Tackling the Nature Crisis

Submitted by: Federal Policy Committee.
Mover: Baroness Parminter.
Summation: Richard Benwell (Chair of the Policy Working Group).

Conference notes with concern that:

1. The UK has lost nearly half of its biodiversity since the Industrial Revolution and is ranked in the bottom 10% in the world and the worst among G7 nations for biodiversity.
2. The Conservative Government has missed its 2020 target for 50% of Sites of Special Scientific Interest to be in favourable condition and for UK seas to meet Good Environmental Status.
3. The Conservative Government is set to miss its target for 75% of rivers and streams to be in good condition by 2027, with just 14% of surface waters in good ecological condition in England and 0% in good overall condition.
4. There has been a global decline of 68% in animal population sizes since 1970.
5. The climate emergency and the ecological emergencies are intrinsically linked, and that there has been insufficient action in the UK and globally to tackle the climate emergency.

Conference recognises that the ecological emergency is one of the greatest threats to life on Earth, and to people's health, wellbeing and prosperity, and without urgent and effective action domestically and internationally nature and human life will be put in serious jeopardy.

Conference also believes that the Liberal Democrats are the only party that understands the scale of the challenge, and has the right solutions to deliver a vibrant and thriving natural world with clean rivers, seas, lakes and air that will safeguard the wellbeing of present and future generations.

Conference therefore endorses policy paper 156, Tackling the Nature Crisis, in particular its proposals to:

1. Reverse the decline of nature by 2030 and double nature by 2050 by:
   1. Increasing the protected area network from 8% of the land to at least 16%.
   2. Doubling the area of the most important wildlife habitats across England.
   3. Doubling the abundance of species in the UK from the current baseline.
   4. Empowering and funding local government to increase the network of local nature reserves and to ensure they are well managed, to move to nature-friendly management policy of council land, including highway verges and farm land.
2. Introduce a 'Right to Nature', which would include:
   1. A new Environmental Rights Act, which would recognise everyone's human right to a healthy environment and guarantee access to environmental justice.
   2. Establishing a new Open Environment Standard.
   3. Introducing a Duty of Care for businesses to protect the environment.
3. Reduce the UK's environmental impact globally by:
   1. Mandating disclosure of impacts on nature in major financial and business sectors.
   2. Upholding the highest environmental standards in our trade deals.
   3. Aligning with the EU's rules at a minimum and rejoining the EU REACH programme and the European Chemical Agency.
4. Manage our land for nature by:
   1. Providing a fair deal for farmers with a long-term funding guarantee, based on public money for public goods, to pay for a shift to a wildlife-friendly, high welfare, climate-positive and economically thriving farming sector.
   2. Establishing a new Environmental Markets Authority, setting standards to ensure all markets work for nature and climate, and eliminating greenwash.
   3. Introducing a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework to effectively balance competing demands on our land and oceans.
   4. Introducing a new Sustainable Land Standard.
5. Manage our seas for nature by:
   1. Reforming marine spatial planning to deliver a new, integrated approach, focused on sustainability.
   2. Reforming the fishing quota allocation system to reward the most sustainable fleet, and ensure all catch limits are set at sustainable levels.
   3. Putting in place effective management rules, to support the ecology of each protected area, including a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas.
   4. Ensuring at least 30% of our seas will be fully or highly protected by 2030.
   5. Funding coastal local government authorities to increase the monitoring of the health of coastal waters and to develop ways to increase the communication of the results.
6. Manage our lakes, rivers and streams for nature by:
   1. Taking urgent measures, including mandating major infrastructure upgrades in the sewage system and implementing natural catchment solutions, to end sewage pollution, prevent harmful run-off from agriculture, and ensure developments do not add to the pollution burden on our precious freshwaters.
   2. Introducing nutrient budgeting in English catchments, requiring projects in vulnerable areas to demonstrate 'nutrient negativity' before they proceed.
   3. Setting new 'blue flag' standard and introducing a 'blue corridor' programme for rivers, streams and lakes to ensure clean, healthy water.
   4. Abolishing Ofwat and replacing it with a regulator with real and meaningful powers.
7. Make the economy and government work for nature by:
   1. Delivering an Environment and Wellbeing Budget, introducing a new fiscal rule to ensure that tax and spending plans are sustainable and implementing a green finance plan.
   2. Undertaking regular systematic reviews to ensure that green taxes and spending make up an increasing proportion of the overall fiscal picture.
   3. Increasing the tax reliefs offered for greener choices and phase out subsidies for polluting industries.
   4. Ensuring that the twin purposes of nature's recovery and climate stability are written into the guiding statutory purposes of all relevant public bodies.
8. Reduce the UK's resource consumption by:
   1. Embedding circular economy principles to reduce use of raw materials and minimise pollution at home and abroad.
   2. Ensuring the right incentives are in place to cut back on waste and overconsumption, including comprehensive deposit return schemes and Extended Producer Responsibility.
   3. Introducing standards for repairability, interoperability, sustainable construction and reusability.
   4. Allowing local government to put sustainability at the core of purchasing policy and fully funding councils for any cost involved in delivering this.
9. Make planning work for nature by:
   1. Reforming the planning system to make environmental improvement and quality of life explicit purposes of planning.
   2. Funding local authorities to invest in their planning departments to ensure they are able to properly assess plans for environmental improvement, and resourcing local authorities to properly defend planning appeals when they deem applications to be inadequate on environmental improvement grounds.
   3. Improving biodiversity net gain requirements by increasing the length of time that net gain habitat must be maintained from 30 years to 120 years and increasing the net gain requirement for major developments from 10% in smaller sites up to 100% in larger greenfield sites.
   4. Empowering Local Nature Recovery Strategies to identify a new Wild Belt for nature's recovery.
   5. Completing our Nature Recovery Network by strengthening and completing the network of England's environmental protected areas and improving the management and funding of AONBs and National Parks for nature.
10. Tackle the climate emergency by:
    1. Mapping out the areas that are most important for nature and climate and extend planning protection and investment to those areas.
    2. Setting new standards, including a Blue Carbon Standard and a Soils Carbon Standard.
    3. Protecting the UK's most important carbon store with a complete ban on horticultural peat use, burning heather on peatlands, and restoring the peatlands that have been damaged.
    4. Doubling woodland cover by 2050.
    5. Empowering local government to continue to develop and deliver practical local action to tackle climate change.

