Restoring Nature
To address the climate emergency, we are working with our partners and stakeholders to restore and enhance West Yorkshire’s natural environment.
Climate and Environment Plan
The Climate and Environment Plan is currently being refreshed and is due to be published in Spring 2025.
Our Climate and Environment Plan 2021-2024 stated that we have declared a climate emergency. It outlined how we will address the damaging impacts of a changing climate and how we can deliver a sustainable, nature-rich and climate-ready West Yorkshire.
Protecting the natural environment and making the region more resilient is a core part of the plan. We are committed to developing a Local Nature Recovery Strategy for West Yorkshire, as well as delivering green infrastructure and ensuring our region is resilient to the impacts of flooding.
Local Nature Recovery Strategy
Nature's decline impacts us all. Habitat loss impacts the availability of clean air and water. This in turn affects wildlife – nearly 2,000 species may have disappeared from Yorkshire over the past 200 years and approximately 3,000 more are at risk of extinction.
Local nature recovery strategies focus our activity where it is most needed and where it will have the biggest impact. Our strategy will set out what we will do to restore biodiversity in the region, which will also improve carbon storage and flood resilience. We will map nature in our region and will set out how we will address biodiversity loss.
We are currently developing our Local Nature Recovery Strategy.
We held a survey in 2024 to hear from people across West Yorkshire on how they think about and interact with nature. We’ve also teamed up with key businesses, young people, community groups, environmental non-governmental organisations, farmers and landowners to gather a wide range of views.
We have used those views to inform our strategy. In 2025, we will host another consultation to see if people think we are focusing on the right activities. You can find out more about this on our Your Voice page.
Biodiversity Net Gain
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is a way of creating and improving natural habitats. BNG makes sure development has a measurably positive impact on nature compared to what was there before development.
In England, BNG is now a mandatory part of the planning process for any new development. Developers must make sure that their projects result in more or better-quality natural habitats than before the work took place.
We are currently developing our BNG approach, so that we can be responsible for this work across Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield. Our intention is to establish a unified way for planning officials, developers and interested organisations to approach these questions.
BNG will be an important part of how we deliver our Local Nature Recovery Strategy.