Financing Green Sector Transitions
Flagship 1 addresses the need to address the negative biodiversity impacts derived from the UK's agricultural land-use sector, which accounts for over 70% of landcover. In collaboration with stakeholders - the agri-food sector, investors, and civil society - it will test a range of financial instruments, partnership models and policy scenarios within real-world settings, i.e. existing sites within England and Northern Ireland, to assess their impact and applicability. The goal is to create and implement "win-win-win" nature restoration scenarios that will benefit investors, land-users, nature, and civil society. The research will also analyse the impact on habitats of international supply chains, such as tea and rubber imports as well as develop advanced sensor technologies and AI for monitoring and verification of biodiversity net gain in the agri-food sector.
Flagship Leader: Professor Paul Brereton
Paul is Director of Strategic Alliances at the Institute for Global Food Security, Queen’s University Belfast. He conducts interdisciplinary research in the area of risks to the food system including those related to food safety, quality, and sustainability as well as the impact of the food system on human and planetary health. As well as leading numerous national activities, Paul has co-ordinated two of the world’s largest research projects in the area of food authenticity and traceability: the €20M TRACE project (tracing the origin of food) and, FOODINTEGRITY, a €12M EU-sponsored research project that aimed to address at a European level many of the gaps identified during the horsemeat incident. Paul leads QUB's input into the Sus-Health project, part of the UKRI Transforming the UK Food System programme, and sits on the executive board of the €11M TITAN Horizon Europe project on food transparency where he leads a Work Package on Improving food choices. He is a Work Programme Leader and sits on the Executive Board of BIOFIN, a Horizon Europe project that aims to mobilise mainstream finance for biodiversity. Paul has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and articles and edited 1 book. He has close links with the UK Public sector, academia, food sector and the European Commission. He currently chairs the European Commission PRIMA Foundation evaluation panel and reviews DG Research Framework strategy e.g. Food 2030.