In exactly a year’s time, a group of organisations will ask UNESCO to grant Biosphere status to a stretch of Sussex that has a unique combination of downland, city and sea.

When UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) makes its decision in 2014, it could put the area between the River Adur in the west to the River Ouse in the east on a par with places such as the Amazon rainforest and the Canary Islands.

The campaign is called “Here Here – For Our Biosphere’s Natural Community” and was launched by a collection of conservation groups and local government bodies that form Brighton & Hove and Lewes Downs Biosphere Project. If successful, they would form Britain’s eighth Biosphere Reserve, alongside North Devon and the North Norfolk Coast, and its first new Biosphere in 35 years.

The landscape and seascape of this section of Sussex makes the area’s ecology internationally valuable and Biosphere status would protect the fragile balance between people and nature. Uniquely in this country, the proposed Biosphere area would include Brighton and Hove city, and would also cover towns and villages including Steyning, Upper Beeding, Lewes, Shoreham, Newhaven, Peacehaven, East Saltdean, Ditchling, Hassocks and Hurstpierpoint.

Two internationally important nature conservation sites are also within the proposed boundaries: Castle Hill, near Woodingdean, which is an ancient chalk grassland rich in wild flowers, and the Lewes Downs, a traditionally managed ancient downland rich in orchids, including the largest British population of burnt-tip orchid, and home to the Adonis and Chalkhill blue butterflies and the scarce forester moth.

“We want to capture people’s imaginations with the wealth of interest all around us,” says Chris Todd, chair of the Biosphere Partnership. “From the Whitehawk Soldier Beetle to the Red-nose Piddock and the Bastard Toadflax, these are some of the colourful names of local wildlife here in our Biosphere. Their environment is our environment, so if we look after them, we help ourselves.”

Biosphere status would open the door for the area to receive grants and funding, and encourage eco-tourism and create jobs. It would also recognise work that has already been carried out this year in preparation for the bid, such as creating butterfly banks and wildflower meadows around the city, sheep-grazing in the city’s green spaces, putting down wildflower turf at Woodingdean crossroads, and propagating wild flowers at the nursery at Stanmer, while an orchard of traditional local fruit tree varieties is to be planted in Whitehawk this autumn.

“The bid to become a Biosphere is all about putting the spotlight on the unique combination of downland, city and sea on our doorstep,” says Councillor Pete West , from Brighton and Hove City Council, one of the leading members of the Biosphere Partnership. “It has already helped us to secure £100,000 to improve our chalk downland, and if our bid is successful, it could lever in additional funding.”

UNESCO created Biosphere reserves to promote a balanced relationship between people and nature through conservation, culturally and ecologically sustainable economic and social development, and knowledge.

“Biosphere” is defined as the zone of life around our planet, the areas we live and share with other living things. There are 580 in 144 countries, each comprising a core area, which is an internationally important nature conservation site where the natural environment is permanently protected. There is a buffer zone – the area around the core where nature is conserved while the land is sensitively used – and a transition area – an area of “co-operation” where people live and work.

In the Biosphere here in Sussex, the core area would include Castle Hill.

Its buffer zone takes in the chalk downland of the South Downs National Park that surrounds and reaches into the city of Brighton and Hove, the coast and sea including the cliffs east of Brighton Marina and inshore marine sites along the chalk ridge of South West Rocks near Hove. The transition area covers the urban Brighton and Hove, where plans to create more wildlife-rich housing estates, parks and open spaces, healthy local food production and eco-building practices would be put into practice.

Key members of the Biosphere Partnership are Brighton and Hove City Council and four district councils, conservation groups such as Sussex Wildlife Trust, Brighton and Hove Friends of the Earth, Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority, Natural England, the National Trust and the RSPB, and educational establishments including the University of Brighton and Dorothy Stringer School .

“It’s about increasing understanding about how our lives, whether rural or urban, are hugely dependent on the quality of the natural environment,” says Dr Tony Whitbread, from the Sussex Wildlife Trust. “Most of the area’s water supply comes from the chalk aquifer and its quality depends in part on how the Downs are farmed and the quality of the biodiversity on the Downs.

“The Downs provide food and the sea locally sourced fish - on the Downs and by Lewes we do have such incredible wildlife sites, staggeringly rich and diverse places. And these are just the pinnacle - the best of the best. Sometimes we do not realise what we have on our doorstep.”

Factfile

To find out more about the Biosphere Project and how to become a partner, visit www.brighton-hove.gov.uk and search Biosphere Project.