Skip to content
THE NAT NYC Week · Recap Explore the week
THE NAT GALA dining room at Halo 28, lit in deep ocean blue, with guests seated at long tables.
Climate Week NYC · 20–24 September 2026 · The Recap

THE NAT
NYC Week

Five days. Seven gatherings. Culture, capital and nature in the same rooms, and the conversations that carried far beyond them.

Gatherings
7 across 5 days
Press
16 outlets, 6 countries
Impact
374 corals planted
The week in brief

From Water Is Life to For The Ocean

As Climate Week NYC convened leaders from business, government, finance, conservation, culture and civil society, THE NAT hosted the NYC Solution Series: a flagship gala, a coral rave, two investor roundtables, two working dinners and a closing night for the ocean.

The week opened with THE NAT GALA, Water Is Life, and closed at the water's edge in Lower Manhattan. In between, investors, hyperscalers, farmers, scientists, founders and community voices sat at the same tables to work on water, food systems, digital infrastructure and regenerative investment.

~300guests at THE NAT GALA, Halo 28
302guests at NATCAP: Coral Rave
16press outlets, from Vogue to Forbes
148leaders across two roundtables and a working dinner
The programme, in review

Seven gatherings, one movement

Each gathering produced something to take forward: a framework, a commitment, a coral nursery, or a room of new allies.

Day01 Sunday 20 September
Dee Jay Two Bears and Standing Rock performers in ceremonial dress at THE NAT GALA.
Photography: Joe Short
Flagship Gala Halo 28

THE NAT GALA 2026: Water Is Life

Nature returned to New York.

The second NAT GALA opened Climate Week NYC with a sensory journey through the full cycle of water, from salt marsh to glacier to reef. Across four acts, Sophie Hunter, Sabrina Elba, Tenzin Seldon, Dr Sylvia Earle, Dee Jay Two Bears, Rozzi and Pattie Gonia carried the room, timed to honour ten years since Standing Rock and the passing of the UN High Seas Treaty.

  • 5-minute standing ovation for Tenzin Seldon on Gross Domestic Regeneration
  • Voices: Gail Gallie, Sabrina Elba, Thomas Crowther, Emma Watson (on film), Tenzin Seldon, Jesper Brodin, Gabriela Hearst, Dr Sylvia Earle (on film), Lord Fakafānua and Titouan Bernicot
  • Performances: Sophie Hunter’s “Salt of the Earth”, Dee Jay Two Bears’ “What Came Before”, Rozzi and Pattie Gonia
  • Beneficiaries: Conservation International, Blue Marine Foundation and Open Planet

"Climate change isn't a moral failure, it's an accounting failure. Our economy does not account for nature because it does not see nature."

Tenzin Seldon, Founder & Managing Partner, Pulse Fund
Read the recap View the gallery
A guest in a gold sculptural gown in front of THE NAT step and repeat. A speaker on stage in front of a projected aerial river delta. A performer in a feathered headdress under blue light. A guest celebrating with arms raised at the step and repeat.
DJ KP The Great on the decks behind THE NAT logo at NATCAP: Coral Rave.
Photography: Joe Short
Afterparty With Spotify & Coral Gardeners

NATCAP: Coral Rave

When the Gala ended, the reef came alive.

The late-night counterpart to THE NAT GALA turned a party into planting. Guests danced to a live set from DJ KP The Great, and every ticket planted a coral in THE NAT GARDEN, a new coral nursery grown by Coral Gardeners at Tiaia, Mo'orea, French Polynesia.

  • 374 corals planted, roughly 7% of the garden's 5,400-coral capacity
  • 302 guests, with nearly 1 in 3 ticket buyers planting two or more corals
Visit THE NAT GARDEN Follow the garden grow
Pattie Gonia performing in front of streaks of blue light. Young corals growing on a nursery line underwater in French Polynesia.
Day02 Tuesday 22 September
A candlelit long table set for dinner above the New York skyline at night.
Private Dinner Moss, New York

The Regenerative Table

Nature is infrastructure, and can be financed like it.

Investors, philanthropists, food-company sustainability leaders, conservationists and farmers gathered around two long tables, opening with a first look at Groundswell, Josh Tickell's new film. Three working models, from Kenya, Mozambique and the global soil economy, showed how restoration becomes stable, investable cash flow.

  • Speakers: Patricia Zurita (Conservation International), Edward Norton (Conservation Equity), Matt McLuckie (Karingani), Kristen Sparhawk (Bedari Collective) and Bill McGlashan (Oath), hosted by Jay Lipman and moderated by Hari Balasubramanian
  • Conservation Equity: luxury tourism profits flowing 100% to a conservation trust in Maasai conservancies
  • Karingani: a 150,000-hectare restored reserve that pays for itself
  • $711bn–$1.3tn annual nature funding gap, small relative to global capital markets

"Nature is producing a return. We just need to put the money in it."

