Young people are 'key' to future of Dales says national park chair

I write this on a glorious late-summer day as the sun streams down on the beauty of God’s Own, and all seems well in the world. In the 70th anniversary year of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority we can celebrate much that has been achieved by our predecessors and the work currently in progress with our partners and with our officers, volunteers and members. And it is a privilege to have been elected as chair of the authority, albeit somewhat daunting to be following in the footsteps of Neil Heseltine.

Yet we face a worsening climate and wildlife crisis; dramatic degradation and loss of flora and fauna; negative impacts from inequalities of transport, housing, education and access to communication; and continuing uncertainty about the direction and funding of the farming and tourism economies.

To address these and other challenges, we are actively preparing the new Local Plan, alongside the new National Park Management Plan, which is the most important document for the Yorkshire Dales National Park. This five-year work programme is produced and monitored by a partnership of local organisations that operate across the area. Consultations have been valuable in both processes.

In the wider context we are establishing and furthering our relationships with new ministers in a new government, our new local councils and mayoral offices, Defra (the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and other funding sources and with many project partners. No matter how focussed or potentially effective our objectives may be, further resources are needed to maximise impact.

We can be encouraged by the partnerships that are working so strongly across the Dales. Projects include nature recovery; supporting agricultural transition (especially the Farming in Protected Landscapes scheme and working to ensure continuity and deliverability of whatever comes next and through the Environmental Land Management Schemes); creating and supporting apprenticeships; enhancing public access and rights of way (including our work on the Coast to Coast Path); providing health and wellbeing (producing a Nature Prescription calendar to support healthcare professionals across North Yorkshire in association with the RSPB); and helping schoolchildren connect with nature (including through the Generation Green initiative).

Our collaborations with Friends of the Dales and with Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust in particular give true added value towards our shared ambitions, whether through joint working or sometimes simply collaborative thinking. Also, the impact of DalesBus cannot be underestimated, enhancing the lives of residents as well as reducing carbon emissions and travel costs for visitors.

So there is much to celebrate in what is being achieved, and this can be built upon as we go forward with the new Yorkshire Dales Management Plan for the next few years. Yet just looking to ‘the next few years’ is not enough.

Addressing significant nature recovery and carbon reduction, developing and embedding new approaches to farming and land management, moving towards regenerative tourism and leisure, these all need strategies that have a vision way beyond just a few years. We need to be more creative and have a longer-term perspective.

The challenges we face now have not just occurred as a surprise in the past few years (even if some deniers may hold that view), but have crept up on us over decades, if not over the past couple of centuries of industrialisation and its consequences. So our planning likewise needs to set a bigger period and a bigger ambition. And if we want to have a different relationship with the planet and with people, then we need to think differently and do things differently too.

To truly provide for a sustainable and regenerative future, defining our aspirations and how to achieve them, we must engage young people, the true stakeholders in their futures. Students, apprentices, young adults living or working in the Dales, all have perspectives to be considered. Likewise, upcoming cohorts of young ecologists, environmentalists, health practitioners, planners and community activists can offer new insights and energy. They can bring new ways of thinking, new ways of working, and we need to be open to enabling that to happen.

If the future is to be different for the next generation, then whilst we can have some impact through our own actions now, the biggest investment we can make is to ensure that young people are themselves engaged, empowered and encouraged to create, to own and to bring about those long-term transformative changes ready for their own successors.

Derek Twine was elected chair of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority in June. Mr Twine, who lives in Burley-in-Wharfedale is an Honorary Lay Canon for the Leeds Anglican Diocese, and a former chief executive of the Scout Association.

This feature is reproduced from Friends of the Dales membership magazine. Visit: www.friendsofthedales.org.uk