COMMUNITIES FOR NATURE

Common works with local communities across the UK to help them buy and manage land for nature recovery, protecting them for current and future generations.

HOW IT WORKS

Our model is rooted in community action, balancing local heritage and aspirations with national expertise on land management and community business.

We help communities to crowdfund, doubling amounts raised from the Common Match Fund (created with Esmee Fairbairn Foundation), and completed by other partner impact investors.

Collaborating with Common means joining a dynamic nationwide network of community land projects, a fellowship of insight, resources and support.

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“Though rich in places, Britain as a whole is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Never has there been a more important time to invest in our own wildlife, to try and set an example for the rest of the world, and restore our once wild isles for future generations.”

Sir David Attenborough, 2023

our ethical tenets

COMMUNITy

We give local people a chance to own and protect nature on their doorstep. We reconnect people to their local wild places, which provides a range of social, physical and mental health benefits. Nature-positive revenue streams then allow communities to cover their costs for land management and local skills.

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NATURE

Our land management principles enable sustainable ecosystems to thrive. Each Land Management Plan will recognise unique local characteristics, and be developed in close consultation with local communities, transferring skills to them in the process.

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Economy

Ensuring the long-term protection of woodlands, wetlands and heaths, will enable the sequestration of carbon from the ground and atmosphere as well as promote the recovery of insects, birds, mammals, waterways and soil health.

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TIME FOR NATURE RECOVERY

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. And yet we are a nation of nature lovers.

 

Biodiversity levels have declined by more than 70% since 1970 and woodland cover is at 13.3%, compared to a European average of 38% (notwithstanding differences in population density). Tree cover in the UK is increasing but too slowly to meet our decarbonisation goals: the Government is failing to meet its target of 300,000 Ha per year, in order to reach net zero by 2050.

 

Britain also ranks bottom in Europe for nature connectedness. Out of 14 nations surveyed, UK citizens measured lowest for their oneness with the natural world.

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Learnings from the Agroforestry Show
In September, Woodoaks Farm in Hertfordshire hosted The Agroforestry Show: part festival, part field...
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Cymunedoli Cymoedd: A Story of Hope and Action
Last night in Pontypridd, representatives from across the Valleys gathered for the launch of Cymunedoli...
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Community session at Groundswell draws leaders and an audience of 400
🌳 Groundswell Agriculture 2025 is a wrap, and the Common team were blown away by the experience. Despite...
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Common to host session at Groundswell 2025
Common can announce that we’ll be hosting a session at the 2025 Groundswell festival, the UK’s...
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The Observer features Common (12.4.25)
The Observer ran a two-page feature on the UK rewilding scene in April 2025. Despite the somewhat clickbait...
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Standing Room Only at St Briavels
The Common team alongside the Lindors Wood Steering Group held a meeting at the St Briavels Assembly...
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Woodland Savers is now Common
What’s in a name change? In 2015, most people probably paid no attention when the tech company Google...
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Learning and networking with partners at Forest Research
4 December 2024: the Woodland Savers team along with colleagues from Lawyers for Nature, Woodknowledge...
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Community land buyout meeting in Gweek, Cornwall
On 2 November 2024, Woodland Savers worked with colleagues from Plant One CIC, My Little Farm, and Thousand...
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Meet the woodland saviours battling bulldozers (The Times)
If you take a train south from London Bridge station you may just catch a glimpse of Gorne Wood, a flash...
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Meet the team

In September 2021, the idea for Common was born when co-founders, media lawyer Tamsin Allen, eco filmmaker Franny Armstrong and television director Adam Wishart, crowdfunded £500k to buy and reunite three lots of ancient woodland in Devon.

 

Since then, the team, their funders and advisors have been working to enable more communities to reclaim their local landscapes and protect them for generations to come.

MEET THE TEAM

What people say

“As a woodland creation CIC, purchasing land to create publicly accessible woodlands is a key focus for us, and partnering with Common makes this possible. Their team brings essential expertise, support and access to a wide network to ensure we can acquire land for the good of the community.”

