The new strategy for the country’s leading green space custodian has been informed by consultations with more than 200 other organisations, and aims to boost collaboration to stop ecological decline.
Published last week, the architects of Natural England’s ‘Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security’ framework claim it supports economic growth and protects the environment.
Central to this is the idea that nature is both monetarily and environmentally valuable, with English peatlands estimated as providing £888million in water filtration and green spaces adding £26.5billion welfare value.
‘Nature provides the foundation stones of our growth, health and security. The threats facing nature today are also threats to our way of life,’ said Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England. ‘The scale of the challenge facing us means that we need to increase our ambition for nature recovery and change the way we have worked.
‘Succeeding means thinking carefully about where and how to target our efforts so that we can do bigger and better, as well as promote collaboration on nature across society,’ he continued. ‘We can grow the economy and meet the government’s stretching legal environment targets – this strategy sets out a path to do just that.’
The strategy focuses on three core outcomes, which also support international targets of protecting 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030:
- Recovering Nature – Restoring natural systems like rivers, wetlands, forests by tackle root causes of decline and prioritising large-scale recovery.
- Building Better Places – Embedding nature into homes, infrastructure, and investment from the start to create greener, healthier, more investible places.
- Improving Health and Wellbeing – Expanding access to green and blue spaces where people live and partners with health, education, and employment sectors to unlock the benefits of nature.
- Delivering Security through Nature – Supporting nature-friendly farming, forestry, and fishing to supplying food, water, clean air, and improve climate resilience in the future.
‘There is a huge positive opportunity at hand to unlock the power of Nature in pursuit of wider national priorities for growth health and security,’ said Marian Spain, Chief Executive of Natural England.
‘We know this can be done because there are already many examples of this kind of strategic and broad-based approach seen up down the country, from the agricultural landscapes of Lincolnshire to the heathlands of Surrey and from internationally important wetlands in Dorset to the uplands of the Pennines, where diverse partnerships for Nature’s recovery are bringing a wide range of benefits for people as well as wildlife,’ she continued.
Natural England has now pledged to us its convening power to push for integrated action to support people and nature simultaneously, and establish partnerships to launch programmes which unlock ‘nature benefits’ at scale. The benefits of investing in the environment will also be prioritised with outbound communication.
Science, data and technology will be key to these goals, including monitoring and evaluation, AI and systems approaches, meaning there is now an urgent need to upskill and close knowledge gaps.
Image: Aaron Burden / Unsplash
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