The forces we are building resilience against are indifferent to the borders we’ve drawn, yet the systems we’ve built to respond to them can often remain bound by them.
Consider the farmer whose land straddles the Welsh and English border. They currently face a logistical challenge. In Wales, they must navigate the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) with its specific universal baseline actions. In England, they face SFI 2026, which offers an entirely different menu of choices.
It is the exact same ecological challenge on both sides of the fence, yet the rules and applications are worlds apart. While these devolved policies represent valid democratic choices for local contexts, we cannot let the process obscure the purpose.
The language of resilience
At Land App, our mission is to ensure that while the rules might change depending on where you stand, the mission of climate resilience remains achievable. We are helping farmers and landowners move beyond these borders by providing a consistent “data language”. Whether you are holding water on a Highland croft, a Welsh hill farm, or even a hillside in Peru, the fundamental challenge is the same. This is why we are always thinking about how to expand our infrastructure beyond England.
Turning data into progress
The stakes are high. The Treasury is investing roughly £3 billion annually into environmental land management across the UK. To keep that funding flowing, we must prove that rivers are getting cleaner and flood water is being slowed and, ultimately, that there’s a genuine return for the taxpayer. Fragmented, unverified data spread across disconnected systems makes it almost impossible to demonstrate. The same is true for private markets. A supermarket or water company investing in nature recovery needs hard evidence that their money went where it was supposed to go before they’ll release the next round. However, when we use a cohesive data language, the pipeline becomes real. We’ve already seen this through our Nature, Risk and Resilience Reporting partnership with supermarkets, which has helped money reach farmers who could use data to prove their baseline.
The first step is universal
The government can design the frameworks, but it is the verified data captured by farmers on the ground that will drive this transition. This baselining has to happen everywhere, consistently and honestly. Whether you are in Surrey or the Scottish Highlands, recording what you see on the ground today is how we move at the speed the planet needs.
This need for cohesive action was the exact focus of a roundtable I was recently invited to by Mary Creagh MP, the Minister for Nature. We discussed the critical balance among land-use change, climate resilience, and nature recovery. And I left feeling certain that while the government can design frameworks, it is the verified data captured by farmers on the ground that will actually drive this transition.
This spring, think about recording what you see on the ground. Because the more of us who start from that same honest foundation, whether we’re in Surrey, the Scottish Highlands, or on a Peruvian hillside, the closer we get to a resilience journey that actually moves at the speed the planet needs.
Tim Hopkin
Founder and CEO
