Page 10 - Wildlife News April 2018

Hot topics
Chance
of a lifetime
The long-awaited publication
of the Government’s 25 Year
Environment Plan promises lots
for wildlife. But if it’s to come to
fruition it will need to be backed
by legislation, says BBOWT Vice-
President Professor Dieter Helm
Prof. Dieter Helm is a Vice-
President of BBOWT, Chair of
the Natural Capital Committee
and author of Natural Capital:
Valuing the Planet, published
by Yale University Press.
I t has been a long time coming. The promise made in 2011 to
be the first generation to leave the natural environment in a
better state for the next one has followed a tortuous path
through five secretaries of state, but finally we have the 25 Year
Environment Plan, launched by the Prime Minister at the London
Wetland Centre.
It has been worth waiting for. This is one of those historic
turning points and it is what The Wildlife Trusts have been fighting
for for decades. Finally we have concrete commitments, and there
are lots of wins for BBOWT. There is an explicit commitment to
make sure that all the development going on to meet housing
needs will result in a net environmental gain. There is an explicit
commitment to reconnect children with nature. And there are
solid commitments to implement the Lawton Report by creating
significant new areas for nature conservation through the Nature
Recovery Network to join up our fragmented landscape.
Of course it could have been even more ambitious, but
then that would always be true. The Plan is only a plan.
Implementation is another matter and politics is a business of
ever-changing priorities.
To make it stick, the 25 Year Environment Plan commits to the
creation of a new body to hold the Government’s feet to the fire.
There is also to be an end to the wasteful, inefficient and perverse
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which has done such damage
to our landscape, biodiversity and rivers. The money that has been
poured into subsidising the ownership of land is going to go on
public goods, and mostly on the environment.
10 Wildlife news / April 2018
Now’s the time to get on
the front foot for the iconic
wildlife of our counties.
(PHIL LUCKHURST)
Legislation will be essential. Indeed it is inevitable if the
government is to keep its promises. It is time for a new Natural
Environment Act to provide a credible long-term framework for
its delivery over the next decades. The Natural Capital Committee
was clear in its advice on this. Without it all the good words and
intentions could evaporate in the politics of more immediate
demands on MPs’ time and the Treasury’s budgets.
There is no time to lose. BBOWT needs to get its act together,
coming up with new ideas and proposals to turn the 25-year plan
into concrete results in our area. We already have a good start
through the Trust’s numerous initiatives. The opportunities are
there: for engagement with the children for nature programmes,
in identifying new natural habitat creation and coming up
with environmental benefits to address the new planning
requirements on developers. This is a chance to realise what
BBOWT’s members have been striving for since the Trust was
founded.
Minsters talk of ‘taking back control’ after Brexit. Whatever
your view on Brexit, there can be little doubt that bringing an end
to the CAP has to be a big positive. What is now needed is to take
control of the 25 Year Environment Plan, to make it happen locally
as well as nationally, and here BBOWT is in prime position.
This is the moment to move from trying to hold the line on
a process of continuous decline, to getting on the front foot to
make our counties a better environment for the next generation.
This is a big breakthrough and BBOWT should grasp it with both
hands. generationgrasp it with bothands.