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E168 BNG Round Table: This is Still the First Chapter · Second Nature

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: So we we sit here uh the day after the land use framework was released.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Is it gonna do anything?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Is there any point to it?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: Who's got what?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I happily go.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I actually haven't digested yet, to be honest.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, normal.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_06: So I reckon it's nice, but no cigar.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_06: And I think it's it's soft, it's gentle, it's probably a really important step forward.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_06: But I remember years ago, Dimblebee's, you know, approach to food and nature and similar was talking about the different ways that land needed to be used, and we've kind of sensed this all for quite a long time.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_06: If it had a bit more teeth, so for example, it was something that had to be taken into account by decision makers in a in a meaningful way, could be important.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but really it seems like a lot of aspiration saying things that lots of people have already been saying for quite a long time.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_06: And I don't think it's necessarily going to take us a meaningful step forward towards addressing these inevitable trade-offs in a coherent, predictable way.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_06: And that's what ideally I'd have loved to have seen is something that showed the sector, the nature restoration sector and the development sector, that this is how these um impacts and needs are going to be traded off against each other.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_06: Here's the clear signal to the nature sector to get investing now in nature protections.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_06: You already are doing a lot, but do some more because a lot is going to be happening.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_06: And developers get ready to budget this into your cost of development.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_06: And ideally, that clear signal could have been a predictable sort of mechanism to allow even more investment to really make that whole process run more smoothly, predictably, and affordably.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_06: That's my take.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: I think the hard bit on each of these things, whenever there's another strategy document or a white paper or something, you never know which bit's going to catch and grab attention and actually mean something.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_04: And you look back five years later, and whether it's a desculpture review or a food strategy or something, they each lay an element that gets pieced together to actually move things forward.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: Let's mention the development side of things.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: Fee, how does something like land use strategy get received by a PLC house builder?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: Will they care?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_04: Will they look at it?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_07: I'm I'm not sure.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, you you mentioned teeth there, and we kicked it around yesterday in terms of what would be the teeth.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_07: I think the thing is, as a as a geographer and as a planner, I quite like it.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_07: I like I like anything that looks like a spatial strategy.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_07: I'm like, this is a good idea.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_07: And I I gave it a quick thumb yesterday.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_07: And really, what it does is a bit of he says, she says, doesn't it?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, um, the the farmers think this, and counts and that people and that fat people might think this, and uh, you know, we need to think about energy, and you know, obviously development needs to go in the right place.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_07: It doesn't really say anything new, so it sort of starts to layer things on top of each other, but it's not going to influence place making per se.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_07: I think you know, we've got other uh things, other other plans that will do that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_07: I think, you know, for me the thing that struck out was you know, the headline is we have enough land.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_07: And I was like, well, obviously you are going to come to that conclusion.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_07: But we haven't got a lot of work.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_07: That was gonna be the part, wasn't it?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, we've we have and you know, we're all quite paranoid in this country about the university of land anyway.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_07: So um, I mean, there were some things in it that um that I quite like.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_07: I think it's quite good to say these are the competing elements and we've got to find a way through them.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_07: But no, in planning terms and development terms, you know, we've got we've got local spatial strategies for that.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_07: We're moving back to a to a bit more of a regional model.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_07: There are too many on-the-ground factors that a document of that national scale just can't grapple with with any sensitivity.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_06: And and the sort of the the reasonable, gentle side of me goes, it's actually at least a good start.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_06: But I feel like that start could have happened quite a few years ago.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_06: If we were just gonna say this is what some people think and this is what other people think.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_06: But I think also I thought it was really telling about the order, even just how they ordered it in the document of the priorities, and it was housing, energy, uh, you know, those are clearly priorities right now.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_06: Then I think the good and bad thing, depending on how you look at it, is it's reviewed, they say it will be reviewed every five years.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_06: So that's a good thing in that we might be able to get something more ambitious and meaningful and helpful in five years' time.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_06: But the downside is anything like this needs to have enough continuity to make it work for genuine land use change, which takes decades to bring about, and you know, intergenerational decisions by farming families and institutional landholders.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_06: So I think it's a good and bad thing that only five years means that we're perhaps uh stuck with in ineffective noise for less long, but then on the um downside, it's not very long for investment decisions to be made.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_07: It felt like a bit of a full stop to me.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, and we'll do one in another five years.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_07: We've done that exercise, we said we'd do it.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it it's not going to um there's no implementation plan basically on how to actually make it happen.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_07: And it makes that reference, doesn't it?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_07: About I think it was called adaptive by design.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_07: You know, we'll we'll look at the data, we'll be flexible, and you think how often does that happen?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_07: And the optimist in me says, Well, we know that the data is actually going to change really quickly, and we're gonna s we are gonna see um you know good things, and hopefully you'll get a feedback loop where it does change in five years.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_04: But five years is forever.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: The entire natural capital markets might be gone in five years if we don't get this right.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_04: Oh OC, we're not five years old yet.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: How um what's the last five years look like from the Environment Bank's perspective?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been in the Environment Bank for four and a half years.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we it was about five years ago where we secured the private equity investment from Gresham House.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So prior to that, we were this very small niche consultancy, really.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, we've been around for quite a while, 2006, 2007, we were founded by David.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um but that you know that that equity injection just completely transformed the business away from a consultancy business to something that's just scaled and grown and completely dedicated to a land portfolio, basically.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it transformed the business at that point.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: But even then, I think there's about six people in 2020, at the beginning of 2021, and now we're about 140.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we own land, we have 50, nearly 50 sites across the country.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um but like we're we're at the beginning, well, well, we're uh pioneers in like a brand new market which didn't even exist then.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it didn't even exist really till 2024, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: But um it's a complete, like it's completely different world.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: We when we talk about E B, we talk about it in like dog years, like a month is like a year.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you'll relate less because you were in it, and it's like every month is like a year in progress and pace.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's you know, it's not for everyone, but from my perspective, that's like familiar to mediocre.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sure you have that.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um can you step us through what the process looks like for a farming family or a landowner that that comes to work with you guys?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_04: What does that look like?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so obviously there are lots of different models in the BNG world.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So ours is quite a low-risk model for a landowning family.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so whilst we do go out and target land, actually, most of the time it's sort of interest comes passively to us.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're a well-known brand now, which back in 2021 that was really hard work.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, now we've got really good um relationships in the landowning community.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they come to us because typically they're, you know, they have they need to diversify.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: They need alternative income streams, not necessarily struggling, but the the landscapes change so much for rural landowners where, you know, subsidy landscapes looking completely different, climate change is impacting on how successful their farming business is.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So they're coming with a real need to look for a sort of alternative income stream, an additional income stream.