The Conservation Covenant Era Has Begun!

On Thursday 27 July DEFRA opened the application process for responsible bodies (RB), the third parties who will be monitoring and enforcing conservation covenants (CCs) on the land. They followed this with an explanatory webinar on Wednesday 2 August. After years of anticipation, all the pieces for CCs are finally in place, although it will be some months before we see live specimens in the wild - DEFRA needs to approve an RB (a process that will take up 12 weeks) and then parties need to agree the CC.

I have written previously about CCs as a potential tool for natural capital investment, but for those who are not familiar, CCs are a new legal tool where a landowner voluntarily contracts with an RB to bind their land either indefinitely or a limited period for a "conservation purpose". The aim is to make conservation more attractive and straightforward.