The UK is one of the most depleted countries globally for biodiversity, said this week’s Net Hero Podcast guest.
Emma Toovey, Chief Ecology Officer at Environment Bank told Sumit Bose: ‘When you go to the countryside in the UK, you might think that it is green and pleasant. But there is actually no biodiversity in our landscapes.
‘Shockingly, more than 40 per cent of species have declined since the 1970’s. And there’s this thing called Shifting Baseline Syndrome which is that we don’t realise what we’ve lost because we have gotten used to having less birds and insects.
‘So biodiversity is essentially the diversity of living things – so we want to add different types of habitats, different types of species to these lands. And what diversity brings is healthy soil, clean water, cleans our air and helps with pollination.
‘So lots more bees and bugs means that we can grow more food. And all of these, what we call ecosystem services, helps us as a society thrive.
‘It not only impacts our ability to live healthy lives but it hugely impacts our economy.’
Emma told us that several different factors including an increase in farming has led to the loss of biodiversity.
She said: ‘There is a lot of factors that have caused a loss of biodiversity but primarily it is about habitat loss and the destruction of our core habitat.
‘So that is a result of farming and certain policies in farming that have incentivised food production over the protection of nature. Other factors include urban development and not mitigating the impact of development.’
Environment Bank aims to increase the biodiversity of different landscapes.
‘We work with the rural community, rural landowners. We take land that has low biodiversity value and we create these incredible nature recovery projects on them which add biodiversity value to the landscape.
‘The more variety we have, the healthier our landscapes are. It is essentially bringing nature back into our landscapes.
‘Take cornfields, for example, they are a golden desert for wildlife. There is not that can live within a cornfield and that is hurting us in terms of not having a healthy planet. So that is what we are trying to tackle.
‘Now there is a new legislation that came in called biodiversity net gain which requires developers in England to deliver net gain in biodiversity value – so not just repair a bit and call it a day but make it better than before.
‘So we are delivering these nature recovery projects for developers all over England and we’re able to measure the additional biodiversity value that we are delivering on the ground.’
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