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Local Authorities and Sustainable Peatland Management: Current Opportunities and Future Possibilities for Local Approaches
In England, Greater Manchester Council’s Environment Fund is supporting the development, scale and verification for carbon and habitat banking, aiming for a £5 million annual turnover to finance new habitats, tree planting and peat restoration. 4 National Parks UK has been developing a funding-systems to support nature-based solutions at scale in National Parks. It has set up an organisation, Revere, to bring together NPAs with landowners and companies to develop nature restoration projects, including peat restoration. Learning from the initiatives in different National Parks will then be shared across them.
Ensuring the appropriate nature of peatland restoration works.
Regulation of land use by private landowners generally relies on the land use planning system. Broadly speaking, where a project requires planning permission it is brought into a regulatory system that ensures it will be in the public interest (or at least not have a significant adverse effect in this regard). In England and Wales there is no specific reference to peatland restoration projects in land use planning laws. Generally, they are not considered to require planning permission despite the wide definitions of ‘engineering works’ and ‘other operations’. However, in Scotland, recent legislation has specifically set out the circumstances in which this may be considered to be permitted development. Ensuring the landowner complies with the agreement – t his is a significant problem. At present, the system relies on the enforceability of the agreement. In a 30-year agreement circumstances may change considerably. Land management agreements can be provided that will bind future owners of the land. As noted above this may prove to be disincentive to entering into the agreement. There are also significant issues related to the monitoring and enforcement of such land management agreements. The regulatory possibilities for private finance initiatives related to SPM require further consideration. The Peatland Code is still in its infancy, and it may be that it is beneficial to first consider and review its operation after a reasonable period of time. However, it is notable that the Lead Partner for projects in Wales that currently exist, or are under development, with the Peatland Code is either NRW, a government or charitable organisation. This may not always be the case and the more private individuals involved in the system the less trust there may be.
4 Louise Evans Local Authorities and the Sixth Carbon Budget (Climate Change Committee, 2020) p.32
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