Britain sets out new legally binding environmental targets
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Wallasea Island in England once comprised low-lying farmland. The area is now being returned to wilderness as an inter-tidal coastal marshland.
PHOTO: ST FILE
LONDON - The British government on Friday announced a set of new legally binding environmental targets to protect air quality, green spaces and to clean up rivers.
“These targets are ambitious and will be challenging to achieve – but they will drive our efforts to restore our natural environment, protect our much-loved landscapes and green spaces and marine environment,” Environment Minister Therese Coffey said in a statement first delivered at the United Nations COP15 biodiversity conference in Montreal.
The announcement said an Environmental Improvement Plan would be published in January setting out in detail how it would meet the new targets.
The targets set out by the government aim to:
- Halt the decline in species populations by 2030, and then increase populations by at least 10 per cent to exceed current levels by 2042
- Restore water bodies to their natural state by cracking down on harmful pollution from sewers and abandoned mines, and improving water usage in households
- Deliver on net-zero ambitions and boost nature recovery by increasing tree and woodland cover to 16.5 per cent of total land area in England by 2050
- Halve the waste per person that is sent to residual treatment by 2042
- Cut exposure to the most harmful air pollutant to human health: PM2.5
- Restore 70 per cent of designated features in Britain’s Marine Protected Areas to a favourable condition by 2042, with the rest in a recovering condition. REUTERS
