14:30 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)

The natural environment White Paper will set out a programme of action designed to put the value of the natural environment at the heart of Government and identify new ways of enabling local authorities and local communities to protect and enhance it. We need to consider biodiversity in the context of climate change, where biodiversity plays a hugely important mitigation and adaptation role. We also need to factor the value of ecosystem services, which are fundamentally supported by biodiversity, into our development and accounting processes.

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14:48 Barry Gardiner (Labour)

I, too, am pleased to speak in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. Last year, the UN climate change convention met in Copenhagen. It attracted the most incredible media frenzy, and something of a political frenzy as well, as Prime Ministers, Ministers and politicians from all over the globe made sure that they had a suitable photo opportunity.

In October 2010, I will chair the GLOBE legislators session at the United Nations convention on biodiversity in Nagoya—the conference of the parties. One hundred legislators will press to have natural capital incorporated into national accounts. They will establish legislators’ role as that of providing a vital monitor and audit function, overseeing their respective Executives. Many scientists regard success at the Nagoya convention as even more important than success at the convention on climate change. After all, what would a change in climate matter if species could keep pace with the rate of change? The fact that they cannot, and the demise of the ecosystem services that are lost with them, is the greatest threat to human well-being on this planet.

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15:33 Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)

I share that aspiration; I really hope the new Government do that. I would only remind the hon. Gentleman that for the crops that come to fruition under this Government, a lot of the hard work on tilling the ground has already been done. But it was done on a cross-party basis and with a lot of support from external organisations, which have generated and brought forward the ideas that we have worked on. We will do this together, one way or another, because the issues we are discussing are bigger than party politics. We often say that, but it is true. Climate change is one of those issues; biodiversity is another. I want to discuss how we bring those together and stop one being to the exclusion or domination of the other.

The threats are immense, among them the introduction of alien species, habitat loss and degradation, threats to species, over-exploitation or inappropriate exploitation of resources, and human-induced climate change. So, why should we be bothered? We should be bothered because we need to protect these healthy ecosystems for our well-being, for purely self-centred reasons if nothing else—if not for the intrinsic benefits, then for the extrinsic ones. We should be bothered because of the quality of our goods and services: the fresh water, the marine fisheries, the cleansing of atmospheric pollutants, the protection from natural hazards, the pest control and the pollination of our crops.

I welcome the Minister’s commitment to the roll-out of marine coastal zones and marine protected area networks. Stick at that. I strongly support what he is doing in that area. I look forward to the delivery of these wildlife corridors, stepping stones and buffer areas that are mentioned in the White Paper and the consultation document. They refer not just to undesignated areas, but to the linkages between them. Such developments will enhance the ability of our wildlife and habitats to migrate, which they may need to do not just because of development pressures but because of the impact of climate change, which is having an effect on our wildlife as we speak.

Secondly, what can the Minister and the Secretary of State do to bring biodiversity and climate change together with equal priority on the national and international agenda? What arguments will he use to articulate that and to persuade international colleagues to recognise it? For too long, the focus has been very much on climate change, with biodiversity as something of a side show. Both need to be together because they are so intimately interlinked.

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16:09 Richard Benyon

Given what the Minister has just said, he will perhaps reflect on the fact that, in the horn of Africa, we have seen what are often referred to as the first climate change wars. The desertification that has gone on there has seen the collapse of civil society and spawned the lawlessness that has given rise to piracy on the high seas around the horn of Africa. From that perspective, we see countries such as our own and the US, and international shipping generally, spending millions of pounds in that region on insuring ships and providing navies to escort and safeguard ships in that region. Yet we spend nothing, relatively, on sorting out the ecological and environmental problem of the desertification that has caused that piracy in the first place. Does he not agree that that is the case?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs regularly meets the Secretary of State for International Development, but last week she met him and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. They were talking about sustainability and they are going to New York next week to talk about the millennium development goals. We cannot achieve those goals unless we have sustainability at the heart of our actions.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the place of climate change and biodiversity on the international agenda. Next week I will attend the OSPAR convention, and climate change and biodiversity will be at the centre of what we will say when working with partners in that forum and in the EU. I hope that I have indicated today that we will push those ideas forward next week in New York, next month in Nagoya and in any international environment we can.

The loss of biodiversity, the degradation of the environment and ecosystems, and the need to adapt to and mitigate climate change are the global challenges of our age. International agreement on the successor to the 2010 biodiversity target must be secured. The existing target has galvanised action across the world by Governments and NGOs to tackle the most urgent problems. We cannot afford to lose momentum and must all redouble our efforts to achieve success under a new target.

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