Wild Atlantic Nature
NBS Action
Results-Based Payments Schemes link payments to the environmental quality of a farm.
Description of the Learning Site
Wild Atlantic Nature LIFE IP, a 9-year EU-funded LIFE Integrated Project, works with farmers, local communities and land owners to add value to the wide range of services provided from our Special Area of Conservation (SAC) network of blanket bogs and associated areas. These peatlands provide clean drinking water, store carbon, support biodiversity, produce high quality food and support resilient rural economies and livelihoods through farming, tourism, recreation and other activities. As part of the project, BIOFIN-EU will learn from the approaches used by WAN and identify solutions that can scale up activities that incentivise the protection and restoration of biodiversity.
Wild Atlantic Nature aims to conserve and restore to favourable conservation status Ireland’s SAC network of blanket bog. Once the degraded peatlands have been restored to active blanket bogs, they will become carbon sinks, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere into vegetation which will eventually become peat. Successful rehabilitation of degraded blanket bog will also serve to protect the immense carbon stores that reside in the peat layers that have taken thousands of years to accumulate. Restoration will reverse the current process where degraded blanket bog, a carbon source, is releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere.
Results-Based agri-environmental Payment Scheme
WAN is an exemplar learning site. They are undertaking multiple projects and their interaction with BIOFIN-EU is to explore potential mechanisms that can be used to unlock mainstream finance to increase the scale of these activities. JG in collaboration with WAN has drafted prototypical financial instruments that have been shared through public channels (Department of Environment, Climate and Communications and the National Treasury Management Agency - this note is available on BIOFIN-EU Share point). A second path for these instruments is being evaluated by Marsh and McLennon (GC Securities) to better understand investor requirements and design features for a sustainability-linked bond.
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