This week’s King’s Speech ignored the weighty backlog of environmental commitments made by the UK Government, and instead chose to focus on laying booby traps across the political minefield that lies ahead of the General Election. 

We are a nation of nature lovers – yet the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and the situation is getting worse. A decade ago, shortly after the Conservatives came to power promising to “leave the environment in a better state for the next generation”, the State of Nature report found one in ten species in the UK is heading for extinction. The most recent report published in September found that figure is now one in six. Sometimes it’s hard to describe the scale of these losses – they’re the life-enhancing, surround-sound glories of nature that our grandparents would have experienced without knowing their luck. 

Not too long ago, the Government was making some ambitious commitments to halt the loss of nature – most notably taking a leading role in the global agreement for nature’s recovery at the UN COP15 biodiversity conference - and received plaudits for it. But in recent weeks it seems the strategy has changed.  

Instead, action to tackle the climate and nature crisis has become a wedge issue. First came the Government’s increasingly desperate attempts to weaken environmental protections for rivers. To curry favour with housebuilders the Government broke its promise of not lowering environmental standards and sought to set a false premise that you can either be on the side of new homes or clean rivers.  

After an outcry in the House of Lords – and from the public, appalled and angry about the disgusting state of rivers – Government plans to shelve nutrient neutrality rules were quietly dropped from the King’s Speech. However, plans to change the way that the health of waters is reported could instead mean that the truth about the state of our rivers is hidden from public view. 

Perhaps the most spectacularly foot-shooting of all is the new dividing line on action to tackle climate change – one of the main drivers of the loss of nature. The announcement of a bill to force ministers to run a new round of oil and gas licences every year is an unnecessary, childish political stunt that will do nothing to lower energy bills or to boost UK energy independence. Worse still, it diverts parliamentary time away from long-promised measures such as banning peat sales – something that the Government had committed to do by the end of this Parliament – and adds to the rapidly expanding list of broken environmental promises.  

It seems action to tackle the climate and nature crisis has fallen victim to the Prime Minister’s efforts to find new ways to provoke outrage. Nature versus homes, net zero versus new petrol cars and a confusion of non-existent policies are among new the polarising false narratives.  

The twin nature and climate crises are too important to play dodgeball with – people care deeply and understand that these have become emergencies which threaten us all. It seems Rishi Sunak is forgetting the lessons from his predecessor Liz Truss that undermining efforts to protect nature will not draw people to your cause.  

Back to the State of Nature findings: we also know that before widespread monitoring began, the UK's biodiversity had already been highly depleted by centuries of habitat loss, unsustainable farming practices, development, and persecution. As a result, now we face risks to food security, floods, extreme heat and wildfires, and a societal disconnection to nature with ensuing mental health repercussions. It’s time the Government revived the spirit that led it to spearhead global agreements on nature to tackle these long-term issues – and stopped playing political games with our future.