The Nature Hub CWNYC 2025 events

Millions of people live in communities at high risk of flood, fire, drought, and other climate-related extreme events that affect their health and well-being. People and nature are reliant on each other, and adaptation and resilience efforts should reflect this relationship. Nature supports communities, economies, and infrastructure in facing climate change while people play a vital role in restoring, managing, and protecting nature.

Through meaningful partner engagement and scientific modeling and mapping, we have the ability to prioritize areas most at risk—and most crucial for building resilience. We can then work with a diverse set of constituents to mitigate these risks through a set of holistic solutions that integrate the value of nature and prioritize the restoration and conservation of high-value ecosystems, like wetlands, forests, and coastal systems, to help communities survive shocks and thrive over time.

This session will highlight how holistic decision-making that incorporates nature can serve as a foundation for effective and resilient landscape planning, funding, and policy. We’ll explore how forest restoration, integrated watershed management, and resilient livelihood strategies can combine with climate-smart infrastructure planning to manage trade-offs and increase positive outcomes. We’ll also examine the benefits of working across sectors to enhance resilience for people, businesses, and nature.

We will bring examples that leverage scientific rigor, innovative technologies, corporate leadership, and financial mechanisms to demonstrate how nature-based solutions and collaboration can combine to deliver real progress in building resilience for people and nature. Panelists will share their stories about what’s needed to implement nature-based solutions crucial for building resilience—for communities facing health impacts from climate change, corporations managing risk, and insurance companies protecting investments.

Agri-food systems are a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss—yet they also represent one of the most powerful opportunities for transformative change. Regenerative agriculture is emerging as a viable and scalable solution, with coffee as a high-leverage entry point. Coffee touches all dimensions of regeneration: people, biodiversity, climate, and economic resilience. As a globally traded commodity that grows in some of the
world’s most biodiverse and climate-sensitive regions, coffee presents both urgent risks and compelling opportunities for nature-positive transformation.

This panel will feature experts from Nespresso, Technoserve, PUR, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and highlight how regenerative coffee programs are already delivering measurable returns—for farmers, for nature, and for long-term business value. Companies are increasingly turning to regenerative approaches not only to meet climate and sustainability goals, but also to secure resilient supply chains, strengthen producer partnerships, and protect product quality. As an example, we will share a large-scale, multi-strata agroforestry initiative that has been shown to improve tree cover, restore soil health, and enhance on-farm biodiversity—efforts that are critical for ensuring the long-term viability of coffee production. A key innovation is the use of a scalable Biodiversity Performance Index (BPI), which enables consistent measurement and verification of biodiversity outcomes, helping businesses and their partners demonstrate impact with confidence.

New findings will also be shared in an interactive format on returns across multiple dimensions: improved farmer incomes, strengthened export economies, and measurable reductions in GHG emissions. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of the enabling conditions, implementation strategies, and impact metrics that position regenerative agriculture—starting with coffee—as a future-fit solution for resilient, nature-positive food systems.

This 1-hour event will discuss how engaging religious leaders and networks matters for shaping public opinion, combatting misinformation, impacting elections, and strengthening policies and legislation for the protection of the rainforest in Brazil and Colombia. It will also showcase how mobilization looks like on the ground in the areas of education, training, campaigns and advocacy.

At a time when rainforests and their defenders are seriously threatened, the session offers a space to consider how interfaith cooperation, guided by respect for creation and values of justice and stewardship, can contribute to a united, ethically anchored response to the climate and biodiversity crises.

Repairing decades of environmental harm requires a diverse set of financial tools and investor types working together to address climate change at scale. Today, philanthropy is expanding its role beyond traditional grantmaking—leveraging program-related investments (PRIs) and mission-related investments (MRIs)—and has the unique opportunity not only to deploy capital, but also to influence markets while centering the needs of communities at the core of its mission.

This session, designed for mission-driven investors such as foundations and single-family offices, will highlight innovative investments in nature-based solutions—spanning land, sea, and air. Through presentation and interactive dialogue, participants will gain insights into peers’ most innovative work and explore how philanthropy, collectively, can accelerate systems change.

This interactive roundtable event was designed to develop key challenges and solutions around integrating nature into national, regional and international climate strategies. This session will bring together leaders from corporates and financial institutions to drive business implementation of nature and climate strategies focusing on overcoming barriers such as misaligned incentives, policy gaps, and funding constraints.

Event Objectives:

1. Developing a clear set of key challenges from business for driving forward climate and nature strategies
2. Developing a clear set of opportunities and solutions from business to help meet these challenges
3. Galvanising commitment from businesses as they head towards Belem

The aim is to present these from a business perspective at an interactive ministerial at Belém.

Format: The session will be coordinated by KPMG and N4C as a roundtable session of 50 people across five table-top discussions. The aim is to provide a space in Sao Paulo to announce these commitments and then present them from a business perspective at an interactive ministerial at Belem.

