It's the Guardian's raison d'etre to be critical of its country to the point of almost derogatory pessimism. I say this as a subscriber. Such analysis also fails to take into account the steps that are [necessarily] taken to mitigate the impact in protected areas and the fact that our land mass is pathetically small compared to other countries on that list.
I’d take any content from the guardian with a pinch of salt. I am certain that most countries ranked below the uk dont have as many protected areas, therefore dont have this issue. While damaging the environment is bad so is the misinformation the guardian loves to spread around.
What about china, canada and nigeria? These protect at most half of what the uk does. Coincidentally germany is EU’s largest co2 emitter and a source of highly polluting cars. While it doesnt extract coal or other resources from its own territory it has no issue in using such resources from other countries. So while in absolute numbers it may appear better, overall it’s worse.