The House of Lords has pushed through a proposed Nature’s Rights Bill that would recognise ecosystems and species as legal subjects aiming to transform how construction and engineering projects are planned and consented.
The Private Member’s Bill, introduced by Green peer Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, seeks to place nature at the centre of UK law by establishing a legal duty of care on public bodies and businesses to the natural environment.
The bill would also see the creation of new enforcement mechanisms and establishment of a Nature Guardianship Council, bioregional councils and a Nature’s Rights Tribunal.
Nature’s place in the mix of infrastructure and societal development has been a hot topic of late.
At the end of last year, the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) and Natural England separately defied the government’s stance that nature recovery is a blocker of growth for the UK.
Previously known as Amendment 130, but then Amendment 40 on the Bill’s return to the Commons, it sought for Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs) to be used by developers only for tackling diffuse and cumulative environmental challenges such as nutrient pollution, air quality and water management.
Lords in favour of the new bill said measures within it are designed to halt biodiversity loss and embed ecological protection across government and the economy.
A key basis for the new bill is that existing environmental frameworks, including the Environment Act 2021 and the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan, have failed to halt species decline.
Bennett said: “Environmental laws and regulations have not fundamentally changed the rate of environmental destruction, despite 60 years or more of awareness of environmental issues and half a century of environmental law.
“Short-term economic interests, particularly of powerful companies—now with resources and power rivalling those of all but the largest states—and nations’ determination to exploit and extract from states unable or unwilling to resist them, through mining, logging and polluting, have overwhelmed what are essentially ineffective legal provisions.”
A number of Lords further argued a rights‑based approach within the bill would embed ecological decision‑making which would require restoration rather than just compensation for the loss of environment. They further believe the bill could secure long‑term resilience for food, water and flood management services.
The bill would require public authorities and “UK entities” to carry out rights and rights‑impact assessments where activities might “materially affect nature”.
This would expand the scope of pre‑project environmental assessments beyond current Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements, adding new steps for planning and consenting where the environment is concerned.
Clauses within the bill aslo include precautionary principles and potential offences for causing serious harm to nature with severe criminal penalties proposed.
Developers and engineers could also face stricter constraints on activity in sensitive sites and greater obligations to avoid harm on‑site rather than rely on off‑site compensatory measures such as BNG.
Peers warned the duties under the bill could reach into supply chain decisions and overseas operations, with lenders and pension funds directed to reorient investment around ecological criteria.
The bill further contains elements intended to nudge financial institutions to factor ecological integrity into lending and investment. If implemented, banks and investors might tighten lending to construction projects that pose perceived risks to ecosystems, the Lords warned.
Discussing the bill, Baroness Coffey and former Brexit negotiator David Frost, noted that key terms such as “nature”, “ecological integrity” and “safe ecological limits” could be open to interpretation, causing issues for projects being developed which contain some element of environment loss.
Frost said: “The question of what nature is has preoccupied philosophers and theologians since the ancient Greeks. They have asked whether the natural order is itself divine, merely God’s handiwork, something in between or, more recently, none of those things.
“In examining this question, one issue very relevant to this bill recurs—whether, and if so why, it is reasonable to personalise the concept of nature for theological, philosophical or political purposes.
“This bill seems to do just that. One is led to speculate whether we are seeing not just the embodiment of the modern Gaia concept but a return to the ‘Lady Nature’ of the early medieval Chartres school of Bernard Silvestris and Alain de Lille. These are not irrelevant or purely intellectual questions.
“The bill asks us to believe that nature exists as a specific, recognisable and even self-evident concept, and builds an entire political structure around that.
“Yet intellectual history tells us that things are a bit more complicated. Get the concept wrong and the politics and the legislation will be wrong too. I fear that that is what is happening.”
Several peers also argued the proposals could be legally disruptive to any development in the UK.
The bill passed its Second Reading and will now proceed to the committee stage where its clauses will be examined in detail.
Contractors are already starting to implement proposals from the bill, most noticeably tier 1 contractor Bam and the Eden Project formed a partnership to usher in a “a movement that transforms construction into a catalyst for ecological regeneration”.
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