Nature Restoration Fund: interim evaluation

1 Background

The Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) provides an important vehicle to help Scotland tackle the nature emergency and climate crises by supporting practical, on-the-ground action for habitats and species, restoring nature and improving biodiversity on land and seas. The fund is designed to help Scotland meet ambitions to be “Nature Positive by 2030, and to have restored and regenerated biodiversity across the country by 2045”. This vision, outlined in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy to 2045 (SBS),^[6] reemphasises the necessity for immediate, large-scale action across land and seascapes. The £65 million that Scottish Government has allocated to the NRF represents their financial commitment to realise this vision.

In supporting nature-based solutions, the NRF also aims to help Scotland achieve its ambitious target to reach net-zero emissions by 2045 and assist in the delivery of outcomes in cross-cutting plans such as the Environment Strategy, Climate Change Plan, National Planning Framework 4 and the Agriculture and Rural Communities Bill.

The NRF is a major investment in nature restoration and an unprecedented commitment by Scottish Government, running from 2021-2026.^[7] The NRF was established after the 2020 Scottish Budget with an initial £10 million commitment to a new funding programme for nature restoration, launched in July 2021. It funded a range of capital works through a competitive application process, administered by NatureScot, and included supporting existing initiatives and partnerships to accelerate action on the ground for already scoped projects. The Scottish Government made a further £55 million commitment over the next four years (to March 2026) to extend the programme and build on the first-year successes.

The NRF is delivered through two strands:

1. The Competitive Fund strand is distributed by NatureScot via a competitive application process. Projects can apply for a grant of £25,000 to £250,000 (under the ‘Helping Nature’ stream) to be delivered over 1-2 years. Alternatively, projects can apply for a grant of over £250,000 (under the ‘Transforming Nature’ stream) for single or multi-year projects, as well as funding to develop transformative nature restoration projects.^[8] Project claims and reports are submitted to and managed by NatureScot. All NRF projects must be completed by March 2026.

2. The Edinburgh Process strand directly allocates a portion of NRF funding each year to local authorities.^[9] This strand takes its name from the Edinburgh Process, championed by Scottish Government at COP15 in Montreal, which devolves nature restoration and biodiversity action to the smallest possible scale (i.e. local authorities, sub-national governments). In contrast to top-down national level initiatives, The Edinburgh Process strand provides a means for local authorities to collaborate with stakeholders to design and implement nature restoration from the bottom-up. Local authorities report directly to Scottish Government on the projects and outcome measures deployed. Initially, when the NRF began in 2021, NatureScot assessed applications for funding from local authorities and recommended to Scottish Government which applications should be funded. Since then, funding allocations for NRF are made using a NatureScot funding formula and agreed between Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).

As the Competitive Fund strand evolved, the multi-year commitment of funds by Scottish Government enabled it to shift from mostly 1-year projects to include more multi-year projects. In contrast, the Edinburgh Process strand typically continued to focus on single-year projects and funding. Multi-year funding is seen by some as important for projects which aim to deliver nature restoration at scale, due to the long timescales often involved in engaging landowners and securing permissions, land use changes and associated biodiversity uplift. More information on the NRF, including eligibility, videos and maps of previous projects, is available on the dedicated NatureScot webpage.

1.1 Objectives and scope of this interim evaluation

The aim of this commissioned research was to undertake an independent interim evaluation of the contribution made by NRF projects to the realisation of outputs and outcomes as specified in the NRF evaluation framework (see 2.2 Evaluation framework). This included five key objectives:

i. To collate and analyse data on projects that received NRF funding via the Competitive Fund strand during the financial years 2021/22-2023/24, summarising key outputs and evaluating their contribution to the realisation of key outcomes as specified in the evaluation framework;

ii. To collate and analyse data on projects that received NRF funding via the Edinburgh Process strand during the financial years 2021/22-2023/24, summarising key outputs and evaluating their contribution to the realisation of key outcomes as specified in the evaluation framework;

iii. To collate and analyse additional qualitative evidence on the impacts of NRF-funded projects via a set of case studies;

iv. To identify and report key challenges, lessons learned, and future opportunities related to NRF funding and project delivery;

v. To synthesise the data and evidence and draw initial conclusions about the impact of the NRF, based on the 2021/22-2023/24 funding period.

This evaluation is not a detailed comparison with other similar or past nature funds. A value for money analysis was considered to be outside the scope of the evaluation by the project steering group due to timescales, data availability and project scale. The NRF is one of several policy vehicles that contribute to nature restoration in Scotland, including the Agri-Environment Climate Scheme (AECS), the Forestry Grant Scheme, Peatland ACTION, the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland, and others. This review does not intend to compare the outcomes of these different schemes, as they each have different objectives, audiences, and reporting structures.

It is important to consider that this review looks at the NRF in the first three years of a five-year life cycle (2021-2026) and consequently this is an interim evaluation. The scope of this evaluation includes projects funded from the start of NRF in 2021/22 to the end of the 2023/24 financial year. This includes projects that continued beyond March 2024 and are either ongoing or yet to be completed. This interim evaluation therefore captures early progress, but the full extent of ecological benefits, and the full success of the NRF, may not be realised until later years. Where projects continued beyond March 2024, this is flagged throughout the results.