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So um it's a very iterative journey with us.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we start off on first and foremost, we need to sort of assess the suitability of the land from an ecology perspective, um, and obviously a legal due diligence perspective.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: But just as importantly, like, is are we working with a landowner that's got the right mindset, they're in it for the right reasons, and they are in it for the long term because BNG is, you know, at least 30 years commitment.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, I can't think of any of our projects where there's not commitment.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's it is forever, it's a big decision for those families.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_04: Have you seen a change recently in terms of the level of awareness of people about BNG and the realities of it as they're approaching you?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_04: Has that improved?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Huge, yeah, huge change.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we started looking for land in 2021, and that was really hard work.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're literally dropping flyers and banging on doors and going, We've you heard of this new thing?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone's like, Absolutely, what on absolutely not?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what on earth is this?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why would we take such a big risk?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and also that must have been almost culturally and emotionally offensive to people that you're even asking for that land use change.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Totally, because yeah, land is an emotional asset for for farming families.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and whilst there are a few kind of pioneering um landowners with a mindset around with nature as the focus, that's quite it was quite rare then to find those landowners that had that.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it it was absolutely was like we were saying, well, can you need to transform your land from farming to farming for nature?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that was like a huge step, a huge mindset shift for um landowners that we were talking to.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: But now, like it's completely a different space.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have landowners that are really, really like they've seen it's tried and tested.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: There are examples and case studies out there, there are families that have benefited massively from that um injection of finance um into quite fragile business systems, really.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's meant that it's much easier to have that conversation now and a lot more stakeholders are talking about it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's just made that risk, it m it's less of a big jump for them now.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um still a big decision.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_04: And you you grew up in a farming family.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_04: How would that knock at the door have gone for your dad who was on the farm?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_07: So I I sort of have to imagine that because my dad was a tenant farmer, so he was the last of a three-generation tenancy.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_07: Um and I but I remember other people knocking on the door.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_07: I remember people knocking on about solar or, you know, um conversion of the barns for work, um, live work units, you know, whatever was sort of topical at the time.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, we didn't have the the power to to say yes or no.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_07: Obviously, that's that with with a landowner.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_07: But I think it would have been probably a no, you know, it it's different for the reasons that you've alluded to.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_07: And my dad was quite a forward-thinking guy, you know, he did a lot of um higher-level stewardship early, you know.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_07: But I think uh the one parallel it it gives me is that when I was in house building, we always used to say a landowner can only sell it once.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, the conditions have got to be right, you know, whether that was taxation or you know, who the party was, what the planning can send, you know, you always really respected that they were going to make that decision once for their families.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_07: So the long-term commitment that you talk about and what that means then for the generation that follows them.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_07: Gosh, I can understand that entirely.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Multi-generational decision, isn't it?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they think about their children and grandchildren and what their league that legacy is a huge thing because B and G particularly, like at least 30-year commitments are big, yeah.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_04: And bring that to life for us from a legal perspective.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like what is the commitment they're making?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, well, that's a really good and important point because um because actually the legal commitment is both very robust but also very flexible.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_06: And because equality is flexible.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, um, you know, when we were both at Environment Bank Together, we were always talking about how these habitat management plans need to be adaptive, and actually no one's trying to catch anyone out or tell anyone off.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_06: They're trying to collaborate, including as a regulator.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_06: So, from our SK's perspective, we're a designated responsible body, which means we are the third-party regulator of these habitat banks when we are appointed.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_06: And so our job is to be an independent third party that's looking at how these habitat management plans are going, looking at which bits are working and which bits aren't, and looking at what reasonable changes to that plan could be good to help to achieve the outcomes that everyone wants to achieve.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_06: So, actually, you know, landowners aren't expected, and gain site operators like Environment Bank and others aren't actually necessarily expected to guarantee outcomes.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_06: What as a regulator we want to see is that you're earnestly and in good faith following the habitat management plan actions that we all agreed together at the beginning were capable of delivering those ambitious outcomes for nature.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_06: And our our position is to try to make sure that the whole thing is not viewed as this terrifying commitment that means that people don't get involved, but is actually something that we're all working together to achieve the right outcomes.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_06: And you know, nature doesn't work to any preordained plan.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_06: All you can do is create the circumstances to give it the best chance of thriving.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_06: So the commitment is long-term, and but the actual involvement in that is adaptive, um, flexible, collaborative.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_06: And we as a regulator are most concerned to make sure that gain site operators have really budgeted the true cost of delivery.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_06: They've factored in the opportunity cost of doing this because we really need to avoid any situation where a landowner feels in a few years down the line that they wish they hadn't done it and something else looks much more appealing.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_06: It's important it's appealing enough to be worth making that choice, but also flexible enough to allow other activities on the land that might actually enhance or work neatly alongside what is good for nature.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_06: And really seeing that, you know, it's not this land is set aside for nature and this land is our working farm, but it's that actually this land is helping to improve the productivity of the wider farm by attracting the pollinators, improving the soil structure and health, um, reducing the nutrient loads and et cetera.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_06: So, yes, in terms of the legal commitment, it is important that it's fully understood.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_06: It's important that it's fully budgeted for.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_06: We want to make sure those things are done at the outset.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_06: It's important the habitat management plan is realistic, but still ambitious because we want to encourage ambition to.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_06: And then it's important that management actions are followed.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_06: And where there is a risk of enforcement is primarily down to a cynical, active choice to just abandon it.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_06: That's when you're in trouble.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_06: You know, you just decide I'm not doing this.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_06: That's when uh that there's real issues.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_06: But when you're in good faith following the management actions, but this particular year the ground conditions weren't right to do this.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_06: Um it wasn't quite right to get the planting done at this exact point because of the temperature, etc.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_06: All of that's flexible because all we're aiming for is the biodiversity outcomes at the end of it.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_04: When you think about the design phase, I mean so uh OC's model different to environment banking, we principally buy and have a sort of a multifaceted approach.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_04: When we're thinking about the design phase fee, what is the sequencing of deciding which elements of a uh a large estate is adapted first?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_04: How do we think about the the various revenue streams that can be used there?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_07: So um I Esme's in the room for this podcast, she's like our BNG queen, and it's been a pleasure watching her to do exactly that over the last couple of years.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_07: So I think um, you know, if you if you well, fundamentally what we do is we get around a plan, um, you know, and we take a real spatial approach where everybody comes with their own discipline.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_07: You know, I've been there with my my property hat on, um, you know, head of environment, NATCAP, um, the estate team, the estate manager who knows every every blade of grass there.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and you sort of say, well, what what's right?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_07: What's right for the topography, what's right for um, you know, landscape heritage, you know, where does the flood risk play in?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_07: What existing watercourses and water bodies have we got?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_07: And then you just sort of mediate those things.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_07: And there's very few that conflict.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_07: You know, you we just the I suppose our ambition is to find as detailed and as rich mosaic as of habitats and of different land uses as we can.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_07: So we literally, you know, get the pens out, draw, draw it on, and say, well, what what works, what works best, and and in the context of, as you say, what else operationally is happening in this estate that we either need to make allowance for and work around.