This page has the transcript of the Business action on nature webinar held on 8 October 2025. You can also see additional questions we gave written answers to during or after the webinar.
More information
- Watch the webinar recording
- See the report - Driving demand: business action in the UK
- See the guide - A guide to different types of nature finance
Speakers
- Will McDonald, author of the research and the guide
- Helen Avery, Director of GFI Hive and Nature Programmes, Green Finance Institute
- Ben Hart, Head of Operations at Nattergal
- Liam McAleese, Director of Our Natural World, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Welcome and introductions
Liam McAleese
Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to this webinar where we will be exploring the findings of a new report about business action on nature in the UK. We're really pleased that so many of you could have joined us today, and hope that you find it useful.
I'm Liam McAleese. I'm Director of the Our Natural World impact area at the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. For accessibility purposes. I'll describe myself and where I am. I'm a tall, white, middle aged man with slightly thinning dark hair sitting in Esmée’s offices in London with a bookcase behind me in the pot plant. I will now ask my fellow panelists to introduce themselves. I'm here with Will McDonald, Helen Avery and Ben Hart today, if I could invite colleagues to introduce and describe themselves, please over to you will.
Will McDonald
Hi, I'm Will McDonald. I'm the author of this report. I'm a freelancer who works on bridging the gap between business and nature. I'm a white male in his 40s. I've got short hair and a short beard to match. Over to you, Helen.
Helen Avery
Thanks, Will. Hi. I'm Helen Avery. I head up our nature programme of work at the Green Finance Institute. I am a white woman in my late 40s with long brown hair. I'm wearing glasses and a green long sleeve blouse and some black cords, and I happen to be in our offices, in a booth that is lined in gray felt over to you, Ben.
Ben Hart
Hi everyone, my name is Ben Hart. I am the Head of Operations at Nattergal. I'm also a white male in the 40s with my glasses and short hair. I am sitting in my bedroom in Elephant and Castle in the centre of London. But actually, I've got a nice background of one of our wild lands. A piece of wild land in the summer, which has got some nice trees and some scrubby background, which is quite nice.
Liam McAleese
Thanks, everyone. So just a few practicalities before we start. So live captioning is available for this session. There is a link in the chat if you'd like to see the captions in a separate window, and you can also click the closed caption button at the bottom of this window to see them within Zoom. You can post questions at any point using the Q&A facility which you will find at the bottom of your screens. I'll encourage you to vote for questions submitted by participants if you really want to see that question answered.
We are going to talk through the report. Will's going to describe the findings of the report. We'll have a bit of initial reaction and questions on this, and we will try and get to as many of your questions as possible. Don't worry if you miss something, we are recording the webinar, and we'll share the transcript, and we'll try and pick up some of the questions not answered in that.
Background
Liam McAleese
I also thought I'd take the opportunity to explain a little bit about why we asked Will to undertake this work for us and convening this this webinar today. So for those that don't know the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, we are an independent charitable foundation and investor supporting environment, community and social justice, driven by the climate and nature crisis. We've been active in recent years supporting work that is both seeking to mobilise new forms of finance to restore nature at scale and to benefit communities, but also seeking work that is seeking to address business impacts on nature and particularly we've been supporting a lot of practical projects.
It's brilliant to see some of those projects represented today in the attendee list that are seeking to develop high integrity approaches to financing nature. And those practical projects, and the learning from that has informed why we've commissioned this report as an investor as well, we are considering the impact of our own endowment and the role that we can play in relation to change, but also where we can play a role in our investments in this space. And because of those multiple roles, I've had quite a few conversations with colleagues from business, government, civil society and investors. And I think if I were to characterise those conversations and the general feeling about where we are, I would probably do so by using the words encouraging and confusing.
Encouraging in that there are some really exciting projects funded by new combinations of business, public sector, civil society, philanthropic funding that are delivering improvements for nature and communities. Right now, we're seeing new money coming to nature, whether it's through water company investment or Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). Of course, it's not at the scale that we perhaps hope for or need, but it's happening right now. Encouraging that there are some leading companies taking action to better understand their impacts on nature, and there are emerging tools like nature related financial disclosure taskforce (Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures - TNFD) that are helping companies do that. And encouraging that there are conversations that are happening between government, business, civil society, around restoring nature at scale with an energy and enthusiasm that we wouldn't have seen in recent years and we've not seen in recent years.
But it's also confusing, confusing for businesses trying to work out what their role is and what they can do. It is confusing that despite some really good work and solid progress, the whole scaffolding of policy, regulations and standards is being built around us in tandem, whilst work is happening on the ground. And that is sometimes challenging and confusing for project developers, for farmers, for NGOs, trying to navigate the range of business and sector interests and motivations, and how to really get to grips with that.
So that's why we asked Will to shed some light on some of this confusion, and to speak to businesses and others and to help develop a more shared understanding of the current drivers of corporate potential activity and investment, and perhaps also more shared and precise language and terminology in this space. So I will invite Will to talk through his report and findings now, and looking forward to hearing from you.
Report findings
Will McDonald
Well, thanks very much. I'm just going to find the right PowerPoint and go to the right page. Here we go. Thanks, Liam, so yes, thanks very much for commissioning the work.
I think it's really important what's going on. I think when I started to look at what business was doing on nature, the one thing that was really obvious is that there wasn't a lot of research around this. There weren't lots of places I could go and understand what was happening or what wasn't happening. And conversely, there was quite a lot on the on the supply side. So by the supply side, I mean farmers, land managers, environmental NGOs and so on, people working kind of with the land. So I set about the research. I think the main point here is this is quite a broad, high level report, and one of the key findings is that we all need to be a bit more specific, but though you need to hold both those things to be true at once, and secondly, that the picture is changing pretty quickly, and we'll cover where I think that's happening, mostly.
