sustainability
Empowering sustainability for a better tomorrow
At North Highland Initiative, we believe that sustainability isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the key to building a brighter future for generations to come. We are committed to driving positive change by encouraging and integrating sustainable practices. From the communities we represent to the projects we support, our core mission revolves around empowering sustainability.
The Flow Country green finance intitiative
Covering over 400,000 hectares in the north of Scotland, the Flow Country is a peatland landscape that hosts a wide range of plants and birds. It stores 400 million tonnes of carbon – more than twice as much as all Britain’s woodlands. Much of the peatland is now well managed, but many areas, historically degraded by activities including forestry and agriculture, still need to be restored. The area has been nominated as a World Heritage site based on its outstanding natural values.
The Flow Country Green Finance Initiative is a multi-stakeholder partnership that has agreed a common vision “to achieve a multi-use landscape in which restored peatlands support biodiversity and climate protection as well as high quality jobs and prosperity”. The vision combines ecological restoration and sustainable land use with a carbon investment model, support for circular business, and community development.
The Initiative aims to unlock finance – public and private – by working at a landscape scale using a blended finance investment model. Local organisations, councils, businesses, and universities have come together to identify how their activities can complement each other and integrate them into a larger investment opportunity.
The initiative will generate returns through a premium price from the sale of carbon payments issued on verification of successful restoration action. The projects will offer high-quality “charismatic carbon” structured to provide accountability and transparency and ensure that landowners will get a “fair return”.
The initiative is currently working on proof of concept with two pilot areas representing three categories of land use in the region: private farms, mixed farming and sporting estates, and common grazing areas. These pilots will help develop categories of investable properties or model “pathways” for investment that can be scaled up across the Flow Country.
The initiative is in the process of establishing a Scottish Community Interest Organisation (SCIO) – a legal structure that can connect and aggregate existing, small-scale projects and act as an intermediary with external providers of capital. Investors are invited to engage in the ongoing development of the initiative by advising on their requirements.
The Economic Impact and Business Potential of Peatland Restoration Report sets out the potential economic impact of peatland restoration in a Flow Country/North Highlands context, and the associated potential for spin out businesses which might be stimulated/facilitated as a result of peatland restoration.
