Countryside: Land use

The countryside is central to local and national identities across the UK. As well as providing a home for millions, our image of the countryside often brings reassurance and comfort for those living in cities. But our landscape of green fields and rolling hills can mask a very different reality: depleted soils, greenhouse gas emissions and the disappearance of wildlife. The beauty of our countryside and the iconic picturesque village also obscure some of the realities of rural life, with many places struggling with chronic underinvestment, low wages, unaffordable housing and an ageing population. With this backdrop, people in their communities are already thinking more carefully about how we use the land, how we re-energise rural communities, invest in infrastructure and create the jobs we need for the regenerative economy. In creative and inspiring ways they’re working on restoring the countryside to bring image and reality together.

Scotland’s Land Use Strategy

Prof. Lorna Dawson, James Hutton Institute

A strategy for how land is used is essential for understanding change in multifunctional sustainable landscapes. As the commitments to climate change in the UK are increasing, a land use strategy provides a potentially dynamic tool to catalyse landscapescale management, especially if the CAP incentives are harmonised with a landscape-level policy.

Scotland’s Land Use Strategy (LUS) is a key commitment of Section 57 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. The revised Land Use Strategy builds on the experience of the two Regional Land Use Pilots in Aberdeenshire and the Scottish Borders, which independently tested two innovative approaches to local land use decision-making.

The key aim of the pilots was to use the Ecosystem Approach to create a framework which summarises policy and environmental information for users and indicates where certain types of land use change might be either beneficial or detrimental in line with policy goals and climate change mitigation. This work was set in the context of the five main policy areas of the Land Use Strategy — see overleaf.

The Aberdeenshire pilot built their ‘approach’ around an interactive web tool that was designed to stimulate discussion by exploring different options of land use change and their consequences. For example, this showed where expanding woodlands would improve water quality the most. The tool aids decisions about land use change to better deliver policy objectives and highlight trade-offs. It aimed to rank and map areas according to suitability for the proposed change (e.g. woodland expansion) but where other benefits (e.g. recreation opportunities) or problems (e.g. poor water quality) can be identified.

The Aberdeenshire project concentrated on one major example of land use change: afforestation along with three ecosystem services — nutrient retention, soil/sediment retention and carbon storage. Using the web tool, the user could explore the effect of altering the weighting of related groups of criteria on suitability for the land use change in question, and so produce a map to visualise the effect of the change. Results were then discussed with a range of land managers in a series of interactive workshops which were held across the region.

The Scottish Borders pilot placed significant emphasis on stakeholder engagement and on detailed mapping of key ecosystem services, using available data sources and state-of-the-art assessment methodologies. Over 40 stakeholder meetings were held across 7 sub-catchments of the Tweed, chosen to reflect the range of current and future land use and land management challenges. These were used to assist prioritising ecosystem services for mapping; validation of methods and for discussing emerging results. A series of maps were generated to demonstrate: 1) existing Natural Capital, 2) opportunities for enhancement/ expansion of target Ecosystem Services, 3) maps showing potential constraints/conflicts between services, and 4) maps detailing where expansion of services could lead to co-delivery of other multiple benefits.

One of the strengths of the Borders pilot was the development of a publically available, mapbased tool which can be used for targeting the delivery of ecosystem services through co-ordinated action on the ground. Tweed Forum partners continue to promote the approach, for example through opportunity target mapping within conservation projects, and through mapping woodland planting opportunities to deliver multiple benefits, including Natural Flood Management and Diffuse Pollution control.

What both pilots showed was the need for a strategy for how we use land; which could underpin the agri-environment schemes of the future and help catalyse landscape-scale management to meet climate change targets. Currently the Land Use Strategy in Scotland is a series of voluntary guidelines, and much could now be gained by reviewing what the Welsh Government have since achieved with the legal framing of objectives and roles for delivery. To fulfil its potential the Scottish Government will need to renew its commitment to such an integrated strategy, as momentum has faltered.

Peatland restoration

Dumfries

Emily Taylor

The Crichton Carbon Centre, established in 2007, is an environmental charity that was set up as a direct response to the need to help people and government learn and adapt to climate change.