So the top finding, I think, is that businesses know that nature is a problem. I think this is pretty clear. There's quite a lot of evidence around this, but the businesses are unclear what they can or should do about it. So there's lots of useful facts. This is a CBI one. Only 14% of businesses surveyed by the CBI said this was no business of them, essentially. So that's a very small number. Most people, most businesses, do think business is relevant to them. But actually, if you look at who's doing what, and there are lots of proxies for action, this was Fortune Global, 500 companies, actually, very few are have actually started the journey and are doing something about it. That, really, if you take one thing away from today, that is the kind of top line finding.
And this is a great chart, I like. It's Capgemini research. It's actually a couple of years old, but it still holds today. It's called the 'say do' gap. Essentially, the green bar is whether biodiversity is important to a company, as reported by executives, and the blue bar is whether the company is doing something about it. They've taken a base level of action, do they have a biodiversity strategy? And you'll see there are lots of companies who say that this is important, but are they doing something about it? Less so.
I think two interesting points from this chart. One, if you look at France towards the left hand end of the chart, they've got a much smaller gap, and I think that would be really interesting to look into a lot more. They have a lot more domestic legislation and regulation and government action in France than they do, and that has really brought the blue bar up. There's a lot more action happening within companies.
And the second one is that not everyone agrees with this graph. There was some research out the other day by a consultancy called Bain who reversed it, said that they see a 'do say' gap. They see that businesses are acting on nature, but that they're unwilling to talk about it because of, well, green hushing, commercial confidentiality, you know, various reasons, but I think this pretty much does paint the sort of broad picture where we are.
When you talk to businesses, as I did, went round and spoke to a lot of businesses and a lot of stakeholders and experts on this, what are the main things that are in their mind when they're thinking about it? So first of all, nature is overwhelming as a concept. Very few people in the private sector go to work thinking that nature is part of the work they do. That's not really how they think about it. If you come in it from a supply side, and you're an ecologist, you know, those of us who work with nature a lot do think about nature as a system that we understand, but that doesn't really make sense in a business context.
And the second point is, there's no North Star, you know, unlike with climate change, it's a bit unclear where we're all heading. The UK has some very good nature targets, so from the global biodiversity framework or from the environment act and so on. But it's a bit unclear what that means as you come down to a regional level, or to an industrial sector level, or a company. And the converse of that, if you take some action as a company, it's a bit unclear what that ladder is up to. And the reason that's important is that it companies care about their reputations, and they would like to be able to talk about actions they take positively. And in climate change, you can take a certain action, and you can tell the world that that has addressed 13%, 15%, 20% of your carbon footprint. But we can't really do that nature.
We don't in nature, we don't have that equivalent, and that is quite an important problem. So there is a lack of data. I think this is one of the ones that is changing very quickly. There is much more data available, and people are able to make a lot more sense of the data on that, but there is still a reported problem. Businesses are very keen to see more government leadership, and we can come on to this in more detail, but I think companies, interestingly, were very quick to say they wanted more UK government leadership, but found it quite hard to articulate what that leadership was. What would it look like, what policies were not there, that they would like.
There's little forcing businesses to engage and act. So we'll come on to this. I'll talk about the drivers that I found here of why businesses are acting, given that there's relatively little obligation to do so, there's a very little low level of knowledge about nature. There's lots of evidence around this. Boards really don't understand what it is or why it's relevant to them, and there's some very good work going on to address that challenge.
What you might do varies significantly. It's quite difficult to look at what other companies are doing and copy it and mimic the best practice, because it's really specific to how you run your business and you run your supply chain.
And there's a language problem we all use, and we're all guilty of this in this sector. We all use frames like words like nature investment and nature market. But if you come from a business context, the word investment doesn't you know nature investment doesn't really mean quite what we think it means. And we don't really have nature markets in the sense that there's a place where people can go and buy and trade stuff kind of freely. That isn't really what nature markets are currently. So some of the words and some of the language are confusing for both sides.
And the final, really obvious point, there are many other competing demands for money and attention, so not only to climate change, but international politics, regulation, cost of living, where your consumers are, AI. All these things are huge pressures on businesses, and nature is lower down that list.
There are lots of positive signs. I put a few proxies up here. There are lots of companies who are trying to work out what more they can do. They're joining groups like, Helen could talk more about, the TNFD UK Consultation Group. I won't explain what TNFD is, because Helen can do a much better job of doing that. There are lots of business groups, the party conferences I didn't look at this year, but actually last year, there were a lot of fringe meetings that focused on nature and were being run by businesses. Last year at party conferences and large banks, insurers, asset managers, big companies are recruiting people to be heads of nature, so that is a pretty good sign they're taking it seriously, and there is a lot of action happening on the ground.
But I've separated this one out slightly, so all the businesses I spoke to were able to talk about something they were doing, which is kind of pro nature. But what's interesting about this, and I go to the example of McCain, so lots of you will have seen McCain, have got all their TV adverts at the moment are talking about how they're moving to 100% regenerative agriculture, which would be a great boon for nature. But what we don't really understand, and we may never understand is the relationship between McCain's and the farmers in their potato supply chain is a commercially confidential one. So how much they pay for potatoes now, how much they're going to support farmers to move to regenerative agricultural systems, and how they're going to support them, what advice, you know, and what price they'll pay for potatoes that have been farmed regeneratively are things that we will probably never know. We'll never know how much it costs, and we won't necessarily know the nature impact either. This kind of hidden level of action makes it a really quite confusing picture.
