Nature as a source of long-term value
Ucuuba plants floating in a waterway in the Amazon, Brazil. The plants are known for their anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties and are used in Natura’s Ekos beauty products. Photo credit: Natura.
As pressures on nature, climate and communities intensify, finance leaders are increasingly being asked to demonstrate how sustainability creates long-term business value – not as a trade-off, but as a core driver of performance.
At Natura, a Brazil-based global cosmetics and personal care company, this perspective is embedded in the organization’s business model and decision making. In this blog, Natura’s Group Chief Financial Officer, Silvia Vilas Boas, shares how the organization integrates financial, social and natural capital, how the finance team works alongside sustainability colleagues to guide everyday decisions, and how new financial instruments are being used to channel capital towards nature positive and socially inclusive outcomes.
At Natura, we believe nature is not a cost. It is a driver of value and an intrinsic part of our business model. Because of this, separating nature from business is not only impossible – it would significantly undermine our ability to succeed. This is why Natura is committed to building a fully regenerative business model by 2050, generating positive impact across all capitals – natural, human, social and financial.
Our business model was designed in a way that allows us to combine these four impacts. Through generating financial impact, we also generate positive or negative impacts in human, social and natural capital – because every financial decision we make inevitably impacts the others.
To manage this interdependence, we have developed an Integrated P&L (profit and loss) that monetizes all these impacts and combines them with the financial one. This gives us a clear picture of the value we create. Today, we know that for each US$1.00 of revenue, we generate US$2.50 in positive impact across those capitals. This allows us to manage the business in a way that increases this positive impact we are generating.
Let me give you a concrete example. We have been working with communities and families in the Amazon rainforest for 25 years. Our first product line using Amazon bio-ingredients was launched in 2000 – the Ekos line – and it is now one of our most profitable product lines in Latin America.
This success was only possible because, together with the communities in the Amazon, we learned to better understand the power of the forest. We learned from their ancestral knowledge how the forest works and how to use those ingredients responsibly, without compromising the forest’s vitality.
Every time Natura grows, the lives of those communities improve. In addition to paying for products, we also contribute to environmental protection such as paying for a person or a community to look after a conservation area. This in return helps keep the forest alive. Together, we have protected 2.2 million hectares of forest in partnership with more than 10,000 families.
The Natura &Co Latin America Climate Transition Plan launched in 2024, bringing all our actions together into a single platform embracing climate governance and resilience. Natura has been carbon neutral since 2007 and our ambition is to achieve zero net emissions at our own installations (scopes 1 and 2) by 2030 and in our value chain (scope 3) by 2050.
At Natura we don't consider the world's social and environmental challenges to be obstacles, they are opportunities to innovate and reshape business in a way that serves everyone.
Integrating finance, sustainability and decision making
At Natura, we say that we are all Chief Sustainability Officers – and, in my case, I am also the Chief Financial Officer. Everyone in the organization is responsible for generating integrated results that extend beyond financial performance alone.
Our Integrated P&L is what makes this possible. It allows us to monetize and measure the full range of impacts we generate. Strong financial results often correlate with strong positive impacts across other capitals, but not always. Sometimes, growth can create unintended negative consequences, which is why we are constantly working to minimize the negative impacts we create, while strengthening the positive ones.
One of the most significant social impacts we generate comes from the income of our beauty consultants’ network. We are a direct-selling company, with more than three million beauty consultants across Latin America, so their livelihoods are deeply connected to our decisions.
When we make revenue management choices – such as whether to increase prices above or below inflation – we must consider the impact on consultants’ income. If we do not increase prices above inflation, their income may suffer, increasing our negative social impact.
We do not look at this in terms of product volumes sold. We always compare consultant income with the living wage in each region.
Engaging investors and rethinking financial instruments
When it comes to investors, we see a mix of perspectives. Some are focused on short-term performance and quarterly results, while others take a longer-term view and are more open to discussing strategy and impact in depth. With the latter, we can have deeper conversations about our direction and the outcomes we generate.
Overall though, we find interest is still relatively limited. We continue to work closely with the investment community to develop approaches that incorporate sustainability-related risks and opportunities into valuation models. For us, this challenge is closely connected to how financial markets are currently structured.
The transition agenda – across climate, nature and society – requires far greater engagement from financial markets. Traditional financial instruments alone are not enough to accelerate climate and nature transitions at the scale required. They are based on traditional credit risk models that balance risk and return and naturally favour caution.
This creates practical barriers. For example, how do we provide capital to a small community in the middle of the Amazon rainforest when they obviously will not have a credit rating?
At Natura, we do not face difficulties raising funds for ourselves. But when financial institutions want to support these activities, they often require Natura to act as the off-taker and absorb the initial risk, with Natura then passing capital down the value chain to communities and producers in our network.
This approach is not scalable. We need financial instruments that allow capital to flow directly to small producers, communities and other essential actors throughout the value chain.
That is why we are working alongside the market to design new financial mechanisms that link capital to impact. In 2024, we issued Real $1.3 billion in debentures, anchored by investors – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Inter-American Development Bank – and tied to our commitment to increase the number of Amazon bio-actives in our products to 49 ingredients up from 44. More ingredients mean more income for communities – and more resources circulating locally.
In 2023, we also launched a blended finance instrument called Amazonia Viva, combining both capital with financial return and capital without return. The non-return component, backed by the IFC, is critical. Before providing credit, we need to train communities in basic financial management, technical agroforestry knowledge and help prepare local infrastructure to handle production. So far, we have worked with 15 Amazon communities through this instrument, with zero delinquency or defaults.
This is an approach we want to scale – particularly as we become self-sufficient in palm oil sourced from agroforestry systems. But this goes beyond Natura’s balance sheet. One of our biggest challenges is helping private capital investors understand and feel confident in these new models of nature positive value creation.
Looking ahead
Our experience at Natura highlights both the opportunities and the barriers facing finance leaders today. Protecting and regenerating nature and communities is not a parallel sustainability agenda. It is central to how value is created, sustained and measured over the long term. We are seeing the impact integrated approaches to value creation can have already, yet scaling these results will require a shift in how financial institutions assess risk, return and trust.
For the transition to a net zero, nature positive and just future to succeed, capital must reach the people and ecosystems currently excluded from traditional financial systems – including small producers, consultants and forest communities. As our work to date demonstrates, sustainability ambition alone cannot drive the change we need, the entire finance community must innovate. We need new financial instruments and ways of thinking, and methods for measuring and scaling positive impact for both nature and society.
