Biodiversity: Property Development
(asked on 21st February 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the contribution of the application of the biodiversity net gain system to the UK’s (a) climate, (b) tree-planting and (c) nature recovery targets.
Answered by
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra officials have completed an analysis of the quantified impacts of biodiversity net gain, which can be found in the regulatory impact assessment published alongside the Environment Bill.
This assessment includes an estimate that mandatory biodiversity net gain will result in the creation of between 1,500 and 17,000 hectares of habitat per year. The breadth of this range is due to uncertainty over how much habitat loss will avoided altogether through the policy, and the extent of residual losses that will be compensated for by creating new habitat.
Together with the provisions in the Environment Bill for Local Nature Recovery Strategies, net gain will provide new habitats where they offer the greatest benefit for wildlife and the wider environment. Because habitat creation through net gain will be steered by local strategies and the development impacts for which it is compensating, it is impossible to know exactly what types of habitat will be created through biodiversity net gain. It is therefore also impossible to determine the exact contributions that net gain will make towards climate, tree-planting and nature recovery targets. Biodiversity net gain will, however, complement other Government policies such as our Nature for Climate Fund and future farming policy in order to meet our commitments on these vital issues.