Will the Environmental Improvement Plan improve the environment within a generation and leave it in a better state than we found it?

Late last night the Government published its Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) which intends to translate into policy the commitment made in the 25-year Environmental Plan. So, will the plan “improve the environment within a generation and leave it in a better state than we found it”?

Our Head of Farming Policy Gareth Morgan has read through the plan and provides his comment below.

“The Government’s new environmental plan only goes some way to address the highly critical report from the Office for Environmental Protection on their last plan which said “Progress on delivery…has fallen far short of what is needed”. We welcome the plan and many of the aims within it but why is Defra only aiming for farmers to adopt nature-friendly farming on less than a sixth of their land before the end of the decade? With 70% of English land under farmland and wildlife populations in freefall, we need all farming to be nature-friendly. Agroecological approaches such as those adopted on organic farms prove this is possible, but we also need food policy that supports healthy and sustainable diets to make sustainable farming possible at scale. Plans are all very well and good, but we need detailed policies across Government that spark a swift transformation to make our food and farming system resilient in the face of climate change. Defra’s bite must be stronger than its bark.”

We welcome the long overdue commitment to publish the UK National Action Plan for Sustainable Use of Pesticides in 2023 but are concerned that the Government appear to have abandoned its commitment to producing a Soil Health Action Plan. We will be looking to see if the pesticide plan enshrines the commitment that the government made at the COP15 biodiversity summit to reduce the harmful impacts of pesticides by half by 2030 – and provides the detail for how to get there! Last week’s emergency authorisation of bee-harming neonicotinoids for the third year running flies in the face of these commitments. 

The Soil Association also calls for:

• Higher targets for nature-friendly farming – agroecological approaches, of which organic farming is the best example, is the most evidence-based solution for food and farming.
• Detail on the promised Soil Health Action Plan for England. Both biodiversity and food production rely on this precious resource – government neglect of our rapidly degrading soils puts us all at risk.
• An overhaul in how the government approaches nitrogen pollution with policies to reduce polluting practices, rather than an approach of mitigating the worst impacts.