Environmental law is a teacher

During this conversation, Julia and Richard touch on:

• The role of environmental law

• Biodiversity net gain (BNG)

• Enforcement and compliance

• Habitat banks and conservation covenants

• Connecting people with nature

• Challenges and opportunities

Intro: Welcome to Mott MacDonald's podcast Nature Positive: The Inside Story. In this podcast series, our host, Julia Baker, will be talking to industry leaders and experts about nature related policy, advisory law, and much more. In today's episode, Julia sits down with Richard Broadbent to discuss how the law teaches us to be better, plus insights into habitat banks and conservation covenants. So don't forget to subscribe and most importantly, enjoy this episode.

Julia: Richard, welcome to our podcast. It's lovely to have you.

Richard: Thank you for inviting me. I'm so pleased to be here.

Julia: How do you describe your job?

Richard: Oh, well, so the core of it is nature conservation law. So, habitats and species and the regulation of those. So I came to Freeths from Natural England and, of course, Natural England is a scientific advisor on the natural environment, but also, it's a regulator when it comes to species and protected sites. And so at Freeths, that's what we do, that’s some core elements of what I do as part of the environmental team of Freeths. But increasingly now it's natural capital. So biodiversity net gain, nutrient neutrality and water neutrality now. So there's a range of different things which are, sort of, an offshoot of the regulatory stuff that's the core of the practice. And it's actually very helpful looking at those natural capital matters through the lens of that regulatory framework as well and having an appreciation of how law and policy apply in that area.

Julia: And congratulations on being in the ENDS Power List.

Richard: Thank you.

Julia: I love the way that you describe the law as a teacher. You know, I've never really thought about it before that way. You always think it's enforcement, but it's teaching us to do better, to be better when it comes to our industry and nature and biodiversity. Why do you think the law's a teacher?

Richard: Well, I think that's one of the qualities of the law. Law is reached for, as Elizabeth Fisher says, as the most legitimate and stable medium with which to solve collective problems, right? And environmental law is about trying to collectively solve the problems that we're facing increasingly so, in response to industrialisation, modernisation and so on. So the law is reached for as the way to do that. But the law also has this incredible capacity to be a teacher. What the academics would call this normative power to set values. But I see the law as a teacher because it talks about what we value as important and that inculcates within us values around that. And you can see that happening in real time. There are attitudes towards the natural environment that we have now which we just didn't have 50 years ago. You know?

Julia: Yeah.

Richard: You wouldn't have carried out an assessment of the ecological impacts of your development in the same way that we do now. Decades ago, it wasn't part of it. But as we've valued that and use the law as a way of trying to collectively respond to these problems, it now becomes part of what we do.

Julia: It's like the normalisation within society.

Richard: Well, that's what it is, isn't it? So it has a great value there. And what is the law, at its core trying to teach us? Well, environmental law at its best is about trying to institutionalise stewardship obligations towards the natural environment, trying to make us better stewards of the natural environment.

Julia: That's a lovely way to put it, isn't it?

Richard: Yeah. Well, at its best, that's what it does, right? And we put rules around the things that we value. So we're putting rules around the natural environment with the idea that stewardship is the obligation that comes from there. The downside of using the law in this way is that it can become, over time, burdensome and it can become overly fussy and it can weigh you down. But if you fully appreciate the law as a teacher and take into yourself the considerations of it, then it doesn't become burdensome. It becomes freeing. So when it comes to the natural environment, if you're already thinking, as part of your outline for your development, now I need to think about nature as part of this, and you're doing that right from the start, well, then you're going to make informed decisions. You're not going to feel the burden of the law. You're actually working together with it. So at its best, that's what it can do.

Julia: And it's such an interesting way of putting it, actually, because I've certainly seen biodiversity net gain shift the conversation for biodiversity much earlier. You know, there’s so much talk about biodiversity net gain, of the metric, and rightly so, about local planning authorities having enough resources. And that's really important. But my experience so far, since the 12th of February, has been that suddenly BNG is right up in the early stages. But for the moment, it's more compliance than value and I think that's probably just a time thing. We'll get there over time. So the law's having that effect. But can the law move us from compliance to value or is that more of a cultural change because the law is there?

