Gloucestershire’s Environmental Land Management Scheme Phase 1, 2 and 3 (2019 – 2023)
Creating an on-farm assessment and analysis methodology for Landscape Recovery using integrated local delivery that helps farmers become investment-ready
Author: Jenny Phelps
Introduction
The ELMs test and trial was conducted by FWAG SouthWest in partnership with the Sustainable Food Trust and supported by five technical partners (UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), Rothamstead Research, Ordnance Survey (OS), Gloucestershire Local Nature Partnership, and Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust).
It investigated three policy questions:
- What could a landscape plan look like?
- Which are the most effective blended finance mechanisms?
- What barriers exist to blended finance?
The trial discovered three necessary features for effective Landscape Plan creation:
- A data and evidence pathway
- Value given to the social and human relationships within the landscape
- A capacity to plan, predict and monitor change
What we did
A significant finding of this trial was that the Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) map (which all local authorities have a statutory duty to produce) can fulfil the required data and evidence pathway. The LNRS map can serve as a foundational landscape plan from which county-wide blended finance opportunities are developed.
This trial demonstrated how existing mechanisms, such as the Public Services Geospatial Agreement (PSGA), UK Habitat Classification (UKHab), Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and Global Farm Metric (GFM) framework can enable farmers – with the support of advisers, GIS mapping software and data governance/agreements – to contribute, update and enrich the LNRS with spatial and non-spatial data. There is significant added value from farmers being able to share their data along this pathway via an annual submission.
Challenges we faced
The trial uncovered three key additional findings relating to data and evidence pathways for landscape plans:
- Multiple useful data sources are available for the creation of landscape plans – secondary data from sentinel satellites, topographic layers and remote sensing layers, and primary farm data.
- There is no data layer available to the market that identifies the concrete opportunities a farmer or landowner wants to pursue on their land.
- This trial confirmed that, although advances of technology are assisting data collection, the importance of collecting primary on-farm data cannot be underestimated and must be supported by the UK Government.
Additional project benefits
Effective mechanisms for blended finance can deliver cross-cutting projects aligned to the delivery of local plans and statutory duties for nature, people, and the economy. This can help to identify valuable opportunities not registered by remote sensing and can demonstrate the scale of what farmers want to do on their land. This helps farmers to plan scenarios and consider the wider repercussions of any proposed changes to their farm system resulting from investments or planned projects.
Primary data, including opportunities farmers have identified, is critical to verifying the integrity of project opportunities, improving remote sensing, ecosystem recovery, and sustainability data models.
Landscape plans must include the human and social capital of expertise held by local farmers, specialist advisers and rural facilitators. Using an approach like Integrated Local Delivery (ILD), used in this trial and demonstrated in previous research to Defra[1], advisers and facilitators use their local knowledge and expertise to analyse multiple data streams, contextualise the farm within the landscape/waterbody and scope the social, economic, and environmental opportunities on any farm. ILD enables them to align these opportunities to relevant local, national and international priorities and public, private and third sector funding sources. This is a critical service in the implementation of a landscape plan and development of a blended finance approach.
What next?
The development of a Green Investment Portfolio
Current systems, frameworks and data protocols create a fragmented landscape, and these puzzle pieces must be digitally drawn together and applied consistently for a complete picture of the landscape and a vision for its future. The methodology tested in this trial shows how farmers, along with existing structures that all counties have (LNRS, PSGA and advisor-led farmer networks or partnerships), can support local authorities to create high integrity landscape plans. This could be the foundation of a county wide Green Investment Portfolio of Climate Change adaptation projects which can be developed to harness blended green finance investment.
For the full report and Executive Summary please email jenny.phelps@fwagsw.org.uk
[1] Integrated local delivery https://integratedlocaldelivery.com/