Laura Giles

Combining green finance and regenerative innovation to promote positive effects for biodiversity and support delivery of a socially-just transition

Development should cause no net loss of biodiversity; rather, it is hoped developers strive to go further and improve biodiversity, “offsetting” any impacts of their activities. “Positive Effects for Biodiversity” is especially important in the context of national development initiatives as public funding won’t be able meet the scale of the interventions needed to achieve Scottish Government targets for biodiversity or net zero. It is critical therefore, that private investment supports environmental regeneration, especially where they may be creating the impacts.

Working with the Green Action Trust, this project aims to determine how best to employ appropriate metrics to quantify the extent of biodiversity improvement resulting from active environmental restoration, with the added value of exploring measures of social and economic value, quantifying where interventions would have maximum cumulative benefits. Such metrics can be employed to attract private and commercial “green finance” investment in environmental projects, driving sustainable economic growth through innovative ecological and social regeneration.

Supervisor team: Professor John Rowan and Pauline Silverman