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At the moment, funding for natural
capital investment is ad-hoc and issue-
specific. Grant schemes only provide
partial recompense for the value of
investments and land managers are
obliged to meet the difference.
Where these
investments are
largely for the public
good, the market
often does not create
a sufficient incentive
for landowners
to invest.
The third role of catchment
commissioners would be to
commission widespread, long-term
investment in natural capital across
landscapes. Using opportunity
maps, and drawing together funding
from multiple sources, catchment
commissioners could create new
revenues for encouraging investment,
with long-term certainty that land
use change will be rewarded.
Investment should be guided by
ecological opportunity mapping, but
completed by appropriate bids from
landowners in the catchment.
For example, a commissioner may
open a tender for investment in
habitat creation with air quality and
flood mitigation benefits, and accept
a tree-planting bid from a landowner
close by and upstream of a town;
another area may require investment
in habitat that brings water quality
and amenity benefits, leading to
investment in sustainable urban
drainage options.
There are already multiple sources
of funding that can pay for change.
Established funding sources
include the Regional Growth Fund,
the Heritage Lottery Fund, S.106
agreements, and the Landfill
Community Fund.
However, these are often invested
inefficiently and hard to coordinate
because of barriers of timing,
co-financing requirements, and
incompatible terms of reference.
A long-term, landscape scale, multi-
benefit approach can amplify the
benefits of every pound spent. In order
to coordinate spending and smooth
over short-term funding horizons,
money should be made available
from these sources for Catchment
Commissioners to pay for natural
capital investment.
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