16 March 2022 / published on Environmental Finance

Microsoft and Trafigura are among the buyers of the first three million carbon credits to be generated by the world’s largest mangrove restoration project owned by Indus Delta Capital (IDC), the Government of Sindh and Pollination.

Pollination Executive Director Phil Cohn, the lead advisor on the carbon credits’ sale, said the Delta Blue Carbon Project (DBC-1) received interest from 64 counterparties in the voluntary carbon market (VCM), he added “Blue carbon is considered a super high value segment of the economy.”

Elizabeth Willmott, carbon program director at Microsoft, said: “We know that to achieve the global carbon removals necessary to limit the impacts of climate change, we will need to capitalize on existing nature-based solutions, as well as invest in future technologies. The Delta Blue Carbon project has the potential to deliver durable removal that positively impacts the climate, ecosystems, and local communities.”

The programme is being implemented in the Sindh province of Pakistan over 350,000 hectares of tidal wetlands – an area bigger than Luxembourg.

Over its lifetime it will sequester an estimated 142 million tonnes of CO2e over its 60-year lifetime.

17 February 2022 / published on Reuters Breaking Views

Two Australian financial firms are providing a handy example of how to strike a green M&A deal. On Wednesday ANZ (ANZ.AX), one of the country’s top-four banks, paid $50 million for a minority stake in climate-change and investing startup Pollination. It has also struck a strategic partnership in Asia-Pacific with the firm founded in 2019 by former Lazard (LAZ.N) investment banker Tony O’Sullivan and climate lawyer Martijn Wilder. It gives each side the best of both worlds at a generous but fair price.

16 February 2022 / published on The Australian

ANZ will invest $US50m ($70m) for a minority stake in climate change investment and advisory business Pollination, cementing a strategic partnership to participate in the $US150 trillion global transition to carbon neutrality by 2050.

16 February 2022 / published on Australian Financial Review

Australia’s leading climate change advisory firm, Pollination, has secured a $US50 million cornerstone investment from ANZ Banking Group.

The strategic partnership makes sense given that the skills built up by Pollination’s co-founders, Martijn Wilder and Tony O’Sullivan, are not found inside ANZ.

09 February 2022 / published on Business Green

“The world is at a crossroads. We are within a decade of the deadline for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet significant challenges still lie ahead, and progress is being hampered by the most severe global health pandemic of our age. Today more than ever, substantial investments are needed to ensure that the world is on track towards a resilient, inclusive, and sustainable transition. A new way of looking at the global financial structure is urgent and inevitable” writes Pollination Senior Advisor Nick Hurd MP in Business Green.

Working as part of the G7 Impact Taskforce set up by the UK Government, Nick highlights the potential for private capital to accelerate the world’s progress towards the SDGs.

Following the publication of the Taskforce’s report titled ‘Time to Deliver: mobilising private capital at scale for people and planet’, Nick outlines it’s recommendations on how the power of the private sector – estimated globally at $250 trillion – can be unlocked to meet funding requirements, particularly in emerging economies, where the gap is greatest. And underscores the importance that the flow of investments are channelled into initiatives for maximum global impact in achieving the SDGs and a just transition, that does not leave disadvantaged populations behind.

He writes, “Delivering on the SDGs and the transition to a Net Zero world will, therefore, require that we all urgently capitalise on the existing opportunities.” And continues by stating, “It will be impossible to achieve any targets without the full support of private enterprise, and the commitment of decision-makers to mobilise private capital for the public good. The necessary private capital is ready and willing to help. If fully implemented, the recommendations will create a route that can enable private funding to flow to areas where it will make the biggest difference, helping build a sustainable and equitable future. It is incumbent on both the private and the public sectors to close the gap between rhetoric and action.”

04 February 2022 / published on New Private Markets

In the context of the Natural Capital Investment Alliance announcing it would mobilise more that $10 billion of private capital toward natural capital themes at COP26, Pollination Partner Gavin Templeton met with New Private Markets magazine to discuss how natural capital is gaining traction but that certain complexities will need to be smoothed out as it gets off the ground.

Gavin talked about how “investors want to get ahead of the game” by getting to grips with how their investments affect the natural world before doing so becomes the industry norm. He described that one of the biggest challenges is figuring out what to measure and how to report it: “Everything is underpinned by how you measure those outcomes. The complexity is that nature is multi-dimensional. Carbon is much easier to measure, but something like biodiversity is a bit more complicated.”