Scottish Nature Finance Pioneers – Grow, Restore, Prosper

The Scottish Nature Finance Pioneers provides an opportunity for communities, businesses, landowners, project developers, financiers, and public agencies to work together to create a new high integrity market for nature-based solution projects in Scotland, financed using new mechanisms beyond traditional grants and philanthropic donations.

Biodiversity, natural flood management, water quality, carbon sequestration and public engagement with nature, provide the current focus for developing new ways of bundling and securing ‘forever green’ revenues in exchange for the multiple benefits generated.

The scope of opportunities includes integrated management of both land and sea. On land, we are engaged across the full range of habitats, including commercial forestry, sustainable farms, Peatlands, urban environments, and Riparian woodlands.

Our open network is creating momentum around building investment/investor readiness and the project pipeline in Scotland. Together, we are nurturing potential projects by equipping them with knowledge, network, and shared practice.

We are the ‘devolved’ open platform for coordinating and convening the action in Scotland in relation to the recommendations made by the Financing UK Nature Recovery coalition.

With an emphasis on what can be achieved through open collaboration, the Pioneers are working together on a range of nature finance market development activities:

• Integrated Land-Use and Community Driven Projects
• Business Model Development and Proof of Concepts
• Seed Investment and Patient Capital
• Financial Mechanisms
• Capacity and Capability Building
• Market Development and Frameworks
• Policy and Regulation
• Codes and Standards
• Scientific Evidence Base

The following video, presented during the ‘Finance for Nature in Scotland’ COP26 fringe event at Ross Priority, provides further background to our work.