Next in the research, I looked at what are the drivers for action? I asked companies what they were doing. It's not a simple picture, but I think there are four key areas. One is an actual problem or risk. If you're a coffee company and you run a chain of cafes, an actual problem is the price of coffee. Say, some of that is due to nature. So you've got a real problem that you need to address. You need to take some action.
The second one is nature-based carbon. Lots of companies have carbon targets and strategies for getting there and nature-based carbon. In the UK, that would look like peatland and woodland code. And we can talk more about that if people are interested. People are interested. That is driving some interest. Compliance markets. So principally, we're talking about Biodiversity Net Gain there. And then CSR, which is essentially philanthropies. That's Corporate Social Responsibility, but that is a kind of donations given by companies to help nature. So those are the four buckets. What I do in the report, and there's no need to take notes or screen grab. It's all available in the report, is try and map out the relative size of the pressures here and what's going on. I won't go too much into the detail here, but I think there are quite a lot of different drivers, and businesses found it quite difficult to unpick which was the one driver that was really pushing them to action.
There are current shifts going on in the drivers. What's changing? If you're a business, you're thinking about, what am I? What do we need to do? Something on nature. I need some help. Will quite often turn to a standard or a framework. So TNFD, or there are lots of people out there like GRI so on, who can help you. They prepare these documents so that you know that you're operating in a fairly standardised way, and you're not going off down some rabbit holes. There's a general expectation around that there will be more standards, and some of them might become mandatory, and that investors, especially, will want to see you using these kind of standards. And that is really ramping up over time.
The second shift is that companies are wanting more work which is specific to the sector that they work in. So if you work in agriculture, it's very different for what you will need to do than if you work in textiles or you work in mining. And so there are these excellent projects going on and which, if you look in climate change, we know these sector pathways. We have these already. You understand what your role is within your sector and how that ladders up at a national level. But we really need these for nature as well.
And then the third one is keeping an ongoing ramp up of activity by investors, so investors who are asset managers or, you know, asset owners get together in alliances. And despite the political backdrop, investors know that the nature crisis is real and that will have an impact on companies that they're invested in. There's no sign that is slowing down, which is a good thing for all of us.
I also look to actors here. I won't cover too much in this. There's a detailed section in the report. What I found was it was a slightly confusing picture and room, possibly for a bit of work to bring things together more and for a bit more leadership across the whole of this area.
A final point I wanted to make is that I think there's some rhetoric around nature finance that's quite unhelpful. There were lots of quotes I could have used here. This I picked on the Defra nature markets framework, which is a great document. It's got loads of really good stuff in but there was this paragraph in it that really stuck out to me about being self evident that business and sectors are already doing this work, and they're seeking straightforward financial instruments to support nature recovery. I'm just not sure that's true. I just don't think that's where we are now. I would love this to be true, and I think we are heading there. But I think some of the rhetoric and what we need to balance here is, and this is businesses really reflected it as a kind of hesitancy to talk about what was happening. A more realistic version of this, is that there are a few leading corporates and a minority of investors who are doing this work, and they are slowly getting to grips with it. There is lots of action here, but maybe some of the rhetoric.
If you're on the supply side, and you're looking at this world, it sometimes feels like people are promising billions of pounds of, you know, investment is going to come your way any minute now. You're going to get a phone call and the pension fund is going to offer £20 million for you to restore some landscape. That really is quite misleading.
So the conclusions here, businesses know there's a problem and is getting to grips about action. There is action happening on the ground, but it's not always obvious. The confusion is widespread. There's many factors influencing how firms think about things, and there are still a wide range of drivers of action. And there's more and more research coming out on the demand side. I think there's two reports on this, final one that have come out in recent weeks. One was a responsible investor survey of investors on nature, which was really interesting. And the second one was a British retail consortium one looking at what retailers are doing on nature. There is more and more work coming out of this. If you're trying to understand where corporates are, I think there is more you can look at, and that was my best attempt to run through the report in as short a time as possible. I hope that was helpful. And back to you.
Q&A
Liam McAleese
Excellent. Thank you, Will, very helpful indeed. Reminder that you can put questions in the Q&A field. Thank you to colleagues who already put some interesting questions in.
I'm going to start with one, just because I know on the call there are lots of people who are involved in actually developing projects on the ground, and may want some feedback or advice. What do I do this report? How do I engage business? Will, what would be your practical advice to projects that are actively seeking to engage with business within their areas?
Will McDonald
Yeah, thanks. Liam, I think that is one of the things we were really keen to draw out of the research and make it practically useful for people. I think there are probably a few points that are relevant here. One of them I've made already, which is about the language, and there is a bit of hype around the market, and I think we need to talk positively about the opportunities, because there are huge opportunities, and there are some really good projects on the ground that have got private sector money, and that wouldn't have happened a few years ago, and that is making a huge difference to nature. But I think I wouldn't necessarily wait for the phone call for that, for that pension fund to offer you £20 million. So there's something about just understanding what's happening at the moment.
I think secondly, is be really cognisant. It's probably quite a big decision. Lots of landowners, farmers, NGOs are not necessarily very big organisations, and you're potentially entering into contracts for what might be five years, might be 10 years, might be 30 years, and you really need to have quite a good understanding of what it is you know you're doing and how that fits with your objectives, and is this what you want to be doing?
I would try and be really specific. If you find yourself, as a project developer, saying, "we would like to engage business to help us restore nature", you need to be much more specific. And that includes, which businesses you are looking at which sectors of the economy, and where you're going to start. And there are lots of people out there who can help you think that through. But I think if you find yourself talking in general terms, you're probably not going to end up with a satisfactory conclusion. I think you need to try and be really specific about who's operating in your area, which you know, if there are, if you're working with farmers, which supply chains are they in? Which sectors do they work in? What else is happening in those areas and so on. I'll probably leave it there for now. I think probably Helen and Ben do quite a lot of work with both sides of the equation here.
