In response to the international Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992, the UK Government encouraged all local authorities to prepare a Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP). BAPs have a top-down role in that they provide an up-to-date ecological ‘stock take’ and analysis of potential threats to different species and habitats, which is used to inform sustainable town planning. BAPs also need to engage with a range of stakeholder groups (e.g. local voluntary groups and businesses) and establish ways of achieving nature conservation ‘on the ground’.
LUC produced a Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) for the London Borough of Newham, incorporating a Biodiversity Study for the LDF evidence base. The study was set against a backdrop of unprecedented change in Newham — with both the Olympic development and housing growth. These and other factors posed simultaneous opportunities and threats to the future of the natural environment in this part of East London.
The project had two distinct audiences, requiring a two-pronged approach from the LUC team. The first audience was town planners who required scientifically robust, Borough-wide strategic information. We first produced the detailed Biodiversity Study, drawing together biological data received from Greenspace Information for Greater London, the Environment Agency, Natural England, the London Borough of Newham and various other sources. We then prepared a series of analyses highlighting salient trends in the extent, condition and population status of habitats and species in the Borough. This was accompanied by GIS mapping of key ecological resources in the Borough, such as protected areas and ecological networks.
The second audience included groups such as voluntary/NGO conservation bodies, developers and park managers, requiring non-technical conservation information to enable delivery of nature conservation ‘on the ground’. LUC carried out a series of facilitated consultation events, culminating in the formation of the Newham Biodiversity Partnership, a partnership organisation hosted by the Council and tasked with taking forward the recommendations of the BAP.
Preparing the BAP was an interesting challenge from several perspectives. It entailed both presentation of strategic and technical ecological analyses and also consideration of how this detailed information could be presented to lay audiences and used to galvanise conservation outcomes. It was also important to fulfil the requirements of audiences such as economic planners, for whom areas of land such as brownfield sites (some of the most valuable botanical and invertebrate habitats in the Borough) are priorities for development and routes to alleviating socio-economic deprivation.
