Young people take a lead in restoring nature, climate and wellbeing
The UK is one of the most nature-depleted nations on the planet and bears massive historic responsibility for climate change. It is also home to the unhappiest population of teenagers in Europe. Creating new opportunities to empower and involve young people in building climate resilience by restoring the UK’s damaged ecosystems could provide a win-win solution to these interconnected problems. This is the ambitious goal of a new National Lottery-funded project - Intergenerational Action for Climate and Nature - being led by youth environmental charity Action for Conservation, Avon Wildlife Trust and Heartwood CIC at High Leas Farm.
Over the next three years, 45 young leaders aged 13-18 will have the opportunity to co-design and deliver nature restoration with more than 700 local community members across 650-acres of land at three sites:
Penpont: The UK’s largest intergenerational nature restoration project, located in the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, Wales. Since 2019 a partnership of landowners, farmers, young people and charity Action for Conservation have been restoring 500-acres of land at the site;
Heartwood: A 160-acre farm located near Matlock in Derbyshire which aims to grow food, restore nature and offer therapeutic opportunities for the surrounding community;
Grow Wilder: A 5-acre brownfield site, located just outside Bristol’s city centre, a stone's throw from Grow Wilder, Avon Wildlife Trust’s thriving urban nature reserve and food-growing hub.
“Working with our partners we want to create a gold standard for involving young people in all aspects of the design, development and delivery of nature restoration at scale - the best way to remove excess carbon from our shared atmosphere. In doing so we will empower young people as change-makers and tackle eco-anxiety, a major cause of the UK’s youth mental health crisis”, says Hendrikus van Hensbergen, CEO of Action for Conservation.
Young leaders will work with expert ecologists, farmers and local community members to create new, multigenerational visions for nature restoration. They will then turn these into reality by restoring lost habitats like woodlands that capture carbon and wetlands that protect areas from flood and drought.
“Heartwood is located in the River Derwent Catchment. Bringing people here to make positive changes to the land, like re-establishing natural flood management features, could have major benefits to communities downstream who are suffering major impacts from flooding made more regular and extreme by climate change”, says Miriam McDonald, farmer and land manager at Heartwood.
At the flagship Penpont Project, 100% of young leaders who have been part of the project since 2019 reported that they experienced an improvement in their wellbeing thanks to their involvement in the project.
“Through being at Penpont my relationship to nature evolved. There's a deeper level of emotional connection that comes from doing something you love in a place that means a lot to you”, says Penpont Youth Leadership Group member Hana.
The new 3-year project will help establish green spaces that help other young people enjoy similar benefits long into the future.
“This project will transform what is now an underused, neglected area into a nature-rich space where young people can learn, grow and be heard. Through this work we will honour the rich ecological, food growing and social history of this little patch of land and bring together different voices to shape its future”, says Lucy Hellier, Learning Manager at Avon Wildlife Trust. This project has been made possible thanks to National Lottery players. Action for Conservation, Avon Wildlife Trust and Heartwood have received over £870,000 from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK.
4 According to research commissioned by AFC, in the UK 64% of young people aged between 11 and 16 are experiencing eco-anxiety. https://www.actionforconservation.org/_files/ugd/58792b_e82c242ca59d4137972350b2c0f92a77.pdf
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