Biodiversity

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Wednesday 28th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

My Lords, I am delighted that I will not be the only pessimistic person standing up today. I was beginning to feel that perhaps I would be my usual dark cloud in a sea of cheerfulness. I should declare an interest as president of the British Trust for Ornithology, the volunteer science body in bird conservation, and president of the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Peterborough. Perhaps I should be allowed an extra minute to read the list of things in which I am involved. I am vice-president of the RSPB and of Plantlife, chairman of the Great Fen fundraising campaign and, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, a member of the climate change adaptation sub-committee. These are my UK interests. As this is a UK debate, I have not for the purposes of the record mentioned my international ones.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, for the opportunity to do our bit—playing the Glasgow Empire on a wet Tuesday being the equivalent of the last debate before we break for the Summer Recess—on something as important as this. I know that the noble Baroness believes that there are reasons to be cheerful and reasons to be less cheerful. I am trying to pitch what I say today as a realist because the picture of UK biodiversity is very mixed. The message that comes from what is and is not thriving is that, where action has been clearly targeted and counted, where resources have been particularly focused and applied, and where there is a comparatively small number of bodies involved in delivering, we have seen improvement. For example, our sites of special scientific interest were in a very poor condition. There has been a terrific effort by a substantial number of bodies, but not a huge number, to hit the 2010 target for improvement in quality of our SSSIs. That has been a great success.

That pattern of success has been repeated across some habitats and some species. For example, a clear target was set for heathland re-creation and improvement in quality after a 90 per cent loss, with the progress being absolutely in the right direction. Where there is targeting and resources, and a comparatively small number of organisations involved, it can work. Other habitats and species have not responded, especially those species of the wider countryside and particularly, as has already been said, of the wider farmed countryside.

Farmland bird declines continue. The most recent report by the BTO, the RSPB and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee demonstrated that farmland bird decline has not been halted. I believe that we are struggling in areas where there is insufficient targeting of resources, no clear injection of resources and where the actions that need to be taken are by a very large number of people.

I was glad to see recently that the Secretary of State said that alongside climate change biodiversity loss is the greatest threat we face. We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and others about future threats to climate change: namely, not only the impact on habitats in this country but also the pressure for global food security; population growth in this country, which is possibly enhanced by climate change; and, of course, development pressures. What we need the Government to do, while recognising the financial situation, is pick up the challenge, which is twofold. First, within this financial constraint, we must not lose what we have so recently achieved, so things like the progress that has been made with some biodiversity action plans on species and habitats, and on improving SSSI condition and the quality of our nature reserves must not be allowed to dribble away. Many bodies, organisations and individuals have worked hard on these. Secondly, we need to identify why the current mechanisms in the wider farmed countryside are not working, and then change them.

I have five thoughts for the Government as they consider the natural environment White Paper. The first concerns agriculture and how we are going to sort out the impact of agriculture on biodiversity. The agri-environment schemes are absolutely vital to this. The entry level scheme is too broad, unfocused and untargeted. The pressure has been on reaching the coverage target of 70 per cent, which is admirable in that it would bring many farmers into an agri-environment scheme, but really it is about numbers rather than quality. We need to make sure that we are not just paying people to do the easy things, but to do the right things in the farmed countryside. I believe there needs to be a much greater focus on the higher level scheme in view of its importance in delivering good management on our best wildlife sites and on some of our most threatened species. Moreover, we face a problem in that farmers had been involved in the former schemes—the environmentally sensitive area schemes and countryside stewardship payments—which are coming to an end. I urge the Minister to commit to shifting resources to ensure that increases in the higher level scheme funding that were originally planned will continue.

We need also to look at the other mechanisms in the wider countryside for agriculture beyond SSSIs. I recognise the commitment made by the National Farmers’ Union and others to the Campaign for the Farmed Environment, but it is a voluntary scheme and is not yet showing results in the figures. We need now to look seriously at what can be delivered by further requirements for farmers to adopt cross-compliance. There should be simple but targeted actions in return for the single farm payment, a resource for which you, I and every other taxpayer in the country pays £1.5 billion, but which at the moment is not working for its living in terms of delivering biodiversity in our countryside.

The second area I should like to cover is the marine environment. We have another country offshore. It is a wonderful one with hills and dales, trees and plants, birds, animals and fish in it. We all worked hard on the Marine and Coastal Access Bill so I hope that the Minister can confirm the Government’s commitment to designating an ecologically coherent network of marine protected areas by 2012, as was agreed. Perhaps I may encourage the Minister to comment on the impact of the cut of £800,000 to the budget of Natural England in the marine field. Given that, can the commitment to the network of marine protected areas be honoured?

The third area has been covered very well by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and concerns adaptation to climate change and the impact on biodiversity. I should say to the noble Lord that I will sit down with him in front of a computer to try and find the work programme and objectives for the climate change adaptation sub-committee because they are there, but perhaps lost in the e-somewhere. I can assure him that in September we will be launching our first report that will give a framework for measuring adaptation, including looking at how we might make progress in measuring biodiversity’s adaptation.

Climate change will put additional pressure on our wildlife and on our protected areas. We must not panic when the important species for which protected areas are designated cease to be there, because inevitably they will shift and change under climate change pressures. However, that does not mean that those areas are any less important. They are the only areas where space is specifically made available for biodiversity, so we need to make sure that whatever it is that wants to move on as a result of climate change has somewhere to move to. On a larger landscape scale, we need to make sure that our SSSIs and natural protected areas are made bigger so that they are more resilient in the face of climate change. We need to develop networks, with corridors and linkages between wildlife sites, so that they do not decline into isolated zoos for biodiversity.

Many fine words are spoken about the ability of wildlife to move between sites—it is called “permeability”—but at the moment it seems to be a religion rather than a scientifically-validated mechanism. We need to make sure that the science is developed to enable wildlife to move and I urge the Minister to protect the science budget and move forward. We need to count whether or not we are doing well on biodiversity. I am alarmed that the PSAs have gone and yet we do not have a clear framework for how we are going to judge success. Many noble Lords will have heard me say before that football would be a bad game if we did not keep the score. I think that football is a bad game anyway, but it would be even worse if we did not keep the score. Biodiversity is like that. Much of the monitoring of biodiversity is carried out by volunteers. As president of the British Trust for Ornithology, I have 36,000 volunteers working on bird monitoring. They are skilled and unpaid and I urge the Government not to cut the government funding that levers that vast amount of free work.

I urge the Minister, in preparing the White Paper not to over-rely on the big society. If anywhere in this country we have had a huge volunteer effort, a huge community commitment lasting more than 250 years, it is in biodiversity, and yet we are not winning, and so clearly the big society is not the only answer. We need targeting, resources and incentives for multiple actors to work—and only government can give that degree of leadership and co-ordination.