JSE launches Africa's first Nature- Linked Performance-Based Bond

THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) marked a milestone in sustainable financing with the listing on Friday of Africa's first Nature-Linked Performance-Based Bond, the R2.5 billion FirstRand Bank Cape Water Performance-Based Bond.

- EDWARD WEST

CELEBRATING the listing on Friday of Africa's first Nature-Linked Performance-Based Bond, the R2.5 billion FirstRand Bank Cape Water Performance-Based Bond.

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The bond is part of a broader transaction structure that supports The Nature Conservancy (TNC) South Africa, a nonprofit organisation with established conservation programs, in delivering a project that restores priority water catchment areas by removing invasive plant species, thereby increasing water flows into storage dams.

The R2.5bn issuance links part of investors' returns to independently verified ecological restoration. It marks a big advance in the role capital markets play to support nature and water security.

Bhulesh Singh, FirstRand Group Treasurer, said the innovative bond was part of the broader Cape water invasive plant removal project transaction structure.