This post is by Kate Jennings, head of site conservation and species policy at the RSPB and a member of the Protected Areas Working Group (PAWG) of the IUCN National Committee UK.
In December 2022, at COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, world leaders committed to halt and reverse nature’s decline. Central to this was the ’30 by 30’ commitment to both protect and effectively manage 30 per cent of land and seas by 2030, through both protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (known as OECMs).
This week, an event will be held at the COP28 climate summit to mark the anniversary of the ‘30 by 30’ commitment. The question is, will that commitment, which has been championed by the UK government, be matched by world leading action in the UK to achieve it?
Despite the target, nature is still largely unprotected
Several assessments have already shown just how far there is to go to achieve the target in a meaningful way across the UK. When it comes to protected areas, one study found that only 11.4 per cent of land falls within protected areas designated primarily for nature conservation, with only half of this in favourable condition. It concluded that “as little as 4.9% of UK land area may be effectively protected for nature”. Similarly, in marine areas, the State of Nature report found that “although 38% of the UK waters are designated as protected areas, we lack a comprehensive condition assessment and management is not yet fully implemented at most sites”.
Analysis at country level paints a similarly poor picture. A 2023 progress report on ‘30 by 30’ by Wildlife and Countryside Link found that, in England, while 40 per cent of seas and 8.5 per cent of land are deemed to be protected, in truth only eight per cent of seas and 3.1 per cent of land are both protected and effectively managed. In 2022, Scottish Environment Link found that 18 per cent of Scottish land is protected for nature, with 65 per cent of features in favourable condition. And, in 2021, a Northern Ireland Environment Link study concluded that, although marine protected areas occupy 38 per cent of Northern Ireland’s inshore waters, only 4.48 per cent of these were ‘under favourable management’.
To date, the UK does not have any OECMs and neither the Westminster nor the devolved governments have published processes to identify and assess potential OECM sites. However, they have made commitments to do so (eg the Welsh government’s Biodiversity Deep Dive recommendations and the Westminster government’s Nature Recovery Green Paper). The Scottish government has now published its draft framework for ‘30 by 30’ in Scotland, and the Westminster government has committed to publish a map of what counts towards the goal by the end of 2023.
Potential areas for nature protection and management have been assessed
To help identify both what already counts and, critically, the pipeline of sites that could and should count towards ‘30 by 30’ in the UK, the Protected Areas Working Group (PAWG) of the IUCN National Committee UK has just carried out a review of UK protected areas and OECMs.
IUCN sets international standards and guidance for both protected areas and OECMs. PAWG’s new independent, evidence-based assessment and technical report reviews 23 types of UK land and sea site designations against these international standards, using the best publicly available data. This replaces the earlier assessment in 2014’s Putting nature on the map report.
As well as updating the analysis of site designations against the IUCN’s definition of ‘protected areas’, the new report goes further. It assesses how well they are managed and, for those designations which don’t meet the ‘protected area’ definition, it identifies sites which could still meet IUCN criteria as OECMs.
Many sites don’t make the grade
Compared to 2014’s assessment, there have been notable changes in which sites qualify against the ‘protected area’ criteria. Here’s a summary of what we found:
- Five types of site designation fully comply with IUCN’s definition of a ‘protected area’, those were Sites and Areas of Special Scientific Interest; marine protected area designations; Ramsar Sites; Special Protection Areas; and Special Areas of Conservation.
- Eighteen other site designation types are not considered to be protected areas. These include some which did qualify in the 2014 assessment, but which no longer meet the standard. These are Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, National Nature Reserves, National Parks, most reserves owned or managed by environment non-government bodies, UNESCO Biosphere Reserves and UNESCO World Heritage Sites. All these areas have a vital role to play in delivering ‘30 by 30’. When assessed, some may (in whole or part) already be contributing but, as these designations do not meet the protected area criteria, a case by case assessment of them against the OECM criteria is the right approach.
- Seventeen of these should be assessed on an individual site by site basis to determine their potential status as either protected areas or OECMs.
- Critically, none of the designations have evidence of comprehensive management effectiveness. In most cases, management is, at best, either only partly delivered or partly effective. For five site types, management effectiveness is unknown due to a lack of available data.
The report does not assess any new potential OECMs yet to be proposed across the UK which could additionally contribute to ‘30 by 30’. This includes areas additional to those in the protected areas network that may be effectively secured in the long term, managed for purposes focused on, or wholly compatible with, nature conservation, and those effectively managed for and delivering significant outcomes for nature.
Effort is needed fast to increase protections and measures
Based on the assessment, PAWG believes that, subject to a focus on securing management effectiveness, a significant area of land and sea across the UK could qualify for the ‘30 by 30’ target, either as a protected area or an OECM. With concerted collaboration between governments and NGOs, including addressing known gaps in site networks, significant and important progress towards ‘30 by 30’ is achievable.
The scale and urgency of this task can’t be overstated; the 2030 deadline is only six years away. The new assessments by PAWG offer important guidance to the UK government, the devolved administrations and their respective statutory nature conservation bodies, about which areas should count towards the 30 per cent totals on land and at sea and conform with internationally agreed standards.
PAWG will be updating this assessment every year, reflecting changes in policy and practice. It would welcome any further relevant information to update these assessments until the end of September 2024. Please send evidence to IUCNUK.PAWG@wwt.org.uk.