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_06: And also to add to that, if you if that's okay, because I was just bursting to say this, in terms of the in terms of the interplay between agriculture and um habitat banks and BNG, another thing I like I love remembering and reminding myself each day, and which is something we very much saw at Environment Bank, is that very often what's happening on a habitat bank is what agriculture was back in the 40s.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_06: True.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_06: It's low inputs.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_04: We hear a lot as well.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but Grand and Dad used to do that.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the connectivity.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_06: It's low input, it's low inputs, you know, it's it's grasslands and it's you know, hedgerows put back in often along lines where hedge was hedges were before the intensive agriculture really took off in the 70s and and beyond.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_06: So also just thinking about that interplay of which bits of the land you pick, you know, you see landowners actually wanting to bring their farm back to what it was like back in the 40s and before.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_04: We I often wonder, Emma, because we have the beauty of being able to just argue with ourselves of land and usually as me wins.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um how much harder is that process when you are dealing with an in situ family who have emotional ties to the environment?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_04: Does it inherently have to be a slower process?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think what we have to take into account is that under our model, typically those landowners are also going to be our long-term land managers, and then they will also want to retain the land in their family for long past the BNG sort of commitment has sort of um moved away.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to make sure that they're absolutely comfortable that they they can manage the land in that way, that it fits within their wider farming business as well.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, like we love conservation grazing, and of course, that's a really um positive way to manage habitats, but um some farming families aren't always comfortable with bringing in a conservation grazing herd, so we need to talk to them about that, maybe support them with training, um, even look at mechanical management if that's something that they want, that that's their preference, so sort of looking forward.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it does take a bit longer, but also I think because they're so it it it there's a it's a win-win for us because actually the outcome is that they're much more comfortable.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: We think the land, you know, there are much fewer chances for things to go wrong.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it means that we have their confidence and trust in this kind of like long-term relationship.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_04: But then you don't have the challenge of having to find a local estate manager who doesn't have knowledge of the of the area who exactly, yeah.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so we do have some sites where we manage them ourselves or we, you know, we use a third party, but our preference is always to work with the family that are on the land and and make the management plan work for them as much as well.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_04: From a marketing and storytelling perspective, that's so much better.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: But also like we really genuinely feel like we're contributing into the rural economy as well and helping a family.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have a number of examples where it, you know, a dairy farm in the northwest where, you know, they were genuinely struggling, probably going to sell off at least part of their land, and we've given them a bit of a lifeline, and now they're able to stay multi-generations on the land because they've got a new income stream on a piece of farming land that just wasn't productive.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what an amazing story, keeping them there and um where they wanted to be and they wanted their grandchildren to grow up as well, you know.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_04: We had a very similar experience with um w one of our estates is a farming partnership, it's uh an outlier, but the family pulled me to one side and said, uh, we're not gonna have to sell this with a first generation that's not gonna have to sell because of the potential of natural capital.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_04: That's a game changer for them.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: And we couldn't have had that conversation five years ago.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you spent a lot of the run-up to BNG sat on the other side of the fence as a potential buyer.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_04: What have you seen that's um been more positive or gone better than you expected when you were considering it as a potential buyer to now being someone who's overseen some of the biggest habitat banks in the UK?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it's and it's been lovely to be on both sides of the fence and to now see it come full circle.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_07: Um I think what have we seen?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_07: Um the thing that inspies me the most, I think, is how many different professionals have been involved.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_07: I think to start with, we all thought ecology was and BNG was something that was going to be done by ecologists, you know, and I think it's been wonderful to see.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_07: You called, you know, sort of you mentioned pioneering earlier.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_07: And I feel like there is this sort of feel that everybody is having to go through the metric for the first time, right?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_07: The management.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_04: There are more lawyers working in BNG than there are ecologists.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_07: It certainly doesn't feel like it.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_07: Sign sign off with the way.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_07: I wanted to know them.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_07: Um you know, it's been it's been a bit painful and a bit slow, but it you know, it has been collaborative, and I think it's wonderful now to see the market come up with supply to meet demand.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_07: And I think you know that when I was on the other side of the fence, you know, making reps to the regulations, what's this going to look like, how's it going to play out?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_07: It's probably played out, you know, largely as expected.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_07: It's been a bit slow, it's been a bit lumpy.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_07: But I think now, you know, we see a good variety of habitat unit types coming forward.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_07: We're seeing the geographical spread of that change.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_07: Um and I think if the government is serious about development and economic development in England and they're going to continue to push that, the um, you know, the market for BNG is there.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_06: Um yeah, and like and you know, we spoke to so many developers.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, and again, I keep going back to my time at Environment Bank just because it was such an instructive time for the whole process of implementing.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_06: Literally market making.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and also the amount I spoke to developers all day long who were both nervous about what it could mean for them and reassured that there are people out there creating the solution for them, ready-made.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_06: And the biggest sad bit of it, which is an inevitable hiccup for any new way of doing things, was just that in those thorny first kind of few months of BNG being mandatory, because of the kind of implementation timetable that was statutorily constrained, there weren't at that moment enough registered gain sites for developers to tap into.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_06: And that was a really sad, very boring mistake of that the planning authorities, despite working really hard, didn't have the capacity to become the regulators of this market, and nor were they expected to be solely the regulators of it.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_06: And responsible bodies couldn't exist because the responsible body um designation process hadn't come into effect.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_06: So the really sad, boring reason, I think, why BNG came off to quite a difficult start was because of that timing hiccup that led to developers that I think truly embraced this with an open mind and an open heart, much more than people might have expected.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_06: And ahead of time.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_06: And ahead of time, suddenly found themselves caught in a situation that was not of their making, which was that they needed things that at that point didn't exist.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_06: And of course, the tragedy there was so many people had been pummeling all the effort to make those things exist.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_06: But that regulatory bottleneck that's an accident of the implementation timetable led to a lot of that goodwill being lost.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_06: And of course, it was at that exact moment when BNG was in its sort of worst nadir when the landslide um victory in the election happened.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_06: And so you can also understand why a government came in on the horror stories of what was really just a short blip of understandable horror stories triggered by the implementation problems.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_06: And you can see just how easily a government could under could view this as being a problem that needs to be solved rather than itself the beginning of the solution.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_06: And that's a real sad accident of life that I think happened there that's led to us needing to work quite hard now to protect BNG from too many kind of erosions and inroads into its exemption regime because of quite understandably the concerns of developers that built up specifically during that hiccup of the during the implementation.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_07: But but the previous government had been so clear that they didn't want to interfere with anything that the um that the private sector could deliver, you know, whether that, you know, units, but also the mechanisms for sale, a platform, you know, they didn't want to do anything, right?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_07: We're gonna leave it to the private sector.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_07: And then there was this point where it was like, well, the we haven't the pup the private sector then hasn't had time to respond before they start to say, Well, how about we exempt this and how about we exempt that?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_07: So I agree with you, the timing is just awkward.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_06: The biggest tragedy of bad luck of all possible things, I think.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone we spoke to in your house building network was like, we don't want a delay.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_04: Like when they pause things, they're like, no, no, no, can we just get on with the stuff?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_07: And the regs took so long to come through.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_07: You know, I was briefing teams for a huge amount of time.