AONB Landscape for Life Conference SpeechLearning, Sharing, Inspiring

Newton Rigg College

July 9th 2014

The Value of AONBs to Business

Good Morning

Minister, Chairman and Women, Ladies and Gentleman

Many thanks for the invitation to talk to you and many thanks to David for a very thought provoking presentation.

My role this morning is to talk about the relationship between AONBs and Business,  What it is, what it isn’t, what it could be, should be or may be.

But first a bit about me and the business that I work for.

I am Head of Sustainability for Landmarc Support Services.  A long time ago I worked for the Gower AONB, and then went on to help set up Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, spent a couple of years as the Superintendent of Epping Forest for the City of London Corporation, one of the oldest protected Landscapes in the country, run by one of only two sovereign (like) wealth funds in the UK, the other being the Shetland Island.  In the distant past I worked for the Woodland Trust and I now work in the private sector.

Landmarc is a support services, facilities management and construction company.  We are owned by a UK PLC called Interserve and an American corporation, PAE.  We have 1300 staff with another 700 in our immediate commercial partners Compass ESS (catering), Smiths Gore Carter Jonas (Land Agents) and Jacobs (consulting).  Last year we turned over a bit more than £100 million.

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We work mostly in the UK and 95% of our business is one contract with the MoDs Defence Infrastructure Organisation to maintain and operate the National Defence Training Estate.  We are in the 12th year of a 10 year contact and we have just won the re-competition of this, so we will be around for at least another 5 years and hopefully 10.

As part of that contract we mange around 240,000 ha of the UK, thats 1.5 %, from The Orkney Isles to Cornwall, the coast of Antrim to the cost of Lincolnshire.    Mountain, moor, heathland, grassland, woodlands, forests, beaches and mudflats.  

All are in rural locations and that is our point of difference.  We deliver complex, comprehensive service in some very rural locations,   Many of which are designated for the landscape, biodiversity and cultural significance.  We have International, european, national and local designations on the estate.

We have 1200 farming tenants, these tenants are major recipients of agri-environment funding which enables the estate to deliver on the wider nature capital and ecosystem services required by the UK population, as well as fully meeting the defence training needs of the nation. 

The relationships we have with the regulators and stakeholders in these areas are vital to our license to operate and our client license to train.

We maintain this through a range of programmes that seek to sustain and grow the rural communities in which we live.

We have Rural Enterprise Hubs, the Landmarc 100 innovation awards, a BITC Rural Business Connector in Northumberland, and an almost exclusively local supply chain.

Advocacy through a seat on the leadership team of the Princes Rural Action programme and as advisor to the EU on business and biodiversity.

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We support for events such as the Social Value Summit, and knowledge project like our “Landmarker” Natural Capital Decision Support Tool.

Hopefully that makes me qualified for this talk

When the organisers asked me to do this talk. Jill very helpfully sent be the presentation I delivered to a 2010 AONB meeting in Birmingham on “Building relationships with business”. and asked if I could update you.

She added “Quite a lot has changed for us, what has changed for you?”

Lots but I will come to that in a few minutes

At a more recent AONB meeting I, along with a number of other business people were asked why would business want to engage with AONBs?

My answer as a short and possibly unhelpful "Why not?"

As a business, when you find a group of organisations that are forward leaning, progress, agile and that can demonstrates their connectedness through the intelligent use of their power to convene community leaders, activists, local and national political leaders and the passing trade of casually interested, why wouldn't you.

When those organisations are also world class thought leaders, project managers and communicators,  It becomes a case why haven't you.

I believe that Landmarc is one of a large group of responsible business that are working hard to meet the highest standards of business management.

Its a long list but a few worth mentioning are Interserve, Kingfisher, M&S, National Grid, Patagonia, Jaguar Land Rover, ArcelorMittal,

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WalMart, and PWC. These are not scary organisations driven purely by a single minded pursuit of profit.

Yes we need to make a profit, it is why we are here, it is at the heart of of our business model.

However the founding principle of all business is to find solutions to problems, meet customers needs and provide our investors with a return on their investment hopefully in proportion with the risk they have taken in investing in us.

