This social science commissioned report explores the potential for a social accountability approach to accelerate nature recovery in the UK context. It explores how far elements of this already exist within nature recovery approaches and what can be built on.
Social accountability refers to ways that the public and civil society organisations can hold authorities and responsible parties accountable for their actions through social participation, engagement and mobilisation. Under the right conditions these approaches can: i) improve public service delivery ii) engage the public in collective problem-solving and iii) improve relationships between the public and service providers or decision-makers at the local level. The research draws on extensive study of social accountability in the field of international development to apply a conceptual framework. The methodology used in this research primarily involved interviews and workshop discussions with Natural England staff and colleagues involved in nature recovery projects with a particular focus on: Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies, and Landscape Recovery Schemes.
Our study did not find existing examples of social accountability for place-based nature recovery to learn from directly, in the organisations where interviews took place. However, we found many of the relevant building blocks or conditions for social accountability in place or being developed across the initiatives reviewed, offering potential.
We found that significant commitments have been made and actions taken by government and other responsible parties towards nature recovery, signalling positive state action. There is notable public energy and action on nature issues at both local and national scale, demonstrating a level of citizen action. We saw evidence of increases in the kind and volume of information needed for those policy commitments to be tracked and monitored. In relation to citizen-state interfaces, there are opportunities to build on existing consultations between authorities and the public on these issues to create longer term engagements that enable the public to play a role in accountability processes. We also saw that public energy is being mobilised to support these kinds of engagements, including by mediating organisations such as environmentally focused NGOs, which indicates the presence of civic mobilisation.
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