Financing instruments for nature-inclusive housing development
A green living environment benefits our well-being, more and more people realise. Creating nature not only costs money, it also delivers something. But until it is clear exactly what the benefits of more nature are, the question remains who pays for the costs.
The challenge
In the Common Woods neighbourhood, consisting of 56 sustainable and energy-efficient houses, residents themselves invest in the greenery of their surroundings. There are no fences and only the same native plants are used in the gardens. In this way, animals have space and the ecosystem remains in balance. The aim is to build a neighbourhood that is CO2-neutral, and rich in biodiversity.
Yet funding greenery in residential areas often remains difficult in practice. For instance, it is unclear what ecosystem services provide, it is not clear who exactly all benefits from nature and there is little understanding of these benefits. As a result, nature is seen as a cost item and parties are not asked to co-invest.
The approach
For the municipality of Amersfoort, Rebel investigated the concrete benefits of nature in the sustainable neighbourhood Common Woods and how the costing and financing of green space can be organised differently. To this end, we expressed the benefits of greenery in euros: from trees that absorb CO2 and make people less ill, to the reduction of water damage through water-permeable paving. Moreover, houses in green surroundings are worth more. We charge for this increase in value. The increase in biodiversity cannot yet be monetised. That is why, together with an ecologist, we map out the positive effects of more biodiversity and monitor the ecological situation over a longer period of time. To tell the story convincingly, we visualise this.
Solidifying the benefits of green in this way helps convince stakeholders and make the business case stronger.
In the future, Rebel wants to investigate how other effects can also be expressed in figures. Think of the social cohesion that increases when residents take care of the green living environment together with a neighbourhood greenhouse or a vegetable garden.
Impact
Rebel offers parties concrete tools to finance green, where the benefits are clear and transparent to all.
