An economy going in the wrong direction

The idea of a second runway at Gatwick Airport is building up a head of steam, promoted in particular by local business associations.  This is a great worry to the Wildlife Trust.  Gatwick Airport at present has a huge ecological impact and adding an extra runway will make this worse.  More than this, however, it is the sign of a local economy heading in completely the wrong direction.

The Sussex Wildlife Trusts opposes the construction of a second runway at Gatwick, a position we have held for many years.  Aviation strategy should be based on a planned programme of a significant and continuing reduction of its environmental impact.  This should have two elements: first the reduction of its direct impact from land take for the airport itself and any associated development, and second a programme of continuous reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to reach an 80% reduction by 2050 in line with government targets.

The direct impact of expansion on the environment would be unacceptable, causing significant damage to wildlife in the area.  A recent press release from the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign (GACC) indicates the level of threat that Sussex is under.  A study by independent consultants jointly commissioned by the West Sussex County Council and the Gatwick Diamond business association indicated that between 30 and 45,000 new houses would be needed if a new runway is built.  The number of jobs created in the area would be far in excess of any available labour and so require a substantial influx of workers from other parts of the UK and the EU.  

This equates to a new town in Sussex about the same size that Crawley in now and could mean the urbanisation of much of that part of Sussex, possibly resulting in the towns of Horsham and Crawley combining and ending up as one continual conurbation.

However, one of the greatest threats to wildlife and the environment is climate change.  The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report presents even firmer evidence of the cause and effects of climate change and is an even stronger impetus for action to be taken.  Aviation is a major source of greenhouse gases and is also the fastest growing contributor to climate change.  This clearly needs to be reversed. Current improvements in the technology may deliver some increase in fuel efficiency, but it is difficult to see a situation where 80% reduction targets will be achieved against a background of airport expansion. 

If aviation is not able to reach its 80% reduction requirement then it will be necessary for the rest of industry to achieve a still greater reduction to compensate for the environmental failure of aviation.  We have seen little evidence that the rest of industry will even meet this need for an 80% reduction, let alone offer far greater reductions in order to compensate for the climate change effects of air travel.

In this way air travel is competitive with, rather than complementary to, other forms of business development. 

The situation with air travel may be an example of a wider issue for business development in the South East.  Attempts to continue business as usual whilst ignoring environmental limits, as well as being environmentally damaging in the short term, becomes damaging to business development and the economy in the not too distant long term.  In future green economic growth will become the only economic growth and this is the area in which the South East could excel.

The current reliance on air travel, let alone any increase in this reliance through airport expansion, will drive a highly vulnerable local economy that lacks resilience to likely future change.  The economy of the area around Gatwick now has the opportunity to develop in ways that support the environment rather than damage it.  A campaign for an expanded Gatwick Airport is to head in the wrong direction and promote an economy that is not fit for purpose.

“Fracking” – is there a good side to it?

Well no, actually, I don’t think there is.  But I’d like to look at one of the arguments in favour of fracking to see if there is bigger picture here that we need to take account of.

An argument often used is that fracking provides us with a short-term, interim energy source that buys us time while we develop non fossil fuel based forms of energy generation.  Burning natural gas produces less carbon dioxide for the energy it provides, it is claimed, than other forms of fossil fuel so, as an interim fuel it could be a good one.

Let us put to one side all the other problems with this energy form.  Forget that this could industrialise Sussex, ignore the amount of water that is needed, the transport footprint from the lorry movements, the land needed to treat polluted water and the risk of air and water pollution and so on. 

If fracking gives us more energy for less greenhouse gas emissions then it has to be taken seriously. This sounds persuasive; it is often repeated and rarely challenged.  But there are problems.

Fracking gas is methane, which does indeed produce more energy for less greenhouse gas than, for example, coal.  Methane, however, is itself a very potent greenhouse gas.  An often quoted figure is that methane is 25 times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.  This, however, is a 100 year long term average, as it does not remain in the atmosphere for long.  In the short term, say 20 years, methane is about 70 times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

This means that you only need a small amount of gas leakage to completely negate any greenhouse gas emission advantage that burning methane has.

