Why conservation, regenerative agriculture, and public health advocates need to come together to build a new framework for investing in America's natural resources.
I need to get something off my chest.
It's something I've been thinking about for nearly two years, and after attending the Regenerative Food Systems Investment (RFSI) Forum last week, I feel more strongly about it than ever.
First, I want to acknowledge how much optimism I took away from RFSI. The innovation, entrepreneurship, and passion in that room were incredible. There are people building businesses, developing new financial models, and creating entirely new markets around regenerative food and agriculture. They're doing important work to create a more sustainable food system.
And increasingly, I think we have to acknowledge that a sustainable food future is not guaranteed.
Every week, we see more concerning headlines about our water supplies, our food systems, and the increasing pressures on the natural resources that sustain us.
And while I believe technology has an important role to play in addressing these challenges, I don't have confidence that technology alone is going to save us.
That's why I think we need to fundamentally reconsider how we invest in nature.
Trees, water, and stable ecosystems are critical infrastructure, but we don’t treat it that way.
Nature Is Infrastructure. We Should Invest in It That Way.
For decades, climate finance has focused heavily on technology and renewable energy. I understand why. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is essential, and renewable energy is a critical part of the solution. There's no question about that.
But somewhere along the way, we've discounted the value of land-based strategies.
We underinvest in conservation. We underinvest in regenerative agriculture. We underinvest in watershed restoration, soil health, and the ecological systems that make our economy possible in the first place.
Part of the problem is that we've become obsessed with the wrong financial metrics.
The financial darlings of the investment world are companies that promise hockey-stick growth and extraordinary returns. And while there are certainly opportunities for innovation and attractive returns in nature-based businesses, that's simply not how most land-based investments work.
But here's the thing: that's not how most infrastructure investments work, either.
Nobody expects a municipal water system to deliver venture capital returns. We don't build roads, bridges, or wastewater treatment facilities because they promise exponential growth.
We build them because they're essential.
They're the foundational assets that allow the rest of our economy to function.
Nature is no different.
Public lands are infrastructure. Healthy watersheds are infrastructure. Productive soils are infrastructure. Wetlands that store floodwater are infrastructure. Grasslands that support livestock, biodiversity, and water infiltration are infrastructure.
These systems provide real economic value, whether or not that value shows up on a balance sheet.
This isn't just a philosophical argument. In its 2026 report on the economic benefits of healthy watersheds, the Environmental Protection Agency documented measurable economic benefits from watershed protection, including reduced drinking water treatment costs, flood mitigation, recreation, and increased property values.
One example estimated approximately $31 million in annualized flood protection benefits from coastal wetlands in Tampa Bay.
And just like traditional infrastructure, the financial returns from these investments often don't capture their full societal benefits. That's precisely why governments have historically invested in infrastructure directly or created incentives that attract private capital participation. We need to start applying that same logic to nature.
Instead of asking why conservation investments don't generate venture-scale returns, we should be asking why we haven't developed the financing mechanisms, public incentives, and investment structures necessary to fund them at scale.
We don't have a nature investment problem because nature lacks value. We have a problem because our financial systems don't adequately recognize or reward that value.
The Conservation Industry Has Been Playing Defense for Too Long
Here's where my frustration really begins. For the better part of three decades, the environmental and conservation industries have been playing defense. We've been fighting to preserve existing protections. Fighting to maintain funding. Fighting to prevent the erosion of regulations that were established decades ago. And those fights matter.
We absolutely need strong protections for wetlands, clean water, wildlife habitat, and public lands. We need effective enforcement of the Clean Water Act. We need environmental laws that work. But we cannot build the future of conservation by constantly defending the past.
The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. The challenges we're confronting today are not the same challenges we faced more than 50 years ago. We're dealing with increasing water scarcity in some regions, more intense flooding in others, changing agricultural economics, declining biodiversity, and growing pressure on productive land. We need a conservation framework designed to address the challenges of the next 50 years, not simply preserve the framework of the last 50.
Instead, we find ourselves repeatedly fighting over how existing regulations should be interpreted, whether particular wetlands qualify for federal protection, or how far federal authority extends. Consider the ongoing debates around Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which governs permitting for discharges of dredged or fill material into jurisdictional waters. We spend enormous amounts of energy debating the scope of federal authority, even as the science continues to demonstrate the importance of wetlands and functioning watersheds for water quality, flood mitigation, and ecological health. Meanwhile, the underlying problems continue to grow.
