全球视野 | 为改善生态系统定价、投资甚至上市，可行吗？

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文章《Nature Has Value. Could We Literally Invest in It?/大自然拥有价值。我们可以真的投资于它吗？》发布在《纽约时报/ The New York Times》上，作者Lydia DePillis是专注于报道美国经济的记者。文章介绍了来自Intrinsic Exchange集团的“自然资产公司/Natural asset companies”这一概念。这些公司将为改善生态系统来制定市场价格，而不是破坏生态。它们旨在为土地所有者提供一种选择，在获得收入的同时，增强自然效益。尽管面临来自各方的争议和阻力，但这一概念仍然吸引着一些土地所有者和投资者。

Picture this: You own a few hundred acres near a growing town that your family has been farming for generations. Turning a profit has gotten harder, and none of your children want to take it over. You don’t want to sell the land; you love the open space, the flora and fauna it hosts. But offers from developers who would turn it into subdivisions or strip malls seem increasingly tempting. 

想象一下：你在一个发展中的小镇边上拥有几百英亩的土地，你的家族在这里世代务农。继续务农赚钱变得越来越难，并且你的孩子们都不想接手这份工作。你不想卖掉这块土地。因为你喜欢这片开阔的土地，以及土地上的动植物群。但是地产开发商的提议似乎变得越来越诱人，他们想把这片土地开发成住宅区或是商场。 

One day, a land broker mentions an idea. How about granting a long-term lease to a company that values your property for the same reasons you do: long walks through tall grass, the calls of migrating birds, the way it keeps the air and water clean. 

有一天，一位土地经纪人提出了一个想法。不如把土地的长期租约授予一家公司，一家出于同样原因看重你的土地的公司：在高草丛中漫步，聆听候鸟的叫声，保持空气和水的清新。 

It sounds like a scam. Or charity. In fact, it’s an approach backed by hardheaded investors who think nature has an intrinsic value that can provide them with a return down the road — and in the meantime, they would be happy to hold shares of the new company on their balance sheets. 

这听起来像是诈骗，或者是搞慈善。事实上，这种方法得到了头脑冷静的投资者的支持，他们认为大自然具有内在的价值，可以在未来为他们带来回报。而在此期间，他们很乐意在自己的资产负债表上持有这家新公司的股份。 

Such a company doesn’t yet exist. But the idea has gained traction among environmentalists, money managers and philanthropists who believe that nature won’t be adequately protected unless it is assigned a value in the market — whether or not that asset generates dividends through a monetizable use. 

像这样的公司目前还不存在。不过这个想法在环保主义者、资金管理者和慈善家中得到了支持。这些人都相信除非在市场上赋予大自然一定价值，否则大自然将得不到充分保护——无论该资产是否通过货币化的使用方式来产生红利。 

The concept almost hit the big time when the Securities and Exchange Commission was considering a proposal from the New York Stock Exchange to list these “natural asset companies” for public trading. But after a wave of fierce opposition from right-wing groups and Republican politicians, and even conservationists wary of Wall Street, in mid-January the exchange pulled the plug. 

当美国证券交易委员会开始考虑这个由纽约证券交易所提出的、把这些“自然资产公司”上市交易的提案时，这一概念几乎大获成功。但在右翼团体和共和党政治家，甚至是对华尔街持谨慎态度的环保主义者的强烈反对下，纽交所在1月中旬取消了这一计划。 

That doesn’t mean natural asset companies are going away; their proponents are working on prototypes in the private markets to build out the model. And even if this concept doesn’t take off, it’s part of a larger movement motivated by the belief that if natural riches are to be preserved, they must have a price. 

这并不是说“自然资产公司”将会消失，这一概念的支持者正在私人市场上研究开发原型，以构建该模式。就算这个概念没有兴起，它也是更大的运动中的一部分。这场更大的运动相信，如果想要保护大自然的财富，就必须为其定价。

For decades, economists and scientists have worked to quantify the contributions of nature — a kind of production known as ecosystem services. 