These business, and the next generation of leading responsible businesses are interested in AONBs as we have moved away from the standard Corporate Social Responsibility agenda to a more holistic sustainability driven approach, beyond simple incremental performance improvement, 2% year on year carbon reduction, etc.

We seek to create new value through delivering transformational business offerings.

Other than a bit of business school jargon what does that mean

These new businesses have found or are looking to find, ways of meeting their customers needs and doing this in a way that not just does less harm but does more good.  

These business will deliver investor returns by enhancing culture, landscape and biodiversity, protecting our most important habitats and valued places at the same time as delivering the social and economic gains we all need.  Many of these business will have an international perspective, understanding that business, climate change and biodiversity loss are globalised.  

We see that AONBs are part of the global family of protected areas and are leaders in building the cross sector relationships between companies, regulators, advocates, employees and neighbours that will create and drive the transformational change needed to meet challenge of 9 billion people on this planet by 2050.

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There is no room for environmental bombast and doom mungers, this is a big turn off for the vast majority of people and creates the head space and oxygen for the climate change deniers.  

Our customers, and yours, are looking for the positive and tangible benefits and impacts from meeting these challenges and solving these problems well.

The AONB community are perfectly placed to help business in this mission. You are thought leaders and doers, we like doers even moor than we like thinkers.

There is much talk of natural capital, ecosystem services, and circular economy.  Meeting the opportunities these new business strands offers will require innovative thinking, innovative products, highly creative use of digital channels, and most certainly not business as usual.  

The AONB family has a track record of delivering on all of these things so any business would be a fool, not to engage, not to take that meeting and listen to your offer.

The biggest draw back in all of this is that you probably don't know what you have.  As I have alluded too I spent the first 20 years of my professional life working in the public sector on landscape and recreation, with a short flirtation in the voluntary sector.  In that time I saw some amazing and innovative work, but never more so that the 5 years I spent in the Gower AONB.  

I was lucky enough to go from the countries first AONB to help set up Scotland first National Park in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. Many will think that was a step up and in some ways it was, I did move 300 miles north.

I went to an organisation that was being built alongside a newly empowered nation, one that may be more empowered later on this year but one that understood that a critical part of nation building was having National Parks, a genuinely global brand alongside the usual suspects of Coca Cola, Mickey Mouse and The Papacy and

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the modern pretenders of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Nike, Superdry, Vodafone, LG & Samsung

This was an organisation that was well funded and well supported, but not radical, being created more in line with Addison, Hobhouse and Dower’s visions of landscape protection than those of the new century it was born.

A century of new technology offerings that merge digital and physical, local and global, automated and personalised services.  

A century that more so than ever is being built on trusted relationships.

National Park is a great brand, a trusted brand, and brand is really important in the modern world of micro attention spans and flicking through a supersonic twitter feed.

AONBs have a great product to sell and need to get out a sell it to business.  

and you have a great brand to sell it with.

Not AONB but The Gower, The Cotswolds, The Quantocks, The Northumbrian Coast, The North Pennines, are the sort of names that marketeers kill for.

Each comes with a unique, beautiful heritage.  A heritage that cannot be devalued as its viral, self replicating, it appears to each customer as the manifestation of there own needs.  This is almost worthy of a Dr Who or Star Trek episode.  

There is no need to a technical debate about intellectual property and ownership just get out here a sell the values that AONBs stand for and don't worry about anybody else's statutory purpose or legal personna.

So what are you selling?

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Engagement

Engagement beats brand very time. I know Superdry makes clothes but thats it.

I haven’t engaged.

Business has no shortage of statutory consultees, from planning to waste management, employment to advertising there are endless lists of people we have to talk too.

These relationships are mostly transactional, some may, through frequent interaction have development in to something more trusting but at the end of the day there is a list of boxes to be ticked and we will tick them.

There is however a shortage of bodies to engage with, to have longer term and deeper relationship that are characterised by peer to peer sharing of challenges and opportunities, and a mutual need to design solutions through testing and prototyping.

