Essential partnerships
UKCEH works with partners to deliver world-leading science, which brings governments, policy makers, regulators, NGOs, businesses, think tanks and investors together to tackle environmental challenges and meet sustainability goals.
Our scientific projects are often delivered in partnership with government bodies, private institutions and non-governmental organisations. The impact of our research in addressing key environmental challenges has enabled us to develop strong relationships in nature finance.
We are contributing to the Nature Investment Standards Programme led by BSI in partnership with Defra, the devolved administrations and industry.
The Programme will establish a standards framework to address barriers to investing in nature and support the development of high-integrity nature markets. UKCEH is part of the Nature Markets – Natural Carbon Benefits – Specification Advisory Group.
The group is working towards defining a standard for the natural carbon market based on overarching principles set out by other groups within the Programme.
More about the programme >
UKCEH is coordinating the Integrating Finance and Biodiversity (IFB) for a Nature Positive Programme, co-led by NERC and Innovate UK to develop the solutions needed to embed the values of biodiversity in financial decision making. UKCEH scientists are working on several projects as part of the programme.
Our scientists contributed to a new inventory setting out domestic and international nature-related risks to our economy published by the Green Finance Institute. These include soil health decline, water shortages, global food security repercussions, zoonotic diseases that pass from animals to humans like bird flu, swine flu and Covid-19, as well as antimicrobial resistance and litigation risks. Findings will inform decision-making and provide much-needed impetus to integrate nature-related thinking into the risk analyses carried out by companies, central banks and supervising authorities.
Read more >
UKCEH has entered the Gaia Sciences Innovation partnership formed with sustainability investor Greensphere and other science institutes and organisations, with the potential to expand the impact of our science through nature-based solutions.
Greensphere Capital will raise a £150 million fund designed to invest in and expand world-leading start-up and spin-out businesses that successfully commercialise solutions which mitigate against the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss in the UK and internationally.
UKCEH will identify, assess and progress viable potential new investment opportunities arising from our research and develop these as spin-out companies.
Alongside UKCEH, the partnership brings together leading institutions that are home to more than 4,000 researchers and conservationists, including Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, ZSL, University of York, and via the Anglia Innovation Partnership, the Earlham Institute, John Innes Centre, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Quadram Institute, The Sainsbury Laboratory, and the University of East Anglia.
