Government has mountain to climb to deliver protected land and sea commitment for England

The Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee’s report warns that with seven years remaining, the extent of land protected for nature in England that can count towards ‘30 by 30’ sits at just 6.5 per cent, requiring an area almost one and a half times the size of Wales to hit the target.

The Committee’s report; “An extraordinary challenge: restoring 30 per cent of our land and sea by 2030”, also found that protected sites in England, which can include land that has multiple uses, are often in a poor condition and in many cases inadequately monitored.

Whilst welcoming the Government’s ambitions to meet the stretching target by 2030, the Committee’s report concludes that it is not clear how the Government plans to achieve ’30 by 30’, and that a major step change in its approach to protected areas is required to deliver the commitment it made.

The Committee is calling on the Government to:  

• Create more protected areas, retaining all existing designations, whilst ensuring existing protected areas are better managed, to achieve favourable condition.
• Confirm that areas should be protected for nature for more than 30 years to meet the ‘30 by 30’ criteria.
• Put in place a management plan, with effective monitoring for protected areas on land based on an up-to date condition assessment which must be updated every six years.
• Expand the current marine monitoring programme, both inshore and offshore, to develop a robust baseline of data that should be made publicly available.
• Raise public awareness of local protected sites and communicate how they can play their role in protecting them, including unleashing and harnessing citizen science for data collection.
• Use the next legislative opportunity to place a statutory duty on Natural England to monitor Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) and ensure the resulting data is published.

Baroness Parminter, Chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee said:

“Our report makes it clear that the Government faces a huge challenge to meet the ‘30 by 30’ target it signed up to last year.

The Government must designate more areas to be protected, meeting international criteria, and manage and monitor all protected areas better to achieve favourable condition.

Time is running out to halt species decline and recover nature for the public good. We are therefore calling on the Government to act urgently as it has just seven crucial years to fulfil its nature crisis pledge.”