LONDON, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Climate Asset Management has

raised more than $1 billion to invest in natural capital

projects such as regenerative agriculture, its chief executive

told Reuters.

While still a relatively niche area, demand from asset

owners to invest in improving soil health, planting trees and

rehabilitating land has increased in recent years after

countries agreed to do more to protect the world's biodiversity.

The Global Biodiversity Framework, known as the Paris

Agreement for nature, calls for a substantial increase in public

and private finance - by at least $200 billion annually -

towards addressing the nature-related funding gap.

CAM, a tie up between HSBC's ( HSBC ) fund arm and advisory

firm Pollination, said it had seen demand from a range of

financial investors and companies, and that its Natural Capital

Fund and Nature Based Carbon Fund had closed to new money.

The Restore Fund, designed by CAM and tech company Apple ( AAPL )

, remains open and has around $280 million. The balance

of the firm's assets are split roughly across the two closed

funds.

Backers of the Natural Capital Fund included German insurer

Gothaer Asset Management, which contributed $100 million, CAM

said.

The Nature Based Carbon Fund, which aims to generate carbon

credits by investing in large-scale landscape restoration and

conservation projects and will pay investors in these credits,

had seen strong demand from companies like GSK.

Chief Executive Martin Berg, who joined the firm last year,

said nature was moving from a very nascent asset class to

something which was attracting more attention from institutional

investors.

He said nature-related reporting requirements like the

Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), which

asks companies to report on the impacts they have on the natural

world, were also driving interest in the asset class.

"At first the disclosure obligation was focused on risk, but

soon opened up opportunities to invest, which transferred a

challenge into an opportunity," Berg said.

Berg said the funds have already allocated a significant

portion of the capital raised and that performance was "inline

with expectations."

CAM said it will start fundraising again in 2025.