The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. We believe that we have a responsibility to halt and reverse the decline in biodiversity to ensure that future generations can enjoy rich and abundant nature, while building the homes and producing the food we need.
With 70% of England’s land devoted to agriculture, we believe that farmers should be given a fair return from the market for sustainable food production and should be rewarded with public and private funding for their role as custodians of our countryside and for protecting and restoring nature.
As well as nature-friendly farming, land use, and habitat restoration, our nature programme covers topics such as water quality and security, nature-based solutions to climate change, resource efficiency and security, sustainable fisheries management, and restoration of the marine environment.
CEN’s nature programme brings together conservatives from across the UK to champion conservative solutions that will restore our natural environment. Explore this page to find out more about the work of our nature programme.
We coordinate environmental action within the conservative movement and mobilise conservatives to achieve positive environmental policy change. We do this by developing and championing policy campaigns in Parliament and across the UK. Some of our recent nature campaigns can be found below.
Nature-based solutions (NBS) to farmland flooding and drought can help to alleviate the risk posed to farmland.
CEN has been raising awareness of the vital role that NBS can play on our farmland and working with MPs to campaign for policy solutions that establish more of these nature-based solutions on the ground.
Our new model of ‘public money for public goods’ is a more efficient use of taxpayers’ money and will help farmers to tackle the biggest medium term threats to food security: biodiversity loss and climate change.
But this new system is only as strong as the budget underpinning it. With rumours of a budget cut circulating, CEN has been campaigning to keep the nature-friendly farming budget intact and to index it in line with inflation.
We raise awareness of environmental issues and their electoral importance among conservatives, as well as promoting conservative voices within the environmental policy debate. We do this by regularly producing blogs, as well as landing stories and opinion pieces in the media. Read our latest nature-related media hits below.
We organise public and private events that enable conservatives to debate environmental issues in a trusted setting and find common ground. Photos and recordings from previous events delivered by our nature programme can be viewed below.
