Nature Restoration and Collaboration: Integration and Participation in England’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy Framework

Abstract Ecological restoration has become an overarching aim of biodiversity law internationally, prompting the introduction of legal frameworks aimed specifically at nature restoration. This article presents an analysis of England’s new statutory regime, the Local Nature Recovery Strategy framework, introduced through the Environment Act 2021, situated in local land use planning, and intended to support collaboration for nature restoration. The framework is analysed here in respect of two legal and governance issues for collaboration present in the English context: the integration of environmental concerns in and across legal frameworks; and the safeguarding of public participation. This study argues that, as it stands, the Local Nature Recovery Strategy framework is weakly integrated with national and local regimes relevant for nature recovery and has minimal safeguards for participation in the preparation of the strategies. These issues must be addressed because they impact the potential of the framework to be transformative of biodiversity governance.