Reconciling human activities with nature is never going to be easy, but a new group is using everything it’s got to try and protect a vital part of the UK. Working this top-grade farmland produces one third of England’s vegetables – including key crops like potatoes, celery and carrots, and half of all UK-grown lettuce – adding over £3 billion each year to the UK economy. Of the half a million people living in the Cambridgeshire Fens, 80,000 of them are employed in some aspect of food production. But this fertile landscape faces environmental challenges such as the loss of peat and associated release of CO2. The Cambridge Centre for Landscape Regeneration is working with local farmers, organisations involved in managing water drainage and storage across the fens, communities and conservation groups in order to find environmental solutions that regenerate landscapes for the benefit of climate, nature, the economy and society.
Added10 November 2022; updated 17 April 2023.