How It All Began

Local Biodiversity Partnerships

Biodiversity, or Nature as many people would think of it, enables farmers to produce food and protect their crops, it helps people have clean water to drink and cleaner air to breathe.  Well cared for, Nature helps protect our homes, businesses and roads from flooding.  The many benefits we get daily from nature go largely unseen and largely unappreciated.  In our modern world we think it is new technology, scientists in laboratories, doctors in hospitals and food in our supermarkets that make our lives better.  We have all forgotten what Nature does at the start of all these things.  For example, without Nature to pollinate the farmers’ crops, the supermarket shelves would be pretty bare.

Many billions of words on biodiversity have been written and spoken since the Rio Summit.  The 1994 document Biodiversity: The UK Action Plan crucially confirmed that “biodiversity is ultimately lost or conserved at the local level.  Government policies create the incentives that facilitate or constrain local action.” If the UK Action Plan is to be implemented successfully, we need to translate national targets into action at the local level. To do anything else would be extremely selfish.

This led to setting up the North East Scotland Biodiversity Partnership in 1996 as one of the four pilot partnerships in Scotland.

If the UK Action Plan is to be implemented successfully, we need to translate national targets into action at the local level