16:30 Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)

That this House has considered climate change and biodiversity.

Climate change has triggered more extreme weather conditions, causing heatwaves, droughts, high precipitation and flooding. Adapting to the impacts of climate change in the UK and around the globe is necessary to keep the human population safer. Taking steps now to adapt to future change will make us more resilient and less vulnerable to its impacts. Adaptation can include traditional engineering projects, such as sea walls or other coastal defences as sea levels rise, but the natural environment also has a significant role to play. Adaption covers everything from water storage to drought resistant crops, from green urban areas to protecting and restoring natural, indigenous ecosystems.

The Climate Change Committee reports on progress on adapting to climate change in England. Many of its recommendations for improving adaption planning and implementation in England have been taken up by the Government and their arm’s length bodies. They accept the committee’s central message that they must take greater action to build resilience to the impacts of climate change.

The Climate Change Committee has advised that the UK should adapt to a 2° warmer world for the period 2050 to 2100 and assess the risks for a 4° temperature increase. It identified the eight priority risk areas that need the most urgent action: the viability and diversity of nature; soil health; the release of sequestered carbon; crops, livestock and forestry; collapse of supply chains for food, goods and vital services; power system failure; human health and productivity; and risks to the UK from climate change impacts overseas. Nature-based solutions can help to address all these risks.

Analysis has shown that nature-based solutions can help to address 33 of the 34 climate change risks identified as requiring more action in the Climate Change Committee’s third “UK Climate Change Risk Assessment”, including the eight risks requiring the most urgent action.

The UK’s national adaption programme sets out potential actions to address climate change risks. A recent report from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the WWF-UK, “Nature-based Solutions in UK Climate Adaption Policy”, highlights opportunities for nature-based solutions in the UK and provides recommendations on how best to use nature-based solutions to deliver widespread benefits to both people and wildlife. I respectfully refer the Minister to those recommendations.

I completely agree with the hon. Member’s question. We need to measure metrics and outcomes more thoroughly as part of the process of using nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change. That is absolutely spot on.

I ask for the Minister’s thoughts on the key recommendation of the RSPB and WWF report. Nature-based solutions contribute to reducing our vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. They are no longer peripheral, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has already started to develop policies that should be rolled out across all sectors. Nature-based solutions need to be mainstreamed in policy by establishing common goals, harmonising policy support and overcoming barriers across all sectors.

Increased funding is required. There is reportedly a £5.6 billion gap in the funding required to cover environmental gains, challenges facing the food system, an integrated response to net zero and local community benefits. But funding does not have to be the sole responsibility of government. Three per cent. of private financing mobilised under the 2018 Paris agreement went into adaptation, with more than 95% going towards mitigation. Adaptation will increase resilience, benefiting businesses and financial institutions, as well as nature and people.

We have a window of opportunity to take action to adapt to climate change and avoid the worst impacts, and political commitment and follow-through across all levels of Government to accelerate the implementation of adaptation actions is vital. I believe that the Government have the will to do this. Climate change will increasingly cause extensive, sometimes irreversible, damage to ecosystems. This degradation of ecosystems increases the vulnerability of people. The rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts, as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.

Nature-based solutions offer opportunities for cost-effective adaption to climate change, while also providing benefits to people and wildlife. Safeguarding biodiversity is fundamental for climate-resilient societal development. Conservation, protection and the restoration of land, freshwater and coastal ecosystems, together with targeted management to adapt to unavoidable impacts of climate change, reduces the vulnerability of biodiversity to climate change and benefits us all now and into the future.

[Source]

16:41 Samantha Dixon (Labour)

The world is facing a global biodiversity crisis triggered by human disruption to nature and the destruction of habitats. Members across the House know the seriousness of the challenges we face, but we also know we are nowhere near where we should be given the critical condition our nature is in. One million species are at risk of extinction due to human activity, but it is not only individual species that are threatened. The collapse in the abundance of nature also means that many of our ecosystems are not functioning as they should. Climate change is driving nature’s decline, and the loss of wildlife and wild places leaves us ill-equipped to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to a changing climate. We must recognise that the climate and biodiversity emergencies are intrinsically linked and should be tackled together.

[Source]

16:44 Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)

I welcome this important debate. It comes at a brilliant time. Only yesterday the Prime Minister set up the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which builds on the Government’s commitments in recent years to all those who live in the UK and around the world. Such an important development is welcome—and so soon after the publication of the Skidmore review on net zero. As I say, the formation of this Department is a clear commitment to caring for our planet and taking our responsibilities seriously to match and build on the commitments the Conservative Government have made since we legislated for net zero in 2019.

