This project will support Fife Coast and Countryside Trust to further develop CreditNature’s NARIA framework as a viable financial tool for quantifying biodiversity and using it to support the delivery of catchment scale restoration. A sample investment case will be developed utilising co-design of interventions and a community benefit vehicle. Engagement with communities will be undertaken through a communication and engagement plan, that will include events to engage potentially interested corporates. The project will be delivered by a partnership led by Fife Coast and Countryside Trust with support from Anstruther Improvements Association, Fife Council, James Hutton Institute, SEPA, CreditNature, North Star Transition, Apella Advisors, and Bidwells.

This project will develop Highlands Rewilding’s aim for community prosperity by generating investment-ready Joint Ventures (JVs) with the communities local to their estates. These JVs will explore new ways to monetise the ecosystem services derived from the restoration of natural capital assets and will be a mechanism for involving more people in nature restoration, boosting the economy, skills development, job creation and cohesion in local communities. They aim to produce new standards for community engagement and benefits from natural capital projects that are transferrable across the field as a whole. This Market and Investment Readiness project is built on a business model of co-production of ecosystem services and community benefits from rewilding in a way that is low-risk but highly scalable.

This project will pilot a blended finance model and aggregating mechanism for delivering peatland restoration at scale through the Flow Country Green Finance Initiative. The project seeks to create Flow Country carbon as a premium brand, delivering beyond-carbon benefits and sharing commercial benefits with local communities. The project will structure financing deals and deliver peatland restoration at three pilot sites – a farm, an estate and a common grazing – utilising a blend of Peatland ACTION funding, private investment and sale of carbon credits via the Peatland Code, with the latter providing a return for landowners and investors. This will act as proof of concept for the legal structures, financial flows and community benefit mechanism for rolling out at scale. The pilot projects will seek to resolve complex issues surrounding land ownership, agricultural needs and crofting law.

This project will develop a publicly available, simple Buyer-Seller contract for Pending Issuance Units and Woodland/Peatland Carbon Units, empowering smaller-scale and community participants in carbon markets and enabling the market to scale. The focus will be on the Woodland and Peatland Carbon Codes but will be applicable to other nature markets as they emerge. Use of a standard contract will bring greater integrity to codes/standards and confidence in their use. The contract will consider different landownerships, stacking and bundling and community benefit sharing.

The project will develop an investment portfolio of natural flood management interventions that aim to reduce flood risk in the Eddleston Water catchment by 10% in 1 in 30 year flood events, utilising finance from ecosystem service beneficiaries and others to fund the protection and enhancement of the catchment. The project will include modelling of interventions and impacts, financial modelling, landowner and buyer/investor engagement, establishing a Community Interest Company and securing a pilot transaction for a portion of the interventions. The blended finance model will include local flood outcome buyers, insurers, carbon and biodiversity markets and social impact funds.

Palladium International, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park and Revere propose to develop a Nature Finance Platform as a means of catalysing responsible investment in nature restoration in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. Developed by Revere, the Platform will make at-scale investment possible whereby the investment supports upfront project delivery costs and the revenue is generated from the sale of ecosystem services to ethically vetted corporate offtakers. The revenue is distributed to landowners, the community through the establishment of community funds, the National Park, Revere and the investors.

This project will develop the methods, documentation, governance, and infrastructure to enable biodiversity crediting for woodland creation and peatland restoration projects in Scotland, including the capability to either stack carbon and biodiversity payments within the same project (where additionality rules allow) or bundle the two outcomes into one credit that includes a quantified level of biodiversity uplift alongside carbon credits. The methodology will be piloted with four projects and integrated into the Woodland Carbon Code, Peatland Code and UK Land Carbon Registry.

This project aims to create the infrastructure and a structured approach to community engagement that will enable private investment to be secured for a catchment scale nature restoration capital programme that includes woodland creation, peatland and saltmarsh restoration, species recovery, regenerative deer management with a longer-term ambition for reintroduction of missing species.

The purpose of this Make Rewilding Your Business is to ready a pipeline of up to 100 ‘investment ready’ nature restoration projects across Scotland.  SCOTLAND: The Big Picture is responsible for developing the Northwoods Rewilding Network and their aim is to attract private investment into the restoration of natural capital assets of the Network’s members. The project also aims to develop mechanisms to engage communities in project design and sharing of benefits to support a just transition.

