Broads Authority

LCIC has worked as a consultant with the Broads Authority (BA) on emissions and emissions reduction throughout the whole Broads area. BA administers the Norfolk and Suffolk broads, Britain’s largest protected wetland and home to some of the countries rarest plants and animals.

BA had identified a need to take a positive approach to the management of greenhouse gases and has responded to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA) call for national parks to act as beacons for authorities and local communities. To this end BA commissioned LCIC to help them develop a strategy to reduce emissions that arise not only from its own operational activities but to quantify and subsequently reduce emissions arising from all other factors within its geographical remit. The first step to achieving this was to identify where the emissions were coming from, the factors that influence the scale of the emissions and to determine to what extent these emissions could be controlled or influenced by BA.

This led to a multi-layered strategy to reduce both the smaller emissions from BA operations and also encourage changes in land management and recreation and tourism that would deliver much larger emissions reductions. Examples of actions at this wider level included reductions in nitrogen inputs and other nutrient management measures to reduce nitrous oxide emissions as well as actions to encourage tourists and service providers to reduce the carbon intensity of tourism as a whole.

Uniquely, the Authority considered the existing carbon store in vegetation and soils as land management practices have an impact on this store. Modifying practices so that these protected and enhanced the overall carbon store, thus potentially offsetting any unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions was another important feature of the project.