Trust signs up to the Right to Nature campaign

The Trust has joined a coalition of 90 organisations to call for a legal right to nature to be prioritised in the UK Government’s Levelling Up and cost of living agendas.

The John Muir Trust has joined sports, health, equality and nature experts to call on the Government to make equal access to nature a core part of their Levelling Up plans to benefit wildlife and communities across the country.

• 70% of Brits say free outdoor exercise is likely to be more important as the cost-of-living bites, yet park budgets have been slashed and 1 in 3 Brits have no local green space.
• Disabled people, ethnically diverse communities and deprived households are most excluded from free outdoor exercise opportunities.

At the heart of the John Muir Trust is a belief that wild places are for everyone - so long as they enjoy them respectfully and responsibly. Since our inception we’ve been rooted in local communities, and we’ve seen through local partnerships, and initiatives like the John Muir Award, that when people are able to connect with nature on any level, they are much more likely to be invested in protecting it for the future. We have also seen, through our Wild and Well repository, just how strong the connection is between wild places and human health.

This is why we have joined the Wildlife & Countryside LINK coalition to call for a legal right to nature, ahead of a proposed amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill by Caroline Lucas MP.

If accepted, this amendment would enshrine a right to nature in law – helping secure the stronger requirements and funding needed to help Local Authorities bring green and blue spaces into our most nature-deprived communities and restore deteriorating parks and waterways across the country.

The Nature For Everyone coalition is asking members of the public to show their support for these changes by signing a petition to the Government at: bit.ly/nature-everyone

Caroline Lucas MP, said: “Lack of access to nature is entrenching inequality across the UK. People on lower incomes and people of colour are more likely to live in the most nature-poor communities. Parks, woodlands, canals and rivers all across the country are in decline as local authority budgets are stretched and new neighbourhoods aren’t being designed in partnership with communities to deliver the access to nature people need.

“We saw clearly in the pandemic just how important local nature was to people’s mental and physical health, and these figures show the increasing need for free outdoor exercise as the cost of living bites. Having access to nature near home, and the health benefits it brings, should be a right, not a privilege. It’s time to end the nature postcode lottery with a legal right to nature.”

Natural England estimates that one in three people do not have a natural space, like a park, woodland or river, within a 15 minute walk of their home. Ethnic minority communities and disabled households are particularly excluded from free exercise opportunities as these groups are at least twice as likely to live in a nature-deprived area with little or no greenspace.

Disabled people are also excluded from many natural spaces, which often do not cater to individual needs. Only around half of the people in the new survey believed that the greenspaces near them had accessible features (such as paths suitable for wheelchair users or those with other mobility issues, accessible parking, frequent benches for resting, and braille signs).

Access to nature is proven to boost physical and mental health – improving the likelihood of a longer and healthier life. Yet the condition of many local parks and other green spaces is deteriorating as a result of Local Authority funding cuts, with an estimated £190 million lost from Local Authority parks budgets alone since 2016. Crucial natural spaces in and around towns and cities are also disappearing rapidly. Development pressures continue to result in the loss of natural community spaces - around 11% of urban greenspace has been replaced by buildings over the last 15 years. 

The Government has delivered a £39m Parks Fund. But this is just a drop in the ocean of the billions intended to be spent on Levelling Up and pales in comparison to the £5.5bn estimated to be needed to truly Level Up access to nature in urban areas alone.