Tony Whitbread

Ecocide

2012-02-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

A colleague has just been in touch with me to highlight a campaign to make “Ecocide” an international crime. It’s not a subject that I have looked into, but it looks like something worth thinking about. Follow the link for more information:
http://www.eradicatingecocide.com/what-you-can-do/

Ecocide is the “crime” of extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of the territory has been severely diminished. This is certainly not something specific to Sussex, indeed most of the discussion is at international level – examples of “ecocide” given include the Amazon rainforest, the Athabasca Tar Sands in Canada and the oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and the Niger Delta.

The proposal to adopt Ecocide as an international crime against Peace has been put to the United Nations by British environmental lawyer, Polly Higgins. World leaders attending the Earth Summit in Rio in June 2012 will have the opportunity to agree to outlaw Ecocide (but they may need a little persuading!)

An enforceable law would help close off the flow of damage and destruction at source, and encourage investment into more responsible business activities, turning hopes of a green economy into reality at last.

There are many ways you can help. One is to write to David Cameron to ensure he is aware of the importance of attending the Earth Summit. Also the Eradicating Ecocide website (above) is full of ideas, and you’ll easily see what is yours to do. Be sure to check out “The Ecocide Earth Summit Strategy”.

Natural environment white paper – progress

2012-02-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

We were very pleased with the publication of the Natural Environment White Paper last June and quite a lot has happened since then to take it forward in Sussex. This is good stuff and I feel that we are working through some of the concerns I had when it first came out.

Two of the initiatives from the White Paper were “Local Nature partnerships” and “Nature Improvement Areas”.

Local Nature Partnerships (LNPs) were supposed to be the development of new or existing partnerships to champion nature and the environment in an area. I had some major concerns about the lack of resources, demanding timescales and rather broad guidance but we have been fortunate in getting funding to develop the idea in Sussex. We are now talking to a wide range of partners with the idea of developing our current Biodiversity Partnership into an LNP. We will not be able to apply for LNP status until later in the year but we hope that this background work will bare fruit.

One activity of a LNP must be to try to embed the value of nature into our economic decision making. Government therefore wants LNPs to have good links with Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). This is good, but I not sure anyone has mentioned this to the LEPs. One early job, therefore, will be to try to build better links with the business community.

So, in a few months time, we should have an LNP for Sussex. More of what that might mean another time.

A Nature Improvement Area (NIA) has also been developed in Sussex by the National Park Authority for the South Downs ridge. A very professional bid has been put forward and we know it has got through to the last 15 (12 will be granted NIA status and receive funding to support its objectives). The National park Authority, with the support from a South Downs farmer, did a presentation to the selection panel this week. I am confident that they will have made a good pitch so good luck to them. We will know very soon whether the South Downs bid has been successful.

Since the publication of the White Paper, however, I have always been worried that these 12 “pilot” NIAs will end up as the only ones. The NIA concept is good but these large scale initiatives should be found all over the country, not just in 12 places. In practice I could think of very good arguments for more than 12 NIAs in Sussex alone. It does seem, however, that government does not intend to limit ecological networks to the lucky 12 pilot NIAs. Minsters have now said that they want to see NIAs wherever the opportunities or benefits are greatest, driven by the knowledge and vision of local partners. I am not sure how much, or whether, funding will be available for a proper network of NIAs but the idea that the UK’s failing ecological network will be fixed by just 12 NIAs should now have disappeared.

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

2011-12-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

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

George Osborne's attack on nature

2011-12-01T02:21:00.000-08:00

Not being content with a destructive shake-up of the planning system, George Osborne now has wildlife sites of international importance in his sights. Now our most important wildlife sites and rarest species face an uncertain future in England.

Osborne’s perspective on this is clear:
“..we will make sure that gold plating of EU rules on things like Habitats aren’t placing ridiculous costs on British businesses.”
“If we burden them with endless social and environmental goals…. businesses will fail, jobs will be lost, and our country will be poorer.”

So that’s it then – wildlife is just a ridiculous cost and it’s making us all poorer!

Where has George Osborne been for the last two decades? Study after study, as well as basic logic and common sense, shows the central importance of the environment. This is not separate to the economy or a cost to the economy but underpins the economy (as well as underpinning our well-being and very existence). Economic growth that damages the environment can no longer be considered economic growth at all.

The Government’s own National Ecosystem Assessment and Natural Environment White Paper, both published in June this year, promised us much more than this:

The UK National Ecosystem Assessment states: “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.”

The Natural Environment White Paper states “The Government is committed to putting the value of natural capital at the heart of our economic thinking.”

There is no sign of this clear thinking in Osborne’s current attack.

These documents were supposed to herald a step change in nature’s fortunes.

