Conservation and climate action are essential for the future of our planet. Innovative financing and rigorously designed climate action offer powerful tools to drive progress.”

Wijnand de Wit is a Partner at Dalberg Advisors based in Geneva. With extensive experience in strategic planning, organizational transformation, and strategic execution, he supports international organizations and multi-stakeholder partnerships in environment, health, and trade. Wijnand is currently leading a review of the strategy, product portfolio, and operating model for a foundation that operates standards in environmental and social markets. He has worked with prominent organizations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), World Health Organization, Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, and Green Climate Fund. Before joining Dalberg, he worked at KPMG Consulting in the Netherlands on financial management in the public and private sectors. Wijnand holds an MBA from Nyenrode University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering from Rijswijk Polytechnic.

In this interview, Wijnand discusses his commitment to conservation, the role of consultants in environmental protection, and the innovative strategies needed to tackle the global climate crisis. 

What draws you to focus on conservation?  

Conserving nature is a mission that resonates deeply with me on both professional and personal levels. As the WWF reminds us every year with the Living Planet Report, it is an urgent issue, and a fundamental one. Nature has the power to provide resources to build and develop economies and societies sustainably, but we have stretched those resources far too thin. With climate change and the acceleration of extreme weather events, investing in conservation needs to be a top-of-mind priority for everyone.  

Protecting the environment relies on science to understand the challenges and evidence-based policy responses. What role do consultants like Dalberg play in this process?

Conservation issues are usually complex, uncertain, occur at local, regional, or global levels, and involve competing interests. Science and evidence-based policy making are crucial, but even more effective when combined with strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, funding and resource mobilization, advocacy, and innovation. Consultants such as Dalberg can add a lot of value in creating an environment in which science and evidence-based policymaking maximizes impact, especially when divergent stakeholder priorities lead to an impasse. Consultants can offer new perspectives on the same problems, develop a fact base, engage stakeholders as independent facilitators, and forge partnerships.  

Here’s where our commitment to marginalized communities becomes especially important. Often, the communities most affected by environmental degradation lack a voice in policy discussions. Their traditional knowledge and practices can hold valuable insights for sustainable solutions, but these perspectives are frequently overlooked. Dalberg bridges this gap through inclusive stakeholder engagement, empowering local voices, and seeking effective, equity-focused solutions. This ensures that everyone benefits from a healthy planet, not just privileged groups. Ultimately, Dalberg’s ability to care about marginalized communities isn’t just a value on our website—it’s a strategic advantage that offers long-term sustainable solutions. 

Significant progress on conservation has been elusive. What key actions or strategies are necessary to overcome these difficulties and drive meaningful conservation efforts?

Conservation often gets approached in a siloed way, missing a more systemic approach. A system’s approach to conservation involves understanding and addressing the complex interrelationships between various components of an ecosystem, as well as the social, economic, and political factors that influence conservation outcomes. This holistic method recognizes that environmental issues cannot be effectively addressed in isolation but require integrated solutions. Program design greatly benefits from a clear conversation about the system, the levers available, and how they may influence behavior.

One example of a program that has managed to do this well is the “No Plastics in Nature” program by WWF. This program aims to eliminate plastic leakage into natural environments, especially oceans, by 2030. This initiative started with a review of the overall plastic lifecycle from production to disposal, and mapped out all stakeholders and their incentives at each stage of the process and designed a set of interventions that target those incentives. I believe that this type of thinking will result in more effective projects.

With the climate and nature crisis upon us, what actions can we take to scale up efforts and move faster? 

We are at risk of reaching critical thresholds that, when crossed, could lead to large, accelerating, and often irreversible changes. But that doesn’t mean giving up, or that we should throw everything against known pathways. It is important to continue to experiment and learn what works, even if this involves making small changes, as they can lead us to new ideas and pathways. What we do need to focus on is shortening the innovation cycle and scaling promising solutions more quickly, whether they are policies, technologies, or products.

Most organizations that we work with are acutely aware of the need to continue to experiment and innovate. As our work with a foundation that operates standards for environmental and social markets demonstrated, there is no shortage of ambition. It is more about setting guardrails around the innovation cycle so that the time and resources that are dedicated to innovation are used in the most effective way. These guardrails include setting clear objectives, monitoring key performance indicators, tracking against milestones, and clear go/no go decisions at milestones.

You recently supported a carbon market player with their strategy. What impact potential can we expect from carbon markets?  

I believe carbon markets, both compliance as well as voluntary, have an important role in emission reduction. Carbon markets create financial incentives to invest in emission reduction, often with benefits to other sustainability goals such as global health. They also allow for experimentation and innovation and generate experience and knowledge on what works well, informing climate finance initiatives more broadly. However, offsets should only be considered if all other options to reduce emissions have been exhausted. Organizations shaping the market have a responsibility to ensure that those buying carbon offsets understand and are equipped to maximize their emission reduction before resorting to offsets.

Looking ahead, what developments or trends will you be following closely? 

Innovative financing for nature is key. Mechanisms like debt-for-nature swaps could provide $100 billion to restore nature and help countries adapt to climate change. While not a new concept, variations are emerging that improve incentives for creditors, such as enabling them to trade carbon credits generated from these transactions. 

In addition, climate financing overall is evolving. Our knowledge and experience with mitigation and adaptation programs are growing rapidly, allowing us to better define best practices. As these programs become more available and thoughtfully designed, they will offer increasingly compelling propositions for climate financing.

Contact Wijnand to know more about Dalberg’s work on long-term sustainable climate solutions: