{"id":539191,"date":"2026-07-13T12:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T12:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/539191\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T12:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T12:33:10","slug":"plan-to-restore-nature-in-england-by-2030-criticised-as-completely-insufficient-environment-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/539191\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan to restore nature in England by 2030 criticised as \u2018completely insufficient\u2019 | Environment policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government\u2019s plan to protect and restore nature in England<\/a> by 2030 has been condemned as \u201cpathetic\u201d and \u201ccompletely insufficient\u201d in the face of the spiralling environmental crisis.<\/p>\n

The long-awaited plan published on Monday calls for landowners to voluntarily opt to protect and enhance nature, rather than creating legal protections for nature across more of the country\u2019s land, critics say.<\/p>\n

Ministers said the strategy would accelerate action to meet an international commitment to restore 30% of nature by 2030 made by more than 100 countries during Cop15 negotiations<\/a> in Montreal in 2022.<\/p>\n

The target is considered the minimum restoration needed to halt and reverse the global decline in nature<\/a>. But with four years to go, the government is a long way off the target. Its own analysis shows that just 7% of land in England meets the \u201c30by30\u201d criteria.<\/p>\n

The new plan identifies land covering about 32% of England that is either already likely to or has the potential to contribute to the 30by30 goal, but the plan acknowledges that reaching the target will require a step change in ambition, coordination and delivery.<\/p>\n

It comes as one of the country\u2019s biggest landowners, the Church of England, prepares to vote on Tuesday on a motion to rewild 30% of its land by 2030.<\/p>\n

The environment minister Mary Creagh said the government\u2019s plan<\/a> was a call to action for land managers, farmers and communities to work together to secure the natural systems that underpin a healthy, resilient and prosperous country.<\/p>\n

But the nature writer Guy Shrubsole said it was more of the failed politics of the past 40 years, with ministers failing to take public control of the nature crisis and contracting it out to private landowners who would not deliver.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pathetic,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the dying days of [Keir] Starmer\u2019s government, ministers have admitted they\u2019re failing utterly to meet their own target to restore nature in England. So instead of an actual plan with fresh policies, they\u2019ve issued this desperate plea asking landowners to voluntarily protect nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shrubsole called for the new government under Andy Burnham\u2019s leadership to scrap the plan and instead take radical action, legally protecting much more land for nature, giving national parks and the Forestry Commission a legal duty for nature recovery, and funding habitat restoration through many more landscape recovery projects.<\/p>\n

The RSPB said the strategy was \u201cdeeply disappointing and completely insufficient\u201d.<\/p>\n

The strategy says the most protected natural landscapes, known as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) are gold standard and can be formally counted towards the target. But critics note that the strategy contains no plans or timeline to create new SSSIs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The plan highlights how managers of protected landscapes, including national park authorities, are powerful delivery partners for meeting the 30by30 target. But ministers said that because most land in national parks and national landscapes was privately owned, the success of the strategy would depend on the actions of landowners, land managers and other organisations with an interest, such as water companies.<\/p>\n

The weaknesses of this approach are highlighted by a row that is coming to a head within the Church of England over its attempt to rewild 30% of the land it owns by 2030.<\/p>\n

The Rev Canon Val Plumb, an area dean in Oxford, will introduce a private motion to the General Synod to be voted on on Tuesday. She said the country\u2019s land was \u201ccrying and dying out for liberation\u201d. Currently, 3.5% of the church\u2019s land is used for nature restoration, which Plumb says is not enough. \u201cAs humans and Christians, we have an honourable calling to protect creation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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However, not everyone in the church agrees. William Nye, the secretary general of the archbishops\u2019 council, said the motion was inconsistent with the church\u2019s legal obligations and responsibility to ensure \u201clong-term capital growth\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Veteran Conservative environmentalist Ben Goldsmith described this approach as nonsense. He said: \u201cThere is a whole slew of revenues you can get now from nature that weren\u2019t there five or 10 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The environmentalist and TV presenter Chris Packham said a key reason for the slow progress in reaching the national 30by30 target was access to land, with 50% of the land owned by 1% of the people.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo as a consequence of that, we\u2019ve always struggled to be able to access or afford land for any nature conservation purposes,\u201d Packham said. \u201cThe church owns a significant amount of tenanted land which is given over to industrial farming. We feel it\u2019s responsible in this time of crisis for them to rewild a proportion of that land.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the motion to pass, it would need majority support among the 480 synod members.<\/p>\n

The Church Commissioners, a body that manages the church\u2019s endowment fund, argues that the current approach to managing the fund\u2019s farmland portfolio is consistent with its legal duties. But in a legal opinion commissioned by the campaign group Wild Card, Prof Mark Hill KC found that the church was legally free to restore 30% of its land.<\/p>\n

Hill wrote: \u201cIt is to be hoped that the commissioners will revisit their current policies and implement the 30by30 target as a matter of expedition without the need for litigation. It is both an ecological and a doctrinal imperative.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, the Church Commissioners said while 30by30 was an \u201cimportant national target\u201d, it related to conservation. \u201cBecause of the nature of our land, our efforts primarily focus on sustainable farming, forestry, renewable energy and thriving communities,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government\u2019s plan to protect and restore nature in England by 2030 has been condemned as \u201cpathetic\u201d and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-539191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}