The internationally important sites under attack are the Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), established under the EU Habitats Directive, and the Special Protection Areas (SPAs), established under the EU Birds Directive.
(see http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designatedareas/spa/default.aspx
http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designatedareas/sac/default.aspx)

They are the very foundation of environmental protection on land and at sea in England and the building blocks for nature’s recovery. They include iconic places such as the purple heaths of Ashdown Forest, the unspoilt wetlands of the Arun valley, the flower-rich grassland turf of the South Downs at Lewes and at Castle Hill and the secretive ancient woods at The Mens and Ebernoe Common.

Yet taking England’s much depleted wildlife into a more positive future is clearly far from the Chancellor’s agenda.

At a time of recession we should look to the long-term.

The coalition Government during the Second World War placed nature at the centre of post-war reconstruction and some of our greatest nature conservation initiatives stem from that period. Even during one of the worst economic climates of the twentieth century Britain was able to build a positive future for the natural world. Governments then did not have the advantage of the clear messages coming from the National Ecosystem Assessment, they had not had the decades of environmental awareness that we have now and did not have the foundation of protected sites that we have spent decades identifying and defending. But they did know it was the right thing to do. How different to today when nature is presented merely as an unnecessary cost to society.

Is the Government’s review of these sites an attempt to ease the way for major developments on land and on our coasts?

The chairs and chief executives of the 47 Wildlife Trusts met last week where we heard from the New Economics Foundation about the urgent need for a fundamentally different economic model that takes the value of our natural capital into account. Only a dramatic shift will secure the services we gain from a healthy functioning environment and produce a society that can thrive.

Economic growth achieved at the cost of our natural life support systems is not economic growth at all, merely an illusion of temporary benefit.

Engaging with the National Park

2011-10-07T04:23:00.000-07:00

The National Park has been functional for about 6 months now and one of its biggest jobs has been to encourage engagement with people throughout the Park.

My view is that they are doing a pretty good job, indeed so good that people are starting to complain about consultation fatigue! To those of us that are in the loop maybe this is what it feels like but there are a lot of people with a lot of different interests in the Park and not all of them will have found the opportunity to input. So I feel that all the effort has been worth while.

The opportunities being provided by the Park Authority at the moment is through a series of 9 autumn workshops: 3 in East Sussex, 3 in West Sussex and 3 in Hampshire. As I understand it, these are to give people the opportunity to give views on the special qualities of the South Downs and the chance for this to feed in to the development of a Park-wide Management Plan.

This is all good stuff but people do need to engage in order to have their say. Four of these workshops have already taken place and I know the Authority would like still more people to get involved. So it’s a good opportunity for members of the Wildlife Trust, and readers of this blog, to get along and help promote the case for wildlife.

The dates and locations are as follows:

10th October 2011 – Arundel Town Hall, Arundel

11th October 2011 – International Lawn Tennis Centre, Eastbourne

3rd November 2011 – Manor House, Littlehampton

4th November 2011 – Linklater Pavilion, Lewes (may change depending on numbers)

7th November 2011 – St John’s Church Hall, Rowlands Castle

You can find out more about these on the National Park web site on http://www.southdowns.gov.uk/get-involved

I’ll be going along to the West Sussex meetings and will be promoting our theme of a wildlife-rich Living Landscape for the Park. Why not come and help?

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

2011-09-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

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 Natural Choice: securing the value of nature

2011-07-07T03:30:00.000-07:00

Well the Natural Environment White Paper that we have all been waiting for has now been published and we have had some time to think about its contents.

Since before the election, the Wildlife Trusts, along with other environmental NGOs have been pushing for a new impetus for the natural environment. The UK failed to meet its 2010 biodiversity targets, wildlife is in continual decline and we are struggling to meet other environmental standards. More of the same is not an option. Is the Natural Environment White Paper, entitled “The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature” going to be the step-change in the ambition for the environment that we are all hoping for?

The starting point…
Taking the messages from “Making Space for Nature” and the “National Ecosystem Assessment” together, we have to conclude that whilst the natural world is essential to our existence, biodiversity in the wider environment is reducing and our current scatter of wildlife sites does not comprise a coherent ecological network. Our ecosystems are consistently undervalued and many of our essential ecosystem services are in continual long term decline.

So does the white paper set the right direction?

Generally I would have to say that the overall trajectory looks good. I have been fairly critical of government in past blogs – it seemed to be environmentally floundering - but I said then that the white paper is a major opportunity to turn this around.

The Wildlife Trusts have therefore welcomed the white paper. However, I am concerned that there is insufficient detail to be confident that Government is fully committed to making the vision a reality. The paper lacks the sense of urgency we believe is required.

There a re 4 key areas in the White Paper:

Nature Improvement Areas.

