Value and fund an urban forest

24-06-2025

Including a projection can strengthen your case by presenting two investment scenarios. On one side, it sets out the potential value of your green infrastructure based on specific interventions and scenarios. And on the other, it gives an insight into how lack of investment could impact people and places. 

The methodology tested by Treeconomics for valuing growth scenarios with Birmingham City Council is an example of this. Their analysis revealed: 

• With investment, there would be an estimated additional £10m in annual ecosystem service benefits if all wards were increased to 25% canopy cover by 2051. 

• Without significant investment, there would be a projected loss of 65,000 trees across Birmingham by 2051 (with most of the trees lost in areas that are already greyest). 

Use environmental and social data to understand exactly what people need in your town or city. Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Mapping Database includes a variety of socio-economic and access datasets, but you may also want to consider using specific environmental data. 

Birmingham City Council’s Climate Risk Vulnerability Assessment uses data that includes pollution, surface temperature and flood risk to identify where need is greatest in the city. This mapping builds on Birmingham City Council’s work on environmental justice as part of the Future Parks Accelerator programme. 

Once you’ve identified the key needs of local communities (e.g. flooding, heat and pollution), move on to step 4 to determine how green infrastructure could address these issues (e.g. flood risk mitigation, heat reduction and air quality improvements). 

Assess what type and level of benefits are being provided by urban green infrastructure right now and consider what projects you could deliver in the future to enhance and expand these benefits. 

At this stage, you need to think about how you will evaluate ecosystem services provided by your urban forest and start to analyse this against the typical cost/benefit profile of urban trees. This will help you identify the most appropriate existing ecosystem service markets and funding models for your urban greening projects. 

Identify urban areas that could be helped most from additional green infrastructure and consider which projects would be most effective in enhancing the social, economic and environmental benefits for communities living there. 

Read about evaluating the ecosystem services provided by green infrastructure and understanding the needs of buyers in our Urban Greening Toolkit for Private Finance. This report explores the challenges of delivering ecosystem services in dense urban environments, where the scale of green infrastructure can be limited. 

Use a cost modelling tool to work out what the cost would be at an individual project level. You can then use the data collected to estimate costs involved on a citywide, urban forestry planting programme level.  

Determine what outcomes you’re promoting and how you’re going to monetise them. 

Give private funders additional confidence by identifying suitable metrics and rigorous quantification methodologies that demonstrate the strengths of the outcomes they’re buying into. 

Read about payments for ecosystem service models in our Urban Greening Toolkit for Private Finance and get an insight into new funding models that could help channel private funding to your urban forestry projects. 

Make sure you’re ready to receive and deploy any funds that are invested. Here are some helpful questions to ask yourself: 

• Who is the responsible body (this could be the local authority, an independent company, a charity or a special purpose vehicle)? 

• How will you receive and ringfence funds? Is your responsible body able to ringfence funds? Local authorities can have restrictions on fundraising and spending, so are you set up to attract and use funds flexibly? 

• Who will be making decisions (about how the funds are spent, who delivers the work and where any profits go)? 

• How will you verify standards? Do you need to quantify the outcomes delivered and assure the quality of projects? What resource will you use to do this? 

Develop engagement materials to help start meaningful conversations with potential funders. 

These could include the following approaches: 

• Communicate the benefits of supporting existing trees 

• Educate investors about the wider benefits of green infrastructure 

• Highlight the quantitative ecosystem services that projects provide 

• Visualise what will change with the funder’s support 

• Emphasise what benefits funders will receive 

Think about ways you could leverage your partnerships and use investment models to offer additional social, economic and environmental benefits to an area. For example: 

• Make payments to residents for managing trees 

• Ringfence part of the investment for local skills programmes and employment opportunities to manage trees 

• Build partnerships to co-invest in green infrastructure and housing in a specific location 

• Invest in social prescribing programmes alongside green infrastructure interventions