We blend academic and applied work with the mission of enabling change and turning research into action. We strive to realise ‘action on the ground’ and work hard to develop partnerships and build relationships with communities, land managers, businesses, schools and other environmental organisations. We have developed and delivered a range of projects since our inception, including the first UK Carbon Management Master’s Degree Programme in collaboration with the University of Glasgow and a 10-year programme of environmental and climate change education for local schools.

As a small charity that receives no core funding, we are always striving to develop new projects, identify and apply for funding while delivering our suite of current projects. This ongoing cycle of time limited projects makes it difficult to build our capacity and invest in staff over the long-term as funding for staff can seldom be permanent. Following the vote to leave the EU this was particularly apparent as uncertainty around EU funding mechanisms meant it was very difficult to develop the large-scale projects that would have supported our staff.

In response, we went through a period of revaluation and sadly had to make the decision to make some redundancies, reduce our core costs, even move our office premises to reduce our overheads. This period, however, allowed us to revisit our ambitions and develop smaller projects that would really showcase our unique position and expertise, particularly on peatland restoration and management for carbon benefits. This led to us working on UK government funded projects and becoming a key organisation delivering the national Peatland ACTION programme of peatland restoration in Scotland. We’ve now developed a unique programme for Peatland ACTION to deliver training for contractors, land managers and consultants to improve their understanding of restoration so we can build capacity for long-term, national-scale, best practice.

Our new approach to how we fund our work; developing and delivering projects, not always large-scale in terms of budget, but those that absolutely provide real world advice, information and support, has allowed us to be seen as ‘doers’ and be more reactive and opportunistic. This is of particular importance for us now, during this time of great change both politically and environmentally. We are striving to be at the forefront of taking concepts, for example payments for ecosystem services, and understanding and establishing how these concepts can go on to underpin how we manage our countryside.

I think, personally, what I have realised is that the key to our success over the years is our ability to foster meaningful relationships with everyone from schools and land managers, to academics and governments. The power of plain talking, listening and understanding everyone’s points of view can help establish working partnerships which go on to result in real world change. By celebrating this as one of our strengths and unique selling points, we have established ourselves as small but very effective!

Natural flood management

Stroud

Rosemary McCloskey

Like other parts of Gloucestershire, the Stroud Valleys suffered extensive flooding during the summer of 2007, which impacted 200 homes. The Environment Agency has since identified the Slad Valley as a rapid response catchment, at risk of destructive flash flooding similar to the event that destroyed parts of Boscastle in Cornwall.

Over the years, communities and authorities have realised that the River Frome and its tributaries are not suited to hard engineered solutions to the issue. This is in part due to the physical nature of the catchment and the distribution of the properties at risk, but also due to the heritage and aesthetic value of the Stroud valleys.

In 2012, the Environment Agency commissioned a report into the feasibility and potential benefits of implementing natural flood management (NFM) (also called rural sustainable drainage) throughout the catchment of the Frome and associated tributaries. Acting on the findings, a formal partnership was formed between Stroud District Council, Gloucestershire County Council, The Environment Agency and the Wye Regional Flood and Coastal Committee to employ a project officer to work with the community to identify and implement measures across the 250km2 Frome catchment.

The project approach

The Stroud Rural Sustainable Drainage project takes a locally driven approach, putting people at the forefront, building relationships between the community and landowners. It has helped strengthen community ties and understanding of NFM, as well as providing the NFM interventions at a low cost using local labour and volunteers.

As of January 2019, the project had worked with 19 land managers to implement 400 plus NFM interventions throughout the catchment. Implementing these many schemes across such a large proportion of the catchment has been possible due to the innovative approach:

• Designed and implemented by local organisations and people using local knowledge and building on natural processes and techniques.
• Co-designed with the landowners and community groups, which has meant much of the emphasis has been on establishing long-term working relationships between these groups.
• Interventions often built by landowners or their contractors, using local materials and building skills and capacity.
• A network of many small-scale interventions spread at strategic locations across the whole catchment, building in greater resilience.
• The interventions designed to be multi-functional to achieve a number of outcomes, for example; introducing large woody material into smaller water courses in woodland areas; creating informal and more formal attenuation in woodland and grassland riparian areas using low bunds and berms, timber flow diversion structures and targeted tree planting to increase infiltration or flow complexity.

