Prosperity and Environmental Protection go hand in hand

I very much welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s recognition that prosperity and environmental protection can go hand in hand.

In a speech made on 11th April Nick Clegg stated that: ‘the environment contributes to our economy in a range of ways, many we don't always appreciate’ and that ‘lean times can be green times’.

His comments, made at the KPMG headquarters, come following a Government review of the EU Habitats Regulations, which concluded they are not a burden on development. The final National Planning Policy Framework, which it was feared would put the needs of development ahead of the natural environment, also showed more of a balance between the economy and the environment. I mentioned the thawing of both of these concerns back in my blog of 30th March, but the Deputy Prime Minister has gone further by clearly destroying the myth that the environment has to be put to one side while we dabble with economic concerns.

The Deputy Prime Minister’s speech is a welcome sign that the Government is moving away from the damaging rhetoric that preceded the budget, which suggested that protecting the environment is at odds with economic growth. Protection of the natural environment is not only compatible with increasing prosperity, but the services healthy ecosystems provide are vital to underpinning a healthy economy.

Indeed I would go further than the Deputy Prime Minister has – the world is moving on quickly and politicians are having trouble keeping up. It is not so much recognising that growth can be green; more that growth must be green. If not then it is not growth at all – the choice is between green growth or no growth. Bearing this in mind, there are signs that we are moving in the right direction – Nick Clegg mentions energy efficiency and low carbon industry for instance. Very good, but these are perhaps the areas where we should already be far more advanced. Far more difficult problems to address will be how to truly reflect the value of nature in all our decision making. The value of pollinating insects, for instance, was mentioned by Nick Clegg – perhaps worth about £1.8bn as the value of pollinating crops. But this is only the tiny tip of the ice berg in terms of all the services that nature provides for us for free. £1.8bn may sound a lot but is a poor approximation of infinity against the cost of ecosystem collapse if we really were to loose our pollinating insects.

I look forward to the Deputy Prime Minister’s promised statements on Natural Capital in the coming months. I urge him to grapple fully with the key messages that came out of the National Ecosystem Assessment and to drive forward the ambitions in the Natural Environment White Paper. The Government must put the recovery of the natural environment at the heart of any plans for economic recovery.

National Environmental organisations incredulous at George Osborne’s Autumn Statement.

The concern about George Osborne’s Autumn Statement is not limited just to the Sussex Wildlife Trust. Environmental bodies around the country find it incredible, especially against the background of other work being done in government. One illustration of this is the letter below, written to the Prime Minister by the Chief Executives of several major environmental Non Government Organisations, including the Wildlife Trusts:

Dear Sir,

The environmental movement has spoken out repeatedly against policies that put short term profit ahead of our countryside and wildlife, eroding our natural capital and quality of life.

But rarely have we been as incredulous as we were on Tuesday, upon hearing the Autumn Budget Statement. The stunning disregard shown for the value of the natural environment not only flies in the face of popular opinion but goes against everything the Government said in June when it launched two major pieces of environmental policy – the Natural Environment White Paper and the England Biodiversity Strategy.

It is increasingly clear that society needs a new economic model that accounts properly for our natural capital. Yet with this Statement, its "red tape challenge", sudden cuts to solar subsidies, and its ill-conceived planning reforms, the Government is continuing an out-of-date approach that casts regulation and the environment as enemies to growth.

Is the environment really an obstacle to economic productivity or is it in fact the very basis of it, as well as of our national well-being? Not a hard question to answer and there is an increasingly powerful body of evidence that demonstrates this, including the Government's own National Ecosystem Assessment.

How can the Prime Minister tolerate this gaping intellectual and political inconsistency, and walk with open eyes down a policy path that condemns future generations to a lower quality of life and to a massive and costly struggle to rebuild the country's natural riches?

We appeal to you Mr Cameron to show leadership and champion long-term, sustainable economic policies that will bring much-needed prosperity without destroying all that millions hold dear.

Signed by:
Mike Clarke, RSPB, chief executive
Shaun Spiers, CPRE, chief executive
John Sauven, Greenpeace, executive director
Stephanie Hilborne, Wildlife Trusts, chief executive
Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth, executive director

There is a stark miss-match between the need to take proper account of our natural capital on the one hand and the Chancellors apparent desire to consider this as a ridiculous cost on the other. His desire to take away the “gold plating of EU rules” is perhaps just a symptom of a Chancellor who has missed the point.

Maybe it would be a good idea if SWT members and readers of this blog wrote to their local MPs to say what you feel about this proposed diminishing of the protection of our most important wildlife sites. For a list of MPs and their contact details follow this link:
http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/planning/page00008.htm

Sussex Wildlife Trust / University of Sussex 50th Anniversary conference: The Nature of Change.

On 15th September this year the SWT joined with the University of Sussex for a major conference. We called this “The Nature of Change” because, as well as being our 50th anniversaries, this could be a major period of change for the natural environment.

Our conference was opened by Professor Michael Farthing, the Vice Chancellor of the University and then we gained a fascinating insight into the last 100 years of nature conservation in Sussex. David Streeter, founder member and President of the SWT, traced the history of 8 very special places in Sussex first identified by Charles Rothschild (the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves) in 1912. Looking at the detail of what has happened to places like Amberley Wildbrooks gives a good illustration of how nature conservation has grown in extent and influence over the last 100 years.

The theme of the conference then moved on to the major issues that should have a major influence on our relationship with the natural world in the future. Although they are not new ideas, concepts like landscape ecology, ecological restoration and ecosystem services have been developing considerably in recent years. We therefore received a series of four excellent presentations on these subjects:

• 
  First was a talk on the “Making space for nature” review into the functioning of England’s ecological network. A major document, highly influential to government, which outlined the failings of England’s ecological network and gave a series of recommendations for improvement.




• 
  Then there were two presentations on the National Ecosystem Assessment, giving an outline on how ecosystem assessment works and some of the key messages to come out of the NEA.




• 
  The last morning session was from DEFRA, talking about the England Biodiversity Strategy and how this is taking on the messages form the making space for nature review and the NEA.

The afternoon sessions presented a challenge to some major organisations in Sussex – how will they respond to this call for a much higher ambition for the natural world?

In the afternoon we therefore had presentations from:

• Natural England,




• the Environment Agency




• the South Downs National Park Authority and




• East Sussex County Council,

all giving a great insight into what this greater ambition might mean in practical terms.

It was a good conference, and I am very grateful to all the speakers involved. All the presentations can be viewed on the following link:

http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/conservation/page00031.htm

Of all the thousands of pages that have been written in the National Ecosystem Assessment it is perhaps the first sentence that is most important:

“The natural world, its biodiversity and its constituent ecosystems are critically important to our well-being and economic prosperity, but are consistently undervalued in conventional economic analyses and decision making.”

Our 50th anniversary is a good time to move from this to a situation where we value, restore, recreate and reconnect nature, for its own inherent value and so it can provide the services on which we all depend.

The Launch of the National Ecosystem Assessment

At its launch, Oliver Letwin (Minister for Government Policy) said that the National Ecosystem Assessment was one of the most important things government has done for a very long time. He referred to it being “paradigm changing” and said that it shows that we can’t just ignore the value of nature, indeed it must now become central in all decision making.

I tend to agree with him. The National Ecosystem Assessment should create a major change in the way nature is valued. This is internationally leading, ground breaking stuff which should help re-write the rules on how our society can live sustainably with the natural resources on which it depends. And yet, although it has been reported to some extent, the importance of this work seems to have escaped most in the media.

The first “Key Message” in the introduction is perhaps the most important paragraph in the whole document so I will repeat it verbatim:

"The natural world, its biodiversity and its constituent ecosystems are critically important to our well-being and economic prosperity, but are consistently undervalued in conventional economic analysis and decision making. Ecosystems and the services they deliver underpin our very existence. We depend on them to produce our food, regulate water supplies and climate, and breakdown waste products. We also value them in less obvious ways: contact with nature gives pleasure, provides recreation and is known to have a positive impact on long-term health and happiness."

So that sets the context. Yet most of our ecosystem services are degrading or existing in an already degraded state. (For example about 50% of the marine fisheries are being managed sustainably – but fish stocks are being sustained at a level about 10 times lower than they were 100 years ago). If you are one of those people who can only think in economic terms then we are loosing economic benefit because we have degraded our ecosystems. And future trends are likely to degrade these ecosystems still further. Its more important than life or death – this is costing us money!

Add this to the findings of the review by John Lawton ”Making Space for Nature” and you come to the conclusion that England does not have a functional ecological network and the ecosystem services on which we all depend are in long term decline.

Of course this is nothing new; we have known this for decades, but this in an internationally leading study which should feed straight in to government policy. Government should be listening and going by Oliver Letwin’s comments, they are. Indeed Prof Bob Watson (DEFRA Chief Scientist) said that he has never seen a document have such a rapid effect on government policy.

Indeed environmental policy has been breaking records recently:

• there never has been a review like Lawton’s “Making space for nature” before,


• there never has been such a public response to any government policy as there was to the consultation on the Natural Environment White Paper (15,000 responses) and


• the NEA has possibly had one of the most rapid effects on government policy of any document.

I have been critical in a past blog of the coalition government seeming to get off track with its environmental record. Well maybe this can change matters. The Natural Environment White Paper is due out on 7th June. This clearly must set the right trajectory by picking up the recommendations in the Lawton review and by responding to the key messages in the NEA. But it is what happens next that is important. How will any policy changes in this White Paper be reflected in practical results at local, national and international level?

A future for the Public Forest Estate

The problem with the current debate about the public forest estate is that it started in the wrong place. Admittedly it did attract a great deal of public interest, but instead of asking

“how can we dispose of the estate?”

it should have started with the question

“what is the purpose of the estate?”.

