AQW 16433/17-22

Ms Kellie Armstrong
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 16/03/2021
Answered On Date: 25/08/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs how he plans to create employment in the area of nature-based solutions.

Answer:

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are solutions that work with and enhance nature to help address societal challenges such as climate change, while simultaneously providing multi-functional benefits to biodiversity and people.

My Department supports a wide range of such solutions and other measures to help contribute to a reduction in emissions, climate change mitigation and adaptation, improved water cycling, reversals to biodiversity decline and improved health and wellbeing. This support enables and maintains the employment of those who deliver these measures.

For example to assist with climate change mitigation and adaptation my Department supports measures to increase carbon sequestration in ecosystems and to deliver benefits to biodiversity such as reforestation and peatland restoration. We also improve the adaptive capacity of biodiversity to future climate change through for example restoring hedgerows that could potentially facilitate species movement within the landscape. NbS measures we take to assist with the creation of accessible green spaces also benefit health and well-being.

My Department is committed to the continued protection and improvement of the environment and I have championed a Green Growth Approach to transform and grow the Northern Ireland economy whilst protecting our natural assets and reducing our carbon emissions. I have initiated a number of specific measures to help address these matters for example: in March 2020 I announced the Forests for the Future Programme which will involve the planting of 18 million trees over the next 10 years; and I have continued to support financial measures to conserve and restore our natural habitats such as those delivered through the Departments Environment Fund and our Agri-Environment Schemes. Many of the associated outcomes are delivered by individuals and organisations within the environment sector.

This range of programmes alongside the work of other Executive colleagues will together help contribute to the delivery of NbS and other measures that will help us to achieve environmental and climate change targets which supporting employment.