February 2025
Today, as global decision makers are gathered in Rome for the resumed sessions of COP16, the UK has put forward its national plan for how it intends to translate global nature promises into action. But does this action plan go far enough to meet the scale of the global nature crisis?
What is an NBSAP? Why is it so important?
Two years ago, the UK played a pivotal role in shaping the global nature targets at COP15, resulting in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF)—an ambitious global action plan to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Building on this foundation, countries – including the UK – are required to produce their own national plans, known as National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs). These should serve as their blueprint for translating global commitments into tangible actions, ensuring that the pledge to protect and restore nature is not merely an aspiration but truly actionable.
How will the NBSAP impact on nature in every country of the UK?
The UK's NBSAP, launched today, includes a strong set of targets, and points to high-level action plans, but is really just the beginning. While the UK government plays a key role in international decision-making such as at COP16 and in publishing the UK-wide action plan, nature policies and their implementation on the ground are largely devolved in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This means these national governments have the primary responsibility for managing nature conservation efforts, improving environmental standards, regulating agriculture practices and safeguarding biodiversity. What is at stake now is how each of these governments are going to build from the NBSAP in order to deliver tangible actions for nature to recover and thrive in all parts of the UK.
How can we ensure the NBSAP will deliver?
With less than 5 years left until 2030, there’s no time to waste. Below, we set out key principles that should guide the delivery of the UK’s NBSAP, as well as the more specific next steps needed per country to bring the NBSAP to life:
Principles for NBSAP implementation:
- Strengthen nature legislation: this includes expediting the passage of essential environmental bills and developing statutory nature recovery targets. By embedding ambitious goals in law, governments can better ensure accountability and drive actions for nature’s recovery.
- Clarify delivery plans: one of the biggest barriers to delivering results on the ground is the lack of sufficiently detailed plans underpinned by data and evidence. The implementation of the NBSAP must fill this gap by clearly defining who will act, when, and how, and outline resource mobilization strategies to ensure effective implementation.
- Strengthen Governance Capacity: setting targets and strategies is only the first step. To make progress, the NBSAP should drive every country to establish robust mechanisms for enforcement, monitoring and assessment. Taking a whole-of-government approach is essential for delivering commitments in time.
- Secure sufficient and comprehensive funding: the funding gap for nature must be closed. Currently, funding schemes for conservation are often fragmented or short term, making it difficult to achieve long-lasting impact. Comprehensive and effective funding frameworks are needed to support frontline conservation effort at scale.
- Foster collaboration across all levels: departments, devolved administrations, and local stakeholders must work together, sharing knowledge, aligning priorities and fostering partnerships. By taking a collaborative approach, we can move more efficiently towards our targets, ensuring resources are used wisely under a common vision to deliver greater benefits for people and wildlife. We welcome that in today’s NBSAP there is a strong recognition of the benefits to this kind of collaboration, and urge this collaborative approach to be invested in.
Crucial next steps to bring the NBSAP to life across the UK
Today’s NBSAP rehashes existing commitments and strategies without adding the detail needed to guarantee action. Below we share what needs to happen next in each of the UK countries to really move from words to action.
The Scottish Government must:
- Ensure that its newly introduced Natural Environment Bill fully grasps the opportunity to drive the recovery of nature in Scotland. The Bill should establish the framework for statutory nature recovery targets as well as other measures including monitoring and enforcement. These targets must underpin the aims of the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and to restore and regenerate biodiversity by 2045. Proposals within the Bill to improve the management of deer for nature and climate are critical to the restoration of habitats including ancient woodland and peatland. As the Bill passes through Parliament, some key proposals should be strengthened, including giving National Parks an overall purpose to lead to nature’s recovery at scale, and ensuring that any changes to environmental protections (specifically Environmental Impact Assessments and the Habitats Regulations) are restricted, made with the full scrutiny of parliament (rather than through secondary legislation), and result in non-regression of protections. Crucially, a thorough delivery plan is needed to convert the targets and measures in the Bill into tangible action, alongside an effective investment plan to ensure adequate funding.
- Enhance support for sustainable farming, forestry, and rural development. The government must deliver its Vision for Agriculture and implement the Agriculture and Rural Communities Act to support farmers and crofters to embrace sustainable farming and nature friendly practices empowering them in delivering climate solutions and restoring biodiversity.
The Welsh Government must:
- Introduce a bill on Environmental Principles, Governance and Biodiversity Targets. This bill must embed environmental principles into law, establish an independent environmental watchdog, and introduce legally binding nature recovery targets reflecting the commitments under the KMGBF. It should hold Welsh Ministers accountable while strengthening public authority duties regarding nature recovery.
