For years, nature has been blamed as a blocker of economic growth. After some ministerial about not letting get in the way of growth ambitions, the UK government released more details of its plans to .
The centrepiece of its aspirations to balance both nature and economic growth is a , to be set up in England through changes to habitat regulations. This should allow developers to stay within their legal obligations towards nature through a payment scheme without delaying their projects.
The is that, as an alternative to relocating important species or improving habitats on the site of a proposed development, a developer could pay into the nature restoration fund. This would pay for larger, more strategically located schemes to protect the species in question.
The fund simplifies and streamlines the regulations while collecting funds to promote more, bigger, better and increasingly .
Protecting nature is not just about bats and newts. According to trade association the Home Builders Federation (HBF), there are 160,000 homes being delayed by what are known as measures. These rules were a response to growing public concerns about land and water pollution caused by nutrient loads 鈥� pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus 鈥� associated with livestock farming and spillages from sewage works.
Government agency 74 local authorities that they should not allow any more house building in their areas unless this pollution could be mitigated. But this has led to lengthy and expensive project-by-project reviews to identify potential damage.
How will a fund help?
The fund will build on some schemes that are already known to work. One such scheme works for the protection of . Another successful scheme is project, working to protect and enhance heathland sites where rare birds such as nightingales breed. Crucially, this scheme allows new development to go ahead in adjacent areas.
The fund will be run by Natural England, which aims to draw on these experiences to unblock development at a large scale rather than at single-site level, pooling contributions from developers to pay for mitigation measures when there is a risk to nature.
If a particular 鈥渂locking鈥� issue is identified, experts from Natural England will produce a plan, which must be approved by the environment secretary. A levy on developers will then pay for mitigation measures 鈥渋n perpetuity鈥� (often 30 years), allowing the development to get under way.
Environmental experts have the general principles and approach of the nature restoration fund. But there has also been about whether the plan is well enough thought through. There are also questions on how well it will integrate with other schemes.
A widespread worry is for the future of 鈥� which includes measures for creating and improving using biodiversity units, effectively a form of 鈥渘ature market鈥�. This approach sets a target of 10% for biodiversity improvement based upon the combined distinctness, condition and significance of affected habitats over the lifetime of the development. But these measures are only just .
The concern is that providers of sites for these habitat banks 鈥� which might be councils, landowners, charities or private businesses, for example 鈥� might get cold feet and if they can鈥檛 be certain that their plans will be compatible with the nature restoration fund.
There is concern, too, about how payments from the nature restoration fund would be calculated. These will need to be locally appropriate and not pit nature restoration and biodiversity net gain against each other if, for example, landowners are forced to choose a particular scheme for their land that they are then . With two parallel systems in play, the relationship between them must be crystal clear, otherwise shared goals could be missed.
Another question is whether Natural England can be both regulator and financial beneficiary of the new scheme. There have been calls from some of those already involved in nature markets for some form of .
And it will also be vital that the new scheme respects what鈥檚 known as the 鈥渕itigation hierarchy鈥�. This hierarchy aims to avoid, reduce and then mitigate any impacts on nature on-site in that order. Then developers should consider off-site measures in areas where there could be greater .
But a danger here is that this could disconnect people from nature even further by mitigating ecological loss miles away from the site of the damage. This disconnection is considered to be a critical underlying cause of .
There is much to like about the nature restoration fund, but there is a risk that little will be achieved without the government showing genuine ambition and allocating enough money and staff to properly monitor and enforce it over the long term. Only time will tell whether it achieves the government鈥檚 goal of speeding up development.
At the moment, it is not clear how the fund will complement similar schemes and there is a danger of creating a complex patchwork in nature restoration funding. But if it works well, it could provide a richer funding ecosystem for nature recovery 鈥� a much-needed boost for England鈥檚 nature-depleted landscape.
, Professor, Urban and Environmental Planning and , Senior Lecturer in Planning and Environmental Management
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