CEP supporting webinar series on 25 Year Environment Plan

PARTNERSHIPS FOR PEOPLE, PLACE AND THE ENVIRONMENT - UPCOMING WEBINAR on 3 October

As part of new research commissioned by Defra on local delivery of the 25 Year Environment Plan, CEP, along with partners EKN and nef, are pleased to announce the fourth webinar in the Partnerships for People, Place and Environment series:

Using natural capital approaches to improve integrated decision-making

Wednesday 3rd October 2018, 1 to 2pm BST

This free webinar will discuss how natural capital approaches are being used to engage new partners in decisions about areas of land and water, and the barriers to engaging organisations and interest groups who may not understand their dependence on a healthy natural environment.

Paul Walton, Head of Environment and Rural Economy at the New Forest National Park Authority will be talking about the Green Halo Partnership, an initiative that is working beyond the boundaries of the New Forest National Park to integrate nature and the natural environment with a thriving, economically successful community. Paul Leinster, Chair of the Bedfordshire Local Nature Partnership, will discuss the challenges of getting the environment and natural capital investment recognised as material and important issues within the governance and delivery aspects of the Oxford - Milton Keynes - Cambridge Growth Corridor.

The webinar will be chaired by Sarah Jane Chimbwandira of Surrey Nature Partnership.

To register for the webinar please follow the link below:

For more information about the research project on Local Delivery of the 25 Year Environment Plan, please contact Dr Sian Morse-Jones (Senior Consultant) or Paula Orr (Technical Director).

Workshop on Local Delivery of the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan

CEP is to hold a workshop on Partnerships and Collaborative Governance across the Environment – Economy - Health Sectors

CEP is leading a consortium that has been commissioned by Defra to explore how best to support local organisations and partnerships to work together to deliver the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan. 

Our consortium is inviting practitioners in the North of England to contribute to co-producing more effective approaches to local delivery through a workshop to be held in Leeds this autumn.

The Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan provides a guiding framework for achieving the goal of improving the environment within a generation.   This is vital to protect and enhance our environmental assets and resources and to support wider social and economic objectives. 

Local delivery is essential to the Plan’s success.  The workshop will be an opportunity for participants to share their expertise and generate proposals for improving local outcomes.

Who should attend: directors, managers and trustees of organisations working across the environment – health – economy sectors at the regional or local level; local authority planners; members of local partnerships such as Local Enterprise Partnerships, Health and Wellbeing Boards, Local Nature Partnerships and others.

Date, time and venue

The workshop will be held from 10am – 4pm at Leeds Town Hall on 02 October 2018.

The evidence and proposals generated at the workshop will inform our report to Defra on the local delivery of the 25 Year Environment Plan.

For information and registration, contact Paula Orr, Technical Director (p.orr@cep.co.uk)

The project is a collaboration between CEP, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and the Ecosystems Knowledge Network (EKN)

CEP to look at local delivery of the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan

CEP commissioned by Defra to investigate how local delivery of environmental outcomes can help to achieve the goals of the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan.

The Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan provides a guiding framework for achieving the goal of improving the environment within a generation.   Embedding local delivery is essential to the success of the plan.  CEP is leading a research project to understand how government can best support local organisations and partnerships to work together to protect and enhance important environmental assets and resources, whilst supporting their own needs and ambitions. 

The project has two phases: Phase 1 is gathering evidence about models and approaches for local integration and leadership currently in use and under development, examples of good practice and information on the factors that facilitate or hinder the achievement of good environmental outcomes and shape the relationships among local delivery bodies and Defra. This phase includes an evidence review, four case studies and interviews with stakeholders. Building on these findings, in Phase 2 the project will carry out an online survey and work with practitioners to develop tools and approaches to enhance local delivery and implementation of the 25 Year Environment Plan. 

The project is a collaboration between CEP, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and the Ecosystems Knowledge Network (EKN). The project runs for the duration of 2018. For more information, please contact CEP’s Project Manager (Paula Orr) or CEP’s Project Co-ordinator (Sian Morse-Jones).

CEP participatory land use planning webinar

An introduction to participatory land use planning: making it work for people and the environment 

WEBINAR: Thursday 13th July 2017, 1.00 - 1.30 pm British Summer Time (GMT+1)

Participatory land use planning is an internationally-recognised approach to making decisions about how land, water and natural resources are managed and used. It has significant implications for those involved in managing environmental assets in the UK. The UN Sustainable Development Goals reinforce the need for it to be applied. In this webinar, CEP's Dr Peter Phillips and Dr Bill Sheate will introduce this topic and the associated one-day training course (on 6 September). They will draw on work they have undertaken for The Pentland Hills Regional Park, commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage.

