Greenbank joins Green Finance Institute Nature Group

The next few years are crucial to achieving the UK Government’s broader vision to support an economic transition to one that values and invests in nature.

Project aims

G-FIN aims to bring together financial institutions engaged in UK nature finance to collaborate and find solutions that can help establish markets which accurately value and protect nature. The group will identify barriers to the UK Government's ambitions on increasing private sector finance and provide feedback and input on key government initiatives including:

• the development of a national database to track progress towards HM Treasury’s target of £1 billion per year of private sector nature investment by 2030;  
• the development of high-integrity domestic nature markets; 
• the Land, Nature, and Adapted Systems Advisory Group’s recommendations in the development of the UK’s green taxonomy; 
• UK uptake of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures framework.  

Imperative for action

The next few years are crucial to achieving the UK Government’s broader vision to support an economic transition to one that values and invests in nature. The transition also needs to align with the 2023 Green Finance Strategy, the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at COP15, and the findings of the Dasgupta Review. Biodiversity has declined more rapidly over the past 50 years than at any other time in human history, with biodiversity loss now being recognised as a severe threat facing humanity.[1] 

Over £6 billion in new investment is required annually over the next decade for the UK to deliver its nature-related commitments.[2] Some of this funding gap will need to be plugged by increased private sector investment. Current barriers to investment include a lack of market-ready investment opportunities and the long-term time horizon required for investment. You can hear more about these challenges in our recent Green Shoots event on nature restoration.

We look forward to contributing to this initiative as part of our wider engagement work on biodiversity. You can read more about our recent work on illegal deforestation here.
 

[1] IPBES, Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, (2019)

[2] Green Finance Institute, The Finance Gap for UK Nature, (2021)