Kicking off Sustainable Finance.Live 2025 in London, event host and founder of ResponsibleRisk, Richard Peers, outlined the objectives of the event this year and the theme of resilient infrastructure.
Peers began by emphasising the importance of resilient infrastructure, which is at the heart of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – addressing climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and fiscal policy. The goal of Sustainable Finance.Live 2025, noted Peers, is to upscale the financing of, and planning for, resilient infrastructure - with nature as the solution.
Peers highlighted the need to move from mitigation to adaptation, and explained how developing sustainable roads, rails, data and energy centres, and more, can generate long-term economic growth. Precisely how these projects will be financed and delivered, however, remains in question.
“As we started to hear about the new Planning Bill...nature was being positioned as part of the problem, which slows things down. We want to use this conference to frame how nature is part of the solution: the funding solution, the resilience solution, and the ecosystem service benefits that it brings.”
Citing data from the World Bank, Peers pointed out how climate-related disruption to infrastructure costs $390 billion a year across emerging and developing economies, while the extra cost of resilience is less than 3% of the overall investment - and the benefits are worth $4.2 trillion. He added that the savings are not the only benefit and that there would be significant developments in economic productivity once there is momentum behind the movement.
Peers underlined four major challenges facing infrastructure today:
- Approval delays and staff shortages;
- Legal and environmental challenges;
- Community opposition and governance issues; and
- Technical and financial constraints.
Finextra's Sustainable Finance.Live 2025 aims to address these issues and pose scalable strategies that can make a real difference.
Peers closed his welcome speech by posing a survey question to the audience: “If you accept that nature's infrastructure is integral to resilient infrastructure, are you clear on how it can be financed for inclusion in major projects?” The majority of the audience answered “No” and “Somewhat”.
The Evenlode Landscape Recovery project: A case study
To present the opening keynote of the event, Peers handed over to Tim Coates, managing director of Evenlode Landscape Recovery. The session, titled ‘Flood Management and Nature as Infrastructure – A Case Study’ examined why a farming partnership in Gloucestershire could be the first of many nature-based water catchment solutions.
Coates described the “pioneering and transformational” nature project of the North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster, which has 200 farming members across 60,000 hectares and three river catchments. Of the farmers, 60 are partnering with the Evenlode Landscape Recovery Project, which aims to “restore the hydrological function of the entire catchment through the recovery of the riverine and riparian habitat”.
Coates pointed out that landscape scale, land management and nature solutions can have major benefits in protecting real infrastructure assets, delivering public good, and creating investible returns.
“I think all human infrastructure is strictly maladaptive to the landscape. It wasn't meant to be there. It is not always going to be there. It changes the complicated natural functions of the landscape and leads to uneasy relationships between the two,” he said.
“I want to imagine a better future cost of life," he continued. "How can we add in all of the various expertises and skills in the economy to create both public as well as private value?”
Coates emphasised that water is the biggest issue facing every catchment globally. He explained the Evenlode Landscape Recovery Project uses various forms of database solutions and interventions to improve the structure of a catchment and restore nature.
Coates went on to identify a few locations around the catchment that are failing water regulation standards. A big part of the concern, he said, is around water quality and flood risk protection.
There are multiple benefits for asset owners to be found in database solutions, whether it's reforestation, arable reversion, floodplains, or channel reconnections, Coates explained. He emphasised that while regulation and duties of asset owners to reduce emissions and protect biodiversity are making an impact, the real work with asset owners in infrastructure projects is driven by good business.
“We've been working for several years in various capacities to show that nature-based solutions are a better use of funds...Forecast against the worsening climate, the cost will come down if we invest in landscapes and co-design nature-based solutions.”
Coates concluded the session by stating: “We are demonstrating how nature-based solutions protect real infrastructure assets, deliver public good, and generate investment returns. We've got this product to the starting line ready to deliver, but collectively, we are all running out of time. This is a project that started decades ago. We don't have decades more. So, how do we scale this and replicate it at pace, delivering the impossible?”