Nature-Based Integration Policy and Practice Toolkit

mid the growing challenges faced by migrant
communities and their integration in the UK, our project
‘Nature-Based Integration: Connecting Communities
with/in Nature’ 1
funded by the Nuffield Foundation
and the British Axademy highlights key interventions
that enable various stakeholders to harness the
transformative, yet often untapped, power of nature
to aid integration. This project explored how nature
contributes to the integration of migrants and established
local communities, utilizing a variety of participatory
and reflective methods. These included analyzing
participatory mapping surveys, conducting community
aesthetic workshops, making reflexive observations of
natural spaces, and surveying nature-based integration
efforts across the UK. We provide further illustrations of
these methods in this document.
Our research conducted with diverse stakeholders
and community members across the UK demonstrate
how nature engagement is important to integration by
impacting fundamental domains as referenced in the
Home Office’s 2019 Indicators of Integration2
such as
social connections, health and wellbeing, stability and
culture. Nature engagement influences integration in
this way due to its relationship with processes including
natural environment-specific socialising, aesthetics
and sensemaking, and the establishment of authentic
connections with nature which uniquely influence
belonging and identity.
The interventions outlined below describe specific ways
that these important nature-based interventions can
be operationalised. Most of the interventions relate to a
broad range of actors including regional policymakers,
funders and community leaders. Some interventions,
such as Enhancing Access to Natural Spaces, may
pertain more to regional or local policymakers. However, others, such as Cultural Practices Informing NatureBased Integration - should be of interest to community
organisations or community leaders. The full range of
recommended interventions are organised as such:
Integration through Nature-Based Activities;
Cultural Practices Informing Nature-Based
Integration;
Enhancing Access to Natural Spaces;
Safety and Inclusivity;
Cultural Congruence and Engagement; and
Community-Centred Design;
This document also includes selected examples of
initiatives recorded in our nature-based integration
initiative survey (carried out in 2022 and 2023) that
illustrate and provide useful context of some of the
interventions above in action.
Underpinning the interventions outlined in this toolkit
should be an agile user-centred approach3
that prioritises
consultation with and co-development of strategies
alongside communities. Some of the interventions
included in this toolkit and described in the document’s
case studies address this challenge of consultation and
co-development directly.
The range of interventions in this toolkit represents an
ideal grouping of nature-based integration strategies
as identified in our study. We hope that a wide range of
actors across different sectors can cooperate to apply
as many of these interventions as possible as part of a
holistic, place-based model that maximises the potential
of nature-based integration in as many communities as
possible.