Complete the Facility for Investment Ready Nature In Scotland (FIRNS) projects that develop tools to support smaller-scale projects to participate in carbon markets by end March 2025.
Objective 5: Invest in nature
Priority Action 25. Establish a values-led, high-integrity market for responsible private investment in natural capital.
The Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS) programme has supported a set of projects designed to help smaller land managers and community-scale actors participate in carbon and nature markets. These projects aim to reduce barriers to entry by developing tools, standards, and practical guidance for engagement in voluntary carbon markets.
Published project outputs include:
The Aggregated Whole Farm Approach (Soil Association), which focuses on enabling small and medium-sized farms to participate in natural capital markets through a whole-farm aggregation model. The Bundling Carbon and Biodiversity Credits project (SRUC), which explores how carbon credits from established standards such as the Woodland Carbon Code and Peatland Code can be combined with biodiversity credit approaches to improve market accessibility. In addition, the Buyer–Seller Contracts project (Green Finance Institute) has developed simple, publicly available contract templates for carbon units, including Pending Issuance Units and verified credits, to reduce transaction complexity for smaller participants.
Together, these projects are aimed at improving access to carbon markets for smaller-scale land managers, but they remain part of an enabling and development phase rather than full market rollout, with ecological outcomes dependent on uptake and future implementation.
These FIRNS projects support ecological outcomes indirectly by making it easier for smaller farms, community groups, and land managers to participate in carbon and nature finance mechanisms. This could help increase uptake of peatland restoration, woodland creation, and other land-use changes that deliver biodiversity and climate benefits.
Evidence from existing standards such as the Woodland Carbon Code and Peatland Code shows that carbon market participation can support habitat restoration and carbon sequestration when projects are properly verified and implemented. However, these FIRNS-supported tools are still in development or early use, and there is limited evidence yet that they have resulted in large-scale additional ecological outcomes. Their contribution is therefore enabling rather than directly delivering ecological change, with impacts dependent on future market uptake.
NatureScot – FIRNS programme
Green Finance Institute – Farming Toolkit
Woodland Carbon Code
Peatland Code
Promote the natural capital market framework to foster responsible, values-led private investment in nature while delivering benefits to local communities. It will do this by providing guidance to investors, land managers, and other stakeholders, offering tools and resources to develop sustainable projects.
Publish a Biodiversity Investment Plan for Scotland by the end of 2024 that contains actions to: support a range of finance mechanisms; promote value for money; and develop biodiversity markets in Scotland.
Public funding streams that contribute to nature restoration will be designed in a way that they can be matched or blended with private finance or investment. - New ways of using available Peatland Action funding to leverage other sources of finance for peatland restoration will be tested from 2025/26. - New approaches to further increase the level of private investment in woodland…
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