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Biodiversity Emergency Declared in the Broads

Writer's picture: Dr Mark CollinsDr Mark Collins

In 2019, the Broads Authority recognised the climate emergency and pledged to make its operations carbon neutral by 2030, aiming for zero emissions by 2040. Now, in 2024, it has declared a parallel plan to address the biodiversity emergency. It wants the Broads, which is the most biodiverse and important freshwater wetland in Britain, to be a leading model for ecological resilience and nature recovery and has committed to reversing biodiversity loss through a new five-year Broads Nature Recovery Strategy (BNRS). Implementation will be achieved by convening and engaging with more than 40 committed Broads organisations, including the Broads Society, through the Broads Biodiversity Partnership.

 

A few words of context may help to explain what this is all about. Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and faces a biodiversity emergency that is inseparably linked with climate change. The BNRS is based on a framework established in the former government’s 25-Year Environment Plan 2018, elaborated further in the formal Environment Act 2021, and reconfirmed in the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023. Across England, Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs) are being prepared by 48 responsible local authorities, including Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils. Strategies at a finer scale, including the Broads, are being prepared across the nation to nest within the 48 council plans. Natural England and Defra have not yet defined all the targets for nature recovery, but we know that of the ten targets that apply to Protected Landscapes (i.e. National Parks, the Broads and former Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty), seven apply to the Broads, as does a further one for species.


Delivery of the BNRS will be organised according to three priorities: species, water quality and quantity, and habitats (wet grassland, fen, fen meadow, reedbed, wet woodland). However, there’s a snag, and it’s a particularly big one in the Broads. Climate warming and the resulting sea and river-level rise, salinisation, flooding, and drought threaten regional change on a scale that could undermine or even negate the best-laid plans.

 

The map here, taken from a summary document for the Broads Nature Recovery Strategy that is about to be published, illustrates three important issues that underpin the BNRS.


map of the broads
Illustrative Opportunities Map of the Broads

Firstly, the Broads Protected Landscape is tightly circumscribed around the middle and lower reaches of rivers and their floodplains. However, this area of just over 300 sq. km relies on the health of more than 3000 sq. km of water catchments beyond the Broads’ boundaries. These currently have very few sites designated for nature protection, and additional biodiversity opportunities are yet to be identified. They will be highlighted in the Local Nature Recovery Strategy in 2025. Pollution control, water management, housing development, farming practices, and many other factors in these wider catchments will be critical to the health of the Broads downstream and to the success of the BNRS.

 

Secondly, within the Broads Protected Landscape, there are significant opportunities to help nature recover, indicated in pale green on the map. This land within the Broads but outside the designated reserves is mostly privately owned, and much of it consists of drained wetlands used for grazing marshes, arable farming, and other economically productive purposes. With appropriate management, it could greatly contribute to nature recovery and should be the focus of collaborative engagement by any possible means.

 

Thirdly, the spidery shape of the Broads Protected Landscape is clearly centred around the Trinity Broads and the five main rivers – the Waveney, Yare, Bure, Ant and Thurne. These waterways and their associated broads and tributaries comprise the ‘navigation’ described in the Norfolk & Suffolk Broads Act of 1988. The navigation is maintained through approximately £4 million of tolls paid annually by 9,844 privately owned and 1,560 hire boats (September 2023 figures from the Broads Authority).

 

All three of these observations deserve further analysis, but here we focus on the third, exploring the links between the navigation and nature recovery. Will the management of the waterways as paid for through tolls from boat owners contribute to the Broads Nature Recovery Strategy, and if so, how?

 

The Broads Act includes notionally separate funding systems for navigation and national park protection and enjoyment, but this system has never been very successful. Very few Broads Authority budget lines can be attributed entirely to navigation or the management of the Protected Landscape for protection and public enjoyment. In recent submissions to Defra, the Authority has argued convincingly that non-boating enjoyment of the waterways is a significant public benefit, ought more properly to receive a contribution from Defra, and should not depend so heavily on toll-payers. But another approach would be to reform this element of the Act altogether, with a view to improved strategic integration of navigation, protection and public enjoyment functions in the Broads. Treating navigation as a separate financial component constrains the holistic planning that is needed to tackle nature recovery, adapt to the impact of climate change, and keep the waterways navigable. It wastes valuable management effort, diverts too much time to fund allocation, and creates contentious and unproductive discourse among Broads businesses and non-governmental communities.

 

The outmoded separation of the navigation budget also creates the entirely incorrect impression that boating has nothing to do with nature protection and management, when this could not be further from the truth. We know very well that freshwater rivers and broads are the reason why the Broads has a higher biodiversity than any of the National Parks, despite being smaller.  About 17% of Britain’s 65,000 – 70,000 species are found here, 1,500 of them threatened, and most of them highly dependent on freshwaters.


Bittern in flight
While scarce in much of the UK, the bittern flourishes in the Broads (credit Hans Watson)

Most recreational boaters undoubtedly have huge respect for the environment in which they sail and cruise and prefer to do so in biodiverse areas. It should come as no surprise that boating is at its highest density in the more varied landscapes of the Northern rivers, particularly in the nature-rich areas of the Bure and Thurne. Boaters appreciate the opportunity to navigate Britain’s largest protected wetland and to ply rivers peacefully meandering through wide open reedbeds and marshes. Certainly, they pay tolls principally to keep the waterways navigable but at the same time, they strongly support programmes for nature protection and recovery.

 

At the same time as paying to keep the waterways open, the funds from the boating community undoubtedly help to maintain the Broads’ wetland mosaic by pushing back ecological succession. Most nature conservation efforts in Britain rely on this process, which is one of the earliest theories of land management. Ecological succession is the process of change in the species that make up an ecological community over time. For example, without dredging and water plant management, ecological succession would soon see marshland invading open water, lakes shrinking and silting up, and rivers narrowing. Unmanaged wetlands would lose specialist reedbed species as they give way to scrub and woodland, as can be seen at Surlingham and Sutton Broads.


Reedbeds on the Broads
Without management, ecological succession will soon see reedbeds replaced by scrub.

Navigation tolls can and should be used for the dual purpose of maintaining the navigation while simultaneously halting succession and preserving biodiversity. This is one of the reasons why Natural England reviews and advises on the Authority’s proposals for dredging, water plant management and maintenance of navigation infrastructure.

 

Declaring a Biodiversity Emergency and creating a Broads Nature Recovery Strategy are greatly to be welcomed. These decisions help to reaffirm the interconnectedness of all aspects of Broads management. Sensible reform of the Broads Act would allow the Authority more freedom to integrate nature protection, public enjoyment and navigation more effectively. At the same time, the boating community should embrace the challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change more openly, support an integrated approach to financing the Broads, and no longer promote the navigation as a world apart from the environment upon which it actually depends, and to which it has so much to offer.

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