Boris Johnson promises to protect 30% of UK land by 2030

An additional 400,000 hectares of English countryside will be protected to support nature’s recovery under plans to be announced by Boris Johnson.

The prime minister will make the commitment at a virtual United Nations event later on.

It joins a global commitment of 65 leaders to reverse the losses in the natural world by the same date.

National parks, areas of exceptional natural beauty and other protected areas account for 26% of the land in England.

Johnson promises that the government will increase the amount of protected land in the UK from 26% today to 30% by 2030.

The environment is a decentralized issue, but the government has said it will work with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as landowners, to increase the amount of land protected in the UK.

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The prime minister will sign the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, which includes commitments to prioritize an ecological recovery after the coronavirus pandemic, meet ambitious biodiversity targets, and increase funding for nature.

Johnson will say that countries must turn “words into action” and “agree to ambitious targets and binding targets.”

“We cannot afford to hesitate and delay because the loss of biodiversity is happening today and it is happening at a terrifying rate,” he will say.

“If left unchecked, the consequences will be catastrophic for all of us.

“Extinction is forever, so our action must be immediate.”

World leaders have often come together to reach agreements on climate change, but a high-level engagement with nature is much rarer.

Environmentalists are delighted: They say nature is in free fall and urgently in need of protection, as roads, railroads, homes, and farmland cover the Earth.

But they say Boris Johnson must lead by example. They note that around half of the UK’s existing SISs are in poor condition, many due to lack of funding.

What’s more, the measures to protect wildlife in the Environmental Bill are quiet in the Commons due to lack of parliamentary time.

Activists say that if the UK is really taking nature seriously, it must avoid trade deals that harm wildlife.

It must also clamp down on food imports that have caused environmental destruction abroad, such as raising beef in the Amazon.

Martin Harper, RSPB’s director of global conservation, said the 30% commitment could be a “big step in addressing the crisis facing our wildlife.”

“However, the paper targets will not be enough,” he said. “Those established a decade ago failed because they were not backed by action.”

Harper said the promise should be incorporated into national legislation “as part of a set of goals to restore the abundance and diversity of our wildlife in all countries of the UK.”

Craig Bennett, executive director of The Wildlife Trusts, said it was a “good start” but that “a much higher level of urgent action” was needed to restore nature, including rescuing wildlife sites that are currently in decline.

He said that many National Parks and areas of exceptional natural beauty were “severely depleted of wildlife due to overgrazing, mismanagement or intensive agricultural practices,” while about half of the sites of special scientific interest were “in bad shape. state and suffering from a decline in wildlife. ”