Local Nature Partnerships

Ecologically coherent planning,

Biodiversity offsets.

Nature Improvement Areas. I prefer “Ecological Restoration Zones” as it said what they should do – restore ecology. Nature improvement sounds weaker. Nevertheless the concept was promoted by the Wildlife Trusts and we are pleased it is in the white paper. However, they are currently non-statutory and there will be a competition for the first 12 such areas. As the aim is to restore a coherent ecological network, just 12 are hardly significant. There should be lots of them everywhere, and connected throughout the landscape. In Sussex alone we have identified 75 biodiversity opportunity areas. That gives a better idea of the scale needed. 12 for the whole country really is just a start. Hopefully we can look forward to the parallel development of Nature Improvement Areas everywhere, embedded in the new planning framework and with the funds to deliver.

Local Nature Partnerships were promoted by The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB and CPRE in the lead up to the white paper. The proposal is for around 50 in England, so they will have to be strategic in outlook, should work at a landscape scale and should be outcome focused. All good stuff. But timescales to form these are too short so it will be hard work to form coherent structures so that these strategic partnerships link up with all the really local partnerships. If we are not careful the rush to form LNPs, and attract the money that’s on offer, will actually set people up in competition and effectively undermine partnership working.

Ecologically coherent planning. It remains to be seen how ecological coherent the planning system will be at a time when government seems to be loosening up planning laws. A general reference to a National Planning Policy Framework seems unconvincing and whilst it does mention a presumption in favour of sustainable development I thought that had been the case – at least on paper – since 1992. I am sure it is right to look for win-win solutions where both development and the natural environmental are delivered at once but there will be conflicts and at present it looks like the same old story where development will take precedence.

Biodiversity offsets offer huge dangers but also huge opportunities so must be looked at carefully. Done badly it could de-value nature and be a licence to destroy. Done well, and underpinned by firm protection for wildlife, it could be a major mechanism for enhancement. Fortunately the DEFRA team working on this are aware of the dangers and the benefits.

Some may feel that the white paper has deliberate “trip hazards”, designed to make something that sounds good very difficult to implement in practice. The jury is out but I remain optimistic. Unrealistic timescales, feeble resources, limited practical ambition and questions regarding reconciliation with other government initiatives are all worrying. But it also mainstreams ecological restoration and the valuing of nature. I’ll take Caroline Spelman’s introduction to the white paper as setting the tone for its ambition:
“Too often, we take for granted the goods, services and amenity value that nature freely provides us. They risk being lost as a consequence. We can and must do things differently.”

Time is now for new era of nature conservation

2011-06-07T01:11:00.000-07:00

The publication of a Natural Environment White Paper - the first for 20 years - should mark an exciting new era for nature conservation. But has the Government been ambitious enough?

The Wildlife Trusts have pushed for the Government to take leadership and make the natural environment a priority. This White Paper is critical in setting a new direction. One in which the connections between a healthy natural environment, healthier people and a healthier economy are recognised.

The natural environment can produce significant benefits to society and the economy but, to do so effectively, there must be the right legislative framework and policy in place. Many people are currently suffering from a profound separation from the natural world. This framework – the White Paper – should enable people and communities to value, and take action for, wildlife.

Paul Wilkinson, Head of Living Landscape for The Wildlife Trusts, said:

“We want the Government to set out a new vision for nature’s recovery and so hope to welcome the content within this Natural Environment White Paper.

“Government needs to take a fresh look - and a smarter approach - at the way we use and manage the natural environment. Changes are essential and we expect to see clear evidence that the Government is committed to positive and ambitious change. A sound framework must be implemented, one which puts nature on the front foot and produces more benefits for people and for wildlife. It will take strong leadership and cross-departmental support.

“Government must take bold steps and make brave decisions. Society’s future is very closely linked to nature’s recovery.”

Within the White Paper on the Natural Environment, The Wildlife Trusts will be looking for the Government to commit to:

Putting nature’s recovery at the heart of all decisions on policy-making across all Government departments.

The Wildlife Trusts want to see the recovery and restoration of the natural environment happening everywhere in the UK. As reported in the Making Space for Nature1 report, England does not have a coherent and resilient ecological network. The report should be implemented in full; where priority areas for restoration on a landscape-scale are mapped out, and policies enforced, which protect their value.

The Wildlife Trusts have been delivering landscape-scale conservation on the ground on a voluntary basis but Government now needs to show leadership and make it a national priority.

Getting the policies and legislation right nationally to support people locally.

The time is ripe for Government to make improvements which will give individuals, businesses and communities the power and support they need to take action, protecting and improving areas for wildlife, securing a full recovery for nature.

