These priorities are designed as a shared framework which connects the long term goals of the Regional Environmental Enhancement Strategy with the current policy agenda.

Each advocacy priority has related work either via YHREF or partner organisations. Information about these projects can be accessed via the links to the left.

Each page provides details of current activities and outlines opportunities where you can create links into your own work, contribute new data or simply contact the lead organisation or YHREF representative.

Advocacy Priorities for 2009/10

1. Reducing the Region's Footprint

If the whole world used resources at the rate we do in Yorkshire & Humber we'd need 3 planets. Or to put it another way, Yorkshire & Humber uses up its annual share of the world's resources by April each year. Wales has made a commitment to achieve a One Planet economy by 2050. Shouldn't Yorkshire & Humber follow suit?

2. Enhancing the Region's Environmental Capacity

We make many demands on our environment, so if we invested in increasing the capacity of the environment to support society we'd have a better environment and be more sustainable. This means things like improving habitat connectivity, reducing our reliance on hard flood defences, being more resilient to extreme weather, growing more trees, improving water and air quality.

3. Enhancing Places

Large-scale, strategic action for the environment needs to be much better informed by what communities aspire to for the places they live and work in, and by how the characteristics of different places influence the environmental actions that are relevant. Different approaches apply to sensitive environments like York or Nidderdale, or the eroding Holderness Coast; to places needing new injections of environmental quality, like the Dearne Valley; or to places under a lot of development pressure, for example to the east of Doncaster. What kind of environmental enhancements will be effective in those different places?