NETGAIN: developing the science and practice of nature markets for a net positive future

There are few challenges with more pressing urgency than climate change, land and ecosystem degradation, and biodiversity loss. The need to formalise practices for improving nature amidst essential land management activities for housing, infrastructure, and food, now dominates the global discourse on restoring the planet’s terrestrial and marine habitats (collectively: “net gain”). We are entering a time of unprecedented public and private investment in climate and nature-related restoration activities, driven by the integration of the net gain concept into local, national, and international targets and emerging nature markets.
Yet, the science and practice of net gain and nature markets remain underdeveloped, lacking a robust evidence base and theoretical framework to ensure these sweeping changes in land use management truly secure nature-positive and climate-positive outcomes in a socially equitable way. Addressing this urgent challenge requires bridging knowledge gaps across scientific disciplines, industry, and government sectors. There is, therefore, an acute need for training that produces a new type of net gain scientist-practitioner, one who can seamlessly navigate and integrate these diverse fields to effectively drive and deliver progress. NETGAIN will directly address this challenge.
We have assembled a far-reaching network of academic and non-academic partners invested in supporting the initiative through evidence-driven training and research, and propose a novel and innovative doctoral training programme co-developed with this network of partners. This programme will serve as a template to equip future scientist-practitioners with the translational skills and experience necessary to develop scientifically rigorous, trusted, sustainable, and fit-for-purpose nature markets that contribute to reversing biodiversity loss in the UK, and globally. Using proposed NERC and University funding as a seedcorn, NETGAIN aims to become a self-sustaining programme positioning the UK as a leader in ecologically, economically, and socially effective nature markets.
Our vision is of an inclusive, equality-driven, and collaborative doctoral training programme that integrates diverse disciplinary and sectoral perspectives to directly address critical training needs and knowledge gaps associated with the design and implementation of nature markets and delivering biodiversity net gain more broadly. We will achieve this through a multidisciplinary culture of co-creation. Our unique training programme, supported by four HEIs and 36 external partners and which has generated close to £3M in financial support (>100% matched funding), will address critical skills gaps across quantitative eco/geosciences, socioeconomic disciplines, regulators, and industry.  This initiative will prevent disciplinary siloing and establish a robust evidence base for nature markets, ensuring students emerge as multidisciplinary leaders.
Our pioneering training programme, spanning a wide range of net gain-related topics, will expose collegiate cohorts of students (and supervisors, and partners) to cross-sector training delivered through three core modes: the NETGAIN Student Development Programme (SDP, monthly ‘little-and-often’ learning), a community-building annual conference including Skills Development Masterclasses (SDMs), and support for bespoke Individual Training Programme (ITP, continuous and self-paced). At the heart of this programme is the NETGAIN open-access e-book, with contributions from leading experts and student case studies that will adaptively define net gain theory and practice, providing a standard-defining resource for ongoing learning and progress tracking.
Cultivating a new generation of multidisciplinary scientist-practitioners, NETGAIN will transform the landscape of nature markets, ensuring effective, evidence-based solutions to the world's most urgent environmental challenges.