- The UK’s Action Plan for nature restoration has been launched during international nature talks in Rome
- Nature groups call on national delegates gathered in Rome to commit to more finance and detailed implementation plans to ensure global targets for nature are achieved
- With the UK playing a key role in global biodiversity targets at talks in 2022, now is the time to back this up with domestic action
Today (26 February 2025), the UK Government has launched its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. This strategy brings together plans from each of the UK’s four countries and is intended to set out how the UK as a whole will work to achieve international nature goals at home, including the target to protect and restore 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.
Whilst the NBSAP outlines the UK’s contributions to the Global Biodiversity Framework targets (first published in Autumn 2024), it lacks an analysis of the contributions required from each UK nation to meet overall UK targets. And whether existing policies, actions, and funding in each country are actually sufficient to achieve them.
Previous analysis released by Link in October 2024 on policy progress in England towards global biodiversity targets (agreed at COP15 in 2022) showed action in many areas had stalled or even went backwards. [1]
Richard Benwell, CEO at Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “We’re grateful to see the UK publish this plan, but it’s just the start. Now the real action begins in each of the UK’s four countries to get the plans, policies and funding in place to deliver the nature targets by 2030. The Government is currently undertaking a much-needed review of the Environmental Improvement Plan in England. This must lock in action to meet global nature targets, and set the UK on a path of restored nature, healthy communities and a sustainable economy.” [2]
Beccy Speight, RSPB chief executive, said: “This action plan points to ambitious and much-needed targets and high-level strategies for tackling nature loss in the UK. But time is running out for these to just remain well-intentioned words on a piece of paper. Each of the UK’s countries and territories need to get on with the job of guaranteeing our global promises translate into action on the ground. Now we need strong legislation followed up with workable, properly funded polices to genuinely turn the tide for nature and climate. That work must begin today.”
Karen Whitfield, CEO of Wales Environment Link, said: "Wales faces a nature emergency. Failure to act urgently could cause irreversible damage to habitats and species, while hampering our response to the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change. We urgently need an increase in investment in nature recovery to strengthen the natural capital on which people and the economy depend, to address the climate emergency, and to deliver international commitments of the Global Biodiversity Framework.
“The publication of the UK’s NBSAP is a welcome step, but we now need to see this ambition underpinned and driven forward by legally binding targets under the Welsh Government’s forthcoming Environmental Governance, Principles and Biodiversity Bill.” [3]
Max Bryant, CEO of Northern Ireland Environment Link (NIEL), said: “NIEL believes that having clear, binding targets is critical to ensure action is taken to better protect our biodiversity, and that time and resources are directed to where they can be most effective. Working towards a number of definitive goals can help to inform the actions we take for nature over the coming years and provides a benchmark against which our progress can be measured.” [4]
Deborah Long, Chief Officer of Scottish Environment LINK, said: “We are pleased to see global ambition is translating into ambition on the part of the Scottish Government. However, it is now essential that we see commitments turned into delivery.
“Scotland’s Strategic Framework for Biodiversity published at the end of 2024 outlines ambitious steps to restoring nature. This strategy and accompanying delivery plan, alongside the recently introduced Natural Environment Bill and legal targets for nature recovery, sets the stage for urgent action to address Scotland’s biodiversity crisis. But reaching these ambitions will require strong leadership, effective collaboration, clear targets and dedicated funding.” [5]
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
1. Environmental policy in the UK is devolved across the four nations.
2. Action in England must include:
- The Environmental Improvement Plan, currently being revised, must include a commitment to meeting all international Global Biodiversity Framework targets, and must set out how these targets will be delivered.
- Currently, the policies, actions and funding are not sufficient to deliver any of the targets in England, by Link’s analysis.
- New policies and new funding set out in the Comprehensive Spending Review in June to ensure delivery action genuinely adds up to achieving these ambitious targets.
- This should include:
- increased public investment to address the nature finance gap
- an increase to the nature-friendly farming budget to support delivery of nature targets and sustainable land management
- introduction of a Nature Recovery Obligation for high-impact industries.
3. Action in Wales must include:
- The pathway to nature recovery outlined by the Global Biodiversity Framework is clear, but the longer we wait the more challenging and costly it becomes. That is why WEL recently re-published our Pathways to 2030 Report, with revised figures resulting from new evidence and inflation, incurred partly as a result of delays to implementation of actions to protect and restore nature.
- To deliver the Global Biodiversity Framework, Wales must:
- Deliver the overdue Environmental Governance, Principles, and Biodiversity Targets Bill, ensuring ambitious targets for the recovery of species and habitats are secured in law backed by robust, independent environmental governance.
- Provide a fair deal for farmers, nature, and communities, providing sufficient funding for a just transition to a Sustainable Farming Scheme and wider food system that delivers for nature and climate and tackles farm pollution and pesticide use.
- Restore 30% of degraded ecosystems on land and at sea, and effectively conserve 30% of land and sea by 2030, letting nature invest in people and wellbeing by tackling nature poverty and bring nature back to Wales
- Provide green stimulus, raising at least £1bn a year to fight the nature and climate emergencies and back the Nature Service for Wales.
- Cutting budgets takes us in the wrong direction - we cannot face up to the huge scope of the nature emergency in Wales by underinvesting in nature.
4. Action in Northern Ireland must include:
- It has been clear for a while that biodiversity in NI is not doing well. As the DAERA draft NI Environment Strategy said: “Key reports in 2019 reported concerning trends in abundance indicators for a suite of species in NI and widespread loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitats.”
- There are many other sources of evidence of the poor state of NI’s biodiversity. For example, NI got a ranking of 12 (out of 240 countries and territories, where a ranking of 1 is the lowest biodiversity intactness and 240 the highest) in a Biodiversity Intactness Index, which indicates how much nature is left from a pristine state, for the amount of nature it has left. Even our designated areas are not doing well. According to the 2024 Environmental Statistics report , for the 2023/24 reporting period, only 55% of all features both terrestrial and marine, were in favourable condition in our Areas of Special Scientific Interest (ASSIs).
- The announcement of the Nature Recovery Fund in January 2025 is welcome but funding needs to be backed up by policy and legislation, including the introduction of ambitious targets in law to halt and reverse the systemic loss of biodiversity and put nature on the path to recovery by 2030. A key part of this will be the 30x30 target to ensure the effective protection and management of at least 30% of land and sea for nature and people by 2030, a goal which was endorsed by the former AERA Minister in the NI Assembly on 25th May 2021.
- NI also needs to publish a new Nature Recovery Strategy to replace the previous Biodiversity Strategy, which covered the period up to 2020.
5. Action in Scotland must include:
- The Natural Environment Bill, introduced last week, is a key opportunity to halt nature’s decline in Scotland. With legally binding recovery targets, it will provide accountability to drive progress.
- The Scottish Biodiversity Strategy (SBS), published in late 2024, aims to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and restore it by 2045. The Natural Environment Bill will be crucial in achieving the SBS goals.
- By 2030, every local authority must have a spatially defined, ecologically coherent Nature Network. Local authorities need financial support and ecological expertise to design and implement effective networks that connect key biodiversity areas.
- Scotland’s commitment to protect 30% of land and seas for nature by 2030 relies on effective Protected Areas and action to support threatened species. Scottish Government and NatureScot are currently engaging with stakeholders to improve the monitoring of existing protected areas and develop criteria for Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs).
