Natural Capital Investment: Community Benefit & Additionality Scoping

Tender description

We are seeking to appoint a consultant with expertise in scoping and identifying community benefit and impact opportunities, and associated challenges, along with the development of frameworks to help us define and monitor our community benefits for our local communities as part of our natural capital investment plans. We have secured funding from NatureScot and the National Lottery Heritage Fund under their Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS) programme to enable us to explore in detail the opportunities for valuing and monetising the ecosystem services inherent in the Strathfillan Landscape, which will simultaneously enable our communities and businesses to thrive in a greener, fairer future for all. Background Wild Strathfillan: As part of our nature restoration work, The Loch Lomond and The Trossachs Countryside Trust is lead partner for a large partnership project - Wild Strathfillan. Together with land managers, communities, businesses and the National Park Authority we are working to deliver nature restoration across 50,000ha of the Strathfillan landscape. The Wild Strathfillan project takes in the rural communities of Strathfillan (the villages of Tyndrum and Crianlarich) and Killin. Landownership within the Wild Strathfillan area is predominantly private small to medium landholdings. To date the traditional land uses of shooting, farming and forestry have provided the economic income to sustain livelihoods. Many land managers have undertaken small scale nature restoration on their land using the traditional grant funded model, but to appeal to green finance this now needs to be at a scale greater than individual landholdings. We require a contractor with experience of measuring social value in a community and land context and a thorough understanding of the Scottish Land Commission’s work on Community Benefit Guidance (recently released), Community Wealth Building, a Just Transition, natural capital investment, land reform and community benefit. The contractor will: Deliver a minumum of 3 workshops in the local communities of Tyndrum, Crianlarich and Killin, to enable residents to share their thoughts, ask questions and identify and shape opportunities for delivering impactful community benefit. Scope and review the ‘additionality’ potential for communities arising from planned nature restoration and partnership work as part of the Wild Strathfillan Partnership. Produce a Community Benefit Framework which identifies opportunities to share, monitor and coordinate benefits, both financial and non-financial, from the management of natural capital and carbon with the local community, and identify, mitigate and manage risks. Create a suite of accessible, educational resources to explain community benefit in the context of green finance and natural capital investment.