Bruce Winney, Nature Recovery Coordinator, National Landscapes Association and Leo Fisher, Senior Officer - Evidence, Protected Landscapes Partnership look at the numbers.

One year ago, Defra published their first vision for how England might meet the 30by30 commitment - 30% of land and sea managed for nature by 2030. At the time, they estimated that 8.5% of land in England counted and that Protected Landscapes (National Landscapes and National Parks) had the potential to contribute up to 50% of the final target.

There were a few issues with this that Bruce highlighted at the time. He estimated that, using their suggested designations and publicly managed woodland, the figure was closer to 3.5%. Moreover, for Protected Landscapes to contribute 50% of the target, 83% of their total area would need to count – this is an unlikely scenario given that much of that land is farmed.

A year has passed and a lot has changed with a new government and the recent publication of Defra’s confirmed criteria and next steps. We thought it would be a good time to reassess where we are at.

Publication of the criteria that sites need to meet to count towards 30by30 is very welcome. There is a lot of work to do over the next six months to test how well the provisional guidelines work and edit them as necessary. This is only the start. It will need to be an iterative process as policies develop over the course of this government. This is not a problem, so long as the resources and incentives are available for people to get on with doing the work on the ground.

It is always heartening for those advocating for nature to feel that they have been listened to. For instance, Defra’s inclusion of SSSIs now only counts those in Favourable or Unfavourable Recovering condition, instead of all SSSIs regardless of condition. This change lowers the estimated SSSI area currently counting from 7.8% to 7.1%. However, this still does not account for whether these sites are under effective management, a key pillar of the 30by30 criteria.

We can see that when management proxies, such as Agri-Environment Schemes or sustainable woodland management, are applied to Unfavourable Recovering SSSIs, the contribution of SSSIs reduces further by 1%. Interestingly, only 65% of SSSIs in Favourable
condition are actually in such schemes. If you exclude those SSSIs that aren’t being managed, then the SSSI contribution is only 4.9%. Some form of management is key to ensure that SSSIs in Favourable condition remain that way.

Also welcome is their new view of the role Protected Landscapes will need to play:

“Our Protected Landscapes will provide the backbone to 30by30 in England, contributing towards the target where they are effectively managed and delivering in-situ conservation. We recognise that we can, and must, go further within Protected Landscapes than other areas to meet our national environmental targets, including 30by30. This will be driven by the Protected Landscapes Targets and Outcomes Framework, as well as further action to ensure that these special places are wilder and greener. Through their management plans, existing structures and strong partnerships, Protected Landscapes organisations can also play a convening role to champion, identify and support areas that meet, or have potential to meet, the 30by30 criteria.

It is important that Protected Landscapes deliver a significant contribution towards 30by30 in England. This is key to delivering landscape-scale nature conservation and realising our vision of a well-connected and ecologically representative 30by30 network. At the same time, we recognise that these are unique landscapes operating in different contexts, and therefore their specific contributions to 30by30 will vary.”

We are currently working with the Protected Landscape family to understand what the contribution could be and the resourcing that will be needed to hit the target over the next five years. Watch this space…

According to Defra’s analysis, National Nature Reserves and managed woodland only count for 0.7% of England. Is this really the case? Our analyses suggest this underestimates the potential contributions.

Our work shows that managed broadleaf woodland outside SSSSIs accounts for 8.1% in Protected Landscapes and 4.9% across all of England. The discrepancy with Defra is because they only count publicly managed woodland. While not all privately managed woodland will be managed well, at least some of it will be, and so they might underestimate the possible woodland contribution.

And what about priority habitat? Analysis of six National Landscapes and Big Chalk shows that 0.8-4.4% of priority habitat outside SSSIs may be managed for nature under appropriate Environmental and Countryside Stewardship schemes (as of August 2023). This is very Landscape dependent and while not all interventions will count to 30by30, many could.

Adding contributions up we estimate 10.7-14.3% of England’s land might currently count. Not all sites will pass the test (as indeed not all of Defra’s estimate will pass) but it is greater than Defra’s figure and 3-4 times greater than Wildlife and Countryside Link’s recent 3.1% estimate.

There will always differences in the way organisations approach targets, with Wildlife and Countryside Link wanting to hold government to account and (at least the previous) government wanting to hit targets. In reality, the WCL estimate is certainly too low, whilst the Defra estimate is too optimistic but misses lots. Something between 6-9% might be a fair reflection of reality…

It is still a long way to go to get close to 30% managed for nature by 2030. We have to get on with it and pan-regional programmes such as Big Chalk and the Great North Bog will help to join up the work on the ground with the national ambition. For example, achieving 30by30 in Big Chalk alone, an area about one fifth of England, requires something like 336,000ha of habitat needs to be created and a further 200,000ha brought into management. This is very much in agreement with the more optimistic 9% above.

30by30 is important because it is much more ambitious than the current Environmental Improvement Plan and is an international commitment that the UK has signed up to. If we come close to meeting 30by30, then many of the targets for nature recovery will be significantly exceeded well ahead of time. But 30by30 is not the silver bullet for nature recovery. As acknowledged by Defra, 30by30 sites need to be connected up and to succeed, the wider landscape must also allow nature to live in it.

There is a crucial place for nature friendly farming in our landscapes (not least for farmland birds, arable plants, pollinators and soil health) as the matrix that allows the whole to work. This does not need to, and for the most part cannot, meet the 30by30 criteria but, as per the Lawton Principles of ‘bigger, better, and more joined up’, it is essential to make the wider countryside as favourable as possible for nature.

Food production and 30by30 need each other and we need both to succeed or else both will fail.