Book Review: Scaling Conservation
I perceive ‘Scaling Conservation’ (2025), by inspirational Dr Rich Stockdale, as a practical extrapolation of the architect of Natural Capital, *Sir Dieter Helm’s, seminal treatise ‘Legacy – How to Build the Sustainable Economy’ (2024), laying the foundations for a new asset class and the rapidly growing demand for high-quality natural capital solutions. *“What is not sustainable will not be sustained.”
This passionately written book arrives at a moment when we all stand on the cusp of a transformation era in environmental sustainability and economic growth and outlines how Oxygen Conservation’s innovative, unique natural capital business model is a blueprint for a sustainable future with multibillion-pound huge global potential. The core strategy of Oxygen Conservation, with the ambitious target of managing over £1billion in assets by 2030, creating positive impact at landscape scale by acquiring and managing land for positive environmental and social impact, is promoting natural capital as a mainstream bankable asset class and reshaping how the world values nature.
The environmental sector is being forced to confront an uncomfortable arithmetic: the scale of ecological decline and climate risk is far outstripping the scale of grant funding and charitable giving available to address it. Stockdale’s central argument is unapologetically pragmatic. If nature is foundational economic infrastructure - delivering biodiversity, carbon sequestration, soil function, water regulation, and resilience - then conservation must be financed and governed like infrastructure, not treated as discretionary philanthropy. The book is less a technical manual than a strategic provocation: it seeks to normalise the idea that restoring landscapes can be investable, measurable, and scalable.
The most compelling feature of the book is that it is written from inside the experiment. Stockdale is not simply commenting on the rise of natural capital markets; he is building one, raising the bar in Q3 2025 for UK NbS carbon credits to £125tCo2e.As founder and CEO of Oxygen Conservation, backed by Triodos Bank, he has placed the organisation at the frontier of the UK’s emerging natural capital economy by acquiring and restoring large landholdings with the explicit intent of generating high-integrity nature outcomes and associated revenue streams. In that sense, Scaling Conservation reads as both an intellectual case for market-enabled restoration and a field report from a firm intent on rolling out at landscape scale what has historically been small-scale, fragmented and chronically underfunded work.
Oxygen Conservation’s pioneering role is framed through a clear proposition: landscape-scale restoration can produce investable “nature outputs” if supported by credible measurement, long-term stewardship, and market demand. While the book does not delve deeply into the technicalities of carbon methodologies or verification frameworks, it is persuasive on the organisational and strategic challenges of building a pipeline of projects at scale. Stockdale emphasises that investing in nature is not merely buying land and waiting for ecological recovery; it requires disciplined execution, patient capital, stakeholder alignment, and governance structures that can endure beyond electoral cycles and quarterly reporting.
For readers interested in the emerging Natural Capital Carbon Market, the book’s contribution is to articulate why the market is not a niche adjunct to climate policy but a potential mainstream allocation thesis - provided integrity is treated as non-negotiable. Stockdale’s underlying contention is that higher-quality nature outcomes should command premium pricing, and that a credible market will reward operators capable of delivering measurable, durable carbon benefits alongside wider ecosystem recovery. Oxygen Conservation is positioned as precisely this type of operator: one assembling the land base, ecological expertise and commercial architecture required to translate restoration into investable, long-duration outcomes.
The book’s limitations are largely those of its genre. Academics seeking a full engagement with debates about commodification, additionality, permanence, leakage, or the political economy of market-based conservation will find the treatment high-level. Yet this is also the book’s purpose: it is written to mobilise action among landowners, investors, practitioners and policymakers who need a coherent narrative and a credible example of delivery.
Ultimately, Scaling Conservation is best read as a catalyst. It argues that conservation must learn to speak the language of finance without surrendering ecological ambition—and it offers Oxygen Conservation as an early proof point that landscape-scale restoration can be organised, financed and scaled. Whether natural capital markets mature into a trusted asset class will depend on standards and governance as much as entrepreneurial energy.
Stockdale’s book is inspirational and full of hope, seen as the most potent weapon in the fight against climate change, making a strong case that the energy is now here. This landmark book is essential reading for all ecologists, environmentalists, landscape architects and anyone interested in the sustainability agenda.
Written by: Tony Brophy ‘enhancing the environment since 1949’ is an international pioneer of NbS grassland carbon sequestration via his TRANVIRO platform, advocating a new global paradigm viewing nature and landscapes as invaluable societal assets that should be cherished and invested in –‘the green economy under our feet’.