Lately, we’ve been thinking about the Natural Environment White Paper and what it has to say about landscape-scale partnership working. The White Paper proposes that
“effective action to benefit nature, people and the economy locally happens when the right people come together in partnership” (The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature 2011:19).
This has resulted in the creation of Local Nature Partnerships (LNPs) to offer a strategic vision at a regional/county level for how nature will be valued and managed. Whilst LNPs have been welcomed by nature conservationists, it is widely accepted that the vision outlined in the White Paper will need to be operationalized in individual landscapes, at a scale smaller than that of the region/county, with partnerships and cooperation on an even more local level. The twelve pilot Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs) proposed in the White Paper are unlikely to achieve a complete picture of the numerous informal partnerships in operation around the country, their limited number restricting the potential for learning best practice from pre-existing success stories. The emphasis on partnership working has meant that the nature conservation sector is increasingly concerned, even where LNP and NIA status is unavailable/unrealistic, about how best to communicate their plans to communities and develop effective ways of working in partnership at the landscape-scale.
We’ve been advisory members of a nature conservation partnership since July 2010 called Linking the Lizard (comprising the National Trust, Natural England, Cornwall AONB, Cornwall Wildlife Trust, NFU and Cornwall Council). The meetings have highlighted the importance of: i) maintaining networks between the social sciences and the nature conservation sector; and ii) co-creation of knowledge to extend and enhance the opportunities for partnership working and local community participation at the landscape-scale. We’ve been involved in a number of Linking the Lizard initiatives, notably a series of community engagement exercises focused on the future of a National Trust farm.
As we move forward with the CLIF project we intend to put this experience to good use, in order to offer the UK Nature Conservation sector a toolkit for working in partnership with local communities.
