Robert Owen Community Banking – Economic Solutions to Sustainable Land and Water Management: a different view

19th March 2025

About

In discussions around nature finance – securing necessary resources for sustainable land management – focus is usually placed on public subsidy for agriculture (the SFS), philanthropic funding, ecosystem service markets and the potential for private investment. These mechanisms have thus far been unable to provide the necessary funding or financing of nature initiatives. Limited public funding and the need to construct careful governance and regulatory systems have slowed progress towards global goals for nature, such 30×30, now less than five years away.

Other economic tools offer potential solutions to resourcing nature and land management. These include co-operative finance and community banking, which have been used successfully in Wales and across the globe to mobilise money to meet essential needs – e.g. for housing, energy efficiency, social care – in ways that can avoid the negative consequences of private finance and deliver a broad range of benefits. These approaches have strong political support in Wales and a track record of practical delivery.

Thinking more carefully about the economic models and approaches we use can also shine a light on some of the assumptions that are driving action around nature finance – which lead to many of the concerns and risks that we are often struggling with (e.g., inaction and worsening climate crisis, land transfer, unbalanced outcomes, value being lost from communities).

In this webinar, we will hear from experts in co-operative and community centred economics:

•     Looking at the ‘nature finance gap’ – what money is needed for sustainable land management and how we can get it to flow.
•     Practical co-operative economic solutions that have worked in other areas (e.g. Renewable energy, energy efficiency & housing) and how they could be applied to nature finance.