Outermost-region Living Lab in the French Caribbean: private co-financing of ecosystem restoration and site qualification (NatureChain)

About NatureChain

NatureChain is a French SME based in Guadeloupe created to get ecological restoration and conservation sites financed, partly or fully, by private actors (companies, banks and insurers). Our aim is to secure long-term financing for these sites, well beyond the few years covered by public programmes. We work on nature credits and certificates as framed by the EU Roadmap towards Nature Credits, with project holders to make their sites fundable, and with private funders to understand what holds them back.

Our founder previously worked at the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB) in Guadeloupe on BESTLIFE2030, the EU small-grants programme for biodiversity in European overseas entities. He brings experience in EU project design and an established network of restoration actors in the French Caribbean.

What we propose for HORIZON-NATURE-2027-02-02

We can help build a Living Lab in the French Caribbean outermost regions, starting with Guadeloupe and Martinique, with additional sites possible in other French outermost regions. It covers tropical island ecosystems (mangroves, coastal wetlands, rivers, forests, agroforestry systems) exposed to cyclones, flooding, coastal erosion, drought and invasive species, under Area A or Area B depending on the consortium.

Core sites would be carried by local actors joining the consortium or supporting it through letters of intent: conservation NGOs, site managers, municipalities and territorial authorities. Financial support to third parties, managed by the coordinator or another partner, would extend the Living Lab to additional sites and smaller actors. The Living Lab would serve as a real-world testing ground for private co-financing of restoration and for nature credits.

Link with the Nature Restoration Regulation

National restoration plans under Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 must include restoration measures tailored to outermost regions (Art. 15(3)(o), Art. 14(16)(c)), estimate financing needs and the intended public or private means of financing (Art. 15(3)(u)), and ensure long-term effects of restoration (Art. 15(3)(q)). Our work would give competent authorities evidence and reusable approaches on how tailored measures can be implemented with local actors in outermost regions, and how private funding can complement public funding to keep restored sites in good condition.

Implementation bottlenecks we target

• Funding after the works: public programmes fund restoration for two or three years; management and monitoring over the following decades rarely find stable funding.

• Weak private demand: no direct financial return, unclear accounting and tax treatment, and risk-reduction value (e.g. mangroves against storm surge) not recognised by banks and insurers.

• Lack of trust: few comparable, verified projects with demonstrated additionality, secure land tenure and no double funding with public money.

• Fragmented applications: each funder has its own dossier, and funders receive projects they cannot compare.

• Outermost regions left aside: they host most of Europe’s biodiversity but remain largely absent from nature credit frameworks and far from potential funders.

What we bring

• Private co-financing of restoration, our core activity: identifying barriers, testing incentive levers with companies, banks and insurers, and designing long-term arrangements so that sites can be partly or fully financed by private actors after the project, with social science partners working on funders’ motivations.

• Standardised site and project dossiers, built with a tool we are developing from open public data (land, zoning, protected areas, GBIF, iNaturalist, TAXREF, OpenObs), with maps and budgets. Sites would then be qualified by independent expert committees based in each territory, organised by NatureChain, with no stake in the sites assessed. Ecological monitoring would remain with the consortium’s scientific partners.

• Mobilisation of local partners in Guadeloupe and Martinique across the stakeholder types requested by the topic.

• Replication across outermost regions and EU overseas territories.

Role sought

Partner leading or contributing to tasks on restoration financing, private co-financing and nature credits, preparing standardised dossiers for Living Lab sites and organising their independent qualification, and mobilising local partners in the French Caribbean. Also open to HORIZON-NATURE-2027-01-03 (finance side of transformative change) and 02-03 (cross-Living Lab work on the financing bottleneck).

Contact: Julien Lorthios, julien.lorthios@naturechain.eu