Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Natural Capital Advisory (NCA) is coming to Wales after growing successful operation with groups of farmers working together to maximise the income from Natural Capital trading.
NCA’s mission is to use its expertise in natural science and business to deliver the very best environmental and financial outcomes from the Natural Capital sector.
Sue Evans Director Wales said “We were pleased to welcome Chris Sparrow Managing Director of GWCT’s Natural Capital Advisory to speak at our stand at the Royal Welsh Show. He explained how NCA is putting the farmers in a position of strength when going to market to trade on their natural capital. As we believe is best practice, GWCT is working from a bottom-up model providing farmers with the tools they need to maximise rewards in this new market.”
NCA has four main activity areas:
- Biodiversity Auditing - For farms and estates, NCA provides baseline biodiversity audits. These audits are used to quantify the current baseline and the potential practical headroom available to trade biodiversity in the future. NCA has completed over 60 audits to date.
- Convening - NCA brings together groups of farmers and landowners for the purposes of Natural Capital trading. In England, NCA services three convened farmer groups covering 2.3% of England's farmed landmass. These groups build a critical mass of land, which not only gives the convened groups both buying and selling power, but also gives investors one point of contact through which trading can be facilitated.
- Brokering - NCA brokers trading of Natural Capital services between farmers, investors and buyers. With its partner organisations, it has a strong network of connections throughout farming, green finance, legal, accounting, surveying and investor communities.
- Monitoring - NCA provides ongoing monitoring of environmental contracts. These are either plans put in place to ensure that environmental projects meet the requirements of any trading agreement or to give farms and estates an understanding of how much environmental gain is being delivered by their project.
To find out more about NCA and the services it offers, please find out more by visiting www.naturalcapitaladvisory.co.uk and email nca@gwct.org.uk.