The climate and ecological emergency is driven by unsustainable business and investment and negative environmental societal (consumer) behaviours. These adverse effects can be addressed through approaches to investment that consider environmental consequences and where the nature becomes a valued asset. However, research and related policy/business initiatives have focussed on large corporates while ignoring the issues facing Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), despite the fact that they form a larger proportion of the UK and global economy. There is more recent attention to investment for climate change, but there remain major gaps in understanding concerning investors impact on biodiversity and nature positive impacts. Furthermore early stage SME innovators offer disruptive technology and new business models to support nature positive impacts. This is underpinned in the Dasgupta report (2021) and the recommendations for a Central Bankers (2022) mandate to improve the biosphere. Both investors and the SMEs seeking finance face challenges in terms of having information on each other about commercial and sustainability factors. These SME finance information asymmetries' (Owen et al 2022) are greater when considering nature positivity due to the lack of clarity in defining biodiversity impacts with related Science Based Targets (SBTs). These information asymmetries are even greater when dealing with new and small disruptive SMEs operating in novel and emerging sectors. This research examines the constraints facing investors wanting investees to report on biodiversity. It will also examine the current good practice in businesses seeking nature positivity and Net Zero. This requires attention to the metrics used and how their measurement can be practical and affordable for SMEs. Finally, it will explore the steps required to encourage a support ecosystem for both investors and SMEs so they can assess nature and carbon impacts. The study will examine four high-risk and potentially high net-gain impact sectors: i) agri-food; ii) infrastructure (transport and construction and appliance of Biodiversity Net Gain); iii) fashion and clothing; iv) advanced engineering and biotech (sectors offering tech for mitigating and measuring biodiversity). Across all of these we will examine the diverse sources of finance, such as banks, supply chain finance, and early stage equity investors (e.g. venture capitalists, business angels, accelerators). Through our project partners, the study will build on UK-based networks derived from impact investor groups, business case studies and support agencies. Key partners already committed to this project include early stage investors, banks, financial intermediaries (notably ESG advisors), and small business support and representative organisations. Data will be collected through qualitative interviews and workshops with investors, SMEs and other key informants advising on reporting for Net Zero and biodiversity. In a period of rapid change, this project will examine the process of change by continuing Middlesex University's longitudinal sample of businesses and SME investors developing innovative approaches to biodiversity reporting. Further work will examine the burgeoning industry around biodiversity reporting for SMEs and other businesses. Ecologists and business reporting specialists will work together to explore the approaches being used, the metrics being prioritised, the methodologies used to assess impact, and the technology being developed to reduce the costs and extend the depth and accuracy of analysis. By having practice partners embedded in the project from the start, the impact plan will ensure there are a range of good practice guides for SMEs, investors and those providing biodiversity and carbon assessment services. The results will reach a wider audience building on the strengths of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) communications team.

The scale of change needed to transform UK food systems for health, social justice and environment requires new ideas, organisational models and collaborative approaches that can meaningfully engage individuals and communities. Existing top-down approaches to the challenge of sustainable food provision and diet have failed to tackle the crisis of poor dietary health and sustainable food production. Our proposed research will focus on the distinctive role of social enterprises as an integral part of a more diverse system, exploring and enhancing their unique contribution to food systems that are more inclusive, sustainable and healthy. Social enterprise are organisations that are trading with a core social and environmental purpose, and make up 9% of the business population. Initial work by the project team and partners reveals how social enterprises and their community engagement around food and wellbeing can occur through a variety of activities, including community growing spaces and distribution schemes, leisure and fitness centres, children's nurseries and other community-based services. The proposed research will examine the extent to which such 'bottom up' approaches that build on local understandings, networks and capabilities have further unrealised potential to engage diverse communities and other organisational actors (private, public and civil society), and thus catalyse the expansion of sustainable and healthy local food systems across the UK. To this end, our transdisciplinary team, led by researchers who are part of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, brings together expertise from the natural, social and policy sciences, with specialisms in social enterprise, sustainable consumption, nutrition and environmental life cycle assessment. This team will work with six partner social enterprises in England, Scotland and Wales and six support/policy organisations all of whom contribute to the research design at all stages. This will ensure the potential for transformational impact on policy and practice is maximised. The research will include the following main elements: -Analysis of the range and types of social enterprise involved in developing local food systems and connecting people to growing spaces and other green areas. -Examination of the scientifically measurable outcomes of the interventions on the supply chain, environment and nutrition, and identification of good practice in measuring such impacts. -Case studies of social enterprises focused on food and community wellbeing to examine how they engage their communities, their ownership/governance structures, partnerships and innovative practices, the challenges they face and their support needs. -Exploration of the different understandings of sustainable food and diets within diverse communities. -Mapping the wider food network, key stakeholders and supportive ecosystem in each case study locality. -Exploring how transformational change can come about from scaling up social enterprise activity and policy change. Central to the project is the active participation of our social enterprise partners, their staff and community members, with particular attention to developing their research skills and capacity, as well as those of the academic researchers to enable participatory research. The research findings will be used to co-design resources and toolkits to support the scaling-up or replication of successful models and innovations and the sharing of good practice across the country. This is not without its challenges and the project will examine the various barriers and constraining factors and how they can best be addressed. In addition to good practice guides for social enterprises and other organisations across the country, policy briefings will be prepared, focusing on the different levels of local, regional and national policy making.

