Place-based investment offers lifeline to left-behind towns
Partnerships between investors and locals deliver both social and financial returns
To solve our greatest social and environmental challenges, we need to make more capital impact capital, and more stakeholders impact stakeholders. We teamed up with Financial Times to show that all investors can be impact investors.
FT’s special report looks at funds that put social pay-offs first — from greener energy in Nigeria to new jobs in the UK. Plus: pharma’s funding gap, biodiversity credits, and faith-based finance.
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Across the UK, more than one in four children live in poverty. In the North of England, according to a report published last month, that rises to one in three. The current cost of living crisis is affecting everyone, but it is having a disproportionately severe impact on families that were already struggling. What is sometimes forgotten is that the consequences of poverty are felt not just in individual households, but in whole neighbourhoods. However, new models of investment can address this challenge.
The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and historic under-investment have all combined to tip entire communities that were ‘just about managing’ into ‘not managing at all’. Bringing more inclusive, sustainable growth to these communities has never been so urgently required, both to address immediate needs and so that people do not have to leave the place they love in order to find economic opportunities, or affordable housing, or childcare.
