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West Midlands Natural Environment Plan: 2021 - 2026

where are we now?

The West Midlands has ambitious and exciting plans to protect, restore and enhance its natural environment. We have already laid out our plans to tackle the climate emergency through our work on #WM2041, and the natural environment plays an important role in that, but this plan also focuses on how we will simultaneously address the ecological emergency. It outlines the actions that we will prioritise over the next five years

to improve the region’s biodiversity and access to green and blue space for our communities. This is our first five year plan for the natural environment, but we are committing to a long- term vision for nature, with subsequent plans that will build on success, but also address ongoing challenges to the region's biodiversity.

We know that we are not beginning from a standing start – there is a huge amount of work happening at a local and regional level already, and we have highlighted a number of these projects in this document. Addressing some of our most important challenges around the natural environment will require a sustained collective effort from a whole range of organisations, many of whom already have established projects and programmes in place.

To understand what the West Midlands can achieve in terms of expanding, restoring and enhancing its natural environment, we need to take account of the regulatory and policy environment that we are operating in. This is the case in terms of national, regional and local contexts. This section reviews policies, plans and projects that have the power to strengthen and enable our regional natural capital ambitions.

Supporting national policy

Urgent action is needed to address the rapid decline in the UK's biodiversity. The UK's State of Nature report provides a detailed look at how the natural environment is changing across the UK against a 1970 baseline. The most recent (2019) report showed the following:

  • 15 per cent of species are under threat of extinction

  • The average abundance of wildlife has fallen by 13 per cent with the steepest losses in the last ten years

  • 41 per cent of UK species studied show a decline in numbers and 133 species have already been lost from our shores.

    In addressing the challenges faced by nature in the UK, the Environment Bill is expected to provide a statutory framework for work on natural capital and biodiversity net gain. As a combined authority, we will be looking to play our part in the delivery of this and the 25 Year Environment Plan, which has stated the urgent need for this generation to leave the natural environment in a better state than we found it. Of the 6 themes prioritised in the 25 Year Environment Plan, this Natural Environment Plan particularly picks up on:

  • using and managing land sustainably

  • recovering nature and enhancing the beauty of nature

  • connecting people with the environment to improve health and wellbeing.

    It will also support the delivery of the national Nature Recovery Network, with its focus on enhancing landscapes; improving connectivity between wildlife- rich places; climate resilience; protection of existing natural environments and supporting access to nature for health and well-being.

As the Environment Bill receives royal assent in autumn 2021, the plan provided here puts the West Midlands Combined Authority in a strong position to respond to challenges around the natural environment. Local Nature Recovery Strategies, with their focus on comprehensive habitat mapping and biodiversity net gain, will be central to this. These are themes that run through all our work on the natural environment. Our focus is on genuine net gain, not just covering losses from new development. There will also be a commitment to following the mitigation hierarchy to avoid impact where possible before moving through 'minimise, restor and offset' (with the latter as a last resort).

Ahead of this formal requirement, however, we are looking to implement actions that could support the principles of biodiversity net gain, both through a better understanding of the data that we already have available as well as the implementation of some practical projects. We will work with regional stakeholders, including our local authorities, environmental NGOs, LEPs and private developers as a key element of our work on biodiversity net gain.

In addition to supporting measures around biodiversity protection and enhancement, this plan also identifies the importance of connecting people and nature more effectively. This emerged as a priority in The Landscapes Review 2019 (also known as the Glover Review). The report called for innovation in the way we think about our national parks and landscapes, how we connect them to urban communities, and how we ensure that there is representative diversity and inclusivity in their management. The West Midlands National Park (launched in July 2020) is cited as a positive example within the Landscape Review as a form of new, urban national park and we are working to turn the vision for this national park into a reality.

Finally, the fundamental benefits of our natural environment were highlighted in The Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity, a landmark report commissioned by HM Treasury and released in February 2021. It calls for urgent and transformative change in how we think, act and measure economic success to protect and enhance our prosperity and the natural world, and puts forward ways in which we should account for nature in economics and decision-making. Its headline messages serve as a critical reminder of the importance of nature:

  • “Our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature.

  • We have collectively failed to engage with Nature sustainably, to the extent that our demands far exceed its capacity to supply us with the goods and services we all rely on.

  • Our unsustainable engagement with Nature is endangering the prosperity of current and future generations.

  • The solution starts with understanding and accepting a simple truth: our economies are embedded within Nature, not external to it.”

  • We will be taking this thinking into a Natural Capital Investment Plan, proposed as part of this plan.

  • Recognising the many co-benefits from investing time, energy and resources into the natural environment, this plan will support delivery against the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

  • We will also explore the potential of working with other internationally agreed frameworks, for example in October 2021, parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will meet
    to determine the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. The outcomes of this could have an important bearing on our actions, including scale and pace.

Regional Context

In June 2019, WMCA declared a climate emergency and in July 2019 a target date of 2041 was established for the region to achieve net zero carbon emissions. In January 2020, the WMCA strategy (#WM2041: Actions to meet the climate crisis with inclusivity, prosperity and fairness8) was launched. This plan cut across the different actions that would be required to achieve the 2041 goal in a way that supported inclusive growth across the region. The natural environment played a key role in the strategy in terms of supporting resilience and adaptation; providing a route to mitigate climate change; and recognising the importance of green space for people across the region as part of a balanced and inclusive West Midlands.