Just like smart cities there is a market and a need for smart landscapes that generate energy, clean and manage water, pollinate crops, produce our food, recharge our cultural and emotional self and keep us connected to our humanity.

You are the obvious people to lead the way on this.

You are marvellously free of multiple, overwhelming, statutory purposes.

You are trusted by your stakeholders

You have to ability to convene diverse groups of interested parties to have open and honest conversations about the art of the possible.

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Your standing enable those conversation about NOT business as usual to take place in the atmosphere where people will listen and consider before they object.

Why hasn't this happened?  

This is the really challenging bit.

Mostly because you have not wanted it too.  As I have already said I spent much of my early career in the public sector, I was driven by a sense if duty and service, wanting to demonstrate that the public sector could deliver unquestioned public services and benefits in a cost effective and efficient manner.  I was a staunch defender of the public sector as a delivery vehicle, in fact I would say that I went beyond defence but robust advocacy.  

I wasn't wrong, the public sector is very good at policy, shaping the governance of a country, region, county, district or protected landscape.

This was at a time when there appeared to be a strong resource base and an appetite for change.  Today we are looking at a world that is struggling to balance the books, we are not where we were before 2008 and there is unlikely to be more public money for landscape protection.  

There is a need to find another way and this will require cross sector partnerships that are built on trust, engagement and sharing, peer to peer in every way.

The future of the the living landscapes community is very strong. Use the freedom you have to take the transformational leap that is needed to ensure the future of landscape protection.  Stay lean, stay agile, stay connected to your communities and talk to the business that will listen.  I promise you that within a couple of years you will be fighting business partners off with sticks, locally grown sticks I hope.

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I am not talking about sponsorship, I am not talking about CSR although there is a place for both and in some cases the consummation of a relationship might be putting a business logo on a website, twitter feed, interpretation panel or vehicle.  

Your proposition is all about soft power - advice, support, consultation, communication. It comes in many forms.  You can convene and create opportunities for business to find out how people feel about them and their products, services and the future.

You are not the council, sorry to all the councillors in the room

Brands, choice and trust are the future currency in the digital market place.

Why am I so optimistic? Wheres the evidence that if you commit your scarce resources to this it will deliver.

Multi stakeholder collaboration between Business, NGOs Governments and communities is delivering real success in some of the big ticket areas like Palm Oil. One of this companies we have never heard of, Wilmar which controls 45% of the globals palm oil has committed to zero deforestationn by 2015, thats next year not a distant 2020 or 2050 target. That was delivered the RSPO (roundtable on sustainable palm oil)

Google has its Zeitgeist programme that brings global doer together to achieve change

It has also used its knowledge of analytics to drive SAVE the Summit Against Violent Extremism helping to prevent and tackle gang violence with online forums etc.

Here their analytics power a network of gang leavers working to get more people to leave.

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Closer to home Interserve have established a joint venture with the Irish NGO ReHab to deliver The Work Programme in Wales and The West of England.

In this example business has brought capital, financing and back office systems to be matched with a social enterprises customer facing delivery skills. Each playing to their strengths but meeting a wider social need.

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At Landmarc we are working with X Forces, a social enterprises, to support the military diaspora in all its guises to set up new enterprises. X Forces work with the individuals to secure funding through the Start Up Loans company, a BIS programme, and we provide mentors, hubs, introductions etc.

Business will join the dots and make the leaps it needs to to stay in business. The AONB community can help accelerate that.

Its not easy, its often not pretty and there are some big risks. Trust is the most powerful business asset available.  It is why people invest in a business, why they work for one and why they award them contracts.

Trust is challenged every day. The hyper connected world that we live in has predicated what those in consumer facing business have called the “The Consumer Spring”

Get it wrong, drop the ball and you will be outed in minutes.Trust is what AONBs have in spades.  You are trusted, trusted to deliver value, to listen to stakeholders, and find a solution that keeps as many players in the game as possible

You are not regulator, you are advocates for responsible behaviour, you can make choices, your have a portfolio of triple rated brands, your are authentic, connected and trusted

Why would I not want to work with you.

Thank you

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