The Nature Prosperity Pump
Why NatureProsperity Could Signal A New Model For Regenerative Growth
Founded by earth scientist and entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett, NatureProsperity launches with four initial investees: Highlands Rewilding, MAKAR, and two new companies being established in forestry and community building.
For decades, economic growth has largely come at the expense of the natural world.
Forests cleared. Biodiversity depleted. Communities hollowed out. Housing crises deepening. Rural economies left behind. But across the Scottish Highlands, a different model is beginning to emerge. One that asks a radical question:
What if restoring nature could also create homes, jobs and long-term prosperity?
NatureProsperity is a new investment company created to channel long-term capital into nature recovery, affordable housing and resilient rural communities.
Founded by earth scientist and entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett, founder of Solarcentury, SolarAid and Highlands Rewilding, NatureProsperity launches with four initial investees: Highlands Rewilding, affordable timber-home builder MAKAR, alongside two new companies being established in forestry and community building. Together, they form the foundations of a new kind of regenerative economy.
Beyond Sustainability
Reframing nature as economic infrastructure
What makes NatureProsperity particularly compelling is that it moves beyond traditional sustainability narratives. This is not simply a conservation project. Nor is it a housing initiative operating in isolation.It is an attempt to rethink how economies function altogether. Nature recovery becomes job creation. Forestry becomes housing infrastructure. Regeneration becomes economic resilience.
The model responds directly to some of the defining challenges facing rural Scotland today: biodiversity decline, depopulation and a severe lack of affordable housing for the very people needed to restore landscapes at scale. NatureProsperity is designed to close that loop. To keep land in nature and people on the land.
Homes Built From Forests
How MAKAR is helping bring the vision to life
One of NatureProsperity’s key investees is MAKAR, the Inverness-based timber housing manufacturer known for its low-carbon, Passivhaus-standard homes.
Built using locally sourced Scottish timber, MAKAR homes are designed to lock away around one tonne of CO2 per cubic metre of wood while dramatically reducing operational energy demand. The company’s precision off-site manufacturing system is currently capable of producing up to 30 homes per year, with ambitions to scale alongside growing demand for affordable timber housing.
Earlier this year, Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney visited MAKAR’s prototype Paradigm home, describing the company’s work as an example of how innovation and creativity can accelerate Scotland’s housing ambitions while improving long-term outcomes for residents.
In NatureProsperity’s wider model, these homes become more than housing. They become infrastructure for regeneration.
Scotland As A Living Prototype
A new vision for rural resilience
At South Bunloit near Loch Ness, NatureProsperity’s vision is already beginning to take physical shape. The estate is set to become the NatureProsperity Resilience Reserve, a living test-bed for the model where woodland creation, peatland restoration, food forests and affordable timber housing operate as part of one interconnected system.
Highlands Rewilding is already managing the land for biodiversity recovery and carbon sequestration, while future plans include small-scale timber housing for workers and community-led ventures. The ambition is not simply to restore landscapes. It is to create thriving rural economies rooted in nature recovery. And if successful, Jeremy Leggett believes the model could be replicated elsewhere.
A Different Vision Of Prosperity
Why this story matters now
At a time when much of the climate conversation is framed around sacrifice, restriction and decline, NatureProsperity offers something fundamentally different.
A vision of prosperity built through restoring the living systems we depend on.One where climate resilience, biodiversity recovery, affordable housing and economic opportunity are no longer treated as competing priorities, but interconnected outcomes of the same system.
For Blue Earth, this is exactly the kind of bold, systems-level thinking needed to shape the next generation of regenerative business. Not incremental sustainability or isolated climate solutions. But entirely new economic models capable of rebuilding the relationship between people, nature and prosperity itself. And perhaps that is the bigger story emerging from the Highlands: The early blueprint for an economy designed to regenerate rather than extract.