Just Climate has raised $540 million in commitments at the final close of Natural Climate Solutions I, the first fund in its natural climate solutions strategy. The firm announced the close on November 12. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System, CalSTRS, is the strategy’s institutional anchor investor, and Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund is its corporate anchor. More than 40 investors committed to the fund in total, with about two thirds of the capital coming from institutions, including pension funds and asset managers such as Achmea Investment Management.
Just Climate was established in 2021 by Generation Investment Management, the sustainability-focused firm chaired by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. It launched the Natural Climate Solutions strategy in September 2023 to back companies across the land-use value chain: food production, land use, water management and waste reduction, sectors the firm says account for about a third of global emissions.
The fund has already made five investments: NatureMetrics, a biodiversity monitoring company; Afresh, an AI-powered fresh food ordering and inventory platform; AgroStar, an Indian agricultural transformation company; GreenLight Biosciences, an agriculture biosolutions provider; and Tropic, a tropical seeds developer. About 70 percent of the capital is directed to OECD countries and 30 percent elsewhere, with Brazil and India named as priorities, and the firm takes minority stakes in companies that already have operating and commercial traction.
The close matters beyond its size. Natural capital strategies raise money against outcomes, soil health, emissions abatement and biodiversity, that are harder to underwrite than contracted infrastructure cash flows. Anchoring the fund with a teachers’ pension system of CalSTRS’s scale, alongside a corporate climate fund, is the structure Just Climate is using to make that underwriting acceptable to institutional allocators.