Carl Rowlison

Co-founder
Plant One Cornwall
“A healthy and biodiverse local natural environment brings so many positive outcomes to local communities, from health and wellbeing benefits to reducing flood risk and supplying clean water, and potentially now financial benefits from emerging nature markets. We need more community ownership models for nature restoration and organisations like Common to pioneer them to bring these wide-ranging benefits to more people.”

Rich Fitton

Director
Finance Earth
  • Social tenets

Reverence

Projects will start with and continue to serve local people and place. We want all people to be able to feel they will have been “good ancestors”.

Respect

Projects will respect and celebrate the creative contributions, the wisdom and insights and diverse characteristics of all involved.

Reciprocity

All people involved in our projects should have the opportunity to contribute their skills and experience, and to benefit from those of the others.

Regeneration

Common wishes to enable communities to prosper in current and future generations, each enriched by the work of those preceding them.

Responsibility

Common takes seriously its responsibility as an organisation working with communities. Projects will be managed in observance of all laws and regulations. Common will not work in partnership with any organisation with a socially-negative impact.

Reconnection

Common seeks to reconnect people with nature and each other. WE see relationship as a fundamental quality of good project design.

Redistribution

Common welcomes the contributions of the full diversity of each community, and wishes everyone to benefit from participation.

Resilience

Common projects will strengthen local social resilience, raising the awareness of need and ability, and building local security in times of challenge or plenty.

  • Environmental tenets

Reverence

Projects will start from the perspective of local habitats and ecosystems, and imbue all structures and processes with their heritage, capabilities, and aspirations. The rights of nature will be observed in all projects and their governance.

Respect

All landscapes acquired and / or managed by Common will be done so in collaboration with local communities, supported by subject-matter experts, and conducted with due respectfulness for their particular characteristics.

Reciprocity

Common will design projects to support the interdependency and mutual flourishing of species and habitats. The projects will give more than they get from nature.

Regeneration

Landscapes will be managed for long-term ecological prosperity, such that eventually they require no further human intervention beyond service and good stewardship.

Responsibility

Common will not work with capital from oil and gas companies, or from any organisation contributing to the problems Common is addressing. Common will not offset greenhouse gas emissions unless satisfied that they have been reduced so far as possible by the emitter, with a proven commitment and progress towards net-zero, and nature positive status. Common landscapes will not be used for field sports, including foxhunting, driven game shooting, hare coursing or beagling. Invasive or damaging species such as deer or grey squirrel may be controlled by local experts, in service of these Tenets.

Reconnection

Landscapes will not be lotted, unless within a common governance framework adhering to these Tenets. Conversely, Common will seek to protect and increase the unity, quantity and quality of wild landscapes, according to the principles of the Lawton Report Making Space for Nature (2010): “more, better, bigger, more connected”.

Redistribution

Landscapes will only be sold in service of these Tenets, with first refusal to charitable conservation organisations, and then only with a conservation covenant ensuring ecological management in perpetuity.

Resilience

Common understands that relationship is of the essence of our resilience, between and amongst communities of nature and people. We act to create, restore, and sustain positive and enduring relationships of service, dignity, and wellbeing.

  • Economic tenets

Reverence

All economic decisions will be taken with due regard to the sanctity of the natural world, and in service of its prosperity.

Respect

The finances of our projects will start from local heritage, will be co-designed with local people, and serve what they see as their most positive futures.

Reciprocity

Common projects will enable communities and nature to replenish one another.

Regeneration

Neither the finances of Common nor its projects will do harm to nature; on the contrary, they will contribute to a virtuous and enduring cycle of the regeneration of nature, communities, and their economies.

Responsibility

Projects will be managed with the highest standards of diligence in financial management. Common will not work in partnership with any organisation without a commitment to net zero and nature restoration.

Reconnection

Common will foster the reconnection of economics with purpose. Its projects will support local organisations, values-aligned partners, and nature-positive supply chains.

Redistribution

Common projects will serve the common wealth of our common home, locally, and for the Earth as a whole.

Resilience

Common projects will strengthen the resilience of local economy: the ability of local people to derive livelihoods from local work which prospers nature and people.