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Although rewilding has the potential to benefit multiple sectors across Europe, funding gaps remain vast and urgent. This is surprising given the costs of land degradation in sectors such as food and agriculture. Soil degradation is estimated to cost EU farmers an average of €1.25 billion annually. Although estimates vary, several leading experts agree that there is currently a shortfall of hundreds of billions of dollars for biodiversity, nature-based solutions, and reversing global land degradation. Masu.
Achieving Europe’s multiple goals, including climate and nature, will require new financing models that share the burden across social sectors. In cooperation with 19 international organizations including World Resources Institute, gold standard, nature conservation organization,EIT climate KICwe proposed one such framework. “Landscape Finance”a financing approach that supports holistic, systemic, and community-led landscape restoration.
Integrated landscape restoration is a model of landscape restoration that enables local actors to make landscapes more climate resilient and socially and economically prosperous. Comprehensive landscape restoration has more than just ecological benefits. When people come together to restore landscapes, they can build social cohesion and capital between and among communities, and they can serve as the backbone of thriving local economies. Integrated landscape restoration can contribute to a more resilient and sustainable future in line with the vision of the EU Green Deal by benefiting multiple sectors and stakeholder groups.
Through landscape finance, policymakers can foster transformation through holistic landscape restoration and have a lasting impact on Europe’s landscapes. Here we offer some recommendations on how EU policymakers can incorporate landscape finance approaches into their work.
1. Landscapes and landscape partnerships need to be recognized in policy frameworks for transformative change and achieve multiple goals
EU institutions and Member States should allocate resources to support landscape partnerships that promote integrated landscape restoration.. Public funding in the form of unrestricted and flexible grants should be made available to support multi-stakeholder landscape partnerships and governance processes to foster restoration. This is the most catalytic of all funding opportunities in integrated landscape restoration, as the partnership develops landscape vision and planning, provides governance, and drives long-term restoration. .
Introducing incentives that align with nature. It is important to redirect or eliminate environmentally harmful incentives, such as subsidies, in place of activities that restore ecosystems and enhance ecosystem services. Accelerating reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and applying them with integrity will help align public finances with natural and agricultural biodiversity goals. By tailoring policies to appropriately reward benefits and provide economic penalties for harm, governments can naturally encourage positive behavior and discourage harmful behavior.
Integrated landscape restoration serves as a platform to streamline the implementation of national plans targeting the same landscape. EU Member States’ national and regional development plans, including national biodiversity strategies and action plans, need to recognize landscapes and landscape partnerships., promoting vertical and horizontal policy coherence and the integration of national planning and budgeting across sectors. This should be done in a way that best suits each country’s policy and fiscal system. But regardless of a country’s level of decentralized decision-making, landscapes can be used to implement policies such as adaptation, restoration, and drought planning.
The Commission should develop a harmonized landscape accounting and reporting framework. This allows the private sector (companies and investors) to report against new sustainable finance regulations such as the Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.
2. Public finance can play an important catalytic role in overall landscape restoration
All guidance documents on restoration legislation produced by the European Commission should clearly recognize the value of landscapes in addressing multiple objectives and be reflected in national restoration plans.. Fostering cross-sector collaboration between government agencies, NGOs, businesses, and local communities at the landscape level, aligning diverse interests and pooling resources to address multiple issues in a cost-effective and effective manner. You can implement strategies to tackle these challenges.
The Commission should develop a guidance document on how landscape restoration can be integrated into national restoration plans..
The Commission should develop a mechanism with the mandate to provide designated funding for landscapes.. Within the current multi-annual funding framework (MFF), directorates that benefit from restoration (CLIMA, ENV, AGRI, EMPL, REGIO, SANTE, etc.) should allocate a portion of their budget to landscape restoration. . These designated budget elements can be brought under one governance system: a dedicated recovery fund. Similarly, the new MFF (2028-2034) should consider dedicated financial support. This is part of the European Innovation Council Accelerator, which aims to attract private finance into integrated landscape restoration activities and processes, for example by providing guarantees to reduce investment risks and by providing subordinated funding. This can be done through funding programs similar to the Rator. Blended finance approach. The European Investment Bank may provide advisory support or co-investment in such vehicles.
3. Within integrated landscape restoration, infrastructure investments should take a long-term, integrated perspective and incorporate green infrastructure restoration to strengthen resilience to climate change.
EU institutions and Member States should provide public funding for landscape restoration initiatives that enable the integration of gray infrastructure projects and associated green infrastructure improvements.. Taking a holistic, landscape-level approach to these investments is more cost-effective and also makes the overall investment more resilient to the physical risks of climate change. At the same time, it generates multiple valuable public benefits. Large-scale landscape restoration projects should receive the same financial support and attention as large-scale gray infrastructure projects.
We need landscape finance now more than ever
The question of how to achieve the vision of the EU Green Deal is more pressing than ever, as farmers’ protests intensify and EU authorities threaten to roll back Green Deal measures. Now more than ever, we need new financing frameworks like landscape finance to support nature regeneration and help farmers move to more regenerative practices at the landscape scale. For more information on the landscape finance approach, please see below. Read the full story here.
About Commonland
Commonland is a nonprofit organization that brings people together to restore landscapes and reclaim our common land, our planet. Since 2013, we have been on a mission to restore her 100 million hectares of degraded land. Assure Ecosystems, economies, and communities will thrive into the future. Today, we work in more than 20 of her countries to promote landscape restoration and drive change on a global scale. Our practical approach, the 4 Return Framework, helps people around the world restore their home planet and keep it healthy for generations to come. In November 2023, Commonland will publish a new report proposing the application of an investment concept called “landscape finance” as a financing approach to support integrated landscape restoration. World Resources Institute, gold standard, nature conservation organization,EIT climate KIC
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