On Tuesday 25th February, Broadway Initiative Chair Peter Young addressed the launch Investing for Nature, a strategic plan for a nature positive regional economy produced by Nature North.

This pioneering strategy aims to make the North of England the UK's first nature-positive economy. Bringing together 50 organisations and 400 contributors, the plan lays out a clear pathway to scaling up investment in nature's recovery. 

The impact of this strategy could be truly groundbreaking, and we were delighted that our chair Peter Young was invited to address the launch. Speaking alongside Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England, and Alan Lovell, Chair of the Environment Agency, Peter provided a comprehensive overview of the state of nature markets in 2025 and highlighted the possibilities and the challenges at this vital moment for environmental policy making.

Speaking to 200 delegates in the room and 400 online, this is what Peter had to say:

I am delighted to be invited here today to welcome this visionary new strategy for investing in the nature of the North of England. 

Business finds the current array of initiatives, organisations and requests to help nature a bewildering barrier to investment. 

This report heralds a new strategic, holistic and consistent approach, which I welcome, and is an essential precursor to increasing private investment to improve nature. 

We all know that nature is in trouble, that we need to act urgently, and business is no different. Business is rapidly understanding its exposure to new risks triggered by nature’s decline and widely expects reporting through TNFD (the task force on nature-related financial disclosures) to become mandated in the future as these escalate. Businesses also share common purpose in the benefits of resilient, nature-rich environments. These are desirable places to live, they attract increasingly mobile talent and skills, they make for accessible places for the workforce and suppliers, they result in healthier and more productive employees, and they reflect long-term thinking and stability, making it easier to invest. 

And business perhaps sees clearer than most that nature and climate risks are conjoined. 

I want to share one recently confirmed indicator. Since 2008, nature’s decline has been adding to climate risk. As recently as the 1960s, nature in our hemisphere was capturing 0.8% more carbon dioxide every year, significantly slowing the cumulative effect of rising emissions; now nature sequesters 0.25% less as each year goes by, becoming a significant emitter of greenhouse gases over the annual cycle of the so-called Keeling Curve. This has a massive impact on climate targets, yet is arguably one of the easiest trends to reverse. In the light of such science, business is as baffled as anyone as to why nature restoration isn’t integrated into net zero plans, and why business and economic policies (and government departments) are not integrated with climate and environmental ones. 

The North is in my mind an excellent place to overcome these headwinds. It already has leading projects to demonstrate nature’s recovery at scale. Industrialisation came here early, and so have examples of environmental recovery. Pioneering projects like - only 15 miles away - the Dearne Valley, creating SSSIs from closed glass works, collieries and sidings, extracting soil to cover contaminated land to make wetlands. Real biodiversity net gain before the term was coined. Creating a national wildlife destination where visitor revenues had previously been non-existent. Giving hope to communities left abandoned and derelict. But across all Northern landscapes, whether they be post-industrial urban centres, upland peatlands, coastlines like Co Durham’s or even mountains like Skiddaw – this strategy is peppered with inspiring exemplars. 

But, however good these projects are, they won’t be enough, nor realise the North’s potential. Now we need to scale up and act in concert. Business needs the North to convey certainty and consistency in its asks for nature. This means a collaborative approach with transparency and all the attributes to deliver high-integrity, fast-growing and well-regulated nature markets. 

It is 4 years since Professor Dasgupta said in his Review of The Economics of Biodiversity and I quote: 

‘Nature’s worth to society – the true value of the various goods and services it provides – is not reflected in market prices because much of it is open to all at no monetary charge’ 

Sponsored by the Treasury we were promised that nature’s worth would be integrated into all policy making and business stood by to see what this would mean. But that clarity is still not evident, risks are rising, nature loss continues, and business is impatient to take action to protect itself from these market failures, the so-called tragedy of the commons. Business knows that nature markets provide a mechanism to help align economic interests with nature recovery, by enabling more of the goods and services delivered by nature to be paid for by those who benefit from them, directly and indirectly. They also create economic growth and activity by themselves, requiring high skilled, widely distributed, and rewarding jobs. 

I believe the North is well placed to solve this conundrum and will explain why. 

