The Natural Capital Alliance (NatCap) announced today that three new institutions are formalizing their participation in the global collaboration, as it marks 20 years of valuing nature in decisions: the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank as international financial institution collaborators, and the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont (UVM) as a research member.
The announcement coincides with the 2026 Natural Capital Symposium being held at Stanford University this week.
“Bringing in our first new institutions since transitioning from the ‘Natural Capital Project’ to the ‘Natural Capital Alliance’ is an exciting milestone,” said Anne Guerry, NatCap co-executive director. “We’ve worked with all three for many years and look forward to finding new ways to leverage our respective strengths to innovate and scale up natural capital approaches globally.”
Taylor Ricketts, director of the Gund Institute and professor at the Rubenstein School of the Environment and Natural Resources at UVM, was one of the co-founders of NatCap while at WWF.
“The Gund Institute is thrilled to be joining the Natural Capital Alliance as a research member,” said Ricketts. “This move formalizes two decades of ongoing collaboration between researchers at NatCap and the Gund. Teaming up makes sense — both organizations work to reconnect nature and people so both can thrive. I’m looking forward to broader collaborations and impacts ahead.”
Research teams supported by the Gund Institute are leading on a variety of projects including a U.S. network of statewide climate impact assessments, working with NGOs and development organizations to quantify the health impacts of nature conservation, partnering with Vermont's agricultural agency to design, evaluate, and improve their payment-for-phosphorous program, developing microsensors to monitor water quality at a tiny fraction of typical cost, working with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and farmers to develop Vermont’s first map of soil health, and devising new metrics of prosperity and well-being that account for natural capital. This work involves a range of ecosystem services that are also of central interest to NatCap, including carbon sequestration, water purification, flood mitigation, crop pollination, soil health maintenance, infectious disease regulation, stress reduction, and cultural connection to nature.
Moving forward
NatCap plans to continue expanding its ranks gradually over time, filling out different needs and niches that strengthen both the collaboration and the efforts of others doing aligned work.
In addition to the three new institutions, NatCap’s global hub is at Stanford University; its other core institutional members are the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics (at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Research and implementing members are the University of Minnesota’s NatCap TEEMs, Natural Capital Insights, The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund. NatCap also works with a global network of hundreds of institutions in the public and private sectors who collaborate on research, implementation, and scaling of natural capital approaches.
Excerpted with permission from Deepening collaborations, scaling up benefits for people and nature.
