UK set to miss ‘30 by 30’ nature targets, peers warn

An area equivalent to one-and-a-half times the size of Wales needs to be protected for nature if the UK is to achieve its ’30 by 30’ biodiversity targets, a Lords select committee has warned.

The government has committed to protect 30% of England’s land and seas by 2030, however, a new report from the Environment and Climate Change Committee reveals that just 6.5% of land is effectively protected for nature.

This means that 23.5% still needs to be protected to hit the target – amounting to more than three million hectares – with the report warning that it is not clear how the government intends to deliver this, and that a “major step change” is needed.

Committee chair, Baroness Parminter, said: “Our report makes it clear that the government faces a huge challenge to meet the 30 by 30 target it signed up to last year.

“The government must designate more areas to be protected, meeting international criteria, and manage and monitor all protected areas better to achieve favourable condition.”

Approximately 41% of species have decreased in abundance in the UK since 1970, and reversing this trend is key to boosting biodiversity, improving public health and wellbeing and tackling climate change.

The committee's report calls on the government to:

• Create more protected areas, retaining all existing designations, whilst ensuring existing protected areas are better managed

• Confirm that areas should be protected for nature for more than 30 years to meet the 30 by 30 criteria

• Put in place a management plan, with effective monitoring for protected areas on land based on an up-to date condition assessment which must be updated every six years

• Expand the current marine monitoring programme, both inshore and offshore, to develop a robust baseline of data that should be made publicly available

• Raise public awareness of local protected sites and communicate how they can play their role in protecting them, including unleashing and harnessing citizen science for data collection

• Use the next legislative opportunity to place a statutory duty on Natural England to monitor sites of special scientific Interest and ensure the resulting data is published.

Baroness Parminter added: “Time is running out to halt species decline and recover nature for the public good. We are therefore calling on the government to act urgently as it has just seven crucial years to fulfil its nature crisis pledge.”