GALA 2025Recap GALA 2026Water Is Life
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Tuesday 22 September 2026

Private Dinner: The Regenerative Table

Regenerative Agriculture at Landscape Scale

Moss, New York · Climate Week NYC

Delali Ayivi

Event Summary

Nature is infrastructure

Investors, philanthropists, food-company sustainability leaders, conservationists and farmers gathered around two long tables to test one idea: that nature is the world’s foundational infrastructure, and can be financed like it.

The evening opened with a first look at Groundswell, Josh Tickell’s new film completing the trilogy that began with Kiss the Ground. Across three courses, speakers then shared three working models — from Kenya, Mozambique and the global soil economy — that turn restoration into stable, investable cash flows.

The Message of the Night

The science and the project pipeline already exist. What’s missing is capital at institutional scale, and the structures that let it flow.

Three Working Models

  1. 01

    Kenya — Conservation Equity.

    Recoverable foundation and donor-advised fund capital backs a benefit corporation running luxury lodges in Maasai conservancies, with 100% of net profits flowing to a conservation trust fund.

  2. 02

    Mozambique — Karingani, a landscape that pays for itself.

    A former charcoal concession restored into a ~150,000-hectare reserve, where a high-end lodge anchors hydropower, water treatment and agriculture that also serve the national utility and a community of 42,000.

  3. 03

    Soil — Oath, biology as the lever.

    Microbial consortia built with advanced genomics, delivering 50–250% yield improvements for smallholders in Rwanda and an expected 50–80% cut in fertiliser.

Numbers from the Night

$711bn–$1.3tnestimated annual nature funding gap
$200–400bnof that is the annual private-market funding gap
~$1.5tnsize of the infrastructure asset class, considered “uninvestable” 20 years ago — the playbook to repeat
250m acresof land under regenerative agriculture globally
~$12.5ma year in concession fees funding conservation at Karingani
~70%of the world’s soil is now degraded

Figures as shared by speakers during the evening.

Who Spoke

  • Jay LipmanCo-founder, THE NAT · Host
  • Hari BalasubramanianTHE NAT & Eco Advisors · Moderator
  • Patricia ZuritaChief External Affairs Officer, Conservation International
  • Edward NortonConservation Equity · Maasai conservancies, Kenya
  • Matt McLuckieKaringani Game Reserve, Mozambique
  • Kristen SparhawkBedari Collective · Investor in Karingani
  • Bill McGlashanFounder, Oath · Soil biology
“Nature is producing a return. We just need to put the money in it.”
Patricia Zurita, Conservation International

Hosted by: THE NAT

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