May 21, 2024 | Read Online

🌱 This week in NatureTech

[4-minute read]

Col and Ol

Happy Tuesday!

In today’s edition:
⚡️ EU Nature Restoration law up in the air

🚜 A whole host of Nature-Tech funding deals

🐘 Want to work on bringing back the Wooly Mammoth - check the jobs section?

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🐘 Long Read (1-Min Read)

Ministers mount last-ditch attempt to save EU laws on restoring nature

What happened: A last-ditch attempt to try to save the EU’s nature restoration laws from oblivion has been mounted by 11 member states, which are racing to get the legislation over the line in the next four weeks

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

Restore at least 20% of land and sea habitat in poor condition to a good condition by 2030, increasing to 60% by 2040 and 90% by 205.
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 rightwing parties threatened to sink the deal.
March 2024 : The law still needs to be adopted by the council of the EU before it can take effect. This is usually a formality, but pushback from countries including Hungary, Italy and Poland has left it in limbo. A vote on the law was postponed indefinitely.
May 2024: To pass at an EU level, the Nature Restoration Law requires 15 out of 27 member states. Eleven EU Member States have so far 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 June 17th.

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 would 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 would be a major demand-driver for Measurement, Reporting and Verification start-ups and Reforestation start-ups. (Full story here)

💬 Snippets for your lift conversations

Finance: UK launches roadmap for high-integrity marine natural capital markets which can provide much needed new sources of finance to protect, restore and sustainably manage marine and coastal ecosystems.
Finance: A US trading platform lists 10,000 Terrasos biodiversity credits. Each Terrasos Biodiversity Unit represents the long-term protection of 10 square metres of conserved or restored ecosystems in the El Globo Habitat Bank, Colombia
Finance: One year after Ecuador’s debt-for-nature swap, the largest ever, key policies and processes to allocated funds or guide investment says NGO
Big Business: Tetra Pak, a leading food processing and packaging solutions company, has launched its ‘Approach to Nature’ framework which aims to manage the company’s value chain impact on nature and actively support ecosystem restoration.
Big Business: PepsiCo partners with a Canadian group to support biodiversity improvement in farms. PepsiCo will provide financial support to producers who commit to planting perennial forage on unproductive cropland to improve biodiversity.
Big Business: Planet, ERM, Salesforce, and NatureMetrics launched the NatureTech Alliance, a global partnership to help businesses understand, manage, and reduce their impact on nature.
Research: A herd of 170 bison reintroduced to Romania’s Țarcu mountains could help store CO2 emissions equivalent to removing almost 2m cars from the road for a year, research has found
Personal action: A green medal for sustainability is to be introduced at the Chelsea flower show, rewarding gardens with the lowest carbon impact - aiming to boost biodiversity across the 1.2m acres of private garden in Great Britain,

🎣 Deals (1-Minute Read)

Oxford-based climate tech Dendra Systems has secured $15.76M in Series B Funding to develop its ecology platform which uses AI and drones to restore and rehabilitate huge swathes of land by reseeding.
ArkeaBio, a Boston developer of a vaccine to reduce livestock methane emissions, raised $26.5 million in venture capital funding led by an investment fund founded by Bill Gates.
Rize, a Singapore based agritech platform working towards making rice cultivation sustainable has raised, $14 million in Series A
Brightwater, a US startup, launches to scale fundings towards nature based solutions and biodiversity conservation
Nordluft, A swedish developer of drones for sustainable forest management raised an undisclosed fee in Early-vc
7Analytics, A Norway based developer of a data analytics platform intended for sustainable planning of surface water management., raised $4.3Mn in Seed

💭 Little Bytes

📊 Stat: African buffalo herds actually use a form of voting when trying to decide which direction to travel in. One at a time, adult females will stand up and look in a certain direction before sitting down. Whichever direction gets the most amount of looks is typically where the herd travels.

📺️ Watch: The #AI-powered #SmartWhaleSounds project off the Irish coast records & analyzes the calls of dolphins & whales every hour to study the impacts of local shipping

💬 Listen: Paul Rosolie on the Amazon Jungle, Uncontacted Tribes and Anacondas

📆 Events

21 May - ecology calling. biodiversity credits - Linnean Society of London
22 & 23 May - Carbon Unbound - NY, USA
12 & 13 June - Forestry & Agriculture Investment Summit - London, UK
25 & 26 June - Nature Tech Expo 2024 - Leeds, UK
26 June - The Nature Positive Hub at London Climate Action Week 2024 - London, UK
16 July - Using Green Finance to Drive Nature’s Recovery - Online

The HackSummit, Europe’s largest gathering of ClimateTech builders and investors returns to Lausanne Switzerland on June 13-14th for two days of networking and deal-making. Use the code TRIPLEBOTTOM to save 20% on your pass.