Richard: Well, ideally, that's what the law's trying to do, right? And I'm so pleased to hear that, that people are thinking about it at the early stages because that is absolutely the right way to go about doing it. If the environmental law becomes a problem to you, if you try and deal with it later on in the process, if you're trying to retrofit it on, bolt it on, as an afterthought because you've missed the stage earlier on, that's when the real difficulties arise. But if you're thinking about these things going in, and that's true not just for biodiversity net gain, it's true for pretty much every area of environmental regulation, then it's almost like having a magic wand. Thinking about it early, you have the ability to deal with it and manage it. So that's really good. I see what you're saying about it's just compliance and I get that it's seen as another burden. And what it's going to require is a thoughtful and skilful application of this regime so that it doesn't feel just like another burden that gets in the way of other things. But actually, it's something that feels right to be doing and doing in the right way, seeing the associated benefits that come with having nature built into your development, then it will feel less like a burden and more like essentially doing the right thing.

Julia: Yeah. And it's not enough that the law is there. It needs to be enforced. And people need to know that there's a really effective enforcement regime for biodiversity net gain. A lot of people are really concerned, saying how on earth is this going to be enforced? It's for 30 years. Local planning authorities don't have enough resources to deal with the applications, let alone enforce it. I'm interested in, firstly, what is the balance between the law being there, but people knowing that it's going to be enforced? Is it enough that mandatory net gain has come in or does it need that proof that people are enforcing it? And then, what does good law enforcement look like? Is it a series of Section 106s where people are going out and talking it. In your mind, is it what some people would call the heavy-handed approach? Is that good law enforcement?

Richard: Those are really good questions. And the regime has to have some teeth. Regimes without teeth are not going to operate effectively. So the idea is to inculcate that these obligations are stewardship. When we build something, we're going to put something back for nature. And there's strong moral and ethical dimensions to that.

Julia: As well as the business case.

Richard: As well as the business case too. So it's good for nature, it's good for the people. It's good for their physical well-being, it's good for their mental well-being. You know, those are all good ethical reasons to be doing it. And also the property value is better, workforce retention is better if they're working in a beautiful environment. There are other reasons, too, as to why it's important. Done well, done effectively. But like any regime, it has to have teeth and this regime has those teeth built into it. And the way it builds it into it is having legal mechanisms which legally secure, when it's on-site, biodiversity net gain. If it's significant, then it has to be secured through a planning condition, through a section 106 agreement, through a conservation covenant. And if it's off-site, habitat bank being created, it's secured through a section 1O6 or the conservation covenant.

Well, built into that is going to be plans for how you deliver the habitat. It's going to be monitoring, reporting and enforcement steps. Now, that is all necessary otherwise this thing is a mirage. So you have to have those elements. Now, it’ll come down to the wide application of that in practice. So, overly heavy-handed enforcement of that would be problematic because the creation of a habitat is inherently uncertain. So there needs to be a dialogue between the landowner who's being regulated and the body regulating, whether it's local authority through a section 106 or a responsible body through a conservation covenant. A sensible dialogue about how to tweak what you're doing so that you still achieve the outcomes that you want to achieve. So an overly heavy-handed approach to that would be disastrous.

On the flip side of that, if the local planning authorities are responsible for the enforcement of this regime and they lack the resources and the bandwidth to do that, well, then there's going to be a lack of enforcement there. And I think there's a lot of concern around how that's going to operate.

Julia: I think what you're saying is, and I've not heard that before, the way that enforcement is described as that ongoing dialogue. It is about checking in and it is about sending the monitoring reports to the developers, sending it to monitoring or off-site providers, to the local planning authority. And to maintain that dialogue in terms of what's the progress towards biodiversity net gain, rather than behind closed doors. Suddenly something's gone wrong and we have that heavy-handed approach, which seems to be the way that people… it's about perceptions. Can we talk about perceptions? Because the way that you described it – which I think is a really important collaboration because, ultimately, it's about making sure that biodiversity net gain is successful, and that dialogue is important – versus the perception of enforcement of BNG.

Richard: That's a really good question and there's a real tension there. In the period 2006 through to 2019 when I was at Natural England, I was at Natural England for a chunk of that time, and during that time we carried out 14 prosecutions for damage to SSSIs.

Julia: How many years was that?

Richard: From 2006 through to 2019.

Julia: 14? Gosh!

Richard: Yeah, 14 prosecutions.

Julia: That's quite a lot, given how hard it is.

