Funding Competition: Unlocking Nature Positive Private Investment – UK

This funding is from Innovate UK and is part of a £7 million Integrating Finance and Biodiversity for a Nature Positive Future (IFB) programme led by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

The aim of this competition is to mobilise significant private investment to scale nature positive solutions. The competition will enable the development, acceleration and commercialisation of innovative solutions. These solutions must enable private investors to confidently invest in nature positive projects.

Your project must support the scaling of nature positive solutions, by enabling biodiversity-related risks and opportunities to be incorporated into planning, reporting and investment decisions for the finance and business sectors.

Your project must address and overcome previously identified barriers to private investment in nature, including but not limited to:

• limited sources of revenue from nature to fund investment
• high-transaction costs and significant disincentives for investment in nature-based projects
• insufficient certainty to price long term risk, due to a lack of standards and accreditation
• limited project pipeline and scale and an under-developed supply chain

Your project must consider factors that are important in the context of nature and biodiversity, including but not limited to:

• wider impacts including climate adaptation and resilience
• impact on people including indigenous communities
• removing barriers to adoption of solutions including, for example, trust, authenticity and traceability of the data, and lack of data expertise

Specific Themes

Your project must focus on one or more of the following themes:

• data, tools, models and metrics, including decision making tools
• environmental monitoring and verification of investments, over time, cost effectively
• insurance or insurability of projects
• solutions that help aggregate projects to attract finance

Project Size

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £250,000 and £500,000.

Projects they will not fund

• They are not funding projects that directly deliver nature positive solutions.
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • last up to 9 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • start on 1 September 2024
    • end by 30 May 2025
  • Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.
  • Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project or work alone your organisation:
    • must be a UK registered business of any size
    • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
    • can collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
  • All project teams must have as a lead or grant claiming partner, at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).
  • Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project.
• Non-funded partners
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
  • You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Number of applications
  • A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.