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_07: You know, if we're buying immediate land, this is how we're gonna do it.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_07: If we're doing strategic land, let's try and do some more ourselves.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_07: How are we gonna do it?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_07: You know, every everyone was was primed.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_07: Groups like Future Homes Hub were doing brilliant work for smaller developers in particular that kind of didn't have in-house teams.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_07: There wasn't a, I mean, we might talk about the viability of it, but you know, there was some grumbling about it being another development cost.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_07: But because it was well signposted, people were getting on board and were understanding that they needed to do it.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_06: And so the theory goes in the kind of utopian fully fledged system that costs should be affordable in a kind of healthy, competitive environment that can be factored in from the beginning.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_06: And of course, that's easy for me to say.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_06: Viability is always a challenge, and there's been huge issues on viability in all sorts of other areas.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_06: So you can see again why, if other things are competing for limited margins, you can see why BNG can, to the untrained eye, get sidelined.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_06: But what I know, I you know, people developers were saying to me that they actually liked BNG because it could solve a lot of the problems of opposition in the planning process is actually easier to address when you go, look, we we have actually complied with this level playing field law, and we've everybody has agreed these are an appropriate are appropriate parameters.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_06: This is an appropriate application of the mitigation hierarchy, and it actually helps to neutralize a lot of that opposition because you've got a system you could have um built in from the beginning.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_06: The biggest sad, sad accident of all of this was that implementation bottleneck meant that that abundant supply wasn't there ready for the developers to take their pick from.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_06: And you know, that trading platform that you know exists.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_06: You couldn't you there are platforms out there that exist, you can press a button and buy the units you need.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_06: And that's exactly the frictionless world that the policy wanted to create.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_04: No the market's ever done that.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like when when people suddenly wanted electric cars, the Tesla Model S wasn't available to tolerate a price first.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_04: Neil um Neil at Bellwig has been on the podcast and talks wonderfully about the fact that when done right, BNG helps in every regard.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_04: He said people forget and think we're house builders.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, we're house sellers.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_04: And when BNG is done right, it makes houses more marketable, better for everyone.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_04: Emma, what what have you seen that's now easier to do than it was two or three years ago?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_04: How has the market developed?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_04: Because we're so young as a market still.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_04: People often criticize things where I was at a conference once, and this uh chap raised his hand, he was just about to retire and he said, Can we stop bashing natural capital?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: I've been in finance for 45 years, it's been going hundreds, and we still wreck the world all the time.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_04: Give these guys a minute.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um, what has got easier and better as a result of us growing as a market?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: What from a from a habitat banking perspective?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Any aspect of being easy.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've been an ecologist for 25 years now, and just sort of back to the points around how it's made life easy for the development sector.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like we mustn't forget that BNG actually got over the line and became mandatory because of the lobbying from the development sector, because there was that frustration around the kind of lack of consistency about how impacts on ecology from development were actually being addressed in the planning system.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this postcode lottery, there's an inconsistent way of dealing with those, and it would just depend on the particular planning team that you would that you were speaking to at the time.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the concept of um no net loss or biodiversity enhancement isn't that didn't come in just overnight with BNG.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's been a policy um position for decades.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And actually BNG brought a framework to it.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: It just made everything consistent across the country.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: It made it gave developers a very clear indication of what was expected of them of them from the moment it was a twinkle in their eye, the idea of this project, to when they could get their consent that you know they were like, I know what pathway I need to do now, I know what I need to do, I need to get the ecologists in.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: We do a metric, it's quantitative, and it's the same if I do it in Northumberland or in Kent or in Cornwall.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_04: Even the ability to have that conversation wasn't doable five years ago.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_04: We didn't have the language to even have it.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, and exactly, and that's what you know, the likes of Neil, they were they were championing this because they're like, we need this consistency, we need we need predictability and certainty, and that's something that you know developers need because they work on these long time frames and funding time frames.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: So BNG has brought that, and yeah, it is frustrating that there was this blip in the market at the most critical time, and it and but it was working, you could see it coming.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was just there was just this bottleneck, this backlog, but it was all there, the opera, you know, even we weren't the only ones ready to service this market, we just couldn't quite get there in time.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um so but now, but now here we are like competition's ramping up.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's like no one wants to be the only person at the party, as we always say.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like I don't mind.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's maybe uh but you know, I think it it a successful policy is never going to be one single successful business delivering it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: You have to bring, you know, um every everyone along with you.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Competition's ramping up, um pricing, like pricing discoveries there now, there's dynamic pricing, there's like genuine pricing discovery across the market.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um and supply is pretty much there.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can see that because the statutory credits, the back, the government backstop, isn't really being used that much.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Less than a million pounds of statutory credits um have been purchased.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because the supply is there and developers are asking for it and the market's delivering.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, it's rare I speak positively about anything to do with the government, but the the sheer price point they've set as the backstop is really helpful.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like if they'd have been way tighter on that, it would have been problematic.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_04: The fact there is some genuine headroom there to allow projects to develop is is really important, I think.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um one of the criticisms early Lex was the time it took to get agreements in place and things like that with either the local authority or responsible bodies.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_04: Is that getting faster?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, it definitely is getting faster.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, I remember it taking well over two years, and I still didn't do it to get that 106 over the line.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_06: OMG.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_06: It was like, I mean, uh and I and the saddest thing was it was like despite the best intentions in all the world, it was just, you know, it we were having to bolt the whole BNG sector onto the overloaded planning system.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_06: And that was just another unfortunate design problem that was quickly alleviated once more and more responsible bodies were designated, which by design were there to take some of that regulatory load off of the planning authorities that weren't didn't want it or you know, or were keen to support it.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_06: Well, and of course, some planning authorities can absolutely continue to govern habitat banks through their own 106s.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_06: So there's a whole long list now of different responsible bodies.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_06: And this is a fascinating experiment in itself in terms of regulation.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_06: The idea of regulators not being an actual government department.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_06: You've got private companies like mine, you've got charities, you've got planning authorities, you've got a whole range of entities that have been designated as a responsible body.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_06: They go through a rigorous process to become one.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_06: They've got to demonstrate that strong financial governance, strong history of good finances, and really the skills and technical expertise to be able to do this.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_06: So the really exciting thing now is how these organizations take this responsibility seriously and how they approach it and what ways they can be themselves competitive among each other.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_06: Now, obviously, dangerously, it could result in a dangerous race to the bottom of standards as everybody's competing to try to have their lower monitoring fees to win people through the door.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_06: But I do think there are a few safeguards against that that we're all alive to.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_06: One is the moment your response your reputation as a regulator is in the mud, you're you're done anyway, because actually the buyers of these credits do care about how uh dignified they are.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_06: They do actually want to make sure that they don't get left open to criticisms by activists and other groups, and they want to get through planning.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_06: But second, um, is that you will be de-designated if you're rubbish.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_06: And if you're de-designated, DEFRA becomes a responsible body of last resort.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_06: So you have to stay competent and you have to stay focused on making sure you're credible and that you're regulating the right things that matter.