Jeremy's Blog 16th July 2021: Land Use
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 15th July 2021
The House of Lords Committee stage on the Environment Bill has considered biodiversity gain, the proposal that all development should ensure a net 10 per cent in biodiversity, whether on-site, off-site or by a payment to a fund, with 30 year agreements to secure the change. Alongside other costs and policies, it will guide where development might go amid the conflicting pressures from housing to wildlife, trees, peat and food.
Natural England has just issued the latest version of the way to assess this, Biodiversity Metric 3.0. It avoids the complexities of biodiversity itself by giving a framework for recording and assessing habitats, so focussing on land use. Under the surface, there are large issues about evidence and data.
Such assessment and comparison will become an integral part of work on development, requiring the ecological literacy that will also be needed for the coming land management schemes and the Bill’s Local Nature Recovery Strategies. The Government is confident that the value in such work will attract advisers. Members interested in this area should be preparing for it.
The Government, rejecting suggestions that these agreements be in perpetuity, saw that they would produce long term change, some of which might attract designations. Agreements would need to be registered and monitored. As a comment, they will also need a review mechanism as circumstances (from climate to compulsory purchase), policies and knowledge develop over those 30 years.
The Earl of Devon asked how much land might be used for this. The minister replied in striking terms:
“… the UK is one of the most nature-denuded countries on earth … there is a lot of marginal land which is nature-denuded but could be restored without posing a choice between food production and nature … [which] are not mutually exclusive … We are committed to the 30 by 30 goal: protecting 30% of the country’s land … by 2030. … I think this is something we simply have to do”.
That can be seen as consistent with some expectations for the land use change under the forthcoming local nature recovery and the landscape and ecosystem recovery schemes.
Today’s Dimbleby food policy report has further land use change proposals from those that imply further economic pressure on meat and sugar production to an express division of land between food production, nature-friendly low-intensity farming and outright nature and carbon sequestration.
Land use is now centre stage. Yet, while policies may influence change, the outcomes will be made by the decisions of individual owners.