Toothless Government policy and targets insufficient to stem the tide of UK biodiversity loss

Toothless Government policy and targets insufficient to stem the tide of UK biodiversity loss - Environmental Audit Committee

Image: Damselflies by Michael Swailes, submitted on his behalf by Eileen Swailes

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) urges the Government to conserve and restore UK biodiversity and ecosystems amid grave concern that of the G7 countries, the UK has the lowest level of biodiversity remaining.

The EAC found that existing Government policy and targets were inadequate to address plummeting biodiversity loss. This is made worse by nature policy not being joined up across Government, nor is nature protection consistently factored into policy making.

The Government is not on track to improve the environment within a generation, and due to a lack of clear statutory targets, its 25 Year Environment Plan does not provide sufficient direction to change this. Further, the recent biodiversity net gain policy, while welcome, in its current form with the potential for a lack of compliance monitoring and non-implementation of mitigation measures, does not go far enough.

The sheer variety of data systems and inadequate monitoring, coupled with a lack of ecologist expertise in the heart of Government and in local authorities, presents challenges to introduce effective mechanisms to halt biodiversity decline. Funding cuts to bodies exacerbate this, and the EAC urges the Government to consider increasing Natural England’s multi-year funding to reflect the scale of their tasks to protect nature.

The Government’s pledge to protect 30% of the UK’s land and seas by 2030 is welcome, but UK protected areas are currently poorly managed. For seas, a timetable should set out management plans and monitoring for all Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), with destructive bottom trawling banned or restricted and effective monitoring introduced to establish if habitats are recovering.

Irrespective of being classified as ‘protected areas’, the Government should protect existing ecosystems such as ancient woodland and peatlands given their benefits as nature-based solutions for climate change. Much more needs to be done to lock in carbon in these areas, and the EAC calls for the proposed ban on the sale of peat products to be brought forward to as soon as possible before 2023.

The EAC found that all too often, governments spend more on practices that exploit the natural environment than conserving it. The Government must urgently establish a natural capital baseline to measure progress against environmental goals.

Read the Report