11 months ago we at Broadway launched our Nature Markets Dialogue which has turbo-charged the national conversation on what the private sector needs to ramp up investment in nature, culminating in the current consultation ending this month on nature markets governance. Please respond if you can to help us make the changes the North needs to underpin delivery of this strategy being launched today. 

I want to just clarify a few things about how I and business see nature markets. Nature markets can unlock the investment needed to scale up nature restoration. If designed properly, they allocate resources in the places that deliver the greatest benefit for the lowest cost. This strategy sets out how the North can do that now, not least through the Local Nature Recovery Strategies. But it is important to also say that nature markets are not: 

• an alternative to effective environmental regulation 
• a substitute for public funding for the environment 
• a way for business to avoid eliminating or minimising their impact on the environment; 
• a pathway to privatise nature or 
• a mechanism for greenwashing

When this happens, and it does at the moment, it shows nature markets are not yet operating as they should. This is fundamentally a regulatory failure not a market failure. The solutions are the subject of our consultation which I commend to those who recognise that this strategy for the North needs help not hindrance from national policy making and regulators. 

Nevertheless, this strategy can steer the North to promote integrity in the market participants, projects and the units by which nature’s improvements are measured. By working together, the North can pioneer the necessary governance framework underpinned by authorisation, standards, accreditation and assurance. I guarantee this approach will unlock business participation and private sector capital to upscale the quality of nature across the North. 

So are business sitting on their hands? No. Broadway is currently working with the Food and Drink Federation, whose member businesses are particularly important to the North’s economy, to produce a handbook on nature. This handbook will provide food and drink manufacturers with a user-friendly, practical guide to understand: 

• Their dependency on nature. 
• Why there is an urgency for action and what is meant by ‘nature positivity.’ 
• Their business’ impacts on nature. 
• What nature-based solutions they can support and invest in now. 

It will offer clear examples on the most readily achievable actions that businesses can take now within their operations and along their supply chains. 

And for more evidence of business’ appetite to act, another business-led organisation I am involved with, the Aldersgate Group, published two months ago a briefing ‘Why Nature Matters for Business’ I want to pick 3 of the 8 recommendations, and I quote: 

• Increase the ambition of Biodiversity Net Gain and progress next steps towards Environmental Net Gain or Environmental Benefit for Nature. 
• Set up a taskforce and sandbox to accelerate the design of creative and effective environmental regulation to encourage innovation and partnerships in the private sector. 
• Efficiently resource regulators and local authorities to play their critical role supporting delivery, monitoring and enforcing regulation, to build private sector confidence to invest. 

Yes, that’s right, business is asking for higher ambition, new regulation and better resourced regulators and local authorities. The need for Biodiversity Net Gain is understood, but a half-hearted, half-applicable, half implemented and under-regulated scheme is an enemy of good business. I look to my colleagues here from Natural England and the Environment Agency to redouble their efforts to claim the resources you need to play your part in these new and rapidly expanding nature markets. Business and the kind of coalition Nature North is building need you to do your job properly. Business must be able to rely on compliance being rewarded and not undermined by free-riders. 

The need for good governance and well-regulated environmental markets is not new. My first Government commission report in 2007 could be summed up in three words - long, loud and legal. In 2013 I sat on the business-led Ecosystems Markets Taskforce and our no.1 recommendation, disliked greatly by the then government, was to mandate a biodiversity net gain system for all development. The Environment Bank in York was founded on that expectation. It took 10 years to come about but the Bank now reports a pipeline of £210m of projects, their cup is half full. But – cup half empty -Wildlife and Countryside Link report the delivery of just 13% of the amount of nature improvement deemed ‘likely’ to be created by this policy. This tells us two things, the massive potential for the North of planning all activities to contribute to nature restoration, and the massive gap between where we are now and a level playing field which commands business confidence that high quality and efficient outcomes for nature will be delivered in all cases. 

So, in conclusion, I appeal to our leaders in the North - and especially those from our combined authorities with devolved powers – now is the time to be brave and set the bar high and wide on nature recovery. If you ensure you are consistent across all your endeavours, if you message strongly that the North is open for business which enhances nature, and if you envision Northern progress as resilient, sustainable and enduring, you will make the North more attractive to business and investment, not less. 

I believe this strategic plan creates the space for Northern leadership to show the way. Let’s start now and make the North the best place for people, for business, for investment and for nature!