Using open spaces to remove carbon
The City of London Corporation owns and manages a network of open spaces in the Square Mile, Greater London, and surrounding counties. Open spaces, such as Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest, provide natural habitats that absorb carbon dioxide, a process known as carbon sequestration or removal. This process is crucial to helping us meet our commitment to reaching net zero by 2027.
We have launched a Carbon Removals and Land Management Project to both protect the existing carbon stored by our open spaces and to increase their carbon sequestration capacity. Our open spaces currently remove over 16,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year. They contain important habitats and wildlife, improve air quality, and create valuable places for health and wellbeing.
These measures will help us protect and increase carbon removals:
- Creating new habitats, which will also improve biodiversity.
- Protecting habitats from environmental risks, such as wildfires.
- Improving land management practices, like reducing the frequency of mowing.
- Monitoring a range of indicators, both positive and negative.
- Research and trialling to identify further steps that can be taken.
We invest more than £40 million a year to protect our green spaces. These sites, most of which are charitable trusts, are run at little or no cost to the communities that they serve. They include important wildlife habitats, Special Areas of Conservation, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, and National Nature Reserves and are protected from being built on by special legislation.
Our open spaces are known as carbon sinks, which are areas that store carbon dioxide (CO2) through carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is a natural process that occurs when plants harness energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis, and use it to convert CO2 into valuable energy-rich plant matter while releasing oxygen into the air. This locks CO2 into plant material and soil, therefore removing it from the atmosphere.
Land management practices also impact carbon sinks. Poor land management practice can result in releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, whereas good land management practice not only protects current carbon sequestration rates but can also increase it.
Epping Forest is an example of one of our carbon sinks. The woodland has over one million trees alone, including 50,000 ancient pollards of Beech, Hornbeam and Oak, all contributing to carbon storage. There are also around 500 rare and endangered insect species, making it a valuable home for biodiversity too.
We will be looking at what we can do to improve our land management practices in the following areas:
- Natural flood management: holding water on our sites for longer helps ease water stresses at times of drought for trees and plants.
- Fire protection measures: by changing the way we manage fires; we are trying to minimise the risk of large habitat fires and the destruction they cause.
- Planting and protection: we will look for opportunities to plant trees, scrub and new hedgerows where they are needed, while monitoring factors that pose large-scale threats to our trees.
These measures will help to prevent environmental risks from destroying habitats that are vital to sequestering carbon.
New habitat creation in Patmore's Field
In 2021, a 42-acre wildflower meadow was sown at Patmore’s Field in High Beach, which makes up part of the ‘buffer lands’ adjacent to Epping Forest. To plant the new meadow, a mixture of 26 native UK-grown wildflower and grass seeds were sown, including carrot, cowslip and ragged robin. They were planted on a previously cultivated but low-quality arable field, transforming it into a permanent grassland with improved water storage and soil health.
In 2022, two ponds were dug to provide complementary habitat to support greater wildlife when filled with water.
The creation of the new meadow has increased Patmore’s field capacity to capture atmospheric carbon in its soil. It has boosted biodiversity habitats for a range of species and provided greater connectivity for pollinating insects.
Over the next 3 years as part of the Carbon Removals and Land Management Project, additional habitats will be created across our open spaces such as meadows, wood pasture, small woodlands, reedbeds and hedgerows.
In this video, you can see the creation of the wildflower meadow at Patmore's Field and learn more about its benefits.
The video below has no commentary.
"Climate change is a serious issue affecting everyone on the planet. It is clear green spaces can play a major role in cutting carbon from the atmosphere. This project demonstrates our commitment to tackling this global problem at a local level and it’s exciting to be making pace with this work."
Graeme Doshi-Smith, Chairman of the City Corporation’s Epping Forest and Commons Committee.