🌱 This week in NatureTech #6

[4-minute read]

Author

NatureTech Memos
June 18, 2024

Happy Tuesday!

In today’s edition:

🌳 Nature Restoration Law gets green light

🌊 Funding to collect more ocean data

💼 A whole new suite of NatureTech jobs

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🐘 Long Read (1-Min Read)

Nature Restoration Law gets green light after Austria flips

What happened:  After months of setbacks and difficult negotiations between the EU Council and the European Parliament, environment ministers voted yesterday in Luxembourg to pass the Nature Restoration Law. 

Details: The laws, which were two years in the making, will oblige member states to:

  • Restore at least 30% of land and sea habitat from poor condition to good condition by 2030, increasing to 60% by 2040 and 90% by 2050

  • Enable 3bn trees to be planted and for action to be taken to ensure there is no net loss in the total amount of urban green space

 Rewind and look forward:

  • June 2022 - Nov 2023 - Initial proposal for a law and alignment on specific terms

  •  Feb 2024 - The European parliament gave the green light to a watered-down law to restore nature after weeks of fierce protests from farmers and a last-ditch attempt from right-wing parties threatened to sink the deal.

  • March 2024: The law still needed to be adopted by the Council of the EU before it could take effect. This is usually a formality, but Austria, Belgium, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and, after a controversial last-minute U-turn, Hungary, signalled they intended to either abstain or oppose the law if it was put to the vote.

  • May 2024: Eleven EU Member States had signed up to an Ireland-led call to adopt the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) and to urge other member states to do the same at a meeting of environmental ministers scheduled for yesterday, June 17th.

  • June 2024: A last-minute position change from Austria paved the way for the deal. Slovakia, which had previously publicly voiced doubts about the proposal, also backed the text. This allowed the law to pass with a narrow majority of 20 countries representing 66% of the EU’s population. The threshold for approval is 65%.

 Those for… claim that it is a fundamental step towards protecting and restoring ecosystems across Europe - Europe is the fastest-warming continent and about 80% of habitats in the EU have “bad” or “poor” conservation status.

Those against… argue that the law will over-regulate EU food production at a time of rising food prices in Europe. They also argue the rules would detriment agricultural communities and food security.

Why it matters for NatureTech: Approaches to measuring progress would be, in part, by measuring grassland butterfly and farmland bird populations. The law passing will be a major demand-driver for Measurement, Reporting and Verification start-ups and Reforestation start-ups that can support implementation of the law at minimal cost to landowners (Full story here)

💬 Snippets for your lift conversations

  • Finance: In a report titled “Climate meets nature” UBS Asset Management and Planet Tracker provide a practical guide for industry practitioners on how best to integrate nature when looking at solutions for the global energy transition

  • Finance: The World Bank will issue a new bond expected to raise some $200 million to support its sustainability activities and reforestation in Brazil's Amazon, 

  • Big business: Biodiversity and electricity grids can co-exist, EU power association says, in large white paper

  • Big business: WRI-led initiative drafts strategy to restore 50 mln hectares in Latin America by 2030

  • Policy: Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad, sets sight on enhancing biodiversity

  • Funding: Africa's Great Green Wall, which is meant to restore degraded landscapes and boost economies across the continent, is low on cash and unlikely to meet a 2030 completion goal, the president of the most recent UN summit on desertification said

  • Policy: The European Union is ill-prepared to implement the bloc's new law aimed at banning the import of commodities and related goods linked to deforestation, an EU grain trade association said on Tuesday.

  • Research: Increased tropical cyclones due to global heating could lead to dramatic declines in seabird populations, according to a new study.

  • Amazing Nature: Researchers used AI to analyse 469 wild African elephant calls to spot subtle differences between the rumbles and found that Elephants have unique names for each other

 🎣 Deals

  • Irish ocean data company, Xocean, which uses uncrewed surface vessels to collect information, has raised €30 million in Series B

  • Octopus investment plans to close its first natural capital fund by year end, allocating some funds to NatureTech, according to Carbon Pulse

💭 Little Bytes

📊 Stat: There’s several species of sharks that live in northern Australia and Indonesia that walk. They’re capable of climbing out of a rock pool and walking on all- using their fins as legs

📺️ Watch: Anna Colquhoun: The Nature Tech Nexus: Bridging biodiversity and business

💬 Listen: Is Investing in Nature the Next Economic Revolution?

📆 Events

💼 Jobs

📩 Feel free to send us deals, announcements, or anything else at [email protected] . Have a great week ahead! 

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