Biodiversity Emergency

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Devon (CB) [V]]

My Lords, happy Earth Day. Many thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for securing this important debate.

As a land manager responsible for biodiversity in a small part of Devon, I am interested to know what the declaration of a biodiversity emergency entails. What is the geographical extent of this emergency? Should we declare a global emergency or a UK emergency or, as environmental policy is devolved, should we consider only England? Given that we have competence over only England and our overseas territories, should that not be the limit of our ambition? To pronounce wider and beyond our jurisdiction smacks of imperial overreach.

Secondly, what are the implications of such a declaration? What impact would it have on policy? Given the huge upheavals under way in agriculture and environmental land management, yet further changes could be confusing and mix up the message.

Thirdly, by what metrics is this emergency to be assessed? Is there a common standard that the Government would apply? Speaking from personal experience only, I am not convinced that 2021 constitutes such a biodiversity emergency in England.

To some embarrassment, I grew up with middle name Peregrine. I remember being given a painting of a peregrine as a child and being told that it was the only likelihood of me ever seeing the bird as they did not exist in southern England. Now we see them regularly off the red cliffs of Dawlish. Similarly, we now see ravens, goshawks and egrets, which were never present in my youth. I vividly recall camping out at night to see a rare badger in the woods. Now, dead badgers litter the roadside and the hedgehogs have gone. We have a hedgerow at home that was about the only place in England to see the Jersey tiger moth in the 1980s. Now, they are common across the south-west. Finally, as we have heard, on a macro scale, we have seen considerable reforestation of our country since the nadir of the First World War, albeit that much of it is admittedly coniferous monoculture.

The point I seek to make is that, on many metrics, through responsible land management, biodiversity has increased in recent decades while continuing to provide cheaper food to an ever-expanding population. The declaration of a biodiversity emergency now might ignore that important work.