This document discusses public-private partnerships for resilient agricultural landscapes. It proposes using blended finance approaches like payments for ecosystem services and landscape enterprise networks. Payments for ecosystem services involve voluntary transactions where ecosystem service buyers pay providers for maintaining certain land uses. Landscape enterprise networks aggregate demand from businesses and supply from farmers to design interventions that meet both business and farm needs. The document argues that aggregating demand and supply can increase funding and benefits while reducing costs. It also suggests blending public and private payments to leverage more investment and incentivize practices that markets won't support alone. Overall, the document advocates blended finance models to improve agricultural sustainability and environmental outcomes through cooperation across sectors.

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Public-private partnerships for
resilient agro-ecosystems
Prof Mark Reed

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Context

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Emissions from land use

4. Emissions from…
Source: Herrero et al 2016 Nature Climate
Peatland
Livestock
Source: Wetlands International

5. Poorly managed systems
Environmental
degradation
Insecure
livelihoods
Knock-on
effects for
society and
business

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Blended finance

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Payments for ecosystem services
• A voluntary transaction where
• A well-defined ecosystem service (or land
use likely to secure that service)
• Is being “bought” by a (minimum one)
ecosystem service buyer
• From a (minimum one) ecosystem service
provider
• If and only if the ecosystem service provider
secures provision (conditionality)

10. Public, private or blended
Public PES-like schemes e.g. agri-environment
Private PES schemes e.g. compliance, voluntary and
regional carbon markets
Blended e.g. private finance tops up public funding to get
additional scheme entrants

11. UK Peatland Code

12. Landscape Enterprise Networks

13. STEP1:LENsNetworkAnalysis
1

14. £
B1
B2
B3
1. Understand Business needs
3. Build a technical
understanding of
businesses’ common
requirements from
the landscape
‘Supply
aggregator’
4. Engage service provider (operating on behalf of
farmers) to design and cost interventions / service
offerings that meets the needs of businesses
5. Cut a deal
‘Demand
aggregator’
2. Convene businesses around
their common interests
STEP2:Thebasicoperatingunit
2

15. 3
SUPPLY
DEMAND
Supply
aggregator
STEP3:Developinganetwork
Shared
interest
Supply
Aggregator
Supply
aggregator
Shared
interest
Shared
interest
Supply
aggregator

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10 key lessons

17. 1. Trade-off between farmer uptake and quantification
of benefits to investors
2. While complexity reduces land supply, limited
quantification of benefits does not appear to
significantly constrain demand if buyers have clear
dependencies on natural capital
3. Brokers can reduce complexity and increase land
supply if payment rates are high enough to pay for
their services
4. Business to business trusted brokers speak the
language of business

18. 5. Aggregating demand for ecosystem services
increases:
• Amount of funding (by stacking payments for multiple
benefits, bringing in non-regional buyers for carbon
and reducing perceptions of free-riding); and
• Resilience of funding (by spreading risks of non-
delivery of benefits/payments to buyers and sellers)
6. Aggregating supply of services:
• Increases market potential (availability of saleable
benefits) and density (connected landscape scale
opportunities rather than farms scattered across a
region)
• Reduces transaction costs (of contracting with
multiple landowners)

19. 7. Prices don’t have to reflect carbon markets
8. Public and private payments can be stacked to
increase uptake of agri-environment schemes, but
high public payment rates will crowd out all but the
most simple and attractive private schemes
9. Public schemes could be designed to leverage
private investment, with public funding prioritised to
unattractive or costly locations that the market won’t
pay for
10. Blending public and private finance is likely to
significantly alter cost-benefit ratios for land use
GHG mitigation options, making them a more
attractive proposition for reaching net zero
emissions

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mark.reed@newcastle.ac.uk
@profmarkreed @ResilientDairy @fasttrackimpact