Whilst they have been criticised, there are some peer-reviewed studies that indicate a leakage of around 10% of methane from wells in the USA.  So let’s play with some figures to see just how relevant this might be.

Instead of 10%, let’s be generous and say that only 2% of the methane is lost to the atmosphere.  And instead of 70 times as bad as carbon dioxide let’s say it’s 50 times as bad (it makes the sums easier!).  If my maths is correct this means that a 2% leakage of methane has the same greenhouse effect as the other 98% burned and emitted as carbon dioxide.  In other words (and even if my maths is not spot-on) it doesn't take much leakage to make exploiting fracking gas twice as bad as it appears in terms of climate change.  This could make it as bad or worse than coal and as such could not be considered an interim fuel.

Another problem with the interim fuel idea is that I've heard it before.  I am old enough to remember similar arguments when North Sea oil was developed.  Yes we were talking about wind and wave energy in the 1970s and it was said that North Sea oil would buy us the time to research and develop this properly.  Ideas quickly forgotten in the rush to develop. 

I am also unconvinced that an apparently lucrative gas supply will be abandoned before it is fully exploited as renewable energy sources are developed.  It is far more likely that, as with North Sea oil, attention will turn away from any thoughts on long-term sustainability and focus entirely on the apparent benefits of apparently cheap energy.

There are now highly emotive arguments being presented by the pro-fracking lobby: from dire warnings of the lights going out, to unchallenged claims that fracking will save the planet, that it is supported by the science, that it is good for the economy or that it will bring us out of recession.  Perhaps the worst thing, however, is the way that fracking has taken over a far more important agenda about developing an economy that is fit for purpose, delivering real prosperity while maintaining and improving the environment on which we depend.   

A new body to look after the nations forests

Following the governments welcome change of heart over the sell-off of Forestry Commissions woods, an independent panel was established to look at how the estate could be managed.  The panel reported last year – a good report probably indicating the minimum of what we should expect from government if it is serious about looking after this public asset.  Since then government has produced a forestry policy and now a consultation summary for a new Public Forest Estate Management Organisation (PFE MO).  This is essentially government’s response to the independent panels report.  So what is the progress?

Unfortunately, in my view this government response falls at the first hurdle. 

In its very first recommendation the independent panel called on government “to pioneer a new approach to valuing and rewarding the management, improvement and expansion of woodland ecosystems for all the benefits they provide to nature, people and the green economy”.  It was clear from this that new ways of accounting for all the benefits provided by forests should be adopted.  Furthermore, at the same time the National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) and the Natural Capital Committee (NCC) were providing the tools to do this. 

This “Governance Premises Summary”, however, falls back to a traditional approach of simply “maximising economic opportunities whilst maintaining public benefit” – a phrase that would not have looked out of place 50 years ago.  What is written in the governance summary is old fashioned language reflecting flawed economic thinking and is a huge missed opportunity.  It will mean that the Forestry Commission may just revert back to a narrow role of selling timber in the hope that a surplus can “pay” for other public benefits. 

The independent panel report itself showed that whilst the cost of the Forestry Commission was about £20 million, the public benefit it produced was valued at a minimum of about £400 million.  A 20 to 1 return on investment - if you actually did the sums.  To ignore this is like a business ignoring its income stream and then being surprised when the books don’t balance!

The governance summary appears to have been written as though the NEA and the NCC did not exist.  Many of the ecosystem services provided by forests are quantifiable, timber production is just one.  Many others are of such fundamental importance that they underpin all other values.  Forestry, as with any valuation from now on, must fully account for all these services.  Indeed forest management should be the natural cause célèbre for this new approach to valuation.  Only by doing so will we start to properly value forests – and foresters.

Forest economics must therefore be fundamentally reformed to reflect full natural capital accounting.  The full range of public benefits must be properly accounted for, with a hefty contingency allowance for all the essential services which cannot be easily reflected in financial valuation.  This is a requirement that flows from the independent panel report and should be a strong theme that runs through any proposals, yet there is no hint of this in the governance summary, its supporting “review of functions” or in the Forestry Policy.

