Introduction

The Nature Impact Fund, managed by WWF France, illustrates a major shift: directly financing practices that restore biodiversity and ecosystem services. Between 2023 and 2025, more than €6 million was committed to support evidence-based projects: protected hectares, maintained habitat trees, stored carbon, and 99-year commitments via Environmental Real Bonds (ORE).

And yet, this is where everything is at stake. This model is not reserved for natural spaces; it opens the way to a new type of action for real estate players.

From environmental philanthropy to measurable proof

The Fund's corporate sponsors finance sustainable management practices: restoration of hedgerows, wetlands, and forest corridors. Each action is monitored, audited, and sustained over time through legal tools (trusts, environmental impact assessments) and a standardized measurement framework. The result: 5,458 hectares of sustainable practices, 16,446 protected habitat trees, 378 hectares left to evolve naturally, and over 85,500 tCO₂e sequestered.

This Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) logic sets a precedent: it makes the value of nature tangible and establishes the ecological traceability of financing.

Transfer this logic to the city

IRICE identifies here a lever for transforming the real estate sector. Urban projects also generate ecological services: rainwater infiltration, green corridors, thermal regulation, and common biodiversity. The challenge now is to qualify, measure, and certify them.

This is precisely the purpose of the Biodiversity Performance Score (BPS):

• establish an ecological performance metric,
• distinguish between proven beneficial practices,
• to ensure the verifiability of commitments over time.

In addition, the Effinature® certification provides a legal and methodological framework in accordance with ISO 17065, guaranteeing the credibility of the process.

Towards a certified "urban PSE"

The challenge for local authorities and project owners:

1. Identify fundable practices (green roofs, permeable soils, ecological corridors, soft management of green spaces).
2. Establish independent monitoring of their impacts.
3. To ensure the contractual sustainability of results, through commitments similar to OREs.

Conclusion

The logic of the Nature Impact Fund demonstrates that biodiversity can be managed as an asset, provided it is measured, monitored, and audited. By applying this approach to urban environments, IRICE strengthens the ecological credibility of real estate transactions: paying for fair practices, proving impact, and guaranteeing sustainability.

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