Schedule 2: Improving the natural environment: Northern Ireland Part 1: Environmental Improvement Plans Environmental Improvement Plans
Paragraph 1 introduces a duty on the Department to prepare a plan for significantly improving the natural environment. It states: what the plan must do; what the plan must contain; who must be consulted; and enables the plan to relate to a specified time period or to be of no specified duration.
	Sub-paragraphs (1) and (2) introduce the requirement to have an environmental improvement plan for significantly improving the natural environment.
	Sub-paragraph (3) enables the environmental improvement plan to relate to a specified time period or to be of no specified duration.
	Sub-paragraph (4) specifies that the environmental improvement plan must set out the steps that the Department and other Northern Ireland departments intend to take to improve the natural environment.
	Sub-paragraph (5) allows the environmental improvement plan to include measures that any Northern Ireland department intends to take in order to improve people’s enjoyment of the natural environment. Enjoyment may be increased through education and public awareness of the natural environment both past and present, natural systems and processes through which organisms interact with their surroundings.
	Sub-paragraph (6) requires the Department to consult with such other Northern Ireland departments as it considers appropriate as part of the process of preparing an environmental improvement plan. These may be departments who are taking steps to improve the environment or those whose policy remits might be impinged upon by those taking steps.
	Sub-paragraph (7) requires the Department to publish an environmental improvement plan and lay this in the Northern Ireland Assembly within 12 months of paragraph 1 coming into force.
	Sub-paragraph (8) states that all references in Schedule 2 to the current environmental improvement plan are to the environmental improvement plan that is in effect at the time.