We recently celebrated Tellus Natural Capital’s first anniversary, which seems an appropriate moment to take stock and review what we’ve done over the past year. Here’s our Top 5 lessons learned:

The Committee for Climate Change has published its 2022 Progress Report to Parliament, issuing a strong call for the Government to match its policy commitments with real action and promising to monitor key indicators of the Government’s progress against the Net Zero Strategy.

Our COO, Kate Russell, attended a Farming Forum hosted in his constituency by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, with the Defra Minister for Farming, Victoria Prentis in May 2022. Kate took the opportunity to raise the issue of inheritance tax reliefs for agricultural land in environmental agreements. The current definition of “agriculture” for Agricultural Property Relief seems unlikely to cover land which is no longer in active agricultural use, where, for example, it is being managed for nature recovery, and this is deterring some landowners from participation. Kate asked the Chancellor to review the current definitions and offered an “oven ready” solution, which is explained below.

Any development creating overnight accommodation in a catchment where a protected waterbody is affected by nutrient pollution will have to demonstrate nutrient neutrality – either by installing on-site mitigation measures or by off-setting through nutrient credits. 74 local authorities in England are now affected.

The Government has issued a flurry of papers and announcements on its plans to boost nature recovery as it seeks to find ways to reach its “30 by 30” target to protect 30% of the land and sea by 2030.

The Environment Act 2021 created the principle of statutory Biodiversity Net Gain, which will require most development in England to deliver a 10% increase in “biodiversity units”. The Government is now consulting on the regulations which will include much of the detail of how this requirement will work in practice. This note outlines the key issues raised in the consultation.

I enjoy getting out and about at the weekends to explore our wonderfully diverse country and often head for the hills or a rural riverside to immerse myself in nature. Recently, though, I ventured into the unfamiliar territory of industrial Teesmouth and I was astonished to find it teeming with curlew.

The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has called for a land use strategy for the UK in order to address the competing demands being made of land, in its report reviewing the potential contribution that “nature-based solutions” can make to the UK’s path to Net Zero.

The importance of nature based solutions with effective monitoring and evaluation in tackling climate change risks is noted by the Government in its the third 5 year Climate Change Risk Assessment for the UK, published on 17th January 2022.

DEFRA has announced more detail about the proposed Local Nature Recovery Scheme and Landscape Recovery Scheme which, together with the Sustainable Farming Incentive, form the “agricultural transition” towards a future where public money funds more “public goods” in England.

More detail has been announced by Defra on the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme, which is due to open in 2022, including the first details on a proposed Moorland and Rough Grazing Soils Standard.

The UK Government published both its Net Zero Strategy and its Heat and Buildings Strategy on 19th October 2021. We summarise what we think are the key points for rural landowners to consider from the two Strategies.

In early autumn 2021 Tellus Natural Capital Ltd invited landowners, scientists, politicians and others interested in upland management to an official launch event with the theme “Shaping the Future of Natural Capital in the Uplands”.

“A healthy environment and a vibrant economy can go hand in hand, and indeed must do, otherwise we will have neither.”

Many landowners will recognise the truth of this statement, if not regard it as self-evident, but the UK’s nature conservation agencies are now driving home this message more urgently than ever before.

This week Kate Russell from the Tellus Natural Capital team attended the virtual IUCN Peatland Conference 2021. With dozens of presentations on a wide variety of subjects over four days, she has distilled some of the key messages from the event for landowners of peatlands with an interest in natural capital.

Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS) are intended to drive better planning for nature restoration and recovery at a local level, within a national framework for England. These Strategies have the potential to become widely used tools for land use decision-making by local authorities, NGOs and others, so it is important that landowners understand what they are and how to get involved in producing them.

In June 2021 Natural England published its Action Plan in which it set out its intention to play a key role in the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment pilot which should fill some important gaps in data….