Protecting and Restoring Nature: COP15 and Beyond

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Barry Gardiner

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I will give both ways, but not simultaneously. I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. One of the constant problems, particularly in our overseas territories, which do not have the resources to be able to establish their own datasets, is the gaming between them and the Foreign Office, because technically, through the convention on biological diversity, we are responsible for the biodiversity in those overseas territories.

It is a great tragedy that this palming off of responsibility between the two continues. I know that the Minister is new in post, and I welcome him to his post, but I hope he will have robust discussions with his colleagues in the Foreign Office about this. Perhaps he could whisper something to that effect in Lord Goldsmith’s ear, given that he is Minister of State in both DEFRA and the Foreign Office. This really does need to be sorted out. The overseas territories need that support to get the database.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I absolutely agree that there has to be a measurement of the effect on the natural world and the environment, measurements of human inequality and all the normal GDP measurements. Would it not be better if the UK Government set an aim to come away from the next round of discussions with an agreed position on how we will measure the effect on the natural world of economic activity as part of the whole measurement of GDP? In that way, it would be factored in and give a legal status and entity to the environment and the natural world, as opposed to just discussing it as a separate thing as a consequence of our own activities.

[Barry Gardiner]

Indeed. One of the things COP15 is grappling with at the moment is how to reconcile the different metrics that different countries use to assess their national biodiversity and sustainability action plans, and how to integrate them into a common measure. It is much more difficult to do this with biodiversity than it is with climate change. We know the common measure in climate change—it is CO₂—but we do not have an easy common measure for biodiversity. My right hon. Friend is right. It is one of the things that COP15 really has to grapple with.

I mentioned the national biodiversity and sustainability action plans—NBSAPs—that are produced by many countries. The truth is they are simply inadequate, not from a lack of goodwill on the part of those countries but often because of a lack of the robust scientific data we were speaking about.

We also know that, even when NBSAPs are based on sound scientific data, they have to be implemented. There is no point in simply putting them into your action plan and not implementing them. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central spoke about the Lawton report. Professor John Lawton set those principles in place over 15 years ago and those principles are clear. We have to act. Whether it is in the UK, sub-Saharan Africa or south-east Asia, we have to act at a landscape scale. As John Lawton suggested, we need “bigger, better, more joined-up” habitat. That in effect is the response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on the metrics. We need to see at a landscape scale that that is happening.

The COP is setting out its target to halt the loss of biodiversity, but as I said earlier, sadly that has been our 10-yearly target for nearly three decades now. For effective implementation, we must ensure that there are key staging posts to show that we are on the right track to achieving the long-term objective. Interim objectives around the amount of reforestation and the amount of marine protection zones must be used as staging posts in the same way as we in this country use the five-yearly carbon budgets as staging posts towards our 2050 net zero target.