What We Are Not
Most 'climate' and 'water' funds are easiest to understand by what they chase. We find it more useful to be precise about what we decline — five deliberate boundaries that define Mazarine Climate.
Most 'climate' and 'water' funds are easiest to understand by what they chase. We find it more useful to be precise about what we decline. Definition by negation is unfashionable, but it is honest: a thesis that excludes nothing is not a thesis. Below are five things Mazarine Climate is not — each one a deliberate boundary, not an oversight.
1. We are not a water fund.
What we are not: A “water” fund. “Water” is not a category — it is a noun that hides four different businesses behind one word, collapsing utilities, wastewater, treatment hardware, bottled beverages, irrigation, desalination and flood analytics into a single label, as if a pipe manufacturer and a parametric-insurance model belonged on the same map.
Why we are not this: We removed the word from our thesis on purpose. We invest in hydroclimatic risk — the measurable consequences of too much water, too little water, the wrong kind of water, and water moving things it should not. That is a category with edges. “Water” is a category with a gift shop.
2. We have exactly zero interest in water / wastewater utilities.
What we are not: Investors in companies who sell software to water and wastewater utilities. A large share of the field sells operational tools to those utilities — better dispatch, smarter maintenance, leak detection, cleaner compliance. Worthy work, and a genuinely improving market. It is not ours.
Why we are not this: Our portfolio companies' customers are the institutions that carry water risk on a balance sheet: insurers, banks, real-estate owners, linear-asset operators, coastal infrastructure, and power generation. The only utilities we back are the ones water threatens — power and telecom — where assets are exposed to hydroclimatic hazard: substations in floodplains, transmission and fibre along scour-prone corridors, thermoelectric and hydroelectric generation facing water-availability and cooling constraints. There the buyer is pricing a hazard to the asset, not optimising the treatment of water itself.
3. We are not betting on a reluctant buyer changing.
What we are not: A bet on sales execution against a structurally cautious customer. One popular optimism holds that historically slow buyers are finally adopting faster because vendors have learned to retire perceived risk. That may be true — but it is demand manufactured deal by deal.
Why we are not this: We prefer demand that does not need manufacturing. Disclosure mandates, protection-gap repricing, lender requirements and balance-sheet exposure create spend the buyer does not fully control. “Non-discretionary” for us does not mean “nice to have, and increasingly necessary.” It means a regulator, a lender, or a reinsurer has already made the decision. We would rather ride a forced buyer than a converted one.
4. We are not a “resilience” fund.
What we are not: A “resilience” fund. Resilience is a property you claim; adaptation is a thing you do to a specific hazard. “Resilience” has followed “sustainable” into the realm of words that no longer constrain anything — broad enough to hold anything, specific enough to commit to nothing.
Why we are not this: We fund the verb, not the adjective. “Adaptation” still carries weight, because it forces the question adaptation to what? Answer that honestly and you have named a hazard, a buyer, and a loss avoided — which is the entire discipline. We choose the higher-calorie word, and we accept the narrower scope that comes with it.
5. We are not here for the “water is life” story.
What we are not: A vehicle for the “water is life” scarcity story. “Water is life” is unimpeachable because it is true — but it is a moral claim, not an investment thesis. Access, affordability and the human right to water are best served by the people built to serve them: development finance, philanthropy, the “.org” crowd — not by a fund that owes its LPs a return.
Why we are not this: We do take scarcity seriously where it shows up as a priced operational risk to a paying asset owner — chiefly water-availability and cooling risk to power generation, and drought- or low-flow exposure at inland ports and the linear assets that feed them. There, scarcity is not a cause; it is a line item on someone’s balance sheet. We are not moved by the nobility of the problem. We are moved by who is contractually obliged to pay for the data once the water runs short.
The throughline
Each of these boundaries narrows the field, and that is the point. Precision is the product. We are not trying to be the broadest expression of ‘climate’ and ‘water’ investing on the playground — we are trying to be the sharpest expression of a single, falsifiable claim: that the institutions exposed to water risk will be compelled to measure and price it, and that the data and software layer serving that need is investable on its own merits, without subsidy, sentiment, or a flattering adjective.
Disagree? Let's debate it.
If this framing sharpened (or annoyed) you, take a look at how we think about it. Read our investment thesis and our sector focus, then reach out — we welcome a friendly debate.
