The cross-party Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has warned that without substantial private investment and clear commitments from ministers, the UK may not meet its pledge to protect 30% of land by 2030 and offer communities greater access to nature.
Since the Government’s current growth agenda prioritises substantial housebuilding and large-scale infrastructure development, private investment in schemes such as Biodiversity Net Gain will be critical to reverse the UK’s position as one of the most nature depleted countries in the world.
In its report on the role of natural capital in the UK’s green economy, the Committee urges Ministers to set out unequivocally the Government’s support for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and to ensure that BNG delivers on the Government’s aspirations for the policy. BNG drives investment into nature by encouraging developers to provide a minimum increase in biodiversity of 10%, whether this is done on the development site, delivered somewhere else, or by buying ‘credits’ from the Government as compensation.
There has been speculation that the Government may be wavering on its commitment to BNG, given recent proposals for a state-administered Nature Restoration Fund supplied by developer contributions. The Committee fears that a move away from BNG will cause uncertainty in nature markets and will have a negative impact on direct investment into nature restoration initiatives.
The Committee makes a number of recommendations to strengthen BNG, including offering developers the ability to pool BNG projects to ensure that they can attract investments at scale.
The Committee recommends that Ministers demonstrate that natural capital approaches are embedded into all decision-making across Government. The Committee urges the Government to renew its commitment to the principle that “economic and financial decision making... support the delivery of a nature positive future”.
It also recommends that the Government set out in the upcoming Spending Review how it has taken a natural capital approach to evaluate spending decisions as well as to set out how the approaches taken will grow the UK’s stock of natural capital.
The Committee recommends that progress on BNG should be subject to annual review, and that a comprehensive and publicly accessible register of the location of on-site and off-site assets under development— and the investors in each project—should be established. It says the Government should also be clear as to how it proposes to invest the ringfenced revenues from BNG credits.
The Committee concludes that at present, there is no clear method for the Government to understand or assess progress towards the 2021 target to deliver £1 billion of private investment into nature recovery by 2030. EAC therefore recommends that within 12 months the Government provide a report to Parliament on current and projected levels of private investment into nature recovery in England.
The Committee also recommends that the Government undertake a specific assessment of how its proposed Nature Restoration Fund (to be provided for under the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, currently making its way through Parliament) is likely to affect the level of private investment into BNG projects. The Government’s commitment to promoting natural capital investment into nature restoration can be demonstrated by publishing a swift response to its current consultations on the operation of UK natural capital markets.
Environmental Audit Committee Chair, Toby Perkins MP, said: “No ifs, no buts: we need Ministers to facilitate private investment by setting out a clear commitment to the Biodiversity Net Gain policy.
“Biodiversity Net Gain is a ground-breaking approach which can secure genuine and lasting nature recovery in tandem with development in every corner of the country. Speculation that it might be ditched in favour of a broad-brush approach to state funding of nature restoration at scale risks undermining market confidence and further depleting nature in some communities.
“There is a real opportunity, through the Government’s commitment to growth, for nature to grow hand in hand with the economy. Failure to do this properly, and to keep on top of which projects are being invested in, will see green spaces slip away from already nature deprived communities.”