Applicability: England only; except 2. (lines 38-45), which is England and Wales; and 3. (lines 46-53) and 7. and 8. (lines 94-117), which are Federal.

Motion before amendment

Conference notes with concern that:

1. The UK has lost nearly half of its biodiversity since the Industrial Revolution and is ranked in the bottom 10% in the world and the worst among G7 nations for biodiversity.
2. The Conservative Government has missed its 2020 target for 50% of Sites of Special Scientific Interest to be in favourable condition and for UK seas to meet Good Environmental Status.
3. The Conservative Government is set to miss its target for 75% of rivers and streams to be in good condition by 2027, with just 14% of surface waters in good ecological condition in England and 0% in good overall condition.
4. There has been a global decline of 68% in animal population sizes since 1970.
5. The climate emergency and the ecological emergencies are intrinsically linked, and that there has been insufficient action in the UK and globally to tackle the climate emergency.

Conference recognises that the ecological emergency is one of the greatest threats to life on Earth, and to people's health, wellbeing and prosperity, and without urgent and effective action domestically and internationally nature and human life will be put in serious jeopardy.

Conference also believes that the Liberal Democrats are the only party that understands the scale of the challenge, and has the right solutions to deliver a vibrant and thriving natural world with clean rivers, seas, lakes and air that will safeguard the wellbeing of present and future generations.

Conference therefore endorses policy paper 156, Tackling the Nature Crisis, in particular its proposals to:

