support
The UK Food Security Report 2021 clearly states: “The greatest medium- and long-term risks to UK domestic production come from climate change and other environmental stresses, such as soil degradation, water quality and biodiversity”.
The estimated cost to UK farmers of soil degradation alone is £1.2bn a year. To ensure a sustainable future for UK food and farming, we need more nature.
Delaying plans to reward farmers for restoring nature would be worth the money, and providing billions of taxpayer dollars to England’s richest farms would hinder nature’s restoration and hinder Britain’s progress towards net zero.
The UK government must urgently announce details of a long-awaited nature restoration plan for local farmers and reverse massive landscape and river restoration funding cuts.
ambition
The legally binding target will ensure that nature is in better shape by 2042. The government’s current natural targets will mean a natural reduction in England in 20 years’ time.
This is simply unacceptable as wildlife populations are at their lowest ever and once a common species on the verge of extinction.
We need a goal to keep nature in a better shape for future generations. This will hold politicians accountable for their commitment to protecting nature.
The government should raise ambitions and set targets to increase wildlife populations by at least 20 percent from current levels.
hope
We can’t let the UK government pretend it has the best of both worlds – it can undermine environmental law while also positioning itself as a climate and nature leader on the world stage.
When the UK takes part in negotiations at COP15 in December on global action on biodiversity loss, its push for an “ambitious” outcome will be undermined by its decision to prioritise nature at home.
Without strong environmental regulation, we won’t be able to protect 30% of our land and seas for nature by 2030, which is exactly what we’ve been lobbying other countries to achieve through the Leaders’ Nature Pledge commitment.
Domestic commitments, such as the Environmental Act’s legally binding species abundance targets and the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto promise to implement the most ambitious environmental plan of any country on Earth, have no hope of being fulfilled.
wilderness
Even with protections like habitat regulations, Only 3% of the land can be reliably considered to be protected by nature. Current proposals in the retained EU law bill would weaken the existing system or create change for the sake of change. This can confuse developers, industry and conservation groups.
As our landscapes are increasingly ravaged by climate change – as seen this summer with wildfires, droughts and floods. We cannot fail to do everything we can to protect our wild spaces.
As the review commissioned by the Treasury noted, our economy depends on the resources nature provides – for jobs, materials, health, well-being and more, Economics of Biodiversity Professor Pasha Dasgupta.
For the benefit of future generations, we must reject deregulation and instead strengthen nature conservation.
The Wildlife Foundation understands that people are concerned about these issues and their impact on nature, climate and food security. To help #DefendNature visit our event page.
this author
Joan Edwards is Director of Policy and Public Affairs Wildlife Trust.
