Biodiversity – gaining ground?

Abstract

England's new biodiversity net gain legislation represents a historic milestone, and a vital step towards reversing the long-term depletion of the natural environment by human activity. Adopted in November 2021, the new legislation will require new building and infrastructure projects to provide a 10% net gain in biodiversity. First proposed over a decade ago, biodiversity net gain policies were initially envisaged as a means to create large scale ecological networks, by offsetting habitat lost to development with strategically located habitat creation. In their current form however, the net gain policies primarily focus on mitigating localised effects of development. We argue that off-site habitat gains should be encouraged, to support the creation of large-scale ecological networks. There are considerable resourcing bottlenecks and knowledge gaps which could hamper the successful delivery of the net gain legislation. To roll out these policies across all of England and at all scales of development will require a much bigger cohort of ecologists, specialist training for developers and their professional teams, and new collaborative working practices linking the private, public and charitable sectors.