Responding to calls for geographers to re-engage value theory in examining the political economy of nature, this article questions the capacity of such theory to grasp nature’s growing representation, valuation and exchange through financial instruments ranging from catastrophe bonds to carbon credits and from green bonds to index insurance. Drawing on and extending recent debates in political economy, it submits that understanding the contemporary nexus of climate change and financial innovation requires incorporating risk into value theory – it requires, that is, ‘risking’ value theory. Parsing the literature on climate finance, the article demonstrates how such risking might be achieved.