UNESCO and Siemens join forces in bid to draw private investment into natural capital

The non-profit trading arm of the North Devon UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, The Biosphere Foundation, has teamed up with engineering giant, Siemens, to launch “global scale” market infrastructure to transform the natural capital sector.

The three-year partnership has created two critical infrastructure platforms in a bid to redirect private investment into the environment and climate markets:

the Natural Capital Marketplace – an online trading platform to provide the market infrastructure to connect landowners, investors and ecosystem service customers such as carbon credits and biodiversity Net Gain Credits; and

the Smart Biosphere Digital Twin to monitor, report and validate impact in the environment, bringing together internet of things sensors in the environment, big data, machine learning and earth observation.

The partnership said the Natural Capital Marketplace has been developed over two years with funding support from the Environment Agency and the UK government and has rollout plans for the UK.

Smart Biosphere is in a pilot stage on a 5km river catchment in North Devon after 18 months of development with funding support from Heart of the South West LEP, South West Water and the government.

Both projects will, according to the partnership, enable farmers, landowners, and carbon/biodiversity credit customers to purchase offsets online. Smart Biosphere will, “collect, secure and structure data from sensors and sources within water, and ground-based assets.”

Commercial lead at the Biosphere Foundation, Rob Passmore, said: "To date, we believe the market has lacked the necessary infrastructure to aggregate projects up to investment scale. The solutions we have created with Siemens directly address the market barriers.”

Biosphere Reserves protect internationally important ecosystems. The North Devon UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in South West England is larger than Greater London.