Corporates heavily back UK nature conservation partnerships
Three major corporates – B&Q, Amazon and the John Lewis Partnership – have unveiled a flurry of schemes and plans to restore nature and partner with environmental and conservation groups across the UK.
DIY retailer B&Q is financially backing a Woodland Trust scheme to transform a treeless landscape at Snaizeholme in the Yorkshire Dales into native woodland. Besides the reforestation plans, Snaizeholme has more than 100ha of upland peat bog that the charity is also looking to restore as a part of the project. It also plans to create limestone pavements, maintain historic drystone walls, and instal leaky dams to improve water management while conserving fish and crayfish.
The John Lewis Partnership has unveiled a “plan for nature” that will include trialling its first net-zero farm, at Leckford in Hampshire, by 2024. It aims to ensure that all of its supplier farms are net zero by 2035, and is working to eliminate deforestation in the supply chains of all key commodities for its own-brand products.
The company had earlier pledged to ensure that all key raw materials in its own-brand products come from recycled or sustainable sources by 2025, including timber, cotton, soya, palm oil, cocoa and cashmere, with a 2028 deadline for polyester, leather and manmade fibres such as modal and lyocell. Under the plan, it aims to ensure that at least half of its fresh foods come from areas that manage water use responsibly by 2030.
The retailer has also unveiled a partnership with WWF in which it will invest £2m in the charity’s nature protection and regeneration schemes in the UK and India. A second partnership has been unveiled with the National Oceanography Centre to support research into the degradation of plastic and its impact on ecosystems and animal health.
Amazon, meanwhile, will allocate £2.8m to nature projects from its Right Now Climate Fund. It will provide £750,000 to the London Wildlife Trust’s Rewild London fund to support 20 projects working with owners and managers of nature sites in the capital. It has also pledged to give £2.1m to the Woodland Trust’s Emergency Tree Fund, which awards grants to local authorities so that they can create or expand forests and green spaces in areas where residents do not have sufficient access to nature.