In this op-ed written for Regional Post’s COP17 issue, Dr. Tiffany Grabski, Head of the SSE Academy at the UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative, explains why stock exchanges hold the key to mobilising private capital for nature.
TEXT : Dr. Tiffany Grabski
As delegates gather in Yerevan for COP17, the conversation will turn, as it must, to money. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework set out what the world needs to achieve for preservation of biodiversity and nature by 2030. Meeting those goals is estimated to require around 700 billion USD a year. Public budgets alone will not close that gap. Private capital has to move too, and the fastest way to reach private capital is through the institution that sits at its center – the stock exchange.
We often talk about “the market” as if it were one actor. It is not. It consists of listed companies, investors, banks, brokers, auditors, regulators and standard setters, each with its own incentives and each waiting for someone else to move first. Work with investors alone and you still depend on companies to disclose the information investors need. Work with companies alone and they will ask why they should report data no investor requires. Exchanges are different. Their core job is to connect all of these players, and they already speak to every one of them through their listing rules, disclosure guidance, market data, indices and capacity building. When you work with an exchange, you are not working with one part of the system. You are working with the system and when a stock exchange changes its guidance or launches a new bond segment, markets pay attention in a way they rarely do for outside voices.
This is why the UN SSE initiative has worked with exchanges since 2009. It now partners with more than 130 exchanges worldwide. Each has committed at the level of its CEO or Board Chair to promote sustainable investment and better disclosure among the companies listed on its market. Over the past decade we have watched exchanges do this for climate. Sustainability guidance, green bond segments and ESG indices went from rare to routine. But how can we tackle climate change and its effects, without nature?
Nature is now where climate was ten years ago. With more scientific data, scenarios and trends documented, we know now that nature and biodiversity are financially material to economies and to businesses. More than half of global GDP depends moderately or highly on nature, and nature-related risks are beginning to show up in how companies are valued. The frameworks to measure and disclose them now exist, led by the TNFD. What is missing in most markets is the capacity to use them.
That is where education comes in. Guidance, standards and regulation are only as effective as a market’s ability to put them into practice. Nature is harder than climate in one important respect – it is local. A ton of carbon has the same effect wherever it is emitted, but the effect of drawing water from a stressed river basin depends entirely on where that basin is. Companies need to learn to locate, evaluate and assess their dependencies and impacts on nature. Investors need to learn what good nature-related disclosure looks like. Boards need to understand that this is a question of strategy and risk, not only of reporting.
We launched the SSE Academy in 2021 to fill exactly this gap. We act as the back-office sustainability team that most exchanges do not have the resources to build themselves. Our workshops are expert-led, CPD-certified, donor-funded and hosted by exchanges free of charge for their markets. To date, more than 70 exchanges have hosted our training for over 60,000 market participants in more than 150 countries and territories. This year, together with the TNFD, we began dedicated training on managing and reporting nature-related issues, and exchanges across several regions have already brought it to their markets. By the end of COP17 we will have held 14 workshops with the TNFD and partners, reaching more than 4,000 market participants.
The Euro-Asian region is well placed to lead in this space, to mitigate risks while also securing important opportunities related to nature. Yerevan is home to the Federation of Euro-Asian Stock Exchanges (FEAS), which has spent three decades convening exchanges across Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. FEAS has worked together with the UN SSE and its members to disseminate knowledge and build capacity across markets that are often too small to do it alone. Here in Armenia, the market is now growing important opportunities associated with nature. The country’s first green bond and first sustainability-linked bond were both issued in 2024, the latter listed on the Armenia Securities Exchange (AMX). The Central Bank of Armenia has since recommended a dedicated green bond segment on the exchange.
This is an opening for nature. Many economies across the region rely heavily on agriculture, water, mining and forestry, the sectors most dependent on healthy ecosystems. Those same sectors offer the clearest investment opportunities – sustainable agriculture, efficient water management, land restoration and the rehabilitation of mining sites. Since 2025, international bond market guidance has allowed green bonds whose proceeds go exclusively to nature-related projects to carry the “Nature Bond” designation. A labelled bond segment built with nature in mind from the start, supported by guidance and training for issuers and investors, would let the region’s markets raise new capital for nature and give investors a credible way to find it.
At COP17 we will launch the SSE Action Plan on Nature, a practical and flexible roadmap for exchanges and regulators. My invitation to exchanges and regulators across the region is simple. Use the Action Plan to identify where your market has the greatest opportunity. Then work with the SSE Academy and FEAS to bring education to every participant in your market, from the largest listed company to the smallest broker. Exchanges have the infrastructure that we have already seen mainstreaming climate into financial decision-making, and they can do the same for nature. It starts with making sure everyone in the market knows how.