The scheme will double in value, helping more Crown Estate farmers transfer boost revenue through ecosystem projects.
Now valued at £20million, the Crown Estate’s Rural Environment Fund aims to agricultural businesses in transitioning and diversifying their interests. This leads to ‘better outcomes for food production, nature recovery’ and income, according to a press release announcing the increased investment.
A number of targets and measures have been set out for the first stage of the new finance initiative. These include:
- Marine & coastal environment: Integrate nature as a priority into the Marine Delivery Routemap. Identify the most suitable locations for nature recovery across our marine and coastal portfolio to support accelerated delivery of improvements across marine and coastal habitats by 2030 in close collaboration with others. This includes doubling the area leased to marine and coastal nature recovery-focused activities by 2030.
- Ruralenvironment: Repurpose 15% of farmland let on new tenancies to nature recovery by 2030 and restore or start creating Habitats of Principal Importance (HoPI), backed by a £20m Rural Environment Fund. The Crown Estate is also committed to developing shared visions for nature recovery with graziers with common rights and other stakeholders in Wales and Cumbria and delivering action plans by 2030.
- Windsor Estate: Enhance and expand nature recovery within the Windsor Estate including increasing the area of Habitats of Principal Importance (HoPI) such as parkland and heathland, and to restore or create 25 waterbodies and wetlands providing wildlife rich habitats by 2030.
- Urban & built environment: Protect and grow nature-rich green and blue spaces across our urban portfolio and commit to exceed mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements by targeting 15% BNG where we are the developer.
You can read the full report here.
Schemes will contribute to The Crown Estate’s 2030 climate adaptation and resilience across land and sea areas. So far, efforts have led to the planting of 300km of new hedgerows and 280 hectares of new woodland across the organisation’s farmlands.
A Crown Estate 15-year environmental Farm Business Tenancy has been developed with the Tenant Farmers Association to introduce ‘guardrails and opportunities’ for both the landlord and the company operating the land itself. Meanwhile, $50million has already been spent on Offshore Wind Evidence & Change programme, analysing the relationship between renewable infrastructure in marine areas and nature, improving future decisions.
‘We’ve set a clear ambition across our diverse business to enable and deliver nature recovery in rural, urban and marine environments. The new measures and targets outlined today demonstrate our commitment to be transparent and accountable for progress against our goals and help us deliver on our purpose of creating lasting and shared prosperity for the nation,’ said Anna Swaithes, Chief Sustainability Officer at The Crown Estate.
‘It’s clear that on nature recovery we can’t take a piecemeal approach nor deliver in isolation; we must act on this challenge across the breadth of our business,’ she continued. ‘We’ve worked with a number of customers and supply chain partners to create our ambition and to start to accelerate action, and look forward to the continuation of those partnerships to deliver upon our goals.’
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Image: Werner Sevenster via Unsplash