数十年来，经济学家和科学家们一直在努力量化大自然的贡献。这是一种被称为生态系统服务的产品。 

By traditional accounting methods, a forest has monetary value only when it has been cut into two-by-fours. If a forest not destined for the sawmill burns down, economic activity actually increases, because of the relief efforts required in the aftermath. 

按照传统的会计方法，只有当一片森林被砍伐成标准尺寸木料时，它才具有货币价值。如果一片预计不会被砍伐的森林被烧毁了，那么实际上经济活动是增加了的。因为需要在火灾之后进行救援工作。 

When you pull back the camera, though, forests help us in many more ways. Beyond sucking carbon out of the air, they hold the soil in place during heavy rains, and in dry times help it retain moisture by shading the ground and protecting winter snowpack, which helps keep reservoirs full for humans. Without the tree-covered Catskills, for example, New York City would have to invest much more in infrastructure to filter its water. 

不过当你拉回镜头时，你就会发现森林在许多方面帮助我们。除了吸收空气中的碳，森林还能在大雨期间固定土壤，能在干旱时期通过遮蔽地面和保护冬季积雪来保持土壤水分，这也可以帮助水库保持水位，供人类使用。比如在卡茨基尔，因为当地没有树木覆盖，所以纽约市不得不在基础设施上投入更多资金，来过滤水源。 

Natural capital accounting, which U.S. statistical agencies are developing as a sidebar to their measurements of gross domestic product, puts numbers on those services. To move those calculations beyond an academic exercise, they need to be factored into incentives. 

美国的统计机构正在开发大自然的资本核算，以作为衡量美国GDP的辅助手段。这些服务将会被计算成数字。而要使这些计算不只是局限于学术研究的范畴，那就必须将其纳入激励机制。 

The most common way to do that is the social cost of carbon: a price per ton of emissions that represents climate change’s burdens on humanity, such as natural disasters, disease and reduced labor productivity. That number is used to evaluate the costs and benefits of regulations. In some countries — notably not the United States, at least on the federal level — it is used to set taxes on emissions. Efforts to remove carbon can then generate credits, which trade on open markets and fluctuate with supply and demand. 

最常见的方法是计算碳的社会成本：每吨排放的价格，代表了气候变化对人类造成的负担，比如自然灾害、疾病和劳动生产率下降。这个数字是用来评估监管的成本和收益。在一些国家（不包括美国，至少在联邦层面上），这个数字用来设定排放税。消除碳排放的工作，可以产生信用额度。这些信用额度可以在公开市场上进行交易，并随供求关系而波动。 

But carbon is just the simplest way of putting a price on nature. For the other benefits — wildlife, ecotourism, protection from hurricanes and so on — the revenue model is less obvious. 

但碳只是为自然定价的最简单的方法。至于其他益处，比如野生动物、生态旅游、防护飓风等，该收益模式就不那么明显了。 

That’s what Douglas Eger set out to address. He wanted to work for an environmental group after college, but on his conservative father’s advice he instead made a career in business, running companies in pharmaceuticals, tech and finance. With some of his newly built wealth, he bought a 7,000-acre tract northwest of New York City to preserve as open space. 

这正是道格拉斯·艾格想要解决的问题。大学毕业后，他本想为环保组织工作，但在他保守的父亲建议下，他转而投身商界，开始经营制药、科技和金融公司。艾格用他新积累的财富在纽约市的西北部买了一块7000英亩的土地，作为开发空间来进行保护。 

He didn’t think philanthropy would be enough to stem the loss of nature — a seminal 2020 report found that more than $700 billion was needed annually to avert a collapse in biodiversity. Government wasn’t solving the problem. Socially responsible investing, while making progress, wasn’t reversing damage to critical habitats. 

