The media is awash with budget speculation with new green taxes uppermost in pundits’ minds.
These new levies could significantly swell the Treasury coffers and some of that money would be well-spent helping wildlife.
The government has set itself a number of targets for reversing wildlife declines and re-establishing lost habitats such as heathland and saltmarsh.
But the chances of hitting these 2010 targets are becoming increasingly slim, largely because ministers have allocated too little money for conservation.
A Defra study found two years ago that £300 million more each year would be needed to hit the conservation targets set by government under ‘biodiversity action plans’.
That shortfall could be partly made up from increases in another tax – landfill tax – announced a year ago and coming into force next month.
The Treasury will reap an extra £300 million from landfill tax within a year, a figure that could double by April 2010.
Putting aside just some of that money for wildlife would considerably help meet action plan targets. As the Independent says today, taxes without purpose will be seen as taxes to make money. Taxes funnelled directly into environmental protection will be far more acceptable.
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The Chancellor should also take action to make businesses and individuals reduce their carbon footprint. More incentives for the production and use of cleaner vehicles, and penalties for driving those that pollute most would be a good start.
Mr Darling is expected to replace air passenger duty with a flight-based tax. This is a good thing but should be based on each aircraft’s fuel efficiency.
The government continues to back airport expansion, however, and has yet to prove that its action can match its climate change rhetoric.
That means more is needed but not at the expense of wildlife. So plans to force us to buy more biofuel should be thrown out because of the harm biofuel production is already doing – to wildlife habitats across the world and to hopes of cutting greenhouse gas emissions: some biofuel production is actually increasing emissions.
Read the Independent's leader column here