About 16,000 new jobs could be created in restoring nature and planting trees in areas where unemployment is set to soar when the government’s furlough schemes end, according to the report from the Green Alliance thinktank.
The future parks accelerator, a project to promote green spaces, has calculated that investing £5.5bn in greening urban areas in the UK would produce £20bn in economic benefits.
The report’s authors examined the fifth of parliamentary constituencies in Britain with the most severe employment challenges.
The authors also mapped the potential for some widely available “nature-based solutions” to the climate crisis, including tree-planting, restoration of degraded landscapes and the restoration of marine ecosystems, across Britain.
Many of the coastal constituencies where seagrass could be grown are areas of high job need, with a higher proportion of people on furlough and a lower-than-average increase in employment expected when the pandemic eases.
Improving such areas in neighbourhoods currently without green space could create 10,800 jobs in areas with the worst post-pandemic jobs prospects, the report says.
Patrick Begg, the director of natural resources at the National Trust, said the pandemic and lockdowns had revealed the benefits of access to green space.
The potential jobs identified in the report range from entry-level roles in “shovel-ready” projects to graduate positions, for instance in research and development into nature restoration projects.