艾格认为光是慈善并不足以遏制自然的损失。2020年的一份有巨大影响力的报告发现，每年需要超过7000亿美金，才能避免生物多样性的崩溃。政府并没有解决这个问题。社会责任投资尽管取得了一些进展，但也没有扭转对于重要栖息地的破坏。 

So in 2017, Mr. Eger founded the Intrinsic Exchange Group with the goal of incubating natural asset companies, NACs for short. Here’s how it works: A landowner, whether a farmer or a government entity, works with investors to create a NAC that licenses the rights to the ecosystem services the land produces. If the company is listed on an exchange, the proceeds from the public offering of shares would provide the landowner with a revenue stream and pay for enhancing natural benefits, like havens for threatened species or a revitalized farming operation that heals the land rather than leaching it dry. 

所以在2017年，艾格成立了Intrinsic Exchange集团，其目标是孵化“自然资产公司”，简称NAC。NAC是这样运作的：土地所有者（不论是农民，还是政府实体）与投资者合作，创建一家NAC，并授权使用土地所产生的生态系统服务。如果这家公司在交易所上市，那么公开发行股票的收益，将为土地所有者提供收入来源，同时用于支付增强自然效益的费用，比如受威胁物种的避难所，或是振兴农业经营，从而治愈土地而不是将其榨干。 

If all goes according to plan, investments in the company will appreciate as environmental quality improves or demand for natural assets increases, yielding a return years down the road — not unlike art, or gold or even cryptocurrency. 

如果一切按计划进行，公司的投资将随着环境质量的改善，或对自然资产需求的增加而升值，并在多年后获得回报。这和艺术品、黄金甚至加密货币并无不同。

“All of these things, if you think about it, are social agreements to a degree,” Mr. Eger said. “And the beauty of a financial system is between a willing buyer and seller, the underlying becomes true.” 

艾格说：“如果你仔细想想，其实所有这些东西，在某种程度上都是社会共识。金融体系的美妙之处在于，它建立在自愿的买卖双方之间，而这正是其底层逻辑。” 

In discussions with like-minded investors, he found an encouraging openness to the idea. The Rockefeller Foundation kicked in about $1.7 million to fund the effort, including a 45-page document on how to devise an “ecological performance report” for the land enrolled in a NAC. In 2021, Intrinsic announced its plan to list such companies on the New York Stock Exchange, along with a pilot project involving land in Costa Rica as well as support from the Inter-American Development Bank and major environmental groups. By the time they filed an application with the S.E.C. in late September, Mr. Eger was feeling confident. 

在与志同道合的投资者讨论中，艾格发现人们对这个想法持开放和支持的态度。洛克菲勒基金会提供了约170万美元的资金来支持这一工作，并包括了一份45页的、关于如何为纳入NAC的土地制定“生态绩效报告”的文件。在2021年，Intrinsic Exchange集团宣布计划将这类公司在纽交所上市，同时还宣布了一个涉及哥斯达黎加土地的试点项目，并得到了美洲开发银行和大型环保组织的支持。同年9月底，当他们向证券交易委员会提交申请时，艾格信心十足。 

That’s when the firestorm began. 

就在那时，风暴开始了。 

The American Stewards of Liberty, a Texas-based group that campaigns against conservation measures and seeks to roll back federal protections for endangered species, picked up on the plan. Through both grass-roots organizing and high-level lobbying, it argued that natural asset companies were a Trojan horse for foreign governments and “global elites” to lock up large swaths of rural America, particularly public lands. The rule-making docket started to fill up with comments from critics charging that the concept was nothing but a Wall Street land grab. 

美国自由捍卫者(American Stewards of Liberty)的总部位于德克萨斯州。该组织致力于反对关于自然的保护措施，并试图削弱联邦政府对濒危物种保护的力度。该组织盯上了这个计划。通过基层动员和高级游说，该组织声称NAC是外国政府和“全球精英阶层”用来锁住美国大片农村地区、尤其是公共土地的“特洛伊木马”。在规则制定过程中，批评者的意见开始不断涌现，指责这一概念不过是华尔街的土地掠夺行为。 

A collection of 25 Republican attorneys general called it illegal and part of a “radical climate agenda.” On Jan. 11, in what may have been the final straw, the Republican chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee sent a letter demanding a slew of documents relating to the proposal. Less than a week later, the proposal was scratched. 

