On 31 January this year, the Government triumphantly published its Environmental Improvement Plan 2023.

The plan includes some hugely ambitious-sounding aims, from a promise to create or restore 500,000 hectares of wildlife habitat to a ‘multi-million pound’ Species Survival Fund.

When it comes to the environment, we applaud ambition - but for a 262-page document, this plan has a worrying lack of detail and clarity, and you can’t help but feel you are left with more questions than answers.

What is the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023?

In 2018, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) created the 25 Year Environment Plan which set out how the Government aimed to leave the environment in a better state than it was.

The Environment Act 2021 created a legal commitment that the plan would be updated every five years.

Fast forward to January this year, and the first revision has been released - the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023.

So what does the new version promise?

At the COP15 UN biodiversity summit in December, the UK agreed to the global commitment to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030 - just seven years’ time.

But in the Environmental Improvement Plan the Government has added some ambitious targets of its own.

These include pledges to ‘halt the decline in species abundance by 2030’; ‘create, restore, and extend 70 wildlife areas through new National Nature Reserves and more Landscape Recovery Projects’, and ‘restoring or creating’ more than 500,000 hectares (larger than the size of Buckinghamshire) of wildlife habitats outside of protected sites by 2042.

Ambitious targets like these are great – but targets are nothing unless they are met.

Less than two weeks before the Environmental Improvement Plan was released, the Government’s own watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), published a report highlighting the Government’s failings so far.

Dame Glenys Stacey DBE, Chair of the OEP, said that out of the 23 environmental targets her staff looked at, ‘none of them were demonstrably set out to be achieved’.

What else is new?

In addition to new targets, there are new initiatives such as the ‘multi-million-pound’ Species Survival Fund.

The plans say the fund will ‘create, enhance and restore’ habitats to protect the UK’s rarest species such as the red squirrel to help meet the 2030 species abundance target – but despite being mentioned several times, there are no actual details about it. We still don’t know when the fund will launch, what the exact figure will be or if it will support long-term projects.

The plan also unveils a commitment to give every person in the UK access to nature by ensuring everyone lives within a 15-minute walk of a ‘green or blue space’

This will be quite the task: according to the plan, currently 38% of us do not have ‘green or blue space’ within 15 minutes’ walk.

Where is the money actually coming from?

One of the most frequent questions being asked of the plan is where the money will come from.

Part of the answer is a target to raise at least £500 million a year in private finance to aid in nature’s recovery by 2027, and then more than £1 billion by 2030.

Once again, though, it is not explained how this will be done.

As for funding directly from the Government, it is unclear what the exact figures are and how much of it is actually new money.

No time for mistakes

We are currently living through a nature and climate crisis, we need to tackle this crisis now and there is no time for mistakes.

That is why BBOWT, along with the other Wildlife Trusts, will continue to hold the Government to account over its environmental plans.

If you want to help us, you can become a BBOWT Wildlife Ambassador. Find out more here.