Record response to the Natural Environment White Paper

My blog has been a little quiet over the last month – too much other stuff to do. But, following my last missives on the subject, you may be interested to know how the consultation on the White Paper went. Well, I think it’s fair to say that the input into the consultation was pretty good - a record number of people according to the DEFRA press release.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said:

“I’m delighted with the overwhelming response that we have had to our call for ideas on the Natural Environment White Paper. We’ve received over 15,000 replies from individuals, NGOs and businesses, which goes to show that people really care about the natural environment and want a say in how it is managed.

“This is exactly the kind of debate that we had hoped to stimulate. A healthy environment is something that we all need, and all enjoy, so it’s vital that people get involved. We will take these ideas forward as we look to create a new vision for our natural environment and seek opportunities to enhance its value".

This overwhelming response provides a clear message to the Government that people care passionately about the natural environment and want to see bold and ambitious action to support its recovery.

Thousands of people therefore chose to take action and show how much they value wildlife. I suppose a record response is pretty good, but in Sussex alone I wrote to 17,000 memberships so presumably some decided not to respond – shame on them!

More good news is that Debbie Tann, the Chief Exec of the Hants WT, and a good chum, has been seconded into the DEFRA team to help write the White Paper. So hopefully she’ll be able to exert some influence.

So, things are moving on. If you want to see my response to the consultation go to http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/conservation/page00020.htm,
where you will also find the response of the Sussex Biodiversity Partnership.

Work continues to develop the White Paper for publication in the spring. As part of this, more detail has now been published on defra’s thinking so far on "biodiversity offsetting", where society is compensated for environmental loss through building development, by a developer paying to create or restore an area of habitat elsewhere. More on this in a later blog post.

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 Natural Environment White Paper 2

In my last blog I pointed out that an international study – “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” (TEEB) is one of the drivers behind the new Natural Environment White Paper. I’ve mentioned this before (see my blogs on 23rd July and 25th May 2010), but I thought I’d now try to talk a little bit more about it.

This will be a difficult task as this study has been done by some of the greatest brains on the planet. I am sure I will not do it justice so the best thing for readers to do will be to go to the original work through this link.

http://www.teebweb.org/

But, in case you do not feel moved to do so, I’ll have a go at presenting my own take on the subject:

TEEB is an independent, global study launched by the European Commission to produce a report on the economics of biodiversity loss. It aimed to bring together expertise from all regions of the world in the fields of science, economics and policy to enable actions to be taken in response to the impact of the loss of biodiversity.

The key point that this study brings out is something that we should all know, that conservationists have been stressing for decades but which everyone, in practice, simply tries to ignore. Our ecosystems, biodiversity and natural resources underpin our economies, societies and our individual well-being. There is no escaping from it – the environment is the system; economies and societies are sub-systems relying totally on the environment. To be sustainable, sub-systems must not damage the systems on which they depend. But at the moment they do. This will change.

The value of our natural environment’s myriad benefits are overlooked and poorly understood. They are rarely taken fully into account in normal economics or in day to day decision making. Loss of forests, soils, wetlands, coral reefs, fisheries, etc etc are all often economically invisible. We are running down our natural capital stock without understanding the value of what we are loosing.

Part of the study showed that the economic loss from degraded forest ecosystems alone (and they probably only measured the easy bits) is far greater than the financial losses the world experienced in the worst part of the recent global credit crunch.

The degradation of soils, air, water and biological resources can negatively impact on public health, food security, consumer choice and business opportunities. Furthermore, the rural poor are often most directly reliant on natural resources and are often the hardest hit. (Nature conservation is not just a hobby for the rich).

Our current economic model is letting us down. It is only capable of valuing some things and only in the present, whereas to make sensible decisions we need to consider everything that the environment provides now and in the future.

Maybe if I make up a Mickey Mouse example it may help make the point.

