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BUD

The Border Uplands Demonstrator (BUD) is a collaborative initiative to develop a programme of innovative approaches and pilot demonstrator projects that can be used to build knowledge and find ways to achieve a more sustainable and resilient future for the remote upland communities of the cross border area of Northern England and Southern Scotland.

The initiative will seek to demonstrate if a new joined up, enabling approach could deliver more holistic and sustainable outcomes, utilising, sustaining and enhancing the natural and cultural capital of the area to develop a genuinely environment-based economy.

It will also seek to identify how we can develop integrated outcomes for landscape management and rural development with a shared vision that is not constrained by borders, demonstrating how clarity of purpose and joined up action across all sectors of society can deliver positive long term outcomes over a broad number of agendas.

What are we aiming to achieve?

To test approaches with the overall ambition of developing:

  1. A genuinely environment-based economy where the management of a high quality, healthy, resilient natural environment and a rich cultural heritage underpin the area’s sustainable development and are at the heart of what people value about the places they live, work and visit.
  2. Resilient communities that can attract new generations into an economically and environmentally sustainable area, that has access to communications, services and a thriving visitor economy.

Where is BUD?

The cross border upland areas of Northern England and Southern Scotland. This area faces all of the challenges that typify remote upland communities and encompasses a huge wealth of natural capital and cultural assets. The area has:

  • a largely land-based local economy built on farming, land management, forestry and tourism, allied to an important cultural sector and a proliferation of micro-enterprises
  • communities which demonstrate high indices of need and that have great commonality in terms of their economic circumstances and their access to facilities and services
  • a common suite of important upland species, habitats and ecosystem goods and services (environmental cohesion)
  • a common set of upland agricultural and land management issues

The map below illustrates the geographic area the Initiative will focus on, although this can be flexible to some extent:

Border Uplands Demonstrator Map

Who is involved?

The Initiative is hosted by Northumberland National Park Authority. The steering group is chaired by the Authority’s Chief Executive, Tony Gates and involves a small number of core partners. A wide range of partners and stakeholders will be involved in the development of specific pilot projects.BUDI-overview-presentation-Jan-2017-2

Want to know more?

To find out more about the Border Uplands Demonstrator, what work we have done so far and what our plans are for the coming months, you can download our overview documents using the links below.

Download the Border Uplands Demonstrator Initiative overview here.

Download the Border Uplands Demonstrator Initiative presentation here.