BofA, King Charles initiative back Eurazeo's $40M biodiversity fund
What's the deal? Bank of America, the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), and French investment firm Eurazeo have launched the Lighthouse Initiative, a $40 million vehicle to finance nature restoration and biodiversity protection. BofA and Eurazeo are the cornerstone investors. The SMI is a sustainability coalition founded by King Charles III.
What's the endgame? The strategy will make minority investments in project development platforms and technology solutions across developed and emerging markets. It targets four areas: ecosystem restoration via regenerative agriculture and forestry, sustainable industrial supply chains, financing platforms to draw in institutional and public capital, and technologies to measure and verify biodiversity outcomes.
How is it structured? Eurazeo will manage the fund as a subset of its Future Industries Fund III, monitoring investments through its impact framework with added biodiversity indicators, including a biodiversity footprint assessment. Each investment must contribute to at least one target of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, such as conserving 30% of the world's land and waters by 2030.
Why now? "Nature is the foundation of the industries we invest in, yet biodiversity remains one of the most underfunded investment themes," said Matthieu Bonamy, partner at Eurazeo. The fund is designed to bring in further partners and scale up over time.
The signal: The $40 million launch is modest against the biodiversity-finance shortfall, and its significance hinges on follow-on capital and measurable outcomes. It joins a broader push to make nature protection investable: the OECD says private investment seeking both biodiversity benefits and returns topped $14 billion in 2025, while the Value Nature Fund targets €300 million for regenerative farms and forests.
Read more: esgtoday.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
