Mission-Oriented Public Policy for Nature Recovery

Natural ecosystems and the benefits they provide continue to decline. A dominant narrative views a lack of funding for nature conservation as a major cause, emphasising the need to attract private finance. Governments have historically played a large direct role in tackling societal grand challenges, using ‘mission-oriented’ policies to coordinate public and private institutions for technological innovation. We conduct an expert workshop to identify policies for delivering nature recovery in England and perceptions of their feasibility, showing an inverse correlation between experts’ perceptions of policies’ impact at delivering nature recovery, and their feasibility. We then explore how these policies relate to the policy toolkit applied in mission-oriented strategy and demonstrate how missions-thinking can be applied to nature recovery. Many policies proposed fall within the conventional mission-oriented policy toolkit (clearly defining the mission, policy coordination, strategic public procurement, public investment in fundamental innovation and public goods, conditional financing, public engagement). However, experts also proposed various policies associated with greater direct regulation of ecological harms, indicating their perception that nature recovery is unlikely to be delivered through shaping markets to deliver technological innovations alone. We conclude by considering future directions and challenges for the implementation of mission-oriented policy for nature conservation.