Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he has taken towards meeting targets to start nature’s recovery by 2030.

Our world-leading Environment Act introduces ambitious measures to address the biggest environmental priorities of our age, including restoring nature. The Act requires a new, legally binding target to be set to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. This is in addition to setting at least one long-term legally binding target for biodiversity, air quality, water and waste reduction. Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities will work together to drive action towards our targets for nature recovery.

We also published the Nature Recovery Green Paper. This sets out our ambition and proposed approach to enable nature's recovery in England, to support the delivery of our commitment to halt the decline in our biodiversity and protect 30% of our land and sea by 2030. Further, we published a Pollinator Action Plan in May supporting the National Pollinator Strategy. This plan sets out how we will continue to work with partners to help pollinators thrive.

The Nature for Climate Fund provides £750 million for the creation, restoration and management of woodland and peatland habitats.  Prior to that, we published our England Peat and Trees Action Plans. These set out our vision for the management, protection, and restoration of peatlands and how we will deliver our aim to at least treble tree planting rates in England by the end of this Parliament.

The Green Recovery Challenge Fund is estimated to deliver 0.6mha of habitat creation and restoration within & outside Sites of Special Scientific Interest.  We set a target to raise at least £500 million in private finance to support nature's recovery every year by 2027 in England, rising to more than £1 billion by 2030. We announced at the Spending Review 2021 the investment of more than £250 million over three years to protect and restore nature. This included designating at least 15 new National Nature Reserves and expanding the Species Recovery Programme supported by new grants.

We also launched the 21,000 hectares G7 Nature Recovery Legacy Project in Cornwall. We have since launched five more partnership-led landscape-scale Nature Recovery Projects that will help nature recover across an estimated 99,000 hectares. We plan to launch a further six projects in 2022/23.