Biodiversity Emergency

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, if we are to make a difference to the trend in biodiversity, we need to make a difference to all our children. We need interest in biodiversity, familiarity with biodiversity and the value of biodiversity to be things that our children grow up with. At the moment, they are leading much more restricted lives than we did—certainly, very much more restricted lives than our parents did—in their ability to interact with nature and to get a real understanding and appreciation of what nature is and what humans can get from a relationship with it.

At the moment, there is a proposal from OCR for a natural history GCSE that has been in the DfE’s inbox for about six months. I know that the DfE is busy, but everybody in this climate and biodiversity emergency has to make their contribution. I hope my noble friend will be able, at some quiet moment, to emphasise to his colleagues in the Department for Education that it matters that they do their bit too, that they let this GCSE through and let us start the process of getting children back in touch with nature. That is where, over the long term, we can make a difference to this. If we all live in cities with our backs turned to nature, we are never going to want to spend the money and time that will make the difference.