Biodiversity Net Gain is a phrase we are likely to hear with increasing frequency due to its introduction as a requirement in the 2021 Environment Act. Now, all new development and infrastructure projects are mandated to deliver BNG.
Biodiversity strategy is being pioneered to counter biodiversity loss: a problem that threatens all of us with an impending existential crisis.
Image: surveyor with gloves checking water in the forest.
1. 60% of biodiversity in the UK has been lost.
In the past 50 years, the UK has seen a 60% drop in biodiversity. Such a fast fall is worrying because ecosystems that humans and animals rely on are at risk if the biodiversity they need isn’t holding steady or is shrinking.
Rather than looking at climate change and biodiversity loss as separate issues, it must be acknowledged that the two are intertwined. In fact, biodiversity is integral to our chances of adapting to climate change. The trees and plants that store carbon simply can not help us in protect the environment if their levels are dwindling, or worse, if they no longer exist. This is why we need to take action to restore nature at scale.
2. Mitigate Further Habitat Loss by working with Developers
Reversing the construction of houses and infrastructure is impossible. We think that development can and should occur while simultaneously restoring biodiversity.
To sum it up, BNG legislation is about ensuring developments lead to biodiversity gains. If you’re going to pave over some of the countryside, then its better if at least 10% more nature is created than there was previously. This helps pay back the ecological debt that lots of developments over the last 50 years have racked up. We are also doing what should really be the central aim of development: making the places we inhabit healthier and more livable.
3. Air Quality and Carbon Locking added Benefits
Our team have a unique way of dealing with BNG—biodiversity net gain—for developers. Through our panel of Habitat Banks, which operate on a network that spans the whole of the UK, we secure BNG for developers by helping them deliver uplift in biodiversity and allowing developers to subsequently meet their BNG requirements.
A Habitat Bank is a piece of natural real estate, typically from 20 to 100 hectares in size, that is leased from the landowner and managed with ecological consultants. Habitat Banks are established in places where on-site compensatory mitigation (like creating a wetland or planting trees) is difficult to accomplish because of the local ecological conditions or because of the real estate market.
Ecosystem resilience depends on habitat banks. They are able to secure essential ecosystem services like improved air quality, carbon sequestration, reduced nutrient run-off into our rivers, and flood mitigation. If they’re placed right, they can even up the ante on agricultural yield potential.
Image: surveyor with hat and rucksack walking through forest.
4. Supporting Local Economies and Communities
Biodiversity has been overlooked for too long, and it is probably not too much to say that its decline has been largely ignored because it has not shown up in terms of monetary interest. Now, Habitat Banks provide something new and potentially transformative—an opportunity for landowners and farmers to diversify the ways in which they make use of the land where they live.
Landowners can have 30 years of income security if they agree to create (or restore), manage, and monitor a “habitat.”
5. Faster Nature Restoration
Habitat banks are a clear and effective way for local planning authorities to deliver the local nature recovery that national legislation demands. Overall, they help deliver a robust mechanism that is compliant with the Environment Act 2021 and the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). For developers, habitat banks provide a means to contribute to the nature restoration agenda without being responsible for the management of the habitat in question.
Habitat Banks are being set up in every local authority across the nation, creating thousands of hectares of restored biodiversity habitat.
These new sites are so large and coherent that they are far better for biodiversity than the small fragments of amenity land that, say, housing schemes incorporate.
The provision of BNG will ensure that development doesn’t just happen, but proceeds. Meanwhile, ecosystems are set to recover, primarily because nature is capable of doing so when unimpeded. Indeed, when you consider it in detail, the ecological upsides of BNG are many.