Liam McAleese
Yeah, thanks, Will. Helen, I'd be really interested in your perspective? Because GFI work with investors, with businesses and with projects, so you see it from many different perspectives. Be interested to hear your take?
Helen Avery
And thanks for is a great report, and super helpful. And thank you, Will, for a great presentation. So building on some of the things Will said, I think if you're thinking about the supply side, and you're looking to engage with the demand side, I think we've hit, like, the hard part now, and that can be quite frustrating and disconcerting. I think it also leads to, unfortunately, things that, like new initiatives, set up, but we know what the challenges are. We've really just got to figure them out with all the knowledge that we've accumulated over the past decade, really. I would encourage you to have some patience and really, you know, still retain hope. We're just at this really difficult piece because corporates are interested. You know, we've got 600 corporates in the UK National Consultation Group. We've got 80 adopters of TNFD already in the UK, which may not sound a big number, but we are moving that way.
But the challenge is a lot of them can't quite translate what that risk is to them. So, say there's a risk of flood or risk of water shortage, they can't translate what that, what does that cost then look like for them, if they were to pay you the supply side, to deliver against, to shore up some of that risk for them, or mitigate against that risk, they're really struggling with that piece. It's quite hard for them to get money out the door, because how do they say, well, yes, if I pay you this, it's going to be worth it to me down the line, because I figured out what the water shortage is going to cost my own business. There's some of that going on at the moment, and that's a real gap that we've got to fill just building some of the sector work.
I think it's really easy for us all to go it's agri-food. And actually, what we're seeing in the TNFD Consultation Group is agri-food is a little further behind. And agri-food is a very broad church, if you will. Like, there's a lot of different parts to agri-food, where we are seeing more movement is from the infrastructure sector. So, you know, obviously National Grid, there's NCEP BNG credits that need to be units rather that need to be fulfilled. You've got highways concerned about flood. They're a bit more actively engaged at the moment, we're noticing. If you can come together around a region, what might be impacting Network Rail, and, you know, the infrastructure providers, you might stand a really good chance of putting together a project.
And then the only thing I'd say is just that these corporates are inundated with projects that say, Hey, why don't you buy this for me? And what about this? And I think just bearing that in mind, typically, you've got one person in an organisation who's facing out to hundreds of requests every day. So if we can be collectively cognisant of that, could we come together a bit more as we're approaching these corporates? I'm seeing a fatigue. I know that, you know, we speak to corporates all the time, and they're like, oh, and it's another, you know, there's another initiative that's calling on us, and another landscape scale project that's calling on us. So it's just being cognitive that how can we, you know, we're still in this pre-competitive space. I know it's slightly moved, but can we just come together a bit more and solve some of our problems together?
Liam McAleese
Thank you, Helen. Ben, Nattergal are actually on the ground, delivering for nature. I'm really keen to hear your reflections on the question in the report.
Ben Hart
Yes. Thank you very much, and thank you for having me and Will, great summary, brilliant report. Just a little bit of context. Nattergal is Danish for Nightingale and for those who know, the Knepp estates, we have been developed by Sir Charlie Burrell, who's the founder of Knepp and others, to essentially create more Knepps in the UK. We have raised £40 million over the last few years. We've invested that in three farms, three nature restoration projects that we have, one in Lincolnshire, which is proved to be wildland, one in Norfolk, which is high fen wildland, which is a wetland restoration project, and then one in Essex, which is Harold's Park wildland. We are very much on the ground, delivering nature restoration at scale. That's our sort of mission. And we're also a private company, and one of our missions is to create a sustainable financial return.
We are trying to create natural capital assets that investors can invest in and get a return from. And if we can do that, we can start to funnel the billions, apparently, that are out there into this nature restoration space. So just to follow up on some of those points we are finding, and I think, Will, one of the things that really got me in your report was this slight difference between the corporations, as Helen said, that are all kind of like struggling to work out what's going on and looking at TNFD and looking at a risk side of things, and then suppliers like ourselves, who are very much working on nature credits and developing, certainly our core focus is charismatic carbon. And an example of that is we have sold this year, we released, we sold a million pounds worth of carbon to Arup for their carbon reporting, for the carbon kind of targets at £100 a ton. So that was really exciting, because that was a high value carbon sale that built in the kind of charismatic parts of it, so the community engagement work that we do, and the nature of recovery, and on the other side of it, we're looking at the Biodiversity Net Gain, which is a government policy driver that's, actually, developers required at the moment to show a 10% increase in biodiversity from the development project to do.
Nattergal essentially creates those off site habitat banks that developers can get into. So from our point of view, in terms of the drivers, it's very much trying to align that kind of risk TNFD side with that credit production side. And how do we do that? We are actually one of the TNFD early adopters that Helen talked about, and one of the things we're going through is working on our TNFD reporting and an impact report that we aim to produce before the end of the year, so we can talk to the corporates that are working on that, and we can say, well, actually, we go through the same process, we've got the same metrics, and we can communicate what we're doing as part of the value that you're creating within your risk analysis. If that makes sense.
Liam McAleese
Thanks very much, Ben. You mentioned both in the report, Will, and Ben, you alluded to kind of the importance of government policy. And I know the GFI are very involved in this. I'm just curious to tease out the role of government here. We talked about project developer business, but where is the, I think it was described as, government leadership in your report, Will. What does that look like? Helen, do you want to go first?
Helen Avery
Yes, I'd love to. And I always have a little bit of a list, because I always think it's good to know just like it's government's on the line, like it's either that they are. Yeah, I think there are absolutely things they could do. I mean putting more pressure on businesses to actually address their risks. And obviously, as you know, we have nature positive pathways that are under development, and I think that will translate the environmental improvement targets into what sectors need to do. And I think that's help. If they do not have teeth, then we end up where we are with net zero in that, yes, businesses know what they need to do and they set targets, but are they actually going to do them?
