COP15 global nature summit underway

By Jess Price, Conservation Officer

This week is the start of COP15 – a global nature summit, which is seeking agreement on a new set of global targets to halt biodiversity loss. We have to see bold action from all nations to tackle the twin nature and climate crises. We need a nature positive decade (though just eight years remain) so that by 2030 nature is on a path to recovery, with 30% of land and sea protected for nature. We need nature to be more abundant than it is now, so it can help us mitigate and adapt to changing global temperatures.

COP15 must agree a landmark legally-binding global treaty to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity by 2030, and nations must provide effective financial and practical support to global majority countries and indigenous communities.

Watch our regular COP15 video updates here.

If the UK wants to be a world leader on climate and nature, the government must ensure we are taking the same action here at home as we are encouraging others to take internationally. Currently we risk major embarrassment on the world stage, with the UK failing to make a meaningful difference to nature. According to the Office for Environmental Protection, the government has “a pattern of missing legislative deadlines” which undermine the UK’s ability to restore nature. 

Promised but missing policies include:

1. Environment Act targets: overdue and key to nature’s recovery. With just seven years left to deliver them time is running out to reverse nature declines and clean up rivers
2. Long promised Environmental Principles to help interpretation of environmental laws and prevent damage to nature: still missing
3. 30x30 target: to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, but currently only at 3.22% with no clear plan of how to reach 30% in the next seven years
4. Landscapes Review: implementation of protections for National Parks & AONBs – overdue
5. Nature Recovery Green Paper: new protections for sites & species still not published
6. Highly Protected Marine Areas: designations have yet to be announced
7. New farm schemes in England to reward farmers for benefits to society: uncertainty as promised elements of the schemes disappear and ambition diminishes
8. Local Nature Recovery Strategies: new system to plan nature’s recovery but stalled
9. National Action Plan on Sustainable Use of Pesticides: absent since Spring 2022
10. River Basin Management Plans: overdue despite appalling state of England’s rivers
11. Ban on horticultural peat use: yet to introduce legislation to enact the ban
12. Deposit Return Scheme to cut plastic pollution, especially in the marine environment: promised in 2018 but still not even close to being introduced
13. Beaver reintroductions: still awaiting plans for allowing this species to roam wild
14. Bycatch mitigation initiative to protect rare sea life: promised but stalled

We've set out some further detail about Defra's to do list here.

All these stalled policies will prevent the UK from attaining the key principle of COP15 talks – to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.

To make matters worse, the government’s decision to press on with the Retained EU Law Bill threatens over a thousand laws that protect the environment, including those that protect wild places and wildlife, and ensure minimum standards for water quality and pollution. 

That’s why Sussex Wildlife Trust is continuing our #DefendNature campaign and asking you to continue to contact your MP about the terrible dangers of this Bill. Find out more here.