In this debate, we are recognising the critical role of biodiversity and nature-based solutions. We need to match our efforts to deliver decarbonisation with our efforts to recover nature and biodiversity. It would be a tragic shame to reach net zero but not reach our commitments to recover nature, which is why this debate is so timely and important. It can be done. We worry about food security and production in relation to nature recovery, but I believe there is no conflict—they can be done together and, in fact, they are co-dependent.

I recently secured a debate in support of the nature and climate declaration, which embeds nature recovery in the road to net zero. The Climate and Ecology Bill is a natural instrument to build on this necessary approach. I am sure we will all be hearing more about how that Bill intends to deliver on the key things that were raised this morning by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) who opened the debate. I will leave it there.

[Source]

16:47 Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat)

In the two minutes I have, I want to talk about the uplands. They are massively important to us as a country and hugely important to our communities in Cumbria. They can be a massive contributor to our fight against climate change. They are where we see water management happen; 70% of our drinking water comes from the uplands. Think of the peatland and soils there, which are vital to carbon sequestration.

I am grateful for the intervention. Peatland is hugely significant. It is more quickly restored than woodland and therefore has greater capacity to tackle climate change as a carbon sink. Our uplands are critical. While I support the principles underlining the environmental land management schemes and the transition payment for farmers, I think the ELMs at the moment have badly let the uplands down.

I mentioned the value that the uplands can provide in the fight against climate change and the need to value biodiversity in such an important part of our country. We must also remember how important they are to the landscape—and the economy—of the lakes and the dales. There are 60,000 people who owe their jobs to the hospitality and tourism industry in Cumbria, and we have a £3.5 billion tourism economy.

Based on what the Lake district and the Yorkshire dales look like, it would seem wrong for the Government to—I hope—accidentally transform in a negative way the landscape of our communities, particularly in the lakes. My major ask is that the Minister reconsider the payment rates for the uplands so that we can value our upland farmers and tackle climate change in our most beautiful places.

[Source]

16:50 Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)

Hedgerows are the perfect example of how the environmental improvement plan will positively impact climate change and boost biodiversity. As a hedgerow hero, I am proud to have worked with the Campaign to Protect Rural England to increase hedgerow coverage by 40% by 2050. The environmental improvement plan announced the target of 30,000 miles of new and restored hedgerows by 2037, and 45,000 miles by 2050. That will result in 360,000 miles of English hedgerows—10% above the 1984 peak. Hedgerows are a classic symbol of the English countryside, providing a sense of continuity across the changing seasons. They also provide biodiversity’s best friend—a stable home for a bounty of flora and fauna. One in nine of the UK’s most vulnerable species, such as the hazel dormouse, the hedgehog and the brown hairstreak butterfly, rely on healthy hedgerows.

Hedgerows also play a crucial role on our path to net zero. We all know that planting trees and protecting peatlands are key to capturing and storing carbon, but so are hedgerows. Unmanaged hedgerows are estimated to sequester over 140 tonnes of carbon per hectare, compared with 169 tonnes for a 30-year native woodland. If hedgerows are properly managed, they can sequester even more, both in their woody stems and in the roots below.

To come back to biodiversity and moving towards net zero, it is important that we boost our biodiversity to strengthen our rural economies. So many steps that we have taken, which are laid out in the environmental improvement plan, are key to that. It is fantastic that, as part of the plan, DEFRA recognises the importance of supporting green jobs and careers with apprenticeships across forestry, ecology, countryside management, the water environment and more, especially given that this is National Apprenticeship Week.

As we face more frequent extremes of climate change, we need to ensure that our natural environment is healthy and our relationship with it is sustainable. By doing what we can, we will support biodiversity and harvest the gains that the countryside provides on our path to net zero.

[Source]

16:54 Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Climate change is an absolutely huge subject and massively important, particularly for our children’s and grandchildren’s futures. It is really important to Stroud, because we are the greenest constituency in the greenest county in the country, and people passionately care about this issue.