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_06: And that's an exciting place to be.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_06: And I think again, this decentralized regulatory approach will be really fascinating to see how it pans out.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_06: And already, you know, the good cross-checking work is being done by impressive academic institutions, are really crawling through the data, crawling through what's available to really start to shine light on is this working?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_06: And the government should hopefully also take that active role in wanting to get the right data in place to see is this working?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but yeah, so as a regulator, um uh it's a new and nuanced and important role, and the sheer range of new regulators is speeding up the process.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_06: And we're obsessed about speeding it up and standardizing it.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_06: So we've already put our template conservation covenant that we've invested a lot of time and effort into getting balanced and informed by the real-life negotiations with real-life landowners, real-life gain site operators, and that's out there and available for anyone to see, comment on, build on, take it, use it how you will.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_06: So the more we standardize, the better for everybody.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and we are obsessed about finding ways to safely reduce costs without undermining the integrity and quality of the long-term delivery of this, these natural capital assets.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_06: You talk about that bottleneck.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_07: If we hadn't had conservation governance, I don't know where we would be because the planning system was so overloaded.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, you know, and and I won't name names, but we've we've had situations where we've said, who is the officer in in the local authority responsible for this?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_07: And you've sort of done a ring round and nobody knows because they just, you know, okay, this was 12 months ago, but they just they just hadn't got there and they hadn't got the capacity.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I re I feel like we shouldn't underestimate like how innovative that element of the fra the BNG framework is.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I you know the world is watching how successful the BNG framework's going to be and how how it's kind of progressing.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one bit that I get asked about a lot is that you know, moving that burden away from the public sector that's already kind of failing and struggling, to opening up to a competent, you know, tested and um questioned uh private sector that is absolutely capable of spreading that burden and then making it a kind of um uh a commercial offering that has the teeth and the integrity that sits behind it.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's really novel, and I think something that the government should actually be proud of.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, there's no single point of failure, nor a single point of corruption, I'd like to add, which can happen when you when you centralize everything into one potentially very underfunded, um, highly pressurized regulator that's getting its funding threatened, for example.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_06: So, yeah, how this this dispersal approach works will be fascinating to see.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_06: But we all as a sector have an interest in it working, so we're all kind of propping each other up by like policing.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_06: We're like, well, I don't think that's gonna go down very well, or we want to make sure all of everyone does their due diligence because we all suffer if anybody drops their standards.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_06: It actually hurts us all.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_06: And so we're actually hyper-vigilant, over-vigilant to what might be viewed as low standards, dodgy offsetting, you know, cash to trash stuff.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_06: We're quite, you know, conscientious of making sure we don't fall into that trap.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_04: As a sector, uh, wherever you want to draw the line around the natural capital world, it's far more collegiate and collaborative than it was five years ago.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you look pre-our respective timelines, the and uh uh pre-Craig Bennett and the Wildlife Trust, they wouldn't talk to each other.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_04: Never mind, talk to anyone who had any form of commercial approach to anything.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_04: Whereas the fact this podcast exists and you are all kindly sat here shows that we are exactly trying to do that, to grow an entire marketplace and category together.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it uh it is truly fascinating because what I think the seismic shift that's happening here is that nature has the phrase very often used by David Hill, making nature economically visible.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_06: So instead of it being something that's being morally protected, and it's being protected with, you know, um moral money, for want of a better way of putting it, the law is making it be protected because to harm it costs money.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_06: And immediately that shifts the dynamic into a professionalized approach that supports the NGO efforts, and the NGO efforts support these efforts.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_06: Like we become a kind of bigger group of people that all have the shared interest in protecting nature.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_06: And while some companies make money out of things that harm nature, this is a spring of companies, an up-up wellspring of companies that are making money out of protecting nature.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_06: And it and actually I think the the NGOs and the ecology sector and the natural capital sector are finding they have more and more in common, particularly as they're defending against some, you know, potentially fairly naive government policies that aren't necessarily as informed on the implications of those policies as they could be.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_06: So I do think we're all, everyone's kind of um bonding together to say, look, nature is economically important for all sorts of reasons and morally important.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_06: And together we can find a way that balances those trade-offs effectively.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_06: And it isn't about just blocking at all costs, it's about a healthy and strong mitigation hierarchy that stops cash to trash.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_06: And then it's about high-integrity solutions to compensate for those truly unavoidable harms.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_06: So I think the NGOs and the ecologists and the natural capital crew are all finding we have more and more in common.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and of course, I in the absolute ideal world, it it continues in the way it was, which is it's also the developers are into it too.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, and the landowners, it literally was the self-congratulatory win-win-win cycle.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_06: Um, because the developers were glad to have a framework that was universally applicable that they could budget for.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_06: So, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the kind of rhetoric has changed, and I think that has shifted the atmosphere.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_06: But I think the sectors just come together so strong with developers, with NGOs, to go look, there's some really good ways of doing this that rec that really brings private investment into nature, that really gives competitive, high quality solutions to developers and rubs out a lot of the scandal risk that can come from just a central pot of cash that never gets spent on nature.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_06: And that's really.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_06: Another direction that we could hopefully try to resist, in my view.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_04: Fee, look, you you oversee the entire conservation part of the business and a 400 million pound portfolio, which has meant investors have put a huge amount of money into this, got record pricing for carbon and BNG.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: How much do you think that quality component is something that's been a factory and been able to build that portfolio?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_07: I think I'm no, I'm gonna Dan's gonna be so mad.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_07: I'm gonna quote you, which is how you do how you do anything, is how you do everything, right?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_07: And because um, you know, I described earlier we kind of see each of our estates as this kind of mosaic of uses, and you know, use types and use classes, they've all got to pull their weight.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_07: They've all gotta, you know, we talk about kind of having this diversified, diversified stack.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_07: They've all got to be as good as they can possibly be, you know, and the different parts of the business are quite competitive to make their thing, you know, um, the best.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_07: The integrity point is important to us.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_07: We hope it will be that important to Avaya too.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_07: You know, you and I spoke a long time ago about um will people pay more for a good quality BNG unit?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_07: There will be people who just want to discharge the responsibility in terms of BNG.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it's a compliance to box.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_07: But I think we're going to see you know, a flight to quality, if you want to call it that.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_07: And all of us on the panel know that not all BNG units are created equal, you know.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_07: And yes, it's great to have BNG on site, but you've got you know, you've got more recreational pressure there.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_07: You know, they're not necessarily going to deliver the same environmental outcomes that a extensive kind of landscape scheme like the ones that we do.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_07: You know, ours are four, five, six hundred acres.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, building on the Lawton principle, bigger, better, more connected.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_07: I just love the variety of that model as well.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_07: You know, the the cumulative impact of that is just so much, so much greater.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um you're starting to see differentiations amongst the biotypes, Emma, of what they're looking for.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh I also think like if you look at the US mitigation banking market, which we're what they're in their third or fourth decade now, like you can see that um actually there's so many parallels to where we are now.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the learnings that they've had, we we're sort of seeing them play out in our our very nascent market.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that I think is fascinating is that buyers in the US mitigation banking market, they ask for performance data.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost part and parcel of that transaction process.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you go to tender um and they want to know how well has you how well is your habitat performing?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: How as an operator have you failed?
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: Have you done something wrong?
