Innovative financial instruments for sustainable landscapes I Jesper Beverdam

Field l Discipline

• Halting biodiversity loss
• Improving landscape quality

Summary

The project centers around the need for halting biodiversity loss and improving landscape quality. Financial constraints are a large obstacle to achieving these objectives. Where traditional funding methods seem to have fallen short, the aim of this project is to develop and construct innovative financial instruments, namely landscape securities, of which the proceeds can be used to achieve non-financial impacts. These securities can be held by businesses and institutional investors, but also by citizens. The financial returns of these securities depend on the achievement of ecological and/or landscape performance targets.

The initial part of the project consists of taking inventory of various existing financial instruments, analyzing the interactions between different financial and non-financial objectives, and investigating ways to measure financial and non-financial performance. Afterwards, innovative financial instruments will be designed for, and tested in, various Dutch National Parks in the north of the Netherlands.

These experiments will involve multiple stakeholders and key players in panels in order to allow for the joint design and acceptance of the financial instruments. Especially the collaboration with the Nederlandse Waterschapsbank (NWB) allows for incorporating expertise in the design of the landscape securities. To take into consideration the appreciation of nature areas and landscapes by citizens, the Greenmapper software will be used. Essentially, four different financial securities are envisioned, which are:

• Biodiversity oriented,
• Landscape quality oriented,
• Oriented towards regional sustainable business,
• An ‘all-inclusive’ instrument

Supervision by

• Prof. dr. Bert) Scholtens Faculty of Economics and Business

More information and contact details can be found on the personal profile of Jesper Beverdam