Green Finance Initiative

The Flow Country is home to the largest blanket peat bog in Europe. It’s an important wildlife habitat and stores 400 million tonnes of carbon – more than double the amount in all of Britain’s woodlands. This makes it vital for both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. The remarkable ability of these peatlands to store carbon is only possible if the bogs are kept in healthy condition. Sadly, huge areas are degraded and actually contributing to climate change, rather than reversing it.

Restoring our peatlands is one of the most important things we can do to fight climate change. But it’s not always easy to set up projects to do this, especially not at scale.

The Flow Country Green Finance Initiative is a locally-led initiative to raise money to restore peatlands at scale, blending public and private finance. It aims to support community development goals, create high quality jobs, carbon investments, ecosystem services, and support circular business models.

The Flow Country Green Finance Initiative will help achieve our twin climate goals of reducing emissions and sequestering carbon. This is a vital part of Scotland’s Net Zero ambitions, and we’re proud to be leading the way.

The Flow Country Partnership’s profits – accrued from investments, ecosystem services and carbon credits – will be reinvested into community projects

Benefits

COMMUNITY APPROACH

The FCP ensures a cohesive community approach, ensuring that the economic activity associated with restoration remains within our region as much as possible.

NOT FOR PROFIT

The FCP’s commitment to the Flow Country, its people and our landscape is written into its charitable constitution. It means we can ensure a proportion of the financial benefits that accrue from carbon prices and ecosystem services are looped back into our community for our united benefits.

ETHICAL FINANCE

The FCP’s ethical finance guidelines will help ensure that investment into Flow Country restoration reflects local views on community and the environment.

CARBON, SOCIAL IMPACT, BIODIVERSITY

We connect all three elements to maximise our positive impact at scale. In doing so we create high-quality carbon units that attract a higher price.

MAKE CONNECTIONS

The FCP will connect public funding sources through Peatland Action for landowners and private finance through the Peatland Code for restoration.

WE DO THE ADMIN

Applications and paperwork are done for you by the FCP team, removing the administrative burden of applying for restoration funding, and will provide support whilst the restoration work is being undertaken.

VERIFICATION

The FCP helps with the ongoing monitoring and evaluation process, as well as the verification.

MITIGATE FOR FUTURE RISKS

We’re giving you umbrella protection for what you don’t know yet. We aim to help make nature-based finance, and the restoration work, understandable and actionable.

Funding Acknowledgment

This project is supported by The Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS). Delivered by NatureScot in collaboration with The Scottish Government and in partnership with the National Lottery Heritage Fund.