And just be clear, that doesn't necessarily mean it will translate into projects, but what it will mean is business understand how they need to reduce their impacts and shore up some of those dependencies as well. So I think it will really help the nature positive pathways, piece of work with ourselves and WWF.
The other thing is like this, I think it's still not clear, is it, when we look at the maps, like, where is the risk? Like, where is the flood risk? Like, one map of truth, where's the flood risk? Where's water shortage risk? Like, let's just understand that together. I appreciate that. You know, from commercial interests, you don't want to put your own data on those maps to show well, we have all this risk here. No one wants to do that. But if we all can start to understand where are the regions where businesses are going to have most interest, that I think would be really helpful. And there's so much data and evidence that governments have.
And insetting is something we hear about from corporates all the time. If we could just figure out insetting. I know that's a global issue, that's not just the UK government to solve. But then money will start to move more because they'll start to put more money in, buying carbon credits within projects insetting. Not offsets.
And then I think the other one is carbon pricing. Often we talk about that, and I know there's the wooden carbon purchase fund that's being discussed. But then aggregation models as well, like just, how do we start to bring together a regional scale? These landscape projects that we've got, many landscape recovery projects that, Ben knows, there are one of them. Is there ways that not all of them are going to succeed in finding private sector investment? How can we bring them together? And those aren't going to work, then we should be using public sector funding. I don't think we've really thought that through. So quite a few things there on a wish list.
Thanks, Helen. Ben, what's on your wish list?
Ben Hart
Yeah, I think I'd support that. One of the models that we look at from our business model - we're a nature restoration company, and at the moment, we focus on BNG and carbon because of the markets that we can see. We're relatively agnostic where the revenue will come from. We just need to create those income streams to prove to the investors that are they are safe, secure, stable income streams. And the chopping and changing within the market, certainly around Biodiversity Net Gain this summer, with all the different consultations, hasn't helped aid the kind of client demand. Clients are obviously, understandably cautious in terms of committing to 20/30 year contracts for us to deliver that. We are doing a 30-year contract to deliver a certain habitat, but they still have to buy the credits from us to do that if they don't know if that's what needs to be done, and any company is not going to spend money if they don't have to. So I think, Liam, policy that is unlikely to get changed. I think would be really the main request from most of the market.
And I always point out the wetland mitigation or the watershed mitigation market in the US, which is relatively non political and has been developed over the last 20 or 30 years, and there are active billion pound funds investing in wetland restoration to protect watersheds across the United States. And it's a model that just works. And I think I saw a stat recently, I think David Hill from the Environment Bank, shared that there are more people in the US working in nature restoration than there are in the steel industry nowadays, because there was a clear policy that all companies had to sign up to that delivered this wetland mitigation policy. If we can get something like that. There is a lot of people who are a lot of landowners who want to do nature restoration, if they can see a clear route to income, and then a lot of investors who want to invest in nature restoration, if they can make sure that their financial committees can see that return and it's safe and secure going forward. And I think if we can crack that puzzle together, then we will see some great opportunities going forward.
Thanks. Ben. I'm just going to move us on to another question. I'm going to try and group a couple of these. We've touched on the issue of geography a couple of times, but I just want to circle back to it. John's got a question. John Stride around the importance of geography to investors, for example, the marketability of nature restoration projects within protected landscapes that have added value of appealing to cultural value and significance. So that's one slightly different angle.
Liam McAleese
Simoney has asked a question that the UK Government about how pension funds and insurance can invest in UK infrastructure, kind of buying British what is the appetite politically to encourage these funds to buy British nature, and would it be considered too illiquid and unquantifiable in terms of potential returns? So who wants to have a go at answering a geography question? Maybe responding to those two points.
Will McDonald
I could jump in quickly on that. I think one of the things that the Dasgupta review, if you've had the misfortune to read 600 pages of it, is pretty clear on, is that nature is different from carbon in many ways, and place is one of them, like what nature where matters much more than what carbon where. And that matters both to us, people who really just care about nature for nature sakes, but also people working in businesses and so on, what nature you're talking about. And I think that's where some of the mismatch between the supply and the demand side comes in. Because in a very crude sort of analogy, if you're a Rivers Trust and you're working with a farmer on one side of a river, and let's say, Nestle, have a supply chain farm on the other side of the river, then Nestle won't necessarily be interested in talking to you about this farm, because they're only interested in this side. So place matters a lot.
There's also some really obvious bits, lots of our nature in the UK is in the North and Scotland. Essentially, that is where our big bits of nature are. But I think, going back to John's question, I think investors' main role here - and this is fundamentally the theory of change of this government and the last government - which is that if you get companies to put out in public, what is their impact on climate and nature, and this is what the TNFD process does, you just put it out there in public, and then that investors will then use that information to put pressure on the companies to change and to do better. That is the fundamental theory of change we're working with here. I think investors' role, which some of them are doing brilliantly, is really just to keep asking questions of companies, like, where are your risks? What's going to happen when nature collapses? What's going to happen when you know your soil health is totally degraded, and you're not getting the yields you need? And I think that really is investors' main role.
There is a there is a separate bunch of investors who are trying to actually put money directly into projects, to invest in projects, but they need a financial return. That sort of investor needs 10% to 12% cash back every year from year one, they can't not do that, because they're regulated to do that by the Bank of England. So you need to be really clear about what sort of investor you're talking about and how, whatever it is you're proposing, how it's going to play into how they work, how are you helping? What's the need that you're giving them? And I haven't really seen people quite yet crack, a bit like what Ben was talking about, that how do we get a 10% to 12% return in cash back to an actual investor? That's a tough nut to crack. Thanks.
