The government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund has opened for applications. The fund of up to £40 million will create jobs in nature recovery and conservation, according to Defra.

Grants from £50k to £5 million are now available to help the nation build back greener from the coronavirus pandemic, the government announced today [14 September].

The £40 million Green Recovery Challenge Fund, part of the government’s wider green economic recovery, jobs and skills package, brings forward funding for environmental charities and their partners to start work on projects across England to restore nature and tackle climate change.

The fund will help create up to 3,000 jobs and safeguard up to 2,000 others in areas such as protecting species, finding nature-based solutions to tackling climate change, conservation rangers and connecting people with nature. Up to 100% of project costs will be available.

Read more here.

However, this week the government has been roundly criticised for blocking plans to ban the burning of UK peatlands.

This editorial from the Observer provides a rather dim view of the Boris Johnson’s professed environmentalism.

A consultation conducted as part of an inquiry the all-party parliamentary group on a green new deal has found that the British public backs an ambitious transformation of the UK into a greener, fairer more equal society as it emerges from the Covid-19 crisis.

The cross-party consultation found support for ambitious plans on equality, work and environment.

Read more here.