Patricia Zurita, Conservation International
Read the recap
Day03 Wednesday 23 September
Aerial view of a river braiding through dense green forest.
Roundtable I With CGC, ENVEST & Salesforce

Navigating Peak Water: Aligning Investors Around a New Normal

The capital is there. The connective tissue is not.

51 leaders from 48 organisations, from investors and lenders to corporate water leads, scientists and founders, scanned capital bottlenecks across the full water value chain and the solutions that could align capital behind water.

  • Key speakers: J. Carl Ganter (Circle of Blue), Claire Goelst (ENVEST), Phil Taylor (Mad Capital), Laura Zizzo (Estian Partners), Paul Fleming (WaterValue), Amanda Von Almen (Salesforce), Kirsten James (Ceres), Alix Lebec (LEBEC) and Eli Hopson (CGC), moderated by Jay Lipman
  • Death by pilot: water technologies are piloted again and again, but rarely bought
  • Every basin is different: plan and invest at basin scale, with shared intelligence
  • Value water, don't simply monetise it: full-value accounting changes the investment case
Read the recap Watch the reel Next: CGC Water Funders Forum
Close-up of electric blue coral ridges.
Roundtable II With the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation & C40 Cities

Harmonious Hyperscaling: Data Centres for a Nature-Positive Future

From differentiator to default.

53 hyperscalers, solutions providers, investors, funders, NGOs and community voices pressure-tested Pledge & Publish, a draft framework for nature-positive data centres, building on The True Nature of Hyperscaling at London Climate Week.

  • Key speakers: Nick Cain (the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation), Luke Upchurch (C40 Cities), Tripp Wall (Pantheon Generation), Gabriel Scheer (Elemental Impact), Kaitlin Chuzi (Microsoft) and Nicole Miller (Biomimicry 3.8), moderated by Jay Lipman
  • The build-out is the opportunity: landscape-scale restoration is a "rounding error" against project budgets
  • Community trust is now the binding constraint on what gets built
  • 50 cities now signed up to the C40 Global Urban Data Centre Pact
Read the recap Explore Pledge & Publish
Blurred blue forest of tall trunks in mist.
Working Dinner With ServiceNow · Ludlow House

Before the Storm: Building the Foundations for Sustainable AI

Getting it right, together.

Around 40–44 leaders from data centre development, energy, technology, cities, foundations and community organisations sat down for a working dinner, not a panel, with around $1 trillion expected to be spent on AI infrastructure in the next 12 months.

  • No one is in charge of getting it right: collaboration is the missing ingredient
  • Distributed energy as the community dividend: lower bills, not just benefit agreements
  • A convening hub for each bioregion, strongly backed by ServiceNow

"It felt like the best dialogue of any event this week."

Rex Martin, Sankari Studios
Read the recap Watch the reel
Day04 Thursday 24 September
Sunset over the East River seen through the windows at WSA, Water Street.
Closing Night WSA, Water Street

For The Ocean: Closing Night of Climate Week NYC

An evening for the ocean.

Around 100 guests from the week's ocean community gathered at the water's edge for a reception, a candid panel on sport, culture and the changing ocean, and live music from Prazul, looking ahead to Oceans 2026 in Western Australia. Co-hosted with Progression, Oceans 2026, REEFLINE, ACTAI Global and ImpactAssets.

  • 3× WSL Longboard World Champion Rachael Tilly on stage with Bill Tai and Ximena Caminos
  • Culture moves people where panels can't: sport, art and music build a movement
  • Unlikely partnerships as the engine, and only the beginning

"Take care of nature as if your life depends on it. Because it does."

Dr Sylvia Earle
Read the recap Watch the reel
Rachael Tilly speaking on the panel. Prazul playing saxophone.
In the headlines

“At New York’s Nat Gala, celebrities rub shoulders with nature protectors.”

This year’s event was a deep dive into the ecosystems that cover most of the Earth’s surface, but only get a tiny drop of the conservation funding.

16 outlets across 6 countries, with a combined 508M monthly unique visitors across the online titles that covered THE NAT GALA.

Also covered by

Watch & look back

The week, in motion

GalleryTHE NAT GALA 2026, by Joe Short ReelNavigating Peak Water ReelBefore the Storm, the evening in full ReelFor The Ocean, closing night Instagram@thenat____
The Noguchi fountain at Halo 28 with a projected koi, dressed for Water Is Life.
Thank you

None of it happens without you

Thank you to every partner, speaker and guest who made THE NAT NYC Week possible. That support turns a week of extraordinary evenings into lasting capital and attention for the natural world.

See what's next hello@thenat.com