If water always finds a way, as the saying goes, then the same is true for financial ingenuity. A UK fund launched this week aims to generate returns for its pension fund backers from restoring natural resources and getting the companies who benefit to pay. There’s something to this idea, if it can navigate the problems that tend to vex green finance, such as fuzzy definitions and fears of dirty data.

So-called nature positive finance — the preserving and restoring of nature — is the topic du jour in green finance circles. Rebalance Earth, a start-up whose founders hail from wealth and pensions management, has secured ￡25mn from the ￡20bn West Yorkshire Pension Fund for its nature-based programme.

The plan is to get, say, a supermarket to mitigate its risk of flooding by paying, like any other maintenance or service fee, for an upstream river maintenance project. Perhaps a cat foodmaker will see benefits in boosting North Sea fish stocks by restoring oyster reefs. Pension funds will profit mostly from a spread between the cost of the work and the fees collected. It aims to provide investors with an annual internal rate of return of up to 12 per cent over 15 years. For a pension fund, that’s good.