The Nature Market Accelerator is an industry-funded initiative launched by the UK government to enhance private investment in nature-based projects. This initiative is part of broader environmental regulatory reforms aimed at streamlining processes to boost economic growth while ensuring nature conservation.
The accelerator seeks to bring coherence to nature markets, facilitating increased private sector investment in environmental projects.
Key objectives:
- Stimulating green finance – The accelerator aims to bring coherence to nature markets, facilitating increased private sector investment in environmental projects.
- Supporting nature-based solutions (NbS) – By providing technical assistance and capacity building, the program aims to prepare NbS projects for investment, unlocking institutional finance for nature recovery.
- Aligning economic growth with environmental goals – The initiative is part of a broader strategy to reform environmental regulations, aiming to balance infrastructure development with nature preservation.
By fostering a more dynamic and streamlined approach to environmental regulation, the Nature Market Accelerator aims to unlock significant private sector funding for nature restoration, contributing to both economic growth and ecological sustainability.
Finance Earth
Finance Earth, which delivers the UK Nature Accelerator, says that it is designed to provide NbS projects with support in the final stages of preparation to obtain investment from the UK Nature Impact Fund.
While the UK’s nature market is growing, it’s still new and there are a limited number of delivery and investment-ready projects in the pipeline.
Finance Earth says that there is a growing need for ‘last mile’ technical assistance and extra support in developing investment-ready projects.
This assistance might include refining investment cases, completing financial models, designing transaction structures and contracting mechanisms, developing project documents and finalising contractual terms.
It’s hoped that with support the number of high-integrity nature-based projects will increase and find investment. In this way, the Accelerator aims to prepare nature-based projects for investment and unlock institutional, repayable finance at scale for nature recovery.
The Accelerator currently supports woodland creation and peatland restoration across the UK, and biodiversity net gain in England.
Participation
The Accelerator is part-funded (50%) by Defra. Finance Earth says that it is currently seeking additional strategic co-funders for the Accelerator programme, but currently participants may be asked to provide a contribution to match Defra’s allocation on a project-by-project basis.
Companies participating in the Accelerator programme will also need to dedicate staff time. Finance Earth says that it requires participants to allocate 0.5 days per week resource to ensure sufficient engagement and successful delivery.
The aim of the Accelerator is to enable participating companies to:
- Create investment-ready nature recovery projects appropriate for institutional investment
- Develop blueprint transaction structures and contracts that can be scaled and replicated
- Build capabilities through guided investment readiness support
- Enable collaboration and shared learnings to increase capability and capacity