Community Joint Ventures

In October 2023 we received funding to co-develop a set of investment-ready business plans for community joint ventures on and around Bunloit, Beldorney, and Tayvallich.

This project, ‘Joint Ventures for Scalable Community Benefits from Rewilding’, aims to create opportunities for communities to benefit from the environmental improvements that come with rewilding.

Explore our approach, key definitions, updates and how to get involved.

Funding

Our project is part of the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS) scheme, co-funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with the Scottish Government and NatureScot.

Thanks to National Lottery players!

Ours is one of 27 projects in the first round of funding from this innovative Scottish programme. It will run for 18 months (until 31 March 2025) across the three estates owned by Highlands Rewilding. Our total budget is £194,700, with 50% provided by NatureScot and 50% by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. This funding is used to support a Community Engagement Coordinator role and a Marine Rewilding Lead within Highlands Rewilding, as well as a programme of community meetings and initial development of joint venture ideas.

The communities local to the lands managed by us are at the centre of this project, and will co-design and co-develop this process.

The joint ventures will capitalise on environmental improvements from rewilding, and the valuable ecosystem services they generate. They will be a mechanism for involving more people in nature restoration, boosting the economy, skills development, job creation and cohesion in local communities.

Community joint ventures (CJVs)

To us “community joint venture” means a new business created jointly by Highlands Rewilding and the communities local to the land we manage to benefit from improvements in natural and cultural heritage.

Central to Highlands Rewilding’s approach is co-creation of the joint ventures with the local communities. We want the business ideas for the ventures to come from the communities themselves, to meet their needs and interests and use their expertise to tap into the many ecosystem services that the rewilding of the land can bring.

CJVs developed under our FIRNS funded project will combine:

Communities local to our sites

(their heritage, needs, priorities, expertise)

Our rewilding activities and expertise

Restored nature and its benefites (ecosystem services)

The communities across the three land areas are very different to one another. Each contains a vast array of expertise, interests, and needs. We are already seeing this in the first CJV ideas. We are hoping to see even more of the individual character of each area in the ideas as our project progresses, and with luck some scalable business ventures that could be replicated in other areas as a result.

The project will also fund legal advice on the most appropriate ownership structures for the CJVs, set up their structure and constitutional documents and finalise the shareholders or members agreements for each CJV. These are costs that community groups may otherwise be unable to afford, and we hope will provide a framework that can be used elsewhere.

CJVs are making their way to Scotland. To illustrate how cooperation between a private company and a community can work we might take the example of a community deer larder. Deer management is a vital part of Highlands Rewilding’s land management across it’s sites. However, when the deer are stalked these could be supplied to a community-run business that processes the deer, butchers them and then sells them on to local businesses and communities. Highlands Rewilding land could provide a resource for community benefit, whilst the community enterprise fulfills an important function for Highlands Rewilding by ensuring the deer can be stalked and locally sourced food supplied. Both come together for a shared purpose sharing resources and expertise.

From horticulture to heritage, we are delighted to have selected four community joint ventures (CJVs):

Community Growing Scheme – Bunloit Estate
Bike Hire – Tayvallich Estate
Mindfulness through Nature Connection – Bunloit Estate
'Gu h-àrd is gu h-ìosal - Above and Below: Foraging and Heritage Tours - Tayvallich Estate

For more details on each of these ventures, please read our CJV announcement blog and our progress report.

CJV Business Modelling

The collaborative enterprises developed with the local communities living adjacent to the lands that HRL manages could range from businesses that directly deliver ecological land management on our or others’ estates to schemes where we provide space for community groups to deliver health and well-being support.

Currently, there is no accepted blueprint for joint ventures between a for-profit company, such as HRL, and local communities working together on nature restoration. The project, therefore, includes funding for an interdisciplinary team working in rewilding, community engagement and business development, with resources for support from professional consultancies.

The key deliverables of this project are robust business models for up to 5 CJVs. This means that each community joint venture will receive professional business development support in the following areas:

Market research
Business and financial modelling
Legal and governance structure

Ecosystem services

Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect contributions which ecosystems make to human well-being. These range from tangible things like food or wood, or systems which deliver clean water or limit flooding, to more intangible contributions like the way ecosystems give us a sense of place or spiritual connection.

NatureScot has created a very clear infographic giving examples of what ecosystem services are and their contributions to human well-being (Source: nature.scot):

Land ecosystem services

To put this theory in our context it is worth thinking about the ecosystem services that Highlands Rewilding’s lands provide. Looking at Bunloit and Beldorney, we can list the following:

Provisioning

Food and drink
Materials