Biodiversity in planning in post-Brexit Northern Ireland: The potential contribution of planning to biodiversity conservation and enhancement in post-Brexit Northern Ireland

The UK’s withdrawal from the European Union is both a challenge and an opportunity for environmental protection in general and biodiversity in particular. All parts of the UK have made, or are in the process of making, changes to their biodiversity laws in the wake of Brexit. These changes will have considerable implications for planning. New developments in Northern Ireland include a requirement on the Executive to publish an environmental improvement plan and the establishment of a new environmental law ‘watchdog’, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP).
More extensive changes to biodiversity law have been made in England and are likely to follow in Scotland and Wales. There is little opportunity at present to make similar changes in Northern Ireland, where no Executive has been formed and the Assembly has not sat since the March 2022 election. The Royal Town Planning Institute and the Ulster University School of Law hosted a roundtable of
planning and biodiversity experts in September 2023. Participants discussed what changes to the legislative and policy framework, planning system and broader environmental governance structures might improve planning’s contribution to biodiversity as part of its overall objective of the sustainable development of Northern Ireland.