So, you’ve heard of the Climate Emergency, and are doing what you can to reduce your carbon emissions. Explore Cornwall Council’s Carbon Neutral Hive for more information on climate change.

But what is the Ecological Emergency, and how does it differ? Find out more below.

• What is biodiversity?
• What are the main causes of biodiversity loss?
• What is ‘nature recovery’, and how can we achieve it?

The best way to make a difference for nature locally is to understand what’s already in your local environment. The area you live in is already home to important plants and animals that may be key to the local ecosystem. Therefore, we recommend that you follow a step by step process.

1.  Understand the basics about key habitats
2.  Find out more about your local site
3.  Use our cheat-sheet to brainstorm ideas with your local group
4.  Firm up your ideas into a plan and policies
5.  Secure funding and make your plan a reality
6.  Tell us that you’re taking action for nature

Protecting and restoring nature is a resource intensive process, and it’s worth forming a local group of volunteers in order to be more effective in your efforts.

The ecological emergency is huge, and it’s easy to lose faith in what you are doing. That’s why we’re keen to let you know about how your work fits into a wider context.

In 2022/23 Cornwall will be creating a Local Nature Recovery Strategy that will define our local priorities for nature, and define a blueprint for a Cornwall-wide Nature Recovery Network. It will identify where and how we can best protect, enhance, create and restore nature locally.

By taking action in your local community, you are taking vital grassroots action to build a piece of Cornwall’s Nature Recovery Network! All of our actions, however small, can add up big changes.

If you’d like to be involved in helping to shape Cornwall’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy, sign up to our newsletter. We already have a draft, which you may have already helped shape, as we were one of five national pilot areas to test making one. As soon as Government releases its statutory guidance, we will work with our communities to refine it ahead of its adoption.

See below for a helpful glossary:

• Climate Emergency: The serious and urgent problems that are being caused by changes in the world’s weather. This in particular relates to the world getting warmer as a result of human activity.
• Ecological Emergency: The ecological emergency describes the decline in nature, driven by global warming and human activity.
• Biodiversity: The term ‘biodiversity’ describes the variety of life on earth. A simple way to remember it is to think of it as the diversity of the biology on earth.
• Genetic: All living things have genes, that determine their outward characteristics. Watch this video for more information.
• Habitat: The natural home or environment of an animal, plant or other organism.
• Biome: A large naturally occurring community of plants, animals or other organisms occupying a major habitat.
• Species: A group of organisms that can reproduce naturally with one another and create fertile offspring.
• Keystone Species: A species that has a disproportionate large effect on its natural environment.
• Ecosystem: An ecosystem consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact.
• Ecosystem Service: The ‘services’ that nature provides us are known as ‘ecosystem services’. Check out this video for more information.
• Organism: An individual animal, plant, or a single-celled life form.
• Regenerative farming: A system of farming that focuses on biodiversity alongside food production.
• Agroforestry: a land use management system in which trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland.