Our story

How to make a paradigm shift toward nature?
You have to re-write the rule book!

Horizon Nua was the first spin-out enterprise created from the Horizon 2020-funded Connecting Nature project in 2017. The idea for the business came out of initial collaboration with three cities on new business models for nature based solutions. The cities asked for a guidebook capturing this process, we put one together, then other cities asked for it and started to translate it into their own language and from there it snowballed. In the first year alone there were more than 250 requests for guidebooks and workshops from more than 25 countries around the world. We stopped counting after that!

The need for greater collaboration

Cities like Nicosia in Cyprus and Poznan in Poland started exploring funding collaboration with the private sector; other cities like Genk in Belgium rewrote public financing rules to better reflect the multiple benefits of nature-based solutions. It became clear that there was a need for even greater knowledge-sharing, strategy and processes to support this shift towards a nature-based economy. Horizon Nua was born.

Then we started looking at how nature-based solutions could support entrepreneurship. We worked with ten cities over three years to better understand the roadblocks and opportunties that existed to support a nature-positive economy.

We collaborated closely with Trinity College Dublin who were working at the same time on ground-breaking research on the concept of nature-based enterprises.  Building on this research, we collaborated with cities in experimenting different approaches to nature-based entrepreneurship from building awareness and training programmes to piloting accelerator programmes for nature-based enterprises in Glasgow.

Creating connection between like-minded businesses

As our reach widened we saw that there were already thousands of nature-based enterprises delivering many different types of nature-based solutions all over the globe. Many of these companies didn’t even realise there were like-minded companies in other countries. In 2020 we launched the Connecting Nature Enterprise Platform so these nature-based enterprises could connect with their peers, learn about good practices from other countries and showcase their own work.  Today there are ten dynamic communities of practice led by industry ambassadors who organise regular webinars and activities to keep everyone connected!

Around this time we began to realise that nature-based solutions could play a truly vital role in a paradigm shift toward a different type of economy. One that puts people and nature first. Our founder Siobhan, chaired a European task force working with the European Commission, thought leaders, and a multitude of EU projects to explore this potential.  After an 18-month global consultation process, the end result was an EU publication on the potential of nature-based solutions in a nature-positive economy. It’s the most popular download on the European Commission website.

Practical roll out

Since Connecting Nature, Horizon Nua has expanded its role in supporting cities to implement nature-based solutions and is actively working to address the bottlenecks in the supply side of the nature-positive economy through involvement in Horizon-funded projects such as Go Green Routes and new projects commencing in 2022, Invest4Nature, NBS Eduworld, MAIA, and now NetworkNature+ the follow on project to NetworkNature.

We’ve also started working with national and local governments to develop their thinking around the nature-positive economy and how they can develop policy to support change and foster growth in their own and developing countries economies. 

Our team

Our team is driven by the desire to tackle climate change. We are motivated to do what we can using our skills and expertise to contribute to tackling climate change and reducing biodiversity loss in order to safeguard our world for future generations.