17:51 Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con) [R]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. Without wanting to sound competitive, Somerset has some amazing wetlands and Ramsar sites, and Somerset Wetlands, which includes the west of Sedgemoor in my constituency, is England’s largest super national nature reserve. Does she agree that such declarations are crucial to reversing nature’s decline and to the fight against climate change?

I do. I will come on to the fight against climate change, because the hon. Lady is absolutely right. She speaks about Somerset. Investment of £20 million, I think, went in for flood resilience work, and there is work going on with farmers. The expertise she speaks to can be sold around this country and exported around the world, so I am excited that she is able to speak so fondly of that.

I would welcome a renewed push on four transformative steps that would speed up the progress on creating and restoring 100,000 additional hectares. I invite everyone in the Chamber to join the all-party parliamentary group for wetlands and join the fight, because it is crucial to achieving the net zero target. I would like action, but I will also take manifesto commitments.

Before my hon. Friend comes on to her priorities, may I just set out how impressive she has been in persuading me, as a former Minister, and colleagues across the House of the wonderful benefits of wetlands? We are all more knowledgeable thanks to her and the work of WWT in her constituency. As well as the benefits for climate change and biodiversity, does she recognise the benefits to our health? Our mind, body and soul can really appreciate the value of spending time in green and blue spaces. As there seems to be some competition, let me say that I have 32 miles of coastline and many lakes—a wetland in the English Lake district. The benefits to our mental and physical health must not be underestimated. A wetland can be just a pond, and the 30 million gardeners across this great land can also play a significant part.

The Climate Change Committee has stressed the importance of protecting and restoring saltmarsh and seagrass because they are so efficient at carbon removal. In the long term, saltmarshes bury carbon 40 times faster than woodland. I know that the Government are obsessed with trees because we can count them, and we like things to be measurable, but there are other options. Let us do the trees, but let us do the wetlands as well.

[Source]

18:08 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)

These ecosystems are not just landscapes of natural beauty and biodiversity; they are also critical to our mission to restore nature and to hit our climate change targets. I am going to lay out the things that we are already doing and the things that we are working on. A year ago, we published our environmental improvement plan, which set out the Government’s ambitions to improve the environment for the whole nation. Those commitments are underpinned by our legally binding Environment Act 2021 targets, including our apex target to halt the decline of species by 2030. This should not be taken lightly; it is a globally leading target. It is pretty phenomenal to have committed to setting such a target in law. We have also committed to creating or restoring over 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats by 2042.

Internationally, at the most recent convention on biological diversity, COP15, the UK was at the forefront of efforts to secure another ambitious agreement, to protect 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030, including through the conservation and restoration of freshwater habitats. We have heard today about the freshwater volunteers working in the Forest of Dean— [ Interruption. ] Apologies, the New Forest. Those volunteers recognise the importance of the habitat in their area in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis). In December we furthered our commitment to freshwater wetland habitats at the United Nations framework convention on climate change, COP28, by signing up to the international freshwater challenge. We are also a proud member of the international Ramsar convention on wetlands. Across the UK, including the Crown dependencies and overseas territories, we protect 175 internationally important Ramsar sites. That is more than any other country in the world.

Those projects are supporting species recovery and building resilience against the impacts of climate change. In total, such projects cover something like 200,000 hectares, so a significant amount is already going to restoring those wonderful sites. We are about to announce the successful bids to our £25 million species survival fund grants, which we launched last year. A range of those projects will restore more habitats, including wetlands. Half of the projects funded by our £14.5 million species recovery programme capital grant scheme will support the recovery of wetland habitats and species such as the wonderful lapwing and black-tailed godwit, as well as mammals such as the water vole and white-faced darter. I know that has sparked the interest of Mr Deputy Speaker. As has been said, 10% of our species live in wetlands, so it is important that we look after them and help those that are in decline.

Our countryside stewardship schemes pay for actions to create and manage reedbed and fens. At the recent Oxford farming conference in January, as part of the new environmental land management schemes, we are updating these actions to better reflect the costs and income forgone for all farm types to create and maintain those important habitats. That has resulted in increased payment rates. For example, the previous rate of £35 a hectare for management of a fen has rocketed to £920 a hectare, which has been extremely well received. In addition, we are making these offers less prescriptive and more flexible about how they achieve the intended outcomes. That will help to incentivise the creation of new wetlands, contributing to our outcomes for biodiversity, water quality and net zero.

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. We work widely on the international stage. Indeed, some of our Blue Planet fund and our Darwin fund go to working on wetland areas internationally, particularly restoring mangroves and work on climate change. We are already doing a great deal, but we can always learn from other countries. It should be a reciprocal learning process, and we will continue to work like that.

Wetlands can play an important role in addressing both the causes and the effect of climate change. That is why DEFRA is funding £300,000-worth of projects this financial year, to measure and verify the carbon storage potential of saltmarsh habitats, which, again, was raised by my hon. Friend. That will allow private investment to be leveraged through the saltmarsh carbon code. Basically, that means that a standard will be verified for carbon credits and for saltmarsh, which will then trigger a market and private finance can then be leveraged, much as we do with the peatland code. That is on the way, and I believe that is also one of my hon. Friend’s asks.

In the net zero strategy, we have committed to the aim of restoring approximately 280,000 hectares of peatland in England by 2050. That is building on that 35,000 hectares, which is well under way. And the £80 million green recovery challenge fund has also been a cornerstone in our efforts and has contributed to funding a range of nature-based solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation, including riverine, coastal, floodplain and grazing and marsh habitats. That fund, as many in this Chamber will know, was set up during covid to help with lots of the effects and to get people out into nature and the countryside, but also to create skills and jobs, and it is extremely successful.

[Source]