Natural and Cultural Heritage Fund (NCHF) - Sustainability Action Plan - Guidance and template

Environmental Sustainability is one of the three Horizontal themes in the ERDF Programme. All Lead Partners and Delivery Agents across all of the Strategic Interventions are expected to deliver outputs and outcomes that meet the aspirations of the Horizontal Themes.

Sustainable development

Sustainable development is described by the European Commission as “specific actions to take into account environmental protection requirements, resource efficiency, climate change mitigation and adaptation, disaster resilience and risk prevention and management”.

You need to think about environmental sustainability and how you can embed this into your project from the beginning.  We expect all grantees to do their upmost to reduce the potentially negative impacts of the projects we support and enhance environmental benefits.

That might be by:

• reducing CO2
• reducing plastics
• reducing hard-surfacing
• reducing construction waste
• reducing energy use
• recycling materials
• not using peat
• creating sustainable drainage
• providing new habitats for wildlife

You should embed sustainability in your briefs and statements of requirements when procuring goods and services and you should consider asking contractors to demonstrate their environmental sustainability.  Utilising local suppliers and contractors will typically reduce the impact and carbon footprint of your project.

You must tell us about the environmental impact that your project may have and identify potential actions which will be undertaken during the delivery of the project to reduce these. These impacts will also include the impacts that an increased number of visitors may have, particularly on vulnerable habitats.

In your Environmental Sustainability Action Plan you need to demonstrate the reduction in potentially negative impacts.

There are a number of tools that can help organisations to measure and monitor their environmental impact.

Carbon footprinting tools are available, for example:

• Footprint Reporter
• Carbon Trust
• Carbon Footprint

You could also think about setting yourself the goal of achieving an award or other type of recognition as part of your project. There are a range of environmental award schemes that you might consider, for example:

• Certification schemes for building projects: BREEAM , Passiv Haus and LEED
• Green Tourism Award
• Creative Green for arts and culture organisations

Visitor management

There is some useful information regarding visitor monitoring and impact assessment within naturescot’s management for people system and toolkit.

The Scottish Outdoor Access Code advises anybody who is promoting access in a particular area to talk to the relevant land managers about “local issues relating to privacy, safety or conservation” (para 3.63).

You should make contact with your local NatueScot office and your local authority access officer to discuss visitor management, at sensitive sites in particular.

Action plans

These templates are provided to support NCHF projects, organisations may have their own approach to environmental sustainability action planning which should be reviewed to ensure it covers all aspects indicated above.

SWOT analysis – your project organisation and location:

Project/ Organisation Initiatives

Aspect	Comment
Strength	The project/organisation is aiming to, for example, achieve Healthy Working Lives award.
Weakness	Although the project team might agree to actions there may be no guarantee that they can follow them easily as part of their day to day work. Policies may be an aspiration rather than a reality.
Opportunity	One of our project team is very keen on health and wellbeing and willing to act as a champion for this aspect of the project
Threat	Workloads will limit how much time the project team may be able to commit.

 

Project location considerations

Aspect	Comment
Strength	Already has an active biodiversity and fitness groups. Owns the building. The building already has green infrastructure elements like a green roof, recycling of rainwater, composting, information about native trees, biodiversity meadows.
Weakness	Not close enough for cycling commute or to greenspace for walking
Opportunity	Project location is shared with other organisations within that may be willing to co-operate with active travel and outdoor exercise opportunities
Threat	Workloads will limit how much time the project team can commit.

 

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