About
Closing the global financing gap is one of the most pressing challenges of our time. Despite decades of public funding and philanthropic giving, the resources needed to effectively address climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequalities — particularly in the Global South — remain far short of what is required. Blended finance has emerged as a powerful response: by combining private capital with public or philanthropic funding, it de-risks investments and unlocks flows of capital toward projects that would otherwise struggle to attract private financing, from renewable energy and climate technology to nature-based solutions and social inclusion initiatives.
Yet blended finance remains a nascent and poorly understood field. Scaling it into a robust global market requires rigorous research, structured knowledge-sharing, and the training of a new generation of investors and policymakers capable of designing and deploying these instruments effectively.
Mirova Research Center is committed to playing an active role in building this market. Through dedicated partnerships with leading academic institutions, MRC supports the development of the evidence base needed to identify best practices, improve financing structures, and inform both private-sector decision-making and public policy. Our engagement in blended finance reflects our conviction that mobilizing private capital at scale — and directing it where it is most needed — is essential to achieving meaningful progress on the world’s most urgent sustainability challenges
Partnership
Through a multi-year partnership with Columbia University’s Sustainable Investing Research Initiative (SIRI), MRC and Mirova are working to foster the emergence of blended finance as a structured global market for sustainable investment. Under the leadership of Professor Caroline Flammer — SIPA Vice Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs, Director of SIRI, and Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Columbia University — the partnership brings together academic expertise, practitioner knowledge, and policy perspectives to deepen our collective understanding of blended finance and help drive its development. Joint efforts focus on producing rigorous research, enabling dialogue between public and private stakeholders, and building capacity among current and future generations of investors and policymakers