John Robinson

John Robinson is a Partner at Mazarine Climate, a London-based venture capital firm focused on water and wastewater investment. His work sits at the intersection of climate risk and capital allocation, with a specific lens on one of the most underappreciated resource challenges facing the global economy.

On The Grove, John joined host to unpack what it actually means to specialize in water as an investment thesis. One of the more thought-provoking ideas he raises is the difficulty of defining the water industry itself. Because water underpins nearly every sector, from agriculture to manufacturing to energy, it resists clean categorization. As John puts it, everything is the water industry, which paradoxically makes it harder to get investors and innovators focused on water as a distinct opportunity. His conversation uses agriculture as a clear example: farming is universally understood as an agricultural sector play, yet it would cease to function without reliable water access. Whether that makes it a water industry challenge or not is precisely the kind of question Mazarine Climate is built to answer through its investment work.

John brings a grounded and specific perspective to climate capital, moving past broad sustainability framing to examine how water risk shapes real asset value and where technology and finance can intervene most effectively.