Vatican City / London / Belém / Johannesburg — 26 October 2025
The COP30 IFRS Framework for Nature — a Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) Lighthouse Report designed to institutionalise Nature on the balance sheet as a recognised, auditable, and investable asset class — was launched following a historic week at the Vatican, where His Majesty King Charles III led the SMI delegation in an audience with His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, aligning faith, finance, and accounting in service of creation.
The Lighthouse Report provides a fiduciary and accounting blueprint for sovereigns, auditors, and institutional investors to classify ecosystems as productive infrastructure assets, applying existing IFRS standards IAS 37 and IAS 38 to recognise Nature as infrastructure on the balance sheet.
“As His Majesty’s Terra Carta reminds us, Nature, people, and planet are at the heart of the global economy. Our COP30 IFRS Framework ensures accounting serves as the arteries of that economy — turning resilience into measurable, investable value. Investors cannot price what accounting fails to define.” said Dr Hubert Danso, Chairman and CEO of Africa Investor and Co-Chair of the SMI Africa Council, speaking from the Vatican
The report forms part of the SMI Nature Lighthouse Report Series — which includes the G20 Nature Investment Roadmap, G20 Roadmap 2.0, and Nature in the Portfolio — charting a fiduciary pathway from policy design to capital deployment, and culminating in this COP30 IFRS Framework for Nature.
Under Brazil’s COP30 Presidency, the framework aligns with global standard setters and finance tracks, including the G20, EU, BRICS, GCC, the African Union’s Nairobi Declaration, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Sustainable Finance Initiatives, the ISSB, TNFD, and the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance.
Download the report: Nature as Infrastructure under IFRS for Global Investability
Together, the SMI Nature Lighthouse Report Series reflects the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s leadership under the Terra Carta — guiding sovereigns, auditors, and investors from recognition to allocation, and from valuation to assurance, for the enduring benefit of people, planet, Nature and portfolios.
