Strategy

Diverse portfolio in nature

Tula will focus on a diversified portfolio of nature-related projects across Asia-Pacific supporting managers, project developers and entrepreneurs delivering environmental and commercial returns.

Tula will support strategies that generate value from nature services, increasing value of nature and its provision of ecosystem services, carbon credits, and increasing equity value.

Tula will use a landscape-approach to origination.

What are landscapes?

  • Can have various land use types (e.g., agriculture, biodiversity conservation, urban areas);

  • Has actors with different objectives (e.g., biodiversity conservation, agricultural productivity or livelihood security objectives);

  • Are small enough to maintain manageable, but large enough to deliver multiple functions to stakeholders with different interests;

  • Has boundaries that can be a combination of natural boundaries, distinct land features, socially defined areas, jurisdiction and/or administrative boundaries, or changes in biodiversity.

A landscape approach to origination is key to assessing bankability and potential to generate co-benefits at scale.

This requires consideration of both environmental and social risks and opportunities, while aligning with the interests of multiple stakeholders.

This consideration also needs to be applied throughout and after the investment process to ensure the permanence of impact.

Key factors that we examine are:

  • This describes the factors and often the extraction regime on which the landscapes relies on for livelihoods. Reliance on patterns and trends in nature is especially true in emerging and frontier markets.

  • Oftentimes cultural extraction regimes do not take into account natural hazards, chronic or immediate. Poor consideration impacts livelihoods and is exacerbated by social factors such as race, class, gender, and/or ability.

  • Stakeholder engagement unique to every landscape and is key to the landscape approach to origination. Any intervention will need to balance the rights, needs and expectations of multiple stakeholders. Traditionally marginalized groups such as women and indigenous peoples also warrant additional attention to achieve greater equity in a landscape.

  • Economic and environmental dynamics are one of, but not the only predictors of key industries present in a landscape. Social factors such as a region’s postcolonial legacy and level of development can influence this, changing its position on value chains and appropriate interventions.

  • Looking at a landscape’s existing projects and the agents executing them gives an indication of an area’s capacity and pressures, whether local or external. It also lets us perform common practice analysis on the industries active in the region to tailor interventions.

  • This can be a highly complex topic, influenced by the interplay of both environmental and sociopolitical factors. Some landscapes present more amenable conditions than others for investment and project execution, while some present a better case for the impact additionality of capital.

    Bankability will depend on a closer analysis on environmental, social, and commercial risk-return profiles of interventions considering all of these factors.