Ivo leads UNEP’s Climate Finance Unit (CFU), and oversees a growing portfolio of various initiatives and finance facilities that actively unlock public and especially private capital towards sustainable land use with positive impacts for the climate, nature and people. The team consists of 20 staff and consultants based in Geneva, Nairobi, Jakarta and Cambridge.

Since its inception, CFU has raised more than $70 million in public funding for a variety of blended finance facilities, unlocking more than $200 million in private capital for long-term impact lending and impact investment, with a target of reaching +USD 1 billion in private finance for ‘net zero, nature positive’ agriculture, forestry and land restoration by 2025. This includes initiatives such as the AGRI3 Fund (set up by Rabobank, UNEP, Mirova, FOUNT, Cardano and IDH) that stimulates long-term impact lending by providing guarantees to banks that finance corporate clients and farmers when they are able to achieve positive impacts on nature, climate and local communities, as well as a growing portfolio of business solutions to finance landscape restoration.

UNEP’s Climate Finance Unit has contributed to the capitalisation of the &Green Fund though the GEF ‘non-grant’ window (which closed several innovate deals in rubber, palm oil and soy/cattle), and created the Restoration Seed Capital Facility (RSCF) that stimulate impact investment by private equity funds in forest and land scape restoration. Lastly, CFU supports the Tropical Landscapes Finance Facility (set up by BNP Paribas, ADM Capital, UNEP, ICRAF), including a Grant Fund to build a pipeline of projects in Indonesia.

In addition, CFU advances UNEP’s normative work for example with the launch of the ‘State of Finance for Nature’ report and forthcoming publications on the need to repurpose agricultural subsidies, but also creating business and finance coalitions such as the recently-launched ‘Good Food Finance Network’ on the back of the UN Food Systems Summit (by UNEP, WBCSD, EAT Foundation, FAIRR, Food Systems f/t Future).

Ivo Mulder co-founded together with Global Canopy the Natural Capital Finance Alliance (NCFA) that was launched at the Rio+20 Earth Summit and signed by CEOs of more than 40 finance institutions. It paved the way for the newly-created Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosure (TNFD), the nature equivalent to the TCFD. Ivo also sits on various steering committees.

Ivo Mulder has over sixteen years of professional experience working for UNEP, private consulting firms and with non-governmental organisations. He has published more than fifty reports, blogs and articles and sits on the Steering Committee of a number of initiatives. Ivo is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and a member of the Dutch Association of Sustainable Investors (VBDO). During his free time, he pursues a variety of outdoor sports such as triathlon, diving, alpine skiing and mountain hiking.