Aviva helps restore rare native British rainforests

Aviva helps restore rare native British rainforests - Aviva

Aviva will help restore Britain’s lost rainforests, as part of a £100 million programme of nature-based projects in UK and Ireland to help address climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
Aviva will partner with The Wildlife Trusts to re-establish the UK’s rare and biodiverse temperate rainforest
The project is expected to remove approximately 800,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere - equivalent to the emissions created by one person taking over 740,000 transatlantic flights*

Photo credit: Polypody fern - Coed Crafnant - Ben Porter (November 2022)

Today Aviva announces a £38 million donation to restore Britain’s lost temperate rainforests in the UK. Aviva believes this is one of the most effective nature based interventions to help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The restored rainforests will also provide a positive contribution to the nature and biodiversity crisis, as well as supporting flood protection and resilience. The donation is part of Aviva’s Net Zero 2040 ambition.

Native to the British Isles, temperate rainforest is an incredibly rare and biodiverse habitat that once stretched from Cornwall to the west of Scotland. Now it covers less than 1% of the UK, in areas such as western Scotland, the Lake District and western Wales, and is thought to be more rare than tropical rainforests.

The project sees Aviva partner with The Wildlife Trusts, a federation of 46 local Wildlife Trusts that care for more than 2,300 nature reserves in the UK with local communities at their heart. It aims to re-establish temperate rainforest by planting a combination of native tree species including oak, birch, holly, rowan, alder and willow trees across an area equivalent to around 2,600 football pitches or around 5,200 acres.

The donation builds on Aviva Ireland’s recent €5m donation to the Nature Trust, to help accelerate its native tree afforestation project. It also supports Aviva’s ambition to make the UK the most climate-ready economy following the recent launch of Aviva’s climate-ready campaign.