Joined Up Landscapes Partner Webinar – a chance to share experiences with Biodiversity Net Gain

Dr. Sophie Perry reflects on a recent webinar co-hosted by Joined Up Landscapes and Ground Control to facilitate a conversation around a key issue affecting JUL practise partner organisations.

January 2026 

An enduring consideration of the Joined Up Landscape project practice partners (North Essex Farm Cluster, South East Rivers Trust and Wye and Usk Foundation) is the role of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) as a potential method to fund landscape recovery. While BNG is regarded by partners, farmers and landowners alike as a potential source of long-term funding for NbS, the processes and realities surrounding being listed on the register are complex and opaque. The relative novelty of BNG as a policy means that landowners, intermediary organisations, and local authorities have few successful examples, templates, or models to look to for guidance.

Building on the enthusiasm from JUL partners for a conversation to learn more about BNG alongside the expertise held within the project’s networks, JUL convened a partner sharing webinar on the topic of Biodiversity Net Gain. We worked alongside Ground Control, who have successfully listed two gain sites on the BNG register – Devana in Cambridgeshire and Wildfell in Essex (which is a part of North Essex Farm Cluster’s Pant Valley Pilot Project). Chris Bawtree, the Nature Recovery Director at Ground Control, reflected on his experiences of applying to be listed on the BNG and selling units as a listed gain site.

Images from partner BNG projects, including the attenuation pond at Wildfell, part of the Pant Valley Pilot project in North Essex.

The conversation was convened by JUL, who invited partner members and organisations from NEFC, SERT and WUF, and encouraged questions from the audience throughout. Through the reflections and questions shared, we explored the different options of section 106 agreements vs conservation covenants, the timeframes and costs associated with compiling a BNG application, the realities of selling units and the roles of intermediary organisations like brokers, as well as whether the monetary focus of BNG eclipses the inherent importance of nature and biodiversity in landscape recovery.

The webinar was the first of what we hope will be many more opportunities to foster reflection, sharing and collective learning between different organisations invested in facilitating the implementation of Nature based Solutions.

Centre for Food Policy hosts the the UK Food Systems – Centre for Doctoral Training annual Symposium

November 2025

Students from across the UK Food Systems Centre for Doctoral Training (UKFS-CDT) came together at City St George’s earlier this month to showcase their research at the annual student symposium. More than 50 doctoral researchers from the Centre for Food Policy, University College London, the Royal Veterinary College, Aberystwyth University, the University of Sussex, Brunel University London, Niab and Rothamsted Research presented the interdisciplinary and transformative projects they are undertaking to build resilient, healthy and inclusive food systems of the future. The UKFS-CDT is funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Transforming UK Food Systems Strategic Priorities Fund and is led by the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich.

Many of the Centre for Food Policy’s PhD candidates are part of the UKFS-CDT programme. Explore their projects here.

See below for some image from the day.

Processed Food and the Politics of Communication with Professor Charlotte Biltekoff

Wednesday 22 October 2025

This Food Thinker’s webinar focuses on the political stakes of food industry campaigns that treat public concerns about processed food as rooted in misinformation. It illustrates how industry uses scientific authority to counter public worries and undermines policy action. Drawing upon the content of her recently published book ‘Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge’, Professor Charlotte Biltekoff explores the assumptions behind industry-led communication campaigns and highlights how attempts to educate the public with scientific facts have resulted in an anti-political discourse. Consequently, the deeper societal issues surrounding food and health are overlooked and left unaddressed.  

Charlotte Biltekoff is Professor of American Studies and Food Science & Technology and Darrell Corti Endowed Professor in Food, Wine and Culture at the University of California, Davis, where she builds bridges between scientific and cultural approaches to questions about food and health. Her expertise centres on understanding where ideas about “good” and “bad” food come from and the social and cultural role they play. She is author of Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge (2024) and Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health (2014). She was recently a Co-PI on the UC AFTeR Project, a multidisciplinary research project examining the Bay Area Agri-Food Tech sector.  Her research is interdisciplinary, and she frequently collaborates and communicates across disciplinary differences.  Learn more at www.charlottebiltekoff.com 

Attendance at City St George’s events is subject to our terms and conditions.

Guest lecture – Ways of seeing food systems policy: challenges, paradigms, and tools

Wednesday, 8th October 2025, 17:00 – 19:00 (BST), C309 (Tait building) and Online (Zoom)

Attendance at City St George’s events is subject to our terms and conditions.

Diagnosing Food Systems Policy Coherence – a practical guide with Dr Stella Nordhagen

Wednesday 24 September 2025

Addressing interlinked food-related challenges requires integrated approaches that work across food systems, as opposed to in sectoral silos. Food systems policy coherence (FSPC) strives for policies across sectors to be aligned, as opposed to working against one another. While FSPC is an appealing concept, in practice it is very difficult to assess. GAIN, working with the pan-African food policy thinktank Akademiya2063, have developed a new diagnostic tool that can: 1) identify areas of coherence and non-coherence between food system policies and key societal goals and 2) suggest ways to improve coherence. The tool has been applied in 10 countries across Africa and Asia. It has also begun to be applied in the UK and Switzerland. In this presentation, Stella Nordhagen of GAIN introduce the tool and explained how it works. She also highlighted key results from the first country applications and outlined where food policy is doing well and what could be done better to support holistic food systems transformation.

Stella Nordhagen is a Research Lead with GAIN, where she oversees research related to food systems in Africa and Asia. Her areas of research interest include market-based approaches to improving diets and nutrition, food supply chains, food environments, food choice, and linkages between nutrition and environmental sustainability. Stella holds an MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Attendance at City St George’s events is subject to our terms and conditions.