Water quality: what 3 future environmental land management schemes can achieve by 2027
Updated 7 April 2022
Applies to England
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Important messages
The Environment Agency has estimated the pollution reductions from voluntary land management and land use change until 2027.
The following future environmental land management schemes are one group of a wider set of schemes expected to contribute to this reduction:
- Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI)
- Local Nature Recovery (LNR)
- Landscape Recovery (LR)
There is uncertainty on the total contribution of the future environmental land management schemes, as they are being piloted, developed and launched throughout the period.
Nationally average pollution reductions do not reflect the high variability in local outcomes.
The level of pollution reduction that can be achieved can be significantly increased by targeting land use change for water quality.
The pollution reductions that are estimated to be achieved by 2027 will not be enough to meet environmental targets.
Introduction
The environmental objectives in the current river basin management plans (RBMPs) for England are being reviewed and updated (as of April 2022). These environmental objectives are used by government, the Environment Agency and other public bodies to:
- make planning decisions
- decide on the conditions to include in environmental permits
- target action, including informing funding decisions
Updated river basin management plans (RBMP 2021) will be published in Autumn 2022. The plans and the environmental objectives they contain will be reviewed and updated again at the end of 2027.
During this period, farmers in England will transition (as outlined in the Agricultural Transition Plan) from the current agricultural funding support structure to 3 new environmental land management schemes: SFI, LNR and LR.
These reward farmers and land managers for producing public goods.
The specific agricultural challenges for the water environment, as well as an overview of future mechanisms, are already provided in the ‘Agriculture and rural land management: challenges for the water environment’ document.
This document describes the total pollution reductions estimated to be resulting from voluntary land management measures and land use change.
Methodology
This analysis draws information from the recent Defra project WT1594. This bundled actions of voluntary land management measures into 2 different levels of their impact on the water environment. The report also provides an estimate of total current (2018) pollutant loads in England at current implementation of all measures.
Table 1: Total estimated absolute pollutant loads in England in millions of kilogrammes (Mkg) at current (2018) uptake rates of measures
| N | P | Sediment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated absolute loads in Mkg | 209 | 4 | 1794 |
Also, the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Forestry Commission lead the Land Use Change Project, which demonstrated the potential benefits and outcomes from targeting land use change. An economic assessment of the costs and benefits of achieving all objectives for addressing agricultural diffuse pollution has been carried out to inform RBMP 2021. The same approach provides estimates on pollution reductions achieved by these measures.
The evidence base allows the differentiation between 2 different overarching voluntary actions: land management measures and land use change. These can be independently varied in their uptake rate.
Tables 2 and 3 provide an overview of the different overarching voluntary actions for estimating pollution reductions and the type of different schemes these relate to. It makes clear that the 3 future environmental land management schemes are not the only schemes available funding voluntary measures (land management as well as land use change). And environmental land management schemes are being developed, piloted, and rolled out in a phased way over the next 6 years. This makes it difficult to determine the specific contribution from the future environmental land management schemes to RBMP objectives.
Overviews of the 2 overarching voluntary actions that can be separated out in pollution reduction estimations and how they match across different schemes
Note - voluntary schemes are not a complete list but just provide some examples.
Table 2: Voluntary land management measures
| Future agriculture funding scheme | |
|---|---|
| Sustainable Farming Incentive | Yes |
| Local Nature Recovery | Yes |
| Countryside Stewardship | No |
| Water Environment Grants | No |
| Water company funded schemes | No |
Table 3: Voluntary land use change (1%)
| Future agriculture funding scheme | |
|---|---|
| Local Nature Recovery | Yes |
| Landscape Recovery | Yes |
| Countryside Stewardship | No |
| England Woodland Creation Offer | No |
| Water company funded schemes | No |
However, for the purpose of the economic assessment, a series of simple assumptions had to be made as to what is practically achievable within the two overarching voluntary actions by 2027. The following sections are a brief summary on the assumptions made and the underlying operational evidence for each.
Uptake rates for different levels of voluntary land management measures
The most robust evidence on uptake of voluntary measures is the 2020/21 Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) Advice Audit. This sets out the following.
On average half of the available voluntary land management measures relevant for the respective farm will be implemented.
The uptake rates of these measures were:
- just under 50% within existing Countryside Stewardship high priority target areas of England (equivalent to approximately 40% of land area in England)
- approximately 20% in the remaining area of England
With the funding for CSF widening to all of England the following assumptions were made.
Within the evidence base (WT1594) it could only be differentiated between either implementing all available measures or a ‘bundle’ of measures that still have a high impact on water quality but do not require the same level of capital investment.
In view of areas receiving CSF advice not implementing all CSF-advised measures, the best approximation was to use the WT1594 ‘measure bundle’ implementing high impact measures only rather than all available measures.
The same uptake rates as given above were used, which results in a slight increase from current uptake rates as these are averaged across all of England.
Land use change (conversion from productive agricultural land to semi-natural habitat or woodland with a true reduction of agricultural production)
Current government targets of land use change (7,500 ha/year woodland creation and 20,000 ha/year creation of biodiversity habitat) equate to a total of 1.3% land use change over 6 years. This target is currently not being achieved, but we assume that efforts to realise this ambition are increasing.
It is estimated that a 1% land use change rate over 6 years will be achieved, which is just under the rate defined in existing government targets.
The 1% land use change rate is equally split between land draining to deteriorating water bodies and land draining to impacted European nature sites at 0.5% each.
Future assumptions for the voluntary schemes
It is assumed that measures within the 2 overarching voluntary actions will progressively increase from current levels to reach the full implementation rate described above by the end of 2027.
No attempt has been made to assess the likelihood of successful implementation or constraints to achievability, for example, whether it is likely that 1% of agricultural land will be converted to woodland or a semi-natural habitat. It should also be noted that these rates will have to increase further to meet objectives for water.
The 3 future environmental land management schemes are expected to contribute to voluntary land management measures and land use change. This document sets out the overall pollution reductions estimated to be achieved by the end of 2027.
There is no certainty on the exact level of contribution from the future environmental land management schemes. All figures have been rounded to the nearest percentage point.
Estimated agricultural pollution load reductions by 2027
The estimated nitrate (N), phosphorus (P) and sediment pollution reduction are given in absolute millions of kilogrammes (Mkg) and are a percentage of currently estimated nutrient loads from the figures given in Table 1. Any measure will have a greater impact if it is targeted to the worst polluting farm or land. Therefore, some land management measures under Countryside Stewardship were targeted to high priority areas of about 40% of England.
In this document the impact of targeting has been considered for the implementation of land use change only. This is because:
- land use change will only be implemented on a smaller proportion of agricultural land
- the impact of targeting land use change is generally greater, as it completely removes the nutrient load rather than reducing it as in voluntary land management measures
Pollution reductions estimated using an untargeted approach for voluntary land management measures are approximately 1% for each pollutant. These national averaged figures do not reflect the local outcomes that are achieved by voluntary land management measures as reported in the evaluation of the impacts of the CSF scheme. The CSF Phase 4 evaluation reports a reduction of 4% for nitrogen, 8% for phosphorus and 12% for sediment. It also highlights the even higher pollution reductions estimated in specific catchments.
In contrast, note that the estimated pollution reductions for the targeted land use change between 6% and 11% for nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment in Table 5 are optimistic values. There is no guarantee that farmers in the top 1% of polluting locations will engage and convert productive farmland to semi-natural habitat or woodland, even with a targeting approach in place. It is more likely that the 1% land use change rate is targeted somewhere within the top 10% of most polluting areas, for example. Therefore, the estimated targeted land use change pollution reductions provide an upper limit of the pollution reductions that could be achieved and values for both scenarios (untargeted and targeted land use change) are provided.
Overviews of pollution reductions in millions of kilogrammes which are estimated to be achievable in addition to the estimated pollution reductions achieved from current uptake (2018) by the end of 2027
The percentage of currently estimated pollutant loads is shown in brackets.
Table 4: Untargeted land use change
| 2021 to 2027 | N | P | Sediment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Voluntary land management measures | 2 (1) | less than 0.1 (1) | 18 (1) |
| 2. Voluntary land use change (1%) | 2 (1) | less than 0.1 (1) | 18 (1) |
| Total pollution reduction | 4 (2) | 0.2 (2) | 36 (2) |
Table 5: Targeted land use change
| 2021 to 2027 | N | P | Sediment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Voluntary land management measures | 2 (1) | less than 0.1 (1) | 18 (1) |
| 2. Voluntary land use change (1%) | 13 (6) | less than 0.4 (9) | 197 (11) |
| Total pollution reduction | 15 (7) | 0.5 (10) | 215 (12) |
This analysis showed that, with an untargeted approach for land use change, the estimated total load reduction for all pollutants (N, P and sediment) arising from voluntary measures is 2% in relation to currently estimated absolute pollution loads. In contrast, using a targeted approach to land use change, the total estimated pollution reductions increase to 7%, 10% and 12% for nitrate, phosphorus and sediment, respectively.
Generally, it should be noted that pollution reductions estimated to be achieved by 2027 need to be considerably increased further to meet environmental targets.
Contribution of future environmental land management schemes to estimated pollution reductions
The fully operational future environmental land management schemes (SFI, LNR and LR) would be assumed to contribute to environmental outcomes by 2027 due to:
- voluntary measures of land management (through SFI and LNR)
- land use change (through LNR and LR)
There are a range of other incentives that will target the same measures, such as:
- existing Countryside Stewardship agreements
- schemes of the water industry
- the England Woodland Creation Offer from the Forestry Commission
The future environmental land management schemes will only be fully operational from 2024 onwards, which is half of the RBMP 2021 delivery time (2022 to 2027). However, all measures have ongoing costs in order for the pollution reduction to be maintained, so that pollution reduction could be attributed fully to the future schemes by 2027.
Overall, it cannot be clearly determined how much the future environmental land management schemes will contribute to RBMP 2021 objectives by 2027, as it will depend on:
- the scale of contribution from other incentives
- level of participation
- the degree of land use change targeting for water quality
Therefore, it should simply be acknowledged that the future environmental land management schemes will be part of the estimated pollution reductions from all voluntary measures, which is between:
- 2% when not targeting land use change
- 7% and 12% when targeting land use change
The contribution by 2027 from future environmental land management schemes (SFI, LNR, LR) will be somewhere below these upper limits.