This research will critically assess the potential impact on UK agriculture of cultured meat, a technology with possibly profound and uncertain implications for the future of food and farming. Also known as 'clean', 'cell-based' and 'cultivated' meat, cultured meat is engineered animal tissue intended for people to eat. It is a type of alternative protein. Alternative proteins are strategically important to UK and global food systems because they can use less land and water than livestock products, lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, cut antibiotic use and the risk of new zoonotic diseases, and help promote animal welfare. Early data suggest that cultured meats could yield such benefits, but may struggle to compete with other meat alternatives on energy efficiency and cost. They are important because they could substitute more directly for livestock meat than other alternatives, and are at an earlier stage of development, so more open to influence by policy-makers and investors. While cultured meat is potentially transformative, its benefits therefore remain speculative. It also brings risks in nutrition, food fraud and food safety. Technical, regulatory, market and cultural uncertainties mean that the sector may not develop in the UK commercially, or may develop but fail to deliver public benefits. This project focuses on how cultured meat could affect farming in the UK. This is relevant to its environmental, economic and animal welfare impact, and to public and political attitudes that will shape how it gets regulated. Cultured meat is commonly assumed to be a threat to farmers, producing food in ways that could put some out of business. However, nobody has actually looked into this in-depth, or explored these issues with farmers in the UK. In practice, the different ways that cultured meat might develop could bring diverse risks and opportunities for farmers. The technology may create demands for new agricultural products, such as cells (donor herds for cell harvesting), feedstock for growth media (arable, forage, sugar beet), feedstock for edible scaffolds (cellulose, pea, bean, soya) and current waste streams (glucose, cellulose). In some scenarios, cultured meat might even be produced on farms, in facilities owned and operated by farmers, or could complement campaigns for 'less and better' meat. Alternatively, it may not reduce livestock meat consumption at all, or it may compete directly with high-welfare meat production. This research is designed to influence how this potentially transformative technology affects the UK food system. We will work with farmers and other people who may be affected by the technology to investigate whether they can see responsible ways of developing cultured meat. We will examine what farmers currently think of cultured meat, and explore different ways the technology could develop. We will work with farmers in a wide range of different situations to model how their businesses could get involved in or be affected by cultured meat production, and assess the environmental, social and economic consequences. We aim to answer the following questions: 1. How do UK farmers currently perceive cultured meat? 2. What threats and opportunities does the development of cultured meat pose to UK farm businesses in different scenarios? 3. Under what conditions, if any, would on-farm production of cultured meat be practical, economically viable and desirable in the UK? In answering these questions, we will consider not only the direct effects of cultured meat on farm businesses and livelihoods, but also wider ecological, nutritional, cultural and ethical implications, and how cultured meat might complement or conflict with the ways land use and diets in the UK could change to become sustainable.

