So far, only 6.5 percent of the earmarked sites have been protected, with just seven years left to meet the promise of 30 percent.
The government committed to the "30 by 30" target at the COP15 biodiversity conference in December 2022.
"The government faces an extraordinary challenge to halt species decline and recover nature for the public good," the Environment and Climate Change Committee of the upper chamber House of Lords concluded in its latest report.
Territory already said to have been protected remains in "a poor condition and... inadequately monitored", the report found.
This risks failing the framework agreed by scores of countries last year for sites to be "effectively conserved and managed" to ensure quality, and not just quantity, of protection, it noted.
Poor monitoring made progress towards 30 by 30 "difficult to assess".
Protected areas are geographical spaces which are managed to achieve the long-term conservation of nature.
The report found that sites covered by EU Habitats Regulations "are the sites with the highest strength of protection in England".
It recommended that the EU regulations are "retained" and not weakened.
The rules were previously threatened by the possible revocation of EU laws retained by Britain post-Brexit, but are not included in the list of legislation set to be removed later this year.
However, the report warned that the law passed to allow ministers to scrap retained EU legislation should not be used for "diluting or revoking the habitats regulations".
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) insisted the government was "on track to deliver on our commitment to protecting 30 percent of land and of sea in the UK for nature's recovery by 2030".
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