This is the first in a series of blogs looking at the Natural Environment Bill.
The Natural Environment Bill, introduced in February and currently undergoing parliamentary scrutiny, will introduce legal targets for nature restoration as well as making changes to National Parks, deer management, and the powers to modify environmental protections. This blog will consider the introduction of nature targets, with the other parts of the Bill to be explored in future blogs.
Legal nature targets is a long-standing demand of the Scottish environmental sector and mark the only outstanding ask of the Fight for Scotland’s Nature campaign, launched in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. The government committed to introducing these targets in the Bute House Agreement, though the legislation was delayed. Following the collapse of the SNP-Green deal, LINK launched the Scotland Loves Nature campaign to push for the Bill, which was included in the 2024-25 Programme for Government.
Why targets?
Targets alone will not restore nature. Setting a target in law does not guarantee it will be met – as has become painfully clear in the context of climate targets. But statutory targets do increase the momentum towards action and build in accountability if targets are missed.
Scotland’s child poverty targets are a good example of how legal commitments can drive meaningful policy action and accountability. Recent headlines focused on the government missing its interim target. But the setting of these targets was followed by the introduction of the Scottish Child Payment, a groundbreaking policy which has kept 100,000 children out of poverty. Poverty in Scotland is lower than it would have been without these legal targets, and the political pressure to meet these targets ensures that child poverty remains as one of the government’s key objectives.
Timeline for delivery
Nature targets have been introduced in England, through the 2021 Environment Act, and in the EU, through the 2024 Nature Restoration Law. Both the English and EU approaches include interim targets for 2030 as a milestone on the way to 2050 targets (while the English legislation requires some measures to be met by 2042).
The Natural Environment Bill itself is silent on most of the key details of the targets to be introduced, including the dates they should be met. However, the policy memorandum recommits to the broad timeline included in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, for Scotland to be “Nature Positive by 2030, and to have restored and regenerated biodiversity across the country by 2045”.
The Natural Environment Bill will receive royal assent in 2026 and at that point become an Act. The Bill requires that draft targets are laid as regulations within 12 months of section 1 of the Act coming into force. Realistically, the regulations are unlikely to be introduced prior to next year’s election, meaning the second half of 2026 would be the earliest they would be in place.
What targets?
The Bill sets out three areas where Ministers must introduce targets: the condition or extent of any habitat; the status of threatened species; and the environmental conditions for nature regeneration. There is also a fourth “any other matter” topic should Ministers choose to introduce a target which does not fit within the habitat, species, or environmental conditions topics.
An important note is that the Bill requires “at least” one target under the habitat, species, and environmental conditions topics. In practice, there is likely to be a suite of metrics under these topic headings, which will be necessary to capture the complexity of biodiversity.
The Bill also sets out requirements for Ministers to take scientific advice on the setting the targets and appoints Environmental Standards Scotland as an independent oversight body. There is also a process built in for where a target is not met or where Ministers believe a target can no longer be met.
How the Bill can be improved
With the Bill setting a framework for targets rather than targets themselves, the key details will be determined by regulation in the future. This approach is broadly appropriate considering the complexity of biodiversity and the need to avoid counterproductive or overly simplistic metrics in primary legislation – there is no biodiversity equivalent to the ‘net emissions’ metric at the heart of climate legislation.
Despite this, there are a number of ways in which the Bill could be strengthened:
- The drafting of the existing target topics should be amended to ensure that targets cover both habitat quality and extent, and cover species in decline and not simply, as currently drafted, “threatened species”.
- A wider range of compulsory target areas could be included. In particular the Bill would benefit from targets related to ecological connectivity (the delivery of a “national Nature Network”) and reversal of biodiversity loss against a historic baseline (the Biodiversity Intactness Index).
- The mechanism used to introduce targets is through amendment of the existing biodiversity duty on public bodies. The duty requires public bodies to “have regard” to biodiversity – this should be strengthened to require public bodies to facilitate progress towards the targets.
By Dan Paris, Scottish Environment LINK’s Director of Policy & Engagement
Image: Deborah Long