Environment and Climate Change Committee Report: An Extraordinary Challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our Land and Sea by 2030

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Parminter and her committee on producing this report. It is both an impressive route map for government and a salutary report, as it shows the scale of the work needed. As the report states, one of the keys to achieving the target, besides firm and unwavering government support, is public buy-in. This is what I want to talk about today.

The recommendation in paragraph 80 is that

“the Government expand the role of robust citizen science”.

The report underlines the importance of citizen science in helping assess the achievement of targets. It is undoubtedly also a way of capturing the hearts and minds of participants.

I still remember well, aged 18, doing my A-levels, recording everything I could find in my square metre above Pickering—I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is here today. As a southern, lowlands girl, I really had not seen sundews before, and it was thrilling.

There are many citizen science projects, whether by genus or by ecosystem, and I should just run through a few that are happening at the moment. I am sure that noble Lords have taken part in some of these. There is the Big Garden Bird Watch from the RSPB. As its CEO, Beccy Speight, says,

“With birds now facing so many challenges due to the nature and climate emergencies, every count matters. By taking part, individuals are not only practicing their own mindfulness, but they are also part of something much bigger”.


I think that captures what I want to say here very well. Then there is the Big Butterfly Count, which usually takes place during July and August. For amphibians and reptiles, there is advice on frog spawn, for example; or, in Scotland, on helping to restore the natterjack toad’s habitats. The UK Tree Health Citizen Science Network has been formed from a group of individuals and organisations working across a range of projects and activities that engage people with trees.

Particularly topical is River Watch, which the Canals and Rivers Trust is running in order to involve the public in checking rivers for sewage and other pollution. I am sure the noble Lords do not need me to remind them that, when the UK was in the EU, we were subject to the water framework directive, which meant that the Government had the responsibility to carry out detailed pollution analysis of waterways and report every year. There has not been a survey done along the lines of the water framework directive since 2019, so I ask the Minister what the Government will use as a replacement for the water framework directive survey.

Then there is Buglife, a very energetic campaigning organisation that involves people in monitoring both the good, such as grasshoppers, and the bad, such as the invasive flatworm, which usually comes in with imported pot plants. Buglife’s website headlines a quotation that I think is worth repeating here, from Sir David Attenborough:

“If we and the rest of the back-boned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if the invertebrates were to disappear, the world’s ecosystems would collapse.”


I congratulate Buglife on outlining why insects are so important, and it has been doing it for a long time—for example, on bees, which have just been in the headlines.

Then there are the wildlife trusts. They are particularly important, with over 900,000 members and 39,000 volunteers, who work together to make their local area wilder and make nature a bigger part of everyday life. Local nature reserves are very accessible to people, and something that people can feel is theirs. We need to encourage this feeling that nature is both our responsibility and ours to enjoy. That will be critical to achieving 30 by 30 and reversing biodiversity decline more widely.

Although digital tools are terrific—I must admit to being a huge fan of the Merlin app, because I do not see all that well, and being able to recognise a bird by its song or cry is incredibly helpful—they just do not replace the actual experience of walking through that damp, mossy wood, finding the first wood anemone announcing spring or seeing the flash of greeny-yellow and hearing the yaffle of the woodpecker; or, even better, of lying on the warm summer grass, watching the blue butterflies and trying to identify one blue from another, which I seldom succeed in: is it a holly blue or an adonis blue?

I am sorry that the Government are not going to extend the right to roam. Too much of our countryside is still inaccessible to the public. In the year 2000, the Labour Government made such a good start with the Countryside and Rights of Way Act. I am particularly pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is here because, as the Minister responsible, he really spent day and night, including many nights in Committee, achieving the outcomes of that Act.

The Labour manifesto mentioned nine new national riverside walks and three new national forests. Can the Minister give any idea of timescale for these? Importantly also, when Steve Reed was shadow Minister, he mentioned that there would be a White Paper on access to nature. That would be really important and should be an integral part of helping us to achieve what is suggested in this excellent report.