A year of change

Teresa Dent CBE, Chief Executive

The new ELM scheme seeks to reward farmers for the delivery of environmental goods and services – the provision of Natural Capital. © Peter Thompson COP26 has helpfully focused the debate on both climate change and biodiversity loss – a balance rather than biodiversity playing second fiddle. Launch of a new Advisory Service - GWCT Natural Capital Advisory. Thank you to all our staff, trustees, donors and members for their incredible support in 2021.

2021 was a year of change, and one of the changes was the narrative. COP26 means everything is now framed within the narrative of the climate change crisis and the biodiversity crisis. COP26 put equal weight on biodiversity, meaning policy should not sacrifice wildlife in the pursuit of carbon sequestration. A good thing as it should mean it’s possible to manage heather uplands for curlew as well as for people and peatland restoration. A balance, not a single objective.

Alongside that, as Minette Batters, President of the NFU has been saying, we are seeing the biggest change to farming and countryside since 1947. In 2020, we saw the introduction of the Westminster Agricultural Bill laying the path for Defra’s new Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, which seeks to reward farmers for the delivery of environmental goods and services – the provision of Natural Capital (see page 6). Then we had the passing of the Westminster Environment Bill in 2021 which set out the concept of biodiversity net gain and future environmental trades.

And if that were not enough, the pressures on game management also escalated. In Wales, the Government continued its pressure to stop shooting as a leisure activity which risks losing the biodiversity net gain in the Welsh countryside that goes with good game management (see page 8). In Scotland the decision was made to go further than the recommendations of the Werritty Review of Driven Grouse Moor Management and look to license driven grouse shooting alongside the banning of mountain hare culling (see page 7). In England releasing gamebirds on European Protected sites now needs a licence, albeit a General Licence.

Natural Capital works well for sustainable game and wildlife management. The latter by definition delivers a net biodiversity gain and therefore an increase in natural capital. It’s a concept that the game management community should embrace. It is also how species recovery and environmental goods and services are going to be delivered in the future.

Defra has accepted that there is an enormous funding gap between environmental outcomes it would like to achieve in the countryside and what it can afford through taxpayers’ schemes like ELM. It wants to bridge the gap with private sector finance and create what it calls a blended finance model. Much of this blended finance will come in through environmental trades, which means farmers and land managers trading their ability to deliver a net biodiversity gain, carbon sequestration, nutrient reduction in rivers and natural flood management. During 2021, the GWCT has been working with farmers to think about how they can deliver key environmental outcomes and achieve