British lawmakers have opened a consultation to scrutinise whether the UK government’s policies to promote natural capital and investment in biodiversity protection are adequate, focusing on greenwashing risks as well as how best to scale private finance to achieve the goals of imminent biodiversity net gain legislation.

The ‘Environmental Audit Committee’, that plays a legislative function in the checking of government policy, has opened a call for feedback that runs to Sep. 22, to better understand the potential contribution private capital investment can make to measures to secure nature recovery.

The call for responses includes requests to analyse whether current policies are sufficient to establish and maintain the high-integrity markets, expected to attract private investment, as well as address the risk of greenwashing of investments and the offsetting of natural recovery in the UK against environmental degradation elsewhere.

“The Committee seeks to understand how the UK’s markets in natural capital are developing, and whether the frameworks that have been put in place, and the measures being encouraged by ministers, are sufficient to promote investment in nature recovery while establishing the UK as a leading financial centre for nature positive investment,” said Environmental Audit Committee Chairman Philip Dunne, who is also an elected representative of the British parliament.

“We will look at measures to prevent greenwashing in the natural capital sector so that the investment and policies really do make a material and nature positive difference to environmental recovery and levels of biodiversity across the UK.”

The UK is set to bring into force biodiversity net gain legislation by the end of the year, which will make developers ensure that measures are put in place to avoid net nature loss when building projects.

This also includes room for biodiversity crediting to offset, under certain circumstances, the impact of development.

By Roy Manuell – roy@carbon-pulse.com

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