Early Engagement for Defra's Big Nature Impact Fund

The purpose of this notice is to gather market feedback on Defra's proposal as set out below:

• Defra is proposing to launch a Big Nature Impact Fund through appointment of a Fund Manager, which will be charged with two core responsibilities: capital raising and fund deployment. More specifically, this will focus on the twin tasks of leveraging private finance into, and accelerating the development of, new ecosystem service markets.
• This Fund will be structured as a public-private, blended finance vehicle. Defra intends that public investment in the Fund will incentivise and de-risk private investment into the Fund. The Fund will invest in a portfolio of projects that generate revenue from nature-based solutions providing ecosystem services (e.g. benefits from natural services including, for example, flood mitigation and water quality improvements from tree planting or carbon sequestration from restoring peat bogs). This model is being proposed following government's successful use of public-private blended impact models in other areas, including climate finance, social finance and international biodiversity.
• Defra propose that the Fund should target investment into nature-based solutions with the greatest climate change mitigation potential and high potential to generate revenue from ecosystem services. We anticipate these to be primarily tree planting and peatland restoration, however, the scope of potential investments by the Fund will also include a wider range of habitats, biodiversity and nature-based solutions. Investments should support delivery of 25 Year Environment Plan targets.
• The Fund will be able to use the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund (NEIRF) as a potential project pipeline, supporting investment ready projects to attract private investment, scale up and demonstrate revenue streams from nature-based solutions.