Just Climate, a specialty investment business focused climate and agriculture, has secured $175 million in capital, including through the backing of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System as its institutional anchor and Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund as its corporate anchor.
The partnership aims to deliver attractive returns and help transform land use to achieve global net-zero and nature positive goals, Just Climate said in a press release announcing the deal. Currently, the way land is managed accounts for roughly one third of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the primary driver of biodiversity loss, the group pointed out.
“The climate crisis is accelerating and forcing an energy and land transition, which will succeed if it is a just transition,” said Clara Barby, senior partner of Just Climate. “We believe, with the right growth capital and business-building support, the picks and shovels that will enable the land transition have the potential to scale rapidly and generate attractive financial returns through highest positive climate impact.”
Transforming the way agricultural commodities are produced and restoring degraded landscapes creates a unique set of scalable investment opportunities, like biological fertilizers and pesticides to replace chemicals, development models to finance and operate restoration projects and technologies to verify carbon and biodiversity outcomes, Barby said.
Just Climate’s Natural Climate Solutions strategy is a global investment effort designed to support entrepreneurs with growth capital support to scale technologies and services. The strategy aims to invest in businesses with the potential to deliver attractive financial returns alongside the highest climate and nature impact.
“Achieving our ambition of being carbon negative by 2030 requires both reducing emissions and scaling high-quality carbon removals,” said Erika Basham, director at Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund. “Our work with Just Climate reflects our commitment to advancing nature-based solutions that drive high-integrity carbon removals, build resilient supply chains and protect biodiversity.”
In January 2025, Just Climate’s Natural Climate Solutions announced its first investment, a Series B funding round for NatureMetrics, a leading UK-based biodiversity monitoring company that has helped over 600 clients in over 110 countries to monitor and manage nature impacts and risks through its environmental DNA technology and platform.
This investment aims to scale NatureMetrics’ nature intelligence platform and expand its AI capabilities and eDNA solutions, to provide high-quality data to underpin a new era of nature reporting.
“The world needs innovative solutions to help reverse the loss of biodiversity more than ever, and with [Just Climate’s] support, we can empower forward-thinking leaders in sustainability with the tools they need to drive a nature-positive future,” said Dimple Patel, CEO of NatureMetrics. “Recent geopolitical events remind us just how much we rely on visionary organizations prepared to make bold investments in change for good.”
Watch this video: Food system resilience in the era of climate change
