Recommendation 2

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and contribute to the new framework of goals and targets which is being developed internationally, and we acknowledge there is more to do to address biodiversity loss. In June, the Government published its response to the landmark Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity, which committed to a wide-ranging series of actions to tackle biodiversity loss and support the delivery of a nature positive future, including by ensuring that economic and financial decision making supports that goal. Domestic biodiversity policy is devolved in the UK. In England, we are legislating through the Environment Bill to drive forward action to protect nature and improve biodiversity, including through setting a legally-binding target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. The Environment Bill also creates a duty on the government to publish Environmental Improvement Plans, the first of which was the 25 Year Environment Plan. This plan, its update due in 2023, and its associated regular reporting requirements, are crucial to delivering the government’s goals on biodiversity and the wider environment. The Bill further includes world-leading due diligence provisions to tackle illegal deforestation in UK supply chains. This is one part of a wider package of measures to improve the sustainability of our supply chains and will contribute to global efforts to protect forests, which host around 80% of the world’s biodiversity. We are extending protections at home on land and at sea. We have committed to protecting 30% of our land and sea—across the UK—by 2030. Later this year we will publish a Nature Recovery Green Paper, setting out further detail on our approach to delivering this important commitment in England. In English waters there are 178 sustainable-use Marine Protected Areas protecting 40% of our seas, and we recently committed to piloting Highly Protected Marine Areas waters to boost biodiversity recovery. Our UK ‘Blue Belt’ now spans 338,000 square kilometres. We are investing in nature restoration and in nature-based solutions to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change and to safeguard green jobs in England, including through our £640m Nature for Climate and £80m Green Recovery Challenge funds. The Nature for Climate Fund will help us achieve our aim to at least treble tree planting rates in England by the end of this Parliament; and as part of the Fund we have launched our Peatland Grant Scheme which will help us restore approximately 35,000ha of peatland by 2025. change and address climate risks which affect our natural environment, our critical infrastructure services, our communities and buildings, local government and businesses. economy is set out in our National Adaptation Programme, drawing on a large body of ongoing work across government. We are transitioning from the damaging Common Agricultural Payment subsidies to payments that actively reward farmers for the delivery of environmental benefits, by introducing new schemes that reward actions that recover nature: the Sustainable Farming Incentive, the Local Nature Recovery scheme and the Landscape Recovery scheme. These schemes will pay for sustainable farming practices, improving animal health and welfare, mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, creating and preserving habitat, and making landscape-scale environmental changes. Further detail on how we are phasing out economic incentives which threaten conservation and restoration, can be found in our response to recommendation 14. This though is not the extent of our ambition. We will continue to develop our approach to implementing our CBD commitments, updating our plans and strategies in response to the 15th Conference of the Parties to the CBD. This will include actions across Government, which are considered further under Recommendations 3 and 7. Later this year we will publish a Nature Recovery Green Paper, setting out our approach to driving nature recovery in England and providing the primary vehicle for developing and engaging on our future plans and proposals. The paper will set out the government’s vision for how we will achieve our nature recovery ambitions across a number of key policy areas, on land and at sea, including our 30x30 commitment and the Nature Recovery Network, protected sites, species and wildlife law reform, and trees and forests. It will allow us to publicly consult on our initial policy proposals in these areas, and along with feedback from related consultations will allow us to consider how best to put tangible changes in place that will deliver on our goals of nature restoration. This is a significant opportunity to set out the immediate steps we must take to get on track to meeting our target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. Our intention then is to set out further our approach to delivering our international biodiversity commitments at home through the update of our E