Introducing the GM Environment Fund

First up, we heard from Tom Burditt, Greater Manchester Environment Trust Board Member and Chief Executive of the Lancashire Wildlife Trust. Tom offered background on the GMEF and how it can support businesses looking to have a positive impact on the natural environment, including:

• Background to the GMEF:
  • Rooted in Greater Manchester’s Five-Year Environment Plan, which sets out an ambitious vision for a “clean, carbon-neutral, climate-resilient city-region, with a thriving natural environment”.
  • To help address this, the GMEF was established as the biggest city region-based investment opportunity for nature in the UK. It is the first of its kind.
• Benefits of the GMEF over other partners:
  • Connected to decision-makers in Greater Manchester, benefiting from strong partnerships with influential organisations.
  • Actively involved in strategic biodiversity projects, improvements to quality green spaces and creation of green jobs.
  • Transforming the lives of 3 million people across the city region.
  • Linked to local projects that address the biggest needs in our communities.
• The GMEF’s offer to businesses:
  • Providing bespoke funding opportunities to meet CSR commitments whether that’s social, climate or biodiversity. 
  • Helping to demonstrate commitment to initiatives such as the Race to Net Zero.
  • Providing reassurance that precious funds are distributed to the greatest strategic priorities, aligned to evidence of need.
  • Acting as a gateway for corporate volunteering days, to help support the communities where businesses are located.
  • Raising profile and opportunity to celebrate the benefits achieved for people and nature.

Want to find out more about the GMEF and our progress to date? Read our annual review for 2022-23 here.

Why is nature recovery important to Greater Manchester – and why do we need businesses to play their part?

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester offered wider Greater Manchester context for the efforts of the GMEF – with a particular emphasis on how the city-region’s green ambitions need the support of businesses based or operating within the city-region.

He spoke about how he saw firsthand the benefits green spaces offered residents during the pandemic – but also the disparity in green space provision currently seen across Greater Manchester. That led to him including a Greater Manchester Green Spaces Fund in his manifesto, something that has led to high-quality, community-led green space projects being rolled out across the city region. He spoke of how proud he is of the success of the fund and projects that it has backed – a further 18 of which he announced at the event – and how he is keen to continue to back green space development into 2024 and beyond.

But crucially, the mayor stressed that public funding alone won’t address the gap. "Give nature a chance to take hold again and it will - and the benefits it will bring with it are huge. But it takes money, so we need to find innovative ways to raise green finance – this hasn't always been top of the agenda, it's often been a struggle. That's changing, but there's a £56bn gap. We need to build partnerships: public, private and community.”

How is the GM Environment Fund already delivering for communities across the city-region?

Dan Carolan, Contract Director at Suez UK, introduced attendees to the Recycle for Greater Manchester Community Fund. A joint initiative between R4GM and Suez, the fund supports Greater Manchester community and voluntary sector groups. The R4GM Community Fund comes from money that is raised via the ‘Renew’ shops and online market.

Over £600,000 has been awarded to date through the fund, making 69 projects come to life including:

Little Green Sock Project – Manchester, Salford & Trafford

£14,200 funding received.

A children’s clothing and baby bank providing free clothing and essential equipment for families in crisis, by reusing children’s clothing and items donated by the local community. They’re creating a sustainable positive change in public behaviour towards a more circular economy for social benefit.

In less than a year they have supported 350 children with clothing, shoes and essential items and saved local families approximately £35,000 in clothing support and a further £7000 in additional support such as prams/buggies/newborn starter kits.

Future Directions CIC – Manchester

£37,826 funding received.

This project involves working with people with learning disabilities, autism, and other complex support needs to promote the importance of recycling.

The Green Superheroes provide training sessions about how to reduce, reuse and recycle. They also provide arts and craft sessions and organise litter picking walks.

After that, Sam Evans, Head of Natural Environment at Greater Manchester Combined Authority, offered delegates more detail on the Green Spaces Fund, a £2.6m fund that supports community-led projects that increase the amount and quality of accessible, nature rich green space in the city region, particularly in the areas where people need it most. "It is about enabling people to have an involvement and contact with nature,” Sam said, “all led by empowered local communities themselves.”

With over £2m funding awarded to date, 86 community-led projects have been made a reality. The fund really emphasises the benefits outlined earlier by the mayor: it has led to over 84,000 m2 new green space being created and a further 411,000 m2 existing green space enhanced, alongside engaging over 10,000 local people through green skills training and volunteering.

You can find out more about the Green Spaces Fund here.

Aimee Brough, Partnerships Manager at Groundwork GM and lead of our Green Spaces Fund Advisors group, took the room through one of the major benefits of partnering with GMEF: access to the skills and expertise offered by our team of green spaces fund advisors.

Drawing on expertise from some of the most skilled and experienced organisations when it comes to nature recovery and community engagement – including LWT, Sow The City, RHS, Groundwork and City of Trees – they can help business investment go further by:

• Acting as a critical friend to help groups complete their application form, stimulating interest in the fund and generating fund friendly ideas.
• Carrying out community development work in target areas and supporting successful groups with project delivery.
• Carrying out targeted engagement: working in partnership with Public, Private and Voluntary sector organisations, to ensure those who will benefit the most can access the fund.

Their impact to date has seen over 1,000 community groups engaged with across Greater Manchester, with 400 of those supported to the point of making a funding application. Helping mature and enhance group plans, applications and ultimately green project delivery, they also have a key role to play in building a pipeline of potential applicants for future rounds.

What do existing backers think about partnering with the GMEF?

We were lucky enough to welcome several existing business investors and partners to the room, who shared their views with delegates on why the GMEF is worth partnering with.

