Peer review: Protecting and recovering local biodiversity

As a UK county local authority, Norfolk County Council (NCC) has a complex portfolio of responsibilities, including environmental policies.

Like other local authorities, NCC is taking steps to support actions to protect biodiversity and now wishes to act as an example by ensuring that measures for biodiversity protection are implemented on its landholdings in the first place.

Although the NCC remains engaged with their tenants on aspects to do with nature recovery and biodiversity conservation, the small scale of the farms presents a unique challenge for tenants wishing to move away from traditional farming methods. County farms are important to the Norfolk economy and support local communities and businesses.

Under the moderation of Magda Michalikova and Astrid Severin, Thematic Experts on Environment & Resource efficiency, Norfolk County Council is looking to use this peer review to gain new insights on:

• Raising awareness of alternative approaches to benefit pollinators on County Farms
• How to encourage take-up of approaches to benefit pollinators on County Farms, enabling them to contribute to our biodiversity protection targets while remaining economically viable.
• How to encourage County Farm tenants to move towards practices which are carbon positive, in line with the Local Nature Recovery Strategy

The peer review is an invitation-only event. However, key learnings of the peer review will be published afterwards in a follow-up article on the Interreg Europe website.