Investigating the public benefits of Little Asby Common using a multiple capitals approach: summary report August 2023

Friends of the Lake District (FLD) is a charity who campaigns for the landscapes of Cumbria. We own 12 areas of land across the County, including Little Asby Common near Orton. Our work includes commenting on policy proposals and plans, from national to local, demonstrating best practice on our land and feeding this experience back into our policy work, and engaging the public in the outdoors and landscape issues. Landscape is multi-faceted, it includes the use of all the senses and provokes a range of emotions. It also has a range of different attributes, including natural and cultural. Our policy responses and land management consider all landscape attributes. The policy context in which we are working is changing rapidly with a greater focus on putting a financial value on landscape attributes, some of which are hard to quantify. FLD has always been against the quantification and monetarisation of landscapes as so much depends on a person’s emotional reaction. However, the Government want to bring in more private money to the environmental and land management sector, which will involve valuing the landscape benefits and deliverables and putting a monetary value on them. FLD commissioned a natural capital assessment of all its landholdings in 2023 to trial and gain experience about this process. In doing this, we became increasingly frustrated that the methodologies for such assessments never included elements of the cultural landscape, did not take account of the skills and time of those who maintained such landscapes, or of their contribution to the communities and economies in which they lived. Such assessments were only looking at the benefits of one aspect of our landscapes, but what about the other elements which are equally important?