25位美国共和党总检察长称这是非法的，是“激进气候议程”的一部分。1月11日，美国众议院的自然资源委员会的共和党主席，致函要求提供一系列与该提案相关的文件。这可能是压垮骆驼的最后一根稻草。不到一周后，该提案就被取消了。

Mr. Eger was dismayed. The most powerful forces arrayed against natural asset companies were people who wanted land to remain available for uses like coal mining and oil drilling, a fundamental disagreement about what’s good for the world. But opponents also made spurious arguments about the risks of his plan, Mr. Eger said. Landowners would decide whether and how to set up a NAC, and existing laws still applied. What’s more, foreign governments can and do buy up large tracts of land directly; a license to the land’s ecological performance rights would create no new dangers. 

艾格对此感到沮丧。反对NAC的最大阻力，是那些希望继续把土地用于煤炭开采和石油钻探等用途的人。这反映了人们对于什么才是对世界有益的根本性分歧。艾格说，反对者对他的计划的风险所提出的论点，是虚假的。土地所有者将自主决定是否以及如何建立NAC，同时现有法律仍然适用。此外，外国政府可以而且确实在直接收购大片土。并且对土地生态绩效权的许可证不会带来任何新的危险。 

There is also pushback, however, from people who strongly believe in protecting natural resources, and worry that monetizing the benefits would further enrich the wealthy without reliably delivering the promised environmental upside. 

也有一些人表示反对，虽然他们坚信要保护自然资源，但却担心将收益货币化会让富人更富，却不能可靠地实现所承诺的环保效益。 

“If investors want to pay a landowner to improve their soil or protect a wetland, that’s great,” said Ben Cushing, the director of the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign. “I think we’ve seen that when that is turned into a financial asset that has a whole secondary market attached to it, it creates a lot of distortions.” 

塞拉俱乐部“无化石燃料金融运动“的主管本·库欣说：“如果投资者想要付钱给土地所有者来改善土壤或是保护湿地，那是件好事。但我认为，当这被转变成一种金融资产，并附带了整个二级市场时，就会产生很多歪曲。” 

Another environmental group, Save the World’s Rivers, filed a comment opposing the plan partly because, it said, the valuation framework centered on nature’s use to humans, rather than other living things. 

另外一家名为Save the World’s Rivers的环保组织，也提交了一份反对该计划的意见。该意见表示，反对的部分原因是因为，该计划的评估框架侧重于人类对于自然的利用，而不关注其他的生物。

To Debbie Dekleva, who lives in Ogallala, Neb., the prospect that a natural asset company could enroll large tracts of land seems like a very real threat. For 36 years, her family has worked to commercialize milkweed, a wild plant that produces a strong fiber and is the only thing that the caterpillars of imperiled monarch butterflies will eat. Ms. Dekleva pays local residents to collect the pods from milkweed stands with permission from friendly landowners, and then processes them into insulation, cloth and other products. 

对于居住在内布拉斯加州奥加拉拉的黛比·德克勒瓦来说，NAC会征用大片土地的可能，似乎是一个非常现实的威胁。36年以来，她的家族一直致力于把马利筋植物商业化。这是一种可以产生强韧纤维的野生植物，同时还是濒临灭绝的帝王蝶幼虫的唯一食物。德克勒瓦会付钱给当地居民，在获得友好的土地所有者许可的情况下，从马利筋丛中采集豆荚，然后将其再加工成保温材料、布料和其他产品。 

That sounds like a type of business that might contribute to a NAC’s value. But Ms. Dekleva suspects that she wouldn’t be part of it — faraway investors and big companies might lock up the rights to milkweed on surrounding land, making it harder for her to operate. 

