Annual Insights 2025
The CBA’s year in review
2025 was a year of proof points with the circular bioeconomy moving from concept to reality across the globe.
Our Living Labs network extended its reach with phase two of the Himalayan Regenerative Fashion Living Lab, supporting pashmina herder communities in Ladakh, and an agroforestry-based medicinal plants Living Lab in Italy.
Feasibility studies began in Indonesia, Ecuador and France, focusing on regenerative coffee, cacao and viticulture.
Our grants supported Indigenous students at the Living School of the Amazon (EVA) and the coordination of the African NGOs Alliance for Environmental Sustainability (ANAES).
Our two Fellowships deepened the foundations of our work. The Designing for Life essay and the Wytham Woods workshop created as part of the CBA Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Fellowship for Reimagining Nature Finance and Inclusive Capitalism represented a genuine leap: not just asking how to fund nature but also asking what kind of finance system would be designed from nature’s own principles. Our new Fellowship on Artificial Intelligence for a Nature-First Economy supported by NatureAlpha is pioneering the use of AI to advance the monitoring and implementation of landscape regeneration.
2025 also showed one of CBA’s greatest strengths and global contributions: bringing together businesses, scientists, Indigenous communities and public institutions in genuine partnership, and putting that partnership to work across the globe to create demonstrable impacts on the ground.
Two highlights stand out: the convening power of the CBA as showcased at our event at St James’s Palace on nature and health and broadening and strengthening our diverse coalition by welcoming the “la Caixa” Foundation (the foremost private foundation in Spain and one of the largest in Europe) as our first Custodian Member.
