Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Adaptation Committee’s recommendations on page 28 of the Climate Change Committee's report of June 2021 entitled, Progress in adapting to climate change: 2021 Report to Parliament, what plans his Department has to take steps to mitigate the effects on nature conservation of a two degrees Celsius warming scenario.

Mitigating and adapting to climate change is essential if we are to meet our historic target to halt the decline of nature by 2030. The UK Climate Change Act 2008 requires the Government to prepare, on a five-yearly cycle, a UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), followed by a National Adaptation Programme (NAP), setting out actions to address the risks identified in the CCRA.

The Climate Change Committee's Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk offers a detailed and up to date insight into the growing risks and opportunities the UK and its natural environment faces from climate change, from terrestrial and freshwater habitats to soil health and natural carbon stores and to agriculture.

This evidence has informed our third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3), which we laid in Parliament on 17 January 2022. The evidence will inform greater ambition and action on enhancing resilience to the impacts of climate change through the third NAP (NAP3) and highlight gaps where the government needs to go further. NAP3 will address the risks and opportunities for a 2ºC warming scenario, to build a more resilient country, with a focus on enhanced ambition, implementation and evaluation.

Restoring our natural habitats has a number of potential benefits for helping support the resilience of ecosystems to climate change. For example, improving the condition and diversity within, and connectivity between, our wildlife habitats will help species survive in their existing locations and allow them to move towards more suitable climates where necessary. This work is supported by policies such as the nature recovery network and Local Nature Recovery Strategies, as well as the policies set out in the England Peat and Trees Action Plans. We have also invested significant funding into nature, including over £750 million in the Nature for Climate Fund and £80 million through the Green Recovery Challenge Fund.

The environmental land management schemes will be key mechanisms for enhancing our natural landscape's resilience and its adaptive benefits to society, by rewarding farmers for their roles as environmental stewards and improving the resilience of their agri-businesses as well.