This question has been asked and answered many times over, most recently in a report done in 2009. http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/infd-7rufme

Not long ago perhaps, but a lot is changing. The “Lawton review” has made strong recommendations about how to develop a coherent ecological network and the National Ecosystem Assessment has looked at how we can better value the benefits we get from nature. Both of these are key drivers in the forthcoming Natural Environment White Paper. Any future for the public estate must fit within the concept of restoring the natural environment that flows from these documents.

If you want to read some of my thoughts on these please take a look at my blog posts around September last year starting at:

http://tonywhitbread.blogspot.com/2010/08/natural-environment-white-paper-2.html.

Against this background, perhaps it is relevant to ask the question again. If we did then I suggest that the purpose of the estate should go along the following lines:

• The purpose of the public estate is to contribute to realising the full potential of England’s current and future ecological network, so that it provides the ecosystem services on which we depend.

(If you don’t know what I mean by ecosystem services then again please look back to my blogs in 2010)

In practice this is perhaps just a current way of describing multi-purpose forestry, which FC tries to do anyway. But it is perhaps a better recognition that forests deliver a lot more than just timber.

The problem is that this could be the policy objective for all forest management (indeed all land management) – public and private. So the public forest estate must have a special role, something complementary to the private sector.

In my mind this specialness is that the public estate should deliver ecosystem services that are not easily valued in traditional economic terms and so not easily delivered by the private sector.

We can work out the price of timber, but it is harder to value soil formation, nutrient cycling, wild species, climate amelioration or ecological interactions. Other services we get include recreation, access, spiritual enrichment, wildlife and the appreciation of wildlife. We know these are essential, but we hope nature provides them for free. These ecosystem services are our public benefits and do have a value (when the sums are done the value can be 100 times more than the cost of conservation) and the public estate should be there to deliver them as its primary role.

Outside the public estate, management approaches that support these services might be seen as a “cost” to be supported by providing “grants”. A public forest estate, however, should support these as its normal way of operating. So, as well as producing timber, the estate should use (and demonstrate) management approaches that also deliver all other services. It would therefore be an exemplar of multi-purpose land management. One consequence will be that, as so many other benefits are recognised, there will be significant areas of land where other ecosystem services are emphasised and timber production will be far less of an objective.

In order to do this the public forest estate will need to be large and diverse, covering the range of ecological conditions and management situations found in England. It will also need to be transparent and accountable. It will need to be in the places where it can best deliver aspects of public benefit that are less easily delivered by private and charitable sectors. This could mean re-configuring the current public estate, maybe selling some areas but purchasing others. In order to achieve its purpose, it is likely that the net size (i.e. after selling some areas and acquiring others) will be larger than it is at present, not smaller.

This is perhaps my long-winded way of supporting the position statement articulated by the Save Our Woods campaign
http://saveourwoods.co.uk/news/sow-briefing-for-westminster-debate-on-the-future-of-the-fc/

What’s more this seems to be what everybody wants – a bigger, more effective public estate.

Maybe this will be difficult to achieve in the current economic climate but plans for a public estate should be long term. At least we should hold on to a good thing while we’ve got it. A more expansive agenda could then follow when conditions permit.

The National Ecosystem Assessment

The National Ecosystem Assessment, due to be published in March, is one of the key inputs into the Natural Environment White Paper (which itself comes out later in the spring). I am lucky enough to have been sitting on the “user group”, a group that aims to input from the perspective of the organisations who might be making use of it. Having been involved for a while, I have to say that I think its pretty good stuff! I gave a brief description in my blog a few months ago, but its well worth going back to their web site now and then to see how it is developing.

http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/

The recent work (not yet published on their web site) looks at plausible scenarios – “storylines” for the future and what that might look like in terms of the effect on ecosystems. And I have just got back from a meeting looking at “response options”.

A key output, however, is going to be guidance for policy makers. This means that, if taken up by future governments, “ecosystem services” should be far better valued in decision making.

The practice? Well, so far, for example, if you own an area of land – a farm for example – you are only paid for the food you produce. Food is an ecosystem service, but only one of many. Not surprisingly then, a farmer is bound to focus on food production – apart from a few grants he’s not paid for anything else. But that area of land is producing far more than just food – it may also produce things like flood protection, provide water resources, could be building up soil, soaking up carbon and recycling nutrients. All stuff we take for granted or assume to be free. We get the benefit but don’t pay the price. In future these services will be properly valued and it may even be that a landowner will be paid to provide them.

At present farmers get some grants for looking after wildlife – and maybe he sees this as just providing some form of amenity for the public. The reality is, however, that the richness of this wildlife – biodiversity – could be an indicator of how well that area of land is providing ecosystem services. So providing grants for wildlife may also be a surrogate for providing money for ecosystem services.

There are dangers in all this. Putting a £ sign on nature always seems dubious. But from what I’ve seen the dangers will come from miss-understanding or miss-use rather than it being wrong in principle.

We should protect and enhance nature because it is the right thing to do; it makes the world a place worth living in and enriches our soul. But if you are the sort of person to whom all this sounds a bit fluffy then you can think of valuing, looking after and enhancing nature as really just a matter of informed self-interest.