Data & Facts - Gaps: Seeking Nature Based Solutions?

• Across the UK local planning regimes still leave much to be desired. For instance:
  • Does your local authority have a flood risk mitigation strategy? If so, does it include recommendations for tree planting? If your local authority has that documented, are financial constraints hindering implementing and meeting targets? Is this a potential community assembly in the making to bring local people together behind such projects?
    
    
• What provision is made for:
  • Rewilding areas including grouse moors, common land, or parkland. Water catchment areas are key habitats, not only in terms of the wildlife populations they sustain, but also in terms of downriver impacts during heavy rainfall. Upstream land works to let straightened river stretches go back to historic natural paths - otherwise known as 're-wiggling' - using landscape engineering species, such as beavers can enhance water filtration systems, mitigating pollution impacts. They can also alleviate flooding and attract biodiverse species.
  • Is there scope for beaver population releases to achieve natural landscape engineering affordably and at scale?
  • Does your local nature partnership (LNP), or other national network which involves local communities and lay experts recommend other habitat management plans to mitigate impacts? You may already have connections with local NGO's, but also check out:
    • England LNPs
    • Wales LNPs
    • Scotland Local Biodiversity Partnerships
    • Northern Ireland Nature Recovery Networks
    • Republic of Ireland Rights of Nature Public Participation Network

• You have a chance to make a splash if your local authority has declared a Climate Emergency.

  • If they have, wherever local landfill sites have a toxic legacy, you can reasonably ask what remediation and mitigation provision is made for leachate risks following heavy rainfall. Is that part of that climate emergency planning process? For example, are there buffer mechanisms between buried toxic waste and water courses? Some plants reabsorb toxic elements in soils. Are these possible options for your local community to request? Worms have been found to offer some natural remediation in areas of contamination; has your local authority looked at such nature solutions?
    
    

• So many questions arise around toxic landfill... Be sure to check out our Dirty Water Social Justice page, or the following page on sources of information, where you can follow in the footsteps of other campaigners.

• We hope to bring you case studies of legal cases too, as they arise. Be sure to tell of those you are already aware of too...