Title: Environmental Land Management Scheme Test Pilot – Natural Capital Accounts for Cholderton & Snoddington Manor Estates
Client: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Cholderton Estate & Snoddington Manor Estate
Year: 2021
Service area(s): Accounting for Natural Capital
Country/region: UK
eftec team: Ece Özdemiroğlu, Duncan Royle
About the project
This was a Defra Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme Test and Trial project with the purpose of demonstrating how natural capital accounting can be used to put the “public money for public goods” principle of the ELM scheme into practice. Both estates are in the same area on the Hampshire and Wiltshire border and are mixed farms but operate significantly differently.
For each estate, we prepared a baseline for natural capital account showing the extent, condition and benefits of the assets and the costs for maintaining them. This account pointed the priority areas (to support benefits, to reduce decline in the assets etc.) for a Land Management Plan (LMP) for each estate.
The test shows that the proposed accounting process works, namely, we can:
Produce a baseline natural capital balance sheet to highlight the current extent and condition of natural capital and value of various benefits;
Use this information to inform decisions on proposed Land Management Plans; and
Show the impact of these plans on future natural capital benefits and liabilities in a balance sheet for the LMPs.
Client Feedback:
“I have worked with eftec for over three years on three projects on the Cholderton Estate, and their natural capital accounting work has been invaluable in helping us understand the economic value of the benefits and costs of their land management actions, and the potential to improve benefits through better management practices. This is a key step in planning a sustainable future for land management businesses.” - Cholderton Test and Trial project manager