Carbon Emissions: Land Use

Question

Nature markets, including voluntary carbon markets, have the potential to deliver wider benefits for society in addition to their core environmental aim, such as local jobs, community access to nature or environmental benefits. Later this year Government will publish a Nature Markets Framework to clarify our vision and principles for the accelerating the development of high integrity nature markets.

Striking the right balance between different land uses is a challenging task, which will involve trade-offs. There are many uses of our land that we need to anticipate for the future: growing food, planting trees, building homes, natural habitats, land for infrastructure, and leisure and recreation.

Organisations looking to create or restore habitats and enter into nature markets should seek to avoid, minimise and mitigate any negative impacts, and should seek to engage in local initiatives such as Local Nature Recovery Strategies which will be prepared across England from April 2023. Legal requirements on avoiding social and environmental harm must be adhered to as a minimum (e.g. planning permission or environmental assessment will be needed for some projects). Where planning permission is needed for offsetting activities, for instance if they involve engineering works on the land, existing planning controls apply.