This session will share insights into how cross-sector partnerships between private sector technology leaders and nonprofit entities are exploring the application of agentic AI to operationalize and amplify climate-positive initiatives. Drawing on the Forest Stewardship Council’s participation in the Salesforce Accelerator – Agents for Impact, we will examine how agentic AI can enhance tailored guidance and transparency within complex certification systems, while enabling real-time decision-making at scale.

At the same time, the environmental footprint of AI—including energy use, material extraction, and infrastructure demands—raises urgent questions about the technology’s net climate impact. This session invites open, participatory discussion and will explore strategies to mitigate AI’s environmental costs, including responsible development, ethical governance, and climate-aligned deployment.

Bringing together stakeholders from AI innovation, environmental governance, and climate finance, this conversation will explore how agentic AI can serve as a strategic asset for businesses and nonprofits alike—helping to bridge the implementation gap in NbS, while aligning with the ambitions of climate policy frameworks. Join us to examine the delicate balance between leveraging AI’s potential for positive climate impact and safeguarding the planet’s future.

Bringing together stakeholders from AI innovation, environmental governance, and climate finance, this conversation will explore how agentic AI can serve as a strategic asset for businesses and nonprofits alike—helping to bridge the implementation gap in NbS, while aligning with the ambitions of climate policy frameworks. Join us to examine the delicate balance between leveraging AI’s potential for positive climate impact and safeguarding the planet’s future.

This session will explore what it takes to support socio-bioeconomy initiatives that centre on local leadership and territorial governance. What works when connecting communities, markets, and buyers? What role can public procurement and other government policies play in creating the conditions for success?

We will share insights from the ForEco (Forest Economy) program, a collaborative initiative between Rainforest Foundation Norway and six partner organizations across the Brazilian Amazon. Since 2021, ForEco has supported nearly 800 communities across seven states, with initiatives ranging from seed collection and reforestation to food processing, youth entrepreneurship and territorial governance.

This session will explore how socio-bioeconomies, grounded in territorial governance and traditional knowledge, are advancing food sovereignty, innovation and forest conservation from within the territories themselves.

As momentum grows toward building sustainable, deforestation-free commodity supply chains, companies are increasingly investing in nature-based solutions on-farm emissions reductions, setting, for example, SBT FLAG targets and ensuring compliance with regulations (e.g. EUDR). These efforts are a vital part of the climate solution—but to maximize their impact and minimize negative impact (e.g. leakage), they must be complemented by broader, beyond the value chain (e.g. BVCM) landscape-level strategies. Because supply chains are complex, involving diverse producers, ecosystems, and community dynamics, a holistic approach is needed—one that integrates on-farm practices, off-farm initiatives, and landscape protection. This session will explore how aligning these different efforts under a shared framework for action and measurement can reduce emissions, strengthen ecological integrity, and deliver benefits both within and beyond the value chain.

Panelists will examine the business case for investing beyond the farm gate, weighing the benefits of landscape-level strategies against the operational and financial challenges companies face. Through a  real-world case study and discussion, the session will unpack what actions are needed within supply chains—such as traceability and on-farm emissions reductions—and what must be addressed at the landscape level to support long-term supply chain resilience and ecological health. The panel will also explore how broader investments in supply sheds can generate measurable benefits beyond corporate value chains, ultimately creating more durable and scalable solutions to climate and biodiversity challenges.

Building the business case for investment in natural climate solutions and communicating your impact relies on a strong foundation in carbon accounting. High-integrity GHG inventory management and carbon credit generation depend upon it. In this session, leading practitioners from across the value chain will share insights on how forest and agriculture managers are improving their carbon accounting practices in an environment where standards and policy changes for carbon accounting of land-based activities are constantly in flux. In addition, we will discuss how carbon markets can provide a pathway to maximize the full climate benefit of forests and land.

This session will tackle the critical challenge of scaling nature-based climate solutions by showcasing how cutting-edge science and AI-enabled tools are overcoming market barriers to unlock investment and accelerate impact. We’ll highlight three investible Natural Climate Solutions and offer the first public preview of our AI-powered Nature Tech Navigator — a new tool designed to match users with the right nature tech solutions for their climate goals.

This session is being hosted in collaboration with FSC Indigenous Foundation, Nia Tero, Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, and the Climate Champions. The event will be interactive and bring together Indigenous leaders, corporates, standards bodies, investors and civil society allies to share experiences of genuine partnership and what leadership on a nature-positive economy looks like in practice, especially when it comes to finance.

This session is a response to growing pressure on corporations to act on nature. As nature-positive strategies become central to ESG and climate commitments, Indigenous Peoples offer proven, place-based collective solutions that deliver measurable impact far beyond existing models of corporate leadership.

This roundtable will explore how companies can embed Indigenous wisdom into their nature-positive strategies—moving from compliance to co-creation. With a spotlight on practices, tools, funding models, and co-governance frameworks that help shift resources, shape power, and  coordinate decision-making within Indigenous communities.  Further act as source of wisdom and learning for what a corporate strategy aligned to nature and climate could be.

The Nature Hub Day 1 focuses on private meetings and receptions.