Natural Capital Advisory - a new GWCT initiative

Roger Draycott, Director of Advisory & Education

Blended finance from developers will become a key part of funding future environmental delivery. © Peter Thompson

GWCT Advisory has set up a subsidiary company – Natural Capital Advisory. Activity includes biodiversity offsetting projects, nutrient offsetting and, in the future, carbon sequestration projects.

The GWCT Advisory Service has provided conservation advice to the farming and land management community for generations. In the early days, the habitat that was created and managed by farmers to support game and wildlife was entirely privately funded by the farmers and landowners themselves. Since the introduction of public sector support for habitats through agri-environment schemes, much of our advice has been to help farmers utilise these schemes to provide maximum benefit for wildlife. Many of the options in agri-environment schemes supporting wildlife are based on GWCT research, including beetle banks, wild bird cover, late winter supplementary feeding and conservation headlands, and our advisors have worked with farmers to maximise the benefits of these options for wildlife. Looking to the future, in England the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS), which will replace Countryside Stewardship, will provide financial support for individual farmers and groups of farmers working together at the landscape-scale to continue to provide wildlife habitat on farmland. The devolved nations have not yet made clear the extent or nature of their agri-environment climate schemes, but some public payment for environmental goods and services delivery seems likely.

Although it is widely accepted that the phasing out of direct support for the farming sector through the withdrawal of the Basic Payment Scheme will significantly negatively impact the finances of the majority of farms, we believe there are significant opportunities for farmers to access private sector funding to help finance habitat provision and management through ‘natural capital’ initiatives. There are three potential areas of interest for the farming sector: biodiversity offsetting; carbon trading; and nutrient offsetting. The Advisory Service has launched a new subsidiary, Natural Capital Advisory (NCA) which will be working closely with Recce Rural (an independent rural surveying company) to offer a comprehensive service of advice and trading in natural capital markets. Blended finance models will be a key part of funding future environmental delivery. By blended finance we mean a combination of Government finance through ELMS and private finance from large corporates, water companies and developers which are becoming known as environmental trades. These environmental trades are an opportunity for farmers to deliver biodiversity net gain, nutrient reduction and/or carbon sequestration and be rewarded by the market place. For example, developers will need to offset the biodiversity that is lost by building on an area of land and show a minimum 10% biodiversity net gain in the offset; a developer

who wishes to link a new property to the sewage system within a catchment that has a high level of phosphate in the river water, needs to be able to demonstrate that the new phosphate load can be offset (often by means of a reed bed).

Our new subsidiary will be managed by the GWCT’s Advisory team. They are already delivering work for clients by undertaking baseline biodiversity audits for business planning purposes and helping in the formation and running of an exciting new farming co-operative, the Environmental Farmers Group (EFG). The EFG is working collectively to seek new funding opportunities through biodiversity credits, carbon trading and nutrient (phosphate and nitrate) offsetting. The Advisory Service remains committed to continuing to offer specialist conservation advice to the farming and game management sector and this exciting new area of activity has the potential to deliver fantastic opportunities for the natural environment and farm businesses.

For further details please contact advisory@gwct.org.uk.

Our advisors are already helping clients improve biodiversity on their farms (above) and undertaking audits to record species such as birds and butterflies on specially created habitats such as beetle banks (below). © Peter Thompson

GWCT BIODIVERSITY ASSESSMENTS

The GWCT’s experienced and respected team of advisors offer bespoke Shoot Biodiversity Assessments providing an independent expert report on best practice and biodiversity gain on individual shoots. For more information please see gwct.org.uk/shootbiodiversity or contact the advisory team on 01425 651013.