With contributions from Dr Jonathan Bell, Head of Land and Sea Policy and Louisa Williams, Work Placement Student for the Policy and Advocacy Team.
On Tuesday 21 March we launched our Nature Investment Plan for Northern Ireland at a roundtable event, hosted by Danske Bank, in conjunction with Business in the Community.
The roundtable discussion included stakeholders from business, finance, nature conservation and government in Northern Ireland. The purpose of the event was to highlight the nature/biodiversity crisis and showcase the RSPB’s NI Nature Investment Plan.
Previous analysis by RSPB and the Natural History Museum illustrates that Northern Ireland is languishing in 229th place out of 240 countries for the amount of nature it has left. Indeed, a nature financing gap of £149.5 million per year exists in Northern Ireland and public spending on biodiversity priorities in Northern Ireland is approx. £1.4million per km2 compared to the UK average of £2.3million per km2. Securing the necessary funds to bridge this gap requires a renewed effort across the public, private and NGO sectors to prioritise the protection and restoration of the natural environment.
Dr Jonathan Bell, Head of Land and Sea Policy, RSPB NI provided an overview of the Plan outlining the many reasons for investing in nature, evidencing the scale of need for nature investment in NI, identifying a series of case studies demonstrating the multiple benefits of investment in nature and finally setting out the key actions necessary to scale up nature protection, restoration and investment in Northern Ireland.
The Plan demonstrates that investment in nature restoration alone could create 2,000 jobs per year, as well as providing cost effective solutions to many of the challenges our society faces, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation and improving health and well-being.
For a Nature Positive Economy
These aspirations cannot be achieved without a substantial uplift in current levels of funding for the protection, management and restoration of the natural environment.
Other contributors to the session included Keelin McCone, Head of Environment at Business in the Community who provided an overview of the Business and Biodiversity Charter and the steps that businesses are taking to become more nature positive.
Jonathan McFerran, Head of DAERA Green Growth team provided an overview of the draft Green Growth Strategy being prepared by the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, emphasising the potential to grow the economy whilst tackling the climate and nature crisis.
Chris Martin, Head of Sustainability at Danske Bank, presented an overview of the growing role of private finance in addressing the nature and climate crisis. Significantly, Danske Bank is involved with the task forces for Climate-related and Nature-related financial disclosures. Market-led initiatives champion nature positive investing and encourage the disclosure of climate-related risks and opportunities through existing channels.
The roundtable discussion highlighted that, whilst a re-purposing of government funding to more adequately reflect the scale of nature and climate crisis is essential, government finance alone will be insufficient. New partnerships will be necessary to grow the relatively untapped area of private sector financing for large-scale nature restoration in Northern Ireland.
We feel this event was a great first step towards the Nature Positive NI we aim to see.
To find out more about how we can achieve a Nature Positive NI, visit our campaigns page.
If you you want to read the Nature Investment Plan for yourself you can find it here