Evidence Assessment

These reviews were undertaken rapidly at Defra’s request and together captured more than 2,400 individual sources of evidence. This was followed by an Integrated Assessment (IA) to provide a more accessible summary of these evidence reviews, with a focus on capturing the actions with the greatest potential magnitude of change for the intended outcomes and their potential co-benefits and trade-offs.

The outcomes of interest provided by Defra included a range of environmental and cultural services, drivers and other benefits. For simplicity this range of outcomes are called "Ecosystem Services" (ES) in the project reports.

The project was carried out in two phases with the environmental and provisioning services (called the 'environmental services theme') commissioned in Phase 1 and cultural and regulatory services (called the 'cultural services theme') in a follow-on Phase 2. The methodology used by the project team was an adapted approach to one developed by an expanded team which assessed actions being considered by the Welsh Government for the proposed new Sustainable Farm Scheme and thus helps support greater cohesion across the UK.

The project methodology involved commissioning ten expert teams, involving 45 experts drawn from 10 organisations. As a first step, to help navigate both the evidence reviews and IA table, all actions were grouped into management bundles by the team. A top Tier-1 level of 17 bundles were identified with a Tier-2 level of 46 sub-management bundles also created due to the breadth of actions captured by the Tier-1 bundles. All 741 actions were assigned to a Tier-1 and Tier-2 Management Bundle.

The teams were then asked to complete rapid expert-led evidence reviews of one or more the 33 ES loosely grouped by the 10 requested review topics following a standard template which laid out in a series of sections a wide range of issues which could impact on the final inclusion of any specific action into the ELM schemes. The review template included sections covering; the strength of the evidence; the magnitude and timescale of potential change; the contextual dependencies as to whether an action may work; the risk of displacement of production to other land not in scheme; potential impact of future climate change on the impact; co-benefits and trade-offs to other services and to the farmer / land manager. A cost-benefit analysis was not included in the requirement from Defra as this was being covered by a different team. 

The teams then came together to agree a systematic and consistent scoring system for the IA which could capture the wealth of information captured in the individual evidence reviews in a more accessible format. This was carried out over a 2-day workshop for the environmental services involving over 40 of the environmental experts, and a 1-day workshop for 8 experts from the cultural services team.

The IA captures the evidence available not just for an individual service but also how this may be expressed differently across a suite of proposed indicators for each individual service.

The IA scoring system created by the team included the use of combined colour, number and letter codes for each action for each ES indicator as follows:

• The potential impact on the service using a red, amber and green (RAG) traffic-light system (negative (red); variable / uncertain (amber); or positive (green))
• Magnitude of outcome (indicated by 1* (low) to 3* (high) impact or outcome)
• Contextual dependencies (indicated by a ‘T’. This could include outcomes which are dependent on spatial location and/or actions that need to be carried out on contiguous land parcels to be effective)
• If the evidence basis follows a well understood logic chain but current evidence has significant limitations (indicated by a ‘L’)
• Variability in outcome within a single ES indicator which includes a dis-benefit (indicated by a ‘D’ e.g., some taxa will benefit but some will be disadvantaged by a specific action).

Quality assurance of the IA was provided by challenge within the teams as they undertook scoring for their specialist ES.

Once the teams had completed the IA for their ES, quality assurance was provided by the project management leadership team who checked for consistency. This was followed by release of the evidence reviews and IA for external review by invited reviewers from the wider community. Most external reviewers were unable to review the IA itself due to its complexity but provided feedback on the underpinning ten evidence reviews. The expert teams then revised their reviews and scores for the IA table. Finally, Defra provided a further quality assurance check which resulted in final adjustment of some scores for consistency only.  The main analytical and reporting was carried out between the summer of 2021 and March 2023.

All this work, including any external review, was conducted under a non-disclosure agreement which was due to be lifted only on public publication of these reports.

Ten expert reports (evidence reviews) were summarised in an integrated assessment table to enable easy access and analysis.
The reports covered air quality, greenhouses gases, soils, water management, biodiversity (4 sub-themes) carbon sequestration, geodiversity, historic environment/heritage, urban and amenity and access, recreation and engagement.
These were set against Environment Act 2021 targets and climate commitments.

A rapid expert-led assessment of 700 actions under consideration by Defra for inclusion in ELM schemes. Each action was scored against more than 30 ecosystem services and indicators ranging from biodiversity, to air, soil and water quality, water flow and carbon sequestration, geodiversity, recreation and well-being and included the likely trade-off with agricultural production.

The project was led by UKCEH and involved experts from eight other organisations, including the British Trust for Ornithology, ADAS, the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, Bangor University, Birnie Consultancy, Forest Research, the Freshwater Habitats Trust and the Institute for European Environmental Policy.

The work built on a team and an approach developed for the Welsh government back in 2019, but Defra have expanded the parameters of the actions and services considered.

Yes, every action was scored for whether it risked food production being displaced onto land outside the ELM scheme or offshore.

The information in the spreadsheet is simply a summary of the ten reports referencing over 2,400 published studies compiled by 45 experts from the 9 of the UK’s most respected environmental research organisations.

Yes, we have exploited all past reviews and sources of evidence, eg Conservation Evidence and more than 2,400 sources of published evidence, but we have gone one step further by creating the integrated assessment table to allow the data to be analysed and assessed at a glance.

Yes, evidence was used from across the UK and into Europe where systems were comparable to those in England. The evidence and analysis is equally relevant to other parts of the UK but the specific actions and services were all specified by Defra with a focus on the needs and priorities for England.

We were asked by Defra to begin working on this project in January 2022. Since then we have produced ten expert reports that include over 2,400 references of published evidence and our work has already been used by Defra as they developed the early stages of ELM. This release is to increase transparency of the process and evidence base used. 

There are three core strands within the ELM scheme to pay for environmental and climate goods and services:

1. Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) - will pay farmers to adopt and maintain sustainable farming practices that can protect and enhance the natural environment alongside food production, and also support farm productivity (including by improving animal health and welfare, optimising the use of inputs and making better use of natural resources).
2. Countryside Stewardship (CS) - will pay for more targeted actions relating to specific locations, features and habitats. There will be an extra incentive through CS. Plus for land managers to join up across local areas to deliver bigger and better results.
3. Landscape Recovery (LR) - will pay for bespoke, longer-term, larger scale projects to enhance the natural environment.

The transition across to these schemes has already begun. Developments in 2023 include the addition of six new standards within the SFI (following a pilot scheme with 850 farmers that began in June 2022), the CS scheme has been simplified and improved and grants for the first 22 Landscape Projects have been awarded. The work published today has already been used as one of the sources of evidence which supported the selection of action already funded.

All the project outputs are available from the Defra Science and Research Projects website under project code A0858 at this link.