About us
Our mission is to help nature thrive to solve the biodiversity and climate crisis, in the UK and beyond.
What we do
The UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries, with only 53% of the nation’s original nature left intact. We are committed to enabling protection and enhancement at scale to reverse this great decline so that our society and economy can flourish.
We help channel private-sector financing towards reputable and truly beneficial nature recovery projects that will reverse the UK’s nature collapse by facilitating Biodiversity Net Gain in the UK. We provide habitat enhancements on privately owned land holdings and package the measured improvements as Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) credits.
How we do it
We work with farmers and landowners to create and implement habitat restoration plans and sell the measured improvement in nature to developers and other businesses in the form of biodiversity units or credits.
The partnerships implemented generate long term recurring revenue opportunities for farmers and landowners whilst improving nature and biodiversity at the same time.
Our values
Courageous
Passionate
Optimistic
Supportive
Jonathan Withey
Director & Co-founder
I remember scratching my head at school trying to think about what degree to take. I liked the idea of being a doctor – helping people, stable career etc but I wasn’t quite academically smart enough and didn’t love the idea of having to take exams until the age of 30!
I ended up choosing a BSc in Geography at the University of Leeds. I enjoyed learning about how the natural world works and how it has been shaped by time and I chose Leeds for the social scene (which was good fun). I was, however, slightly worried that my career opportunities would be limited to Geography teacher (nothing wrong with that) and that most people would consider my skill sets to be mostly the ability to ‘colour in’ maps…
Whilst studying about how the different systems on our planet work to allow life to thrive I became fascinated by how conditions on our beautiful planet, Earth, have changed significantly throughout it’s 4.5 billion history. Our brains really struggle to comprehend that length of time and what it means. Turns out the Earth has been through a lot and actually the last 10,000 years have been some of the most stable we have ever experienced which has allowed us humans to evolve from being hunter gatherers to settling down and developing the civilizations and technologies that have got us to where we are today. A global population of over 8 billion people supported by complex frameworks and infrastructures whose foundation is the Earth’s natural systems.
As well as looking back over the Earth’s history I also learnt about the incredible way in which us humans have impacted Earth’s life support systems in a way that is unsustainable. That is ultimately why I have chosen to spend my time creating a business case for nature restoration and why you might want to join naturethrive’s mission of making nature restoration profitable for all.
I come from a family of entrepreneurs and grew up in a house where my Dad built multiple successful businesses’ from scratch so being around that naturally made me curious about the world of business and the opportunities that it presents. I knew that we needed a lot of money to solve the world’s challenges. That capital predominantly sits in the private sector so once I finished my Geography degree I undertook a Masters in Sustainability & Business to learn how to build the business case for sustainable development.
I have spent the last 15 years focusing on how to generate business value through environmentally sustainable practices. I headed up Business Development and Transformation for the Planet Mark Certification over the last 6 years which helps over 800 businesses achieve annual carbon reductions whilst unlocking significant business opportunities.
I love business and I love nature and wanted to combine those 2 passions to help be a catalyst from the flow of private sector capital into nature restoration in a way that makes business sense. Nature is more accessible and feels more tangible than other issues such as climate change and if we can better connect with it and focus on the business case for protecting and restoring it we might just solve our growing challenges, together.
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