这听起来像是一种可能会有助于提高NAC价值的业务。但德克勒瓦觉得她也许不能参与其中。因为远方的投资者和大公司，可能会锁定周围土地上的马利筋采集权利，令她的经营更加困难。 

“I think that whoever writes the rules wins,” Ms. Dekleva said. “So let’s say Bayer is doing regenerative agriculture, and they’re going to say, ‘And now we get these biodiversity credits, and we get this, and we get this, and we get this.’ How does someone like me compete with something like that?” 

德克勒瓦说：“我认为，谁制定规则，谁就是赢家。比方说拜耳公司正在做的再生农业项目，他们会说：‘现在我们获得了这些生物多样性积分，然后我们得到了这个，得到了那个。’像我这样的小人物如何与这样的巨头抗衡呢？” 

Such opposition — the kind that stems from deep skepticism about financial products that are marketed as solving problems through capitalism, and questions about who is entitled to nature’s gifts — may be hard to dislodge. 

这种反对，来自于对以资本主义解决问题为卖点的金融产品的深切怀疑，以及对谁有权享受自然恩赐的质疑。这种反对意见可能很难消除。 

Mr. Eger said he built safeguards into the proposed rule to guard against concerns like Ms. Dekleva’s. For example, each company’s charter is supposed to include an “equitable benefit sharing policy” that provides for the well-being of local residents and businesses. 

艾格说，他在拟议的规则中加入了保障措施，以防止出现类似德克勒瓦的担忧。例如，每家公司的章程都应该包括一项“公平利益分享政策”，来为当地居民和企业提供福利。 

For now, Intrinsic will seek to prove the concept in the private markets. The company declined to disclose the parties involved before the deals are closed, but identified a few projects that are close. One is attached to 1.6 million acres owned by a North American tribal entity. Another plans to enroll soybean farms and shift them to more sustainable practices, with investment from a consumer packaged goods company that will buy the crop. (The pilot project in Costa Rica, which Intrinsic envisioned as covering a national park in need of funding to prevent incursions from arsonists and poachers, stalled when a new political party came to power.) 

目前，Intrinsic Exchange集团试图在私人市场来证明这一概念。在交易完成前，该公司拒绝透露参与方，但确认了几个即将达成的项目。其中一个项目涉及北美的一个部落实体拥有的160万英亩土地。另一个项目计划让大豆农场参与进来，让它们转而采用更可持续的做法。该计划由一家消费包装品公司投资，并将会买下作物。（至于Intrinsic Exchange集团在哥斯达黎加的试点项目，因为在新政党上台后陷入停滞。该公司的最初设想是，让项目覆盖一个需要资金以防止纵火和偷猎行为的国家公园。） 

And the concept remains attractive to some landowners who’ve managed to wrap their heads around it. Take Keith Nantz, a cattle rancher who has been trying to build a vertically integrated, sustainable beef operation across the Pacific Northwest. He and a few partners would like to move to less chemically intensive grazing practices, but banks are hesitant to lend on a project that could reduce yields or jeopardize crop insurance coverage. 

对于一些设法弄懂这一概念的土地所有者来说，这一概念仍然具有吸引力。以养牛场主基思·南茨为例，他一直试图在太平洋西北地区建立一个垂直整合的、可持续的牛肉生产业务。他和几个合作伙伴都希望，可以转向化学强度较低的放牧方式。但银行对于这种可能降低产量或危及农作物保险覆盖范围的项目，持观望态度，不愿意提供贷款。 

A natural asset company could be a piece of his financing puzzle. And to Mr. Nantz, the opposition comes mostly from a place of fear. 

NAC可能会成为他金融问题当中的关键部分。对于南茨来说，反对意见主要来自于恐惧。 

“There’s nothing being forced by a government or state or organization to be a part of this or not,” he said. “We can choose to be a part of this, and hopefully it’s a great opportunity to bring some capital.” 

南茨说：“没有人强迫我们参与其中，无论是政府、州政府还是任何组织。我们可以选择加入。希望这是一个带来资金的好机会。”