At this year’s NZ Carbon Forestry Conference, Ekos CEO Sean Weaver will take the stage to unpack two decades of hard-won lessons on what it actually takes to make nature market projects commercially viable. Drawing on Ekos’s history since 2007 developing carbon and biodiversity projects across Aotearoa and the Pacific, Sean will trace the path many projects follow — from early-stage grant dependence through to long-term, market-enabled funding that can sustain conservation and restoration work well beyond a single funding cycle.

The session will look at the practical realities behind that transition: what makes buyers trust a project, how projects need to be structured to attract durable investment, and where common pitfalls slow the shift from grant reliance to genuine market viability. For a sector increasingly under pressure to prove that nature-based projects can pay for themselves, Sean’s talk promises a grounded, experience-based view of what's worked, what hasn't, and what it takes to build funding models that last.