‘Investing in nature essential for national security’, says Natural England chair

Investing in nature is “essential for national security”, the chairman of government agency Natural England has said. 

Tony Juniper said a healthy natural environment was important for “prosperity and public health” but warned it would take decades to properly reverse the decline in species and habitats. 

Mr Juniper argued that England already has the targets and policies it needs to deliver a turnaround for nature, but suggested some areas – such as the reintroduction of beavers – are developing more slowly than he would like.

On the debate over whether the country can afford to restore wildlife and habitats, or should instead prioritise food security, Mr Juniper insisted it needed to be “both and”, rather than “either or”.

The former head of Friends of the Earth said: “A healthy natural environment is essential for national security, and indeed for our prosperity and public health… How do you secure food and water supplies, how do you make your country resilient in the face of climate change, how do you underpin key economic sectors?

“In the end, all of them you can trace back to a healthy natural environment having some role – and in the case of farming and water, having a pivotal role…”

He added: “So health, wealth and security at a national level are three reasons why it’s really important to invest in nature, even at times of economic hardship, because if you don’t do it, you pay a big bill down the track.”

Speaking to the PA news agency to mark five years in his role, Mr Juniper said concerns raised over moves including reintroducing beavers mean “we go more slowly than ecologists and nature advocates like me would like”.

Supporters of reintroduction say beavers engineer the landscape to store and clean-up water, reduce flooding and create habitats for wildlife. But efforts to release them into the wild must wait on Government decisions, with some farmers concerned about their impact on productive land.

However, Mr Juniper said the species, which was hunted to extinction in Britain, had been missing for 400 years, “so if it takes another year to get to the point where we’ve got clarity about what we’re going to do, I don’t think that’s a total disaster”. 

He added: “As an ecologist, I can see the huge benefits that would come with [beavers], so long as we can get everybody to the point where they can see it as well. We need to carefully and make sure we keep as many people on side as we can.”

Mr Juniper acknowledged that economic considerations affect policy, with spending constraints following the financial crash, and more recently the impact of Covid and the cost-of-living crisis prompted by the war in Ukraine.

Developers required to replace habitats

He cited an increasing focus on unlocking private as well as public funding, with new measures such as “biodiversity net gain”. This requires developers to finance the creation of habitat, not only to replace what has been lost to development, but to increase it overall.

As part of the new environmental land management scheme (Elms), which replaces EU farming subsidies, the Government is paying large landowners and groups of farmers to implement pilot “landscape recovery” schemes.

Mr Juniper said this funding would “pump-prime” large-scale nature projects so they can attract green private investment.

Elms also pays individual farmers for outcomes such as healthy soil, hedgerows and reduced pesticide use. Mr Juniper defended the scheme’s focus on “public goods”, such as a stable climate and clean water, rather than food production. 

He said the public goods focus was effectively correcting a “market failure”, by paying for things that people need but which are not available on the market.

While you could argue food counts as a public good, he said, “I think probably the more useful conversation would be to say, how do we ensure that the people growing this food are getting a fair deal in the market?”

“And that’s less public goods and more about the behaviour of the supermarkets, and the trading conditions that shape the prices that people pay in the shops and the prices that the farmers are being paid for all the hard work they’re putting in and the risk they’re taking.”

He added it was necessary to get beyond the “either or” question of food production versus nature recovery, to reach “both and”, bringing nature recovery and food production together.

‘Governments should think long-term’

Speaking in a general election year, Mr Juniper said whoever wins power should be thinking long-term about the programme of nature recovery and the climate challenge.

He also called for a “widespread appreciation that nature recovery is a hugely valuable investment with multiple returns and not simply a cost”.

“The idea of taking the view that this is a sound investment and requires long term commitment, both of those things are essential,” he said, adding there were benefits in tackling multiple objectives, such as housing, clean water, nature recovery and carbon storage together.

Mr Juniper said he felt “the penny has dropped” in politics, agriculture, development, and among the public, on the need to deal with environmental challenges.

He said: “This is not really now for want of new policies or for new targets. It’s really now about delivery.

“I think we’ve got most of what we need in terms of the goals and many of the policies to back their delivery, but we’ve got to stick with the programme. It’s long term, it can’t be solved in one parliament,” Mr Juniper said.