An Environmental Showcase

Gloucestershire has been leading the way on the environment for nearly 20 years, hosting one of the first Heritage Lottery Landscape scale partnership projects in 2002.

 

The Caring for the Cotswolds Project gave rise to the development of Integrated Local Delivery, a framework for coordinated local environmental action, with all partners and stakeholders working in mutual support.

 

The approach, now researched and evaluated as an international case study of best practice, has been strengthened by the ethos of valuing local knowledge from farming and local communities and partnership working through the Gloucestershire Local Nature Partnership.

 

The approach has been further trialed here in Gloucestershire for the new Environmental Land Management Scheme and how it might roll out the approach. It is demonstrating how groups of farmers can come together to help communities build resilience for flooding, food security, biodiversity recovery, air quality,  health and wellbeing. 

 

By building soil health by increasing organic matter and sequestering carbon, farmers can work in partnership with scientists to deliver multiple ecosystem services and public good from their land. The Gloucestershire Food Partnership has drawn inspiration from this successful framework approach in developing its own operating model.