Mobilizing Capital for Natural Infrastructure in Canada: A guide for project champions and funders

The document argues that large-scale investment in natural infrastructure lags because research often focuses on broad valuations rather than specific business cases. It proposes a five-step approach for project champions—starting with a driver, identifying a lead beneficiary, developing a pitch, establishing partnerships, and securing catalyst funding—to bridge the gap between feasibility and finance. For funders, it recommends supporting targeted research, convening beneficiaries, helping projects achieve scale, and providing dedicated predevelopment support.

• Natural infrastructure projects often struggle to secure funding because they are frequently initiated by outside experts rather than the primary beneficiaries, requiring a specific focus on who benefits and how much they are willing to commit.
• Five primary barriers hinder the mobilization of capital for natural infrastructure: chronic underfunding of general infrastructure, the exclusion of ecosystem services from budgets, a lack of performance standards, political preference for visible new projects over preventive measures, and the difficulty of parsing diffuse co-benefits to create a clear business case.
• Successful large-scale natural infrastructure projects are typically driven by time-sensitive forcing events, such as environmental mandates, natural resource needs, or near-term financial losses, rather than general valuation studies.
• Project development requires five distinct 'colours of money' in sequence: catalyst funds, predevelopment support, planning and design funds, construction funds, and O&M resources, with catalyst and predevelopment funds being the most critical gaps.
• Public funding is the most common source of capital for large-scale natural infrastructure, as few projects generate the direct revenue streams required for private financing.
• Canadian funding programs, such as the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund, may exclude natural infrastructure projects because their minimum project cost thresholds (e.g., CAD 20 million) are often too high for nature-based solutions.

APA

Vajjhala, S., & Roy, D. (2020). Mobilizing Capital for Natural Infrastructure in Canada: A guide for project champions and funders. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-12/mobilizing-capital-natural-infrastructure-canada.pdf

Chicago

Vajjhala, Shalini, and Dimple Roy. Mobilizing Capital for Natural Infrastructure in Canada: A guide for project champions and funders. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2020. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-12/mobilizing-capital-natural-infrastructure-canada.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Vajjhala |first1=Shalini |last2=Roy |first2=Dimple |title=Mobilizing Capital for Natural Infrastructure in Canada: A guide for project champions and funders |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=November 2020 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-12/mobilizing-capital-natural-infrastructure-canada.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{vajjhala2020mobilizing, author = {Vajjhala, Shalini and Roy, Dimple}, title = {{Mobilizing Capital for Natural Infrastructure in Canada: A guide for project champions and funders}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2020}, month = nov, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-12/mobilizing-capital-natural-infrastructure-canada.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }