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Hello everyone and welcome to today's webinar which is on a roadmap for nature restoration, nature reporting for food and drink businesses which is hosted by our professional affiliate members Ricardo.
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First of all thank you to everyone for coming today, we hope that you find the content useful.
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There will be a Q &A at the end so please put any questions that you have into the questions box and we'll do our best to go through as many as we can at the end of the webinar.
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We'll also be doing a few polls during this session so please do put your answers in they pop up on the screen and following the webinar today we'll be sending an article email in the next couple of working days and that will contain a recording of the webinar, a copy of the slides and the contact details of today's presenters.
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So without any further ado I'll hand you over to today's presenter Fiona Dawson.
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Hi thanks Luke and thank you very much to everyone for coming.
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I'll do a quick introduction to my co-presenters to start with and then we'll get So, my name's Fiona Dawson, I'm a Principal Consultant here at Riccardo in our land team.
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I lead our work on agri-food businesses.
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So, I'm joined today by Helen Mentink, who leads our work on Natural Capital, and Hilka Shreer, one of our Senior Consultants in the land team also, who focuses on water and climate action planning.
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So, yes, we'll all be contributing to the session today.
1:23
So, as I mentioned, we're all part of Ricardo's land team, and we work across a wide range of policy and practical areas, so I'll do a little bit of a background about who Ricardo are in a moment, and then Helen is going to talk us through some nature concepts to get us really started on the topic, and then Hilke will explain some of Ricardo's approach to Nature Reporting and how that links to some of the frameworks and concepts that you'll probably be aware of.
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We'll talk through a couple of case studies and then we will explain a little bit about the Nature Reporting checklist that we'll be sharing after the webinar.
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And as Luke mentioned, we've got time for Q &A at the end, so please do pose your questions.
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Hilke will go through a couple of polls as we go through to sort of keep things a little bit interactive.
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And so, yeah, we would encourage you to participate in those and it'll help us tailor the content a little bit as we go along.
2:27
So I won't take a long time explaining who Ricardo are because I'm sure you're all keen to get onto the concepts and the nature reporting practicalities.
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But I'm aware that actually Ricardo's name is a little bit less well known in this sector than some other sectors.
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So really keen to just flag a few of our areas of expertise in case people want to come back to that.
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So Riccardo are a global specialist engineering and environmental consultancy.
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We work across the globe, we're all based in the UK, but we do have offices in quite a few different locations around the world and do a lot of work across Europe and the Middle East.
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So we work on everything from calculating greenhouse gas mitigation of the common agriculture policy through to corporate net zero strategies and building capacity for policymakers in Southeast Asia on nitrogen agriculture policy.
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So we have quite a diverse range of projects across the world with different types of partners.
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I'm not going to talk through this.
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This is a slide for you to look at later if you're interested.
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But just to flag, we work across policy strategy economics.
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So with governments and other organizations helping them navigate and develop policies.
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We work with businesses in our corporate sustainability business unit, across all different types of corporate sustainability work.
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We have a significant energy decarbonisation practice, working to try to facilitate the clean energy transition.
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We have a specialism in biodiversity, water and natural capital, and also in air quality, working across all of those areas.
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We're all from the land team, so just wanted to kind of flag how that works.
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So we have a land team which works with people from across our core expertise areas that I just flagged.
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So we often make up projects, teams of specialists in, for example, policy, combined with our specialists in agriculture or other aspects to work on projects that target the needs of customers.
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So, we have a few specialist areas in our team. So, we work on climate, all sorts of climate assessments and mitigation planning.
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We have specialists in nutrients and soils.
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We do a lot of work on air quality, including agricultural mitigations for air quality.
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Helen and Hilke are some of our leads on natural resources, working across water and land-based ecosystems and doing a lot of work on that.
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And we also have specialist ecological assessment teams. And we also bring together teams to focus on bioeconomy.
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So, we have a circular economy team and we often work with them where there's an overlap, for example, with the bioeconomy.
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And I'm not going to talk through this again in detail, but this is just a sense of where our corporate sustainability solutions, sort of how they span across different areas and something for you to look at later if you want to so our team would get involved with our colleagues in the sustainability team where there are overlaps between food, agriculture, other aspects of the land-based sector.
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And so I think we also wanted to flag that we're very aware of all the multiple demands on everyone's time.
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This obviously is, you know, some of this will be on your plate as a big long to-do list.
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So, we're mindful when developing our nature reporting approaches of all the other competing agendas that you're working on.
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So, that's a little bit of background about Ricardo, and obviously do come back to us if you've got any questions on that, but I didn't want to spend too long talking about that.
6:17
And I will now hand over to Helen to do the bit you've been waiting for, which is start talking about nature concepts and moving on to nature reporting. Over to you, Helen.
6:28
Thanks very much, Fiona. Right, next slide, please. Thank you.
6:38
Okay, so what is nature?
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You may have an idea having joined this webinar, but maybe it's completely new to you.
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So, nature really refers to quite broadly the natural world.
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It encompasses biodiversity, and that's biodiversity of all living resources, which includes people, and the interaction between biodiversity and the environment and other species as well.
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Nature is made up of four different realms, land, freshwater, ocean, and atmosphere, all of which are very different and operate in different ways.
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You'll see on the diagram there, society is also included.
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That's to show that society is very much a part of nature, not separate from it, and that includes people, corporates, and financial institutions as well.
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And basically, society both impacts on nature and depends on nature.
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Next slide please, Fiona.
7:37
Thank you.
7:38
So how do we depend on nature as individuals and businesses?
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Well, ecosystems produce flows of benefits to people and the economy, and they're known as ecosystem services, or sometimes wider benefits.
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So examples would include provisioning services, which might include the extraction of biomass and fresh water.
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Regulating services, ones of particular relevance to the food and drink sector would be water purification, mitigation of floods and storms, soil and sediment retention, water flow regulation, and some others, and also cultural services, which include things like recreation and health.
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These ecosystem services form the basis for understanding corporate dependence on nature, and as it says here, they are really crucial for corporate risk management. Next slide please Fiona.
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Businesses themselves depend on ecosystem services.
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You can see there on the top right, different services and goods as well go into businesses and how they operate. They might depend on water resources, natural materials.
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They may require pollination services to be carried out.
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They use energy, all these sorts things, and they also have impacts on nature as well.
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Some examples there, for example, they produce waste, emissions, noise and light disturbances, pollution of water, for example, discharges to soil.
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And the diagram on the left shows that sort of relationship between businesses, society and nature.
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And it's very much, It's the ecosystem condition, the extent of the ecosystems and the characteristics of the ecosystems that affect the quantity and quality of ecosystem services provided.
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So if business or society has too many adverse impacts on nature, then that can really lead to a downward spiral of nature depletion.
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Next slide please, Fiona.
9:51
So can businesses turn negative impacts on nature into positive ones?
9:55
well absolutely they can.
9:59
Nature positive, you may have heard of this phrase, it's gaining in traction around the world, it's basically nature's version of net zero.
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It's a global movement now with around 200 countries signing up to the nature positive ambition through the global biodiversity framework which came out of the COP15 biodiversity summit in Montreal in December 2022.
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FDF, as you may know, has launched Ambition 2030, has five pillars as shown on the screen. The second one is specifically on nature restoration.
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And FDF has committed to invest in nature restoration projects such as regenerative agriculture, contributing to the UK's nature positive plan to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
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Example targets of that include procuring 50% of fresh food from areas with sustainable water management and sourcing from regenerative farms.
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The FDF recommends that members follow the Institute of Grocery Distribution Strategic Framework for building a sustainability roadmap as well.
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Next slide, please. A way of achieving nature positive is through the nature reporting process.
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Nature reporting allows business owners to understand their key impacts and dependencies on nature and also to identify strategic opportunities to address that nature loss, thus mitigating their risks and strengthening their resilience to shocks and disturbances.
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Navigating this nature reporting and identifying the best nature strategy for businesses can be complex though because of the varying reporting standards and frameworks that are around and the nature policies and ecological landscapes in different regions and different countries as well.
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Some reporting frameworks are mandated through regulation, for example you've got various EU directives, for example the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and also TCFD which is the Task Force for Climate Related Financial Disclosures that operates in the UK and also the climate-related financial disclosure regulations.
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But typically these sort of mandatory requirements only apply to large companies and or listed companies.
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They're sort of, you have to look at each one to see who is included in it.
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And also some come into force in different years in the future and some are in force now.
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For the UK sustainability disclosure standards, there are minimum requirements for government certain public bodies as well.
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Some of the reporting frameworks are currently voluntary, for example, the Task Force for Nature-related Financial Disclosures, TNFD, but that is expected to be mandated in the coming years. So that's that.
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Next slide, we actually have a first poll for you. Do you feel up to date with the regulatory framework on nature?
13:07
Yes, no, or somewhat. No, that's what we expected.
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There is a lot of information to understand and it can be tricky knowing where to start because of that.
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That's good, but also good that some of you do know. That's great. Next slide, please, Fiona.
13:42
What guidance is there on nature reporting? Where do you begin with these different frameworks?
13:49
Well, one that's particularly important, even though it's not mandatory at the moment, it's a voluntary framework, the TNFD, Task Force on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures.
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That links in very much to some of the other standards which are mandatory and I think is kind of leading the way in the nature space.
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So especially when this will become mandatory in future, this will be sort of the place to start really.
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TNFD has developed an integrated approach for the assessment of nature-related issues, and this is known as the LEAP approach. LEAP stands for locate, evaluate, assess, and prepare.
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The TNFD LEAP approach is also used for the ESRS recommendations as well.
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TNFD, similar to TCFD, if you're familiar with the climate-related financial disclosures, they've developed a of disclosure recommendations and guidance that encourage and enable businesses to assess, report and act on their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities.
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TNFD links heavily with the global biodiversity framework as well and requires businesses to look at both nature as a whole and the ecosystem services which biodiversity is a part of.
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Additionally, there's the science-based target network which has developed a step-by-step approach to set targets and develop actions, which you can see on the right-hand side image there.
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Hilke will now go into more detail about our approach to nature reporting.
15:31
That's great. Thanks, Helen. Yeah, so basically, how do you start and what do you do?
15:38
Based on TNFD, SPTN, Science-Based Targets Network, and kind of from WWF guidance and other international guidance, we kind of have this four-step approach that we recommend, with step one being really building your foundations, so know your value chain, measure your baseline, and set your goals.
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Step two, metrics and targets, so prioritize your risks, identify opportunities, and set ideally ambitious targets.
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Step three, actions, so develop and disclose your actions, which we also have a couple of case studies for later, and then step four, strategy, so create your biodiversity strategy or what becomes more and more a thing is also the nature transition plan for a natural restoration and then keep tracking over time over the next years.
16:30
So to get started, next slide please, and to understand kind of where we should focus next couple or this next section on it would be great if you could answer the following question of where are you with your nature reporting? Are you on your foundation?
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Are you already developing metrics and targets? Are you already looking at actions?
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Do you already have a strategy in place or you haven't started and that's why you are here basically.
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Okay amazing so most of you haven't started some are at the foundation and some are already at the strategy level.
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That's really good to know for the next slides.
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So then step one with the foundation.
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We go through it step by step, but I'll focus a bit more on foundation then as we, as most of you haven't started yet.
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And this is really the first step to kind of know your value chain, measure your baseline and set goals.
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So first, know your value chain.
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It's slightly different for food and drink businesses.
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is adapted from the TNFD guidance.
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But basically the idea is that you really look from upstream to your direct operations to downstream and end of life.
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A guiding question could be what are your activities by sector, by value chain and also where is your value chain located in which geographies and where are your direct operations.
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So we look at the resources, land use, transport and infrastructure and try to include as many stakeholders as possible, especially in the beginning stage.
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As the next step, slide two, we then look into the nature-related risks and opportunities across your value chain.
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So the network for greening the financial systems defines nature-related risks as the negative effects on economies, organisations and financial systems that result from the of nature or the misalignment of economic actors with actions aimed at protecting, restoring and or reducing negative impacts on nature.
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So there are three types of nature related risks. So physical transition and systemic risks.
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Systemic risks are for example ecosystem stability and financial stability from your organization.
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And then two types of nature opportunities.
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So business performance such as markets, capital flow, financing, resource efficiency, products and services, and reputational capital, as well as sustainability performance.
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So your use of natural resources, ecosystem protection, restoration, and regeneration.
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And nature risks need to be assessed across those interrelated categories, and the influence business performance and of course vice versa.
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So to understand which nature related risks and opportunities are material to your business and specifically and to your value chain, we need to assess the dependencies and impacts on nature.
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So look at mainly physical risks to with.
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As Helen mentioned earlier, nature includes the four realms land, fresh water, ocean and atmosphere.
20:13
So just to keep that in mind that we always need to look at the whole picture and not just one of those four realms. Next slide, please.
20:26
So to understand, or I guess, yeah, we ask first, Do you already have, have you already assessed your business dependencies and impacts?
20:38
Or I started looking into it.
20:44
I guess it's most relevant also for people who have already undertaken their, who are already at the strategy step.
21:06
So most people have not started yet because they haven't done the foundation part yet, I assume.
