restoration HUB: What biodiversity means for the waterways Canals connect many habitats that need to be considered when restoration works are being planned.
Managing impacts on biodiversity has long been part of infrastructure development. However, with the huge amounts of money promised by Government over the coming years for such Protecting wildlife habitats is a key part of development. areas as road and rail transport, housing, energy, flood defence and communications, the potential for devastating consequences for the environment has become very real. Declarations on the joint climate and biodiversity crisis by private and public sector organisations escalated during 2019, placing biodiversity loss, and the need to address it, at the centre of political and public discussions. The question now being asked is: how do we improve infrastructure while protecting, and ideally enhancing, biodiversity? A new approach called Biodiversity Net Gain looks to be the answer.
What is BNG? The concept of BNG is simple: it is development that leaves biodiversity in a measurably better state than before. It requires a shift from an ‘infrastructure versus nature’ approach, to one where infrastructure is designed, built and maintained in ways that benefit our environment. Some major industry players have made voluntary commitments to BNG, including Highways England, housing developers such as Berkeley Homes and Barratt Homes, and water companies like South West Water. There are also local planning authorities stipulating BNG, including Warwickshire
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and Lichfield. Government is now catching up and last year published the Environment Bill’s policy statement setting out a mandatory approach to BNG for development in England. Also, Natural England issued the Biodiversity Metric 2.0 for measuring losses and gains in biodiversity from development.
Good practice To help address the challenge of how to adopt a combined ‘infrastructure and nature’ approach, leading environmental institutes, including the Chartered Institute of Ecology & Environmental Management, Construction Industry Research & Information Association, and Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment, have published Biodiversity Net Gain: Good Practice Principles for Development. These principles provide a framework for achieving BNG and are relevant to the construction industry, local authorities, NGOs, landowners and land managers. They have been widely cited as a benchmark for good practice, and
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