Landscape Approaches: Working at the Scale of Nature
A new wave of landscape approaches is redefining how we finance and implement nature restoration—by working with, rather than against, the interconnected systems of nature to unlock large-scale, bankable solutions that benefit people, planet, and profit.
Since the Industrial Revolution, economic development and protection of nature have been viewed as mutually exclusive. For example, the United Kingdom has lost around half of its biodiversity, based on abundance and species richness, since the Industrial Revolution. On a global scale, wildlife populations have declined by 73% on average over the past 50 years. This is largely as a result of economic and institutional systems that externalise the costs of nature degradation whilst being blind to the collective goods and services provided by nature.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimates $58tn of global annual economic activity was generated in 2023 in sectors moderately to highly dependent on nature, equating to more than 50% of global gross domestic product (GDP). Further, IPBES finds that $5.3tn of annual private-sector financial flows are directly damaging to biodiversity.
In February, at the resumed Biodiversity COP16 in Rome, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed on a way forward to mobilise resources, with a target of at least $200bn a year by 2030. However, making nature-based solutions more financially ‘attractive’ will be critical for steering finance, particularly private investment, towards them. Barriers to finance can be defined as “as project-level problems that arise from the misalignment between nature-based solutions’ characteristics and existing conditions in our institutional systems”
Increasing investment through landscape approaches
Nature does not work in silos, therefore, the approaches to protect and restore it should not either. Landscape approaches aim to embrace this multifaceted complexity. Although there is not a single definition, such approaches “bring together diverse actors in a landscape to form resilient partnerships, co-create a common vision, pool resources, aggregate project activities, share costs and de-risk actions”.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) defines landscape approaches as those that “deal with large-scale processes in an integrated and multidisciplinary manner, combining natural resource management with environmental and livelihood considerations. The landscape approach also factors in human activities and their institutions, viewing them as an integral part of the system rather than as external agents”.
Through a finance lens, landscape approaches make ecosystem restoration ‘bankable’. They look beyond the project level to a wider landscape level, aggregating projects into a larger investment portfolio of ecosystem services.
Such approaches can address challenges in identifying high quality and impactful projects that also generate financial return for stakeholders.
As an example, the Flow Country in the far north of Scotland houses the largest, intact blanket peat bog in Europe. It stores 400mn tonnes of carbon and has been granted UNESCO World Heritage Status. Peatlands are natural carbon sinks, however their degradation results in release of this carbon, contributing to climate change.
The Flow Country Green Finance Initiative takes a landscape approach to attract private investment for restoration through an innovative community carbon investment model, integrating biodiversity, green jobs and community wellbeing with the ecosystem services the landscape offers as a carbon sink. In February 2024 the Flow Country Partnership was established as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO). The SCIO safeguards the interests of the community and ensures the channeling of community benefit from the income generated via the sale of carbon credits, as a result of peatland restoration.
Nature Finance Forum – aligning capital markets with a nature positive future
In less than two weeks, on 28th April, Climate Action’s Nature Finance Forum Europe will bring institutional investors together with those corporations and project operators developing investable, nature-regenerative solutions on the ground in Paris.
In our Carbon Markets and Beyond panel, we will be bringing together leaders from those organisations developing landscape-level projects on the ground. Hear from creditnature, the LEAF Coalition, the Dutch Enterprise Agency and the Ubá Sustainability Institute as they sit down to discuss their work with WeForest’s Dave Bircher.
See the full agenda here.