Nature Improvement Areas one year on: a guest blog by Professor Sir John Lawton

Today, I welcome Professor Sir John Lawton, Vice-President of the RSPB and champion of landscape scale conservation.  His groundbreaking report, "Making Space for Nature", argued that to save nature we needed to up our game. 

John's report advocated five key elements: "improve the quality of current sites by better habitat management; increase the size of current wildlife sites; enhance connections between, or join up, sites, either through physical corridors, or through ‘stepping stones’; create new sites; reduce the pressures on wildlife by improving the wider environment, including through buffering wildlife sites". 

In short, we need "more, bigger, better and joined".  Over the coming weeks I plan to profile some of the projects that are applying these principles and delivering more for people and wildlife. 

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I am delighted to be a guest blogger on Martin's page today to celebrate the first anniversary of the Nature Improvement Area (NIA) programme. Some of you many be aware that I chaired the group that produced what has become known as the “Lawton report “or to give it its full title Making Space For Nature: A Review of England’s Wildlife sites and Ecological network. You can find the full report here. One of the recommendations made in that report was to establish Ecological Restoration Zones, large discrete areas where through collaboration significant enhancements to the ecological network could  be delivered.

The report also recommended that we start the process with a competition for 12 recognising the restrictions on public finances. These subsequently became known as NIAs and I am delighted that they are now one year old and are already showing what can be done at different locations across the UK by coalitions of the willing.

Interest was strong in the competition with 76 applications all of them very strong so whittling it down to a final twelve was a difficult task but speaks volumes of the quality of the applications from those chosen. Indeed many of those who did not make the final 12 have carried on and have sought funding from other sources.

And where have we got to in one year?

Although modest in the grand scheme of English nature conservation, the 12 have already made noteworthy progress. Indeed it is calculated that the original fund of a modest £7.5m has helped leverage in an additional £40m in both cash and in kind contributions.

It has created a programme of partnership based conservation work that involves all the major players: NGOs, landowners etc and is a testing ground for landscape scale conservation. This is how we need to work - the wider societal benefits of a healthy environment are now recognised and development must not compromise our ability to conserve. Yes, of course, I would say this but please look for example at the report of the ecosystems task force on "Realising Natures Value" that makes the argument about the true relationship between business and nature much more clearly - compulsory reading I would suggest for all.

I applaud the efforts of the teams involved in the NIA process around the country and indeed had had the pleasure of visiting many of them.  However as we celebrate, let's not miss the real challenges to the approach. Much of the collaborative work is underpinned by  public money through programmes like agri-environment schemes - these must be kept and improved, whatever the outcome of the current CAP discussions.

Finally, when one looks at the challenges we face - and I have seen dramatic negative changes in my life time - we must see that as a call to action to work better as a collective for the greater good. I do look forward with some guarded optimism to having even more bigger better and joined up NIAs in the next ten years.