Responses to Government Watchdog's report on environmental improvement progress -

RSPB's reaction to Government Watchdog's report on environmental improvement progress

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) has shown that progress remains far too slow on environmental improvement. This puts economic growth, net zero, and public health at risk.
Beccy Speight, RSPB chief executive, said: “Nature in England is still in freefall, and the UK Government is off track on its own legal targets. Action is what matters now: real change on the ground before it’s too late. We back the OEP’s call for Government to drive greater uptake of high‑quality, nature‑friendly farming schemes and to properly fund, improve, and expand the protected sites network on land and at sea.”

The Wildlife Trust’s reaction - New report: abysmal progress to restore nature

Joan Edwards OBE, director of policy and public affairs at The Wildlife Trusts, says: “Despite its promise to halt and reverse the severe decline of nature in this country, the Government is utterly failing to restore wildlife and wild places at the pace required by its own targets. Today’s (Tuesday 13 January) report from the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) is damming evidence that without a significant step change in action and ambition, this Government will not fulfil its legally binding domestic and international commitments to recover nature. Report after report shows that nature declines are acute and that tackling the nature and climate crisis is of great importance to our food security, wellbeing and economy. Yet, as the OEP has pointed out in successive reports, progress against the EIP has continued to fall short, failing to kick-start much-needed action on the ground to protect and restore wildlife, habitats and greenspaces. We need a coordinated effort across land use, food production, marine management and the circular economy to tackle the scale of this crisis. However, dangerous rhetoric continues to emerge from Number 10, falsely blaming nature for a beleaguered economy and hampering efforts to protect what remains of our natural world.”

As The Wildlife Trusts set out just last month, (Underwhelmed: The Wildlife Trusts’ response to the Environmental Improvement Plan), the revised Environmental Improvement plan needs urgent strengthening, and then immediate implementation, if it is to succeed alongside the long-awaited and much anticipated strategies for land use, food, marine and the circular economy.

Responding the Office for Environmental Protection report on the government’s progress towards targets set out in its Environmental Improvement Plan, Chris Thorne, senior oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said

“The government is wildly off track when it comes to progress on nature protection. Even on its own legally binding targets to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, the government is failing - and time is running out. Progress on ocean protection is particularly slow. On paper, the UK has a large network of marine protected areas and powers under the Fisheries Act to enforce proper protection. In reality, many sites remain open to destructive industrial fishing, leaving important habitats and the incredible array of wildlife they support vulnerable. Protection in name only is no protection at all. A healthy natural environment is essential for economic growth, underpinning food security, flood protection, climate resilience and long-term prosperity. When the government has acted with ambition, such as protecting sand eels, it has proven that rapid, science-led action is possible. That same urgency is now needed across all UK land and sea, or the government risks breaking the law and leaving a damaging legacy for all future generations.”