Defra, UK; Rural Affairs - Rural Strategy

Biodiversity is the richness and variety of natural life – our wildlife and their habitat. Together with our landscapes and the basic building blocks of life – soil, air and water – these key natural resources make up the rural, urban and marine environments that sustain us all, wherever we live.
These essentials of life are our inheritance to our children and their childrens’ children. This is why the Government has restated its full commitment to biodiversity and protecting and enhancing our natural environment in Rural Strategy 2004.

We are creating a large, powerful and independent new Integrated Agency with a wide range of levers to protect and enhance nature and lead the delivery of the Government’s targets for biodiversity.
The Integrated Agency – an independent statutory public body – will build on the world class expertise of English Nature (EN), the Countryside Agency (CA) and the Rural Development Service (RDS).
The new agency will work in close partnership with others to enhance the natural environment:
- the Environment Agency: for example taking joint action to tackle diffuse water pollution;
- the Forestry Commission: our woodlands are a rich source of biodiversity and contribute to the protection of our soils, air and water;
- local and regional government, non-governmental organisations, land managers and businesses: to ensure their decisions take account of the economic and social benefits of conserving the environment; and
- the National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England: to continue our long and successful history of landscape protection.

Bringing together expertise, experience, resources and responsibilities from EN, the CA and the RDS into an Integrated Agency will:
- combine the best of the three organisations and their schemes, allowing better targeting of advice and incentives to deliver integrated resource management, for example improving water quality through a river catchment scale approach;
- create a stronger, unified voice for biodiversity and natural resource protection in regional and sub-regional decision-making;
- help people benefit from a high quality environment, through improving access to our green space – in our towns and countryside – including for recreation, health and learning; and
- allow a coherent and area-based approach to the protection of England’s most important natural areas (National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, National Nature Reserves and Environmentally Sensitive Areas).

Page last modified: 19 May, 2005
Page published: 21 July, 2004

Defra