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Environment secretary unveils £50m nature-focused initiatives

by Trevor Loveday

Environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has called for renewed global action on nature while unveiling UK initiatives valued at more than £50m to improve natural habitats.


And Scotland’s environment minister, Mairi McAllan, said: “In Scotland we will shortly publish a new biodiversity strategy – underpinned by statutory nature recovery targets – which will set out our vision to stop biodiversity loss and protect, restore and regenerate nature.”


Both were speaking on Biodiversity Day at the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last week, Coffey pledged that the UK government would:

  • commit £30m to the Big Nature Impact Fund –  a new UK public-private bid to attract investment into nature restoration projects;

  • inject an additional £12m into the an alliance to protect and restore vulnerable coastal communities and habitats;

  • hand out a further £6m to help developing countries to increase their commitment to nature and nature-based solutions;

  • announce a new UK climate-finance contribution of £5m to the Inter-American Development Bank’s multi-donor trust fund to help stem the Amazon’s deforestation through locally-led projects; and

  • raise awareness of the crucial role of mangroves in coastal resilience by signing up to the Mangrove Breakthrough – a science-based initiative through which non-state and state actors can restore and protect mangroves at the scale needed to secure their future.

McAllan said signatories to the Scottish government-led Edinburgh Declaration – an “international plan for nature” – now numbered 280 governments, cities and local authorities across the world. UK minister for climate, Graham Stuart, said: “Only by unlocking private sector capability can we protect the Amazon rainforest, an ecosystem on which the whole world relies.”


The UK, together with Ecuador, Gabon and the Maldives, recently came up with ten-point plan for financing biodiversity, launched, the government claimed, with 17 early endorsers. At COP27, ministers and representatives from 15 existing signatories and others met in a closed door meeting to kick-start its next steps on translating this plan into action ahead of another COP– the 15th Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal on 15-17 December this year.

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