Richard: Well, we were pursuing the angles that we were given. And that's the thing with wildlife crime, it's exceptionally difficult to prosecute because of the evidential burden and the lack of evidence when it comes to many wildlife crimes. Also, one of the great things that Natural England has is civil sanctions. So it has a larger chest of regulatory tools that it can use. So there are different tools that you can use at different times to manage different situations. And that's all good too. But critics would say, well, that's too few, there should have been more and you're not taking that regulatory role seriously. And perception's a really important thing there. And of course, when we did secure a prosecution, it was important for us to tell the world about it. So it had that deterrent effect.

Now, with biodiversity net gain, it's going to be different to that. Built into this is monitoring and reporting and inspections being carried out by the local authority or the responsible body, as the case may be. And so the enforcement is in your face and will necessarily be transparent. People can seek that information out.

Julia: Yes, both on the planning portal for on-site BNG and then on the gains register site for off-site.

Richard: Yeah. So there'll be a great deal of scrutiny around this. And you can just imagine an area for legal challenge if the perception is that action isn't being taken. So, there needs to be careful management of that perception versus what's right in reality.

And I think what's going to be needed is some sort of middle point here, because like I was saying, over-regulation in this area is going to be, it's going to be very problematic and there needs to be a dialogue. But if that dialogue drifts into vagueness, then of course that needs to be reined in.

Julia: It's like the magic part in the middle, isn't it?

Richard: I know, right? And there'll be a lot of scrutiny on this, I'm sure.

Julia: And rightly so, because the fact is that it's obviously a topic of conversation and we know just how much there is.

Richard: There's going to be a role here for the Office for Environmental Protection, whose role now as, you know, is watchdog for the environment, to keep an eye on how this stuff is emerging.

Julia: Do you think biodiversity net gain can better connect people with nature?
Richard: Yeah, I think it can and I think it must.

Julia: And I'll tell you why I asked that question, because, we were just talking about this, actually. The nature that we have here today is the nature that we value. That's the nature that gets the laws to protect itself. I mean, there are so many species going extinct, but only a few get protection. And so there is this value around that. Why do people value nature? It's the charismatic species. But I think it's such an interesting question because, if biodiversity net gain can help better connect people with nature in careful ways, it's not a free for all, these are habitats for wildlife, but in careful ways, I think it really brings us back to that place where we were before. I think it's a careful balance. But where do you see that balance being made?

Richard: In my view, I have a presumption in favour of giving people access to nature. And I feel like that based on our experience in Natural England where we had a programme on connecting people with nature and the importance of that. The English are a uniquely landless people. You know, 82% of us live in urban areas, 1% of the population owns half the country. Only 6% of the of the country's actually urbanised, right? So, 82% of the population clustered into 6% of it. Also in this country, not very much of the landscape you can have access to. As we speak, as we record this, there's a case that's in the Supreme Court about camping rights on Dartmoor, one of the few places in the country where you can camp out in a National Park. And that's in the Supreme Court today over whether that's actually a right or not. So there are some very deep structural issues within this country. Now, it is what it is. It's a product of its history. Fine, but if that's the case, for God's sake, let's try and allow people to have nature built into the developments that they live in and have access to habitats that are being created for this purpose. And let's have a presumption in favour of that. And I absolutely get the point that that, in some instances, that's not appropriate and needs to be managed in certain ways. And, in fact, one of the counter arguments about the Dartmoor camping is that people trash the landscape when they're in it. So we should not be giving this permissive right to people.

Julia: Well, that's just careful design.

Richard: Exactly. There are the ways you can manage this, right? And we can invest more in our countryside codes and things like that. There's a whole range of things that we can do to address this. But I do think we need to have that. And why? Well, because as I was saying earlier, we protect the things that we value. And if you're not spending time in nature, then you're not building up that relationship with it that makes you want to value it. And we do that at our own risk.

Julia: Yes, exactly. I'm interested in your work in supporting local planning authorities with habitat banks. So how did that start? What have you been doing? And what is some advice for people thinking I'm going to start up a habitat bank? Take us through the work.

Richard: So it was a project a year or so ago now where one of our clients, Plymouth City Council, were looking very seriously at this as an option, creating habitat banks on land that they own, which for various reasons are not going to be used for anything else. And yet, they're operating at a cost to the council in terms of their operation. So, why not use those for biodiversity? And the idea there is that, if there is private sector money coming into this area, why not divert some of that at publicly owned land to improve it for nature and not just for nature in the area, but for the communities that live in that area too.

Julia: It's like a win-win-win.

