16 / 56
,QWHUQDWLRQDO $FWLRQ
No country can save nature alone. Of all political
challenges, environmental protection is perhaps the
most inherently international.
Many of the species we think of as “our wildlife” we share
with others. For example, Bewick’s swans (featured on WWT’s
logo) fly thousands of miles from the Russian arctic tundra and
through the EU before they arrive with us in the UK each winter.
The Bewick’s swan is a European protected species and the
swans’ protection relies on cooperation all along the flyway.
Our climate is a shared system. The process
of decarbonisation in the UK—so vital for
reducing our greenhouse gas emissions—
only makes sense as part of an international
effort. The part the UK has played in
prompting international action has begun
to change the world. The next step is for
the UK to ratify the 2015 Paris climate deal
that we helped to forge.
Other challenges like invasive, non-native
species can only be faced effectively by
cooperating with others too. New diseases
like ash die-back and bluetongue cost
commercial forestry and farmers millions
of pounds. It is much cheaper and more
reliable to tackle these threats before they
reach our shores by cooperating.
This cooperation is founded on regional and
global agreements. For example, many of
the UK’s most important laws for wildlife, air
and water have come from the EU and are
only partly transferred into UK domestic law.
Some laws—like the Invasive Alien Species
regulation, which will be vital for wetland
conservation—could be lost entirely.
More broadly, international agreements like
the Ramsar Convention on wetlands have
a global reach, but their rules are not as
strong as the binding laws set out by the
EU. The EU offers a more effective form of
international environmental cooperation
than any other multilateral framework in
existence. They have helped to turn the UK
from “the dirty man of Europe” to a leader
in environmental protection.
However, our relationship with the EU and
the rest of the world is changing. With any
change comes risk. In this case, there is
a critical risk that increasing insularity will
undermine environmental protection, both in
terms of the rules we adopt (like the Birds
Directive, or the Water Framework Directive)
and the part we play in international efforts.
At home, old certainties could be lost like
the Common Agricultural Policy helping to
sustain farming. We must ensure that their
replacements are ambitious in their support
for wildlife-friendly, nature-positive land
management across the British countryside.
The 25 year plan is a crucial opportunity
to head off those risks and maintain and
strengthen the UK’s part in international
conservation efforts. We must not step
back from international environmentalism,
but step forward to lead the world.
We recommend that the Government
uses the plan to set out how it will not
only maintain but strengthen the level of
environmental protection in the UK, however
our relationship with the EU changes.
The plan should be a manifesto for improved
environmental collaboration, as well as a
plan for full implementation of international
environmental law. This should almost
certainly involve new legal protection,
alongside innovative ways of accounting
for and financing investment in nature.