Wetlands play a key role in helping to tackle climate change. The issue of climate change gets a bit shouty sometimes, and very shouty at other times, but when I talk to the public about biodiversity and things such as wetlands, which they can see, they get it. For the benefit of hon. Members in the room, I should say that one of the conversations we had with the Minister last week was about the carbon benefits of forests. The Minister asked to the local experts, “How do the carbon benefits of forests compare with the carbon benefits of wetlands?” The experts’ response was, “They’re about 18 times better.” That is absolutely extraordinary. It is not something that farmers or the National Farmers Union understand properly yet, and we need to get the evidence so that we can back it up.

We can do great things. We can help to hit this country’s net zero targets if the Minister really puts her shoulder behind the APPG for wetlands and all my asks.

My hon. Friend is making as powerful an argument for wetlands as our hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) did for nature- based solutions. Does she agree that we can square all these things? She has fantastic wetlands, I have some contaminated land where we can put a new wood and have some green energy, and down in Hastings and Rye there are all sorts of different solutions to protect the sea. It is about recognising the value of this great environmental plan and then implementing it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) has in her constituency.

[Source]

16:59 Jim Shannon (DUP)

The council needs to have public understanding, and support is key to the success of the project. Interpretive signage is part of that as well. Studies have shown that, as well as the biodiversity benefits, conversion from species-poor to species-rich grassland can significantly increase the soil carbon sequestration rate. In addition, a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions as a result of less frequent grass cutting—that is the key issue in what the council is doing—has reduced the council’s carbon footprint. That is one thing that can be done.

[Source]

17:02 John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)

As our climate worsens, it continues to negatively affect our biodiversity and threaten the stability of our natural world. The issues that arise from that are inextricably linked to many of the challenges we face as a society, and it is impacting our health, wellbeing and prosperity. Given those growing threats, it is about time that the UK Government stepped up and joined Scotland in leading the world on the frontlines of tackling climate change. We must work together as we prepare for the worst effects of the climate catastrophe.

Climate change is simply an issue of justice; it disproportionately affects the most vulnerable communities and nations. Scotland was not only the first country in the world to declare a climate emergency, but the first to introduce a climate justice fund. That fund was set up to help the developing countries most at risk to tackle the effects of climate change on the frontline. Fulfilling our role in tackling the global climate emergency is simply a moral obligation. The climate justice fund was trebled to £36 million over this Parliament, in stark contrast to the espoused global Britain led by a Tory Government who would seemingly rather cut international aid. The Scottish Government believe that a just transition is at the heart of our nature recovery ambitions, which are focused on nature-based solutions that create a greener, fairer and more prosperous nation for all.

Meanwhile, the UK Government do not seem to believe in their own consultations. In March last year, a UK Government consultation produced a legally binding target to increase tree canopy and woodland cover from 14.5% to 17.5% of England’s total land area by 2050. That target was set to help to meet net zero ambitions by 2050 and provide many other benefits, including the creation of new wildlife habitats and a reduction in flooding by slowing the flow of water off hills—all admirable ambitions. Despite that, DEFRA decided to cut the target to 16.5%, claiming that a “review of our evidence”—from its own consultation—now showed that the lower figure was “the most ambitious target” that could be set. One per cent. may seem trivial, but that equates to a reduction of over 100,000 hectares in the total area to be planted by 2050 and, significantly, to an enormous 37 million fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide being removed from the atmosphere by the end of the century.

It is no surprise to me and other interested parties that 75% of all the new woodland trees planted in the UK were planted in Scotland. That is more evidence that Westminster should follow the Scottish Government’s lead if it wants England to meet decarbonisation targets and put in place biodiversity protections.

In January 2022, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee published its report on the role of nature-based solutions in mitigating climate change and achieving net zero by 2050. It argued that, although the Government’s plans for nature-based solutions were “ambitious”, they were at “severe risk of failure”. In addition, a report published in October 2022 by the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee stated:

Will the UK Government finally take heed, work with the Scottish Government and commit to restoring nature and decelerating the climate crisis?

[Source]

17:07 Daniel Zeichner (Labour)

We also understand the importance of doing our fair share to cut UK emissions, in order to try to keep global heating down. Our shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), has been clear on this, and the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), has pledged an investment of £28 billion every year until 2030 to tackle the climate and nature crisis, and to create clean, green and secure jobs for people in the UK.

In conclusion, we recognise that this is a cross-Government challenge that needs focus from all of Government, so we have committed to a robust net zero and nature test for every policy, to create certainty for business and provide leadership to seize the opportunities for the UK, while protecting nature here and abroad. It is a historic challenge, one that we absolutely have to meet, and Labour is determined to do just that.