Richard: Yeah, yeah. It's a good idea. Now, the thing to keep in mind when you're doing that is making sure that you're not doing that at a price per unit which undercuts the emerging market. Because then you're cutting that off at its knees, right?

Julia: OK, let's, that's really, really important. So let's go through that. So you've got a local planning authority with a habitat bank? And you're talking about how they might undercut others?

Richard: So you need to make sure that the price that you're charging for these units is competitive within the markets. You're not undercutting it in any way.

Julia: So a local planning authority might be in competition with a farmer or local wildlife group?

Richard: Because this market's emerging, yes.

Julia: So they're one other market player. Got you.

Richard: But the problem that local authorities are facing is that, as this market's emerging, there are going to be shortfalls in their area. Either they're not coming forward or the habitat units that people need are not coming forward. And that creates distortions in prices, right? That’s supply and demand. So it's a way of going, OK, I can divert this money into publicly owned land for the communities that we serve. That's good. But also, I can have an idea that we can supply units that are needed. You know, you can have an idea about that.

So you can, you can think like that, as long as you do that in a way which doesn't encroach upon on the ability of the private sector land owners to be able to bring forward their projects. That's the idea there. And, actually, there's Government guidance on this that suggests these are the options that are available to you. If you're a local authority using a section 106, you can't, obviously, enter the section 106 with yourself. You create a separate legal entity and it's going to run the habitat bank as a separate legal personality. And then you can have a section 106 with that. The other options that Government talks about is, if you're not a unitary authority, then you get another public body to enforce against you, or you just lease your land and have a tenant and the tenant runs it. So you have these various options. And, of course, with conservation covenants becoming available now, you can just enter into a conservation covenant and then the responsible body's enforcing gains. So you have that option as well. So there are various ways in which you can do this. And I think it's a very good way of bringing money into these areas.

There are other things you can do on these sites as well because, as long as it doesn't cut across your ability to use it for nature, you can put other things on there too, like solar array or something like that. You can stack other natural capital units on there, like nutrient neutrality, for example.

Julia: So what's your advice, if someone's saying, OK, sounds good, a habitat bank. I understand what you're saying about, I don't want to over-compete with others. What's your advice? Where do people start with that?

Richard: There are two things you need to have, without which you can't really make any informed decisions. So, one is obviously an ecological baseline and you need to consider what land you've got. Where does it make sense? What units can you recreate from that? What's going to be the demand for those units over a 5–10-year period? And then you can do some informed calculations about that, which is what's going to be needed.

So you do the ecological baseline and you need a business case – those are the two things. So you can see what you can produce and what the business case is that underpins it. And once you're satisfied that you've got a plan there that works, that is financially sustainable, works within the market that you have, locally or nationally, but particularly units, then you can bring in the lawyers and we'll legally secure that in accordance with the Government's regime that the local authority wants to put in place. So that's the idea.

Julia: I think it's also being aware of what questions to answer, isn't it? You might just think, I can plant a hedgerow here. But your point about what's the demand? And having that matching thing. And what's the demand that others are not supplying?

Richard: And you can see there's already bubbles of undersupply of certain things. One of the things that was talked about over the summer, after an article on it, is open mosaic capita, high distinctiveness, open mosaic capita, which is what you find on brownfield sites.

Julia: Yeah, that's a really tricky one.

Richard: It's really tricky because it's a high distinctiveness. That's inherently difficult and expensive to create. You can create it, but it's difficult, you know. And so you'll have an undersupply potentially of those units because they're difficult to make and they're going to be expensive. And then you get a situation where the brownfield site itself costs less than the units you need for it and, of course, that cuts against Government policy to build on brownfield sites. So you can have these difficulties...

Julia: Answered by the market.

Richard: That's the thing. Do you panic and tweak the metric to try and get rid of the problem? Or do you just let the market do what it's meant to be doing and respond to those price signals and bring in that supply? And that's what you need to do. Now, there's a short-term pain associated with that, but otherwise why have a market mechanism underpinning it? But what a local authority could try and do is try and think, what's the undersupply? How could we address that? How could we adapt and try and address those things?

Julia: And you mentioned conservation covenants. For people who aren't sure what they are, what are they and are they a thing?

Richard: I think they're a thing!

Julia: I've just seen a couple of blogs on it.

