Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Nature Net zero. These are big priorities for the UK government. For all of us. Green Finance has a vital role to play in addressing our climate and environmental challenges, and the government is committed to making the UK a global leader in this area. Central to our agenda is mobilizing public and private capital to finance projects that tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. It's why we're celebrating the one year anniversary of the launch of the UK's Green Financing program, under which we issue green guilts and retail green savings bonds. And we are reflecting on how these projects will benefit the environment and local areas.
Speaker 2 00:00:52 It's 12 months since we welcome the UK Government's listing of its inaugural green guilt on the London Stock Exchange. It launched the UK Government's Green financing program reaffirming the UK and London as a global Center for Sustainable Finance. The program plays a critical role in securing a net zero future for the UK and funding innovation on job creation across the UK's growing green economy, the funding supports sustainable long-term projects, tackling key environmental issues, including clean transportation, renewable energy, and living and natural resources. The public markets are key to mobilizing investment into the sustainable economy and to meet our greatest environmental challenges. Whether those are in the form of the just transition to net zero or tackling biodiversity loss, we must ensure that our financial ecosystem supports our natural ecosystem. It's all part of building a resilient future for the uk. At lsac, we're committed to supporting the transition to a low carbon global economy across all of our businesses. Our overarching vision is towards environmental standards being business as usual, a future in which low carbon transition is embedded in the valuation of every asset considered in every investment decision.
Speaker 1 00:02:03 We are delighted that through these issuances, investors have been able to play their part in helping us protect nature, transition to net zero and create green jobs across the uk.
Speaker 2 00:02:15 Let us take you on a journey of what's been achieved this last year.
Speaker 3 00:02:25 So Tammy, can you say a bit about the Born North fan and why it's important?
Speaker 4 00:02:30 So, Bourne North Fen is situated in South Lincolnshire where we produced 30% of all vegetables hitting the shelves of our supermarkets. It is critical, therefore for food security of this nation. We also have water flowing in from various parts of England towards the wash. We need to be able to capture that water to support our farming industry, to manage risk to our local communities, but also to deliver habitat for wildlife.
Speaker 1 00:03:07 So Rachel, tell me a bit about the Great North Bog and why it's so important.
Speaker 6 00:03:11 Well, the Great North Bogs two things really. It's this amazing landscape that we are within now, um, which is representative of the upland peatlands across the whole of the north of England that extend to something like 7,000 square kilometers of space. And it represents also a huge carbon store for us. So about 400 million tons of carbon are stored up in our peatlands. The other thing about um, the Great North Bog is that it's a coalition of partnerships. So there are six different partnerships coming together who've all been working in their different ways. Um, for about the last decade on restoring peatlands across the north, we're now coming together as a coalition so that we can have greater voice about the importance of peatlands, that we can work together to be more effective and more efficient, um, upscale our work, um, and hopefully attract the right amount of investment to enable us to do that so that we can restore these great landscapes. The important thing about that restoration is that it is not just the carbon store that we get from that, but also the wildlife benefits, the flood mitigation benefits and the, um, water quality benefits from it.
Speaker 5 00:04:15 Since the 18 hundreds, there's been lots of drainage of salt marsh around the uk, um, and we've lo lost lots of habitat, but then now there's a increasing interest in restoring more and more land into the salt marsh habitat. It used to be like at fries and shore here, the R S P B and the Environment Agency have restored about 66 hectares of tidal marsh. Salt marsh is are really important for a number of reasons. They store and capture carbon from the atmosphere and they lock it away for like really long time periods. So they're good at kind of mitigating against climate change, but they also buffer land against storms and flooding by being like a buffer zone in front of development on the coast. And they also provide habitat for say, overwintering birds and water birds. So at the UK Center free collagen hydrology, we are leading a consortium of charity scientists and finance experts to develop a salt, much carbon code. And the idea is that then businesses will be able to offset their carbon emissions while also supporting biodiversity and natural flood risk management. And the code will be the mechanism for around a billion pound of private investment into restoration projects over the next 25 years. And we're hoping that will cover about 22,000 hectares of habitat within the uk.
Speaker 6 00:05:28 So support from government through the nature for Climate Fund is allowing us to make long-term plans as well as deliver the work and also interact private finance in alongside us as well.
Speaker 4 00:05:39 So green finance is absolutely critical. We were lucky enough to work with BFA Awards to secure the purchase of this land, which GLI water. Um, were the third party contributor to, as well as our own reserves within Lincoln Sheer Wildlife Trust down to our membership. But we now need to get the capital together to create a series of reed beds, cuz as you can see at the moment, a lot of it's arable. We need to create reed beds so we can take water from le Bono when it's in flood and full spate event and push it through the reed beds to improve the water quality and then enable selling that water on through the green finance market. But also we need the green finance to enable us to create the site which will deliver carbon capture and also biodiversity net gain.
Speaker 5 00:06:38 It's enabling scientists to develop these rigorous scientifically based certification standards within the voluntary carbon market, and they provide the pipeline from private investment into restoration projects to help us get to net zero and research in restoration projects ongoing restored land that's already happened and natural salt marshes will all feed into this process now and into the future. This work has been funded by the UK Government's Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund that helps private investment go into restoration projects. And it funds projects that not only have an environmental benefit, but can attract that private investment by selling things like carbon credits, biodiversity units, and catchment services.
Speaker 2 00:07:23 Meeting our greatest environmental challenges requires the realignment of capital on a huge scale backing our scientists and entrepreneurs, bold and coordinated policy making. And for those to converge in new and innovative ways, join us in transforming our global economy into a global green economy.
