A coalition of more than 78 UK-based environmental organisations has claimed that the UK government lacks progress on the country’s 30×30 nature-protection pledge and called for more robust action.
The Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL) contended in a report that there are three priorities for UK government action in 2023-24, which are to develop the framework by which the targets should be implemented, to achieve protection of 30% of land area and 30% of sea area by 2030, in addition to creating an assessment process to evaluate progress, and to provide nature agency Natural England with sufficient resources to conduct reporting.
The membership organisation includes a range of NGOs including WWF, Greenpeace UK, Rewilding Britain, and the Marine Conservation Society.
As part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreed at COP15, countries agreed to protect 30% of land and marine areas for nature by 2030, known as “30×30”. A global fund was recently set up with contributions from the UK to help 136 countries deliver on the 23 targets outlined in the GBF.
WCL did a stock take on how the UK government is performing against the target for which it advocated. In the report, the organisation called for “effective, robust, and clear” criteria on what should count towards the target.
“The government should urgently consult on and publish robust criteria for 30×30 and an assessment process to evaluate and report on its progress towards 30×30. The government should provide Natural England with sufficient resources to conduct the assessment and reporting of 30×30 in England,” the report said.
Nature protection is a devolved responsibility in the UK, with Natural England the English nature agency overseen by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The government had previously laid out criteria in its Nature Recovery Green paper, but WCL argues that the criteria should be strengthened with a greater focus on habitat condition of the sites.
WCL itself outlined two criteria for sites to be included in the target, which are to ensure long-term protection, including from environmental damage, and making sure that areas are managed for nature, which would require monitoring and enforcement programmes on those sites.
WCL also called for the government to report on progress towards the 30×30 target, and to publish a new approach for condition assessments for Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), one of the major area-based nature protection designations in the UK.
Despite designating two more sites as SSSI’s in 2022, only 36.82% of the 4,200 sites in England are in good condition, according to the report. The report alludes to this as a major risk to the 30×30 target: that sites could be afforded a protective status but due to inadequate management plans, the condition of the sites themselves does little to benefit biodiversity.
Only 3% of SSSIs are in a “favourable condition”, but by strengthening nature protection in other area-based conservation measures, such as National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 20% of the UK’s land could contribute to the overall target.
At sea, 0.5% of marine areas are designated as “highly protected”, with the first three sites receiving the status in July. An additional 7.5% of marine areas are designated as protected, and the WCL report states that there is potential for 32% of marine area available for protection were management measures put in place.
By Tom Woolnough – tom@carbon-pulse.com
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