Sunday, March 24, 2019
Brexit dominates, the environment suffers
With the Prime Minister apparently facing a cabinet coup as she struggles to deliver the impossible promises of the 2016 referendum, with up to two million people crowding the streets of London to deliver a final say, and with nearly five million people now having signed the petition calling for Article 50 to be revoked, it is little wonder that the Government has little time to do anything else.
However, the focus on Brexit has meant that other, important priorities are being neglected, not least the environment. I am sure that those thousands of school pupils who went on strike only a few days ago, to demand a greater focus on climate change, will be very upset indeed to read in yesterday's Guardian that the UK is likely to miss almost all the 2020 nature targets it set itself a decade ago.
The paper says that we are failing to protect threatened species; end the degradation of land; reduce agricultural pollution; and increase funding for green schemes. In addition, the UK is not ending unsustainable fishing; stopping the arrival of invasive alien species; nor raising public awareness of the importance of biodiversity.
The targets were set in 2010 by the global Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the report from the joint nature conservation committee (JNCC) found insufficient progress was being made on 14 of the 19 targets.
A separate report, published in 2016, found that the UK is “among the most nature-depleted countries in the world”, with continuing declines in species such as skylarks, hedgehogs, many insects including butterflies and corn marigolds:
“The JNCC report says nature in the UK is pretty bad, declining and not recovering, and that is in the context of an awful lot of rhetoric [from ministers] about being a world leader on the environment,” said Kate Jennings, the head of site conservation policy at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
“We are going to fail to meet the vast majority of our international commitments,” she said. “Some of the things presented as positive are where places are getting worse more slowly – if that’s the best achievement we’ve got, it’s a pretty sorry state of affairs.”
The failure to meet Convention on Biological Diversity targets is pretty damning:
A key CBD target is to improve the conservation status of threatened species but the report says “there have been widespread and significant ongoing declines across many species”, such as farmland birds and pollinating insects.
Another of the 2020 targets is to cut the rate of loss and degradation of natural habitats to “close to zero”. While the report says some places have improved, there have been “ongoing losses of natural and semi-natural habitat, for example through neglect or development”.
The target to cut fertiliser and other pollution to levels that do not harm biodiversity is being missed, the report says, with little reduction in sensitive habitats since 2010 and with 65% of inland and coastal waters remaining below target levels.
Only about half of fish stocks are sustainably caught, the report says, meaning the target to end overfishing will be missed. The goal to prevent new invasive species entering the UK and harming wildlife, as the grey squirrel has, is also being missed. Despite strong
action, the report says, the number of invasive species has increased in fresh and marine waters. The CBD targets also require that funding to support biodiversity should “increase substantially” but the report found a fall in government spend on biodiversity. Another goal is to eliminate subsidies that harm nature and increase those that boost it. But the report says: “The UK recognises some ongoing declines of woodland, farmland and marine biodiversity and some recent reductions in areas under agri-environment schemes.”
The CBD targets also require the UK government to make the public aware of the value of biodiversity but the JNCC found “more than half of the UK public report no awareness of the threats to biodiversity … and there has been no significant increase since 2009”.
Brexit may well be in crisis, but the real existential threat to the UK lies in the neglect of our environment, It is time that changed.
However, the focus on Brexit has meant that other, important priorities are being neglected, not least the environment. I am sure that those thousands of school pupils who went on strike only a few days ago, to demand a greater focus on climate change, will be very upset indeed to read in yesterday's Guardian that the UK is likely to miss almost all the 2020 nature targets it set itself a decade ago.
The paper says that we are failing to protect threatened species; end the degradation of land; reduce agricultural pollution; and increase funding for green schemes. In addition, the UK is not ending unsustainable fishing; stopping the arrival of invasive alien species; nor raising public awareness of the importance of biodiversity.
The targets were set in 2010 by the global Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the report from the joint nature conservation committee (JNCC) found insufficient progress was being made on 14 of the 19 targets.
A separate report, published in 2016, found that the UK is “among the most nature-depleted countries in the world”, with continuing declines in species such as skylarks, hedgehogs, many insects including butterflies and corn marigolds:
“The JNCC report says nature in the UK is pretty bad, declining and not recovering, and that is in the context of an awful lot of rhetoric [from ministers] about being a world leader on the environment,” said Kate Jennings, the head of site conservation policy at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
“We are going to fail to meet the vast majority of our international commitments,” she said. “Some of the things presented as positive are where places are getting worse more slowly – if that’s the best achievement we’ve got, it’s a pretty sorry state of affairs.”
The failure to meet Convention on Biological Diversity targets is pretty damning:
A key CBD target is to improve the conservation status of threatened species but the report says “there have been widespread and significant ongoing declines across many species”, such as farmland birds and pollinating insects.
Another of the 2020 targets is to cut the rate of loss and degradation of natural habitats to “close to zero”. While the report says some places have improved, there have been “ongoing losses of natural and semi-natural habitat, for example through neglect or development”.
The target to cut fertiliser and other pollution to levels that do not harm biodiversity is being missed, the report says, with little reduction in sensitive habitats since 2010 and with 65% of inland and coastal waters remaining below target levels.
Only about half of fish stocks are sustainably caught, the report says, meaning the target to end overfishing will be missed. The goal to prevent new invasive species entering the UK and harming wildlife, as the grey squirrel has, is also being missed. Despite strong
action, the report says, the number of invasive species has increased in fresh and marine waters. The CBD targets also require that funding to support biodiversity should “increase substantially” but the report found a fall in government spend on biodiversity. Another goal is to eliminate subsidies that harm nature and increase those that boost it. But the report says: “The UK recognises some ongoing declines of woodland, farmland and marine biodiversity and some recent reductions in areas under agri-environment schemes.”
The CBD targets also require the UK government to make the public aware of the value of biodiversity but the JNCC found “more than half of the UK public report no awareness of the threats to biodiversity … and there has been no significant increase since 2009”.
Brexit may well be in crisis, but the real existential threat to the UK lies in the neglect of our environment, It is time that changed.
