Nature Finance
We’re working to attract more money into river restoration for the benefit of river catchment ecosystems, communities, and wild fish.
Why nature finance?
Significant investment is needed to protect and restore our precious river catchments and change how land and water are managed. Traditional funding from public, government and philanthropic sources fall far short of the scale of support needed to address the biodiversity and climate crises. Nature finance is seen as a way to fill this gap.
Nature finance is a broad term which generally means the financial support of ecosystem restoration from a range of sources such as private, philanthropic, corporate, and institutional finance. Examples of nature finance include repayable finance from the sale of ecosystem services, biodiversity offsets, and voluntary donations from corporations to support restoration work.
Emergent nature finance from corporate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitments is gaining ground. Fisheries Management Scotland wants to attract some of this in support of our members delivering management actions for river catchment restoration action, to improve the medium to long term sustainability of Scotland’s rivers, in alignment with the Scottish Government’s Natural Capital Market Framework, the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, the Scottish Wild Salmon Strategy, and the Scottish River Basin Management Plans.
We believe that scaling up restoration work needs to be a joined-up effort between both private and public bodies and delivered on the ground by local organisations in partnership to address the unique pressures of each catchment. We support our members to access nature finance opportunities as they arise, and it is encouraging to see successes in this area too.
Scottish Rivers Fund
The Scottish Rivers Fund is a collaborative, FMS-led initiative that aims to facilitate vital investment to restore Scotland’s rivers at catchment-scale.
Currently in the final stage of development, the Scottish Rivers Fund builds on the successful Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund (SMEEF) model. The Fund will provide the opportunity for FMS members and other stakeholders to deliver locally prioritised projects to improve the ecological condition of rivers, sustain healthy functioning river systems, and support community engagement. The Fund will be supported by corporate contributions, consistent with the Scottish Government’s Natural Capital Market Framework that promotes greater private investment in nature.
Visit the Scottish Rivers Fund’s website
To achieve this, we are currently implementing a project funded by the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS) that builds on previous FIRNS-funded projects. For more details, please refer to the project-specific details:
FIRNS4 – Scottish Rivers Fund: from Launch to Delivery
FIRNS3 – Scottish Rivers Fund Launch
FIRNS2 – The River Catchment Restoration Portfolio
FIRNS1 – Source to Sea Nature Finance Model
Biodiversity Net Gain
We are exploring opportunities for implementing Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) for river restoration action. BNG is a mechanism being used by some major infrastructure developers to ensure that positive measures to enhance biodiversity are measurably greater than the negative impact on biodiversity caused by their development. It can involve enhancing existing nature, restoring habitats, and creating new habitat for the benefit of ecosystems and biodiversity.
Fisheries Management Scotland hosted a BNG workshop on the River Annan in October 2024 to support FMS members learn more about this mechanism and be involved in pilot projects in Scotland.
Further, one of our members, Galloway Fisheries Trust, has gained funding from the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS) to deliver a suite of habitat restoration projects across the Annan catchment using Biodiversity Net Gain.
Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs)
Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) is a trading system for organising the buying and selling of nature-based solutions – land management measures that deliver ecosystem functions, such as water quality management, flood risk management, resilient supply of crops, carbon, or biodiversity outcomes. LENs allow businesses to de-risk operations that depend on ecosystem functions provided within a catchment, by paying land and water managers in the catchment to safeguard these functions.
The Forth Rivers Trust developed the first LENs in Scotland for the Leven catchment in Fife. Building on this work, there are ongoing explorations to develop similar initiatives across Scotland and Fisheries Management Scotland is offering support as needed.
Scottish Rivers Fund
The forthcoming Scottish Rivers Fund is a collaborative, FMS-led initiative that aims to facilitate vital investment to restore Scotland’s rivers at catchment-scale.
The Scottish Rivers Fund builds on the successful Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund (SMEEF) model. The Fund will provide the opportunity for FMS members and other stakeholders to deliver locally prioritised projects to improve the ecological condition of rivers, sustain healthy functioning river systems, and support community engagement. The Fund will be supported by corporate contributions in line with the Scottish Government’s Natural Capital Market Framework.
Visit the Scottish Rivers Fund’s website
To achieve this, we are currently implementing a project funded by the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS) that builds on previous FIRNS-funded projects. For more details, please refer to the project-specific details:
FIRNS4 – Scottish Rivers Fund Launch2Delivery
FIRNS3 – Scottish Rivers Fund Launch
FIRNS2 – The River Catchment Restoration Portfolio
FIRNS1 – Source to Sea Nature Finance Model
Biodiversity Net Gain
We are exploring opportunities for implementing Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) for river restoration action. BNG is a mechanism being used by some major infrastructure developers to ensure that positive measures to enhance biodiversity are measurably greater than the negative impact on biodiversity caused by their development. It can involve enhancing existing nature, restoring habitats, and creating new habitat for the benefit of ecosystems and biodiversity.
Fisheries Management Scotland hosted a BNG workshop on the River Annan in October 2024 to support FMS members learn more about this mechanism and be involved in pilot projects in Scotland.
Further, one of our members, Galloway Fisheries Trust, has gained funding from the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS) to deliver a suite of habitat restoration projects across the Annan catchment using Biodiversity Net Gain.
Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs)
Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) is a trading system for organising the buying and selling of nature-based solutions – land management measures that deliver ecosystem functions, such as water quality management, flood risk management, resilient supply of crops, carbon, or biodiversity outcomes. LENs allow businesses to de-risk operations that depend on ecosystem functions provided within a catchment, by paying land and water managers in the catchment to safeguard these functions.
The Forth Rivers Trust developed the first LENs in Scotland for the Leven catchment in Fife. Building on this work, there are ongoing explorations to develop similar initiatives across Scotland and Fisheries Management Scotland is offering support as needed.
Our work has been helpfully facilitated by The Rivers Trust and generously supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, The Missing Salmon Alliance, The Golden Bottle Trust, and 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.
