They're talking owning ecosystems and "ecosystem services".
From Fortune, September 14:
America’s most iconic stock exchange wants to bridge the gap between nature and the concrete jungle that is Wall Street.
With investors now closely scrutinizing the environmental, social, and governance or ESG credentials of companies, the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday unveiled a partnership two years in the making with Intrinsic Exchange Group to open up investment opportunities in what IEG calls “nature’s economy.”
“There haven’t historically been mechanisms to encourage the capital formation necessary to preserve and restore the natural assets that ultimately underpin the ability for there to be life on Earth,” NYSE COO Michael Blaugrund told Fortune.
So, the Big Board is helping create one.
The NYSE has developed a new kind of listing vehicle that will be called a natural asset company, or NAC. Using NACs, governments, farmers, and other owners of natural assets will be able to form a specialized corporation that holds the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water. Then the company will tap the U.S. public markets by way of the NYSE like any other entity would. The difference is that instead of using the capital raised to shore up a balance sheet, fund M&A, or buy back stock down the road, NACs will use the funds to help preserve a rain forest or undertake other conservation efforts, like changing a farm’s conventional agricultural production practices to regenerative methods.
In return, investors will get access to a new form of sustainable investment—a space that has enthralled the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink over the past several years even though there remain big, unanswered questions about it. A 2020 report from the U.S. SIF Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the adoption of sustainable investing, found that one out of every three dollars under professional management in the U.S. at the end of 2019 was managed with a sustainable investment strategy....
....MUCH MORE
We'll be back when I figure-out the longs and shorts of commodifying ecosystems and "ecosystem services".
