The Nature Finance Impact Hub highlights progress required to achieve COP27 + COP 15 targets

Just over a year ago, Accelar launched the Nature Finance Impact Hub (NFIH), an online repository capturing the environmental and financial metrics of nature-positive projects around the world. Since then, we’ve had three COPs (26, 27 & 15) and a great deal of discussion around how to inject finance into nature to help mainstream its restoration. The hub has continued to grow and be updated with the latest projects and data, now containing data from more than 80 projects. Ranging across 15 different ecosystem services and 28 countries, total investment into projects in the hub is estimated to be around £3 billion (calculated using NFIH data). Whilst we continue to search for nature positive projects, it highlights the long way to go before closing the $700 billion funding gap reported at COP27.

With the future of nature and the importance of its conservation at the forefront of global discussions at the UN Biodiversity COP15, the need for private sector investment is greater than ever. The latest ‘State of Finance for Nature 2022’ report calls for investments in nature-based solutions to triple by 2030 and increase four-fold by 2050 from the current level.

One of the key developments of COP27 was the creation of the ‘Enhancing Nature-based Solutions for an Accelerated Climate Transformation” (ENACT) initiative. It aims to bring coherence to and strengthen collaboration between existing nature-based solutions (NbS) efforts and partnerships. As a voluntary coalition, annual reports will be compiled to be delivered to COP Presidencies ahead of future UN Climate Change gatherings. This report aims to provide a comprehensive quantitative overview of global progress in implementing NbS commitments by both state and non-state actors.

At Accelar, the NFIH has been gathering data from nature-positive projects for over a year to give an overview of the current market of NbS. This data is either publicly available, or submitted by project teams and our partners. Within the last year, this data represents one of the most comprehensive quantitative overviews on NbS progress, however, still evidences a significant gap on data capture and sharing. For this COP27 target to therefore be robustly and transparently achieved, the data needs to evolve in terms of what is being captured and what is available for reporting. This is especially pertinent given the targets set by the COP27 ENACT initiative.

• Enhance the protection from and resilience to climate impacts of at least 1 billion vulnerable people, including at least 500 million women and girls.
• Secure up to 2.4 billion hectares of healthy natural and sustainable agricultural ecosystems, through protection of 45 million ha, sustainable management of 2 billion ha, and restoration of 350 million ha.
• Significantly increase global mitigation efforts through protecting, conserving and restoring carbon-rich terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.

These measures were a precursor to the COP15 targets around expanding protect areas and restoring at least 1 billion hectares of degraded land.

The NFIH measures data on sustainable conservation of nature, as well as nature restoration, and the chart below illustrates that there is a need for improved transparency in nature positive projects so that data on these key metrics can be captured. It will require a significant global collaborative effort, using various data systems to develop an internet of things for data gathering (e.g. satellite and remote sensing, project MRV, use of drone technology, aggregation and benchmarking such has been done with the NFIH). This is necessary to support organisations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in data measurement (IUCN).

The recent COP15 targets provides four goals and 23 targets that set a basis for global biodiversity to work towards. Target 19 specifically called out the need for “stimulating innovative schemes such as payment for ecosystem services, green bonds, biodiversity offsets and credits, benefit-sharing mechanisms”. The insights from the hub shown below outline the growth we’re starting to see in biodiversity offset projects, albeit it’s not enough as part of the wider ecosystem service landscape. A sample of the data is shown, but please click here to sign up to the hub to grant access to this and more insights.

Of the biodiversity orientated projects , the United States leads the total investment that we have captured to date, with the UK ranked 12th in number of projects contained within the hub. In terms of ecosystem services, nature-based tourism, carbon banking, and flood alleviation have the highest average revenue generated/cost savings. Within flood alleviation schemes alone, these projects have amounted to £17.49 million in cost savings. Across the projects in the hub, 33% of area conserved/protected has been for carbon sequestration purposes, 28% for regenerative agriculture and 26% for sustainable timber purposes.

The UK has recently pledged £12 million to the ocean risk and resilience action alliance to protect and restore vulnerable coastal communities. Similar nature-positive projects based on coastal ecosystems include the Quintana Roo reef protection in Mexico and the Caen Wetlands project in Devon.

Overall, the projects in the hub so far indicate a collective contribution to the conservation/protection of approximately 4 million hectares of forestland, and work to restore 130,000 hectares of peatland. Together these highlight the importance and profound impact of investment into nature-positive projects. The below map shows where the projects currently in the hub are located. To find out more about these, visit www.accelerategreenfinance.com.