Liam McAleese
Well, Helen, Ben, do you want to say anything on the on the geography questions?
Helen Avery
There's a couple of things. So one is, it's really hard, isn't it, because every business is different. Like we hear some from some multinationals. Carbon is carbon is carbon. They're just going to buy the cheapest. And others are interested in charismatic carbon for a narrative, for some reason, so it's just so hard to pin that down. So of course, protected landscapes wouldn't that be lovely, charismatic carbon. But you know, for some very big multinationals I can think of, but won't name, they don't care. They just want the cheapest carbon because they've got to sell it to their board that they're buying the carbon and just hit their targets.
But another thing I wanted to mention was setting aside like carbon and BNG. But if you're going to be selling like flood risk reduction or something like that, obviously location matters. But even then, I would say that, some of the large multinationals, and this was something that actually the Nature Conservancy shared with me this week, so all credit to them for sharing. This was that multinationals have got a global sustainability person. They're looking at their risk. They'll prioritise a couple of regions in the world around say it's flood, and they've prioritised Bangladesh. So even though they're active in Norfolk, or, you know, we're really prone to flood, North West, they're just not going to invest. And it's not that they're not prone to flood there. It's just that's been the global strategy. So I think my sense is that actually, if you can start to work more with businesses that are more sort of regional in nature, you know that I can mention the infrastructure companies in the UK, even UK retailers, because obviously their supply chain is in the UK, and where they can see into the supply chain, which isn't always then, working with them where they are, excellent.
Ben Hart
Yeah, I think just to add that our experience so far. I talk about Arup because that's one that we're able to talk about at the moment. But yeah, they're an international company. They have an international climate targets. And they identified a need to purchase carbon as part of their overall project plans, and it's a very small amount. It's 10,000 tons, and very small amount in their overall projections for the next 20 or 30 years. But the value that they saw from investing in Booth wildland, which is behind me, was that it was local. Is local in the UK. They very much appreciated the kind of local community work that we do, and supporting the local resilience within the community and the volunteering programmes and health, wellbeing. And fundamentally, they could bring their team to see it. So actually, there is that very positive story of, look at this project that we've supported, we've invested in nature, and in a couple of weeks time, we've got, I think we've got 50 attendees from from Arup coming to do volunteering on the site, and they can actively feel and touch and engage with the nature restoration. And I think those local stories, that local connection that we do have. Yes, you're right. There's international organisations that will focus on the risk areas. But I definitely think those kind of positive stories of hope are a key driver, and actually almost are as important as the numbers, on occasion.
Liam McAleese
Thanks, Ben. I'm looking at the upvoted questions. I think David Hills is near the top. At the moment we've touched upon the role of government. But if anyone wants to comment specifically on the Nature Restoration Fund. Ben, you reference the BNG consultation. So do have a look at that one.
And I also want you just to have a think about there are two related questions, one from Roslyn, one from Paul Turner Smith, about board level education programmes and the concept of nature on on the board. So maybe grouping that into a kind of reflection on the extent to which boards are engaged in this, whether that came out strongly in the report, Will, so should we do boards first and then if Will to take that first and then other panelists?
Will McDonald
Yeah, thanks. I think board level is really important. Companies, you know, well, you have to have board buy in, really, to get to make progress at a serious level. And there are, I mean, I know, WWF, UK, and ZSL, the Zoological Society of London, have specific board programmes that go out. They can only go in when they're invited, you know. So what they can do is get brilliant presentations, great speakers ready, and so on. But I think it is talking to sustainability professionals in house, in companies. It's quite a hard sell to get board time. I think the session seemed to go very well when they do. And I think what you would hope to see is that, you know, you get a lot of non-executive directors who are on boards, who sit on other company boards, and it's that network that will bring you know, we did this session at this board, and you know. But I do think that board level one is quite a hard nut to crack. But I think some very smart people are on the case.
I'd make a quick point about David Hill's question about the Nature Restoration Fund. David, you know way more about this than I will ever do. I think there is a broader point here, which is a sort of fact of life at the moment, which is that Defra is a department that has always struggled to have sway across the rest of government. And what we're talking about here is businesses in nature, and Defra doesn't really have a lot of control or powers, a lot of tools, levers to work with business, whereas Department for Business, Treasury, you know, Ministry of Housing, you know, lots of these other departments work with big business sectors that are heavily impacting on nature more than Defra does. So I think we just need to accept that this is true and has always been true. There's probably only been when, maybe when Michael Gove was with Secretary of State for Environment, did Defra have real clout across Whitehall. I think we need to just accept that, and we need to focus our efforts in talking not just to Defra. I think that the people I know at Defra are brilliant individuals who are doing their best. Really, where they need help is for those arguments to be made to Treasury, Department of Business, Net Zero, Housing. In a way, Nature Restoration Fund has come about as an issue, partly because of a sort of intergovernmental disconnect. So that would be my tuppence on that.
Liam McAleese
Helen, any reflections on either of those questions?
Helen Avery
Yeah, so on David Hill's, I totally agree. We cannot get rid of BNG and put it into the NRF. We are moving in the opposite direction to where all other countries are moving, as they're all considering mitigation banking. We're 8 billion people going to 10 billion in 2050, we absolutely have to regulate against impact and net it off. And BNG is working. It's like what I said earlier. Now we're getting to the hard part. People like, oh, it's a bit hard. Let's come up with something new. No, let's just figure out what is actually working, might not be working perfectly, and just solve it. I cannot tell you how BNG is just so important, and I'm concerned that we might just destroy it. It's just such a shame in other countries across Latin America, across Africa, even in the EU, they're now starting to consider mitigation, banking and regulated markets. It's madness. So couldn't agree more and David, you're far more qualified to talk about this than I would be. So I'll leave it to you to convince government.