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, have you done everything you can to fulfil your commitments?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I can already start to see, we're extremely nascent here, right?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's almost impossible to know, like the proof will be in the pudding when those monitoring reports start flowing into Lexateam and we see five years, six years down the line which habitat banks are um are are you know have fulfilled their commitments, but we're already being asked, you know, how's it going?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are you on track?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Are you having any challenges?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're getting our first sort of years, two, year two, three um monitoring data through.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the buyers are asking, they care about the quality, they because they care about their own reputation, they want to deliver outcomes, they care about actually the wider success of the policy.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there is a small, there is a fraction of of buyers currently that aren't asking that.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is price, and price is absolutely still king.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think the react that is the reality.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: But um I think you know, quality does matter.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if if in five to ten years' time we are seeing some operators aren't coming out so shiny, I think they will be the ones that won't be selling as many units.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_06: And also, uh from a regulator perspective, what we we would really want to encourage a culture of enjoying explaining the truth of where things are going wrong, that it's actually an inevitable part of this that stuff will go wrong.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_06: And that, and so then when things are going wrong, it doesn't need to be viewed as a catastrophic failure, and that it shouldn't, and it doesn't legally undermine the qual the the um the uh a sort of uh applicability of a developer's unit.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_06: If they've if they've offset their development with a biodiversity unit that then subsequently fails, there is no strict legal ramification on that.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_06: The developer is allowed to buy and forget in that situation.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_06: The safeguards in this situation is that the habitat bank was created before the harm happened and there's a legal framework there, unlike, for example, under the Nature Restoration Fund, but that's a separate point.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_06: But the good thing is a developer doesn't have to be scared of a biodiversity unit failing.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, they will want to feel comfortable they're investing in a credible scheme, but if their biodiversity unit fails, they are not legally on the hook.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_06: And so as a regulator, we want to encourage that openness because if we can see the bits that don't work and we can make sure we're learning from that, then we're we're actually better off at giving the sector a chance of success than if we, you know, kind of glossed over it.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_06: So, yeah, so and that's where we're keen for developers to be interested in their due diligence, interested in the the habitat bank being set up with the least chance of failure.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_06: But when failure inevitably happens, nobody be scared.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_06: This is all inevitable, and what do we do to avoid it happening again?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_07: That was your flexibility point at the beginning.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, which I think plays, you know, brilliantly for what we're trying to do in terms of the level of data that we've got on each of the estates.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_07: You know, we're meticulous about understanding the baseline before we start and then monitoring anything and everything to incredible level of detail throughout.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_07: It's so actually incredibly easy for us to say is that establishing as we thought it will?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_07: Are we on track in terms of delivery?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_07: What happens next?
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_07: Um and you know, with the estate managers on the ground, they're looking at it every day, they know what's happening.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_04: So we um we've just had Tommy Ricketts on the podcast who um founder run B Zero Carbon, the ratings agency for carbon.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_04: Do we end up with a BNG ratings agency?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_04: Is that something we need in the now, in the near future?
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_06: My instinct I think we've got some bigger fish to fry at the moment, which I think is fixing the exemptions because they're a bit wobbly and a bit.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_06: Well, so there's two key problems, I think, with the exemptions.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_06: One is that a developer can claim an exemption if they believe it applies.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_06: There's no need to, um, there's no strict legal requirement to provide the supporting evidence that it applies.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_06: Now, that belief-based gateway, as I might call it, is obviously ripe for confusion as well as potential abuse.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_06: And what it does is it it means that some planning applications are going through and getting to really late stages only to realise this exemption surely doesn't apply.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_06: And what the kinds of exemptions that are being claimed in sort of what seems like wholly inappropriate situations is, for example, the Day Minimis exemption that was designed originally as saying if less than 25 metres squared of habitat is impacted, don't worry you're exempt.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_06: Now, somehow that exemption is applying to schemes of 48 hectares big.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_06: Such a mystery.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_06: And there's some interesting reports out there to kind of try to get to the bottom of it.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_06: But of course, because we've got such a decentralized data system for planning, it's very hard to pinpoint.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_06: But some of it, I think, seems to be about a kind of uh self-created temporary impact.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_06: They might think, well, actually, their impacts on biodiversity might only last for 10 years or five years.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_06: So we're viewing this as da minimis, we're going to apply the day minimis exemption, which isn't an appropriate way of applying it.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_06: So we've got confusion, and I think that that can be eroding significant amounts of demand.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_06: And if that demand was allowed into the system, it would be a safe, continuous throughput of demand to the habitat bank operators and landowners out there that then allows costs to go down because the demand is where it needs to be.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_06: So because demand is getting hollowed out invisibly because the data isn't there, it means that the suppliers aren't able to necessarily uh continue to invest in a way that would bring down prices in that supply and demand way.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_04: So one is just on that point, so um, for the uh data geeks amongst us, that's why AI's been able to absolutely smash the cost of compute because the sheer volume of buyers and users has gone up at such a rate over each unit of time, they've been able to halve the cost of actually providing that service.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_04: If you think about our respective businesses, if we 10x the amount of unit demand was there, our cost base isn't going to go up by 10 at the moment.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_04: So it just gives us the opportunity to do exactly as you described, unit cost of delivery goes down, then all of a sudden that price point moves for the buyer as well and it benefits everybody.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_06: Exactly that.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_06: And the the and it allows the healthy progression of the policy into something where truly the friction is taken out, the volume and the um the uh economies of scale are really there.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_06: And it and so it really is, I'm not saying this because I would, wouldn't I?
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_06: It really is to make it work for developers because those biodiversity units, when they need a fraction for a small development, it should cost barely anything.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_06: And that's really where we wanted to get to.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_06: But because of the way that the exemptions were designed, we've got absolutely invisible sort of swag bags of developments that are not seeing the light of day, they're not getting into the system.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_06: And so the data was.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_06: And so I so my view is that while getting a, you know, a kind of gold, silver, bronze rating system for habitat banks might be one place for a fully, fully embedded system where we can really see price differentiation based on quality.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_06: For now, it feels like if we can fix those gears and levers in this machine to get the demand where it should be, um, it could really, really help to shore this whole thing up and get the developers buy-in again, get their support for the whole system again.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_06: So they recognize we are actually, as a sector, genuinely here to serve them.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_06: It's easy to forget that, but we're literally only here because they are here.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_06: If they are not developing, we are not working.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_06: And so, and that that love of the developer, I think, has possibly been lost in this process.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_06: And the goodwill of the developer was understandably lost when they were caught up in these bottleneck problems that they never asked for and they never deserved.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_06: But we love them and we need them for this to work.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_06: And I think if we can get the um exemptions fixed so that the belief-based gateway is replaced with a basic, proportionate, minimum evidence necessary to prove this exemption applies.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe we get rid of de minimists completely because it's confusing anyway.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_06: And we just have the area-based exemption.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_06: We all know this development is this big, that means it is completely exempt.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_06: Do not even worry, do not even say the BNG ever.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_06: And then above that, you're in, you're in the party, let's make this jive.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_04: So it is the role we need, is there some form of private um overseer regulator who does check those types of exemptions, who's independently coming in and saying, because there's there's no scope to put it on the planning authorities, they don't have the resource to do it.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_04: Is there a role for the private sector to fulfill there?
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_06: That's a really good question.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, there's like um, you know, tools building up like exemption checkers.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_06: The planning portal is an amazingly important gateway for planning for people accessing the planning system.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_06: A huge percentage, I mean, it may be even above 90% of planning applications go through the planning portal.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_06: And they've been amazing in supporting the sector with some of their data that's been appropriately, you know, anonymized, etc.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_06: Um, so there are ways that we could fix these, but really we need the law to be right.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_06: The belief-based gateway means that even LPAs, even planning authorities, don't have the authority, if you like, to ask for X, Y, and Z.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_06: And even if they could ask for X, Y, and Z, they don't know if they should be asking for X, Y, and Z.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_06: And then the moment a developer says, I haven't got X, Y, and Z, they don't have a clear uh sort of uh playbook to say why it is needed.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_06: And the magical utopian outcome would be every developer knows exactly what they need to provide.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_06: It's proportionate, it's um well understood, it goes into the system, and we can all trust that the real demand is going through the system and fueling this whole market to become efficient, dynamic, frictionless, affordable, enjoyable, and truly win-win.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_06: If we can get to that utopian ideal, I'll be well happy.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_04: If we take one step back from Utopia, is there anything on your wish list, Emma, that you'd like to see amended, adjusted, or that we could all do to help move things forward?
