2.4 Permanence and Leakages
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Marco, ESG lead for large company
“My company is developing its approach to natural capital assets and has asked me to explore the potential for the development of a £50m portfolio. I’m interested in how we can use our own resources to improve our environmental bottom line.”
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Jenny, family office investment manager
“My clients are looking at diversifying their portfolio into more sustainable assets, offering longer term returns and benefiting their country’s environment. They have heard a lot about green finance and natural capital, but they are nervous about ‘greenwashing’.”
Permanence refers to the durability and longevity of the environmental benefits achieved by the investment in nature markets. This principle is important for impacts on all affected ecosystem services and is well known from the carbon market ( Wunder et al., 2025). Permanence is a key issue in nature markets and biodiversity protection. Some impacts, like species extinction, can’t be undone, so it’s important to make sure conservation results last over time.
Also, conservation efforts can affect areas outside the target zone. Sometimes these effects help conservation, but other times they can reduce the overall benefits. (Meyfroidt et al., 2020). For instance, when such interventions restrict the use of natural resources, the activities can shift to other areas and thus relocate the environmental impact. This shift, known as leakage, can occur due to economic factors (like moving production or changing prices), human behavior changes, and ecological connections. Leakage is a well-known issue from REDD+ schemes (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) where it has been a concern in relation to e.g. biodiversity impacts (Harrison & Paoli, 2012).
The leakage into other affected areas can happen locally (e.g., near protected areas), regionally/nationally (e.g., people moving to new areas), or even globally (e.g., affecting global commodity prices). The extent of leakage depends on market dynamics. Leakage is challenging to monitor directly and often requires modelling (Wunder et al, 2025).