Government’s long list of unfulfilled green promises leaves nature at risk
The UK risks major embarrassment on the world stage as the most important global meeting on biodiversity in decades – the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity – starts in Montreal, Canada next week.
COP15 comes at a time when nature is in steep decline across the Earth and the UK is officially one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Yet the Government’s decision to press on with The Retained EU Law Bill threatens over a thousand laws that protect the environment, including those that protect wild places and wildlife, and ensure minimum standards for water quality and pollution.
To make matters worse, the Government has “a pattern of missing legislative deadlines” – according to the Office for Environmental Protection – which undermine the UK’s ability to restore nature. Promised but missing policies include:
- Environment Act targets: overdue and key to nature’s recovery. With just seven years left to deliver them time is running out to reverse nature declines and clean up rivers
- Long promised Environmental Principles to help interpretation of environmental laws and prevent damage to nature: still missing
- 30x30 target: to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, but currently only at 3.22% with no clear plan of how to reach 30% in the next seven years
- Landscapes Review: implementation of protections for National Parks & AONBs – overdue
- Nature Recovery Green Paper: new protections for sites & species still not published
- Highly Protected Marine Areas: designations have yet to be announced
- New farm schemes in England to reward farmers for benefits to society: uncertainty as promised elements of the schemes disappear and ambition diminishes
- Local Nature Recovery Strategies: new system to plan nature’s recovery but stalled
- National Action Plan on Sustainable Use of Pesticides: absent since Spring 2022
- River Basin Management Plans: overdue despite appalling state of England’s rivers
- Ban on horticultural peat use: yet to introduce legislation to enact the ban
- Deposit Return Scheme to cut plastic pollution, especially in the marine environment: promised in 2018 but still not even close to being introduced
- Beaver reintroductions: still awaiting plans for allowing this species to roam wild
- Bycatch mitigation initiative to protect rare sea life: promised but stalled
All these stalled policies will prevent the UK from attaining the key principle of COP15 talks – to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.
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Posted On: 30/11/2022