21:11
And then some people have, but just the upstream value chain part.
21:17
This is also what we often see actually that you start with upstream or downstream and then you go into more detail into the in the next assessment that you would carry out.
21:30
So to undertake the materiality assessment which again varies between food and beverage sector slightly because the value change are slightly different you could start by asking are any of the sectors or value chains and operations that we spoke about before associated with potentially moderate or high dependencies and impacts on nature and where are these sectors and direct operations with potentially moderate and high dependencies and impacts located.
22:08
Also which biomes and ecosystems do your direct operations and moderate and high-dependence and impact value chain sectors interface with.
22:20
So an example would be in the food sector, the raising of cattle, the raising of cattle, for example, then we can look into the provisioning services and like in a first high-level assessment, it could be that you're very highly dependent on biomass and you have a high dependency on water supply.
22:42
For example, in the beverage sector, for example, regulating and maintenance service could be a high dependency for soil and sediment retention, could be low in your fields, in your locations, but water flow regulation could be high.
23:00
But of course, it should be, this is like very high level overview, but it might be that in some locations, it's a high dependency but in others it's lower. Next slide please.
23:13
And the same is the same we would do for impact basically.
23:19
So for example there could be a high dependency on land use change because we are using a lot of fresh water or terrestrial ecosystems but we don't have a high pollution because we produce very low, less solid waste, so we would have a low impact.
23:44
One more question could be for activities, which of these are ecologically sensitive locations, where are we operating, and which of the direct operations are in these sensitive locations?
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So it's also linking it back to the locations.
24:02
So now you're probably asking yourself, that's great.
24:05
I already know parts of it.
24:07
Thanks for telling me all of this.
24:11
But next, we will kind of show you a list of available data sources and tools that we have used in the past, and some of them we have also developed, especially in the UK context.
24:22
So as a next step or a next question, sorry, It would be great to check what tools have you used or if you haven't used any what would come to mind when you think of nature reporting.
24:36
So next question please.
24:41
It would be great if you could put your answer in the question box.
25:07
If any come to mind, just feel free to just put it in the box, otherwise we just continue to the next slide where we have a list of available data sources and digital tools which can be used as a foundation to start with.
25:25
The top part of the list are basically very high-level tools to start with a high-level assessment and the bottom list includes more detailed location-specific data sets including two tools which our colleagues at Ricardo have developed for the UK specific context.
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So the graph on the right, for example, shows areas with the most suitable areas for biodiversity enhancement, because the tool overlays several data sets, which are very location specific to the UK, to identify areas in which the benefits for biodiversity and society are greatest.
26:05
Generally, of course, a major difficulty is usually data, And the more location-specific you can do your assessment, the better and reliable it will be.
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But of course, starting with high-level tools can provide a simplified or as a simple start to the whole complex issue.
26:28
So a guiding question would be, do you know what data you are already collecting in your businesses because in a lot of sustainability departments a lot of data is already collected and then ask how good is that data that you are already collecting. Next slide please.
26:54
So after you've assessed your dependencies and impacts you should now have a list basically of the potentially material activities of your operations, a list and a map of assessment locations.
27:08
A heat map can be used to capture the dependencies and impact analysis to better highlight where the biggest impacts and dependencies are.
27:20
The next step would be to set a very clear goal and aim of what you want to achieve with your assessment on nature.
27:27
So really bringing your stakeholders on board and making sure that the business really aligns with your strategic ambition of your nature reporting journey.
27:39
Generally, a strategic ambition is advised to adopt an integrated approach to address nature, climate, and other dimensions of sustainability.
27:50
So it's always good to see can we already incorporate the nature reporting or link the nature reporting to carbon reporting, for example, or water risk assessments that we already done potentially, depending on where you are basically on the sustainability reporting.
28:14
Next slide, please. Then we come to step two, which is the metrics and targets one.
28:24
The first part of this would be to prioritize your nature risk hotspots or your locations that we have already identified and then identify the associated risk and opportunities with that.
28:36
So, with your ambition and goals in mind, you do the prioritisation and then use weightings and risk scoring to identify which locations should be prioritised to go forward and to implement metrics and targets on.
28:58
And depending on how detailed your assessment is, it is recommended to use site questionnaires on your specific locations to include as many stakeholders as possible and also to verify information that is location-based because often what happens is that a department does something but then the on-the-ground farmer or business has to actually implement what the strategic vision of the business is.
29:30
So ensuring stakeholder engagement with everyone in your value chain is included is quite important.
29:39
Next slide please. So the next step is to set metrics on pressure and state of nature.
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So for example the proportion of supply chain area with native vegetation over sourcing areas from sensitive locations or the weight of tons, the weight sorry in tons of non-plastic packaging for food products or for drink beverage products and by entity, by packaging type.
30:09
It could also be the proportion of cropland controlled, managed, and sourced from with at least 10% natural vegetation and cultivated area, for example.
30:22
So, TNFD and science-based targets have a whole list of nature-related metrics.
30:28
I just gave some examples here, but I think if there are any questions, we can go into that later as well.
30:35
I think it's important just to remind ourselves that we are really looking to try to find metrics that measure a wide range and potentially also link to the carbon assessments.
30:50
Next slide, please.
30:53
And then with going back to the aims and ambitions that we already said, it's important to set realistic targets but of course we also want ambitious targets.
31:04
The targets should be ecosystem centered and as close as possible to local realities and ideally you have a target for each of the four nature realms or and definitely to the ones that your activities are material to and they should be set for the short, medium and long term to which is supposed to ensure that you can actually reach the targets that you are setting.
31:36
So link potential targets to my, the targets should be linked to the materiality assessment results and specific activities which have an impact on the specific geographical areas and then also keep in mind the involvement of internal and external stakeholders in the of defining these targets because in the end they will only be reached if people are on board with it and the scope and time frame associated with your targets.
32:07
So a target could be for example a target for reducing in businesses fresh water footprint for example could be a 30% reduction in a basin by 2029, but that's quite a huge overall target, so that could also be further broken down into the monthly withdrawal volume per source in cubic meter, or enabling that target to be constructed and monitored over time more easily.
32:46
For direct operations.
32:47
An example I also put here is that the business will have zero conversion of natural ecosystems by 2050 compared with the 2020 baseline.
32:59
It always helps kind of to have a baseline year to actually measure against, measure progress over time.
33:10
On the left you can see a target hierarchy which can help to allow the business to set targets that are most appropriate in the context and in which your value chain operates in.
33:23
It's not strictly descending as several types of targets can and should coexist.
33:29
However, a target hierarchy provides a comprehensive and flexible structure to decision-making and also strengthens the overall robustness of your business strategy and transition plan later on as it kind of highlights the transparency and as it provides reasoning for the target setting process.
34:00
As a next step and almost last step of the whole plan, we will develop some actions.
34:13
Are there any actions, next slide please, are there any actions that you can think of or that would be feasible for your business without me telling you some examples?
34:26
It's also an open answer question, so if you could provide some answers in the chat, that would be great. Maybe have you thought of any actions already or not yet?
34:43
Do you need partner organizations to develop actions with something to think about? Next slide, please.
35:02
So both Science targets network and TNFD recommend using the AR3T framework so the avoid, reduce, regenerate, restore and transform framework which also highlights to really based on the metrics and targets that you have that we have set to ensure that all metrics and targets are addressed and that all Yeah, so we want actions per real, cross organizational actions to include as many stakeholders as possible and also ensure the financial planning of these actions.
35:42
So all of that should be incorporated.
35:46
There are some examples of actions listed here for an on-farm management resource, to resource use for example.
35:55
So one action could just be developing a strategy, another could be invest in reviving initiatives.
36:02
But in the next slide, I'll have an example of how to implement nature-based solutions projects.
36:15
The reason I'm talking about a nature-based solution project here is because we often get told we want to implement nature-based solutions, but actually we don't really know how or which, how is this done and this is why I've kind of included a short demonstration here.
36:33
Basically to first identify the environmental requirements, ambitions and visions of the project, have local stakeholder engagement, identify, quantify, and quantify the different habitats on sites to produce a map of the on-site habitats and then see also does it actually implement what I was looking for, measure the baseline level of the provisioning ecosystem services and then track that over time and then design the range of environmental enhancements to increase the natural capital value, measure the changes in biodiversity in ecosystem services and then report back on your metrics of course that we have developed and see how it reaches my target over time.
37:26
There's another step five, which could be done, but it's not a must to estimate kind of the monetary benefits of enhanced ecosystem services provision, which often helps to bring stakeholders on a local level on board.
37:45
Next slide, please.
37:47
And then the last step is to create biodiversity strategy or the nature transition plan to basically bring all of what I've just talked about together.
37:58
So this will help you in the long term to manage the risk, comply with regulations, perform financially, have a competitive advantage, engage stakeholders and achieve long-term sustainability and climate resilience.
38:11
We've done a couple of case studies, which will be sent in the slide deck as well.
38:20
I won't go through them right now, but next Fiona and Helen will go through two case studies on action development.
38:30
Thanks, Hilke. So, yes, Helen and I are going to talk through a couple of examples.
38:36
They're both focused on agricultural supply chains.
38:39
Obviously, as Hilke has set out, you'll need to be thinking about what actions you would take across a much wider range of your business interactions.
38:48
But we felt we had to start somewhere, and we couldn't cover everything today.
38:53
So Arti was very passionate about creating change in agriculture, so we thought we'd start there.
39:01
So what I wanted to start with is just a quick overview of what types of actions in agricultural supply chains contribute to improving nature and biodiversity and I have a feeling that these are possibly, you know, quite obvious to a lot of people but I just wanted to put those out there because actually it isn't necessarily rocket science, the difficult bit is actually getting change happening on the ground.
39:25
So sustainable soil management is really important in terms of better outcomes for nature and links quite a lot to water quality improvements and obviously sort Helen and Hilco set out how we need to look across all the different natural realms to make sure we're thinking about how our business interacts with those.
39:46
So obviously better soil management will improve water quality, often means we need less water to keep the crops going, for example, because actually the water holding capacity of the soil will be increased.
39:59
So actually we don't need to take as much water out of the rivers for irrigation, example, so that actually helps the water quality.
40:06
And also it can mean there's less sort of runoff of harmful chemicals and things like that into the water.
40:13
So sustainable soil management is important. Water quality improvements are also important obviously to protect aquatic ecosystems.
40:25
The pitch here is a nice cover crop, cover crops and catch crops and things like that are really helpful in terms of improving water quality to prevent, you know, fertilizers and things getting into the water and sediment, which can harm aquatic life.
40:41
Another one that actually comes to the front of my mind when people are thinking about what you can do is actually just natural habitat enhancement.
40:48
So tree planting, hedges, you know, field margins, wildflower meadows, things like that are actually, you know, I think lot of people know about those and actually getting those happening within a farm system is really important.
41:02
And obviously we can cut the harm to things like pollinators through reducing harmful pesticide use.
41:10
And obviously all of these are sort of interlinked and have to work within the farm business context.
41:19
So what I want to talk about as the case study aspect really is the value of farming advice programmes.
41:27
So, agricultural advice programmes to help farmers take those steps to improve nature outcomes on their farms.
41:35
So, out of our team in Ricardo, we've been running agricultural advice and training programmes, stakeholder engagement training, grant management and agricultural helplines for around about 20 years now.
41:47
We run these for the government and for DEFRA and for the Scottish Government, we ran something called the Future Farm Resilience Fund since 2019 and I'm going to talk through some of the benefits of that in a moment and work with Natural England and we also work with water companies, so for example sort of helping them engage farmers to reduce pollution into watercourses through changing their agricultural practices and we're very excited to have just launched our new program, Roads to with grant funding from a philanthropic foundation, supporting a pair group of farmers to make some of those changes on farm.
42:28
So we're very passionate about these programs and the changes they can make.
42:32
So what I wanted to kind of flag really is that actually supporting farming advice programs can actually create a real impact on the ground.
42:45
So what we found from experience and I has come up in a lot of conversations I've had with businesses is actually that transition of, you know, you sort of know what needs to happen in your supply chain, but actually bringing your suppliers and the farmers along with you as part of that transition, getting that change happening on the ground is really difficult.
43:05
And actually particularly where suppliers, farm suppliers are being, you know, they're supplying into lots of different businesses and they might be getting different messages from different businesses and they might be a little bit rabid in the headlights thinking, well, my fertilizer prices have gone through the roof.
43:21
I'm struggling to keep my farm going, and they want all this stuff as well.
43:24
I just don't know how I'm going to do this, or I'm too busy. I'm going to do that another time.
43:29
I'm really interested, but actually, not right now.
43:33
So actually, there are quite a lot of hurdles in getting change happening on the ground.
43:39
And obviously, there have been quite a lot of changes in the UK, for example, in agriculture right now and that's not unique to the UK and obviously you'll have supply chains in other places.
43:49
But what we found through some of our advice programmes is that they do make a real difference in getting that real change happening on the ground.
43:58
So 83% of the farmers that had advice through the Future Farmer Resilience Fund through Riccardo's part of that that was funded by the government said that they would implement all the actions that were recommended through their bespoke one-to-one kind of advisory service that they took up.
