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 findings of the RSPB report, A Lost Decade for Nature, that the UK has missed 17 of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets set in 2010 by the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, how he plans to (a) deliver the outcomes contained in the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, signed by the Prime Minister on 28 September 2020, and (b) restore the damage to nature in the UK by 2030, against a baseline of 2020, as proposed by the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill.

UK progress against the existing Aichi Targets was most recently set out in the UK's 6th National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity, submitted in March 2019. The report can be found at: https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/united-kingdom-s-6th-national-report-to-the-convention-on-biological-diversity/

The UK is committed to playing a leading role in developing an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework, to be adopted at COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity later this year, to deliver the ambition committed to in the Leaders Pledge for Nature. The UK will be advocating for ambitious global targets to bend the curve of biodiversity loss by 2030, including targets to ensure at least 30% of the land and of the ocean is protected, ecosystems are restored, species population sizes are recovering, and extinctions are halted by 2050.

We have taken a significant number of actions to deliver these commitments domestically and restore nature, including the passing of the landmark Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries Acts and publishing the England Tree and Peat Action Plans. We are currently consulting on new long-term, legally binding environmental targets, including to halt nature’s decline by 2030 and then reverse that decline. We also set out proposals in the Nature Recovery Green Paper to improve our system of site and species protections to help restore nature and deliver our commitment to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030. The Environmental Land Management schemes (Sustainable Farming Incentive, Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery) will be a major tool in delivering our environmental targets.

The UK has committed to spend at least £3 billion of our International Climate Finance on climate change solutions that protect and restore nature and biodiversity over five years from 2021 to 2026. Domestically, our Nature for Climate Fund is providing more than £750 million over the course of this Parliament and will support a significant increase in afforestation across England and help to restore 35,000ha of peatland by 2025. We are also extending protections on land and sea, placing the UK at the forefront of marine protection with 372 Marine Protected Areas covering 38% of UK waters.

We will be publishing a refreshed 25 Year Environment Plan in January 2023, which is also an Environmental Improvement Plan under the Environment Act, setting out the further steps we will take to deliver our commitment to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.