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.

The Natural Environment White Paper 6

The Lawton review is a pretty good starting point as a general guide for how well our environment is working in terms of delivering our ecological requirements.

Its conclusion is clear:

“…England’s collection of wildlife sites .... does not comprise a coherent and resilient ecological network even today, let alone one that is capable of coping with the challenge of climate change and other pressures....”

However the report also concludes that
“Making space for nature to establish such a network will make efficient use of scarce land and resources, and deliver many benefits to wildlife and people.”

So – we’ve failed so far and we must do better in future.

The report therefore sets out 24 recommendations for what needs to be done in order to make the coherent, resilient ecological network that we need. Together these recommendations provide very helpful background for what we should be asking for from the new Natural Environment White Paper.

I will now summarise just a few of these recommendations (probably including something of my own bias!) – readers may like to consider them, maybe download the document itself, if you want to respond to the full (15 question) consultation:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/natural/documents/newp-discussion-summary-260710.pdf

First ecological networks should be identified and protected, for instance through planning policies. Furthermore the important elements that make up networks (internationally important sites, SSSIs, priority habitats, Local Wildlife Sites, ancient woodland etc) must also have strong protection. There should be no question of throwing the baby out with the bathwater – conservation and enhancement of what remains is the first priority.

A key recommendation is then for the establishment of Ecological Restoration Zones (ERZs). These should be “large, discrete areas within which significant enhancements of ecological networks are achieved, by enhancing existing wildlife sites, improving ecological connections and restoring ecological processes”.

It also recommends that we need to make space for water, restoring natural processes in river catchments and reducing the pollution and nutrient loads that flow into rivers.

An impetus from this review is therefore for the development of significant areas where ecological restoration takes place – not just looking after what we have now (although that is the vital first step) but major landscape-scale restoration of the environment. The review recommends 12 ERZs to start with. But, in my opinion, if we are talking about rebuilding the ecological health of the entire country then that must be seen as just a start. This does not mean that these zones are “wild” areas, left entirely to nature and where people are kept out. Sustainable management for multiple benefits is the starting point.

The review also touches on how this might be implemented. Current financial mechanisms (such as Environmental Stewardship and tax incentives) need to be better directed and modified, and new ones need to be brought in. The government should promote economic approaches that will favour conservation management by stimulating the creation of new markets and payment for ecosystem services, to ensure that the values of a wider range of ecosystem services are taken into account in decisions that affect the management and use of the natural environment. There could be new systems of “biodiversity offset” developed – where impacts on the environment in one place are “offset” by payments for enhancement somewhere else. These seem, to me, to be pretty good principles, although there could be a lot of devil in the detail.


In summary I think there are two major themes coming out of the review that a new Natural Environment White Paper must address:

• First is the theme of major landscape-scale ecological restoration – Ecological Restoration Zones, river catchment restoration, re-instatement of natural processes and a large “ecological network” philosophy. England has failed to meet its 2010 biodiversity objectives so what is needed now is an order of magnitude grater than anything contemplated in the past.
• The second is in recognising the value of ecosystem services and developing financial mechanisms to pay for them. We can no longer ignore the value what nature provides for us. Often this will mean paying landowners for the multiple benefits that environmentally sensitive land management can provide – whether by grants, incentives, tax mechanisms, direct market payments or biodiversity offsets.

The Natural Environment White Paper 5

The third of the main drivers behind the forthcoming White Paper is the “Making Space for Nature: a review of England’s Wildlife Sites and Ecological Network”, chaired by Professor Sir John Lawton. This was published last week and, after getting a sneak preview of earlier drafts it is interesting to see how this has turned out.

You can look at the whole document, or the summary on the defra website (under "making space for nature") at:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/biodiversity/index.htm

I would thoroughly recommend that you at least look through the summary. You can then draw your own conclusions on the scale of the changes that might be needed to address its conclusions.

In my mind this review should be absolutely fundamental. I’ve talked about ecosystem services and so far much of the discussion is at an international scale (with The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) or national scale (with the National Ecosystem Assessment). These are good but it will all only start to mean something when we get down to how areas/places that we know are actually doing as functioning ecosystems – “do England’s wildlife sites comprise a coherent and resilient ecological network”.