And too often, we're leaving the future of our natural resources in the hands of courts and political appointees rather than building durable legislative solutions with broad public support. We should absolutely defend the protections we have. But defense cannot be our entire strategy.
It's time to go on offense.
We Need Protections That Outlast Political Administrations
The recent changes to the Endangered Species Act are a perfect example of why we need a different approach. In July 2026, the federal government finalized a rule removing the longstanding regulatory definition of harm under the Endangered Species Act. For decades, that definition had helped protect endangered wildlife from habitat destruction that could injure or kill protected species.
The administration argues that its revised interpretation more closely follows the statutory language. But the change raises serious questions about how effectively the law will protect wildlife from the consequences of habitat destruction and degradation. And this is happening despite remarkably consistent public support for endangered species protections.
A 2025 peer-reviewed study published in Conservation Letters found that approximately 84% of Americans have supported the Endangered Species Act over the past three decades. That support extends across political affiliations and rural and urban communities. Even more striking, 58% of respondents in the study's 2025 survey believed the law should provide stronger protections for endangered species than it currently does.
Think about that. We have an issue with decades of broad public support, yet the scope of protection for endangered wildlife continues to shift with changes in administrations, regulatory interpretations, and court decisions. This is exactly the problem.
The Endangered Species Act remains federal law, and many of its protections remain in force. But the recent changes demonstrate how much can depend on the interpretation and implementation of that law. And the same problem exists with the Clean Water Act.
When Congress leaves important questions unresolved, those questions are increasingly answered by executive agencies and federal courts. Different administrations adopt different interpretations, regulations change, and litigation determines how far protections extend. The result is uncertainty for conservationists, landowners, businesses, and developers alike.
We cannot build a durable conservation economy on a regulatory foundation that can shift every four years. That's why I believe we need to go back to Congress. Not simply to defend the environmental laws we already have, but to strengthen and clarify them. We should be explicit about what we want these laws to accomplish.
We want endangered species protected from extinction, including through meaningful protections for the habitats they depend on. We want wetlands and waterways protected because they provide essential services to our communities and economy. We want clear, enforceable standards that give landowners and businesses certainty about their responsibilities.
And we want those protections to reflect the long-term interests of the American public rather than depend so heavily on the priorities of whichever administration happens to be in office. Courts will always have a role in interpreting laws, and federal agencies will always have a role in implementing them. But Congress can reduce ambiguity by clearly defining the protections, responsibilities, and objectives that should endure across administrations.
If protecting America's wildlife, water, and natural resources is a broadly shared national priority, our laws should reflect that commitment clearly and durably.
And we shouldn't stop there. Protecting nature from destruction is only one part of the equation. We also need to invest in restoring degraded landscapes, improving watershed health, rebuilding biodiversity, and making our agricultural systems more resilient. That requires more than defending existing environmental regulations. It requires a new legislative agenda that combines durable protections with meaningful investment in natural infrastructure.
That's the opportunity in front of us. We can keep fighting over how the laws of the 1970s should be interpreted. Or we can begin the work of defining what conservation policy should look like for the next 50 years.
We Have an Extraordinary Opportunity to Build a New Coalition
One of the most interesting things happening in America right now is that concern about our natural resources is creating opportunities to bring together people who don't agree on much else. Conservationists care about protecting wildlife and natural habitats. Hunters and anglers care about healthy ecosystems, clean rivers, and access to public lands. Farmers care about soil health, water availability, and the long-term productivity of their land. Parents care about the quality of the food their families eat and the water their children drink. Public health advocates care about reducing exposure to harmful pollutants and improving our food systems. Rural communities care about maintaining productive agricultural economies and preserving their way of life.
And people across the political spectrum have reasons to recognize that our natural resources are essential to America's economic prosperity and national security. These groups may disagree on climate policy, energy policy, or the role of government. But there is a tremendous amount of alignment around some fundamental goals.
We want clean water. We want healthy food. We want productive farms and thriving rural communities. We want intact public lands and healthy wildlife populations. We want our children and grandchildren to inherit a country with abundant natural resources. And we want the people who produce our food and care for our land to be able to make a good living doing it.
Why aren't we building a national movement around those shared priorities?
Imagine a coalition that brings together conservation organizations, regenerative agriculture businesses, farmers, ranchers, hunters, anglers, public health advocates, parents, and companies that depend on natural resources. Not to fight over whether climate change is real or which political party has the better environmental platform. But to advocate for something much more fundamental:
Protecting and investing in America's natural resources is essential to our economic prosperity, public health, and national security. That should not be a partisan position. It should be a national priority.