The governance summary also assumes the PFE MO will be of similar size to current Public Forest Estate.  What is the basis for this statement?  This provides an answer without addressing the question.  The public forest estate should be led by its objectives and then the size would come out of that.  The question then should be “what size should the estate be in order to deliver its functions?”, rather than “it’s this big, what shall we do with it?”

I have worries about the phrase in the Mission statement “for the benefit of people, the economy and nature”.  This implies a balance between three competing elements which, on the contrary, should be complementary rather than competing.  This is reflected in the overarching objective - “the sustainable management of the estate to balance and maximise the benefits to people, nature and the economy”.  This is more a bland catch-all than an objective.  In practice it is meaningless – is it “sustainable management” (in which case what does it mean?) or “balance” (in which case of what for what?) or “maximising” (in which case of what?), you can’t have all three.

The Annex then gives fairly predictable, second-level objectives under economic, social and environmental.  The wording and organisation of these fail to get over recent thinking on how it is ecosystems and ecosystem services that underpin everything else.  Without healthy forest ecosystems there will be no economic and social benefits yet as it is ecosystems only appear in a rather confused last bullet point in the list.

In my view the overarching objective is not overarching.  It starts from the perspective of “here’s the Public Forest Estate, how are we going to manage it?”  An overarching objective should actually start from the perspective of “what is the purpose of the Public Forest Estate and therefore how should we manage it?”

Therefore, an overarching objective, I suggest, should read something like:

The purpose of the Public Forest Estate is to contribute to realising the full potential of England’s current and future ecological network, so that it provides an enhanced level of the full range of ecosystem services.  In particular the Public Forest Estate should deliver those aspects of ecosystem services that are not adequately valued in traditional economic terms and/or not as easily delivered by the private or charitable sectors. 

The sub-objectives in the Annex should then articulate how it will deliver high quality forest ecosystems, rich in wildlife and how is it going to deliver benefit for people.  Economic objectives must then be articulated in terms of delivering benefit for people whilst maintaining and enhancing the natural capital on which it depends.  It also means that any economic approach or valuation will have to rise to the challenge of saying how it has accounted for everything and how value is being provided to people.  At present “economic growth” is presented as a catch-phrase without any hint on what it means, how it will be measured or how it indicates benefit to people.

The administrative structures for the PFE MO are secondary to what it is actually required to do, we do not want the ideal structure delivering the wrong things.  Nevertheless, the right administrative structure should provide the capacity and legitimacy for a PFE MO to deliver public benefit.  There is a fear that the independent panel’s requirement for a Charter has been weakened and that the proposed role of “Guardians”, who should be accountable to parliament, has been toned-down.  One of the greatest benefits that the PFE could deliver is by providing the resource (i.e. the public land) for vibrant and diverse community and public engagement in forests.  I can see no reference to this so far but maybe it will appear in later detail.

I hope I am wrong, and I hope that people engaged in this can tell me so.  Maybe the bland phrase “maximising economic opportunities” does hide a far more sophisticated approach which really does mean proper accounting for all of the vital services that we get from healthy forest ecosystems.  I see nothing yet to give me any confidence though.

Roads to nowhere

We've been here before.  Governments at various times in the past have pushed the myth of aggressive road building as the answer to all our economic woes.  Many of us can remember the bitter arguments in the 1990s with the loss of valuable countryside, such as that at Twyford Down.  But here we are again.  The chancellor now proposes to throw over £28 billion of public money at the largest road building programme for half a century.

At a superficial level it seems to make sense.  If we had a bigger road then surely “this” traffic jam wouldn't be here and I could get to work – get products to market – get to the shops or whatever.  But, given a moments thought, it is clear that we can’t just build our way out of the problem.

Bigger roads generate more traffic, the congestion just moves to the next blockage and in practice hold-ups can get worse.  The predicted economic growth rarely materialises. In the process the environment gets severely damaged, greenhouse gas emissions increase and a treadmill develops building an expectation of never-ending growth in transport and so still more roads must be built.  In practice road building becomes a divergence in what should be a far more sophisticated discussion about how we deliver prosperity and well-being in ways that reduce our environmental footprint.

