Delivering the EU Nature Restoration Regulation will require more than public budgets alone. A policy brief from the Green Deal Restoration Cluster outlines how diversified public and private funding can be mobilised to scale up restoration across Europe.

Key insights

• Strengthen financial and strategic capacities:
  Restoration teams require skills beyond ecology and engineering, including financial literacy, risk assessment, and strategic communication. Projects need to quantify ecological, social and economic benefits – for example through cost–benefit analysis and ecosystem service valuation – in order to become investment-ready.
• Enhance project bankability:
  Clearly articulating expected impacts, risk profiles and revenue structures increases attractiveness to foundations, companies and private investors. Nature-based Solutions should be framed in terms of climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and regional economic benefits alongside biodiversity outcomes.
• Blend public and private finance:
  Blended finance approaches can distribute risks across actors. Public funds can provide guarantees or stability, lowering perceived risks, while private capital contributes additional resources and long-term commitment.
• Establish enabling governance frameworks:
  Dedicated funds, partnership models and special purpose vehicles can pool resources and ensure accountability. Robust standards and safeguards are essential for emerging ecosystem service markets (e.g., carbon, water, and biodiversity) to ensure transparency, verification and equitable benefit-sharing.
• Unlock capital through stronger policy enforcement:
  Significant resources remain untapped within existing EU and national frameworks. Full implementation of instruments such as the cost-recovery principle under the Water Framework Directive and the redirection of environmentally harmful subsidies could generate additional revenue streams for restoration.

Overall, scaling up restoration finance depends not only on increasing funding volumes but also on strengthening institutional capacity, improving governance structures and fully leveraging existing policy instruments.