A landmark legal opinion has confirmed that the Church Commissioners for England need not feel inhibited from going further in their care for creation. The opinion confirms that they face no legal barrier to adopting “30by30” nature restoration targets – indeed, there are sound moral and theological imperatives for them to do so. 

The Legal Opinion has been provided by Mark Hill KC, pre-eminent in the field of ecclesiastical law and religious liberty, and was commissioned by Wild Card. It finds that the Church Commissioners, which holds significant swathes of land on behalf of the Church of England, is both legally free and indeed morally compelled to act on biodiversity; yet at present it lags behind other large landowners such as the Crown Estate and National Trust.

The Opinion concludes with an urgent call to action: “It is to be hoped that the Commissioners will revisit their current policies and implement the 30by30 target as a matter of expedition… it is both an ecological and a doctrinal imperative.” 

Mark Hill KC also observes that: “It seems irrational that the Commissioners are advancing policies to promote net zero and combatting climate change whilst not similarly promoting biodiversity targets.”    The Commissioners admitted at Synod last year that they had not yet undertaken a portfolio-wide assessment of the benefits and costs of 30by30. On this, the KC comments “If that remains the case, the delay and procrastination are regrettable”.  

You can read the opinion in full here. It is hoped that it will give comfort to those Commissioners and members of General Synod, when they debate a Private Members Motion on the issue of nature protection, at the forthcoming Synod gathering in York in July 2026.  Wild Card has also produced a report, Getting Back to the Garden, which considers a wider range of issues relating to 30by30, including environmental, community and financial matters.