Let’s take the South Downs. Without intervention, the only economic benefit would be intensive agriculture. The only thing we can value is food. Divergence from this might be seen as “artificial interference”, a promotion of “inefficient farming” or just an emotional desire. In practice, however, food is just one of the services that we get from the South Downs, but perhaps the only one that we put a “£” sign against. However, the South Downs also provides clean water for people to drink, it has soils which hold carbon and cycle nutrients, it supports species that help with pollination; good management prevents flooding, controls erosion, maintains soils; the landscape attracts tourists, provides recreation and maintains our sense of place and well-being. And many other things as well. Many of these other services are simply not considered in any valuing exercise. These values, however, are very real. Indeed, when you look at the complexity of what a landscape provides, using it only to provide food in the short term must be considered a very inefficient use of land.

So you get to one of the TEEB conclusions – when you do the sums, the benefits you get from a natural area are worth 10 to 100 times more than the cost of protecting it. And we haven’t even mentioned the higher ethical reasons for conserving nature.


This highlights key messages for the Natural Environment White Paper:

• 
  Maintaining nature is a basic need.
• 
  Its economic value is orders of magnitude greater than the short term gains from destroying it.
• 
  You can’t protect nature by just treating it as a special interest.
• 
  We need to alter our economic model so nature’s fundamental importance is given primacy.

The Natural Environment White Paper 1

This could be one of the biggest jumps forward for nature conservation for decades so I will devote several blog posts to it over the next few weeks. If you plan to do only one thing for nature in the next decade then engagement with the White Paper should be that thing! So please watch these posts – I’ll do my best to provide what information and guidance I can (from my own particular bias of course).

A new Natural Environment White Paper could be the biggest move forward for the environment since the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949. It was this, and other changes around the same time, that set the scene for all that followed. There were improvements in the 1960s, in 1981 with the Wildlife and Countryside Act (the first time Sites of Special Scientific Interest received formal protection) and with the Countryside and Rights of Way Act in 2000. But the major stimulus came from forward looking people and an initiative that started in 1941.

The staggering thing about this is that Britain was busy doing other things in the early 1940s! Yet people of vision still found time to stimulate some of the most fundamental changes in the way we look after nature. The economic woes of today are a pin-prick in comparison to the problems the UK had in the 1940s so we have no excuse for not taking forward the job that was started all those years ago.

It is likely that there are 3 main drivers behind the push for a new Natural Environment White Paper:

• 
  An international study called “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” (TEEB).
• 
  The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UKNEA).
• 
  The Lawton Review on Britain’s ecological network – “making space for nature”
  

I will look at each one of these in turn in later blog posts.

However, also behind the White Paper was the lobbying of the Non-Government Organisations, in particular the Wildlife Trusts.

Before the election we stressed the need to move on to all political parties. Although things can always improve, current approaches are good at protecting the best of what we have. There have been further improvements with the development of Biodiversity Action Plans where the emphasis was on improving and expanding as well as conserving. However, any restoration has been far too slow to effectively halt damage to wildlife and rebuild the losses of past decades.

We have failed to meet the national objective of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010. There is now a new target for the whole of Europe which aims to halt the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystems by 2020. More of the same is not an option. It is clear that a step-change is needed in our approach to the natural world.

We therefore pushed for a major shift from government (whoever got in after the election) and this White Paper is the response.
http://ww2.defra.gov.uk/our-responsibilities/nat-environment/

The nature of the discussion document “An invitation to shape the Nature of England” gives the impression that some of the messages are sinking in. For decades we’ve had to put up with decision-makers treating the environment as a “nice to have” – something very much in the background against more serious matters like making money. Now, however, the discussion document talks about how the natural environment underpins our prosperity, health and well-being. The questions invite us to think about how we embed the true value of nature in decision making, how we manage natural systems more effectively, reduce our ecological footprint and how we can think big and take a landscape-scale approach to managing our natural assets.

Maybe there is hope. Maybe someone’s been listening to us!


In future blog posts I will look at each of the major drivers behind the White Paper.