Basically the review asks whether our current approach is going to deliver an environment that conserves healthy, functioning ecosystems that maintain biodiversity and provide us with all the ecosystem services that we need. If we look out of the window, will what we see deliver what we need. Unsurprisingly the answer is “no”.

The review gives the aim of an ecological network as one where:
“compared to 2000, biodiversity is enhanced and the diversity, functioning and resilience of ecosystems re-established in a network of spaces for nature that can sustain these levels into the future, even given continuing environmental change and human pressure.”

Underpinning this are three objectives:

• 
  To restore species and habitats to levels better than in 2000 and that are sustainable in a changing climate.
• 
  To restore the ecological and physical processes that underpin ecosystems, thereby enhancing the capacity to provide ecosystem services.
• 
  To provide accessible, wildlife rich, natural environments for people to enjoy and experience

The review then looked at the current situation to see whether our existing approach works. To do this it tested against 5 attributes:

1. 
   Does the network support the full range of biodiversity?
2. 
   Is the network of adequate size?
3. 
   Do the network sites receive long-term protection and appropriate management?
4. 
   Are there sufficient ecological connections to enable species movement?
5. 
   Are sites valued by and accessible to people?

The review essentially concluded that our current scatter of wildlife sites does not comprise a coherent and resilient ecological network. Indeed of the 5 tests above it is only the first that is substantially met. I know any one of us could have told government this but it is highly significant that a government commission, drawing on a wide range of evidence and expert opinion came to this inevitable conclusion.

From my brief overview, I would say that this is a good review. It says a lot that we have been saying as part of our Living Landscape approach. It also seems to come to similar conclusions about what is needed to reverse the situation and deliver a coherent ecological network. More of that in future blog posts.

The Natural Environment White Paper 4

In my last blog I tried to summarise current descriptions of “ecosystem services” – descriptions mostly pinched from the UK National Ecosystem Assessment. This time I’d like to go a little further and talk about how wildlife, or biodiversity, fits in this overall approach.

It might help to see ecosystem services almost in a hierarchical sense:

1. First you have the services that underpin all other services. These are often the “support” and some “regulating” services such as nutrient cycling, plant growth, soil formation and the major ecological processes like evolution and interaction between species. These are the “primary ecological functions” on which all other services sit.



2. At the next level are the “final ecosystem services” – the services we actually see or experience such as crops, livestock, trees, waste breakdown, the local climate, meaningful places and a diverse wildlife.



3. Finally are the “goods” we receive such as food, drinking water, energy, flood control and recreation. Some of these goods have a recognised financial value to us, some have a financial value but it is not recognised and some have non-monetary values.

As in my last blog, you can find a far better description at the UKNEA web site:

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

This is summarised in the table below:

This hierarchy is important. We often only see the goods we get, many are poorly valued, we often take them for granted and often consider them in complete isolation from each other or the environment on which they depend. Yet these goods are the products of ecosystem services which are in turn reliant on the primary ecological functions.

So where does wildlife fit in? In practice it is fundamental at every level:

Ecosystems are made of wildlife. So biodiversity underpins the primary ecological functions that all subsequent ecosystem services and the goods we receive rely on. All the big-picture ecological functions, like nutrient cycling, plant growth, climate control and pollination, all rely on healthy, functional ecosystems. Healthy ecosystems are composed of a rich biodiversity and, conversely, a healthy ecosystem is also indicated by the health of its biodiversity.

At the next level biodiversity fits in in a very practical way. It provides the species that make up our crops and livestock, provides wood, fibre and pharmaceutical products. So wildlife is central to our provisional services.

Wildlife is also valued by people so is central to cultural services. It is important for spiritual enrichment, in recreation and in education. The wildlife of an area also helps to define that area and give a sense of place. All of this has repercussions in terms of physical and mental health, and in terms of how desirable a place may be to live and work in.

This outline for the value of biodiversity to ecosystem services is summarised in the table below:




To conclude, therefore, a superficial understanding of ecosystem services could miss the central importance of wildlife. Indeed if some ecosystem services are over-emphasised then we could end up with a business as usual situation with wildlife being further compromised away. But when it is thought through a little it should be clear that biodiversity is of fundamental importance to the effective provision of the ecosystem services on which we all depend.

