My Lords, I support the intention of this Bill to concentrate our minds on ecology. I declare an interest in environmental degradation, having the great privilege of being chair of the Natural History Museum, as listed in the register of interests.
Everyone knows that the Natural History Museum is one of the greatest visitor attractions of this nation. I am delighted to report that in fact, we were the most visited museum or gallery in the whole of the UK last year—and yes, we do have dinosaurs. Less well known is that we have a unique and huge collection of specimens from the world’s environment, and that we are a major scientific research institute with 350 full-time scientists and 170 doctoral students all working on that unparalleled database and in the field.
There is a problem. We know that life on earth started around 3.5 billion years ago and that life has spread to every corner of the land and sea. The fossil record also teaches us that over that vast period, there have been five occasions when almost all life on earth has disappeared. We call these “mass extinction events”: five occasions when dramatic changes in the environmental conditions—warming, cooling, ocean acidification—have wiped out almost all existing species, most recently, some 66 million years ago, when we lost the last of the dinosaurs.
The problem is that the evidence is telling us that we could be heading towards a sixth mass extinction—and this time an extinction that we are causing. The causes are quite well understood and are uncomfortably reminiscent of the last but one extinction event, some 200 million years ago, when exceptional tectonic activity created enormous emission levels of carbon and methane in the atmosphere and led to the loss of at least 80% of all species then on the planet. Does this sound familiar? This time, the emissions are again the root cause of dangerous climate trends, but this time, it is humans who have caused those emissions.
The loss of biodiversity has other causes too. Factors such as land use and pollution are equally, if not even more important to biodiversity degradation. Last year, ahead of COP 26, the Natural History Museum published its new biodiversity trends explorer. This uses satellite imagery to collect abundance data on plants, fungi, insects and animals all around the world. It shows for the first time how local terrestrial biodiversity is responding to human pressures causing land use change and intensification. We can now measure with increasing precision and detail what is happening to our environment essentially everywhere.
Our research continues, but it is already showing that the earth has only 76% of its pristine natural biodiversity still intact—well below the safe limit of around 90%, which is the broad consensus among
natural scientists. Here in the UK, only just over half our natural biodiversity is still intact, placing us last in the G7 and in the bottom 10% worldwide, because so much of our land has been given over to sometimes marginal agriculture or monoculture conifer plantations.
At this point we might be tempted to throw up our hands and give up, but the crucial point is that this is a fixable problem. We have the science and the solutions, and we know that—given the chance before it is too late—environmental diversity responds and recovers quite well.
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The UK Government have been forthright in calling for biodiversity loss globally to be halted and reversed by 2030. One of the most important tasks at Montreal will be to push for a set of clear metrics and targets to achieve this overall objective, analogous to the clear headline targets on emissions and carbon neutrality that have been embedded in the international discourse on climate change.
Inevitably, we have to act in our own backyard and not just on the international stage. That is why I support the Bill’s intent in setting clear, robust targets for the UK, even as it champions robust targets at the global level. Indeed, I suggest that we see it as our national objective by 2030 to be not bottom of the G7 but top of the class. Maybe that is ambitious, but it is profoundly important that the Government show clear and strong leadership in this national task. I look forward to the Minister’s response.