Our July Project of the Month is NHS Lothian’s new Biodiversity Action Plan – a bold step towards creating healthier places for people and nature. As one of Scotland’s largest health boards, NHS Lothian is leading the way with a 10-year roadmap to restore, protect, and enhance biodiversity across its vast estate.

Why biodiversity matters for health

The NHS estate isn’t just a network of hospitals, clinics, and offices – it includes hundreds of hectares of green and open space. These landscapes play a vital role in supporting staff, patients, and the wider community, offering opportunities for connection with nature, recovery, and wellbeing.

The new Biodiversity Action Plan, which runs to 2035, recognises this potential and sets out achievable actions to meet the twin challenges of biodiversity loss and the climate emergency. It’s about making the most of NHS land to create more habitats, boost ecosystem health, and embed sustainability into everyday decisions – from grass-cutting regimes to building developments.

From strategy to action

Developed in alignment with the NHS Scotland Climate Emergency and Sustainability Strategy, the Biodiversity Action Plan serves multiple purposes:

• Meeting NHS Lothian’s legal duties as a public body
• Guiding estates teams on greener land management
• Supporting community and staff engagement in green health
• Strengthening partnerships and environmental leadership

Importantly, it integrates with the board’s Environmental Management System, providing a consistent framework for delivery and accountability. The plan is already influencing how NHS Lothian plans and manages its sites – embedding biodiversity into capital projects, informing how greenspace is maintained, and helping colleagues make decisions that prioritise nature alongside patient care.

Empowering staff and community

A key feature of the Biodiversity Action Plan is its emphasis on collaboration and co-delivery. NHS Lothian is working closely with NHS Lothian Charity’s Green Health programme, which supports nature-based initiatives across the region’s health settings. This includes community gardens, therapeutic landscapes, and outdoor wellbeing activities – all of which tie into wider biodiversity goals.

The plan also encourages staff and local people to get involved. From tree planting and pollinator projects to habitat surveys and education sessions, there are many ways to take part in creating a greener NHS.

A blueprint for other health boards

It’s the first such plan finalised by a Health Board in Scotland and also relevant to other public bodies that have greenspace as part of their estate. With biodiversity in crisis, the NHS Lothian Biodiversity Action Plan shows how the healthcare sector can contribute meaningfully to environmental restoration while creating healthier environments for patients and communities. Explore the full Biodiversity Action Plan in the sustainability section of the NHS Lothian website.

Building on strong foundations

The Biodiversity Action Plan builds on earlier work led by greenspace scotland, in collaboration with NHS Lothian, NHS Lothian Charity, and a wide range of partners and stakeholders. Together, we developed the Greenspace and Health Strategic Framework for Edinburgh and Lothians, published in June 2019. This shared framework continues to inform efforts to embed nature in health and care across the region.