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BACK TO NATURE – NEW PROJECT FROM WESTCOUNTRY RIVERS TRUST CHANGES THE FACE OF SOUTH WEST RIVERBANKS
C-Plus is an environmental restoration project which looks set to help conserve the South West’s environment and improve the condition of the rivers is being launched by the Westcountry Rivers Trust.
The Westcountry Rivers Trust has raised over £100 000 of regional and European funding to develop the C-Plus Project. The project bears some similarity to a standard carbon offsetting project, but as the title ‘C-Plus’ implies; it is much more.
Dr Dylan Bright from the Westcountry Rivers Trust said: “There is a lot of suspicion about ‘carbon offsetting’ and rightly so in many cases but everyone can support C-Pluswith confidence. The project is designed to deliver the noblest of ambitions: that of achieving long-term strategically targeted protection of the region’s environmental resources whilst supporting farming and rural communities”
The project will develop a system whereby money will be raised from regional ‘environmental off-setters’ (businesses or people who, for one reason or another, want to redress some of their environmental impact). The money will be used by the Trust to restore strategically targeted areas of former wet-land and river corridor, back to their natural state.
To achieve the restoration, farmers and landowners will be invited to join the scheme voluntarily and will receive a significant one-off payment to take these small areas of marginal land out of intensive production.
Dr Bright added: “The scheme will mostly involve areas with limited value in terms of food production but which could provide much in terms of the environment and resource protection. This is why we call the project ‘C-Plus’ it is much more than a simple carbon offsetting project. The carbon locked up by the project will be substantial and we will be able to estimate the figures, but due to the strategic targeting of the restoration and the long term nature of the restoration, the ancillary benefits to the region will be enormous.
Everyone will see real benefits, including reducing the risk of downstream flooding, improving water quality inland on inshore, boosting migratory fish numbers and improving wildlife habitat”
“Most importantly however we are not asking farmers to do this at their cost; all of us are dependant on a good environment and all of us should contribute to its protection. C-plus is non-profit making, the action is direct and the cost will diffuse down to a negligible amount paid by the huge numbers of people who benefit from the region’s environment as residents, visitors and local businesses “.
“The type of people or businesses we hope will be involved in offsetting are those who would normally undertake standard carbon offsetting or those which depend on the environment, through tourism for instance, for their trade; these people and business can either carbon offset, albeit more strategically, with us or they may decide to set up a simple visitor payback scheme to help maintain the environment that keeps them in business!”
Laurence Couldrick, C-Plus Project Manager, said, “Offsetting will not save the world! but if strategically used it can deliver huge benefits locally and help a little towards reducing our carbon footprint and a lot towards fostering public understanding and support for the principle of ‘thinking globally and acting locally’.”
The Trust has received funding from the Springboard Fund and the European Cooperation Fund for the C-Plus Project.
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