By Vikki Patton, WSP Principal Biodiversity Consultant and Tom Butterworth, WSP Biodiversity Director
SCOTLAND is proud to lead the charge on climate change. It’s therefore surprising that we are behind the curve on the related issue of biodiversity Net Gain – despite the recent assertion from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, when announcing the Programme for Government, that, “Biodiversity loss and the climate crisis are intimately bound together: nature plays a key role in defining and regulating our climate and climate is key in shaping the state of nature.”
The fact is that planning policy is lagging behind developers in relation to addressing the biodiversity conservation challenge head on.
When it comes to protecting Scotland’s natural balance, organisations like Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) are doing their best but, as is so often the case, they are
doing so on tighter budgets than ever and therefore have to hone their focus.
That effectively means SNH is concentrating on preserving only the most precious habitats from the impacts of development while SEPA is the last line of defence for maintaining the quality of our environment by monitoring our air, land and water.
Scotland’s current regulatory system for development relies predominantly on Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) – which effectively focus on reducing likely significant effects, that is, avoiding the worst-case scenario. Impacts deemed to be of low significance can still result in cumulative losses of Scottish biodiversity.
We have a global biodiversity crisis; it’s time to change the status quo.
The alternative, proven in over 100 countries from Australia to Uganda, is a positive approach through adoption of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) alongside EIA. While critics might argue that BNG is a “licence to trash”, it is worth looking at the reality.
BNG’s first principle is to avoid developing on biodiverse sites where possible and, crucially, its mitigation hierarchy embeds biodiversity considerations at every stage in a development. Therefore, environmental credentials are not a tick box at the end. The only way to mitigate loss is to put back more biodiversity than was there at the start.
Indeed, you could argue that sole reliance on EIAs is a “licence to trash” as more often than not there is a loss of biodiversity. Surely a system that’s goal is to deliver a net gain in biodiversity is an improvement on that.
Interestingly, it is industry that is pushing BNG here in Scotland. They are being driven by wider consumer sentiment as well as a shift towards Corporate Environmental Responsibility.
There are fantastic examples of corporates leading the way. One developer, SSE’s Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission, is at the forefront. It published its sustainability strategy last year and incorporated BNG into its core. Initiatives such as the award-winning SSE project that resulted in the creation of habitat for a rare type of bumblebee at its Thurso South substation show the benefits of the approach.
Elsewhere in the UK councils are writing BNG into planning policy at a local level, and the Chancellor has confirmed that the upcoming Environment Bill will make BNG mandatory for developments in England.
Here in Scotland we know that biodiversity loss is intrinsically linked to climate change and yet our current development policies are not working.
We will be proud hosts for the UN climate change summit in 2020 and are already standard bearers for climate change issues. We need to step up to protect our natural resources in line with our climate change ambitions – the fact developers are already taking the lead on BNG underlines the business case is there.
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