In fact government has less excuse for this approach today than it did in the past.  There is now a huge body of evidence on how the natural environment underpins the health of both society and the economy, and that investment in the natural environment is a cost effective way of addressing many of the UK’s future needs.  Investing in nature offers huge returns, even though those returns are often invisible.  The public value of Forestry Commission woods for example is 20 times the cost of managing the estate.  Other international estimates show that the benefits we get from protected wildlife areas can be 10 to 100 times greater than the cost of protection.  Cost – benefit ratios for roads, on the other hand, seem to have trouble to get much better than 1:1.

The Treasury appears to have conveniently misplaced its own Green Book guidance on assessing economic and environmental benefits.  Road schemes such as the proposed £1 billion extension of the M4 through the Gwent Levels in Wales have little or no economic justification and will cause irreversible damage to wildlife and valuable landscapes.  Instead of supporting the UK’s long-term recovery through investment in rebuilding our natural capital, the Chancellor is concreting over the countryside.  This is not just bad for the environment, its bad economics – bad sums!

Poor planning decisions, for development in general as much as for roads, are inevitable with today’s skew in our value calculations.  Simply by talking about the cost of environmental protection balanced against the benefit of economic regeneration the dice is already loaded against the environment.  The reality is that the environment delivers benefits far greater than the costs and so-called economic regeneration often results in costs that are greater than the benefits.  Get the sums right and then we are more likely to see some sensible decisions.

Earlier this year, an influential business-led Ecosystem Markets Task-force  established by Government, highlighted the “emergence of a new economy: one that fully integrates the real value of nature”.  Government is yet to respond to this but the Chancellor’s position suggests the Government is living in the concrete-led past and not the nature-led future.

In response to this the Wildlife Trusts are joining the Campaign for Better Transport in a rally against road building near Hastings on Saturday 13th July.  See details here.  It is being held on Sussex’s own road building site – the Bexhill to Hastings link road.  The Sussex Wildlife Trust has opposed this for nearly two decades.  It makes no more sense now than it did in the early 1990s.

European Maritime and Fisheries Fund- a step backwards?

Unfortunately it feels like one step forward and two large steps back when it comes to reforming the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).  Back in February, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reverse thirty years of failed EU fisheries management in favour of an ambitious reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy.  We were ecstatic.  This was a huge step forwards - at last we were putting an end to over-fishing.

However, recently MEPs on the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee have been discussing the future of the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF).  The EMFF provides funding to the fishing industry and coastal communities to help them adapt to changing conditions in the sector and become economically resilient and ecologically sustainable.  A truly sustainable CFP needs an EMFF that supports the end of overfishing and the rebuilding of fish stocks - one without harmful subsidies.  We are concerned, however, that the Fisheries Committee are considering the reintroduction of public subsidy through the EMFF to build new fishing vessels and engines.  This type of subsidy has been shown to contribute to overfishing and was phased out by the 2002 CFP reform.  You can read more about this here.

It is common sense that public subsidy should help move to a sustainable fishing sector.  Instead of subsidising the capacity to increase overfishing, investment should be increased to enhance control, improve enforcement , improve data collection, and to develop less damaging fishing gear to reduce discards and the environmental impact of fishing activity.

Let’s hope MEPs on the Fisheries Committee see sense before they vote on 10 July. You can help by writing to your MEP (find them here).

Putting the “Wild” into “Wildlife”

BBC2’s Newsnight programme on 28^th May had a fascinating discussion about the idea of “re-wilding”.  I haven’t read it yet, but this comes from George Monbiot’s book “Feral”, and it looks like it will give a welcome boost to a public discussion on the “nature” part of nature conservation.

Re-wilding is something I've been fascinated about for many years.  The whole idea of “managing nature” seems an oxymoron – why should we have to look after nature when, by definition, nature is something outside the human so should function for itself?  I used to give talks entitled “if it isn't bust why fix it?” – alluding to the idea that nature is not something that inherently needs tending by humans.  And I've represented the Trusts in meetings of the Wild Britain Initiative on occasions.  Also in Sussex we have established large non-intervention areas on our Reserves where nature is given more of a free hand and we work with one landowner in particular who is experimenting with naturalistic grazing in a large rewilding project.  So the Wildlife Trusts are not strangers to the idea.

