From Beneficiaries to Decision-Makers: Women in Conservation Finance

- By Mae Bruton-Adams,  Chief Executive Officer, Micronesia Conservation Trust

Each International Women’s Day highlights women as frontline climate champions, project-level leaders, community advocates, and recipients of climate and conservation assistance.

Those narratives are essential to advancing climate progress. But they are also incomplete.

Far less visible is who shapes the financial systems that determine how conservation is funded.

Conserving critical habitats, strengthening resilience and supporting sustainable livelihoods all require a common ingredient: capital. Outcomes are not driven solely by on-the-ground programs; they are shaped by financial governance systems – the institutions and decision-making bodies that design funds, structure financial instruments, set investment policy, and allocate capital. In short, long-term conservation outcomes are heavily influenced by who governs capital.  

Though there are encouraging examples of women leading on conservation finance, they remain rare. Here’s why this matters, and why it needs to change. 

Financial management is at the center of conservation

Finance – particularly at the level of investment decision-making and fund governance –  remains largely male-dominated. This is especially true in technical areas such as endowment management, structured finance, blended finance vehicles, and large-scale conservation financing mechanisms that increasingly underpin global biodiversity and climate finance. These are not public-facing roles. They are fiduciary roles: quiet, technical, and long-term.

Yet they are consequential.

Decisions about risk tolerance, time horizons, liquidity strategies, and asset allocation policies determine whether conservation efforts endure beyond a grant cycle. They influence whether institutions can weather political shifts, economic downturns, and environmental shocks. 

These decisions are not symbolic, they are structural.

The ability to understand, develop and access complex funding streams also affects which governments and local organizations receive support, how projects are scaled, and how quickly on the ground work can be implemented. 

Institutions such as conservation trust funds illustrate how conservation finance operates in practice. These organizations manage endowments, steward donor capital, and design financial mechanisms intended to sustain conservation outcomes over decades rather than grant cycles. Their investment committees and governance structures make decisions about asset allocation, risk tolerance, and liquidity. In this context, financial governance is not peripheral to conservation; it is one of the systems that determines whether conservation efforts endure. 

Palau, Micronesia Region

More women in conservation finance strengthens outcomes

The underrepresentation of women in finance is not unique to conservation. Today, women manage less than 3% of the world’s investment capital, represent just 12% of global portfolio managers, and hold less than 20% of executive positions in asset management. Further, despite women’s central role in climate action, less than 1% of global climate finance directly supports women-led initiatives, and women receive under 10% of venture capital funding.

MCT, which is led by a female CEO and CFO, represents the exception and unfortunately not the rule on this front. Increasing the presence of women in financial management positions would, however, signal an important evolution: Women are not only implementing projects or advocating for change; they are designing the very systems that sustain it.

Increasing women’s presence in conservation finance is not about representation for its own sake. It is about responsibility. It is about stewardship. It is about shaping and participating in the architecture of capital that underwrites environmental outcomes.

It also matters for practical reasons: 

• Governance:  Investment committees and governing boards shape institutional risk tolerance, investment time horizons, and mission alignment. Diverse decision-making bodies can strengthen debate around these issues and reduce the likelihood of narrow or short-term investment assumptions. 

• Broader funding pathways:. Women leaders can broaden the criteria and channels through which conservation finance flows, helping ensure capital reaches local organizations, communities, and governments that are often overlooked in traditional funding structures. 

• Long-term outcomes: Greater gender balance in financial governance can reinforce investment priorities that favor long-term resilience and durable institutional funding. 

• Credibility: Ensuring women hold positions of leadership in finance can strengthen trust with donors, partners and communities.

These are not abstract benefits; they are practical governance outcomes that affect whether conservation ensures and scales.

The path forward for women

Establishing a larger pipeline for women in finance roles will not happen overnight. It requires deliberate technical work: training in financial analysis, investment governance, structured finance, and risk management.  

It will also require institutions – within conservation and beyond – to make what are often behind-the-scenes roles more visible and accessible. This includes creating career paths into fiduciary roles, targeted fellowships and apprenticeships, and governance reforms such as clear diversity metrics and standards for gender equality. 

The future of conservation will not be determined only by who speaks about climate change. It will be determined by who governs and stewards the capital that makes conservation possible.

International Women’s Day is an opportunity not only to celebrate women’s contributions to conservation, but also to recognize—and expand—the role of women in the financial systems that sustain it.