November 28, 2025 – Extreme weather is no longer just an environmental concern, it’s a market disruptor. Recent research shows that weather extremes are driving sharp and unpredictable spikes in global food prices, with olive oil in Spain, cocoa in West Africa, and lettuce in Australia rising between 50–300% since 2022.[1] These aren’t isolated shocks. They are symptoms of a deeper systemic issue: the growing fragility of supply chains that depend on nature’s stability. As droughts, floods, and heatwaves intensify, ecosystem services, healthy soils, water availability and biodiversity, are being eroded faster than they can recover.

Despite the escalating risks posed by climate change and nature loss, corporate responses remain piecemeal.[2] Limited visibility and traceability in supply chains have created blind spots, leading corporates to overlook their nature impacts and dependencies.[3] Most initiatives to date have been limited to isolated CSR-funded projects with little integration into core business strategy.[4]

Transparency is also lacking: a Lancaster University review of 100 corporate sustainability reports found that nearly 80% failed to disclose financial costs, while over 90% omitted data on environmental outcomes.[5]Moving from ambition to action will require new approaches, such as collective action models – models that bring businesses together in a shared sourcing zone, landscape or seascape to collectively pay for resilience, sharing risks, and delivering measurable impact.

The latest R4N Guidebook Nature-based Revenue Models in Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Supply Chains, explores collective corporate action models and demonstrates how Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can support corporate resilience and unlock finance for sustainable supply chains. Driven by regulatory compliance, resilience and reputational integrity, embedding NbS into supply chains can improve resilience, reduce costs, and unlock substantial climate and biodiversity benefits for corporates at scale.

The Guidebook identifies four distinct supply chain models across a range of geographies and commodities to support corporate commitments:

• Fisheries Improvement Fund (FIF) – a repayable finance model that enables supply chain actors to fund fishery improvement projects through volume-based fees, de-risked by concessional capital.
• Rimba Collective – operating across Southeast Asia, Rimba links long-term conservation finance directly to commodity procurement (initially palm oil), enabling companies to contribute to conservation outcomes at scale.
• Responsible Commodities Facility (RCF) – a finance facility that supports soy production free from deforestation and land conversion through low interest loans for farmers, incentivising sustainable land use in the Cerrado, Brazil.
• Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) – a collaboration platform that connects companies with shared environmental goals to land managers delivering NbS, facilitating regional landscape restoration across the UK and Europe.

Key Lessons Learned

Each model within the Guidebook highlights a different pathway for linking supply chain resilience with measurable environmental outcomes, while also mobilising investment. They address common challenges in scaling sustainable finance and conservation efforts including:

Upfront financing gaps
Traditionally, many of these projects struggle to secure consistent funding, relying on short-term philanthropic grants or CSR budgets that often leave significant gaps. In contrast, each model tackles this challenge by providing upfront private or catalytic capital, ensuring that project costs are fully covered from the start. For instance, the FIF uses a concessional loan from a foundation to fully finance the fishery improvement project, covering all associated costs from the outset. The RCF on the other hand, offers cheaper upfront capital to farmers through low interest credit lines funded by green bonds that are blended with corporate and philanthropic capital to decrease costs.

Long-term revenue visibility
Many supply chain investments lack long-term revenue visibility – a clear line of sight into how an intervention will generate consistent financial returns over time. Emerging models, however, are beginning to bridge this gap by embedding long-term commitments and performance-linked incentives. Both the FIF and the Rimba Collective, for example, offer multi-year contracts that span the full duration of a project, with payments tied to procurement volumes and verified ecosystem service delivery. This creates a reliable revenue stream, ensuring that investment can be repaid.

First-mover risk
Companies can be reluctant to be a sole investor in landscapes when benefits are shared across multiple stakeholders and can prohibit investment into shared supply sheds.  Addressing this risk is key to unlocking large-scale investment in supply chains and is central to each approach outlined in the Guidebook. These models demonstrate that collaboration and collective action, is the key to progress. LENs for example, is an aggregation model built on cross-sector collaboration at the landscape level, aligning diverse stakeholders to share risks and rewards through joint, long-term investments. By acting together, participating stakeholders can share costs and benefits, improving return on investment for each while maximising the long-term value delivered on farm. These collective action models signal a shift from fragmented efforts to systemic solutions, where shared value, not first-mover risk, defines the path forward.

Supply chain complexity and traceability
Supply chain traceability is essential for companies to comply with regulations such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation and meet their corporate sustainability targets. However, supply chains are fragmented, with some of the largest corporates having more than 100,000 suppliers. Key commodities frequently change hands multiple times making traceability difficult. Within the models highlighted in the Guidebook, the FIF promotes traceability by focusing on a specific fishery and working with the largest offtakers using MSC certification as a traceability tool. Other models, such as the RCF, are exploring how to enhance traceability so that soy can be directly linked to corporate supply chains.

Scaling these Models

These models have proven their ability to mobilise private sector investment and to deliver measurable impact.As of 2025, they have collectively mobilized over USD 130 million in private investment from a range of private sector stakeholders including corporate balance sheet commitments, and investments from financial institutions through the issuance of green bonds.

Yet, replication and scaling will require unlocking far greater volumes of grant and philanthropic funding. Each of the models received early-stage support from corporate or philanthropic sources to scope and become established – but further catalytic investment is essential to move from pilot to scale. Typically, these models need £50,000–£75,000 in initial funding to develop feasibility and design, followed by up to £500,000 to reach full contracting and implementation readiness.

Beyond grants, concessional capital plays a critical role. Some models require upfront investment that will be paid back over time by corporates while others require upfront finance to offset early-stage risk. However, there remains a mismatch between the funding needs of these models and the return expectations or minimum ticket sizes of most financial institutions. Bridging this gap could be transformative.

With the right blend of grant and concessional finance, these mechanisms have the potential to unlock up to USD 1 billion in private sector investment accelerating the transition toward resilient, sustainable supply chains. The message is clear: corporates cannot act in isolation. Collective action models enable companies to pool resources, mitigate risks, and attract private capital at scale. Taking early action now not only builds business resilience but ensures long-term business continuity.

For more information on these supply chain models:

• Download the latest Revenues for Nature guidebook,
• Watch our latest webinar “Mobilising Private Sector Capital for Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chains”
• Or join our Revenues for Nature Community of Practice to stay at the forefront of nature-positive finance.

Sources

[1] Financial Times (2025). Extreme weather drives food prices surges across the globe
[2] TNFD (2025). Evidence review on the financial effects of nature-related risks
[3] CDP (2022). Now for nature the decade of delivery
[4] World Resources Institute (2024). How efficient metrics and expansive incentives can scale corporate contributions to nature
[5] Timothy A. C. Lamont et al (2023). Hold big business to task on ecosystem restoration