Learning from doing

The Stroud Rural Sustainable Drainage Project started as a pilot scheme to work with a range of partners to trial and develop NFM techniques throughout the Frome catchment. The success and positive uptake and response to the project has been down to the extensive partnership working with the community. Although there was an initial consultation report developed at the beginning of the project, which identified key sites and areas to work in, we have largely taken an opportunistic approach to developing schemes in the Frome catchment where it is safe and feasible to do so.

We’ve learned, over the course of the project, that having a few practical projects on the ground in order to showcase the learning and demonstrate the project objectives is critical in order to build trust and understanding of the methods. It is important to celebrate the wins of an ‘every little helps’ approach and this encourages landowners to spread the message to their neighbours.

Utilising local contractors and involving landowners themselves in the design and implementation of the measures has been important. A key piece of learning it that NFM techniques are not a one-size-fits-all approach. Every site and every catchment have their own unique characteristics, which is why it is important to be as flexible and adaptable as possible in the planning and implementation of the scheme. Identifying and reducing barriers to participation helps to achieve wins for all involved.

Whilst natural flood management is not a new concept, the evidence base for the methodologies is still being developed. One of the challenges of the Stroud project (and all NFM projects) is to provide evidence of the benefits.

We are working with a range of different organisations to implement a partnership approach to monitoring and researching NFM within the catchment. Establishing a monitoring partnership is not without its challenges including resourcing monitoring activities, standardising methods, sharing data and information, and diverging interests and agendas. It can be challenging to gain comparable data over short timescales for NFM; multi-year approaches must be planned in order to maximise the opportunity to gain valuable data.

Whilst it befalls all flood management authorities, NFM practitioners and landowners/residents to demonstrate the benefits of NFM from a social, environmental and economic perspective; we would include the caveat that gathering the scientific evidence should not mean that projects with smaller budgets, limited resources or other likewise constraints cannot go ahead because of the burden of proof. It is key that we continue to expand knowledge and the practical skills base around developing nature-based solutions. NFM should be about mimicking natural processes and building on what’s already there. We would hope to see NFM methods adopted as part of standard land and woodland management practices, and that flood risk management authorities continue to find ways to support the community and local environmental organisations to work with natural processes to reduce flood risk and improve resilience to environmental change.

Trees for timber

John Makepeace

Parnham College was established in 1979 to provide integrated courses in design, making and management for aspiring furniture-makers. In 1983, the college acquired Hooke Park, a 350 acre forest in Dorset, and used the by-products of woodland management for all the structural components for building the new campus, especially forest thinnings from 5–10cms in diameter. The College amalgamated with the Architectural Association in 2002.

We worked with a top flight of foresters, architects, structural engineers, material scientists, and chemists on the design of the buildings at Hooke Park. Many of the conventional barriers to these processes were bridged by the collaborative research programmes which preceded each building. This allowed us to develop the technologies to exploit the best properties of the materials. As no Building Codes existed for the use of forest thinnings, the research findings and the proposed designs had to be approved by the Department of Environment.

Given the unprecedented form of construction, the building costs were hard for quantity surveyors to predict. This was most pronounced on the workshops, where costs substantially exceeded the forecast, leaving me the task of raising funds retrospectively to meet the overrun.

Despite the overruns, the extraordinary quality of the buildings provides a wonderful educational environment. These technologies have now been further developed at the Weald and Downland Museum and the Savill Gardens building at Windsor. The Duke of Edinburgh even took a personal interest in the initiative at Hooke, and oak from the estate at Windsor was used at Savill Gardens, where they worked with the same structural engineers, Buro Happold.

Students are encouraged to utilise timber from the surrounding forest in their designs, and new experimental buildings are partially built by students. Being based within the woodland, they begin to understand the whole culture of woodland management and how to use materials more intelligently. The woods are a wonderful resource for the students.

I’m currently planning several other initiatives to encourage design and architectural students and practitioners to be more entrepreneurial in developing businesses that make better use of our indigenous forest produce, especially hardwoods. It is all about using land sustainably and for multiple purposes — intelligent forestry.

It would make a huge difference if government legislation recognised and encouraged, not only the planting of trees, but the social, economic and environmental benefits of adding value through local enterprise.