Neyland in Pembrokeshire is part of a new UK-wide initiative, seeking to help local, mostly urban, communities stand up for nature in their neighbourhoods.
Three-quarters of people in the UK are worried about the state of nature, yet we are in the bottom 10% of countries globally for protecting it. In March 2023, the People’s Plan for Nature set out recommendations to reverse the UK’s shocking declines in nature, including calls for greater investment in ways to help communities take action to protect and renew nature at a neighbourhood level. The Nature Neighbourhoods project is a direct response to those calls.
As part of the Nature Neighbourhoods project, 18 community organisations across the UK have received support from three of the UK’s largest nature charities – the National Trust, the RSPB and WWF. The organisations have come together as part of Save Our Wild Isles, an ongoing partnership to take action for nature’s recovery in the UK, and along with leading convenience retailer Co-op will support communities to create people-powered plans for nature in their local area.
PLANED will bring their community-led approach to Neyland for this project, furthering their aims to support communities to build a sustainable future.
Iwan Thomas, CEO of PLANED, said: “PLANED with 35 years of empowering community led development in west Wales, is thrilled to be a part of the Cymdogaethau Natur / Nature Neighbourhoods project in partnership with WWF. Our team is embedded within communities across a range of projects which all impact and support the wider environment, and general well-being, so now able to support and work on this key national project of significance here in west Wales is a great privilege, and one we will innovatively and collaboratively deliver on.”
Newport’s Maindee area and Pwllheli in Gwynedd are the other Welsh communities being helped to tackle the global climate and nature crises at a local level.
Polina Henderson is working for PLANED in supporting the community of Neyland, develop its Nature Neighbourhood Plan through co-production, engagement, and listening to the needs for the sustainable future of the essential local spaces, and wider environment of this community within Pembrokeshire.
Through, “Walk & Talks” around the locality, and using existing events and projects, the Nature Neighbourhood project will work through 2024 and 2025 to support the community identify what they see as important to their environmental future, and how this can be sustained and recorded to enable a plan that it owned, used, and developed further, by the community it serves.
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