Farmers Are Already Telling Us They Want to Do More
One of the clearest signs that we're missing an opportunity is the demand for agricultural conservation programs. Programs administered by the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) have historically received more interest from farmers and ranchers than available funding can support. USDA budget data for 2023 indicated that only about 31% of qualifying applications to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) were funded. That means roughly two-thirds of eligible conservation applications went unfunded.
Think about what that means. We have farmers raising their hands and saying, I want to improve my land. I want to invest in conservation. I want to build a more resilient operation.
And we're telling many of them we don't have enough money. Meanwhile, we continue spending billions of dollars annually on agricultural risk management and disaster assistance.
I understand why those programs exist. Farmers operate in an extraordinarily challenging business environment, and crop insurance plays an important role in protecting their livelihoods and our food supply. But what if we invested more aggressively in reducing the underlying risks in the first place?
What if we made comparable investments in soil health, water retention, watershed restoration, and agricultural resilience? What if we paid farmers not only to produce commodities, but also to produce the ecological services that benefit the rest of society? There's substantial scientific support for the benefits of these practices.
According to USDA's soil health research, conservation practices that improve soil structure and organic matter can increase water infiltration, improve water retention, and reduce runoff and erosion. The agency also identifies soil health management as a way to improve agricultural resilience during periods of both drought and excessive rainfall.
These benefits vary by landscape, climate, and management approach. But the broader point remains: investing in healthier agricultural landscapes can address some of the underlying risks that threaten farm productivity and water resources.
Restored wetlands can store floodwater. Healthy grasslands can improve habitat while supporting livestock production. More resilient agricultural systems can help farmers withstand droughts and extreme weather. These investments won't eliminate the need for crop insurance or disaster assistance. But over time, they could reduce some of the risks that make those programs necessary.
We should be investing in resilience before disaster strikes, not just paying for the consequences afterward. And we should be doing it at a scale that reflects the importance of these resources to our economy.
We Need a New Framework for Investing in Nature
This is where I think the public health, conservation, regenerative agriculture, and nature investment industries need to come together.
We have spent years developing individual solutions. Conservation organizations have developed sophisticated approaches to land protection and restoration. Regenerative agriculture companies have created new business models to support farmers and improve agricultural practices. Investors are experimenting with ecosystem service markets, conservation finance, and new approaches to land ownership. Technology companies are improving our ability to measure soil carbon, biodiversity, and water outcomes. These are all important pieces of the puzzle.
But they're too often operating independently. We need to stop treating conservation, agriculture, and natural resource management as separate industries.
They're all part of the same system. And we need a coordinated strategy to finance that system.
That means developing policies and investment structures that recognize the multiple forms of value land creates.
It means compensating farmers and landowners for the public benefits they generate. It means creating opportunities for private investors to participate in ecological infrastructure projects with appropriate risk-adjusted returns. It means aligning public funding with private capital rather than expecting either to solve the problem alone. And it means recognizing that the return on investment in nature isn't limited to the cash flow generated by a particular property or project.
It's also reflected in avoided flood damages, more reliable water supplies, improved agricultural productivity, healthier communities, and more resilient local economies. These benefits are already being quantified.
The EPA's 2026 Economic Benefits of Protecting Healthy Watersheds report compiles evidence of economic benefits across six categories, from drinking water treatment savings and natural hazard mitigation to recreation, health, and property values. The challenge isn't simply proving that nature generates economic value. It's developing mechanisms that allow the people investing in restoration and stewardship to capture enough of that value to finance the work.
We need to build an investment system that rewards the creation of ecological value, not just the extraction of economic value from land.
We Should Be Writing the Next Generation of Conservation Legislation
I'm a lawyer by training, but I have very little desire to spend my career working on legislation. I'd much rather be developing projects, working with landowners, and putting capital to work restoring landscapes. Ideally, government would function effectively enough that the policies we need would already exist. But that's not where we are.
And I don't think we can afford to wait for the perfect administration or the perfect political environment to make progress. We need to build a bipartisan legislative agenda around natural resource resilience. One that protects the resources we already have while creating meaningful incentives to restore and improve them. One that recognizes the economic importance of agriculture and supports farmers in making long-term investments in their land. One that treats water security, soil health, and ecological resilience as national priorities.
And one that creates a much larger role for private capital in financing conservation and restoration. This doesn't have to be an anti-development agenda. We need energy infrastructure. We need housing. We need economic growth. And we need permitting systems that are predictable, efficient, and effective. But we can support development while also establishing clear, durable protections for the natural resources on which our economy depends.
