From Return on Investment to Return on Environment Investing in a Sustainable Planet

Abstract

This desk-review article examines the ecological damage and lost investment opportunities associated with the prevailing economic paradigm. It proposes Return on Environment (RoEn) as a complement to Return on Investment (ROI) for evaluating and encouraging regenerative, nature-positive investment. The global economy has transgressed seven of nine planetary boundaries, while more than half of global gross domestic product depends moderately or highly on nature. Yet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and impact-investing frameworks often define “impact” by how funds are spent rather than by verified changes in ecosystems. Drawing on ecological economics, natural capital accounting, the practice of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV), and selected nature-finance cases, the article makes three contributions. First, it defines RoEn across six preliminary dimensions: carbon, water, biodiversity, resilience, natural capital, and community. Second, it presents a five-level Environmental Impact Continuum—destructive, harmful, neutral, beneficial, and regenerative—and illustrates each level with investment examples. Third, it proposes a scoring rubric that rates investments across the six dimensions, discounts unverified gains, and combines a monetized RoEn ratio with a non-monetized score for reporting alongside ROI. The article concludes that nature is economic infrastructure; impact should require measurable environmental outcomes verified independently and by communities; and investment horizons should extend across multi-decade ecological and financial cycles while centering communities most exposed to ecological breakdown. The tools required for large-scale ecological regeneration already exist.