Going, going, gone... UK wildlife, green space, food security, water resources?

The articles below were written (the one on biodiversity in collaboration with Jonathon Porritt) for the recently published report, “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow – Studies on Population Pressure and Prosperity” initiated by Lord Hodgson.

There’s been a good deal of discussion around the impacts on our natural environment, greenbelt, and wildlife from the Government’s stated target of building 1.5 million homes across England over the 5 years of this Parliament, averaging out at a rate of 370,000 new homes each year.

And about the overarching Planning and Infrastructure Bill which the government is seeking to get passed to enable those houses and associated ‘essential infrastructure’ to be built with minimal obstruction by human development blocking ‘Nimbys’ and inconvenient wildlife — “Focus on getting things built, and stop worrying about the bats and the newts.” ¹

But little or none about the impacts on the country’s wider resources and capacity to meet the needs and service requirements of all those additional households, not least in terms of food production. Certainly, no apparent strategic forward planning or acknowledgement as to where the demand for new homes primarily stems from – the UK’s recent and ongoing population growth.

The Guardian has covered the issue of visitor pressure on heritage landmarks (National Trust bans coaches from East Sussex beauty spot to cut visitor numbers, 12 April) ² and the challenge of meeting the government’s housebuilding target of 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament (UK housebuilders ‘very bad’ at building houses, says wildlife charity CEO, 1 April). ³

But neither article mentioned a common, underlying factor: population growth.

Since 1997, our population has grown by over 9 million people to the most current estimates of 68–69 million ⁴, ⁵
It is projected by the Office of National Statistics to increase by a similar amount over the next 25 years — reaching 70 million by the end of next year, topping 76 million by the mid-2040s. ⁶

The majority of that growth (60%) is due to net migration — the difference between the number of people coming to live here and those leaving. ⁷

The Office of National Statistics expects net migration to add to our population each year, as noted in a House of Commons Library briefing last year:
“The UK population is projected to grow because the ONS expects net migration to add people to the population each year for the foreseeable future.” ⁸

Net migration is also a significant driver behind the demand for new homes — as much as 68% over the past decade according to a report by the Centre for Policy Studies — and is set to remain so over the next two decades at least. ⁹

Of course, increasing pressure on and degradation of heritage sites from Land’s End to the New Forest and The Peak District is not directly caused by migration. And with 28% of 25–29 year olds having to live with their parents due to lack of housing stock and high rents, it is not the only factor behind the UK’s ‘housing crisis’.

But our overall and growing human population in the UK is a significant factor in both over the long-term — and it is disingenuous of the media, policymakers, and conservation bodies not to acknowledge that.

Biocapacity refers to the capacity of our planet’s or a country’s natural resources and ecosystems to regenerate and sustainably provide what people are demanding from those resources and to absorb waste materials created by human activity.

Natural resources and ecosystems include groundwater for drinking water, productive soils for food production and which, like trees and forests, absorb carbon dioxide, fish stocks within our coastal waters, and the weather systems that can recharge our rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers with drinking water.

The pollination of food crops by honey and wild bees, as well as many other insects, is an ecosystem service we humans depend on.

At our current population of c.69 million people, it has been calculated that for the UK overall, average biocapacity stands at just over 1.1 hectares per citizen, yet our average ecological footprint is three times that — equivalent to 4.4 hectares per person — putting the UK in overshoot as to what nature can provide and what we demand of it.

Nature depleted:
Simpler measures of our overshoot are the fact that we have wiped out nearly a fifth of the wildlife that lived here 50 years ago, earning the UK the unenviable title of being “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.”

Water depleted:
With weather patterns changing, rainfall is declining, further stressing our drinking water sources, leading the former head of the Environment Agency to warn of the country’s future water situation as “entering the jaws of death.”

To head off that threat, the government has announced the building of 9 new reservoirs across southern and eastern England — providing vital stores of water certainly, but taking further great ‘bites’ out of greenbelt, food-producing, and wildlife habitat land.

Soil depleted:
Our soils are faring little better, with research published in 2023 finding that 75% of UK soils are degraded and deficient in key nutrients over the past 30 years.

This reaffirms the 2014 study by Sheffield University, which drew the alarming headline: “Only 100 harvests left in UK farmland soils, scientists warn!”

Yet government policy is encouraging the concreting over of land that could and should be regenerated to produce food — for increasing our long-term resilience and food security, and for protecting and restoring natural ecosystems and their wildlife.

The most graphic, topical indicator of the UK’s overshoot is the routine discharge of raw, untreated sewage into our rivers, streams, lakes, and seas — over 450,000 recorded such ‘spills’ in 2023, totalling a disgusting duration of over 3 million hours when human excrement was pouring into and polluting those ecosystems.

Underinvestment and diversion of funds to reward water bosses and shareholders are rightly highlighted by campaigners — but the increase in our population by nearly 20 million over the past 75 years, and a further growth of 6–7 million more people projected over the next 25 years (one generation), is undeniably a factor.

Going, going, gone… UK wildlife, green space, food security, water resources?