In spite of the potential for nature restoration to bring benefits to several sectors in Europe, the funding gap remains immense and urgent, as highlighted in an analysis published by Euractiv.

An "astonishing" thing

This is astonishing, considering the costs of land degradation for sectors like food and agriculture – soil degradation is estimated to cost EU farmers an average of €1.25 billion per year.

While estimates vary, a few prominent observers agree that we are currently missing out on hundreds of billions of dollars for biodiversity, nature-based solutions, and reversing land degradation globally.

We need new financing models that share the burden across society's sectors if we want to achieve Europe's multiple objectives, including climate and nature. Together with 19 international organizations, including the World Resource Institute, Gold Standard, The Nature Conservancy, and EIT Climate KIC, we have proposed such a framework: "Landscape Finance," a financing approach that supports holistic, systemic, and community-led landscape restoration.

What is "holistic restoration"?

Holistic landscape restoration is a model for restoring landscapes that enables local stakeholders to make their landscapes more climate-resilient, as well as more socially and economically prosperous.

Holistic landscape restoration has more than ecological benefits – by bringing people together to reshape their landscape, it can build social cohesion and capital within and between communities, as well as serving as the backbone of thriving local and regional economies.

By producing benefits for multiple sectors and stakeholder groups, holistic landscape restoration can contribute to a more resilient and sustainable future, in line with the EU's Green Deal vision.

Through Landscape Finance, decision-makers could catalyze transformative change through holistic landscape restoration, having a lasting impact on Europe's landscapes. Here are some recommendations on how EU decision-makers can integrate a landscape financing approach into their activities:

1. LANDSCAPES AND LANDSCAPE PARTNERSHIPS MUST BE RECOGNIZED IN POLICY FRAMEWORKS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE AND TO ACHIEVE MULTIPLE OBJECTIVES

EU institutions and member states should allocate resources to support landscape partnerships leading to holistic landscape restoration. Public funds should be made available in the form of unrestricted and flexible grants to support multi-stakeholder landscape partnership processes and governance to catalyze restoration. This is the most catalytic of all funding opportunities within holistic landscape restoration because the partnership develops the vision and plan for the landscape, providing governance and driving long-term restoration.

Implement incentives that are aligned with nature. It is essential to redirect or remove environmentally harmful incentives, such as subsidies, in favor of activities that restore ecosystems and improve ecosystem services.

Accelerating the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and implementing the reform with integrity will be essential in aligning nature and agricultural biodiversity objectives and funding. By aligning policies to properly reward benefits and financially penalize damages, governments can encourage positive actions for nature and discourage harmful ones.

Holistic landscape restoration can serve as a platform to enable the streamlining of the implementation of national plans targeting the same landscape. EU member states' national and regional development plans (including national biodiversity strategies and action plans) should recognize landscapes and landscape partnerships, facilitating policy coherence vertically and horizontally and integrating national spatial planning and budgeting across sectors.

This should be done to best fit each country's policies and tax systems. However, regardless of each country's level of decentralized decision-making, landscapes can be leveraged to implement plans for adaptation, nature restoration, and drought, among other policies.

The Commission should develop harmonized accounting and reporting frameworks for landscapes to enable the private sector (companies and investors) to report on emerging sustainable finance regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.

2. PUBLIC FINANCES CAN PLAY A CRUCIAL, CATALYTIC ROLE IN HOLISTIC LANDSCAPE RESTORATION

All guidance documents for the Nature Restoration Law developed by the European Commission should explicitly recognize the value of landscapes in addressing multiple objectives and be transposed into national restoration plans.

By encouraging intersectoral collaboration between government agencies, NGOs, businesses, and local communities at the landscape level, diverse interests can be aligned, and common resources pooled to implement strategies that efficiently and cost-effectively address multiple challenges.

The Commission should develop guidance on how to incorporate landscape restoration into national restoration plans.

The Commission should develop a mechanism mandated to provide dedicated landscape restoration funding. Within the current Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the directorates-general benefiting from restoration (CLIMA, ENV, AGRI, EMPL, REGIO, SANTE, etc.) should allocate parts of their budgets to landscape restoration.

The budgetary elements allocated could be included in a single governance system, a dedicated restoration fund. Equally, dedicated financial support should be considered in the new MFF (2028-2034).

This could be achieved through a funding program similar to the European Innovation Council Accelerator, which aims to attract private funding for holistic landscape restoration activities – for example, by providing guarantees to reduce investment risk or by providing subordinated financing as part of a mixed financing approach.

The European Investment Bank could provide advisory support to such a vehicle and/or provide co-investments.

3. IN HOLISTIC LANDSCAPE RESTORATION, INVESTMENTS IN INFRASTRUCTURE MUST ADOPT A LONG-TERM HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE, INCORPORATING GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE RESTORATION TO IMPROVE CLIMATE RESILIENCE

EU institutions and member states should provide public funding for landscape restoration initiatives to enable the integration of grey infrastructure projects with associated green infrastructure improvements.

Adopting a holistic approach to these investments at the landscape level will be more cost-effective and improve the overall investment resilience to the physical risks of climate change, while generating valuable multiple public benefits. Large-scale landscape restoration projects should benefit from similar financial support and attention as major grey infrastructure projects.

We need Landscape Finance more than ever

As farmer protests rise and EU officials threaten to roll back Green Deal measures, the question of how to achieve the EU Green Deal vision has never been more pressing. More than ever, we need new financing frameworks, such as Landscape Finance, to support nature restoration and help farmers transition to more regenerative practices at landscape scale. For more information on the Landscape Finance approach, read the full publication here.

About Commonland

Commonland is a nonprofit organization that brings people together to restore landscapes and regenerate the Earth: our common land. Since 2013, we have had a mission to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land to ensure that ecosystems, economies, and communities thrive in the future.

Today, we work in over 20 countries to facilitate landscape restoration and drive change on a global scale. Our practical approach – the 4 Returns framework – helps people worldwide restore our home planet and keep it healthy for future generations. In November 2023, Commonland co-authored a new report proposing the application of an investment concept called "Landscape Finance" as a financing approach to support holistic landscape restoration with a coalition of 19 environmental organizations, including the World Resource Institute, Gold Standard, The Nature Conservancy, and EIT Climate KIC. (Photo: Freepik)