Richard: I've been working on conservation covenants for about a decade now, as an idea. And my involvement in it came about through the Law Commission writing their report on conservation covenants and that came out of work they were doing on the law of easements. So it's a property-related project they were doing. And as they were doing this work on the law of easements, they discovered that in other jurisdictions they have this thing called conservation covenants and they found it curious that we don't have that in our jurisdiction. Now, the reason for that is because, in property law, restrictive covenants run with the land. So, preventing you from doing something that will run with the land to successors in title. The positive covenants, as in you need to spend money to go and manage the land and do things in a positive way that binds the people who make that arrangement, but doesn't bind successors in title because it's not seen as appropriate in law to burden a successor in title down the line with obligations which are entered into many years before.

Julia: Right. Gosh!

Richard: But the idea of conservation covenants is it creates a mechanism which does enable that to happen and it can operate in perpetuity. So you have both restrictive and positive covenants running with the land. And so Defra sponsored the Law Commission's work on that. I was seconded to the Law Commission and I helped work on that with them. And then, when I came back to Natural England, the Law Commission report just went onto a shelf and it could have stayed there forever. I felt like this is another really helpful tool in the toolbox for nature conservation because a lot of the legal mechanisms that we use to try to secure gains for nature are in some way linked to other regimes, normally the planning regime, relying on section 106s. But that's a planning obligation being applied in the nature conservation area. And there are other things like conservation covenants. In Natural England, we had a power under Section 7 of the Natural Environment Communities Act to enter into agreements, which are like conservation covenants.

But that's just one party being able to do it. How about everyone has the opportunity to do this? So conservation covenants, I thought it was an important tool that could be used. So I was chipping away, talking about it within Defra and Natural England. But when it came to biodiversity net gain, when the Environment Bill was being pulled together, it was seen as a mechanism which could be used in that context to legally secure these habitat banks. It can be used for other things other than that, but it's another tool that can be used in that space. And so then it gets included into the Environment Bill and now you can enter into conservation covenants, all those provisions are now part of our law.

For while you weren't able to because it required the Secretary of State to designate responsible bodies with whom you could enter into a conservation covenant. But we now have that too.

Julia: We're getting more aligned.

Richard: Yeah, and more every day. So if you use this web page, it tells you who's on there, and then at Freeths, we've helped draft the first conservation covenants to be used in a biodiversity net gain setting. So I've seen it from its very beginning all the way through to its application now and, unsurprisingly, I'm a big evangelist for it. I think these are things that we should be using. I live on Dartmoor and a lot of work is going on there into trying to bring back the temperate Atlantic rainforest, the Celtic rainforest.

Julia: Oh, wow!

Richard: So, there is oak tree creation, like Wistmans Wood. That's one of the last remnants of this sort of rainforest that we have. Well, it takes 200 years for an oak tree to grow, 200 years to mature, 200 years to die. And these are long-term things. To have a legal tool that's capable of running with the land, binding successors in title not to chop it down, restrictive covenants, but also to manage it in a way which is optimal for these forests that we're creating. So it's, I think, an ideal tool that can be used in that way.

Environmental law has a maturity problem even now. It doesn't stand on its own feet. It blows in the political winds and it hasn't quite yet got its own centre of gravity. It's symbiotic on other things, right? But a conservation covenant feels like a tool that allows it to stand on its own feet. It's not dependent on another regime. It's for nature conservation.

Julia: I think it'll be the slow burn.

Richard: Yeah, it will, I think. And it's an alien thing and it'll take a while for it to...
Julia: But it's one of these things that will be word of mouth. Like people say, oh, that's so good. And then it'll become more and more because, as you start to build those... But how extraordinary that you've actually seen the first one as well.
Richard: In life, there's no solutions, there’s trade-offs, right? So you'll be looking at the trade-offs between having a section 1O6 and a conservation covenant. And I think now, at the moment, if local authorities are struggling with the bandwidth to process those section 1O6s, it's taking them 18 months, say, well, then you're going to go with someone who is going to turn a conservation covenant around with you in a matter of weeks. It'll cost you more, but you have that benefit.

Julia: I didn't realise it was that quick.

Richard: It's because these organisations are going to do it for that purpose and that purpose alone.

Julia: Understood.

Richard: And they're going to have ecologists working with them. So you're going to have a dialogue there with a dedicated team who's going to be working with you on this. And also, if you've got land holdings around the country, rather than have different section 106s for different habitats in different parts of the country or different local authorities, you could have one conservation covenant with one responsibility or several conservation covenants with the same responsibility. And that means you can streamline the way that you do monitoring and reporting and so on. So there are trade-offs here and people will look at that in the marketplace and make a decision.

