Learning from the past and embracing future opportunities: Perceptions of new Environmental Land Management Schemes and private nature markets

The combination of Brexit and UK government targets, e.g., to address climate change and biodiversity loss, has accelerated the development of new Agri-environmental Scheme (AES), the Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS). To improve ELMS design and implementation, it is timely to understand farmers' and farm advisers’ views on these schemes, including their design, rollout and fit with pre-existing and new nature markets, e.g., carbon, Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). Previous research has assessed AES for their attractiveness to farmers and effectiveness. This study examines new challenges associated with the increasing role of the private sector in funding nature recovery on farms, expected increased levels of participation and an increased requirement for collaboration to deliver landscape-scale nature recovery.
To understand how this new policy landscape is perceived by the agricultural sector, 18 interviews were conducted with farmers and advisors (farmer advisors and nature market experts). Findings show that perceptions are shaped by previous involvement with AES (e.g., payment rates, participation costs, inflexibility) which although largely negative, highlight areas for better scheme design. New insights on farmer participation emphasise the roles of policy uncertainty, market integrity concerns, and collaboration, including with non-farmers, e.g., conservation organisations, water companies. Slow policy release was stressed as a key reason for low adoption and underscores the importance of aligning AES incentives with policy objectives. Furthermore, participants raised a need for cross market compatibility, compliance flexibility and fundamental questions about achieving carbon neutrality as a prerequisite for carbon market participation. On the positive side, participants agreed that new schemes/markets are breaking down social barriers through the necessity to work with a wider group of stakeholders and have been a driver for increasing interest in farm clusters.