Glastir — Wales' Whole-Farm Payment Scheme for Peatland, Water and Biodiversity Outcomes

Glastir was the Welsh Government's whole-farm sustainable land management scheme, launched in 2012 and jointly funded by the Welsh Government and the European Union to replace earlier programmes including Tir Gofal and Tir Cynnal. Open to anyone managing agricultural or common land in Wales, it paid participants under five-year management plans for outcomes across several themes — climate, water quality, biodiversity and public access — including a dedicated peatland restoration component.

Participants entered five-year management plans covering climate, water quality, biodiversity and public access outcomes, including a dedicated peatland restoration component.

By the time the scheme wound down, over £336 million had been paid to Welsh farms since 2012, with roughly 1.3 million hectares under contract. An independent evaluation by ERAMMP (delivered by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) found that Glastir funded only 11% of the roughly 9,000 hectares of peatland restored across Wales over the period, mostly on lower-emission bog types, meaning the climate benefit was smaller than the peatland figures alone suggest. The evaluation also found 'few positive benefits for soil', rising pond degradation, and management change on only 31–34% of participating farms — echoing a 2014 Wales Audit Office review that had already flagged delivery weaknesses.

Glastir remains a widely cited real-world example of both the promise and the limits of whole-farm payment-for-outcomes design: a genuinely large, transparently evaluated programme whose own government-commissioned research shows the gap between funding scale and measured environmental change. An interim scheme bridged 2024 ahead of the new Sustainable Farming Scheme.