Welcome to Nature North

Welcome to Nature North,

We are excited to launch this website and tell you a little about what we have been doing over the last year or so.

Nature North  is a collaboration between organisations in the North of England, which have come together to drive climate resilience and green growth through nature recovery.

At Nature North our aim is to create an “environment” which better facilitates collaborative working and large scale investment for nature recovery in the North of England. You can read more about our vision and objectives here.

To support this we have been working on a number of things:

We set out the business case for Nature Recovery in the North of England. Here we have made the link between nature recovery and key issues facing the North of England. These are the issues that many of our key stakeholders and partners are working to address and important aspects of green growth and the build back better agenda. We hope that the business case will help the environmental sector engage, collaborate with and advocate to key partners across the Northern Powerhouse including, combined authorities and local authorities, the NP11, the health sector and business with the aim to embed the natural environment in the North’s levelling up agendas.

At Nature North through partnership we want to enable delivery and facilitate investment into the North’s Natural Assets.  For this reason we have developed 5 cross regional investable propositions. We intend to develop these into viable propositions for investment. We also aim to support two existing investable propositions, the Great North Bog and the Northern Forest. While established, these programmes will benefit from the added value provided by Nature North and cross fertilisation of ideas and innovation across all concepts. The intention is not to duplicate the excellent work that is happening across the North of England but to create an opportunity to scale, increase visibility and drive investment. As we move forward we will be establishing coordinating groups to develop these concepts into viable investable propositions.

Collaboration is at the heart of what we are doing and  we aim to enhance collaboration in nature recovery across the North of England, so that members and partners work together in more efficient and joined up ways. We are also looking to build a Northern community for nature recovery, incorporating the private, public and third sector. This will lead to greater opportunity, investment, and innovation for nature recovery activities. We aim to have public, private and third sectors regularly work together for a well funded, well-planned and strategic approach to restoration and enhancement of the natural environment.

Our aim is to pull all of this together to inform a strategic plan for investment in Nature for the North of England.

The climate and ecological crises are upon us. We are also now living in a world with COVID. However there is lots we can do to improve the livelihoods and wellbeing of our communities in which nature recovery is at the heart.  We are excited to work with you on these aims over the coming months and years.