Chalk Streams (UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site) Bill

Watch Pippa's speech to the House of Commons, where she argues passionately that our Chalk Streams, including those in South Cambridgesire, should receive protected UNESCO Natural World Heritage status. You can read the text of the speech below the video.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I beg to move that leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to take the necessary steps to nominate the UK's chalk streams as a serial UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site.

My Bill concerns a rare natural resource of universal value. We in the UK are custodians of 85% of the world’s chalk streams, our equivalent of the Great Barrier Reef: timeless jewels of our natural heritage. Yet we are allowing them to be drained dry and have raw sewage dumped in them by water companies more interested in profit than people and planet. 

My Bill ensures we finally give chalk streams the same reverence and protections that we give to our greatest cathedrals or monuments - our streams and rivers are just as much a part of our national identity and international significance.

A number of these rare and beautiful ecosystems run through my constituency of South Cambridgeshire, including Hobson’s Brook and the Rivers Cam, Granta, Shep, Rhee, Mel, Wilbraham, and Orwell. And they stretch far beyond my constituency, from East Devon through the North Wessex Downs and the Chilterns, up to the Norfolk Coast, with a southern spur through the South Downs and into Kent, and a north-eastern block in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. There is nothing more British than standing beside a sparkling river with children paddling and playing poohsticks. As the world around us changes, such scenes have brought joy to generations before us and should bring joy to many to come.

But our responsibility is greater still. Article 4 of the UNESCO Convention places a duty on our Government of ensuring the identification and protection for all humanity of our natural heritage., of which chalk streams are the national jewel. This is a huge opportunity for the Government to advance its Pride in Place programme, pride locally, nationally and internationally.

We are here today in one of our world heritage sites: the Palace of Westminster. We are proud to have 32 world heritage sites in the UK - and yet only 4 are natural heritage sites. My Bill requires the Government to nominate the network of chalk streams as a serial natural World Heritage Site.

The whole process necessarily takes a few years but, as I shall explain, the goal is clear, the justification is strong, and the work must start now. To approve a site for natural World Heritage status, UNESCO must be satisfied that it is of Outstanding Universal Value. In David Attenborough’s words on his BBC series, Wild Isles, they are “one of the rarest habitats on earth”, supporting extraordinary richness and diversity of life, more plant species than any other type of river in the UK, providing critical habitat for rare species, such as water voles, white-clawed crayfish, brown trout and a unique chalk stream subspecies of Atlantic salmon, alongside many specialised invertebrates .

M. Speaker, there are only around 260 chalk streams in the world. Their small number is due to the  unique conditions needed to form: They exist only where water filters slowly through chalk aquifers and emerges at springs, crystal clear, mineral rich and at a near constant temperature throughout the year. Or rather, that is what used to happen. Today, our chalk streams are now in a perilous state. 

Climate change is one of the greatest threats to our nature and wildlife. However, extreme droughts are exacerbating the damage already being done. We are letting our streams be drained dry because of untrammeled growth. And allowing water companies and agricultural run-off to create a chemical cocktail of sewage and slurry.  Wildlife is  suffering. The chalk stream Atlantic salmon is close to extinction in some rivers, and rising temperatures threaten the survival of trout. 

That is why this House should make a clear commitment to restore and conserve these rivers.

The Government has itself recognised their value. A Minister once observed that if our chalk streams were buildings, they would be UNESCO heritage sites. Exactly so! UNESCO designation will help galvanise public engagement and investment in their recovery. The nomination process will take time. Inclusion on the UK’s Tentative List is the first step and for this further research and monitoring, conservation planning, and preparation of the case for nomination is needed.

A fundamental requirement is the engagement of local governments and stakeholders and networking amongst them across the broad geographic span of the chalk streams.  In fact, this work has already begun in many communities where they treasure the value of a healthy chalk stream for their physical and mental health, recreation, monitoring their water quality and wildlife, and as stewards cleaning and maintaining them, fighting for their survival.  Armies of volunteers and some extraordinarily capable and connected civil society groups, including the Wildlife Trusts, the CaBA Chalk Stream Restoration Group, WildFish, River Action, and in my constituency, here with us in the gallery,  the Cam Valley Forum, the Cam Catchment Partnership, the Friends of the River Granta, Shep, Fulbourn Fen, and the South Cambridgeshire Climate and Nature Forum.

At the same time, the Government must follow through on its own assertions about its commitment to chalk stream conservation. Commitment at the national level for protection is an essential pre-requisite for nominating a site for World Heritage status. That means ramping up action on the threats of sewage dumping and over-abstraction that I mentioned.

The UK has maintained certain legal protections, however, of the 200+ chalk streams only 11 are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and only 4 as a Special Area for Conservation (SAC). That’s why I’m joining many voices to call for listing chalk streams alongside ancient woodland as irreplaceable habitat – which they certainly are – in the National Planning Policy Framework, in line with the Government’s concession and promise to, and I quote, “make clear, unambiguously, our expectations for how plan makers and decision makers should treat chalk streams”. We should also be ring-fencing substantial financing from the Water Restoration Fund.

As a nation that prides itself on its love for nature, and prepares to celebrate the 100th birthday of nature’s greatest advocate, David Attenborough,  we have a responsibility to act. It’s a global responsibility handed to us by the rocks beneath our feet, so let’s embrace and celebrate it. Let’s be the global custodians of our very own equivalent of the Galapagos Islands, Great Barrier Reef, rainforest.

Madam Deputy Speaker, This Bill would start the journey to secure UNESCO recognition for one of the rarest habitats on earth. We hold 85 percent of the world’s chalk streams. With that privilege comes responsibility. Let us rise to it.

I commend this Bill to the House.