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Some 39 chief executives of banks, investment funds and insurance firms Saturday pledged at a Rio+20 business forum Saturday to integrate the Earth's natural capital into loans and investments.

Twenty years after the first Earth Summit highlighted the importance of the natural environment, they unveiled a "Natural Capital Declaration" that commit their companies also to reporting or disclosing on the theme of natural capital and accounting for natural capital in accounting frameworks.

 As Unilever CEO and sustainability champion Paul Polman said earlier this week, “We must move from a negative footprint, to a positive hand-print.”

This shift is best summed up by Glenn Prickett, the chief external affairs officer for The Nature Conservancy: “We spent the 20th century protecting nature from people, and we will spend the 21st century protecting nature for people.”

Whereas the old conservation sought to preserve tracts of "pristine nature" from human impact, a new conservation will "enhance those natural systems that benefit the widest number of people, especially the poor."