Tag: Biodiversity integrity

Counting on 2026 … day 17

2nd February 

Food security is a pertinent issue. A recent Government report,  Nature security assessment on global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security, investigates “how global biodiversity loss and the collapse of critical ecosystems could affect the UK’s resilience, security and prosperity.” (1) 

At the top of the list of events the poses a high risk for the UK is global ecosystem breakdown: ie the ecosystems on which we depend for fresh water, clean air and food, and for predictable weather patterns, and which protect us from diseases, would cease to function. 

Without major interventions, the report states that this is a highly likely outcome based on current trends. 

Not only would this impact us locally, the UK would also be impacted by the knock on effects of systems collapse in other countries leading to increased competition for limited resources such as food and water, greater risk of global pandemics,  an increase in both armed conflict and mass migration. Partial system collapse is likely by 2030 and a global collapse as early as 2050. 

In a repeat of what has been said so widely, measures needed to reduce the likelihood of global ecosystem collapse include:-

  • Protecting 30% of global land and ocean by 2030 (now just four years away)
  • 30% of global nature to be under rest by 2030
  • Mobilising finance to close the funding gap of $700bn
  • Reducing risks from pesticide usage by 50% by 2050
  • Eliminating or reforming harmful subsidies by $500bn by 2050
  • Meeting the 1.5C Paris climate agreement target

So why aren’t we – whether as individuals, as industries or as the government – a) doing more to curtail activities that are driving this ecological breakdown, and b) doing more to increase national and global resilience?

  1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-security-assessment-on-global-biodiversity-loss-ecosystem-collapse-and-national-security?internal=true

Counting on 2026 … day 16

30th January 

This last week the radio programme Farming Today has been reporting on the difficulties livestock farmers have been facing with insufficient supplies of winter feed. Last year’s hot dry summer reduced crop yields meaning there has been a shortage of things such as hay, silage, maize, sunflower seeds, rape seed etc. Farmers have had to buy in extra feed including more imported soya beans. The Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) said that “the UK needs a national protein strategy to safeguard feed security because that impacts food security.” 

This bemuses me. Would it not be more logical, if we are wanting to increase national protein security, to focus on growing more plant based proteins that can be fed directly to humans rather than feeding us indirectly via livestock? Gaining our protein needs from livestock rather than plants is much more inefficient in the use of land, water, fertiliser etc and generates far more pollution costs too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002q29g
https://www.agindustries.org.uk/resource/aic-on-bbc-farming-today-programme-uk-feed-security.html

Counting on 2026 … day 15

28th January 

Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is a global agreement, dating from 2022seeks to halt and reverse biodiversity loss – ie restoring the integrity of biodiversity. Signatories, which includes the UK, have undertaken to restore 30% of the biodiversity by 2030 – both land based and marine. (1)

In December 2025 the government published its policy paper, The Environmental Improvement Plan (2025) and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. (2) This is intended as a ‘roadmap’ first restoring nature, improving environmental quality, creating a circular economy, protecting environmental security and improving access to nature. However it is crunched in terms of minimise and enable and encourage with no measurable targets and no details as to the who and the how and the where.

More useful is the report from the Wild Life Trusts. It starts critically: “Despite often being a key player in the international stage …the UK has not backed this up with implementation at home. The UK’s international environmental leadership threatens to be undermined by the fact that the UK Government is on track to meet only four of its forth individual domestic environmental targets and remains one of the most nature depleted countries on the planet.” But it also offers positive advice: “Space in the UK is finite and there are many competing aspirations for how our land and seas should be used. A national strategic spatial approach to planning the use of both is needed to reduce and avoid conflict. This approach needs to be fully cross departmental to ensure policies for,planning, transport, energy, food and nature are all aligned.” This plan needs to show “how and where 30%of the land will be effectively conserved and restored by 2030…”

The report also reveals some shocking analysis: “…analysis shows that on,y 3.1% of land in ZD gland is effectively protected and managed for nature, whilst a maximum of 8% of English seas could be said to be protected for nature.” It goes on to recommend: “Landscape-scale habitat creation is needed, linked by corridors and stepping stones of wild places throughout our cities and countryside. Practices that damage nature must be minimised to enable nature to recover.” (3)

I’m surprised that in all these discussions about route maps to increase biodiversity and the need to allocate more space for nature, that instigating a switch to largely plant based diets doesn’t feature. We cannot maintain existing diets, existing farming practices and restore nature!