44:15
We found an average increase in profits from over 50 ,000 pounds across the farms took part.
44:23
Some actually had a lot more than that.
44:24
And that's because there was a business resilience review integrated into the farming advice, which looked at the whole farm and gave the farmers that confidence that they knew where they could go in future and how they could make their farm successful whilst also doing some of the environmental actions needed and that's often a barrier that needs to be removed.
44:48
89% of the participants said they were going to keep farming and make some positive changes.
44:52
Obviously part of the initiative was to keep those farmers working because things were getting quite difficult and obviously they are in your supply chain.
45:02
I think what's critical is that actually a lot of farmers wouldn't be willing to get that help they need to make a to more environmentally sustainable practices and 39% wouldn't have sought the advice if it hadn't been available and sort of promoted to them through funded services and only 9% would have been willing to pay a market rate that advice.
45:24
So actually the difference having advice available to them makes is really tangible.
45:31
So what we've learnt over the years of running these farming advice programmes with different types of organisations with governments and water companies and other organisations is that actually the key ingredients of success are to make it really sort of flexible and bespoke and have a kind of one-to-one aspect of advice so that actually they can understand what the, you know, what the way forward is for their particular farm, because obviously every farm is different in terms of the context and the finances.
46:00
Make it accessible, so easy to get hold of, we have lovely farming advice helplines, we have online things, we have webinars, you know, normally the mixture of things and different times and different ways of people to access that advice is really important.
46:16
It's really important that you link it to the farm profitability and that it's, as we've seen from the feedback we've had, that farmers don't have to fork out a lot of money for it themselves.
46:29
So those are our sort tips for success.
46:33
And I know this isn't focusing on the detail of all the kind of ecosystem benefits, but actually, any change that you want to happen in your agricultural supply chain, you know, needs farmers to come along with that change.
46:46
So actually, we think this these these learnings are really sort of important to bear in mind when you're planning your actions on farms.
46:53
And hand over to Helen now for a slightly different take.
46:57
Thanks Fiona.
46:59
So a project we did a little while ago was supporting Danone with a couple of partners, Nature Conservancy and iCatalyst.
47:08
So we worked with Danone to help transform food systems and address water challenges that they're experiencing in Spain.
47:17
So one of the first things that we did was to identify the nature related risks that were relevant to Danone, so obviously they're a food and beverage company, they're dependent on natural resources like many of you are.
47:30
They're also a key player in Spain, they've got production facilities there and also some of their value chains, some of their key ingredients come from a particular region in Spain, and in this project we looked at peaches, almonds and milk.
47:45
They're also potentially impacted in the future by certain issues relating to climate change, drought is a particular issue in Mediterranean Spain.
47:55
There's increased irrigation, water demand from intensive agriculture going on and also diffuse pollution from pesticides, all of which can actually impact on those sort of raw materials going through the supply chain and impact on the products that Danone can produce.
48:13
So we work with them to try and identify some solutions and opportunities to sort of mitigate these risks and impacts and dependencies.
48:22
So that included regenerative agriculture practices and also nature-based solutions within their supply chain that contribute to improving water security for Danone.
48:35
Next slide, please.
48:39
So we assessed the different solutions that we came up with, both the regenerative agriculture practices and the nature-based solutions and prioritized them.
48:50
So this was based on their environmental impacts, basically relating to water security, biodiversity, crop production, climate change, and soil health.
48:59
You can see some of those in the image there.
49:02
And also we did an economic analysis of the capital and operating expenditure and the revenues of the different potential solutions.
49:14
So you can see here, some of the different solutions recommended included changes in relation to soil cover, to buffer strips, organic soil amendments, rotational grazing, pasture diversification, and crop rotation and direct seeding.
49:30
Just comparing the different water benefits, biodiversity benefits, and other environmental benefits on this slide here was really useful for helping to understand which solutions would be most appropriate in different locations for different farmers, different farms.
49:51
We also helped identify measures to support the uptake of these different measures by farmers but also at a higher level, the cooperatives and the wholesalers as well.
50:03
We produced a report with some recommendations that was around knowledge dissemination, helping those different actors across the supply chain to sort of understand what could be done and why it needs to be done. Trying to encourage collective action.
50:22
Some advice on nature finance schemes and also helping to come up with a pilot project that Denon could take forward to work with certain farmers in relation to those products that I mentioned earlier in relation to peaches and almonds.
50:36
And this project was helpful because it sort of outlined the potential benefits that Danone and its supply chain and the wider environment would get from undertaking these actions.
50:50
So there would be, well, firstly, better integration of the value chain, working more closely together.
50:55
But in terms of environmental benefits, there would be improved water capacity and enhanced water quality, an increased abundance of pollinators and pest regulators as well, and also improved soil fertility and related to increased carbon storage as well.
51:12
So a whole range of benefits coming out of that. And moving on to back to Hilke, I believe.
51:24
Thanks both. So, last but not least, we have a short kind of nature reporting checklist.
51:33
This is just some sample. These are just some sample questions.
51:36
The full list will be provided to you via email after the webinar.
51:43
Some of those questions is really to start, like the whole list is basically to check where to start, to understand where to start.
51:51
So, four these questions are.
51:53
Do I already have an understanding of what nature-related topics are significant for my organization's business or activities?
52:01
Do I understand and know how to link the different nature areas together?
52:05
Does an internal group of stakeholders already support the idea of incorporating nature reporting into business operations and sustainability, or do I need to start aligning stakeholders behind the idea as a first starting point?
52:19
Can I do the initial high-level assessment using open source tools myself, or do I need external support?
52:26
The whole list includes a lot more questions, so I hope it's, or we hope it's useful for you.
52:34
But yeah, this marks the end of the webinar for now.
52:38
And I think we have some open questions now.
52:41
So if you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the chat.
52:49
Thank you very much, guys.
52:51
I think we have had one or two questions come in so far, but please do please do keep putting any in, if any comes to mind.
52:58
The first one that we had in a while ago was, how would you suggest choosing data sources and tools for nature risk assessments?
53:09
Yeah, I think I can answer that.
53:13
So, generally, as I said, a major difficulty is usually what type of data should be used and how good is the data that we have.
53:23
High-level tools can provide a good starting point, but it also simplifies the approach to the complex subject of nature in general, but it can also have some limitations, but it's really then going to identify which locations are my hotspots and then identifying which locations, yeah, which locations are my hotspots and then looking which tools are useful for those specific locations.
54:00
Well, thank you.
54:01
We've had one more question in, so if anyone else does have one, please put it in now before we wrap things up.
54:07
But the last question that we had in was, what approaches and actions do businesses need to support, given that government regulation and funding is addressing some key nature risks?
54:20
I can pick up on that one. So, yeah, it's an interesting area.
54:26
We have quite a few conversations with people about this because, because obviously, you know, through, you know, in the UK, through the UN schemes and, you know, in Europe, through agricultural policy payments and elsewhere, there is, and tightening regulation, there's a lot more that is being taken care of in theory by regulation and a lot of support out there for farmers.
54:51
And obviously some of them are now looking at sort of carbon and nature credits and things like that.
54:55
So it is quite a complex landscape.
54:58
And there's a couple of things that I think businesses need to be bearing in mind that actually you do need to acknowledge that it's not a blank piece of paper you're starting from and actually doing a bit of work to map out that policy landscape that, for example, affects your key supply chains or what context are the farm suppliers that you're working with operating in so that you know almost what the gap is.
55:28
So a bit of a gap analysis actually, I think, really important as part of your planning.
55:32
But then I think what I would say is that actually you shouldn't necessarily assume that if there's funding available for farmers or other businesses to take up, to take those practical steps forward, you can't necessarily assume that they're in a position to take that up.
55:49
What we've found through some of our work with farmers is actually that that hand holding and that sort of having some extra support for them to understand the opportunities are on their farm or for their business to take full advantage of those incentives that are available for example or help them make sure they're properly complying with regulations if you know they they've changed quickly and they haven't kept up to date actually some hand-holding and support to actually take up those opportunities and implement the regulations is actually still really important and that's a sort of really important part of And what you can do is to sort of make sure that the regulatory and sort of incentive landscape is being is working well for you and in your supply chain.
56:37
And so, yeah, it's not it's not necessarily all done just because the policies and funding says it is.
56:44
Thanks, Fiona. I don't think we have any other questions in there.
56:48
So, unless anyone has anything else, thank you to everyone for coming.
56:52
Thanks to Ricardo, Helga, Fiona and Helen for presenting.
56:56
Once again, we will be sending you a copy of the recording afterwards and a copy of the slides, as well as the checklist and the contact details of stage presenters. So, unless there's anything else from you guys, we can wrap it up there.
57:10
Thank you. Appreciate it.
57:12
Cool. Thanks everyone.
57:14
Thank you. Goodbye.
57:15
Thank you very much. Bye.
