A regenerative future for the Fens - Insights from Fens Transition Lab
What would a regenerative Fens look like? Vicky Vanderstichele reports on the work North Star Transition has been doing with stakeholders from across the Fens landscape as they navigate significant challenges, from climate and flooding to drought and economic performance.
The Fens region, set across the east of England, faces a unique set of challenges—climate change, water stress, biodiversity loss, and economic resilience all intersect in this low-lying landscape. Recognizing these complexities, North Star Transition partnered with Future Fens Integrated Adaptation (FFIA) to launch Fens Transition Lab, an innovative process that brings stakeholders together to co-create solutions for the issues faced within the Fens.
The first phase of Fens Transition Lab, building on the work being conducted in Wye-Usk Transition Lab, concluded in early 2025. So, we are pleased to share a summary of the work accomplished and the current state of progress.
If you are not familiar with the Transition Lab concept, it is a systemic regional approach developed by North Star Transition in collaboration with the Climate Action Unit at UCL. It fosters emergent co-production—engaging diverse stakeholders to develop a shared vision, identify barriers, and co-design actionable solutions. The first phase of Fens Transition Lab comprised four workshops that provided a space for cross-sector collaboration and deepened understanding of the region’s challenges and opportunities. These workshops set the groundwork for relationships to build and for a shared understanding of the issues within the Fens to emerge.
Alongside these workshops, we had numerous meetings with individual stakeholders, many of whom were already participating in the region-wide Future Fens Integrated Adaptation programme, hosted by Anglian Water and the Environment Agency, among others.
Five Key Themes for a Regenerative Fens
Through our discussions, five key themes arose as focal points for transformation:
Profitable and Resilient Agriculture: Exploring different farming practices, such as paludiculture and horticulture, to enhance economic and environmental sustainability.
Mid-Level Infrastructure for Water, Energy, and Transport: Addressing gaps in regional, mid-level infrastructure to support resilience and connectivity.
Implementing Land Use Transformation at Scale: Identifying areas for strategic land-use change to balance agricultural productivity, biodiversity, and flood resilience.
Practical Methods to Improve Water, Soil, Air, and Biodiversity: Scaling up best practices for regenerative land and water management.
Economic Networks for a Regenerative Fens: Developing markets for water, renewable energy, and regenerative agricultural products to drive systemic change.
In the next phase of Fens Transition Lab, these key themes will be taken forward within subgroups to enable more detailed and expert input.
Applying a Systemic Lens to Change
These five key themes are not intended to encourage siloed thinking. To ensure holistic solutions, we have identified critical lenses unique to the Fens. The lenses are issues which came up repeatedly within our workshops which related to and had an impact on all the five themes. In total, we identified five lenses:
Planning and regulation: an array of planning and regulatory challenges will make action for the five themes difficult. Each subgroup will need to consider how to work with the planning and regulatory landscape whilst also planning for and working towards changes.
Farmer and landowner financial capacity: any interventions developed by the subgroups for the five themes need to ensure that farmers and landowners have the financial capacity (and incentive) to implement them.
Flood risk management: flood risk is endemic in the Fens. Each of the subgroups will have to take this into consideration when considering their options and will need to integrate flood resilience into land use decisions.
Systemic regional planning: changes considered by each of the subgroups will need to consider how this impacts the entire region and whether it meets regional needs.
Health, wellbeing, and social implications: each of the subgroups will need to examine their areas considering social impacts, prioritizing community and wellbeing benefits alongside environmental and economic goals.
A Different Approach to Financing Change
Fens Transition Lab is working to attract and align financial sources, ensuring that investment flows toward impactful, long-term change. Instead of relying solely on traditional public grants or private sector funding, the Transition Lab aims to develop finance models that combine public, private, and philanthropic capital.
Furthermore, North Star Transition’s approach is not to focus on financing for discrete solutions for isolated issues. Instead, we want to look at financing diverse interventions together to create an aggregated package which makes the whole more attractive to institutional investors and ensures that non-fundable parts still get implemented. This work is already underway in Wye-Usk Transition Lab and we are looking to bring our learnings from that project to the Fens. This approach will enable scalable, system-wide interventions that go beyond isolated projects. By integrating investments in land use, infrastructure, and agriculture with environmental and community benefits, the financing model seeks to unlock funding for long-term transformation.
The opportunity for the region is to align its actions across different systems with Anglian Water’s significant investment in two new reservoirs across Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Large-scale infrastructure projects can act as catalysts, attracting additional investment into regenerative agriculture, sustainable water management, and new economic networks. This investment by Anglian Water provides a strong foundation for financing change across the entire region.
Future phases of Fens Transition Lab will focus on structuring investment collaborations, mapping financial pathways, and seeking out mechanisms for long-term investment.
Next steps
While Phase I of Fens Transition Lab has generated valuable insights and stakeholder engagement, much further work is needed to turn these ideas into actionable change. North Star Transition has recommended further work in the following areas:
Forming working groups around the five themes for the Fens to systematically tackle identified barriers and develop action pathways.
Using the working groups as a platform to design a strategic investment programme for financing change, integrating actions and interventions to attract finance.
Aligning with Anglian Water’s planned investments in reservoirs to leverage co-benefits for the wider landscape.
Continued collaboration, investment, and systemic thinking will be crucial in addressing the complex challenges facing the Fens. North Star Transition would like to thank Anglian Water and the Environment Agency for their support in making this work possible.
For more information, read our full report on Phase 1 of Fens Transition Lab, which can be found on the Anglian Water Innovation Hub website.