[Source]

17:11 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Trudy Harrison)

We absolutely recognise the urgency of climate change. Although we are accelerating our efforts to end our contribution to climate change, we must also continue to take action to ensure that the country is well prepared to face the challenges that the changing climate is bringing. Reducing emissions is key to reducing climate impacts in the long term and our policies to support net zero are crucial. However, climate change-related events, such as droughts, flooding and wildfires, are already impacting the natural carbon stores that we rely on to achieve net zero. We know that our country and our world is going to become hotter, drier and wetter, and that the impacts will be colossal. Our third UK climate change risk assessment, published last year, highlighted the risks and opportunities facing the UK from climate change. There are risks to all sectors of our economy, including the natural environment. We are addressing these through the third national adaptation programme—NAP3—which my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye mentioned. That will be published later this summer. We are working with many other Departments to produce the report.

Adaptation is mainstreamed across Government. All policies and programmes need to consider the risks that climate change poses to their success and build in adaptation actions to reduce these risks. Those are all brought together in NAP3, which looks at the 63 risks. NAP3 actions include restoring and creating new habitats for general resilience, as well as targeted actions, such as protecting species that will be particularly vulnerable to climate change. I have just been handed a note to say that I have confused my numbers. I said the number of risks was 63, but we are actually currently monitoring 61 risks in the national adaptation plan.

Local nature recovery strategies prioritise actions to drive nature’s recovery. Part of our work on adaptation is to make net zero policies resilient to climate risks, for example, by planting tree species that will cope with future climate conditions in their location; through ensuring nurseries are stocked with a high-quality, diverse range of species; and by ensuring that land managers have the right tools to make decisions for the future.

The hon. Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) demanded more action. I thought it would be appropriate to set out what we have already achieved because that is sometimes forgotten. We have already put in place legislation, backed by action, to address the concerns that have been raised. That includes a suite of ambitious statutory environmental targets under the Environment Act 2021. Let us not forget that we were one of the first developed countries to legislate for net zero and then we set out the 25-year environment plan. Although all of those targets will help us to adapt to climate change, particularly relevant ones include: ensuring that species abundance in 2042 is greater than in 2022, and at least 10% greater than in 2030; and restoring or creating over 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat outside protected sites by 2042, compared with 2022.

Restoring our natural habitats has numerous benefits for helping communities to adapt to climate change risks: natural flood management, urban cooling and supporting the resilience of ecosystems to climate change. As part of our commitment to a nature recovery network, in May 2022, we launched five unique nature recovery projects spanning nearly 100,000 hectares. They will see the creation and restoration of wildlife-rich habitats, corridors and stepping-stones. They will help wildlife populations to move and thrive, provide nature-based solutions and enable people to enjoy and connect with nature. One of the more recent pledges in the environmental improvement plan is that no one should live more than 15 minutes away from nature—a green space or a blue space.

The debate is about climate change, as opposed to just climate change adaptation. I appreciate that adaptation is in the DEFRA brief, but I am a little concerned that there does not seem to be that joined-up thinking about the importance of nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation as well. Those can be incredibly powerful for carbon sequestration, whether that is wetlands or planting trees. Is the Minister talking to colleagues in the newly created Department for Energy Security and Net Zero about how to ensure that those two things work together?

I think, Mr Gray, that the debate is about the role of nature in adapting to climate change. I am prepared to stand corrected if I have got that wrong.

The debate is on “Climate Change and Biodiversity”, so I think we are all in order.

Jolly good. Yes, absolutely, I confirm that I speak regularly with my counterparts elsewhere in DEFRA, which has been one of the lead Departments, certainly for net zero, although the climate change national adaptation plan involves many Departments. However, mitigation is also a key priority in DEFRA, where I speak with colleagues, although it the direct responsibility of Lord Benyon.

[Source]

17:27 Sally-Ann Hart

I thank the Minister for her response. Clearly, Members across the House, representing all parts of the UK, have left us in no doubt that biodiversity and nature-based solutions are vital to this country in the actions we take to mitigate the effects of climate change. I thank everyone for attending the debate.

Using biodiversity and nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change is key. I welcome the Minister’s understanding of the situation and the recommendations, and of our need to consider those and other policy measures by working closely with the organisations that are expert in the area on NAP3.

That this House has considered climate change and biodiversity.

[Source]