2023 is well underway and we are as busy as ever here at Cornwall Wildlife Trust, but it’s helpful to take stock once in a while. The end of last year felt somewhat bleak on the nature front, with government seeming to roll back on its environmental commitments in pursuing a growth-first agenda. An underwhelming global biodiversity summit also provided little solace to those of us battling to reverse nature’s decline here in Cornwall.

How are things looking now and what might 2023 bring?

The aim of this blog is to provide an update on these important issues, but we’d also like to share our excitement about what lies ahead for Cornwall Wildlife Trust in the coming year and some of the ways in which we’ll be working hard on the ground for nature recovery in Cornwall.

Defending Nature

In a series of three blogs my colleagues and I wrote last autumn, we outlined the key threats facing Cornwall’s already-vulnerable wildlife as a result of Government decisions in 2022. In the first, I focused on the Retained EU Law Bill (sometimes referred to as the ‘Bulldozer Bill’) that threatens to remove environmental laws we have relied on for decades; in the second, I reflected on the uncertainty surrounding Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs) that are meant to reward farmers and landowners for investing in nature; in the the third piece, I explored the Government’s proposed Investment Zones that would relax planning rules for developers.

We are so grateful for the way in which our members and supporters took part in the really important #DefendNature campaign, whether that was by tweeting an MP, writing letters or sending postcards.

The good news is that the current government seems to have ditched the damaging Investment Zones idea, whilst also taking welcome steps in the right direction with ELMS. Although some important parts of ELMS have been watered down, recent announcements by DEFRA suggest that the basic tier (aka Sustainable Farming Initiative) will include payments to farmers for things like reducing damaging pesticides and pollution, managing hedgerows well and planting wildflowers that will benefit pollinators.

We’re also pleased to see that the highest ambition Landscape Recovery scheme is to be extended to a second round. These details are hugely important for Cornwall where so much of our land is under farming. A healthy natural environment also underpins food security. It will be critical that the government gets the rollout of ELMs right so that more of our farmers can participate and benefit.

Sadly, we cannot report positive news on the Retained EU Law bill, that last month passed another step towards adoption. We are hearing that even more environmental laws and regulations than previously thought will need to be reviewed, revised or repealed by the end of this year. Clearly that’s an impossible task, with the risk that it will simply fall off the statute books by default on 31^st December. Some of our MPs tell us that these rules don’t work, or aren’t relevant to us in the UK, and that we deserve better. I’m all for improving environmental legislation - given sufficient time and resources to do so – yet commentators across the spectrum admit that just isn’t there under the REUL bill.

The Wildlife Trusts and others therefore continue to press the government to ditch the REUL bill and come up with realistic ways to ensure our future domestic legislation provides the right protections for the environment and the conditions for nature recovery.

Targeting action, not words

In the run-up to Christmas, we saw three major global summits on climate change, wildlife trade and biodiversity. You’d be forgiven for missing all but the first – they hardly made world headlines – and, as is the way of these things, people gamely tried to talk up what were really modest, if hard-won, agreements. The last of these – the biodiversity summit known as COP-15 – did agree a new set of targets for countries to meet by 2030, including the protection for nature of at least 30% of land and sea. If countries achieve this, then we will be on a good path to nature recovery. The problem is that governments have a history of not meeting targets like this: the words just don’t seem to translate into sufficient investment and meaningful action.

This is sadly the case here in the UK, one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries. The new year began with the recently established independent Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) reporting that the government was failing to meet its existing targets under the 25-year Environment Plan it adopted five years ago. The OEP concluded that the current pace and scale of action will not deliver the changes necessary to turn the tide on environmental degradation.

In response, in recent days the government has published a new Environmental Improvement Plan (a kind of update on the 25-year Environment Plan), setting out the action it intends to take to ‘deliver the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth’. Here, there are some green shoots. New commitments are laid out to create and restore 500,000 hectares of wildlife habitat, much of it to be delivered by farmers, as well as to improve water and air quality, reduce waste and increase access to nature. Importantly, there is a policy to ensure that nature is taken into account in all government planning and decision-making so that the whole of government, not just DEFRA, is acting to tackle the threat that nature loss poses to us all.

Will this new plan make a difference or are these just more, hollow words? We desperately need it to succeed, yet it’s clear that a significant increase in funding, upwards of £1.2bn per year, will be required. Ultimately, we are going to need to see far more action and urgency if we are to have any hope of reversing nature’s decline.

Looking ahead

Whatever kind of targets, rules, policies and incentives emerge, there’s a lot to be hopeful for – and we will continue to work alongside others here in Cornwall for a future where nature thrives on land and in the sea.

This year we’re excited about progress we hope to make in a host of important projects. We're making bold plans for nature recovery around Helman Tor, including the newly purchased Creney Farm that our supporters helped raise funds for last year. We’ll be expanding our work with farmers taking positive steps for wildlife, soil health and water quality, and looking to support the emergence of new Landscape Recovery projects across larger areas of countryside. We’ll be building on our award-winning work with coastal communities whilst continuing to shine a light on our neglected marine wildlife and ecosystems. And we’ll be launching a new strategy that will guide and focus our efforts to deliver greater, demonstrable impact on nature’s decline.

We’ll be hoping to announce brand new partnerships to help support all this work. We’ll also be keeping a close eye on developments in Cornwall that might affect wildlife and wild places, and speaking up both in public and behind closed doors where we think we need to and where we believe we can make a difference by doing so.

As always, thanks to all of our members, supporters, volunteers and partners without whom we can’t do any of this. We’ll be finding ways to come together and celebrate these contributions during the year ahead.