It is, however, also true that we live in a “cultural landscape”, where the value of our landscape says something about the interaction between people and nature.  For thousands of years people in Britain have been interacting with nature so the wildlife and habitats we see today is largely a product of that interaction.  It is patently obvious that we do not live in a natural wild state, with the full grandeur of nature all around us, but in a heavily modified environment. Humans manage their environment in order to get products and services (like food and water).  In the process, however, sensitive management for farming and forestry should also be in harmony with nature.  Much nature conservation today aims to look after the best of what remains from this interaction, so very often it is traditional management that we focus on as it is this that has given us the wildlife we have today.

So we apparently have two opposing philosophies: one about nature being a system outside the human and so functioning for itself, the other about a landscape formed from the interactions of people and nature so needing continued management.

But these are not opposites in terms of having one or the other.  Unfortunately the Newsnight discussion did develop towards an all-or-nothing debate but this can be avoided if you see these approaches as being at two ends of a spectrum, rather than opposites.  However, (and here’s the surprise) neither end of the spectrum actually exists!

Nowhere in the UK is truly wild.  Many of the most important species, those that drive the country’s ecology, are extinct here.  Some perhaps never evolved (the mammoth should probably have evolved into a European elephant after the ice retreated).  Humans also constrain nature massively – even the biggest nature reserve you can imagine is tiny in comparison to the area needed for nature to have free reign.  So nowhere is wild, nowhere is natural.  But you might be able to get closer.

Alternatively, however, nowhere is truly artificial either.  Even a field of wheat – managed, sprayed, fertilised and cultivated – is not just the product of human hands.  Humans did not create the soil and soil organisms that are so essential to the crop, nor did we plant all the weeds, introduce the insects or create the water cycle and atmosphere that the crop lives within.  So even “artificial” systems depend entirely on nature.  Much of our landscape, however, is far nearer the artificial than it is the natural.

So, parts of our landscape could be said to fit at different points along this spectrum.  The idea of moving significant areas further along the spectrum towards the natural is an extremely valuable concept and one that the Wildlife Trusts have promoted for years.

To promote the wild we need a deep understanding of what this means in practice.  Wild nature should be one in which all the ecological processes are working – all forms of growth, decay, and in particular natural disturbance.  If some of this is absent then the result would be neglect, not wild nature.  So, to promote the wild, we need to understand natural disturbance – this includes storms, erosion, fire (sometimes), but particularly grazing/browsing and the effect of predators.  Miss out these processes and you do not end up with wild, you just end up with another human artefact. 

It is not possible to have the full range of ecological processes in the UK.  Areas for nature are too small and constrained.  People will not allow all forms of natural disturbance to take place - storms get cleared up, erosion is prevented, natural functioning of rivers is constrained and so on.  Furthermore, we do not have the wild free-ranging herbivores that drive vegetation ecology and we certainly do not allow wild free-roaming packs of top predators, who have a driving influence on herbivore behaviour (the “ecology of fear” effects where herbivores graze and therefore how vegetation grows). 

There are two answers to this shortcoming.  One is to endeavour to put back those ecological processes – and I am completely with George Monbiot on this.  We can re-wild river systems, and the Wildlife Trusts now have several examples.  We can increase the size of our reserves (see The Great Fen Project), and allow storms, erosion and other disturbances to take their natural course, and again we have several examples of this.  We can also put back some semi-wild grazing animals that are often absent (see the Knepp project).  It is perfectly reasonable to aim to reduce management intervention and re-establish natural processes.  We can sometimes get nearer to the wild in a spectrum, even though it may not be possible to actually get there (and in practice we do not know what wild looks like in the northern temperate zone anyway).  Furthermore, we have far too few examples in the UK from the wild end of the spectrum.

The other answer is human intervention.  Some management intervention can be good as it effectively re-establishes the diversity that is lost through a lack of natural processes.  Woods are too small to hold the full cycle of growth, disturbance and decay; so coppicing (for example) puts back a disturbance cycle.  Grazing can be put back in ungrazed areas and even cultivation and soil disturbance just mimics what wild boar would have done naturally.  In practice the vast majority of the English landscape will end up in this category, and rightly so – the continued positive interaction between people and nature in a cultural landscape.

