Cairngorm National Park is one of 15 national parks across the UK that has partnered with global impact firm Palladium to help secure funding for vital restoration projects.
The aim is to secure £239 million of funding before 2030 to be used across all of the UK’s national parks.
Of the 15 protected national parks in the UK, 10 are in England, three are in Wales and two are in Scotland. Together they make up 10 per cent of the country’s landmass.
This funding is intended to be used for repairing damaged peatlands and grasslands, woodland planting and management, and habitat creation.
Cairngorm National Park experienced a high number of visitors last year. A new ranger service has recently been introduced to prepare for another busy year.
Partnering with Palladium
The partnership between National Parks and Palladium aims to tackle one of the UK’s biggest environmental challenges – creating a sustainable funding model for nature restoration at scale.
Palladium already designs sustainable business models in the Amazon and for biodiversity projects around the world. These expertise will help the UK’s national parks to secure private and public funding.
Palladium is partnering with @uknationalparks to find a new way to secure £240 million in public and private funding for restoring the National Parks’ natural resources, building on our decades of experience generating business models that can restore and regenerate nature.
— Palladium (@PalladiumImpact) April 26, 2021
Christopher Hirst, managing director and CEO at Palladium, said: “Our partnership with National Parks offers us an exciting opportunity to take our decades of experience working with businesses, government and civil society to design business models that can restore and generate value from nature, and apply them in the UK at a scale that can really make a difference.
“We are excited to bring lessons from tropical programmes such as Partnerships for Forests (P4F), which has supported 67 sustainable forest business models to date and secured over £250 million of new private investment, while placing over 1 million hectares of land under sustainable use.”
Monetising ecosystem services will help restore nature across the parks, support biodiversity, mitigate climate change, reduce flood risk downstream, improve water quality and support local job creation.
Preparing for COP26
Cairngorm National Park is committed to reducing its carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 . The government aims to cut emissions in the UK as a whole by 78 per cent by 2035.
Gordon Watson, CEO of Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park and current UK lead for National Parks, said: “Our collaboration with Palladium is enabling the UK’s National Parks to shape and strengthen how we can solve some of today’s most pressing environmental challenges. Restoring our landscapes at scale will reduce CO2, mitigate flood risks, enhance biodiversity and help rural economies. We’re excited by the progress we’re already making together with Palladium and plan to announce more in the run up to COP26.”
COP26 is the 26th UN Climate Change Conference which will bring together heads of state, climate experts and campaigners to agree coordinated action to tackle climate change. It will be held in Glasgow in November.
Progress is already being made
A number of pilot projects have already been submitted for approval following the announcement of the partnership. These will be tested to measure their effectiveness as new models for the delivery of nature-based solutions in different national parks.
Further consultations will take place this summer, with a diverse range of companies wanting to get involved in this new approach to nature restoration.