I think the question might have been around like, should you have nature in the boardroom, like as a seat at the board. I think that's how I interpreted Roslyn's question. And I just think I'm not sure the current environment we're in is going to be supportive of that given, you know, if you just look at politics around the world, I think that might be a step too far. I know some businesses have introduced it. I'm all for it. I think it's wonderful. But I just wonder if it's a bit tone deaf at the moment to push for that, given where we are politically. Don't know.
Ben Hart
I'd just like to jump in as well on those two points. So first of all, we have a seat at the board on nature. One of our values is nature comes first. And Charlie has a veto on any decisions that isn't the best for nature, which I think is really important. And it'd be great if others could do that. Definitely getting your board out into nature. Got a plug for we do corporate days. If anyone wants to come to one of our sites, very welcome to show boards around and talk about nature restoration, talk about the business, talk about the local community resilience and all the work we're doing there.
In terms of David's point, yeah, completely agree. I've spent a lot my, all of my career in various different parts of sustainability. I started off in solar with the Fizz, massive, great, big solar in development, and then the government changed the rules and the bottom fell out the solar market. The carbon reduction commitment in the early 2010s was a tax on all large companies, their carbon footprints. And the idea of the carbon tax was then put into the fund, which was supposed to then fund renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, and then got moved into general taxation, and then didn't have any impact, and was just a corporate demand on corporates in terms of complexity and extra costs and stuff, and eventually it got wiped away. So I completely agree with David.
At the same time, I also recognise that we are in the world we are. Politically, things change. As a company and companies and market, we have to work with what we've got, and we have to deliver to services so local nature recovery strategy is really important. All of our sites are within those strategies and identifying what works. And the reason we have this growth versus nature argument at the moment, which is so crazy, is because we haven't, as an industry communicated that we are a growth industry. You know, nature restoration is, you know, Will you said, most of our nature is up north in the UK, and that's because we've lost it all down south. So surely that's our biggest opportunity to restore nature is where we've lost it all. And if you think of there is a situation where we can combine development, business growth and nature, and we can have it all, and we just have to have the right policies in place to drive the right behaviors. And there is a route through somewhere which is positive on both ends, but we have to show that nature is a growth industry, and it will pay people's wages, and it will create tax income, and all the positive benefits that will come from that. And that's our mission as an industry, really, right now.
Liam McAleese
Thank you very much. Ben, I'm just going to draw attention to Peter Young's comment in the questions. So Peter, who I know, you know, is chairing the Nature Markets Dialogue, something that Esmée is pleased to be part of, doing some excellent work to help inform some of the thinking on governance. I think we might have touched and answered some of Peter's question around building confidence in policy driven markets, which are rather continued review and challenge. But I just wanted to kind of note that as it emphasises the point that panelists made.
I want to take us to Dr Maxwell Amber's question now. A typically thoughtful question from Maxwell. I might synthesise it, if I may, hopefully not, certainly not intended to lose the intent of it. But I want us to think about how we think about community and social justice in this space, both in the UK and internationally, and your reflections on the extent to which we're doing this or not. Who wants to start with that one?
Will McDonald
I mean, I would just say very narrowly, in terms of the research, we were only looking at UK nature, because we had to draw some lines around it at some point. But one of the first things you discover talking to businesses, is that almost every business, even SMEs, source from overseas, even if you're just running a little coffee cart at a Park Run, your coffee obviously isn't grown in the UK. And I think there are some really good initiatives that I've seen out there, mainly around water and some around deforestation, where you start to see it coming, but where people are really trying to understand their supply chains. But I think we do have a basic problem is that the link between me drinking a coffee and the person who actually grew the coffee is so tenuous. It is such a long chain with so many actors, that is very hard to bring those two together. I would love to see more transparency from a business point of view, more transparency in the supply chain, but also on a human level, kind of more understanding of the links between those two. But there are some very good people wrestling with this problem, and I think it is, I think it is quite hard.
Liam McAleese
Thanks. Ben, I think you want to jump in.
Ben Hart
Yes. I mean, I completely agree with the point. I think the challenge with the Dasgupta review and others, you know, the challenge of intrinsic values of nature. Whilst I think we all agree if you cannot place, this is the whole argument with natural capital. You cannot place a value in nature. You're essentially, for the economist, it's essentially worthless. And therefore we see all the pollution, all the air, you know, all the CO2 getting pumped into the atmosphere, all the sewage into the waterways and stuff, because there's no value to destroying that nature. And I think that's what we're sort of dealing with at the moment, is trying to understand how we can value nature for its own sake, but also put monetary values on it. So if you are a company and you're discharging sewage into the river illegally, you know you are having to charge. You're charged for that. It's the same with nutrient neutrality. It's the same with flood risk mitigation and all of that, we are trying to work out how we can. My wife always explains it as nature charging you for the values it provides. And I think that's what we need to try and deal with. Certainly in the global context, that's less of my understanding. But I think the same thing applies. And all of these indigenous communities, it's really important that we work with appropriately. You know, valuing them for the protection they're providing is almost one of the most important things we could possibly do at the moment.
Thanks, Ben. Anything to add to that, Helen?
Helen Avery
I was just going to put in we've done, through the work we have globally with UNEP FI (Finance Institute) and UNDP, we've done quite a few case studies and guidebooks on how you tackle this. So I'm just going to put some links in the chat. Thanks.
Liam McAleese
So we've got time, probably very briefly, for one more question, which is Anita's around language to use when approaching business, a nice, practical question. I suspect, one with many different answers. Anyone wants to start on that one? Basically, how do you frame the question, what's your entry point on it?
