This could be complex but bear with me. Following the UK withdrawal from the EU the UK government is currently scrabbling to cobble together a system of farm support - it doesn't favour paying landowners to own land, but inspired by Rewild my fire we have a proposed system called ELMS. (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/environmental-land-management-schemes-overview).
Well how does this affect the railway I hear you ask. Well, one of the rationales behind ELMS is to mitigate climate change - changes in land management practices it is theorised can lock carbon in the soil, as well as providing for a healthy environment in terms of flora, fauna, animals and ultimately healthier meat (see for example https://www.pastureforlife.org/) - and land management practices by a neighbour have an affect on how you manage your estate.
Network Rail are doing an awful lot of work researching, modelling and quantifying the effects of a changing climate on what is essentially 150 year old earthworks in many cases see https://www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/environment/climate-change-and-weather-resilience/climate-change-adaptation/ and the accident report by the ORR https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2020-09/annual-health-and-safety-report-2019-20.pdf reinforces this requirement.
So here is an idea. Why not use ELMS as a tool to pay landowners and managers to mitigate the downstream effects of farming practices. This may cause ructions in places - especially in regard to correlation and causation and liability are two grey areas which may need further research and exploration - but if upstream run off is increasing erosion, coupled with the propensity for more extreme weather events and that creates the conditions for say, increased bridge scouring or embankment erosion then one way to stop that is to pay. Who directly benefits will be an issue - is it the cumulative effect of land managment practices by several farms which is creating the problem for the NR estate? And of course what happens if an accident happens and contributory blame is allocated to those land management practices?
Questions, questions.