There is space in the UK for more large areas at the wild end of the spectrum, even if they never become totally wild.  But it is essential that we have a good understanding of how wild nature functions and how we can put back some of the missing elements.  Otherwise, instead of getting the wild, you’ll just get degradation and neglect.

The State of Nature

 For the first time ever, the UK’s wildlife organisations have joined forces to undertake a health check of nature in the UK and its Overseas Territories. The report looks at some of the wider issues involved in our changing countryside, the historical declines of habitats and species and asses the status of wildlife in eight different habitat types.   This is a national report but the trends shown nationally are probably reflected in Sussex.  Here are some of the headlines:

• Quantitative assessments of the population or distribution trends were done for 3,148 species. Of these, 60% of species have declined over the last 50 years and 31% have declined strongly.
•  Half of the species assessed have shown strong changes in abundance, indicating that recent environmental changes are having a dramatic impact on the nature of the UK’s land and seas. There is also evidence to suggest that species with specific habitat requirements are faring worse than generalist species that are better able to adapt to a changing environment.
•  A new Watchlist indicator has been developed to measure how conservation priority species are faring, based on 155 species for which we have data. This group contains many of our most threatened and vulnerable species, and the indicator shows that their overall numbers have declined by 77% in the last 40 years.

Farmland

• Of 1,064 farmland species for which we have trends, 60% have decreased and 34% have decreased strongly.
• 14% of all farmland flowering plants are on the national Red List: 62 species in all.
• Some species groups, such as birds and bats, have benefited from conservation action, particularly through agri-environment schemes. Despite this, many widespread farmland species have failed to recover from the declines of recent decades.

Lowland semi-natural grassland and Heathland

• Overall, 65% of the 923 species for which we have sufficient data have declined, and 35% have declined strongly. A warming climate may be helping some species.
• One in four species of flowering plants is threatened in this habitat. Nitrogen deposition, disturbance, inadequate or inappropriate land management, and habitat loss and fragmentation all pose barriers to recovery.

Upland

• Of 886 upland species for which we have information, 65% have declined and 34% have declined strongly.
• More species have become extinct in the uplands (15) than in any other habitat: 137 upland species, including 131 plants, are on recent national Red Lists.

Woodland

• The area of UK woodland has increased, mainly due to conifer planting, but woodland birds have been declining since the 1970s and butterflies since the 1990s. 94 species of woodland moths have halved in number.
• Of the 1,256 woodland species studied, 60% have decreased and 34% have decreased strongly.
• 11% of woodland vascular plants are on the national Red List: 30 species in all.

Coastal

• Of the 682 coastal species for which we have trends, 60% have declined and 29% have declined strongly.
• 13% of coastal plant species are regarded as threatened with extinction in the UK.
• Habitats such as saltmarsh support internationally important bird and invertebrate populations. Huge areas of coastal habitat have been lost or damaged in recent history, as a result of coastal development, cliff stabilisation and changes to agricultural practices.

Freshwater and wetlands

• 57% of freshwater and wetland species for which we have sufficient data have declined, and 28% have declined strongly.
• Many characteristic freshwater species have declined significantly over the last 50 years, including the Atlantic salmon, water vole and the aquatic plant frogbit.
• One in ten species of freshwater and wetland plants assessed are on recent national Red Lists. Some, such as the freshwater pearl mussel, are threatened with global extinction.

Urban

• Of the 550 urban species for which we have data, 59% have declined and 37% have declined strongly. Invertebrates are doing particularly poorly in urban environments and 42% of species (183) are showing strong declines.
• Despite the fact that brownfield sites provide important refuges for a diverse range of wildlife, including many rare and threatened invertebrates, they are often viewed as ripe for development and receive little protection.

Marine

• UK seabirds have had mixed fortunes since 2000, with some species showing sharp declines. Harbour seals have also declined significantly, especially in Scotland.
• The state of UK fish stocks has improved recently, but overall, 75% of EU fish stocks continue to be overfished. Skates and rays are no longer viable commercial species in many areas.
• There is increasing evidence that climate change is affecting the breeding success of UK seabirds, particularly in Scotland.