These objectives are not mutually exclusive.
We should be strengthening protections for wetlands and waterways through legislation that can withstand legal challenges and provide certainty for landowners and developers.
And then we need to go further. We need to build the next generation of policies that actively encourage investment in nature rather than simply regulate its destruction.
What Would Playing Offense Actually Look Like?
If we're serious about treating nature as infrastructure, we need to start advocating for policies that reflect that commitment. Imagine a national natural infrastructure investment agenda.
One that dramatically expands funding for agricultural conservation and watershed restoration, with the goal of meeting the demand from farmers and landowners who already want to adopt better practices.
One that establishes clear financial incentives for measurable ecological outcomes, including improved water quality, increased water retention, healthier soils, and restored habitat. One that creates financing mechanisms capable of attracting long-term private capital into land restoration and stewardship.
One that aligns agricultural policy, water policy, conservation funding, and infrastructure investment instead of treating them as disconnected priorities. And one that provides durable, predictable protections for our most important natural resources.
We don't have to invent every component from scratch. We already have conservation programs, mitigation frameworks, public-private partnerships, and emerging ecosystem service markets. We have decades of scientific research demonstrating the benefits of ecological restoration. We have farmers and landowners who want to participate.
And we have investors looking for opportunities to deploy capital into real assets that generate both financial and environmental returns. What we don't have is a sufficiently coordinated national strategy to bring these pieces together. That's what playing offense should look like.
Not simply opposing bad policies or defending existing regulations. But proposing a compelling alternative.
A framework that makes investing in nature a mainstream part of how America finances its infrastructure, supports its agricultural economy, and protects its future.
Natural Resources Are a Matter of National Security
Perhaps the most important shift we need to make is in how we talk about conservation. For too long, we've framed conservation primarily as an environmental issue. But our natural resources are among America's most important strategic assets.
Our ability to produce abundant food depends on productive soils and reliable water supplies. Our communities depend on functioning watersheds and resilient landscapes. Our economy depends on access to natural resources that support agriculture, manufacturing, energy production, and countless other industries. And our national security depends, in part, on maintaining the capacity to feed our population and sustain our economy.
The connection between ecological health and agricultural productivity is well established. USDA's soil health guidance identifies water regulation, nutrient cycling, plant growth, and resistance to erosion as essential soil functions.
These aren't just environmental benefits. They help protect the productive capacity of our agricultural landscapes and the communities that depend on them.
We talk about energy independence as a national security priority.
Why aren't we talking about water security and agricultural resilience in the same way?
Why aren't we treating the long-term productivity of American farmland as a strategic national asset?
Why aren't we investing in the natural systems that make our prosperity possible?
These are not abstract environmental concerns. They're fundamental questions about the future of our country.
It's Time to Play Offense
I started this Invest in Nature series because I believe we need to rethink how we value land and the many services it provides. We've explored the idea of land as a multipurpose asset, the opportunity to develop new revenue streams from ecosystem services, and the role that private investment can play in financing restoration.
But I want to end this series with a bigger challenge. We cannot build a thriving nature economy through individual projects and innovative financing structures alone.
We also need the policy environment, public investment, and political coalition necessary to make those projects viable at scale. And we're not going to get there by waiting for someone else to create it. Every major industry in America organizes around its interests. Industries advocate for the policies, incentives, and regulatory frameworks that support their growth.
The nature economy needs to do the same. Not just conservation organizations. Not just regenerative agriculture companies. Not just investors or environmental advocates.
We need farmers, ranchers, businesses, hunters, anglers, parents, public health advocates, and everyday Americans who care about the future of our natural resources. We need to build a movement that is broad enough to transcend political divisions and ambitious enough to fundamentally change how we invest in the land.
A movement that recognizes conservation isn't simply about protecting nature from economic activity.
It's about investing in the natural systems that make economic prosperity possible.
And we need to stop waiting for the right political moment. The opportunity is here. The demand from farmers is here. The interest from mothers for a healthier America is growing. The investment innovation is happening. There is an opportunity to build public support across political lines. What we need now is the leadership and coordination to bring these forces together. We've spent decades defending what we have. It's time to start building what we need.
It's time to invest in nature. And it's time to play offense.
Sources and Further Reading
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Economic Benefits of Protecting Healthy Watersheds (2026).
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Water Act Section 404.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Soil Health on Cropland.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Soil Health Literature and Research.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Soil Health.