Half a million trees will be planted across England in the next three years to protect against extreme weather, the environment secretary, Angela Eagle, will pledge on Wednesday morning.
Mayors, local authorities, charities and grassroots groups will be given new funding and responsibilities for restoring natural landscapes such as wetlands, river edges and meadows, which can provide natural flood management and reduce the damage done by droughts.
The £79m package, to be set out in Eagle’s speech to the Labour party conference in Liverpool, will include £53m for tree-planting and £26m for “local nature recovery strategies”.
This summer’s drought showed the urgent need for more trees, and more protection of natural landscapes, Eagle is to say. “In areas where nature has been allowed to flourish, the ground held more water, and the droughts were less severe,” she will tell the conference. “On streets where trees have been planted, the shade meant temperatures were lower. And when rain finally came, those same trees reduced the risk of floods. We all deserve access to the benefits that nature can bring.”
Trees can reduce air temperatures by 4C in cities, making heatwaves more bearable, while a single mature tree can intercept 15,000 litres of water a year, reducing flood and water run-off risks during storms. They can also halve noise pollution and absorb air pollution, and provide habitats for wildlife in towns and cities.
Echoing the localism agenda championed by Andy Burnham, Eagle will tell the Labour party conference the UK must combine a focus on local communities with the need to make the whole country more resilient to the increasingly intense impacts of the global climate crisis.
She will say that putting decision-making in the hands of those who know their communities best is the most effective way to improve nature and strengthen the UK against a changing climate.
Craig Bennett, the chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, said the plans were “very encouraging”, and appeared to signal that Burnham would change the government’s direction on nature.
“The mood could not be more different from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, who presented nature as a block to development,” he said. “This will be very welcome. For a long time local authorities have been trying to help nature but did not have the power, money or political support. The Burnham government seems to have realised that nature is crucial to the country’s future.”
England has lost more than 90% of its wetlands over the last century. “We need to make Britain wet again,” said Bennett. “We could have tens of thousands of new wetlands.”
Richard Benwell, the chief executive of the Wildlife and Countryside Link charity, said: “Investing in the critical nature infrastructure we need to protect businesses and communities makes good economic sense and good ecological sense, especially when investments are guided by locally agreed nature restoration plans. This is a good start towards Burnham’s promise of the government getting ahead of long-term challenges, recognising nature’s role in supporting our economy and adapting to climate change.
“This should be followed by a commitment to rapidly scale up nature investment as part of the prime minister’s 10-year plan, funded by businesses who will benefit, and by making sure polluters pay.”
The government has faced sharp criticism in recent days over the management of payments to farmers, intended to help them protect nature on their land. Last Tuesday, the Sustainable Farming Incentive was opened at 10am for applications from farmers willing to undertake environmental improvements such as conserving wildlife habitats, growing trees and nurturing soil.
But within six hours, the £253m pot was exhausted and many farmers were left disappointed.
Bennett said farmers needed support to play their role in nature protection and fostering resilience to the climate crisis. “We need to stop thinking about this as just a farming budget, but as a national security and natural resilience budget,” he said.
