Accelar identifies place-based Green Finance opportunities at the Green Halo Conference 2022
Earlier this month, Accelar colleagues Chris Fry and Tess Fitzgerald attended the Green Halo Partnership Conference, taking place in the Ordnance Survey HQ building in Southampton. The Green Halo Partnership brings together organisations across the public, private and third sector to promote best practice in enhanxing natural capital and ecosystem services. Despite originating in the New Forest National Park, the 'halo' extends to organisations within Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, Wiltshire and beyond.
The focus of this year's conference was 'Investing in our Future', centred around innovation and investment in the environment. One of the key themes was how to harness green finance opportunities to deliver benefits to both natural capital and social wellbeing, and with the current nature-finance investment gap estimated by the UNEP to be around $133 billion per year, this felt like a particularly important and relevant theme to explore.
Accelar's co-founder, Chris Fry, delivered a wide-ranging presentation, introducing concepts around nature and place-based green finance and their role in the accelerating the green transition. Drawing on some case studies of Accelar's work helping clients to utilise green finance around a range of ecosystem services, Chris spoke of state of the green finance market and emerging mechanisms for driving private investment. To see more examples of projects using ecosystem services to generate positive impact and revenue, visit the Nature Finance Impact Hub.
The day featured a number of other fantastic presentations, inlcuding a talk from Dr James Alden on the natural environment and its relationship to health and wellbeing, sparking discussions on how best to value natural capital. Gary Wilburn, MD of EP Group delivered a session on investing in our natural and built environment, reflecting on current barriers to investment. The audience also heard from the Hurst Spit and Stour Valley Park projects, providing updates and insights from the latest project developments, as well as a keynote address from Lord Kerslake.
For the full agenda and presentations from Green Halo Conference 2022 please follow this link.
Learn more about how the Nature Finance Impact Hub is supporting green finance through this short video below: