Accelerating nature-based solutions for carbon in the south east

Summary

In 2021-23 East Sussex County Council hosted a project to understand the supply and demand of nature-based solutions for carbon sequestration and offsetting and to provide resources to accelerate this. This was funded by the South East Local Enterprise Partnership (SE LEP) from its Sector Support Fund as a means of not only enhancing natural capital across its region but also delivering clean growth, jobs and skills across the nature-based sectors.

Project delivery primarily involved ESCC, Sussex Nature Partnership and Kent Wildlife Trust Consultancy Services with other services procured from University of Brighton and Eftec. Work was guided by a Steering Group including: East Sussex County Council, Essex County Council, Kent County Council, Kent Nature Partnership, South Downs National Park Authority, Forestry Commission (SE), Environment Agency, Woodland Trust, Southern Water, University of Brighton Clean Growth Hub.

The objectives of the project included the following:

  1. To provide an understanding of the demand for nature-based projects from local authority climate emergency plans and the local businesses seeking to invest in local carbon offsetting.
  2. To assess the ‘readiness’ of nature-based organisations to develop and deliver nature-based projects for carbon sequestration and identify gaps in skills, knowledge and capacity that stand in their way.
  3. To produce resources to support the development and delivery of a coherent nature-based carbon sequestration offer.
  4. To develop demonstration projects to showcase innovation and good practice.
  5. To assess options for a SELEP-wide ‘brokerage hub’ that can bring together ‘buyers’ and ‘sellers’ to co-develop nature-based carbon sequestration projects.

Project Outputs

Four outputs from the project were produced which can be downloaded here.

  1. An introductory guide for buyers and sellers of nature-based carbon offsets (February 2023)
  2. Project Synthesis Report (this sets out the findings of the project) (May 2023)
  3. Resources for Sellers of Nature-based Carbon Offsets (November 2022)
  4. Natural Capital Carbon Offsetting (a review of types of carbon offsets available) (November 2022)

The project is now complete but if you have any queries about the project or its outputs, please contact us on SussexLNPSec@eastsussex.gov.uk