World Species Congress

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this debate and I agree with much of what she said. This issue unites us across the House. The two co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on global deforestation—the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) and I—are sitting on either side of the Chamber. We disagree on a huge amount, but on this issue we are absolutely on the same page.

I gently challenge the hon. Member for Rotherham, because I think she has been a bit hard on the Government, who have done more than their predecessors of either persuasion to address the issue. In my view, that is a good start, but there is a long way to go. She touched on a whole range of issues and organisations. I share her congratulations on the work done by people at Chester zoo; I have been to talk to them about their work on elephants in India. She talked about the UK, but the zoo has a global footprint and an enormously important role.

On the NGO sector, I sit on the board of the African Wildlife Foundation, which is an NGO based in Nairobi that does excellent work in protected areas across Africa. The voluntary sector is also enormously important in all its different guises. Some fantastic work is being done around the world that is genuinely making a difference. Recent academic research shows that the tide is beginning to turn. There is a long way to go and there are still some very big problems—with deforestation, for example—but there is a global understanding now that we cannot go on like this. A huge amount of effort from individuals, corporates, Governments and NGOs is beginning to turn the tide. That turning of the tide just has to accelerate, and the good work that the hon. Member for Rotherham described is an important part of that.

I have a couple of nudges for the Government, but I will also mention some things that are being done well. The new support structure for farming in the countryside needs some tweaks and changes—it is not a perfect system yet—but the principle of supporting farmers to protect nature is absolutely right. Equally, the introduction of biodiversity net gain can be only transformational in the UK. The requirements for building companies to ensure that their impact on nature is counterbalanced by improvements to habitats elsewhere are absolutely right, and some of the most important things that this Government have introduced.

The Government have taken important steps on marine protected areas, which I have been pushing for, because they are about species not just on the land, but in our seas, where there are some serious issues. There is still more to do and I encourage the Minister to get on with finishing the task, but it is an important step that we have started to ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas, which will make a significant difference.

I am outraged, to be frank, that various European Union nations are now trying to stop us putting in place protections for the sand eels on Dogger Bank that provide essential food for puffins and other species. We cannot have it both ways: we cannot all say that we want to protect nature globally but then, when one country takes a step to protect nature as the UK is doing, impose the full force of international law and threaten to tear up or revisit international agreements. That cannot be the right thing to do. I very much hope that the European Union will back off, because the protections are right for nature.

I will nudge the Minister on deforestation and the secondary legislation needed to extend the good work done in the Environment Act 2021 to tackle the issue of illegal deforestation and forest risk products coming to the UK. I know that that work has not been straightforward and there have been various governance issues, but the reality is that it needs to get done before the election.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Member, alongside myself, does a great job of co-chairing the APPG on global deforestation, and he is absolutely right about the legislation. Does he agree that the Government also need to be mindful of the issue when undertaking trade deal negotiations? We need the legislation, but we also need the Department for Business and Trade to have sight of the issue as well.

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely agree, and indeed I am on record as saying—before the Brazilian election—that I would not countenance supporting a trade deal with Brazil until the deforestation in the Amazon had been addressed. There is significant progress there now, although there are still issues in Peru. However we manage this issue internationally, and whatever we do in terms of financial support for the developing world, we cannot go on chopping down forests around the world—we have to stop. It is hugely damaging to ecosystems and we cannot afford to carry on.

I ask the Minister: can we see the secondary legislation for forest risk products? There will then be two debates to be had: one around whether we should extend the legislation to legal deforestation in the way that the European Union has done, and another around the principle of due diligence, which should also apply to the financial services sector. I do not think that that will happen before the election, but I say to Members on both Front Benches that it needs to be done after the election, as has been recommended by senior business figures.

My recent ten-minute rule Bill on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing would extend the principles in the Environment Act for forest risk products to fisheries around the world. Too much fish is coming into the UK and the European Union from totally unsustainable fisheries and from illegal fishing around the world. Huge fleets of vessels, many from China, are sailing around the world and hoovering up the oceans, without any reference at all to sustainability or the endangered nature of the species concerned. We must talk about species on a world basis: we could all come together and deal with the issue by applying tough international rules about trade in IUU fish, by clamping down on licensing and monitoring, and by preventing IUU fishing from happening. I ask the Minister and, indeed, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), to put that issue more firmly on their agenda. It needs to happen.

The Government have done a lot, which is definitely a tick in the box compared with many previous Governments, but nobody should be under any illusions about the extent of the work that remains. Fantastic work is being done by NGOs and, increasingly, by individuals and private foundations, as well as by more and more Governments. However, to reverse what has happened both here and in other parts of the world, as well as to protect what we still have, a huge amount still needs to be done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Charles. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for securing this debate and for all the amazing work she does in the zoological sector around species loss. Given the upcoming World Species Congress, this debate is important and timely.

Many hon. Members will know that I care deeply about conservation, and I have raised it countless times in Parliament, including when I was on the Front Bench. I thank Reverse the Red and the long-standing organisers who work with Wildlife and Countryside Link, BIAZA and, of course, Chester zoo, which I worked with when I served as a shadow Minister, as well as when I have been on APPGs throughout my time in Parliament. They have continued to educate me on the issues of nature and species loss.

There has been a real-terms decrease of 42% in public funding for UK biodiversity since its peak in 2008-09. We do not want to make this an overtly partisan debate, but that does reflect the priorities of our respective parties. It was Lord Goldsmith, when he was a DEFRA Minister, who said that the UK is the most nature-depleted country in the world. I will not go on about the facts and figures, which we all know, but this debate is an opportunity to ensure that the UK adopts a robust, ambitious and integrated national biodiversity strategy and action plan.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham alluded to the rumours that the UK’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan for England will simply be a reworking of the environmental improvement plan. That is disappointing and, frankly, dangerous. It will be another failure of ambition by the Government, bypassing the creation of any meaningful legislative or financial measures. The Office for Environmental Protection has said that the EIP is no more than a wish list and does not provide any on-the-ground species recovery targets, so I hope the Minister will clarify her plans. The World Species Congress is an opportunity to shed light on the granular aspects of the commitments we make to support and protect species.

Fundamentally, meeting our environmental targets requires an integrated and collaborative approach across sectors and the UK’s four nations. Each country’s strategy must interlock to form a whole, and they must work with local nature recovery plans, some of which have been developed and some of which are in development, to begin to have a real impact on nature.

The UK’s NBSAP needs to treat devolved nature policy as a component part, and outline new structures of governance. That would ensure ongoing collaboration among policymakers, politicians and environmental organisations, and delivery across sectors. There is no strategy indicating how the new biodiversity policies will work together, so their implementation could be piecemeal, conflicting and small scale as a result. Nature is not adequately factored into Government decision making. The Government should set out how environmental and planning policies will link together to form a coherent whole.

The 2011-20 Aichi biodiversity targets agreed by COP10 failed—the UK failed to meet at least 14 of the 19 targets —partly because there was no effective monitoring framework to keep the parties on track; in other words, they were marking their own homework. The 2022 United Nations biodiversity conference of the parties to the UN convention on biological diversity, which I attended, agreed four goals and 23 targets. Currently, each country develops its own approach to measuring and monitoring biodiversity.

To begin to meet those targets, we will need the UK’s NBSAP to implement indicators and allow a regular assessment of progress. That will mean that we can adjust plans and policies in real time when required. There is no requirement in the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework to monitor or assess the progress being made, or not, towards biodiversity and nature goals, so effectively the parties are still marking their own homework.

There needs to be a formal mechanism to assess performance against goals and planned action. In the UK, we have one of the world-leading indexes—the Natural History Museum’s biodiversity intactness index —although it is not the only one. We need to adopt an existing index or get the parties to agree to one that does not currently exist. I would rather that we do the former. By doing that, the UK would demonstrate global leadership on species recovery.

We know that there is overwhelming support among the UK public for the restoration of nature. Improving our ecosystem’s health and supporting an abundant natural environment creates healthier communities. The future of wildlife is inextricably linked to our own future as a species.

Plans for nature recovery and nature gain touch on all aspects of our economy. Delivering wide-scale habitat restoration is reliant on the UK creating green jobs. The NBSAP is an opportunity to integrate nature and people by setting out exactly how funds will be directed towards biodiversity skills shortages. There is a skills gap in ecology. No matter how many well-intentioned speeches we hear about the need to create green jobs, there are no proper financial measures to address that. The devolved Administrations and local authorities will simply not be able to prevent further losses and reach our 2030 goals.

If we create a national nature service, people all over the UK will be able to gain hands-on experience and qualifications in green skills. That relates to my earlier point about the need for a cross-sector approach. A national nature service would not only support the economy but deliver biodiversity restoration. The UK is currently behind several major economies globally on that front.

The UK’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan needs to be effective; it must not be a heartfelt but ultimately empty gesture towards nature recovery. Given the UK’s status as the most nature-depleted nation, that could be a real opportunity for us to deliver action and leadership at the CBD.