Nature Improvement Areas

The government first proposed a commitment to Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs) in the Natural Environment White Paper published in June, earmarking £7.5m of funding to create 12 areas between 10,000ha and 50,000ha across England.

While the concept behind the NIAs could help to tackle a number of environmental challenges, their introduction is not without implications for farmers, landowners and land managers.

Indeed, you could find that, without prior consultation, your land-based business is sitting within the boundaries of an NIA.

Landscape scale

The NIA concept builds upon “landscape scale” working, where collective action is taken across a multitude of land holdings to address core objectives such as improving water quality in rivers and streams, and enhancing and creating areas of wildlife habitat.

Farmers and land managers have already been working at “landscape scale” through the Catchment Sensitive Farming initiatives, or even undertaking dedicated management to help individual species – for example, through the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Grey Partridge recovery project. NIAs propose taking the best of these concepts.

The main focus of NIAs will be to restore ecological networks for wildlife within their boundaries by ensuring core wildlife sites are being managed, new linkages are created between habitats, new areas of habitat are created and that areas of land surrounding all of these elements are managed in a “wildlife-friendly” way.

Planning policy

However, unlike the voluntary “landscape approaches”, NIAs are to be underpinned by planning policy which will have implications for every rural business within a designated area.

It is unclear why the government feels a voluntary approach should be underpinned by planning policy when existing landscape scale projects have proved to work well without it. This protectionist approach will stifle economic development in rural areas and could prevent farmers and land managers from lending their support to an NIA project.

Funding

Another question begging to be answered is how the environmental land management proposed through NIAs will be funded.

While it is completely appropriate that funding through Higher Level Stewardship and the England Woodland Grant Scheme should be used to fund management where priorities overlap, these schemes cannot be solely expected to support management within an NIA.

To do so would put other important features in the countryside outside of NIAs at risk.

The CLA is challenging the panel assessing the NIA bids to ensure new sources of funding are found. Only then will farmers and land managers within NIAs have the opportunity to considera new income stream to support their environmental management.

William Worsley is president of the CLA