Aligning Strategies to Address Climate and Biodiversity: The importance of a state of nature target.
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN A STATE OF NATURE TARGET: THE BUSINESS CASE PRODUCED BY THE WILDLIFE & COUNTRYSIDE LINK, SEPTEMBER 2021.
Article by:
James Cameron, Senior Advisor
Valerie Pinkerton, Project Manager, The Pollination Group (1).
The UK was the world’s first major economy to establish a national net-zero target in law, setting a global benchmark for serious climate ambition. Yet it has become increasingly clear that strategies to mitigate climate change must be integrated with measures to tackle the global biodiversity crisis. A fragmented approach risks systemic failure and severe unintended consequences. To ensure coordinated strategies guide decision-making on land use at the national level, the UK must implement a legally binding State of Nature target to halt the decline of biodiversity by 2030.
Elevating a nature-positive target to the statutory footing of the Climate Change Act will ensure the UK delivers both high integrity nature-based mitigation and fortifies its climate resilience through the restoration and regeneration of natural systems. As agriculture and land use represent 12% of all UK emissions, nature-based solutions (NbS) have an integral role to play in meeting the UK’s netzero target (2).
Analysis from WWF and RSPB finds that protecting existing natural carbon stocks will secure the equivalent of 36 years of UK emissions at 2018 levels, while nature can further deliver additional climate mitigation of 75-123 MtCO2e by 2030 (3).
Though forests have the highest sequestration rates in the UK, peatlands hold the largest carbon stores of all habitats (4); however, their extensive degradation means these systems represent the largest emissions source, 24.5 MtCO2e, across the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector (5).
Nature’s mitigation benefits extend beyond terrestrial systems, with the Office for National Statistics estimating that the UK’s blue carbon habitats, like saltmarsh and marine sediments, sequester between 10.5 and 60.1 MtCO2e/year (6). Despite the enormous potential for restoration of natural systems to deliver significant mitigation benefits, unless they are well-designed, carbon-based incentives risk driving interventions at the expense of protecting biodiversity, undermining their long-term resilience and capacity to serve as carbon stores. A legal biodiversity target could help ensure landscape-scale restoration both delivers significant mitigation, while guaranteeing ecosystem integrity and function in a changing climate.
Natural restoration can further build the UK’s climate resilience. For example, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) finds that 1.9 million people across the UK already live in areas at significant risk from flooding, a population which could double by the 2050s. To mitigate increasing flood risks, the CCC recommends the implementation of NbS, such as coastal habitat conservation and sustainable drainage solutions, to restore marine and freshwater biodiversity while protecting vulnerable communities (7).
However, the potential for NbS to contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation will be influenced by the speed with which emissions are reduced, as the UK’s biodiversity is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Climate modelling from the CCC finds that 36% of species in England were at risk of range loss, with increasing temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, wildfire risks, and increasing numbers of pests, pathogens and invasive non-native species affecting terrestrial biodiversity (8).
These risks will exacerbate the ongoing degradation of the UK’s natural environment, which already has the lowest level of biodiversity remaining among the G7 nations. Indeed, 15% of UK species are threatened with extinction and 41% of species surveyed have declined in population since the 1970s (9). To capture and reward both the mitigation and adaptation benefits of nature, we must address the range of cumulative threats to natural systems. Unsustainable agricultural and woodland management, and climate change present two of the top pressures on the UK’s nature (10).
Much like a price on carbon can serve as an economywide discipline to meet climate ambitions, a binding nature target could shape decision-making on land use at all levels. Policy change to scale adoption of regenerative agriculture and other sustainable land-use practices can deliver a virtuous cycle. Healthy ecosystems will sequester carbon, reducing climate impacts on biodiversity, in turn supporting their ability to deliver other adaptation co-benefits.
A State of Nature target would greatly assist in delivering mutually supportive solutions to the interrelated and interdependent climate and biodiversity crises. Alongside the net-zero target, a State of Nature target would provide an overarching strategy to integrate how new environmental, agricultural and planning policies will deliver on the ambition of the 25 Year Environment Plan. New policy initiatives like the Environmental Land Management scheme and Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) should connect to a broader target to restore biodiversity, supported through Local Nature Recovery Strategies and the development of the Nature Recovery Network.
Effective implementation will depend upon a clearly defined vision of success and meaningful allocation of resources for capacity building among landowners to undertake a transformation in land-use practices. The State of Nature target will critically form part of a new set of regulations needed to ensure emerging markets for nature deliver public goods and provide real access to new revenue streams, especially for small-holder farmers who are vulnerable in the agricultural transition period. Similarly, a legal target could help ensure the UK Infrastructure Bank’s net-zero mandate is interpreted to mean valuing nature properly and consistently. We must not waste the unique opportunity presented by the design of this new institution to mobilise funds for nature-based climate resilience initiatives and green infrastructure, as well as include impacts on biodiversity in project selection criteria.
A legal obligation to halt species decline will underpin the design of infrastructure that is both fit-for-purpose in a changing climate and contributes to natural restoration. We are embarking upon a national transformation in an international context. The UK is again poised to lead on the world stage by sending a long, loud and legal signal on biodiversity, in tandem with existing climate legislation. A measurable, enforceable target to halt species decline, tied to a clear baseline, is the first step towards meeting the UK’s international commitments on nature, such as the Leader’s Pledge and the G7 2030 Nature Compact. The success of both the Government’s net-zero and nature-positive goals will depend upon a strong legal foundation to accelerate integrated action on both challenges, including investment at the right scale which respects the uniqueness of place. The UK must seize this unique opportunity to reinforce the linkage between climate and biodiversity, setting an international example to showcase through UNFCCC COP26 and CBD COP15.
1. Pollination is a specialist climate change advisory and investment firm, accelerating the transition to a net zero, climate resilient future.
2. Climate Change Committee (2020) The Sixth Carbon Budget.
3. WWF and RSPB (2020) The Role of Nature in a UK NDC.
4. Natural England (2021) Carbon Storage and Sequestration by Habitat: A Review of the Evidence.
5. Climate Change Committee, see note 1.
6. Office for National Statistics (2021) Marine Accounts, Natural Capital, UK: 2021.
7. Climate Change Committee (2021) Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk.
8. Climate Change Committee, see note 4.
9. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2021) Biodiversity in the UK: Bloom or Bust?
10. State of Nature Partnership (2019) State of Nature 2019.
