Imagine this - it's 2016, and Government scientists tell ministers that in four years' time the UK will face a crisis that will threaten public health, disrupt the economy, damage supply chains, increase pressure on public finances and fundamentally alter the way the country functions.
Would we have responded with a delivery plan?
Would we have launched consultations, encouraged voluntary participation and hoped investment would emerge over time?
Or would every department across Whitehall have been mobilised?
Would the Treasury have unlocked significant investment?
Would infrastructure planning have accelerated?
Would business have been asked, not whether it wanted to participate, but what role it would play?
When COVID-19 arrived in 2020, we discovered what government looks like when it treats something as an existential national emergency.
Whilst not perfect, it was urgent action - departments aligned, funding moved quickly to enable vaccines, infrastructure, urgent safety measures. Regulation adapted and industry responded.
Again, whilst not perfect, collective action became the expectation. Now imagine if we had 4 years; 10 years to plan ahead.
Climate change and biodiversity loss are different challenges. They unfold over decades rather than weeks, and they require different solutions. But they are no less fundamental to our national resilience.
Because nature is not a peripheral environmental issue, It underpins food production, regulates our water supplies, protects communities from flooding, cools our towns and cities, stores carbon, supports public health.
It provides the ecological systems upon which every sector of our economy ultimately depends. Yet despite this, our response remains largely framed as environmental policy.
The publication of the Government's 30by30 Delivery Plan is an important step forward. It provides greater clarity on how England intends to contribute to protecting and restoring nature, and it rightly recognises that land managers, environmental organisations and local partnerships all have vital roles to play.
But reading the plan raises a more fundamental question: Are we organising ourselves to deliver this at the scale and pace the challenge demands?
Nature recovery is still too often viewed through the lens of DEFRA alone, but biodiversity loss is not simply DEFRA's problem.
It is a Treasury issue because degraded ecosystems create long-term economic liabilities.
It is an infrastructure issue because functioning natural systems are essential for water, transport and energy resilience.
It is a planning issue because the places we build today determine ecological resilience for generations.
It is a food security issue.
A public health issue.
A business continuity issue.
Ultimately, it is a national security and resilience issue, and national resilience requires national coordination.
The uncomfortable truth is that there remains no single institution accountable for ensuring that nature recovery is financed at the scale required. Government has finite resources, Environmental charities cannot close the gap alone and farmers and land managers cannot carry the financial burden in isolation. In fact all of these are already on their fiscal knees due to underfunding and lack of resources.
Businesses increasingly recognise that healthy ecosystems underpin resilient supply chains, reliable water resources and long-term prosperity, but many are still waiting for stronger market signals and greater certainty before investing at scale.
The result is a system that depends heavily on voluntary action.
There will always be pioneers and organisations prepared to lead because they understand both the environmental and commercial case for investing in nature. But pioneers alone do not rebuild nations.
History shows that transformative change happens when governments create clear long-term direction, markets respond with confidence and investment flows towards nationally agreed priorities.
That is the opportunity before us.
Rather than treating nature recovery as a collection of disconnected projects, we should be planning it as we would any other form of critical infrastructure: strategically, spatially and over decades.
We need a national blueprint that identifies where investment delivers the greatest ecological, economic and societal return and mechanisms that enable public and private capital to work together. We need businesses to move beyond viewing nature as a corporate responsibility issue and begin recognising it as an investment in the systems upon which their future depends.
At the Rebuilding Nature Alliance, this is the future we have been working towards.
The Strategic Nature Network provides a long-term spatial vision for rebuilding connected ecosystems across the country. And Nature Investment Zones create investable places where restoration can happen at landscape scale.
Together they begin to answer the question that every major investor asks first: where should we invest, and what difference will it make?
Government cannot, and should not, deliver this alone. Rebuilding nature is one of the defining infrastructure challenges of our generation.
The science has given us the warning, for decades and the impacts are no longer hypothetical.
The only remaining question is whether we choose to respond with the urgency we reserve for other national emergencies. Because history is unlikely to judge us by the strategies we published, it will judge us by the resilience we built.
Support our case to Treasury to position the delivery of the Strategic Nature Network as a Critical National Infrastructure Programme by joining the Rebuilding Nature Alliance.
Join us on 17th September 2026 at 1.30pm to hear and input into the case.
