World Biodiversity

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for seeking this debate. I declare my interests in the register of Members’ interests as being president, vice-president and chairman of a very long list of biodiversity and conservation organisations.

We have already heard that global biodiversity is declining at its fastest ever rate. I am rather more gung-ho than the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, about the Aichi Biodiversity Targets under the Convention on Biodiversity. Unless we set targets we will live in some sort of fool’s paradise, not being able to tell whether we are getting better or worse. We have less than five years left to meet these targets, and to be honest the noble Earl is absolutely right: progress and action from Governments round the world, including the UK Government, is simply too slow and too little.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, stipulated in the question for debate the loss of biodiversity “caused by human activity”. That gave me some pause for thought, because that pretty well means all loss of biodiversity. The biodiversity specialists I consulted could not think of a single species decline that was not caused by human activity. We have already heard some of the list: human development, introduced invasive species, climate change, unsustainable agriculture, fishing or forestry, as well as natural resource extraction, persecution and illegal trade—all those are manmade. Yet half the world’s population directly depends on biodiversity for its livelihood, and we all depend on ecosystem services that biodiversity and the natural environment provide.

I therefore ask the Minister how the Government plan to step up UK action to meet the Aichi targets and to help protect and foster global biodiversity. I will raise three issues in particular. First, the UK overseas territories contain—would you believe?—90% of the UK’s biodiversity, yet efforts by the UK Government to tackle biodiversity loss in the overseas territories is fairly low; there is a very strong presumption that the overseas territory Governments will cope, but they have very small capacity and even less money to do much. The current Darwin Plus funding stream is valuable but does not go anywhere near meeting the scale of the challenge.

I have the privilege of being president of the South Georgia Heritage Trust and just spent five weeks in Antarctica completing the third phase of eradicating the man-introduced rats and mice from South Georgia. They came with the whalers 100-odd years ago and had been eating the eggs and young of seabirds, penguins, albatrosses and the endemic South Georgia pintail, a rather dinky duck that looks more at home in a bath than on a rather cold island. The South Georgia Heritage Trust raised nearly £7 million to carry out the first three phases of the eradication programme. Although I am very grateful for the funding that the Government provided, the vast majority—nearly 90%—came from private donors. I must confess that I gnashed my teeth rather when the Australian members of our highly expert team told me that a similar exercise to rid Macquarie Island off Tasmania of its similarly introduced rats, mice and, in this case, rabbits, in order to protect its native biodiversity, had been paid for totally by the Tasmanian and Australian Governments.

The second point that I want to raise has been raised previously—the Darwin Initiative, which is a fine example of UK leadership on tackling global biodiversity conservation. It has a very positive profile in many parts of the world and has had a significant impact well beyond its relatively small size. However, it has kind of undertaken a bit of mission creep, in my view. It is now rather more focused on DfID and development-related criteria than on biodiversity conservation per se. Can we have Darwin back, please, and can we have it focused on long-term sustainable development and biodiversity conservation rather than short-term and reactive policies?

My third point is that biodiversity conservation is a bit like a charity—it needs to begin at home. We could take the view that if every nation in the world looked after its own biodiversity, we would not have a problem. So I ask the Minister about the Government’s commitment to doing their bit for global biodiversity by looking after the biodiversity in the UK that we uniquely are responsible for. We have heard of a number of assessments of biodiversity in the UK, and the 2013 State of Nature report found that 60% of UK species that have been studied had declined in recent decades and 31% had strongly declined. More than one in 10 species could disappear from the UK altogether.

I commend to the Minister the conservation NGOs report Response for Nature, which outlines what needs to be done. We are all looking forward to the Government’s 25-year environmental plan, which I understand will include biodiversity conservation issues. I hope that we might lure the Minister into giving us some insight into what it might contain and how the Government are getting on with their preparations.

Although vision for the future is important, I urge the Minister that the plan needs to be more than just a vision; it needs to have some teeth. It needs to commit clearly to actions for government and to outline actions for businesses, landowners, local government, civil society and the public. It needs to have concrete, numerically expressed goals that can be measured and monitored, and five-year milestones with accountability and reporting to Parliament. In respect of monitoring biodiversity, can I urge the Minister to ensure that the monitoring functions currently carried out by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee do not suffer in the spending review, as is rumoured? If we cannot count and monitor our biodiversity, how will we know if we are winning?

Last but not least, the Government need to defend and implement the laws that conserve nature, particularly the European birds and habitats directives which are currently under review. It would be a grievous blow for biodiversity across the European Union if these directives were weakened. Can I ask the Minister tell the Committee where the Government stand on the defence of these directives? We were somewhat concerned that when nine EU environmental Ministers, including the German and French Ministers, called recently for the directives to be safeguarded, the name of the UK environment Minister was not attached to that call.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, talked about the IUCN Red List. My very good friend Jane Smart, who is the director of the IUCN global species programme, said that the IUCN Red List is the voice of biodiversity telling us where we need to focus our attention most urgently. If we look at that list, biodiversity is not telling us where to focus our attention most urgently; it is screaming for help.