- Accelerate the implementation of Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) and finalize the details for delivery. The scheme must integrate nature-friendly practices into farming systems, ensuring agricultural practice contributes to biodiversity restoration and climate mitigation alongside sustainable food production. Within a short period to implementation in 2026, we need to see the government allocate equitable funding and clearly outline how this funding will be spent across different layers of the scheme. The scheme needs to be aligned with KMGBF targets and the NBSAP, which requires the government to delineate how the overall scheme will contribute to the delivery of nature recovery targets.
- Develop and enforce a set of collective actions that contribute directly to CBD ‘30 by 30’ target with urgency, underpinned by the Biodiversity Deep Dive. While recognizing Wales’s capacity and unique environmental challenges, the government must secure the outcome of the Biodiversity Deep Dive driving long-lasting changes on the ground including expanding and improving the protected sites network, leveraging the potential of designated landscapes and reforming land and marine management.
The Government in Northern Ireland must:
- Ensure the consultation on the new Nature Recovery Strategy results in a clear action plan for the delivery of the KMGBF in Northern Ireland.
- Establish an independent environmental protection agency to protect, restore, and improve the environment - following the Environmental Governance Review that will close in late summer 2025.
- Address funding shortfalls and invest in institutional capacity. The government must significantly increase funding in sectors critical to nature recovery. Particularly, more funding needs to go to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) for monitoring biodiversity, implementing conservation strategies and conducting regular assessment of progress.
- Develop nature-friendly farming. The government must recognise the central role of nature-friendly farming in delivering environmental targets and public goods. This requires ensuring that the new agri-environment scheme, the Farming with Nature Package, is adequately funded and resourced. In addition, a new Agriculture Act is needed to establish sustainable land management practices that support future agricultural policy. While the current budget is under significant strain, the government must increase investment in nature-friendly farming schemes and policies to support the transition to a more nature-positive agricultural system.
- Enhance and protect critical habitats. We need to see the government mobilize resources for improving the condition of protected sites, particularly more robust actions are needed to improve freshwater ecosystems and save lakes and wetlands from ongoing decline. Additionally, we need a clear strategy from DAERA to achieve the KMGBF target of ensuring 30% of land is under effective conservation.
The Westminster government must:
- Ensure the current revision to the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) results in ramped up action to reach the crucial targets set under the Environment Act 2021. The revision must include clear delivery plans that specify who is responsible for what, when and how, backed by sufficient resources. To ensure effective delivery, the EIP should be underpinned by long-term funding cycles for policies and programmes, a balanced approach to addressing trade-offs between social and economic interests in land and sea use, and decision making that is firmly grounded in evidence and scientific data.
- Fully implement nature friendly farming schemes. In England agricultural practices pose the biggest threat to wildlife and natural habitats through land use and pollution. They also represent the greatest opportunity to achieve nature recovery at scale. It is critical that the government scales up access to, and ring fences a budget for, higher tier ELM schemes (CS Higher Tier and Landscape Recovery) and links their outcomes to relevant EIP targets.
- Set out clear plans to improve the extent, condition and resilience of the protected sites network. Protected sites are fundamental for nature's recovery and meeting the 30 by 30 target, which requires a robust and properly resourced delivery plan. At sea, the government urgently needs to strengthen and effectively manage Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as current protections for marine biodiversity and habitats are far from sufficient to halt degradation.
- Strengthen spatial planning for nature recovery. The competing demands for use of land and sea are significantly holding back environmental progress. To successfully deliver environmental targets, the government must develop and implement a nature-positive land use framework, as well as Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs), and detailed catchment and marine spatial plans.
Nature is complex; ecosystems weave together air, water, and habitats such as woodlands, wetlands, and the marine environment with wildlife into a single interconnected network. Restoring nature’s richness calls for long-term commitment and a joined-up approach across departments and levels of governance. With the provision of international frameworks and UK action plans we need governments to up their game to deliver transformative change in both governance systems and the natural environment.
Seize the opportunity, time to deliver for nature
The implementation of the NBSAP presents a historic opportunity to bend the curve of nature’s decline and restore nature’s abundance. With only five years left until 2030, each country must tailor its actions to its own unique challenges and capacities, while using the NBSAP to foster cross-departmental, cross-governmental cooperation, and forge transformative alliances. Now is the moment to unite and drive forward—making ‘living in harmony with nature’ vision a true reality. Delaying now risks not only missing critical targets but causing further, potentially irreversible damage to our species and habitats.
Donia Zhang is Global Policy Volunteer at the RSPB.
The opinions expressed in this blog are the authors' and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.