Candice Turner, Head of Public Sector Strategy at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, talked about how social value is become more and more important to businesses, from integration in procurement processes to benefits to employee wellbeing. Working with the GMEF is helping get their people out into the communities they serve, something that helps funding for nature recovery feel more impactful and relevant to them.  

James Airton, Natural Capital Strategy and Planning Manager at United Utilities, highlighted how the top three global risks are all focused on nature and the climate - so from a corporate point of view, investment in nature is important as a risk mitigation exercise, as well as being something that investors, customers and staff are all increasingly demanding from the organisations that they work with.

Kaye Lee, Director of Group Finance at Auto Trader – who have just funded five extra projects in round 4 of the Green Spaces Fund – emphasised the importance of organisations backing nature recovery, particularly in industries like theirs that greatly contribute to carbon emissions. And importantly, she stressed that partnering with GMEF on local projects rather than international solutions gives them a tangible local outlet for their funding, as well as confidence that they know where their funding is going.

Questions and answers

The business and investor audience at the event had plenty of questions for our Q&A panel, which was made up of Sam Evans, Tom Burditt, Daveen Wallis (Director of Nature and Wellbeing at the Lancashire Wildlife Trust and programme lead for the Greater Manchester Environment Fund) and James Hall (GMEF Programme Manager (BNG) and Lancashire Wildlife Trust Head of Urban Nature).

We’ve captured some of the questions below, along with answers from the panel:

What scale do you see GMEF working on to achieve the investment required for our natural environment?

From a practical perspective, the GMEF finance model requires £5million turnover per year in order to demonstrate value for money, efficiency at scale, and for it to become self-sustaining, as well as having an ability to generate profit that would be spent on nature recovery activity.  But the sky is the limit, and potential opportunity easily could see over £10million per year if we can align GMEF offer to meet the needs of business requirements around Carbon and BNG, so we could set our sights on £100m by 2030.

There is a lot of focus on securing new land for improvements but what about existing land and general maintenance? Without this we will see invasive species taking control and loss of species diversity.

Aspirations through finance model is generate enough income to achieve impact at scale but also to generate profit that can then go into essential works to strengthen our Local Nature Recovery Network Strategy.  Priorities will be identified through this strategy, including management of invasive non-native species. The Green Spaces Fund already funds improvements to the quality of existing greenspace as well as creating new ones.

How do you see GMEF supporting companies to achieve Net Zero?

Net Zero ambitions is still a key goal, but through supporting local, nature-based solutions to offset any remainder carbon emissions that they cannot reduce through decarbonisation of their business.  Companies are willing to pay a high value for the added value of local, citizen engagement, access to nature, and other nature-based benefits e.g. reducing flood risk, cleaner air and water. 

How do you see corporates wanting to invest in GMEF beyond BNG and Carbon?

Companies are increasingly becoming aware of the biodiversity crisis, how our climate crisis is inextricably linked, and how they now need to start taking account for loss and damage of nature, for instance through the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) reporting. ‘Sustainability’ is no longer just about living lighter on our planet – Action Plans are starting to specifically spell out Actions for Nature. 

How will you help companies appreciate the value of investing in GMEF?

Robust evaluation / evidence of impact that demonstrates value not just for nature but across a number of Sustainable Development Goals. Achievements through collaborations, and at scale, will demonstrate the ambition, job creation, value for money, efficiency and added value. 

What’s motivating businesses to invest?

There are several motivating factors for businesses, with some of the most notable including:

• Social value – when tendering for work, having projects to point towards that are delivering on the ground.
• Employee health and wellbeing – getting people out in their local area, in communities to deliver change on the ground.
• Corporate values – aligning this to their business’ values.
• Local impact – having a positive impact in the local area.
• Governance and confidence – in a structure like the GMEF rather than overseas offers (e.g. offsetting).

What are the future opportunities?

Doing more to align projects delivered, their outcomes and outputs with social value frameworks and platforms. BNG becoming mandatory may also stimulate demand for voluntary BNG, to allow businesses to invest in biodiversity uplift in a measurable way, backed by a metric, verification and reporting.

The panel also posed a question back to the audience:

What do corporates want GMEF to offer?

Responses from the audience to the question included a consistent approach to reporting against Social Value, using frameworks / measurements that companies use to ensure impact is aligned, alongside the ability to consider Biodiversity Net Gain across all landholdings and voluntary Schemes that offer additionality to the minimum requirements. 

The feeling throughout the Q&A could perhaps be summed up by one our Green Spaces Fund advisors, Kieron McGlasson from Sow The City, quoting from Dale Vince OBE’s book Manifesto – stressing how what we now need is ‘business as unusual’:

One of the next steps for the Greater Manchester Environment Fund: Biodiversity Net Gain

James Hall, GMEF Programme Manager (BNG) and Lancashire Wildlife Trust Head of Urban Nature, closed the event closed with an outline of the medium- and long-term targets for the fund relating to BNG – and how businesses and other investors can help make them a reality. 

• The medium-term targets within our Investment Strategy specifically target Biodiversity Net Gain:
  • Secure support and resource to develop a GM BNG Investment Facility
  • Support Local Authorities to secure offsite Biodiversity Units on their land
  • Deliver strategic sites for GM
• Readiness for BNG and meeting the challenges and opportunities it brings.
• All building a foundation for wider strategic targets:
  • Investment into natural environment of GM is our primary purpose.
  • Not the case for organisations offering similar service.
  • Significant scrutiny, challenge and support from our board members – pushing us to maximise benefits for nature recovery and social outcomes; as well as available and high integrity units for developers
  • BNG IF will be the foundation on which other strands of our Investment Strategy can build on.

Want to work with the GMEF to unlock the benefits of nature for Greater Manchester?

Find out more on how to become a GMEF funder on our website – or get in touch directly by emailing gmenvfund@lancswt.org.uk.