A New Deal for Nature web.pdf

I commissioned this report earlier this year to inform the Green Party’s debate and policies on nature.  It’s been written by a group of leading UK conservationists and nature writers, Mark Cocker, Jeremy Mynott, Jake Fiennes, Helen Smith and Patrick Barkham.

It came from a realisation that while the climate emergency has rightly risen up the political agenda, much less attention to the catastrophic decline in our wildlife.  And we are not only running out of time on cliamte, there's also little time to tackle the nature crisis too.  

Many of its ideas and proposals have already fed into Green party thinking and the party’s manifesto has more than 70 proposals related to nature and wildlife, with the boldest and best policies for protecting it – for the benefit of people and nature.  While the Green Party manifesto is more ambitious and comprehensive than any other in its pledges on nature and wildlife, we are always ready to work with experts to ensure the policies measure up to the challenges we face.

Among the recommendations of A New Deal for Nature are

• New national parks, with a goal of designating 20% of Britain as national park.
• Every farmer should devote a minimum of 15% of their land (including linear features) to nature, and be paid to do so.
• All primary schools should deliver one hour a day outdoor learning every day, in addition to break time. 
• Twin every primary school with a farm
• Encourage more wildlife-friendly gardens by casting off the obsession with tidiness. Ban the sale of all plastic grass, unless for sports pitches via planning permission.
• Wild public land. Hospital grounds to be re-greened and re-wilded to aid patient recovery
• Permanently protect some brownfield sites as SSSIs, give others “pop-up” temporary wildlife protection
• A moratorium on expansion of aquaculture operations, particularly open-cage salmon farming, shown to be harming the aquatic environment.
• A national deer strategy, with regional targets for per-hectare deer population, so that trees, wildflowers and other rare plants can recover.
• Improve early-warning systems to assess the threats posed by invasive, non-native species which are growing by 10-12 species every year. 

You can read the full report via the link on this page.