Our Approach
Darent Nature Partnership is connecting our precious landscape to boost biodiversity, capture carbon, and hold water back in the landscape, improving water quality and reducing the impact of flood and drought. Our approach will benefit the community, support sustainable food production, and deliver a return on investment.
Biodiversity Net Gain
From January 2024, real estate developers in England are legally required to deliver at least 10% “Biodiversity Net Gain” (BNG) on new housing, industrial or commercial developments.
This means that each development must leave nature in a better state than it was found by creating or improving wildlife habitats and maintaining them for 30 years.
This should be delivered on-site within developments where possible, but in instances this is not possible developers can “offset” their BNG through funding nearby landowners to deliver habitat enhancement works on their land instead.
Darent Nature Partnership proposes delivering landscape-scale biodiversity restoration across 1800ha. Co-ordinated planning across the Darent Valley will ensure that this expands, buffers, and connects existing areas of priority habitat to create a nature recovery network that allows wildlife to recover and thrive across the region.
We have completed UKHab BNG baseline audits across our project area and habitats include chalk downland, lowland meadow, neutral grassland, wetlands, native and wet woodlands, and ponds.
LPA: Sevenoaks
NCA: North Downs, Wealden Greensands
If you have a BNG requirement we have a solution for you.
Carbon Offsetting
In the face of the climate emergency many companies, large and small, are starting to adopt ambitious carbon strategies. Where it’s not possible to achieve these aims through emission reductions alone, one powerful way of compensating is through off-setting carbon emissions through accredited nature-based schemes. This often involves the creation of woodland or other carbon efficient habitat, such as scrub.
The Darent Nature Partnership will sequester significant quantities of carbon, principally through woodland creation, including planting and expanding existing wooded areas through natural colonisation. In addition, carbon will be captured through a mosaic of scrub and neutral grassland habitats.
Our approach will deliver biodiversity uplift and other benefits in addition to carbon stored.
If you are looking to off-set your carbon footprint, we have a solution for you.
Water capture & quality
Water supply and use is a major issue globally with increasing demand from human consumption, industry, and agriculture. Abstraction is one of the main threats to the Darent, with the river having dried up in past years and increasing development pressures.
Replenishing water involves increasing the water volume – specifically within a river’s catchment area – through the implementation of appropriate nature-based solutions.
The Rivers Trust replenish toolbox enables us to quantify the value of volumetric water benefits and sell this as credits to offset water usage. It determines the volume of water held back in the catchment through land use changes, floodplain reconnection and interventions such as leaky woody structures that we will be implementing.
The additional benefits of this land use change and interventions are improved water quality through reduced run-off and natural flood management through alleviation during high rainfall events.
We are exploring opportunities to fund these water capture and quality benefits. If you are interested in offsetting water usage, or funding mitigation of flood risk we can help.
Health & wellbeing
More than half a million people live within walking distance of the Darent Valley, with 1.3 million people living within 10 km.
It has been proven that access to nature and green spaces can provide significant health benefits, with green social prescribing being introduced to support people to engage in nature-based activities to improve physical and mental health.
Darent Nature Partnership is providing greater opportunities for the community to connect with nature through volunteering, activities and enhanced access to the Darent Valley.
Tools, such as the Outdoor Recreation Value Tool, developed by Exeter University, with funding from Defra, help to model and value these benefits. Currently, we are treating these as value uplift of nature credits that we are creating.
If you are a social impact investor, interested in this work please get in touch.
Other ecosystem services
Darent Nature Partnership will deliver other environmental and public benefits through our ambitious actions. Whilst these ecosystem services cannot generate sellable credits at this time, they may be quantified and enhance the value of other tradable credits. These include:
- Natural Flood Management
- Pollination
- Pollution reduction
- Soil health
- Water filtration
We are seeking philanthropic investors or corporate partners keen to support our aims as part of environmental, social and governance commitments. If you share our vision, we have a range of projects to offer, from the huge undertaking of restoring the River Darent to reverting smaller parcels of land to species rich habitats.
Why fund us
Darent Nature Partnership offers a unique opportunity to partner at scale and high impact, with the assurance of best in class conservation partners helping us to deliver exceptional environmental outcomes. Our partnership is built on accountability, integrity, trust and a passion for nature. Principles which have helped us win the support of DEFRA, Sevenoaks District Council and Kent Downs AONB.
- High integrity
Working with Kent Wildlife Trust and other partners, we have adopted principles to ensure projects are of the highest standard for nature. - Scale
We manage more than 6000ha in the Darent Valley, a nationally important landscape, so are able to cater for natural capital requirements at scale. - Single contact
Darent Nature Partnership provides a single point of contact for investors interested in partnering with our group of landowners. - Credibility
We are one of the pioneering Landscape Recovery projects, backed by Defra, Kent Wildlife Trust, Sevenoaks District Council and Kent County Council. - Long-term
This project will entail a detailed 30-year management plan for each landowner, which will be advised on by our project partners. - Monitoring
Robust monitoring, including innovative remote digital monitoring, will ensure confidence in delivery of outcomes and reduce investment risk.