The ‘Silent’ Seminars!

The morning seminars were fantastically chaired by Johan Tasker of Farmers Weekly and Mike Rigby of Eastern Promise Podcast. These 20 minute sessions referred to as ‘Silent Seminars’ due to the use of headphones, were split into two key themes ‘The Economics of Environmental Change’ and ‘Implementing Conservation and Environmental Land Management’. These two sessions demonstrated the technical and financial makeup of natural capital and blended finance, as well as showing inspiring case studies of conservation and Environment Land Management in practise.

Seminar providers of the economics of environmental change area included the likes of Rohit Kaushish of the NFU, Camilla Rhodes of Birketts, and Henry Parkinson of the Langley Abbey Environment Project, touching on topics such as market viability, rights of access, and BNG. The other seminar area saw seminars from the likes of Jake Fiennes of Holkham, David Lyles of the North Norfolk Coastal Group and Helen Greaves of the Norfolk Ponds Project. These speakers demonstrated real examples of conservation, farmer collaboration, and pond restoration in action.

As well as these two concurrently running seminars a smaller session took place hosted by Glenn Anderson of Wendling Beck and Swallowtail Consulting, which shared with attendees how to structure and create landscape scale change projects. Guest speakers included Chris Gerard of Anglian Water, and Susana Stock of UK Infrastructure Bank.

Conference and Panels

Following a fantastic lunch provided by Funnels, the conference was expertly opened by the Bishop of Norwich, and then chaired by the charismatic and knowledgeable Emily Norton. Conference speakers included Wendy Brooks of Norfolk County Council, Professor David Rose of Harper Adams University, and Andy Millar of Albanwise Environment. Intriguing panels were led by Emily and featured Gavin Lane (CLA), Molly Biddell (Knepp Estate), and Kate Russell (Tellus Natural Capital), with a second featuring Susanna Stock (UK Infrastructure Bank), Poul Hoveson (Catalyst Farming), and Chris Gerrard (Anglian Water)

The day was finished with a call to action from Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Eliot Lyne as he called for a more joined up approach to nature recovery in the county, where we can all play a part to help wildlife and farming.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who joined us on the day, and we hope that you enjoyed the event. We are delighted to confirm that the conference and exhibition will return next year in 2025 and we are currently working to understand what we can do differently and better for next year.