Nature-based solutions (NbS*) are responses to societal challenges that involve working with nature to deliver benefits for both people and biodiversity. They include protecting existing ecosystems, restoring degraded ecosystems and managing working lands more sustainably. NbS are of national strategic importance in supporting the UK's net zero climate targets and the Government's ambition to improve the environment within a generation. They have gained international significance too: 131 countries include NbS in their UNFCCC climate change pledges. If well designed and robustly implemented, NbS will deliver multiple benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, enhance biodiversity, promote human wellbeing and support economic recovery. The challenge is that the implementation of NbS is often piecemeal, narrow in focus, and undermined by weak research/policy/practice connections. UCam-Regen will redress this problem by applying its breadth of expertise in a practically driven analysis that provides the knowledge and tools needed to address several challenges facing the delivery of NbS: NbS can contribute significantly to achieving net zero emissions, although the extent of that contribution is limited by the finite amount of land available and critically by the effects of climate change on ecosystems. NbS are not an alternative to decarbonising the economy and must be accompanied by swift, deep emissions cuts; they must be designed with and for local communities; and they must deliver measurable benefits for biodiversity and be designed to be resilient to climate change i.e. a 'whole systems approach' must be applied - as in UCam-Regen - that integrates economies, societies, and nature. Scaling up, restoration and protection of key ecosystems across UK landscapes requires (a) better protection of natural habitats in the planning system; (b) reforming agriculture and forestry subsidies to better support actions that benefit both climate regulation and biodiversity; (c) connecting habitats across landscapes, building on the emerging Nature Recovery Networks; (d) making it compulsory to build an NbS framework into all new developments, and (e) making space on land for natural systems to adapt to climate change. There is a need to develop robust metrics to assess the effectiveness of a wide range of NbS for carbon sequestration, water regulation, biodiversity and human wellbeing. Well-designed new financing mechanisms, including tax incentives and public subsidies for ecosystem stewardship that meet the NbS guidelines and support climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation and biodiversity, could be instrumental for upscaling NbS and improving social-ecological resilience to climate change, both in the UK and globally. UCam-Regen addresses these challenges by applying a whole systems approach to deliver knowledge and tools necessary to regenerate UK landscapes using NbS approaches. At the heart of the proposal is a recognition that local communities must be engaged with decisions regarding their landscape's future and co-produce solutions, informed by scientific assessments of the optimal landscape management approaches to maximise the delivery of ecosystem services. *We take policy recommendation and definitions from a COP26 Universities Network Briefing led by Prof Coomes https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_790171_smxx.pdf

The agri-food system, producing 23% of UK emissions, must play a key role in the UK's transition to net zero by 2050, and through leadership in innovation can support change globally. Our Network+ will build on existing and new partnerships across research and stakeholder communities to develop a shared agenda, robust research plans, and scope out future research and innovation. The Network will design and deliver high-reward feasibility projects to help catalyse rapid system transformation to ensure the agri-food system is sustainable and supports the UK's net zero goal, while enhancing biodiversity, maintaining ecosystem services, fostering livelihoods and supporting healthy consumption, and minimising the offshoring of environmental impacts overseas through trade. The radical scale of the net zero challenge requires an equally bold and ambitious approach to research and innovation, not least because of the agri-food and land system's unique potential as a carbon sink. Our title, Plausible Pathways, Practical and Open Science, recognises the agri-food system as a contested area in which a range of pathways are plausible. Success requires that new relationships between natural and social science, stakeholders including industry, government and citizens, be forged in which distributed expertise is actively harnessed to support sectoral transformation. We will use our breadth of expertise from basic research to application, policy and engagement to co-produce a trusted, well-evidenced, and practical set of routes, robust to changing future market, policy and social drivers, to evolve the agri-food system towards net zero and sustainability. Marshalling our many existing stakeholder links, we will review and evaluate current options and use Network funding to catalyse new partnerships through retreats, crucibles, workshops, online digital networking and scoping studies to develop system approaches to transformation, reframe the research agenda and undertake novel research projects. We will co-design productive and creative spaces that enable the research community to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and thought leaders through the following framework: 7 Co-Is who govern the Network but are not themselves eligible for funding; 9 Year-1 Champions (with new appointments after Year 1) dynamically forging new connections across research communities; 11 Advisory Board members tasked with challenging business-as-usual thinking; and regular liaison with other stakeholders.