Jo joined Wiltshire Wildlife Trust in 2023 from the Soil Association, where she was Policy and Strategy Director for eight years, before then she was Convenor of Defra’s Sustainable Consumption Roundtable and Head of Policy at think tank Green Alliance. At Soil Association, Jo led the 'Food for Life' programme, to give every child the chance to grow and cook food and connect with farms, for nearly a decade. She also founded the 'Food for Life Served Here' scheme which certifies two million healthy and sustainable meals served every day in schools, hospitals and visitor attractions. Jo is a former Chair of the Food Ethics Council and member of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission’s 'Farming Leadership Group' and believes strongly that nature-friendly farmers are the key to nature’s recovery at scale alongside resilient, healthy food production. Jo is also a Trustee of the Courtyard Farm Trust, set up by Lord Peter Melchett. 

Everyone agrees there is a major funding gap for meeting the Government’s legal targets to secure nature’s recovery, nutrient pollution reduction and net zero through a land use transition. Independent analysis commissioned by The Wildlife Trusts, National Trust and RSPB calculated that £5.9bn a year was needed in investment (Scale of Need, July 2024). This year's Comprehensive Spending Review, though more positive than feared, allocated just £2.7bn a year to sustainable farming and nature recovery through to 2029. 

Private finance is looked to as the great white hope for bridging the gap, but the uncertainty in current government policy risks pulling the rug from under Biodiversity Net Gain and Nutrient Neutrality compliance markets just as the Treasury confirms its commitment to the Corry Review’s recommended 'Nature Markets Accelerator.'

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust believes that Nature Markets have an essential role to play alongside public funding. Nature Markets are needed both to convert much-needed housing and infrastructure development from a threat to a ‘win-win’ for nature and to create a meaningful incentive framework for farmers to transition to nature-friendly farm business models. 80% of Wiltshire is farmed and we will only restore the abundance of our farmland-adapted wildlife when farmers at all scales have a profitable pathway to nature-friendly farming. Our concern is that emerging green finance markets risk restricting opportunity to a small number of well-capitalised estates with access to legal teams to handle the scale of project and risk involved.

With that in view, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has partnered with EnTrade since 2020 to support the emergence of a high integrity Nature Market model that can enable farmers at all scales to be rewarded for supplying nature-based projects. EnTrade's model – governed by an independent Environmental Markets Board – makes this possible by aggregating credits from farmers' projects at all scales and matching them with the needs of developers, while taking on much of the compliance risk from farmers.

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's role has been to co-design nature-based project specifications with farmers that can meet the needs of farmers and the needs of the Government's Biodiversity Metric. We've been supporting farmers to consider how nature-based projects like hedges, species-rich grassland and wetland features might complement their whole farm plan, perhaps in the less productive or seasonally wet margins. We've helped them understand how they might access BNG income for these, alongside the ever-changing menu of Environmental Land Management Scheme options.
 
To date, this support for farmers has been restricted to the Bristol Avon Catchment Market geography, but thanks to a Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund (NEIRF) grant, WWT has been able to engage with farmer clusters in wider Wiltshire and give more intensive support to 15 farmers to get 'investment-ready'. 

Now, thanks to pro bono commitment from EnTrade, these farmers will be able to access demand from developers and investors via a new Wiltshire Nature Market, to launch by the end of the year. This follows hot on the heels of a new Cornwall Nature Market, launched by EnTrade in partnership with Cornwall Council, which brings businesses and landholders together to trade environmental services from certified nature-based projects.

Nature can't wait, and housing and infrastructure development in fast-growing towns like Swindon can’t wait either. We urgently need that 'win-win-win' for nature, farmers and development. In supporting the launch of the new Wiltshire & Swindon Nature Market, we hope to keep up the momentum while Government straightens out its contradictory messages and gets behind Nature Markets for the long term. 

Jo Lewis (LinkedIn)
CEO, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust (LinkedIn)
September 2025