How laws can help save nature

There are arguably three crises facing the planet: catastrophic climate change, rapid biodiversity loss and an increasing disconnection of people from nature.  

I was thinking about our responses to these issues as I travelled to Manchester for my first stop of this year's party conference season*.  On twitter there was deluge of images of people participating in 2,000 marches around the world - including 40,000 people that took to the streets of London.   The events had been organised to urge global leaders to do whatever's necessary to deliver a fair and binding climate change deal - starting at the Climate Summit in New York this week.   

While my commitments in Manchester meant I missed the London march (and I arrived too late for the one in Manchester!), I was delighted to join a discussion with the Wildlife Trusts and shadow Environment Secretary, Maria Eagle MP, about what politicians need to do to drive nature's recovery and to help all of us have more contact with nature.  The case for action is clear: 60% of species (for which we have adequate data to detect a trend) have declined in my lifetime, one in ten are at risk of extinction, 65% of SSSIs in England are in unfavourable condition, a third of the ecosystems which provide humans with free services are degraded and only one in five children have adequate contact with nature.

This is why we have joined forces with the The Wildlife Trusts to call for a Nature and Wellbeing Act to be introduced after the General Election.  This would provide a framework for politicians at national and local level to play their part in turning round these appalling statistics.  

But, we have understandably been challenged as to why we need legislation to deal with these problems.  Surely, some ask, we have enough laws and policies to turn things around if only we had the will?  Up to a point, this is correct - there are many obligations already in place (for example through existing wildlife laws or through planning policy) which could and should be partly sufficient.  Yet, it is at least a contestable point that we have had good cross-party ambition for nature conservation since the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.  This paved the way for a new Convention on Biological Diversity which paved the way for the UK Biodiversity Action Plan which was launched by the then Environment Secreatry, John Gummer.  2010 commitments to halt biodiversity loss were set (and missed) and despite establishing a new Biodiversity Strategy for England, the current coalition Government was given a red card for its performance on nature conservation by last week's cross-party Environmental Audit Committee of MPs.

My assessment of successive governments' failure to match ambition with action is that, firstly, Defra is too easily distracted by other issues (it is, after all, the department that has to deal with floods, plagues and pestilence), and secondly it does not have the support of other government departments or indeed local authorities.  This lack of support may be to do with a lack of resources or competing priorities rather than direct hostility, but it is pretty obvious we don't have joined up government action - how else could you explain the Ministry of Defence's decision to sell public land of high environmental value (SSSI) for housing at Lodge Hill in Kent?

And this brings me back to climate change.  Here, we have legislation to establish carbon budgets for the whole of government and the government architecture to monitor and scrutinise progress objectively (through the Committee on Climate Change).  Not everybody likes it and some have been frustrated by the inconsistent signals that have emerged from government over the past few years about our desire to move to a low carbon economy.  But, this legislation continues to bite - forcing government to act in a more consistent and coherent manner while providing certainty to investors.  And, when Prime Minister David Cameron addresses the UN Summit next week he will be able to say that our climate legislation is leading the world reinforcing the UK's role as an environmental leader.  

I do not think that the UK's trajectory to a low carbon future would have withstood the economic shock of 2008 and our response to it without the Climate Change Act.  

We just have not seen the same determination to get to grips with what nature needs.  And this is why, I think new legislative to drive nature's recovery is essential. 

A Nature and Wellbeing Act would provide certainty, coherency and consistency to landowners, developers, agencies, local authorities, Whitehall departments and civil society.  Together, not only can we tackle climate change but we can also drive nature's recovery - demonstrating that our species can live in harmony with the millions of species with which we share this planet.

*The RSPB 2014 conference tour has already taken in the Greens and following Labour this week, we visit Birmingham for the Conservatives and end in Glasgow for the Liberal Democrats - and, of course, we'll be speaking up for nature at party conferences in each of the countries which take place later in the year.