Aviva invests £40mn in nature restoration firm Nattergal

UK insurance firm Aviva has invested £40 million in nature restoration firm Nattergal – one of the largest nature finance deals in the private sector to date.

Nattergal raised the funding as part of a seed equity round, with Aviva joining as a key institutional investor and its Chief Sustainability Officer Claudine Blamey also joining the Nattergal Board as an advisor.

With the financing, Nattergal plans to buy, lease, or manage large areas of ecologically degraded land and seascapes across the UK and Europe to restore them and recover biodiversity.

The firm aims to “make nature an investable asset class” by demonstrating the natural capital provided by natural processes such as carbon capture, soil health and biodiversity. It already operates three ‘rewilding sites’ in the UK, where it will soon issue Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) units, to be sold to property sector firms mandated by the UK government to restore natural habitats.

Nattergal plans to have 20 to 30 sites under management around the world within five years.

“Our ambition to deliver nature restoration at scale is only possible with the support of leading institutional investors such as Aviva. This strong support we have received in our equity raise is testament to our business model, and a clear signal that Nattergal is playing a leading role in making nature an investable asset class. We’re excited to work alongside Aviva and all our shareholders in our next phase of growth,” said CEO Archie Struthers.

Aviva’s nature commitments

The £40 million comes from Aviva’s corporate venture capital fund, Aviva Ventures, and builds upon the firm’s nature commitments. In 2022, it published a biodiversity report outlining a seven-step nature policy. 

Among other things, the firm aims to protect and restore biodiversity, identify and manage biodiversity impacts, dependence on ecosystem services and risks, collaborate with others to improve measurement, disclosure and action on biodiversity, and engage investee companies to help them tackle biodiversity loss.

In April this year, it created the role of Nature Strategy Lead, hiring the former Head of Regulatory engagement at the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), Thomas Viegas, to drive efforts. 

“Investing in Nattergal supports an important element of Aviva’s sustainability ambition, to protect and restore biodiversity through nature-based solutions. I’m delighted to be appointed to the Nattergal Board and I’m looking forward to contributing to their gold-standard approach to delivering nature restoration at scale,” said CSO Blamey about the funding deal.

Private finance for nature

According to the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), private finance for nature surged to over US$102 billion in 2024 (up from just US$9.4 billion in 2020) – made up mostly of equity investments.

However, a previous UN report published last year around COP28 also warned that 140 times more private capital was invested in nature-degrading projects than in nature restoration.