CEP runs training courses for EKN in 2017

CEP TRAINING COURSES FOR ECOSYSTEMS KNOWLEDGE NETWORK IN 2017

Dr Bill Sheate and Dr Peter Phillips will deliver a series of training courses for the Ecosystems Knowledge Network (EKN) during 2017, following the success of our one-day training course on Incorporating ecosystem services into environmental assessment run in London and Manchester during 2016.

The Ecosystem Service and Environmental Assessment course will be run again in Scotland and in Birmingham in May and June 2017 respectively.  In addition, a new one-day training course in Participatory Land Use Planning will run back-to-back with that course:-

INCORPORATING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND NATURAL CAPITAL INTO ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

• Battleby Conference Centre, Perth, Central Scotland, 10th May 2017. With kind support from Scottish Natural Heritage.
• Austin Court, Central Birmingham B1 2NP, 8th June 2017.

PARTICIPATORY LAND USE PLANNING AND THE ECOSYSTEM APPROACH: WHAT, WHEN AND HOW

• Battleby Conference Centre, Perth PH1 3EW, 9th May 2017.  With kind support from Scottish Natural Heritage.
• Austin Court, Central Birmingham B1 2NP, 7th June 2017.

For further information and links for booking see below:

CEP to evaluate Big Lottery Fund's Our Bright Future Programme

Photo credit: 'Blazin Sun' by Stephen Bowler on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP and partners ERS to evaluate Big Lottery Fund's Our Bright Future Programme

CEP, with partners Economic Research Services (ERS), are undertaking the evaluation of the Our Bright Future Programme. The Our Bright Future Programme aims to empower young people to lead progressive change in their communities and local environment, through a portfolio of 31 projects across the UK, each with a duration of three to five years. The Programme is supported by £33 million of funding from the Big Lottery Fund, and is managed by a consortium of eight organisations led by The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. 

The supported projects range in scale from those with a local focus to national level delivering in multiple areas. All the projects are based around key themes including: environmental action, environmental campaigning, leadership and influencing, and sustainable enterprises and vocational training.

CEP and ERS have been commissioned by the Royal Society of  Wildlife Trusts to undertake the Programme level evaluation. The evaluation aims to:

• Test whether the Our Bright Future Programme has achieved its long term ambitions
• Provide better evidence on how young people can improve their local environment
• Test and evidence whether a partnership way of working that invests in human, social and natural capital, is an effective means by which to deliver greater impact
• Identify good practice and ongoing improvements

Owen White is CEP’s lead for this project.

CEP Report on the Nature Improvement Areas initiative published

Defra publishes CEP’s final report on the monitoring and evaluation of the Nature Improvement Areas initiative

CEP’s final report on the monitoring and evaluation of the Nature Improvement Areas (NIA)[1]   initiative has now been published by Defra. The report can be found here.

The three year NIA Monitoring and Evaluation Phase 2 project was commissioned by Defra, in collaboration with Natural England, in February 2013. The project gathered evidence and assessed the progress and achievements of the NIAs over the government grant funded period, as well as learning from the NIA initiative to inform future integrated natural environment initiatives. 

In addition to undertaking the annual evaluations and an overall final evaluation of the outcomes of the individual NIAs and the programme as a whole, other innovative aspects of the project included:

• Experimental research to test and increase understanding of approaches to assess the difference the NIAs made over and above what would have happened anyway (the counterfactual).  The report on this work is included as Annex 1 to the final report.
• Developing the monitoring and evaluation framework and indicators, including relating to habitat connectivity, ecosystem services and social and economic and well-being benefits.
• Completed additional research into the monitoring and evaluation of social, economic and well-being benefits in the NIAs, working with the NIA partnerships to develop related case studies.  This work is reported in Annex 3 (case studies) and Annex 4 (lessons learned from the assessment of social and economic outcomes and impacts).
• Developing and managing an online reporting tool for the NIAs to record their monitoring data.
• Facilitating knowledge exchange with and between the NIAs.
• A scoping study, using lessons learned from the NIAs and the counterfactual work, to design the monitoring and evaluation of the Countryside Stewardship facilitation fund (CSFF).

For further information please contact Owen White (Principal Consultant), Project Manager for the NIA evaluation project.

Footnote

[1] The establishment of the NIAs was announced in the Natural Environment White Paper and contributed to England’s strategy for wildlife and ecosystem services – Biodiversity 2020.  The NIAs were designed to enable local partnerships to develop and implement a shared vision for their natural environment and to demonstrate how a ‘step change’ in nature conservation might be delivered at a landscape-scale, enhancing ecosystem services including social and economic objectives. Following a national competition 12 selected NIAs were awarded a share of £7.5 million government funding for a three year period from April 2012 to March 2015.