Private funding of climate resilient landscapes using nature based solutions

Inspired by the Finnish good practice ‘Give Back to Nature, Salla’ (PP3)—a campaign mobilizing private donations for forest and river conservation—this pilot project adapts the approach to other European regions to engage public and private sectors in nature-based solutions (NBS). In Salla, tourists and businesses voluntarily fund landscape and biodiversity restoration, improving water quality and resilience to tourism and climate change.
With the EU Nature Restoration Law requiring Member States to restore natural areas, NBS offers solutions but demands broad stakeholder engagement. Local authorities often face funding challenges, with public finance alone falling short. Raising awareness of private financing for NBS is increasingly urgent.
The NBS4LOCAL project identifies crowdfunding as a promising tool. The Salla campaign’s strategy is adaptable to other contexts. A pilot will test this in Flanders, Belgium, in the Gete River valley—one of four regions in the ‘Resilient Water+Land+Schap’ program, a Flemish policy instrument of PP2 VLM. This program, backed by government and local partners currently rely mainly on public funding.
As donor partner, PP3 RCL will summarize their experiences in Salla in a draft manual and give continuous information on their good practice. The manual will be co-developed by PP2 VLM and the observer partners from PP5 DPA, the LP and PP8 NDC, drawing on insights from a stakeholder survey conducted with support from Burst. This expanded manual will then serve as the basis for the Flemish pilot.
In the Gete valley, PP2 VLM will test the approach through a crowdfunding campaign. Outcomes from this pilot will be captured in a final report and an updated version of the manual, to support future campaigns in other Flemish regions and potentially in other countries. The targeted Flemish policy instrument Water+Land+Schap will be improved.