Putting nature first in Oxfordshire's green finance initiatives
On 11 January 2024. the OLNP's manager and nature finance manager attended the 100Together green finance event. Hosted by Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) and Oxford Brookes University, with support from the OLNP, this event served as a platform to highlight best practices in green finance and foster collaboration among partners. The shared vision is to harnessing private capital to drive decarbonization, nature recovery, climate change adaptation, and mitigation efforts across Oxfordshire.
OLNP supported OCC in the early stages of designing the event, helping to ensure that nature took centre stage in discussions. Nature must be considered alongside carbon - this is important in a conceptual sense, in that it foregrounds the interconnectedness of the nature and climate crises, but is also a pragmatic necessity. While businesses are becoming well-versed in measuring, managing, and mitigating climate risks, nature-related business considerations are relatively novel in boardrooms.
At the event, the OLNP manager presented the Oxfordshire Nature Finance Strategy, which was developed by the OLNP’s Nature Finance group in 2023. This provided a strategic framework for subsequent presentations. These included from the North East Cotswolds Farmer Cluster (NECFC ) on their innovative landscape recovery and NEIRF (Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund) projects which model soil carbon sequestration and water retention capacity across 7,500 hectares of West Oxfordshire’s landscape through regenerative farming and nature-based solutions, and Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT), who showcased their pioneering habitat banking model which channels funds into a nature-led scheme at their Chimney Meadows nature reserve.
The event was a great success, bringing together leading academics, practitioners, politicians, policy makers, funders and financial institutions to find solutions to the climate and nature crises. It also highlighted the significant funding required to decarbonise Oxfordshire and restore its nature.
OLNP remains committed to collaborating with OCC and other partners to advance this critical agenda. Already in the pipeline are plans to attract much-needed private investment to fund large-scale nature recovery and sustainable solutions within the county.
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