Nature-Based Investing: Suzanne Tavill

StepStone Reflections on Private Markets

Nature provides the building blocks for civilization, arable soil, air and water filtration, ore and minerals for extraction, and economic and recreational opportunities. In almost any other context, you would expect to pay for these services. But with nature, we are wont to expect these things for nothing. Hence the title for the white paper we released late last year, “We Don’t Value Nature.”

As financiers and economists, we are wont to look at nature and try to derive an ROI. And for that reason, institutions have underrated nature—the returns were not competitive with other asset classes. Part of the reason for that is society had not properly placed a price on all the benefits and pleasure it derives from nature. And by doing so, the thinking goes, nature will find a place in investors’ portfolios. On this episode of RPM, Suzanne Tavill, StepStone’s Head of Responsible Investment, discusses nature-based investing. Among other things we discuss:

  • How better pricing can help resolve the nature crisis (9:39);
  • The relationship between climate and nature investing (13:40);
  • The challenges investors are facing in building a nature-based portfolio (20:32);
  • COP15: where it succeeded and how it can improve (23:12); and
  • How the digital divide has been a two-way street (28:58).

Read the transcript here.

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StepStone Group
StepStone Group

StepStone Group (Nasdaq: STEP) is a global private markets investment firm focused on providing customized investment solutions and advisory and data services to our clients. StepStone’s clients include some of the world’s largest public and private defined benefit and defined contribution pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies, as well as prominent endowments, foundations, family offices and private wealth clients, which include high-net-worth and mass affluent individuals. StepStone partners with its clients to develop and build private markets portfolios designed to meet their specific objectives across the private equity, infrastructure, private debt and real estate asset classes.

W. Casey Gildea
Managing Director casey.gildea@stepstonegroup.com
+1.212.351.6114

https://www.stepstonegroup.com/
277 Park Ave, 45th Floor
New York, NY 10172

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