Dasgupta Review

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the UK is not responsible for organising the conference. However, despite the delays to the timetable to that conference, we are fully engaged in the negotiations process in the lead-up to it—for example, working through the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, the UK-led Global Ocean Alliance and our role as ocean co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People. The noble Viscount makes a good point about the need for different voices to contribute to that process, and that is something which the UK values.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, as Dasgupta makes clear, food-intensive farming is the primary cause of all biodiversity loss across the world. Yet, if we look at COP 26 in Glasgow, food was not really on the agenda. Indeed, for Sharm el-Sheikh in November, food is on the agenda, but from a point of view of food security. So I ask the Minister whether there is going to be a change of heart about that, and whether food, as both a cause of carbon emissions and biodiversity loss, will have a bigger presence.

Perhaps I might beg the Minister’s time to ask another question. As we are in a food shortage caused by the Ukrainian war—for instance, Germany is putting down a million acres to grow wheat in an intensive farming fashion, and I hear rumours that ELMS itself might be put back a bit—I urge the Minister to say that this a really bad time. Can the Government put further support into regenerative farming that will produce the same high yields but respect and preserve the biodiversity and good soils we need?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Baroness has a good point that food security and biodiversity and the preservation of our land do not have to be in tension with each other. The aim of our environmental land management scheme is to promote both of those goals by making farming and agriculture more productive and sustainable on some land, while using land which may be less productive to achieve our biodiversity goals. That is something to which the UK remains absolutely committed.