Why private funding can’t replace public leadership on nature

Market-based tools can support conservation — but they only work when government sets the rules, writes James Snider, vice-president of Science, Knowledge and Innovation at WWF-Canada

At the end of March — now mere days away — the core budget that funds programs that protect and restore nature in Canada is ending. No renewal has been announced. No new dollars promised.

Instead, there have been whispers. Whispers of a new approach to conservation finance, where conservation gains are built increasingly on private finance.

The implication is that Canada is quietly retreating from its responsibility to protect nature, replacing durable public investment with private finance, without creating the policies, incentives or safeguards required to make those markets work. This is destined to fail, and here’s why.

This pivot raises three questions: what will drive private investment, whether existing market mechanisms can deliver meaningful conservation outcomes and what happens when government doesn’t address the first two issues.

The biggest obstacle to financing conservation through markets is simple: No one wants to pay unless they have to. Whether the solution is insurance products, conservation impact bonds or standalone markets, good intentions alone do not unlock much-needed funding.

When funding doesn’t materialize, it means fewer protected wetlands, less restored habitat, more species at risk and more nature quietly lost. Governments must both set rules that force action and offer incentives that reward it.

Where environmental markets work at all, government isn’t a bystander, it’s the engine. Regulation creates demand, standards define value, enforcement makes outcomes credible. Without these drivers, there is no real reason for companies to absorb cost or risk in pursuit of healthy ecosystems and biodiversity.

But based on the political backlash against carbon pricing over the past five years and the lengths the current government has gone to distance itself from the issue, it’s hard to believe the government will impose tough new rules to protect nature.

Rather than regulation, attention has increasingly turned to corporate accounting and disclosure frameworks such as the Science Based Targets for Nature (SBTN) and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). These tools alone don’t drive investment — they don’t create demand for conservation outcomes, nor do they force anyone to do anything.

Experience with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TFCD), the climate-focused ancestor to TNFD, offers a cautionary lesson. Despite years of promotion, disclosure alone has proven to be a slow and uneven process that improves transparency but does not necessarily drive new investment.

And in this political moment, there is little reason to believe the government is willing to impose on business more stringent accountability for damages to nature and biodiversity.

So, where does that leave us? Without strong policies to protect nature, Canada is left relying on voluntary carbon and emerging biodiversity markets. Their track record is already littered with broken promises and questionable results. While credibility improvements are promised, the margins are thin and the market remains in its infancy despite 20 years or more of incubation.

Biodiversity or wildlife credits may be even more perilous. Concepts such as “biodiversity net gain” or “net positive approach” promise a reassuring trade-off. In plain terms, they allow damage to nature now in exchange for a promise of repair later. But this logic encourages a “build first, fix later” mindset that ignores the mitigation hierarchy — a principle in environmental policy that harm should first be avoided, then minimized, then repaired and compensated for only as a last resort.

An economy that rewards environmental damages today based on the promise of future benefits is deeply flawed.

All of this could still change, if government chose to lead. It could establish clear compliance frameworks for carbon and biodiversity, set enforceable standards, strengthen disclosure requirements and set a high bar around mitigation and offsetting. But there is little evidence this is happening.

The government’s elusive “nature strategy” is a ghost, floating invisibly in the distance, a memory of Canada’s international and domestic nature goals.

Despite saying that nature is a priority during the election, reinforced in a Speech from the Throne, there hasn’t been a single new commitment to policies or programs that benefit nature. Instead, Canada has made sweeping legislative changes that weaken protections for species at risk and other environmental safeguards, under the premise of “building Canada.”

If we are to expect the future of conservation in Canada is to be driven by non-government, market-based approaches, then at minimum we need a signal from government that it is willing to build the foundation of that model.

Doing nothing is still a decision — one with real consequences for nature.