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I mean, in terms of the B and G market, the next big announcement is around infrastructure projects.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that will really help scale the market itself, but also private finance.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think it just brings so much more stability to the market.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: It it gives it a confidence of volume that I think at the moment, whilst there is some institutional investment, I think that will shift completely once the infrastructure projects they're mandated to deliver on a similar framework to wider developments.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously that's due to come in in May, but we're still waiting on the consultation outcome.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there is some uncertainty about whether or not those projects will have to deliver in the same kind of way.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that unpredictability at the moment, some certainty around that, because we're, you know, we're operators, we're excited to scale and grow and support and service those developments.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: But at the moment, there's a bit of inertia around it because we're just waiting to hear where the government's going to land.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the the kind of nuts and bolts of what those are.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_04: Where would you put your confidence interval that the bulk of the requirement on infrastructure projects will still remain for BNG, that fundamentally they'll have to provide it?
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I believe they will.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: I believe absolutely there'll be a mandated requirement.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think what is there's a level of uncertainty about what playbook they'll have to deliver on it, sort of in terms of particularly um whether they need to deliver BNG in relation to the order limits.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's the big question, isn't it?
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what's their baseline and at what point and uh at what point do they need to kind of measure their residual impact um and deliver against it?
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the bits of uncertainty, but I feel confident, I I feel confident that the government's gonna require it.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: Which is good.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_04: One of the promises of natural capital markets is of course environmental impact, but also social positives as well.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_04: Give us some of those highlights, some of the stories, some of the positives.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_04: What have you seen as a result of BNG and natural capital being a thing that's made the world just a little bit a better place?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd sort of touched on the rural economy side of things, but I think that's huge.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think landowners, farming communities have had a bit of a rough ride in the last decade.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_04: And it's been light to and perpetually abused, right?
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: A bit of a rough ride, maybe a maybe an understatement.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, farming isn't a big margins business either, so they're constantly being squeezed.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think having a stable um alternative income stream that isn't reliant on subsidies is huge, and that genuinely is keeping families on their farms, and I think that's massive.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I also think like sort of talking back to that point around um what are some of the what is some of the development community asking for when they're buying units from us?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, we're getting so much more, so many more questions around social value.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: And like, how is your habitat bank delivering in terms of public access?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: And are you locating it close to communities where they maybe are deprived of green space?
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think most habitat banks that have thought about demand are trying to locate them close to communities and urban areas where there's also a development, um development activity, but that means that it's bringing people closer to nature and nature recovery, and that's got to be a good thing too, right?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: And are we seeing the are we seeing the creation of the jobs as a result of this as well?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I think we are, and actually one of the things that's been nicest now that we're in the in the delivery phase of the NGOC, is to speak to the estate managers who say, I've had the local contract right today, and we've talked about how we're gonna implement this and you know who they're gonna need to do and the timing and just you know that that those spin-off effects that we always talk about from any development that are now coming from from nature restoration.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_07: So we absolutely are.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_07: I'm just gonna follow up on the exemptions point to say if you go back, you know, philosophically, why do we do net gain?
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_07: I feel like every exemption is really just saying what's not nature's not that important, is it?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_07: And that's why it's so important that they hold the line.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_07: Um, because you know, why are we just chipping away at that?
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and not looking at the bigger picture of all the other things that it's bringing.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_07: That's my frustration, you know, cut cut the exemptions how you will.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but that's piecemeal erosion.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_06: Uh exactly, and unpredictability, but also again, the the exemptions can be used as a tool to drive forward whatever the political agenda of the day might be.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_06: So some some um you know, some governments might want to particularly prioritize a certain type of development and decide that that particular type of development doesn't need to comply with its nature obligations.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_06: And that creates an unlevel playing field for the development sector in general.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_06: And I mean, I know our governments want to pull levers, etc., but if we want the if we want affordable flood of high integrity supply, we need a consistent demand that comes across our entire sector, uh our entire industrial strategy, I think, fairly.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_06: And I can understand right at the very smallest scale where there might be developments that where the admin is too much.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_06: But again, the challenge there is that there shouldn't be the admin.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_06: If it's uh if it's allowed to get to its full fruition, it should be just pressing a button because the market, the sector has been there to make it easy for people.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_06: So it's um yeah, it's sort of losing its nerve, and I agree with you completely on that.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are we seeing uh is AI impacting BNG yet?
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: Are we seeing tech play its part?
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's exciting, actually.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the opportunity, I mean, just you mentioned the the planning team's burden can is already starting to be relieved by some of these new tools, obviously, Werner, and um there's a lot of tools developing to make the sort of framework much more robust, but even down to um ongoing monitoring and digital data capture in the field that can be supplemented by um nature tech and all of its you know uh uh ramifications.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like it it not only obviously can reduce costs, but you get much richer data sets that can you can use in so many intelligent ways to kind of inform your decision making and what you implement on the ground, which I think you know it it's only it's improving um our ability to do repeatable, consistent data collection uh and report on that and kind of see trends like even in the last year that the change has been like significant.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_06: I quite like with AI as well, that obviously there's huge big important questions about the accuracy, but of course it's only going to improve by the sounds of it of what it can identify from space or whatever.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_06: But I just love the point as well that was made to me, and I can't remember by who, which was that, well, even if the AI is wrong, at least it's wrong consistently.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_06: So you could actually still be able to compare baselines quite well because it's quite wrong all the time in all the same in all the same ways, whereas the human mistakes are very different depending on which human it is.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_06: But my ideal position, like with all of these things, would be that we use those tools where they're truly valuable and useful, but that we're always keeping that human element, that ground-truth thing in at a safe level, um, and really working with it to let it develop into a system that really is reliable rather than shun it because it's not reliable.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_06: You know, it's better to work with it to get it reliable.
• 1:05:42
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_04: What do you think about OC?
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, the things that our data team does does OC are already, you know, beyond beyond my uh understanding.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_07: And I think seeing what they can achieve is just I almost can't imagine what.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_07: what they're going to be able to do with the the vast, you know, the um the range of data we have across the estates is super exciting.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_04: How's the sector different from when you guys started your career?
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I started as a budding ecologist about 25 years ago.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it just even on the digital data side, you know, I was out there with my bits of paper that I lost in the footwell of my car.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then you know and and then I plot had to go back to the office.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: I use colouring pencils and mats and there was a draft.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that's how old I'm an old lady.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: With cool trainers.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah with very cool trainers always sorry I do apologize with very cool trainers.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: Please edit that fix it in postally like on honestly like there's so much human error in the systems and the way we and and actually differences in perspectives and across the ecology sector that now you absolutely need ecologists in the room.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone everyone should have an ecologist in the room pretty much all the time I would recommend I think that um it's actually the processes and the you know that sort of drudgery of like continued processes that technology and AI can actually automate some of the boring stuff and minimize human error.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you use the amazing ecology brains for like the powerful stuff the interpretation and the decision making and and um getting the ecologists to to make sure you're doing the right thing in the in the round and using the data to inform that like it's such a world away I mean I can't tell you the difference um in 25 years.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_04: What about you Lex how's the the legal side of this evolved?