By developing a Project Standards and Integrity Charter document, alongside investigating a business model for aggregating rainforest projects ACT will streamline the process of creating Atlantic Rainforest restoration and making it market ready. With a uniform set of standards projects will have a ready blueprint meaning carbon certified under the Woodland Carbon Code can be aggregated under an umbrella organisation and sold to buyers with a guarantee of a high-quality baseline, providing returns for land managers and the community.

This project will replicate the Landscape Enterprise Network model within the catchment of the River Leven. Local enterprises and organisations with an interest in nature-based solutions within the catchment will be connected to land managers willing to contribute their land. Restoration will then be co-designed to maximise the benefit for supply chains, land managers, and nature supporting a range of objectives across the catchment. By the end of this project the first trades between local enterprises and land managers will have taken place, ready for interventions to be carried out.

This project is led by Deciding Matters on behalf of the Nature Finance Certification Alliance. The project will create a commercially attractive and operationally sound Community Benefits Certification Process, co-designed with organisations who will support the adoption and roll-out of the certification mark. The Community Benefits Certification Mark will enable UK natural capital land-based projects to demonstrate their high integrity approach to deriving community benefits, via a self-verified or 3rd party verified certification process, depending on the maturity of the project. The certification process will be refined through deep-dive testing with six live projects and certification will include the necessary training and community capacity building. Certification will enable projects to be verifiably compliant to a future BSI Community Benefit Thematic Standard which is being explored as part of the UK Nature Investment Standards programme.

This project aims to build on practical and innovative governance mechanisms identified during a FIRNS Round 1 Development Phase Project. The desk-based development project in Round 1 aimed to develop a proof of concept for a whole farm and farm cluster approach to engaging in nature-based markets. This follow-on project aims to test some new governance mechanisms to deal with the key issues of complexity, scale and capacity with specific landowners and farmers in the Perth / Fife / Stirlingshire area of Scotland. The project will be delivered by a partnership of the Soil Association, Woodland Trust, and the Northwoods Rewilding Network.

Project L-AND will bring a cluster of farmers in the Pentland Hills Regional Park towards having investment ready natural capital projects through investor engagement, ecological baselining, and restoration planning, as well as community engagement centred around benefitting park users.

This project will take place within the catchment of the River Annan. Bringing together landowners under a newly formed Special Purpose Vehicle, this project will create and sign first trades contracts with both landowners and buyers. Accompanied by community engagement informed by a Community Engagement Plan, this will allow the restoration of a pilot site as the first step towards delivering a pipeline of floodplain and riparian restoration within the catchment funded by nature finance.

This place-based project led by Dumfries and Galloway Council will progress three strands of work towards a wider ambition to restore and expand key coastal and marine habitats within the northern Solway Firth. The work will support the ongoing development of the £20m+ Solway Coast and Marine Project (SCAMP) which will be delivered in conjunction with and for the benefit of the local communities, while addressing the climate and nature crisis. The three strands are: developing a business model for two demonstration projects for non-managed-realignment saltmarsh expansion to inform Saltmarsh Code development; exploring governance and financing options for a community stake in expansion of the Loch Ryan oyster fishery; and working with three hub communities on co-designing the wider SCAMP project to incorporate their priorities and benefit ambitions.

This project will create an investment scheme for the City of Edinburgh to help fund the delivery of urban nature restoration and climate adaptation projects identified in the Edinburgh Nature Network and Green Blue Network. The credit/insetting scheme will allow locally-based businesses and organisations to invest in local projects as part of their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or wider net-zero commitments. The scheme will link the value of improvements to ecosystem services with the multiple benefits for people of more access to quality greenspace and interaction with natural environments.

Palladium International, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park and Revere propose to develop a Nature Finance Platform as a means of catalysing responsible investment in nature restoration in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. Developed by Revere, the Platform will make at-scale investment possible whereby the investment supports upfront project delivery costs and the revenue is generated from the sale of ecosystem services to ethically vetted corporate offtakers. The revenue is distributed to landowners, the community through the establishment of community funds, the National Park, Revere and the investors.