Will McDonald
I could jump in quickly there. Liam, if what you're trying to do is get a business to engage, you need to think of them as a customer. You're trying to sell something to this person. What's the need that you can fulfill? What's the problem that they've got, that you're the answer to? So there's a kind of looking at things through that lens. At a really simplistic level, I wouldn't use words like nature or biodiversity, and I would never put pictures of like butterflies or rabbits on your marketing or in your email. I'm not sure that's what people are looking for. On the business side, there are lots of audiences where that is absolutely the right messaging. But just to be really simplistic, I would try and be as hard nosed as you can about it and try and understand from the business you know, your question is, what can I do that can help you? What are the problems you're trying to solve? And the answer may be that there aren't, you can't solve their problems, but that's where I would start.
Liam McAleese
And Will, do you want to say something also about the glossary that's being launched today? Yes, alongside your report.
Will McDonald
So partly, out of some other work I've done with various other people, like Nature North and so on, what we found is that there wasn't really a very good understanding of what all the different types of nature finance are. So at a very simplistic level, you know, what's the difference between CSR and, you know, nature based carbon. And who's going to buy it? Why do they want it? What do they want in return? And so what we, what I put together, is a fairly simple guide to nature finance, essentially, which we're also publishing today. If you read the report on the Esmée Fairbairn website. It's also uploaded there, and I think Liam is just putting the link into the chat. So hopefully that will be something that sort of came out from this research, but will is intended to be a really practical, useful guide, so you can work out which one of those things are you interested in pursuing, if you're on the supply side, which one of these is relevant, and then you can discount the others and try and have a bit more clarity and specificity about what you're going after.
Liam McAleese
Thank you, Will, we are at time. Now I'd like to offer my huge thanks and gratitude to Will, Helen and Ben for your thoughtful contributions, to the number of colleagues who have come and contributed some really great questions and thought provoking questions. So thank you to you. Lots of useful web resources that have been mentioned. Thank you to my colleague, Luna, who supported us during the webinar. Do look at our website for the report. Also would suggest you look at GFI Hive, which is a brilliant source of information as well in this space. So I think that's it for us now. We will try and get the transcript up, and if there are any questions, we can easily answer that and that we will do, but thank you all for your engagement and participation and good afternoon.
Additional questions - questions are highlighted in bold
Interested in the example of France having a smaller say/do gap - Will said it was due to stronger regulations. Could you give some examples of which regulations in France are driving action?
Helen: Article 29 in France required all financial institutions to disclosure biodiversity and climate risks. See a blog about it at the TNFD website: France’s Article 29: biodiversity disclosure requirements sign of what’s to come
There is a big divergence in countries in how many corporates have biodiversity plans. Future piece of research for a comparative analysis and what is the quality of their plans? I'm also interested that you reference standards, but do not reference the BSI Nature Investment Standards being developed. Do you think these will have an impact on demand?
Will: Thanks - yes i think the BSI work is great and will be very helpful. I was trying to avoid mentioning any standards in particular a) to avoid acronym or technical knowledge overload and b) to avoid picking any out in particular!
Did businesses express a confusion or a tension between nature and supply chains at home vs. overseas
Will: Businesses were very clear about the overall location of their supply chains and their key markets, yes. For some, there was a tension between the UK as their HQ and wanting visible, tangible nature action and their key supply chains being mostly / all overseas.
What is the argument against Government offering significant tax benefits for nature recovery investment? Yes, regulation needed, but with Defra urging more green finance in 5 years to displace public sector funding, they need to offer incentives.
Will: There is an important debate here - Dasgupta was very clear about current subsidies supporting harm to nature, and the need to reverse those. There is quite a lot of public money going into nature (not through tax but grants, say) but i think the current spending environment would make it very hard to win more funding...
Economists like to measure everything in monetary terms, money today symbolizes the value we attach to things. The problem is that many things cannot measured in monetary terms such as nature and human welfare, that is because economics cannot be easily applied to such as nature as it is treated as an externality by traditional economics systems of accounts which are left to subjective appreciation at the political or cultural levels. My question to the panel is how does your report address this in relation to environmental justice especially in relation to multinational corporations operating in the developing world where there are no laws to regulate them.
Helen: We have some guidebooks on best examples - on Revenues for nature project - things like the Living Amazon Mechanism spring to mind from Natura.
Lots of chat about Green investment - what does the panel think is a realistic return for those investors?
Will: I’m not sure I’ve seen a model with public figures for the promised return. I don’t know if Oxygen have said what they will pay as a return to [Triodos?] for the loan?
Helen: I think it depends on what the revenue stream is and how much people are prepared to pay for the carbon/commodities/Ecosystem service. No easy answer sadly. I think some projects are not going to work if returns are over 3% to 5% but others could deliver 6% to 8% - if combined with sustainable timber for example that could be higher.
Curious about the framing of 'nature is a problem'?
Will: My take would be that the degradation of nature can be a useful framing for getting companies to engage. This also fits with the mitigation hierarchy i.e. reducing the harm in the first place.
Lots of conversation about large land assets, aggregation and consolidation at landscape level, to achieve scale required for many investors. Just wondering whether any initiatives to help aggregate smaller, maybe urban, peri-urban nature initiatives that perhaps don't have the charisma /draw of the larger regenerative / restorative projects?
Will: As Helen said, there is room for consolidation and aggregation at many levels in nature - lots more to do here. Some initiatives like Projects for Nature are attempting provide a platform for many projects. One key angle is that some businesses will need a large volume and don’t have capacity to engage with lots of small providers (of carbon credits, say). So we need to fix that for a start.