In the UK, the State of Nature Report published the following figures:
- 19%: Across the UK species studied have declined on average by 19% since 1970;
- 16%: Nearly one in six species are threatened with extinction from Great Britain;
- 151 of 10,008 species assessed have already become extinct since 1500;
- 12%: In Northern Ireland, 12% of assessed species were at risk of extinction.
The biggest driver of current biodiversity loss is the destruction and degradation of habitat. This occurs as a result of infrastructure development and agriculture, but a number of other factors are also at play; over-exploitation, pollution, invasive species, loss of genetic diversity, and climate change. The rapid increase in the human population, now at over 8 billion, requires governments to provide the necessary developments to manage and provide for the incumbents; nevertheless, it is also incumbent for us to protect the myriad of other life forms that share our planet. We should consider ourselves as custodians of nature and, therefore, it is our responsibility to conserve what is left of it. This requires a paradigm shift in the thinking and behaviour of everyday people, corporate business, and Governments to address the conflict between business and environment. People need to learn how to protect the remaining biodiversity whilst providing for the human population. Conservation projects that create new habitat, protect existing habitat, and bring species back from the brink are some of the success stories that help us sleep well at night, but more is needed.
In the UK, the Environment Act of 2021 made it mandatory for developments to compensate for biodiversity loss through measures to avoid, minimise or offset impacts so that a 10% increase in biodiversity is generated. To accomplish this, The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in conjunction with Natural England, has created a biodiversity metric that accounts for gains and losses to facilitate the BNG (Biodiversity Net Gain) process. This has led to the offset markets where BNG units are traded by developers to comply with net gain (NG) obligations. It is envisaged that offset sites will be secured in 30-year covenants and managed for conservation purposes by the landowners, local government or project owners. This has the potential for habitat to be set aside, providing the much-needed space for populations of indigenous species to stabilise.
BNG is being applied in a variety of countries around the world; Saudia Arabia, the US, the Netherlands and India. NGOs in America, Sweden and Oman have used variants of the biodiversity metric making BNG an Internationally recognised policy. At the recent UN Conference (COP 16) held in Cali, Colombia it is reported that BNG was a focus of discussion.
It is evident that this is a policy that will drive habitat creation and improvement, that could be pivotal to sustainable management of our natural resources. Measuring biodiversity has its complications, mostly because of its scope and variety but proxies for biodiversity are commonplace and gaining in traction. As such the BNG unit, forms the basis of the trading mechanism bringing green sector jobs and markets not previously seen. Establishing a monitoring and evaluation regime will prove critical to the success of BNG particularly where the provision of sites is related to species level population data. At Kings College, I am examining the use of a variety of methods for assessing habitat quality to support the Goal of No Net Loss (GNNL) particularly the use of Passive Acoustic Monitoring to establish whether NG, NL or NNL is happening at the species level using acoustic indices, and statistically comparing the population data to BNG units for contiguous habitat parcels.