Livelihoods and Corporate Partners Launch €150 Million Fund for Nature-Based Climate Solutions

Livelihoods has announced the launch of the Livelihoods Carbon Fund 4 alongside long-standing corporate partners including Danone, Hermès, Mars, Mauritius Commercial Bank, McCain, SAP, Schneider Electric and Voyageurs du Monde, with an initial raise of €124 million and a target size of €150 million to finance large-scale nature-based solutions designed with rural communities. The fund aims to sequester or avoid between 7 and 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over 25 years while sustainably improving the living conditions of over 500,000 people through ecosystem restoration, climate resilience strengthening and rural economic development. LCF4 builds on Livelihoods' track record since 2009 across mangrove and forest restoration, regenerative agriculture, agroforestry and rural energy access, with supported projects to date having enabled the planting of over 160 million trees and improved the living conditions of more than 2.4 million people across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

 

The Nature-Based Solutions Investment Thesis

 

Eric Soubeiran, Chief Executive Officer of Livelihoods, said companies today have a clear responsibility to reduce emissions as quickly as possible while contributing to the protection of the ecosystems on which collective futures depend, and described nature as the most powerful technology available in a world searching for climate solutions. The fund reflects a shared conviction among its corporate investors that the transition to a low-carbon economy requires both rapid emissions reductions and sustained investment in the preservation and regeneration of ecosystems, addressing the gap between what value chain decarbonisation can achieve and the full scale of climate action required. Bernard Giraud, President and Co-founder of Livelihoods, said the new fundraise reflects the commitment to scaling up a model that combines environmental performance and local development, placing local communities at the heart of climate action built over more than 15 years of project development and partnership building.

The corporate investor rationale for LCF4 explicitly acknowledges the limitations of value chain decarbonisation, recognising that even in the most ambitious corporate emissions reduction scenarios some emissions remain difficult to eliminate in the short term. Nature-based solutions including forest restoration, mangrove rehabilitation and regenerative agriculture address this residual emissions challenge while simultaneously delivering biodiversity, water resource and food security co-benefits that purely technological carbon removal approaches cannot provide at equivalent cost. The 25-year investment horizon of the fund matches the timeframe needed for ecosystem restoration projects to reach full biological maturity and deliver their carbon sequestration potential, providing patient capital that commercial investment vehicles with shorter return horizons cannot offer.

 

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The Governance Model and Community Integration

 

Livelihoods invests directly in long-term projects co-created with local stakeholders, providing initial financing through a governance model that involves investors, NGOs and local communities throughout the process to ensure lasting impact and healthier ecosystems. This co-creation approach distinguishes the Livelihoods model from top-down conservation finance where project design is determined by funders and imposed on communities, creating instead projects where local populations are active participants in design, implementation and benefit sharing rather than passive recipients of conservation investment. The involvement of NGOs alongside corporate investors and local communities provides the on-the-ground implementation expertise and community relationship capital that neither corporate investors nor financial intermediaries typically possess, creating a partnership structure where each participant contributes its distinctive capabilities.

The 25-year project timeframe and governance structure create accountability mechanisms that ensure the carbon sequestration and social impact commitments made at fund inception are delivered throughout the project lifecycle rather than only during initial implementation. For corporate investors in LCF4, the long-term governance engagement provides ongoing visibility into project performance and impact delivery that supports credible sustainability reporting on the nature-based contributions their participation funds. The Livelihoods model's demonstrated ability to combine environmental performance with measurable improvements in rural livelihoods across 47 large-scale projects provides investors with an evidence base for impact claims that is more robust than many nature-based solution funds can offer.

 

Portfolio Scope and Geographic Reach

 

LCF4 will support initiatives capable of restoring essential natural assets including forests, mangroves and agricultural soils while creating new economic opportunities for rural populations across the fund's target geographies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The combination of ecosystem types targeted by the fund reflects the diversity of carbon-dense natural systems that are currently degrading at rates that represent both a climate and biodiversity emergency, with mangroves, tropical forests and soil organic matter each offering distinct carbon storage mechanisms alongside different co-benefits for local communities. The agricultural soil dimension of the fund's scope connects ecosystem restoration to food security and farmer livelihood improvement in a way that mangrove or forest restoration alone cannot, recognising that the smallholder farming communities most dependent on ecosystem services are simultaneously the most exposed to climate-driven agricultural stress.

The corporate partner composition of LCF4 spans food, luxury goods, technology, financial services and travel sectors, reflecting the breadth of industries that recognise both their dependence on functioning ecosystems through agricultural and natural material supply chains and their responsibility to contribute to ecosystem restoration beyond their direct value chain boundaries. For companies like Mars and McCain with significant agricultural supply chain footprints, the connection between healthy soils, stable rainfall, biodiversity and crop yield stability makes ecosystem restoration investment a business resilience consideration alongside its climate and social impact dimensions. The Mauritius Commercial Bank participation demonstrates that African financial institutions are increasingly recognising nature-based climate solutions as relevant to their own sustainable finance strategies and client base.

 

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Outlook for Corporate Nature-Based Climate Investment

 

The Livelihoods Carbon Fund 4 arrives at a moment of growing corporate recognition that nature-based solutions must be part of comprehensive climate strategies alongside direct emissions reduction, driven by mandatory biodiversity and nature-related disclosure requirements under TNFD, CSRD and emerging national frameworks that require companies to assess and address their nature-related dependencies and impacts. Whether the €150 million target raise can be achieved and deployed into projects that deliver both the 7 to 10 million tonne carbon sequestration commitment and the 500,000 people livelihood improvement target will depend on the pipeline of investment-ready large-scale nature-based projects available across the fund's target geographies and the quality of implementation partnerships with local NGOs and community organisations. Sustained delivery against both dimensions would validate the Livelihoods model as a scalable approach to combining corporate climate investment with genuine community development impact.

The convergence of growing corporate demand for high-integrity nature-based carbon contributions, mandatory corporate biodiversity disclosure and the expanding recognition that ecosystem restoration is essential for long-term agricultural supply chain resilience creates conditions in which funds like LCF4 are likely to attract increasing corporate investor interest beyond the existing Livelihoods partner network. The next phase of corporate nature-based climate investment will be defined by the quality of the governance frameworks, community partnership models and impact measurement methodologies that distinguish genuine ecosystem restoration from superficially packaged offset purchasing.

 

Source: Livelihoods