🎓 Asignatura: Historia de los países de habla inglesa / History of english-speaking countries. ✏ Título: Goal number 15 - United Kingdom 🌏 #ODS 15: vida de ecosistemas terrestres / #SDG 15: Life on Land (By Álvaro Díez Díaz)

1. Made by: Álvaro Díez Díaz

2. STORY OF UNITED NATIONS’ SDGs
On 25th September 2015, the world leaders adopted what is known as the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development. This is a series of seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs for
short). These objectives are an urgent call for action by all the countries, both developed and
developing.

3. GOAL NUMBER 15: LIFE ON LAND
This goal focuses mainly in the protection, restoration and promotion of a sustainable use of the terrestrial
ecosystems, managing forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation and halting the
biodiversity loss.
The focus of this project is to see how some English speaking countries deal with the sustainable development
goals that the United Nations created. In this case, we will review the development that the United Kingdom has
experienced towards this goal.

4. UNITED KINGDOM’S DEVELOPMENT
At 31 March 2020, the UK stated that the estimated woodland area as a percentage of total land area
in the country reached it highest point in the last 17 years, being this a 13,2% of all United Kingdom,
divided into 10% of England’s total land area, 15% of Wales’ total land, 19% in Scotland and 9% in
Northern Ireland.
Also, 43% of this woodland area is certified as sustainably managed by the UK, experimenting an
1,6% increase of the woodland area as a percentage of total land area since 2015.

5. UNITED KINGDOM’S DEVELOPMENT
On everything related to the progress towards sustainable forest management,
we can observe in the image that the number of forest
hectares in the United Kingdom has increased in
40000 since the year 2015.

6. UNITED KINGDOM’S DEVELOPMENT
Another important development target is the urgent and significant action to reduce the extinction of
threatened species, which appear on the “Red list index”.
As we see in the chart, the amount of the Red List Index has
decreased since 2000. From 2015 to 2020 the Red List Index
decreased from 0,798 to 0,777.

7. UNITED KINGDOM’S DEVELOPMENT
On the prevention or control of invasive alien species, the United Kingdom published in August 2015
the Great Britain Invasive Non-Native Species Strategy. This strategy covers every non-native species
of flora and fauna, excluding genetically modified living beings.
The invasive non-native species are managed in the British Isles, with countries working closely
together in order to co-ordinate their efforts. The priority species are identified following scientific
reviews, expert inputs and a framework to make sure that their management have been developed.
Although the strong actions the government made, the number of these species in Britain has
remained constant in terrestrial environments.

8. UNITED KINGDOM’S DEVELOPMENT
The United Kingdom published its sixth national report in March 2019. This report showed the United
Kingdom is on track to achieve the 25% of the Aichi Targets by their deadlines. Progress is being made
towards achieving the 70% of the targets. There is 1 target that was not assessed.
This indicator is related to the progress on achieving Aichi Target 2. The United Kingdom incorporated
biodiversity values into a range of planning, accounting and reporting systems. The countries that
form the United Kingdom also established diverse country-based initiatives in order to support the
achievement of this target. For instance, in England, the National Planning Policy Framework was
modified in order to strengthen the protection for irreplaceable habitats and to make clear that
developments should provide biodiversity net gain.

9. UNITED KINGDOM’S DEVELOPMENT
For the next decade, the United Kingdom also have some projects on mind, such as reducing the
proportion of land that is degraded over total land area and the coverage by protected areas of
important sites for mountain diversity. On this case, the United Kingdom has maintained the number
of 87,6% since the year 2010.

10. Moving on, another target that has 2030 as deadline is related to the mountain green cover index,
which measures the percentage of mountainous areas covered by some form of green vegetation. In
2017, the United Kingdom had a 75,86% of the mountainous areas covered by green vegetation.
UNITED KINGDOM’S DEVELOPMENT

11. As we have seen on the presentation, the United Kingdom has done an incredible progress on the
points for SDG number fifteen. This measures are great for trying to maintain ecosystems that are
sometimes forgotten because of all the efforts destined to the oceans. On my humble opinion, both
the land and the ocean should deserve the same helps in order to have a better environment and a
better tomorrow for the next generations.
FINAL THOUGHTS

12. Bibliography
https://sdgdata.gov.uk/15/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mountain-green-cover-index?time=2017
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coverage-by-protected-areas-of-important-sites-for-mountain-
biodiversity?time=2018&country=~GBR