1. Reverse the decline of nature by 2030 and double nature by 2050 by:
   1. Increasing the protected area network from 8% of the land to at least 16%.
   2. Doubling the area of the most important wildlife habitats across England.
   3. Doubling the abundance of species in the UK from the current baseline.
2. Introduce a 'Right to Nature', which would include:
   1. A new Environmental Rights Act, which would recognise everyone's human right to a healthy environment and guarantee access to environmental justice.
   2. Establishing a new Open Environment Standard.
   3. Introducing a Duty of Care for businesses to protect the environment.
3. Reduce the UK's environmental impact globally by:
   1. Mandating disclosure of impacts on nature in major financial and business sectors.
   2. Upholding the highest environmental standards in our trade deals.
   3. Aligning with the EU's rules at a minimum and rejoining the EU REACH programme and the European Chemical Agency.
4. Manage our land for nature by:
   1. Providing a fair deal for farmers with a long-term funding guarantee, based on public money for public goods, to pay for a shift to a wildlife-friendly, high welfare, climate-positive and economically thriving farming sector.
   2. Establishing a new Environmental Markets Authority, setting standards to ensure all markets work for nature and climate, and eliminating greenwash.
   3. Introducing a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework to effectively balance competing demands on our land and oceans.
   4. Introducing a new Sustainable Land Standard.
5. Manage our seas for nature by:
   1. Reforming marine spatial planning to deliver a new, integrated approach, focused on sustainability.
   2. Reforming the fishing quota allocation system to reward the most sustainable fleet, and ensure all catch limits are set at sustainable levels.
   3. Putting in place effective management rules, to support the ecology of each protected area, including a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas.
   4. Ensuring at least 30% of our seas will be fully or highly protected by 2030.
6. Manage our lakes, rivers and streams for nature by:
   1. Taking urgent measures, including mandating major infrastructure upgrades in the sewage system and implementing natural catchment solutions, to end sewage pollution, prevent harmful run-off from agriculture, and ensure developments do not add to the pollution burden on our precious freshwaters.
   2. Introducing nutrient budgeting in English catchments, requiring projects in vulnerable areas to demonstrate 'nutrient negativity' before they proceed.
   3. Setting new 'blue flag' standard and introducing a 'blue corridor' programme for rivers, streams and lakes to ensure clean, healthy water.
   4. Abolishing Ofwat and replacing it with a regulator with real and meaningful powers.
7. Make the economy and government work for nature by:
   1. Delivering an Environment and Wellbeing Budget, introducing a new fiscal rule to ensure that tax and spending plans are sustainable and implementing a green finance plan.
   2. Undertaking regular systematic reviews to ensure that green taxes and spending make up an increasing proportion of the overall fiscal picture.
   3. Increasing the tax reliefs offered for greener choices and phase out subsidies for polluting industries.
   4. Ensuring that the twin purposes of nature's recovery and climate stability are written into the guiding statutory purposes of all relevant public bodies.
8. Reduce the UK's resource consumption by:
   1. Embedding circular economy principles to reduce use of raw materials and minimise pollution at home and abroad.
   2. Ensuring the right incentives are in place to cut back on waste and overconsumption, including comprehensive deposit return schemes and Extended Producer Responsibility.
   3. Introducing standards for repairability, interoperability, sustainable construction and reusability.
9. Make planning work for nature by:
   1. Reforming the planning system to make environmental improvement and quality of life explicit purposes of planning.
   2. Improving biodiversity net gain requirements by increasing the length of time that net gain habitat must be maintained from 30 years to 120 years and increasing the net gain requirement for major developments from 10% in smaller sites up to 100% in larger greenfield sites.
   3. Empowering Local Nature Recovery Strategies to identify a new Wild Belt for nature's recovery.
   4. Completing our Nature Recovery Network by strengthening and completing the network of England's environmental protected areas and improving the management and funding of AONBs and National Parks for nature.
10. Tackle the climate emergency by:
    1. Mapping out the areas that are most important for nature and climate and extend planning protection and investment to those areas.
    2. Setting new standards, including a Blue Carbon Standard and a Soils Carbon Standard.
    3. Protecting the UK's most important carbon store with a complete ban on horticultural peat use, burning heather on peatlands, and restoring the peatlands that have been damaged.
    4. Doubling woodland cover by 2050.

Applicability: England only; except 2. (lines 38-45), which is England and Wales; and 3. (lines 46-53) and 7. and 8. (lines 94-117), which are Federal.

Mover and summation: 16 minutes combined; movers and summation of any amendments: 4 minutes; all other speakers: 3 minutes. For eligibility and procedure for speaking in this debate, see pages 110-111 of the agenda.

The deadline for amendments to this motion is 13.00 Monday 11 September. Those selected for debate will be printed in Conference Extra and Tuesday's Conference Daily. The deadline for requests for separate votes is 09.00 on Monday 25 September.

In addition to speeches from the platform, voting members will be able to make concise (maximum one minute) interventions from the floor during the debate on the motion. See pages 109 and 111 of the agenda for further information.

Amendments

Amendment One

PASSED

Submitted by: ALDC
Mover: Cllr Vikki Slade.
Summation: Richard Cole.

After 1. c) (line 37), insert:

d)     Empowering and funding local government to increase the network of local nature reserves and to ensure they are well managed, to move to nature-friendly management policy of council land, including highway verges and farm land.

After 5. d) (line 77), insert:

e)     Funding coastal local government authorities to increase the monitoring of the health of coastal waters and to develop ways to increase the communication of the results.

After 8. c) (line 117), insert:

d)     Allowing local government to put sustainability at the core of purchasing policy and fully funding councils for any cost involved in delivering this.

After 9. a) (line 121), insert:

b)     Funding local authorities to invest in their planning departments to ensure they are able to properly assess plans for environmental improvement, and resourcing local authorities to properly defend planning appeals when they deem applications to be inadequate on environmental improvement grounds.

After 10.d) (line 145), add:

e)     Empowering local government to continue to develop and deliver practical local action to tackle climate change.