Julia: I think you're right in terms of what's going to be optimal for one person won't be the same for another, and it's about giving the options.

Richard: You've got to give people options. A lack of options is going to be one of the things that might undermine this whole regime. So give people options, they can make informed choices and decisions about things. That's the right way to do it.

Julia: Richard, is there anything important we've not yet talked about?

Richard: I think one of the things we should probably talk a little bit more about is the cost associated with development. And there were already concerns about the ability to create affordable housing. It's another cost that's going to be passed on to the people buying these properties, ultimately. The prices of properties in this country are far too high anyway. And it's another thing that could restrict supply because it's another complication, another sort of burden. And, quite frankly, I am very aware of and alive to and appreciative of those concerns. You know, I get that. And I guess the counterpoint to that is, BNG is a way of what economists call getting to internalise your negative externalities. You're putting a price on your pollution, right? Because someone's got to pay for it at some stage. The environment's already paying for it. It's just, you don't pass that price on, right? This internalises that environmental impact. And that's actually a market correction, if anything.

And, and the structural issues which mean that there's an under-supply of housing and the horrendous cost of housing are really linked to other things. So yes, while this is another burden on top and I get that, there are other things here that need to be resolved at a more fundamental level, about how this whole thing operates. And I don't think free-riding off the environment is something people would particularly want to do, given the choice. I think people go, no, I do want the development that I live in to be a net gain for nature.

Julia: I think it's such an important point there because, you're right, they're absolutely suddenly seen as this additional cost. But your first point was, it's not the law that's the cost, it's the way that people manage it. So there was a more efficient way of managing this that keeps the cost down, and there are obviously costs in terms of, you know, habitat creation or whatever. But I think there's a fundamental… what's your management approach to implementing the law? And are you making it or is it creating a burden because it's not been managed?
I think also there's some really interesting work done on value for money or return on investment and biodiversity net gain and that is because it’s seen as a cost. But even if there's a monetary value for society somewhere over there, if I'm a project manager, I've got costs in and I don't have anything coming in, Julia, thank you very much. But what is the return on investment for that particular project? And I think there's a really important discussion when you bring it down to that level. We can do things like integrate climate resilience and biodiversity net gain. You're avoiding the costs of disruption from climate change to infrastructure down the line or, like you say, building in connection to nature for people. So I think it’s really important to listen to that conversation and come up with a way of answering it.

Richard: Oh, yeah, absolutely. The first flat I moved into in London when I started as a lawyer, the only bit of nature I could see for the years that we lived there was a patch of artificial grass stuck on top of a guard house.

Julia: Oh gosh! Where was that?

Richard: This is in Islington. And then when the first baby came along, we moved across the road to a different… it was twice the cost, right, but there was a garden which the apartments were built around and there was a little pond there and a duck would have its chicks there every year. That garden sold that flat more to us than any other factor. It was the fact that suddenly we could see trees at the height of our balcony and we had a little bit of garden space and then this little pond and actual wildlife on it.

Julia: And it matters.

Richard: It mattered in a way that, we couldn't put a value on it but that was the thing that made the decision to pay twice the cost to go and live there.

Julia: Wow.

Richard: So, yeah, it's really important. And, you know, it turns out people actually want to live in nice places, and that's fair enough.

Julia: It is, it is. And I think you're right about the cost and the burden. There's a couple of cases where the word on the street is BNG's made it unviable or something like that. And I think it's us as an industry getting better at that point, but also really understanding what you’re talking about, is that these are actually better places to live, to work, to build.

Richard: Absolutely, absolutely.

Julia: There is so much excitement about biodiversity net gain. But what is your greatest fear at the moment?

Richard: So that cost piece that we've just been talking about, I think that's the thing because it is seen as another burden. And, like I was saying before, environmental law has a maturity problem and that it can blow in the political winds. We saw that last autumn where the Government looked to change the rules on nutrient neutrality, not to deal with nutrient neutrality, but to create a legal loophole so they wouldn't have to deal with it. |So it has this maturity problem. And if it's seen as another burden and there's lots of negativity around it and in a situation where there's a cost-of-living crisis and a housing crisis, those are real concerns. And this thing will have to be done very carefully, very sensibly. So, that's a worry I have.

