Nature Recovery & Environment Act

What are Local Nature Recovery Strategies?

The strategies are statutory requirements of local areas under the Environment Act, which must be developed and reported on by local ‘Responsible Authorities’ – which in Cornwall will be Cornwall Council.

They will help guide future investment for nature, identify spatial allocations for nature, guide the delivery of Biodiversity Net Gain in planning, and help direct the future for environmental land management funding.

Cornwall’s Nature Recovery Pilot

Cornwall was chosen by Government as one of only 5 places in the country to be a ‘Nature Recovery Pilot‘ to develop a draft LNRS. The pilot was led by Cornwall Council, and the draft strategy was cocreated with Cornwall AONB and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership.

The pilot ran from September 2020 to May 2021. Over 700 local stakeholders generously shared their views to help shape the draft – including environment experts, farmers and the general public.

You can read Defra’s reflections on the pilots. Government is now drafting statutory guidance for the production of Local Nature Recovery Strategies, drawing on the lessons from the pilot.

Cornwall AONB’s role in the pilot

The National Association of AONB’s Colchester Declaration (Appendix viii) pledged to act to redress declines in species and habitats, including a commitment to prepare Nature Recovery Plan’s for each AONB.

In June 2020, Cornwall AONB’s Partnership Meeting agreed to co-create the Cornwall Nature Recovery Strategy with Cornwall Council as part of the Nature Recovery Pilot. In doing so, we are helping to ensure that Cornwall has an effective, joined-up approach to nature recovery covering our AONB and surrounding areas. This will help to embed our own priorities as an AONB within an integrated statutory plan for all of Cornwall, which will enable us to collectively attract funding based on whole-place priorities, and ensuring simpler strategic direction for stakeholders through a single plan.

As a result, Cornwall AONB was heavily involved in the Cornwall Nature Recovery Pilot, including:

• Cornwall AONB’s Partnership Manager was a member of the pilot steering group, providing guidance and feedback on the process and draft strategy.
• The wider Cornwall AONB Partnership helped to shape the content through a workshop in December 2020, and through participating in the pilot surveys.
• Cornwall AONB also supported a public engagement event at the Local Nature Partnership’s annual conference, coorganised a two ‘Growing Greener’ events to engage farmers in the process, and helped to promote engagement events through social media and the press.
• We have since begun testing how the LNRS can be embedded by integrating it within our evaluation process for administering Farming in Protected Landscapes funding.

The draft strategy, Appendix vii, outlines:

• 10 principles
• 6 short-term priorities
• 5 medium-term priorities
• 10 enablers
• A prototype Nature Recovery Network

The prototype Cornwall Nature Recovery Network comprises two areas:

• Zone 1 comprising current protected and high value areas where we need to enhance and protect the best (~25% of Cornwall);
• Zone 2 opportunity areas where we can create and restore the rest (~15% of Cornwall).
• The strategy also highlights wider opportunities outside the network in Zone 3.
• You can read the draft strategy and view the engagement events again here. The prototype map is available on the Lagas mapping platform.

Where next?

The Environment Act became law in November 2021, and we are now awaiting the statutory guidance from Defra. Once this is available, we will work with Cornwall Council on the next phase of consultation and engagement to refine the final version of the Cornwall LNRS for adoption in 2022.