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_06: Well yeah so I guess um really for from my perspective um the I think the more fascinating evolution over the last 25 years is the corporate recognition of their impacts on nature.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_06: You know, the whole explosion of ESG, it started with like corporate social responsibility so it'd be like we'll raise a bit of money for a local charity but it's kind of elevated into you know banks, insurers that are in particular very concerned to see the long-term financial health of their portfolios, you know, and then the people that they are serving are all just really starting to think about their impacts on nature in a systematic way even if it's some people might say it's slow, some people might say it's performative and not really substantial.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_06: But either way it's massive to think that 25 years ago no one was really systematically assessing what environmental harms they were doing or what they relied on environmentally.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_06: And so it's quite good to see you know globally we are all trying to crack this nut of how do we address it.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_06: And that to me is like a major transformation in thought process even if governments waver even if you know inevitably policies take a shift here and there.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_06: In Europe things have been difficult in some of those corporate social sustainability reporting directives and stuff you and no one's quite sure how fast to go and how far to go but either way the fact that that direction of travel is there I think is quite major because 25 years ago it didn't feel like that.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I the fact that you've got CFOs and risk teams talking about nature now I mean it wouldn't have even been on their radar.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: They'd have just thought what's a butterfly got to do with me nothing.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah some some sometimes there will be speaking somewhere to events and people but oh do you not you know wish things had gone faster and better for the sector it's like yeah but I'm here you wouldn't have invited me five years ago no one wanted to talk about the environment at all um fee you were a geographer that we lost to the sector because there wasn't there wasn't a role for you you went to the house building world we love the developers we love the developers I will not tolerate that.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_04: I literally do love them say no bad words to the so um go back now say say you were a young person thinking about starting your career what's the advice you would give someone coming into the sector right now well interestingly I reached out to somebody on LinkedIn the other day because they said they were interested in becoming a um a kind of traditional land manager and I said to them hang hang on a minute do you know about natural capital?
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_07: Don't don't jump in and do the sort of standard route like have a look around at what's happening at the moment because there is such an explosion and you know in all of the areas that we've talked about you know Esme said to me the other day that apparently that's now quite hard to get an ecologist who wants to go and do an ecology survey because actually BNG's become quite sexy and they want to work in BNG.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_07: You know similarly if you like you know data going back to that you know what we can do now in terms of transparency of the and you know to demonstrate the changes on the ground and prove that BNG is a very important thing to do.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_06: The range of role from data scientist to economist to a colleague podcast producers you look across our team and your team and it's just it I think all of our team love it because it feels it feels so timely you know um and there is you know more opportunity than ever I think yeah what's so this is the first chapter of BNG right if if we equate it to the internet we're still in dialogue what does BNG 2.0 look like what's that next chapter that next version what does it span how does it evolve in the future should I go yeah I've got a view but you're not okay so well first I was going to say quickly about if anyone was going to join the profession I would say write to your MP because I think this sector relies on strong political will it's the political will to give strong market signals you know a politically sort of more environmentally focused government might have quite a different land use framework today than what we've got.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_06: That land use framework could have been the thing that made all of these organizations immediately go on a massive recruitment drive.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_06: You know it's the signals from government that feed into the confidence of this sector and of course the SME developer sector and everyone else.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_06: And if the government signals were strong the recruitment openings would be there the developers would be recruiting really good ecologists and so would natural capital specialists and so would insurers and so would AI companies and so would anyone else.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_06: So if you were starting your career or want to get a career in this I'd say write to your MP and help them understand how important this strong political will to continue in this direction is because that's where you want to work and where you want to be most productive.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_06: Get the whole of our of our of our system economic system geared up around respecting the role of ecology and nature in everything that we do.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_06: And then I think my BNG 2.0 or whatever, it would be almost what that land use framework could be.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_06: It could have set what the natural capital accounting frameworks are that all landowners should be encouraged to be using now so that we have a massive national set of natural capital accounts so that we know for each expansion of the built environment it will equal this approximate loss of biodiversity and this is what everyone should be gearing up to fund in that transaction if you could call it that.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_06: And that's where I think the next step would be ideally creating the framework and the conditions for continued investment and innovation.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_06: Let's see the BNG exemptions fixed, but that's really just still an embryonic issue.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_06: But next it will be what what other demands on our ecosystems are there and how do we get the right signals out to be restoring at scale ahead of these anticipated harms that are coming through our growth programme.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_06: And that's what I would ideally love to see is is a thriving economy where nature is priced into it successfully.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_04: The um the point about the land use framework we touched on it to open the the show the chance that that has a significant impact on people's awareness of GIS and spatial data isn't zero.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like each of these reports we don't know which will gather legs but if this catches like 10 or 20% chance of attention that people suddenly start making spatial data informed decisions.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel a blog article coming I I this is the first ever land use framework that's been released in the time of AI where in fact shout out to Peter Harker who's just a joy in the sector at Saffron he built a claw dashboard on the back of it like 10 minutes later when when what an accountant is pushing that forward Peter I I adore you ran across I love that oh he's gonna love that so much Emma BNG 2.0 well I I I mean it's a a kind of echo of Lex's point but I think for me being the BNG framework has so many brilliant elements that can create a blueprint for rolling it out into wider sectors.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you know it's not just about the ecology I think the transformational elements the things like the metric like being able to quantify impacts and changes in land use in a really simple way that the whole sector adopts and and embraces but actually even down to things like governance how do you actually make sure changes in land use for nature recovery actually happen?
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like what kinds of legal structures do you have in place to make sure that happens?
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of funding security do we need to make sure that our future sort of landscapes are more resilient from a nature perspective across the board I think there are like like magical elements of the BNG framework that we can use as a blueprint for other sectors and whether the next one's um food and ag or actually around water resilience or um whatever it might be, I feel strongly that you can roll out the best bits of it and adapt them and flex them to make because the the development sector's actually only a small part of the harm being done to nature across our country and globally.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we actually do want we need a framework that addresses those harms.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_04: I do agree with it it's potentially there like I wrote a pair of pieces that are in book two I think uh coming to you in June that was like yes the polluter should pay but also the protector should profit and we should broaden that definition of BNG to any form of extractive damaging practice on the environment.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_04: Why shouldn't you be responsible for your impact?
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_04: The final final word for for you on the show where if we're sat down in 2030 having this conversation again what are your hopes for for BNG and nature markets in general certainly for BNG I hope that we're not talking about it at all in the context of planning.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_07: I hope it's become so business as usual that you know the market is working people are you know buying one to four units it's just working and that actually we're seeing it being talked about as you say in the boardroom about sustainability reporting and about impact and that we're seeing it in developers sales and marketing material because they recognise the benefit of it.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_07: You know, we need to move away from this kind of dry planning argument.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_07: And for the market in general I I suppose I hope that we stop drawing a red line around BNG and saying well that's BNG over there and it can't be anything else because now it's BNG and we start to think a little bit more about either how we stack things or how that performs in the round.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_04: Love it.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_04: That was an absolute privilege.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you all for being amazing human beings absolute role models and leaders in the sector and for demonstrating what it's like when awesome businesses are collaborative and genuinely want to try and make things better for everyone so I adore all of you thank you so much.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_04: Can we get a round of applause please thank you great to be here thank you