Advising the drafters of the 1949 Act that created AONBs (now National Landscapes) and National Parks, the Wild Life Conservation Special Committee (1947) recommended that a central, guiding tenet of Protected Landscapes should be about harmonising “man’s material needs with the protection of natural beauty” – and that this “will also require a sound policy of Nature Conservation”.

National Landscapes and National Parks are also IUCN Protected Areas Category V (lived-in, working landscapes, shaped by human-nature interaction), which require a minimum of 75% of the land area to be managed appropriately to meet the criteria for the category. According to the IUCN, Protected Area Cat. V land that meets the criteria should also be able to meet the criteria for 30by30.

National Landscapes and National Parks are also IUCN Protected Areas Category V (lived-in, working landscapes, shaped by human-nature interaction), which require a minimum of 75% of the land area to be managed appropriately to meet the criteria for the category. According to the IUCN, Protected Area Cat. V land that meets the criteria should also be able to meet the criteria for 30by30.

In this way, National Landscapes are formally protected areas, with nature conservation as a core tenet, which provide a preexisting legal designation and set of protections that have potential to make an outsized contribution to 30by30 as a step on the path to recovering and regenerating nature in the UK. Protected Landscapes should be enabled to contribute more than 30% to England’s 30by30 goal: as the areas of most outstanding and excellent natural beauty, these areas should form the backbone of the country’s 30by30 strategy. Indeed, this policy context indicates that 75% or more of the PLs have the potential to contribute, if certain changes were made that ensured effective protection, management and monitoring towards conservations outcomes.

It is clear that the protections of National Landscapes need bolstering – existing protections have been applied increasingly weakly over time, and need to be better recognised, valued and strengthened to enable National Landscapes to fulfil their potential in contributing to 30by30 and recovering nature. Some changes that are needed to accelerate an outsized contribution to 30by30 delivery in National Landscapes include:

• Significant expansion of the habitats-based network of sites managed well for nature within and around PLs – through incentives, allocation of resources and guidance. The current mechanism drafted by Defra for 30by30 would be a key tool to enable this expansion, and PLs should be priority areas for this expansion/land use conversion.

• A recognition that the current Defra mechanism that is proposed to deliver an expansion of the habitats-based network of sites managed well for nature is only one strand of the broader 30by30 approach needed to deliver against target 3 of the CBD’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (to conserve 30% of land, waters and seas). The international 30by30 goal requires effective conservation and management through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed systems of protected areas, and includes and respects local cultures and promotes harmony between people and nature. The UK’s Protected Landscapes already work to promote and achieve this harmony between people and nature, and can form the basis for the landscape-scale approaches also needed.
  

• Support for the UK’s Protected Landscapes to undertake processes to achieve the IUCN Green List Standard, which, once attained, would provide measurable assurance that a Protected Landscape was delivering effective, people-inclusive conservation – in line with the Green List Pillars: Good Governance, Sound Design & Planning, Effective Management and Successful Conservation Outcomes, and in line with the Global Biodiversity Framework’s aim to promote harmony between people and nature. Once attained, this could provide a qualifying assurance that the >75% of PLs with >75% area appropriately managed for nature, which meeting the criteria for the Protected Area Cat V, would also count for 30by30. Integrating and implementing this IUCN standard would have the benefit of fully aligning the UK’s Protected Areas with their IUCN category, and keeping the UK on par with international thinking and approaches to 30by30 and conservation.

• Local and strategic land use planning needs to recognise and incorporate the existing protections – i.e. their designation as sites for natural beauty, including nature conservation, the sustainable uses that would make them coherent with the categorisation as Cat V Protected Areas (which means >75%  should be meeting the IUCN criteria), the planning policy protections that exist in, for example, the NPPF (e.g. the exceptional circumstances test) and the Protected Landscapes duty on relevant authorities.

• The Local Plan guidelines for preparation need to be updated to make clear that Local Plans should include the existing protections, and that there should be early exchange and better mutual alignment between NL Management Planning and Local Planning processes, taking into account the protections afforded by the designation. Local Plans should also be required to treat and represent National Landscape designations consistently across the country.

• The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) sets out that National Landscapes (along with National Parks and the Broads) have the ‘highest status of protection’ in relation to conserving and enhancing landscape and scenic beauty. As landscapes protected for their natural beauty, it is vital that the Land-Use Framework reflects that building major developments in National Landscapes should be avoided except in ‘exceptional circumstances’ and that development within National Landscapes should normally be limited and small scale, as set out in the NPPF. The protections in the NPPF need to be upheld consistently in the context of the high nature value of NL land area, and the wording in the NPPF should be updated from ‘landscape and scenic beauty’ to ‘natural beauty’, in line with the legal designation.
  
  
• The Land Use Framework should provide overarching principles on the preferred location of large-scale wind and solar energy development, which take into account the protections and high nature value of the PLs, and the potential of PLs to make an outsized contribution to 30by30.
  
  
• Continuation of the Farming in Protected Landscapes scheme, as well as better targeting of ELMs towards PLs, in accordance with an approach of targeting and other areas of high potential for high nature value, such as Priority areas in Local Nature Recovery Strategies and PL Nature Recovery Plans (as per PL designations).

• Create strong regulations to implement the Protected Landscapes duty. The PL duty regulations should strongly encourage relevant authorities to seek to further the purposes of the PL, and promote the NL Management Plan as the most important document determining how to meet the duty in NLs. As mentioned above, delivering against the NL purposes (conserving and enhancing natural beauty) should already forefront the conservation and enhancement of nature and the natural environment, making the duty a key tool to rally both nature and non-nature actors to help deliver 30by30
  
  
• In this way, Relevant Authorities who carry out functions that affect land in PLs would also be more strongly bound to enable Protected Landscapes to contribute more to 30by30.

National Landscapes Association recently responded to the Government's consultation to the Land Use Framework.