Turning nature into an asset

“I realised very young that humans once understood themselves as part of nature, not apart from it,” he reflects. What he did not anticipate is that this intuition would one day lead him to establish The Embassy of Nature (TEON), a decentralised sovereign diplomatic and economic platform designed to represent the political and financial rights of nature on the world stage.

Today, Fernández-Salvador is not merely advocating for forests. He is redesigning the architecture of capitalism, positioning nature as one of the world’s most measurable, profitable, and investable asset classes.

The Embassy of Nature (TEON)

The Embassy of Nature does not operate with a conventional hierarchy – not even a CEO. Instead, Fernández-Salvador describes it as a pragmatic, sovereign-minded agenda for nature, engineered to succeed where traditional environmentalism has failed.

“For decades we treated environmental and cultural issues as charity,” he says. “But nature is life. Culture is identity. These should be society’s most valuable assets.” His response is a new form of environmental capitalism: restructuring economic systems so that forests, mangroves, mountains, and coral reefs generate value in their preserved form rather than their extracted one.

Through scientific measurement, digital asset creation, and financial engineering, he envisions products that could turn nature into a globally traded, yield-producing force within the new economy.

The three pillars

The Embassy of Nature (TEON) is built on three pillars:

• Environment — the foundation of a new sustainability-driven economic system.
• Cultural unification — reconnecting historically fragmented regions of the Hispanic world.
• “The Hispanic nation holds the world’s greatest green mass and biodiversity,” Fernández-Salvador explains. “It has the moral duty to lead the agenda of nature.”
• Youth — a generation he sees as more spiritual, more global, and more determined than any before. He views this commitment to young people as part of his responsibility as the Marquis of Lises, a title of historic Spanish nobility.

Among TEON’s closest allies is Ambassador Daniel del Valle, recognised as the world’s youngest diplomat and a key figure in youth-centric UN initiatives. Together, they are building alliances with youth organisations, media networks, sovereign wealth funds and international institutions.

Casa Ecuador: A nomadic cultural powerhouse

One of Fernández-Salvador’s most visible projects is Casa Ecuador – The Embassy of Nature, the cultural, environmental, and technological platform he founded through Fundación Identidad Nacional.

Casa Ecuador is intentionally nomadic – a travelling embassy rather than a fixed structure. Its upcoming destinations include Miami (Formula 1), New York (FIFA World Cup), Madrid, and ultimately Casa Hispana, envisioned as a cultural mini-city representing the entire Hispanic world.

In December 2024, Casa Ecuador made its Middle Eastern debut at the Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with an immersive one-storey “palace” featuring digital recreations of Ecuador’s four ecosystems, designed by artist Miguel Ángel Murgueytio.

“We made our debut in the UAE because it is the crossroads of East and West,” he says. “A gateway of innovation, luxury and diplomacy.”

The Embassy of Nature (TEON) now plans to open a regional office in Abu Dhabi, creating a cultural and commercial bridge with the Hispanic world.

Discussions are already underway with global dignitaries, former BlackRock executives, UN representatives, Middle Eastern investors and President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador.

The objective: to unite the natural wealth of the global south with the financial strength of the Middle East.

“It could be one of the most powerful alliances of construction in this century,” says Fernández-Salvador.

AI vs NI: The next frontier

As global attention centres on Artificial Intelligence, Fernández-Salvador argues that humanity is overlooking an even more advanced system: Nature’s Intelligence (NI).

NI is not a metaphor – it is measurable. From fungal “wood-wide webs” that distribute resources among trees, to the slime mould that redesigned Tokyo’s rail network in a 2010 study, nature optimises with extraordinary sophistication. “AI runs on data. NI runs on evolution. Billions of years of it,” he says. “NI is the planet’s operating system – its BIOS.”

TEON envisions think tanks that merge AI with NI, using quantum sensors to decode biological signals – migration fields, microbial communication, coral chemistry – and convert them into big data streams. This data could then be tokenised, forming a bridge between global markets and the planet’s living systems. His proposal is bold:

For every dollar humanity invests in AI, we must invest a dollar in decoding NI.

He believes this knowledge could eventually help humanity terraform other planets, not through brute engineering, but by learning how life builds itself.

Rights of nature

TEON’s long-term mission is constitutional. Inspired by Ecuador’s 2008 incorporation of the Rights of Nature, Fernández-Salvador seeks a universal charter recognising ecosystems as legal entities.

“It would be as revolutionary as the abolition of slavery,” he says. “Because today, nature is still treated as a machine. Not as life.” He is already in dialogue with several governments, including in the Middle East, about adopting such frameworks.

And he hints that Abu Dhabi may be among the first. Debt swaps, big systems and realpolitik TEON’s strategy is not driven by idealism alone. Fernández-Salvador is candid about geopolitical realities. Countries with immense biodiversity often sacrifice natural sovereignty to alleviate poverty. Debt-for-nature swaps exist but remain limited, fragmented or performative.

He aims to create a commercial ecosystem of debt-swap opportunities, a marketplace that aligns sovereign wealth funds, corporations and developing nations to profit while protecting ecosystems and supporting social needs.

This may become one of the most transformative economic innovations the environmental sector has seen in decades.

The Earth is speaking

For Fernández-Salvador, this journey is neither nostalgia nor utopia. It is the only form of sustainability that endures: the kind that generates capital, identity, and global cooperation.

“We forgot nature,” he says. “We even forgot culture. But we can bring both back – naturally and profitably. The Earth is speaking through trees, through oceans, through migration patterns.

With quantum sensors and NI research, we can finally decode what nature has always known and build a future with it, not against it.”

A geopolitical map of its own

The Embassy of Nature is not an event but an emerging international institution, with its architecture expanding toward three permanent headquarters by 2026: Geneva, the diplomatic capital and gateway to the United Nations; Mar-a-Lago, a bridge into North America’s cultural and financial circuits; and Abu Dhabi, the nexus of the Arab world, energy transitions and sovereign capital.

Its ambition is to build cultural, commercial and environmental bridges under a new operating model that Fernández-Salvador frames as cultural capitalism plus environmental capitalism – beauty as influence, nature as an asset, culture as an economy.