Urban and rural green spaces - saved by a thousand actions?

Author: Rosie Pearson

​The Community Planning Alliance was founded on the back of conversations between campaigners from all over the UK who saw their local green spaces threatened by development (of all kinds). 

We realised that we needed to understand the national, cumulative, scale of these many separate threats. And that is why our Grassroots Map was born.

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Now containing more than 500 local campaigns, it paints a stark picture of the huge pressures the UK’s natural environment is facing – and just how broken the planning system is. With each of the habitats that people are campaigning to save being just one in a process of ‘death by a thousand cuts’.

Recent reports show that:

• centuries of farming, building and industry have made the UK one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe;

• our rivers, lakes and streams are among the worst in Europe, due to sewage and farm pollution.

We shouldn’t have to be fighting these battles, but at least now, with the Community Planning Alliance to support and unite them, campaigners need not feel alone. All campaigns become more powerful when united.

We only launched the map in March 2021, but immediately campaigners began to support each other. Groups are sharing petitions, asking questions and providing answers, and linking up to campaign.

And already we know that the map has been noticed by the powers-that-be.

On this website, we will be providing tools, training and resources, as well as links to our partners, so that community campaigners no longer have to learn as they go. In addition, the provision of moral support will be essential. Campaigning is rewarding, but also hard work, stressful and sometimes emotional. 

The UK’s nature and farmland is too important to lose. Government should take heed of this quote from author Jim Watkins, “A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”  And persistence is what all of our campaigners and supporters have.

Nature is suffering death by a thousand cuts. The Community Planning Alliance's aim is to continue filling the map, with another 500 campaigns, and help to save our natural environment with one thousand actions.

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