Another worry I have is over the enforcement piece that we talked about, will that be taken seriously? Because this regime will not stand unless there's that enforcement piece. Now, I don't think the enforcement alone is… the value of this law and policy like this is to inculcate that stewardship value, right? That's what we should be trying to create. Relying only on enforcement, then it's problematic, but that enforcement needs to be there. So that, and making that operate. And we're too early into this to have any feel for what that's going to be like.

So those, those are concerns that I have, and then the other concern is, and it touches on what we're also talking about, I'm worried that a large proportion of the population just doesn't have access to nature and what are the...? Well, we're living with the side effects of that, whether it's mental health or obesity or whatever it is. We're living with those side effects. Well, we need to address that and this is one of the ways that we can address that.

Julia: And I think it really brings it home, in terms of the human cost. What's the cost of not doing this? But you, you have had the most extraordinary career and thank you so much for spending time with us. I'm interested, though, who's your role model?

Richard: I have so many role models because I've worked with such wonderful people. There are so many people at Natural England who I've loved working with. Julie Lund who trained me up and was my boss for many years at Natural England. Marion Spain, the chief executive, she's fantastic. Tony Juniper, for example. And there's people in the academic world I've worked with as well who are great. Maria Lee and all the gang at ECL who are fantastic. And my current colleagues as well. Penny Simpson is one of the best environmental lawyers I've ever seen. She's fantastic. So there's lots in that sense.

I think if I was looking at someone from history, I have a lot of respect for Barbara Ward, who is this incredibly bright, very energetic, very knowledgeable thinker and writer of the middle part of the 20th century. She worked on development and on addressing the income gap between the north and the south. But then, through the 60s, she saw the link between that and nature and she was instrumental in pulling together what became the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Environment, the United Nations Conference on the Environment, which in environmental law and policy circles is seen as the Big Bang moment for this whole thing. Because that then leads to all the various conventions that follow that – the 1992 Rio Convention, 2002 Johannesburg, and on and on. It all comes from that point. For her, there was an important moral and ethical dimension to environmental law, which was linking it together with humanitarian concerns, with stable development, with alleviating poverty. And that sort of moral force was very important to people she worked with and knew and so on. At the heart of what we do, there was someone who saw all these connections. And I think it's important for me, in the way I do this area of law, that you can keep seeing those connections. And that's why, for me, access to nature is really important.

Julia: Absolutely. And for someone who's listening in thinking, OK, I'm in, I'd love to have a job or a career in environmental law, what's your advice?

Richard: When I started, when I was a kid, I never knew environmental law was a job. Who knew? I went to law school and I didn't know either. It wasn't anything that was taught to us. I got into environmental law because I wanted to get another postgraduate qualification. I was working in Holborn just around the corner from UCL and one of the partners I worked with used to go to UCL and he said, you could go there, go to the faculty. It's brilliant. The Faculty of Law was excellent. And it just so happened that the firm said, well, no one does environmental law here. How about you study that?

So pretty much day one, starting that course, I just fell in love with this area of law. Suddenly I was like, oh my gosh, this is the thing I've been wanting to do.

Julia: Amazing.

Richard: Yeah, and it was serendipity, really. But all the things in my life that that led to that moment kind of fell into place. I thought, no, this is the thing, and fortunately, while I was doing that course, a role came up at Natural England. I was able to get that and I worked there and was able to practise in this area. So I think, for people looking at this, sometimes there can be quite an odd route into this. And some of the people I work with have come from different backgrounds and ended up in environmental law and I think that's great because it gives you a richer feel and a different perspective on it.

So I guess, don't be deterred by the fact that it's not on offer. I think, read up around it, spend time in nature. All of those things make you authentically connected with it. And keep your eyes out for things like I did with a masters. Look for those firms that do actually offer it and offer it properly. The DNH conservation law and the usual pollution permitting waste stuff that law firms do, and get a sense for it. I came to it from a slightly odd angle...

Julia: It's the best way.

Richard: Yeah, I think so, yeah. And if you know a firm that does it, try and get a secondment with them. For that reason, I try and make time for people to secondments with me so they can get a taste of what it's like. Do that. And if you're getting nowhere, still join the UK Environmental Law Association. It's a great place to network with people and meet people. So even if you're not practising it yet, or you're still a student, it's a great chance to meet...

Julia: Be part of the community.

Richard: Exactly. It's actually a very small group of lawyers who practise in this area still. So you do that and are active in it, you'll get to see them all and meet them all.

Julia: That's some good advice. Richard, thank you very much indeed.

Richard: My pleasure. Thank you.