Financing Forest Restoration: The Distribution and Role of Green Fintech in Nature-based Solutions to Climate Change


Hybrid event

Financial technology (fintech) has been hailed as a disruptive reformer of the global financial system, promising more open, democratic capital flows and new opportunities for a wider range of investors to participate in sustainable finance. But how true is that promise? This seminar will problematise the rise of green fintech by focusing on the emergence of ‘fintech for forests,’ where we see an exponential growth of online platforms and products that let users donate to, invest in, or even virtually ‘own’ trees via apps and online schemes. Drawing on original mapping and network analysis, the seminar will trace where these platforms operate, who funds them, and where the trees are actually planted. It will assess how fintech claim to democratise climate finance and make sustainability more accessible, and where those claims begin to break down. From the vantage point of forestation fintech, the seminar asks a broader question: can the digitisation of finance genuinely address planetary crises, or is green fintech simply (re)planting new forms of inequality alongside the trees?