Climate and Nature Bill

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and I congratulate her on bringing forward this important legislation. Like many farms in Glastonbury and Somerton, Camel Hill farm’s focus on regenerative farming has improved soil quality and nature loss. However, the farming budget has seen a real-term funding cut after inflation since 2007, leaving farmers trying to restore nature with reduced support.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. If we are to get Members in—we all see how many are present in the Chamber—interventions will have to be short and not pre-prepared speeches. There is plenty of time for those who have put their names down to speak. Members should not use up the time of the hon. Member for South Cotswolds for her opening.

[Dr Savage]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and applaud her for her work as an effective spokesperson on behalf of the farming community. Indeed, she pre-empted what I was about to say. Farmers should be properly rewarded for restoring soils, planting hedgerows and reducing pesticide use, with an expanded nature-friendly farming budget at the upcoming comprehensive spending review. They need a clear long-term strategy from the Government so that they are able to plan and invest accordingly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Savage]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I know Chichester harbour well and absolutely agree that this is vital work.

There is hope. Nature is enormously resilient and has an amazing capacity to regenerate when we give it a chance. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ appropriately named Hope farm has demonstrated that food production can coexist with benefits to wildlife: breeding bird populations there increased by 177% over a 12-year period. We need to encourage people to get involved—a new kind of land army working together for nature. We need to unlock the local knowledge, energy and passion for nature that I see every day in my constituency of South Cotswolds. I am sure every hon. Member in the Chamber has seen it, regardless of whether their constituency is rural or urban.

One of my especially passionate constituents, Jonathan Whittaker, put together the “Shroud for Nature”, an art piece made of 13 double bedsheets covered with heartfelt messages about the Climate and Nature Bill. I have chosen a few of those messages to read out today. They are:

“Care for the planet. Not just for this generation but the next ones. It’s your responsibility to make sure I have a home. I am twelve years old.”

“We all come from nature, by destroying it we are destroying ourselves.”

“When will those in power listen and commit? No nature, no us!”

and

“What you do today will change my life forever.”

That is from William, who is 10 years old. They continue:

“We have the solutions; we have the skill. Are we willing to make the change?”

and

“Leave politics aside. Make changes for humankind.”

Now we have a little poem dedicated to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

“Secretary of State Steve Reed, do us a good deed”—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I appreciate that the hon. Lady is quoting from a poem, but we do not refer to right hon. and hon. Members by name in the Chamber. Can we please ensure that the courtesies of the House are observed?

[Dr Savage]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As the poem will no longer rhyme, I shall move on to its second half. It continues:

“Make the powers pay, and make the waters clean for our play.”

I had better skip the next quote too, as it refers to the Prime Minister rather too directly. I hope that the next line will not get me into further trouble:

“We blooming elected you! Listen to us!”

To end on a more positive note:

“You have a chance to do something important and good. SO DO IT.”

Back on to safer ground, I would like to conclude with a few words about why this Bill matters so much to me personally. After I had my environmental wake-up call 22 years ago, I wanted to find a way to draw attention to my environmental message. For reasons best known to myself, it seemed like a good idea at the time to embark on a series of massive ocean crossings alone in a rowboat, using my expeditions as a campaigning platform to get my message across through blogs, social media, podcasts, talks and books.

For seven years, I rode solo across three oceans—the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian. At the risk of stating the obvious, it was really, really hard. I spent up to five months alone at sea, rowing for 12 hours a day. What kept me going was my sense that our environmental crisis is literally the most important issue on the face of the planet.

I learned a lot on the ocean, and I would like to share three insights that are relevant here. First, the Earth is surprisingly small. I managed to row across a large portion of it at something less than walking speed in just 520 days and nights. This small blue dot is now having to support 8 billion of us and our ever-increasingly materialistic lifestyle, with all the extraction, pollution and waste that entails.

Secondly, nature is incredibly powerful. There is nothing quite like being alone in a 7-metre rowboat in the middle of a storm to make that very apparent. We may think we have nature tamed, but we do not. The recent wildfires, floods and other not-so-natural disasters have made that very clear. Even movie star wealth has not been enough to save homes from the flames. As a species, we have only been on this Earth for the blink of an eye, but we have transformed it out of all recognition. We have gobbled our way through its resources in a way that is by any definition unsustainable. There are laws of humans and there are laws of nature. Whether or not the Bill makes it into human law, for sure the laws of nature will ultimately prevail.

Thirdly, on my journeys I saw the human face of climate change. When I stopped at the Republic of Kiribati on my way across the Pacific, I had a lengthy conversation with the President. With only one point of land more than 6 feet above sea level, his island nation faces existential risk. Later that year, I saw him at COP15 in Copenhagen, just as the talks had fallen apart. Fifteen years later, we are still not on track to save the Republic of Kiribati. How would we feel if our island nation—where we were born, where we had grown up and where our ancestors were buried—was about to disappear beneath the waves?

The Bill is about more than targets and strategies; it is a covenant with the natural world and with future generations. It is our promise to threatened species like the turtle dove, the hazel dormouse and the red squirrel; to the black poplar, the paperbark maple and the star magnolia; to the European eel, the Atlantic salmon and the Arctic char that we will not abandon them to extinction.

Taking bold action on climate and nature is the best way for the Government to demonstrate true global leadership and do what is right, knowing that in the long run the cost of inaction is far, far greater than the cost of action. Are we willing today to do what is required in the long term, rather than what is expedient in the short term? Are we willing to do not what is politically possible, but what is scientifically necessary to ensure a future for our planet? The choice is ours, and the time is now. Let us be the generation who chose to save our natural world, not the generation who stood by and watched it die.

Nature knows no borders. It does not recognise our political divisions. It is time to write a new chapter in our nation’s story—one where we finally understand that in saving climate and nature, we save ourselves.

I invite my colleagues to look up at my young friends in the Gallery: look them in the eye, and show them we are willing to do the right thing for their future. I commend this Bill to the House.