Alternative asset manager Gresham House has launched a new specialist biodiversity strategy to accelerate the deployment of nature-based solutions to halt biodiversity decline in the UK.

Clients of WTW, the global insurance and advisory company with over $150bn in assets under management and $4.7tr of assets under advisement, have been announced as the cornerstone investors in the partnership.

With the UK Government’s landmark Environment Act 2021 biodiversity net gain (BNG) requirements coming into force last week, all developers will now need to achieve a biodiversity net gain of at least 10 per cent for their sites to gain planning permission. These rules establish England as one of the first countries in the world to make BNG mandatory, creating a new market worth hundreds of millions of pounds annually and paving the way for other countries to do the same.

Peter Bachmann, MD of sustainable infrastructure at Gresham House said: “With nature consistently emerging as a key theme in the global narrative around climate, it shows consensus is rapidly growing among political and business leaders that we cannot combat the climate crisis without addressing biodiversity loss.”

Targeting $380m, Gresham House’s GHBC strategy will invest in ‘habitat banks’ created by Environment Bank Limited (EBL), that turn landscape-scale areas of non-arable farmland into mosaics of woodlands, wetlands, and species rich grasslands in accordance with the Government’s BNG metrics. BNG units are then generated from these assets and sold to developers requiring planning permission.

EBL aims to create around 8,000ha of habitat banks by 2026, which has the potential to increase species diversity by 20 times across the country.

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