In 2009, developed countries jointly agreed to mobilise USD 100 billion in climate financing by 2020, with pledges to support efforts through 2025. It’s 2021 and global efforts are nowhere close to reaching that goal. Effective action on climate change requires investment and never has there been a more pressing need to move from simply talking about climate change to taking serious and impactful action.

“Taking effective action on climate change is urgent,” says Jose Maria Ortiz, Palladium Managing Director. “In the short term, the answer is nature, while in the long term we need innovation. In both cases, investment at scale is necessary.”

In that spirit, the UK National Parks and Palladium are announcing the launch of Revere.

Rethinking the Financial Value of Nature

Revere is a nature restoration facility developed to restore natural habitats across the UK using private capital. The facility will develop restoration projects with land managers and work with capital from major global companies.

The innovative projects generate revenue through the sale of ecosystem services (such as carbon credits and nature restoration), creating accessible new funding alternatives for farmers and landowners looking to improve the quality of landscapes and biodiversity.

Designed by Palladium and UK National Parks, the facility supports the National Parks’ Net Zero with Nature strategy, which promotes restoring UK National Park landscapes as key to fighting the climate crisis.

“There isn’t time for small-scale interventions anymore,” Ortiz reflects. “The time is now for bold investments in nature with potential risks, because the alternative is continuing to destroy our planet.”

This is exactly what Revere hopes to address.

With projects already underway across the UK’s vast National Parks, Naomi Conway, National Parks Partnerships Development Director notes the importance of nature restoration, “As COP26 approaches, we want to remind the UK of the role that the National Parks can play in fighting the impacts of climate change and improving biodiversity.”

With initial funding from Gatwick Airport, Financial Services provider Santander UK, international cosmetics group Estée Lauder Companies, Capita, and Southern Co-op, projects have begun restoring degraded peatland in the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland, converting hundreds of acres of arable farmland in the South Downs National Park to woodland pasture, and restoring habitats and woodland in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park and in the New Forest National Park.

“This pioneering private sector support will get us closer to achieving the scale and pace of nature restoration that the UK so urgently needs,” Conway says.

The UK has a total of 15 National Parks, and they contain almost a quarter of the UK’s peatland, which offers a significant opportunity for carbon storage. But it won’t be without a steep cost. Recent findings have shown that an estimated GBP 39 billion will be needed to transform the UK land sector into a net carbon sink by 2050.

Creative financial vehicles, cross-sector partnerships, and new approaches to valuing nature, such as Revere, will be critical in the years to come in mitigating and adapting to climate change and further meeting global and national climate goals.

Download the press release and contact info@thepalladiumgroup.com for more information.