The recognition of the multifunctional benefits of nature continued in the follow-up paper that went to the Combined Authority Board in June 2020 (WM2041: A Programme for Implementing an Environmental Recovery). This paper set out the urgent activity and need for the WMCA and stakeholders to produce five-year delivery plans (four in total) in support of delivering the zero carbon target for the West Midlands by 2041. The first of these WM2041 Five Year Plans (FYPs) was approved by the WMCA Board in March 2021 and has implications for regional natural environment programmes.

In terms of our natural environment specifically, we know that we need to work hard to address inequalities of access to green and blue space that were magnified during the first Covid-19 lockdown. In response to this, the WMCA commissioned the New Economics Foundation (NEF) to produce a report on access to green space across the West Midlands. The data provided through the NEF report has now been turned into a publicly accessible data platform10 that highlights parts of the WMCA (by Lower Super Output Area) where there is low access to green space. Addressing these issues of inequality is an important part of our work on the natural environment; the Community Green Grants scheme that we are establishing will be a route to support action to redress the inequalities identified.

The WMCA has also launched the Virtual Forest website, as part of the commitment to plant more trees across the region. This is providing a focal
point for people to register trees that have been planted and to share information about events and opportunities. This will be increasingly important as the WMCA accelerates delivery based on evidence in the first WM2041 Five Year Plan. This indicates that there needs to be a significant uplift in the tree planting effort across the region to support delivery of the net zero target – our FYP indicates that this will mean planting an additional 5.7 million trees by 2026.

We have taken a broad approach to the natural environment in this plan and, through other work that we will be undertaking, will also be exploring the potential for using natural capital to support adaptation to climate impacts as well as improving air quality.

Mapping activity across the West Midlands

During the stakeholder engagement it became clear that there is already a considerable amount of work underway across the region under different natural capital thematic areas:

Trees

  • Birmingham Urban Forest Master Plan

  • Solihull Urban Forest Strategy

  • Wolverhampton Tree Strategy

  • Coventry Tree Strategy (under consultation)

  • Black Country i-Tree project researching the urban forest.

  • Solihull Planting Our Future Arden Forest vision

Parks and Green space

  • Rethinking parks NESTA/National Lottery programme (Sandwell, Walsall and Coventry)

  • Future Parks Accelerator (Birmingham)

  • Garden City (Wolverhampton/Black Country)

  • Black Country UNESCO Geopark

  • Love Solihull (Solihull, including tree schemes)

  • Linear Park (Coventry)

Habitats

  • Natural England's Midlands Heathlands Heartlands opportunity mapping

  • North Walsall Heathlands

  • Highways green infrastructure planning (e.g. Wildlife Ways Solihull)

  • Fens Pools and Buckpool Nature Reserve, Dudley

  • Heathland restoration projects (Cannock Chase, Walsall, and South Staffordshire)

  • Thame Valley Wetlands Nature Improvement Area

Rivers

  • Opening and de-culverting (Rea, Sherborne, Alder Brook)

  • Development of corridors (Cole, Tame and Severn partnerships)

  • Flood management and restoration (Illey Brook, Smestow Brook, Tipton & Swan Brook)

  • Habitat restoration (River Blythe)

  • Habitat restoration (River Stour)

Region Wide

Severn Trent Water Commonwealth Games Forest West Midlands National Park

 

Key Stakeholders

Delivering this regional Natural Environment Plan will require the involvement of a range of different stakeholders from the public, charity and voluntary, research and private sectors. A number of them have been involved in the development of this plan. These include:

  • Government organisations: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission and Natural England

  • Local authorities: the seven constituent authorities have been consulted to date, although we also commit to work with our non-constituent authorities on delivery

  • LEPs: Black Country Consortium, Greater Birmingham and Solihull, Coventry and Warwickshire

  • Local Nature Partnerships: Birmingham and Black Country LNP and Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull LNP

  • Regional nature organisations and partnerships: The Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country, Warwickshire Wildlife Trust, RSPB, Canal and River Trust, Woodland Trust, Local Nature Partnerships within WMCA region

  • Private sector: working with individual businesses as well as with business-facing organisations (e.g. Business in the Community, Sustainability West Midlands, Growth Hubs)

  • Voluntary sector: 'Friends of' groups, tree warden groups, volunteer groups

    • West Midlands communities: Supporting and working with residents across the West Midlands to get involved in protecting, enhancing and restoring nature will be critical to the success of this plan.

    As this work develops, it is clear that our engagement will need to stretch beyond this initial group, bringing in others that will be necessary to help us achieve the scale of intervention required. This will also include broadening the range of businesses involved; bringing significant landowners on board; and stakeholders who can support with understanding the routes to financing.

    We are also proposing to establish a Natural Capital Board to oversee the work as part of the WMCA’s formal governance structure (see Section 4.2)

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