The Natural Environment White Paper 3

I’ve mentioned the idea of “ecosystem services” in previous blogs. It is now a concept that should be very important in the design and implementation of a white paper. Perhaps it might be worth saying a little about what this actually means.

What are ecosystem services?

It is not a new concept, but at present it is perhaps best articulated by the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, which I’ll be talking about in future blogs, so for a good description I suggest you go to:

http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/Home/tabid/38/Default.aspx

However, in brief, an ecosystem is a natural unit of living things (animals, including humans, plants and micro-organisms), and their physical environment; ecosystem services are the benefits provided by ecosystems that make human life both possible and worth while. So, it may sound like jargon, but it does what is says on the tin – it’s all the essential stuff that nature gives us.

This is a very high level definition, however, so in order to be useful ecosystem services are broken down into 4 main types:


Provisioning services; the products we obtain from ecosystems such as food, wood, drinking water, energy and pharmaceutical products.






Regulating services; the benefits we get from the regulation of ecosystem process such as flood control, influence of the global and local climate and disease control.


Cultural services; the non-material benefits from ecosystems such as spiritual and religious enrichment, cultural heritage, recreation, tourism and a sense of place.


Supporting services; these are the ecosystem functions that support all other ecosystem services, things like soil formation, nutrient cycling, plant growth and ecological interactions.


The problem is that very few of these essential ecosystem services are financially valued so we tend to emphasise some and forget about the others. This point may link in with comments made by Mark Fisher after my last blog. We have so over-emphasised provisional services (ie food) that we have skewed our ecology, left it degraded with much loss of biodiversity, and our ecosystems are now delivering other services less well.

There are dangers in focusing too much on ecosystem services (or rather from allowing its description to be perverted), especially when attempts are made to put a financial value on them. Ecosystem services may have a value but that does not mean you can trade in them – you can’t always buy or sell ecosystem services. Also, financial valuing sometimes implies choice (you can have it if you can pay for it) – a difficult leap as these are essential services. I also worry when people talk about trade-offs between ecosystem services – again are they looking for an excuse to over-emphasis some whilst forgetting about others (business as usual)?

These dangers are real but the concept is valuable in that it is making large numbers of policy-makers take notice of the environment when they didn’t before.

I will take this idea of ecosystem services a little further in my next blog.

The Value of Nature and the Nature of Value

On 13th July the first “Global Business of Biodiversity Symposium” was held as part of the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity. This was the back-drop to the publication of a major report by an international study called “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity”.

This is global stuff! We hear little about it in our press (but see my May 2010 blog), but there are some mighty intellects trying to work out how to correct the market failure that is our economic system. The point of this symposium was to highlight how business can address the inconsistencies in our current economic valuing systems so we take better account of the natural capital on which we all depend. For a fascinating insight I suggest you go to the web site:

http://www.businessofbiodiversity.co.uk/index.php

and read some of the quotes from different key people who attended (including the Wildlife Trusts own CEO – Steph Hilbourne). There's also a short film that makes interesting viewing.

The best thing I can do here, however, is just to quote Pavan Sukhdev who has led this international study:

"Our economic compass is faulty and must be updated to better reflect the roles of human capital and natural capital in our economy. We must ensure that the costs and benefits of conserving nature are calculated as best as possible, recognised by leaders, businesses ad citizens alike, included in the accounts of society and managed in order to be distributed more fairly across communities and to remain sustainable for generations to come

We have been losing trillions of dollars of losses per annum as a consequence of our global economic mechanism failing to account for the natural capital that underpins industries such as construction, tourism, energy, agriculture and pharmaceuticals. We must recognise the nature of value and the value of nature and move now to create a sustainable future.

We stand here at a fork in the road of human history – they are signposted “brown economy” and “green economy”. Both paths appear economic in the short term, but only one leads us to a long-term future. It is the path of the “green economy” – a path to recognising and conserving the value of nature, creating jobs and industries and helping tackle poverty."