This page was updated in May 2021

What causes biodiversity and ecosystem service losses?

This is what the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) says in its Regional Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Europe and Central Asia (2018).

“The major driver of the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services to date has been land-use change, caused in part by production-based subsidies that led to unsustainable intensification of agricultural practices.  However, the assessment notes that the impact of human-induced climate change is increasing and is likely to be one of the most important drivers in the future. The assessment also found that economic growth has, in general, not been decoupled from environmental degradation.”

The three-fold threat to ecosystem services

 So the threat to our ecosystem services is three-fold; land-use change, climate change and change associated with economic growth.  When ecosystem services change, we must be very careful to identify which of those three drivers of change is responsible.  For example, we have lost 97% of our wildflower meadows in the UK since the 1930s.  It is easy to say this has been due to building towns and cities over farmland areas, but the real answer is that it’s more due to changing agricultural practices, especially those associated with silage production.

Dramatic fall in insect abundance in Europe

 Whatever is the real cause, there are consequences of wildflower meadow loss.  For example, such meadows are enormously attractive to bees and other insects and these creatures pollinate 75% of the world’s crops and 84% of cultivated European crops.  Studies have shown a decline of 75% in the total abundance (biomass) of insects in Europe in the last 27 years.  That’s a huge drop in a very short time and it is not at all clear why this has happened.  But whatever the reasons are, they are probably connected with the way that we humans look after our natural environment.   

Government and other responses to threats to ecosystem services

DEFRA’s 2018 25-year Environmental Plan (25YEP), its 2019 landscapes review, and the independent National Biodiversity Network’s (NBN) 2019 series of State of Nature Reports show both the ambition and the challenge facing any wildlife conservation measures in our over-crowded island. 

DEFRA’s 25-Year Environmental Plan

The 25-year plan proposes a natural capital approach to valuing our natural areas.  For example woods and forests in the UK are estimated to provide £2.3billion of ecosystem services, only 10% of which is represented by the value of the timber they contain.   Valuing natural resources is the work of the Natural Capital Committee (the first of its kind globally) set up by the Government to fulfil its commitment in a 2011 White Paper, The Natural Choice’, for ours “to be the first generation to leave the natural environment of England in a better state than it inherited”. 

Among many others, one of the aims in the 25YEP is “to develop, by the end of 2018, a set of metrics (for Natural Capital Accounting) that will chart our progress towards a better environment, ensuring transparency and accountability”. DEFRA subsequently developed a rather dubious biodiversity metric  for putting into practice the 25YEP ambition to achieve ‘net environmental gain’ for all future developments, including housing and infrastructure.

Performance to date on the 25-year Environment Plan (25YEP)

In October 2020 the Natural Capital Committee produced its Final Report on progress made to date on the 25YEP. Of the seven resource areas covered by the 25YEP none is on course to achieve the 25YEP objectives, and five are rated Red, indicating a decline or deterioration over the study period. Dieter Helm, NCC Chair, concludes his introduction to the Report with “We can be green and prosperous, but it will not happen by default. The huge opportunities, both economic and environmental, should be grasped by this government”.

The Natural Capital Committee is due to be wound up and replaced by the Office of Environmental Protection (OEP) under the new Environment Bill. Some worry that the new OEP will not have the legislative ‘teeth’ of the EU regulations it is designed to replace in the post-Brexit era and, consequently, that our environment will be even less protected than before..

DEFRA’s Landscapes Review 

The Landscapes Review argued against complacency in being satisfied with the wildlife areas and AONBs we already have, claiming that:

“the national zeal of the founding mission for landscape protection has been eroded. There is no common ambition and a culture which has neither kept pace with changes in our society nor responded with vigour to the decline in the diversity of the natural environment.

Our country is changing fast. It is becoming more diverse. More urban. Much busier. New forms of farming, carbon emissions, the sprawl of housing, new technology and social shifts have changed the relationship between people and the countryside, and left nature and our climate in crisis.”

The National Biodiversity Network Reports

 The NBN Reports support this conclusion of nature in peril and occasionally in crisis.  The Summary Reports give examples of both increases and decreases in both distribution and abundance of some species, and of no net change in others.  For example, in terms of distributions (of 6654 species), across the UK, 27% of species have shown a decrease in distribution, 21% an increase and 52% little change since the 1970s.  Situations that are as dynamic as these figures suggest are also vulnerable to shocks, such as those from climate change or of urban development in critical wildlife sites.  It is vital that careful and critical Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA, a legal requirement) are made of any sites proposed for development for either the expressway or houses.