Europe

Investment: The European Commission is investing in activities that maximise employment and economic opportunities while minimising environmental impacts of this economy as evidenced by recent policy drivers i.e. Farm to Fork, Climate Resilience by 2050, Clean Air Strategy, Action Plan on the Sendai Framework, Biodiversity Strategy, Circular Economy Action Plan, Just Transition Mechanism. There are also numerous international agreements such as UNFCCC, Paris Agreement, CBD, UN Decade on Restoration as well as national commitments to no net loss, Net- Zero and post-Covid recovery.

Scientific/Technical Project Contribution: We plan to explore two policy objectives: one goal focusing on defining optimal investment for land under regenerative/protected/rewilded status funded through EU and international agreements without financial constraint, and the other goal adding a constraint by the likely magnitude of national investments into green infrastructure. We will evaluate this by combining the capabilities of RIKS’ Activity Based Model Metronamica with appropriate model(s) from KCL’s PSS suite at the European scale. The purpose is to better understand the impact of ambitious and business as usual NBS investments on ecosystem services (the benefits we derive from nature) impacting economy and employment as well as environment.