The UN’s Biodiversity Conference has recently announced that its major global biodiversity summit, COP15, will no longer be taking place in China this summer. The conference will instead be held in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022. Having originally been set to take place in 2020, this change marks the fifth delay to the long-awaited summit.

However, how seriously COP15 is being taken on both domestic and international levels is yet to be seen. There has been some speculation as to whether key stakeholders have really bought into it with reports emerging that previous negotiations have moved at a remarkably slow pace. Agreements on finance, for example, presented a major hurdle to the formation of a global biodiversity plan at Geneva in March. The commitments that will be discussed at the final summit are still yet to be finalised and so the outcome of negotiations held last week in Nairobi will be indicative of how seriously governments are taking biodiversity.

Even within the UK, it is uncertain as to how committed the Government is towards COP15 and the wider biodiversity agenda. Comments by Lord Goldsmith (International Environment Minister) and George Eustice (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) have cast doubts about whether Boris Johnson will be attending the summit at all. Eustice stated that it is “likely” that either he or the prime minister would “play a role” but that it was too early to make any firm commitments.

A UK-led ‘high ambition statement’ will emphasise its role in securing a direct financial commitment from other nations at COP15. Despite this, confusion over government support for rewilding appears contradictory to the  stated wider aspirations. It has been reported that funding for the Landscape Recovery pot under the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) has been cut from £800 million down to £50 million. This appears to undermine the original policy of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs to commit a third of its farming budget to rewilding and instead aims to keep the budget allocation much more flexible.

Biodiversity is certainly an emerging area for environmental lawyers, especially in light of the recent requirements for developments to deliver a minimum of 10% biodiversity net gain (BNG) under the Environment Act 2021 and the drive for suitable off-setting schemes as part of the Net Zero agenda. We at Burges Salmon have been assisting a number of clients with issues around the Woodland and Peatland Codes and in designing schemes for the delivery of carbon credits.  Despite the uncertainty highlighted above we see this as an area of significant growth for legal services.

Written by Simon Cox.