  1. https://www.cbd.int/gbf
  2. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-environmental-improvement-plan-2025-and-the-kunming-montreal-global-biodiversity-framework
  3. https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/sites/default/files/2024-09/UK and Global Biodiversity Framework – The Wildlife Trusts 2024.pdf

Counting on 2026 … day 14

27th January

“Biosphere Integrity refers to the capacity of ecosystems across the planet to support life and maintain the overall health and stability of the Earth system. This depends on the health, diversity, and interactions of the organisms that make up these ecosystems.” (1) 

This is a safety boundary that we – because of human activity – have passed. We are living in the danger zone that means crises are inevitable. We experience this through rapidly declining numbers of pollinators (essential for growing crops); increasing soil infertility; declining ability of the environment to absorb carbon dioxide; declining ability of ecosystems to absorb rain so limiting flooding; loss of species removing opportunities to benefit from them for food, medicines, building materials etc; increasing loss of green and blue spaces that maintain our physical and mental wellbeing. 

Human activities that are causing the loss of biodiversity integrity include:-

  • Deforestation 
  • Changing land uses including  the expansion of urban structures 
  • Increased intensification of agricultural 
  • Expansion of agricultural land use
  • Industrialised fishing
  • Expansion of mining activities including deep sea mining
  • Expansion of industrial processes increasing pollution
  • Expansion of activities producing greenhouse gases – eg use of fossil fuels and livestock farming
  • Increased production of novel entities and the spread of invasive, non-indigenous species
  1. https://www.planetaryhealthcheck.org/boundary/change-in-biosphere-integrity/

Global risk map of the Change in Biosphere Integrity, based on the functional integrity (HANPP) control variable. Transgression is based on the HANPP control variable. All values shown on the map refer to the year 2010. Based on data from Kastner et al. 2022.

Most boundary transgressions occur in large, continuous regions with high land-use intensity. In contrast, areas in regions without transgressions, such as the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and boreal forests, are primarily natural or semi-natural.

Counting on … 178

3rd November 2025

With COP30 a week away, what are the system changes we need to protect the Earth’s  planetary boundaries?

Biodiversity integrity – life forms in all their variety are key to our wellbeing and survival. We re reliant on functioning ecosystems for clean air and water, for food and medicines, for clothing and shelter. And functioning ecosystems depend on there being both a diversity of and a sufficient number of, plants, animals, insects, bacteria etc. For example, without fungi and earth worms, plant roots, decaying leaves etc the fertility of the soil will be depleted and food supplies diminished. 

We humans, through both excessive use of some resources and through a failure to conserve others, have so diminished the integrity of the Earth’s biodiversity framework, that it is now in the danger zone: that planetary boundary has been exceeded. It is something that has been apparent for years, and in 2022 the nations of the world drew up the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework outlining how the Earth’s biodiversity could be restored. From this agreement came the undertaking that nations would by 2030 restore and protect the biodiversity of 30% of the land and of the seas in their control.(1) This is an ambitious target given how reluctant people and organisations are to change the way they live and do business. It is an issue that needs to be kept at the top of the agenda for all international and national decision makers. In a recent blog, it was noted that the “the impact of biodiversity risks to the UK economy and financial institutions are equal or greater than climate risks.” (2)

  1. https://www.unep.org/resources/kunming-montreal-global-biodiversity-framework

(2) https://blog.actuaries.org.uk/2025/9/nature-at-risk-models-at-fault-why-biodiversity-cant-wait/

Further info on the importance of biodiversity – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-60823267