The passage of the Natural Environment Bill is a victory for campaigners who’ve been pushing for statutory nature targets for close to a decade.
The government’s press release said that: “When set, the targets will ensure Scotland is on a bold and ambitious journey to be ‘nature positive’ by 2030 and has actively and substantially restored nature by 2045”.
There’s lots of good stuff in the Bill. There are stronger powers to intervene and tackle unsustainably high deer populations. The duty for public bodies to act in the interests of nature has been strengthened. Ministers will have the power to enforce higher standards in forestry. And the introduction of nature targets should support a government-wide response to the biodiversity crisis.
Scotland’s experience with climate policy shows that setting targets in law can help drive action, but it doesn’t guarantee a good result. You can’t legislate for an outcome, only a process.
The two high-level objectives set out by the Scottish Government are worth considering in turn.
We’ve not yet seen the metrics that this will be measured against, but substantially restoring nature by 2045 is completely achievable. Over two decades there is an enormous amount we can do to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss, to make landscape-scale interventions, and to connect fragmented habitats. The impacts of climate change may make this work harder but not impossible.
The first objective will be judged much sooner. Being ‘nature positive’ means, in simple terms, stop making things worse and start making things better.
What would achieving that by 2030 look like? Last year LINK published our manifesto for the next Scottish Parliament with detailed asks across policy areas. But I want to highlight two specific issues.
A majority of Scotland’s land is under agricultural management and the industrialisation of farming has been a significant driver of nature loss. There are lots of win-wins for farmers and nature that can make agriculture both more economically and ecologically resilient. But the process of reforming the dysfunctional farm payments system has been so slow that environmental groups felt forced to walk away from the government’s advisory group on agriculture in December.
A week prior to this, the government announced the fourth delay to a consultation on introducing fisheries management in marine protected areas. These protections for our seas were originally expected to be implemented in 2016. A decade later, and consultation has been pushed back, again, until after the election.
There are a range of reasons why progress in these two areas has been insufficient but, combined, they show the scale of inertia that must be overcome to make a real breakthrough towards nature recovery.
It is a good thing that the Scottish Government acknowledges the nature crisis. It is a good thing that a clear majority of the Scottish Parliament has voted for action to reverse biodiversity loss. The ambitions of the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy are strong, and lots of good work is underway. But we are faced with a long-term historic decline in nature that is entering a period of acute, climate-driven crisis. Targets won’t meet themselves.
The Natural Environment Act should act as a turning point. But it will only do so if it leads to an increased level of urgency and ambition in how Scotland approaches our stewardship of the natural world.