The Wildlife Trusts work to reconnect people to nature where they live. This approach needs to be given a firmer footing. Local partnerships need to be enabled to deliver landscape-scale conservation, habitat restoration and re-creation in their communities.

Paul Wilkinson continued:

“The Wildlife Trusts have championed a recovery plan for nature since 2006. A plan which helps to create a resilient and healthy environment, rich in wildlife, and one which provides ecological security for people. It is our vision for A Living Landscape.

“However, we currently find ourselves working amidst an array of policies and mechanisms that determine how land is used and managed. Few of these were designed with nature in mind and virtually none allow for its restoration. The time has come for the Government to help society achieve its ambitions for nature.”

The Launch of the National Ecosystem Assessment

2011-06-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

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?

The Greenest Government Ever?

2011-05-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

When it came to power the incoming coalition government made the pledge that it wanted to be the “greenest government ever”. So, twelve months later, how is it doing?

The early signs were good. The coalition had its own ideas, and also seemed to be prepared to make good use of changes that were already underway. The South Downs National Park was designated under Labour, but the new coalition has overseen (rather than undermined) its progress to full function. The Lawton Review and the National Ecosystem Assessment (see my blogs around http://tonywhitbread.blogspot.com/2010/08/natural-environment-white-paper-1.html) were started under labour but have been continued under the coalition and as a result a new Natural Environment White Paper will soon be published.

However, if we look at some of the broader background then there are real concerns that the government is getting off track in its environmental performance.

One of its earliest acts was to disband the Sustainable Development Commission, the mix-up over the Forestry Commission is now well-known and we have sever concerns about the direction planning is taking. In a sop to the development industry, government is now taking the approach of “whatever the question the answer is yes”, setting the scene to allow more environmentally damaging development and (perhaps more significantly) creating a situation where environment and planning become more antagonistic. We now also have the “red tape challenge” in which, despite assurances to the contrary, protection of the environment is listed alongside all other regulation as up for grabs.

The coalition government seemed to start with a desire for a green economy – one where the economy and the environment work together in complementary ways rather than being seen as opposites to balance against each other. The idea of “green growth” was discussed – environmentally benign or beneficial businesses being the ones that drive future economic growth. What’s more, through the work of the National Ecosystem Assessment, we were going to appreciate the economic value of the services provided by nature.

One year later, however, it all seems to have got too difficult and we’re back to an approach that would not look out of place in the middle of the 20th century. The economy comes first and the environment is just seen as a cost or a “burden”. We’re back to ignoring the economic value of nature, and care for the environment is increasingly being portrayed as an act of charity rather than an act of both responsibility and economic necessity. We are seeing the combating of climate change portrayed as a cost to society (rather than a benefit) – something that has to be compromised until the economy is back on track. The more complex reality is being ignored in order to fall back on artificially simple solutions.

This is the background to an open letter sent to David Cameron on 14th May – the coalition’s first anniversary. Chief Executives from 15 leading charities, including the Wildlife Trusts, wrote to the Prime Minister warning that he will have to ramp up his efforts to make this the “greenest government ever” (http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/conservation/page00028.htm).

At present the prognosis is not good but David Cameron and Nick Clegg can act now to get back on track. The forthcoming Natural Environment White Paper presents an opportunity. With other areas environmentally flagging, this must provide an ambitious vision for the future to be signed up to by all government departments and followed by a clear plan of action for delivery. I am looking forward to its publication in June!

Message to MPs on the Natural Environment White Paper

2011-05-04T03:53:00.000-07:00

Last year DEFRA led a public consultation on a new Natural Environment White Paper and at the time I wrote several blogs on its background. (See my blog posts around September 2010 on http://tonywhitbread.blogspot.com/)

There were a record number of responses to this (around 15,000) giving an overwhelming message to government that people value their natural environment.

Since then DEFRA have been preparing this White Paper and it is now due to be published in June. Several of our Sussex MPs have been active in defending the environment in the past and we now call on them all to exert pressure to secure a bold and ambitious White Paper. This should build on the existing protection system and drive nature’s recovery.

I have therefore written to all our MPs asking them to support the White Paper in parliament.

The Wildlife Trusts initiated the call for a White Paper as we believe England needs a new
Nature Act to create the impetus for significant restoration of habitats and ecological processes on a landscape scale. The White Paper should lay the foundations for the establishment of Ecological Restoration Zones and new Local Nature Partnerships to help drive this process. The key functions of these Partnerships would be to:

Identify zones for ecological restoration. These should enhance existing landscapes restore the processes that drive ecosystem health and should restore and create new areas of habitat. They should also conserve and enhance nationally and locally important wildlife sites as well as take action for priority species;

Integrate land management policies, incentives and decision-making locally to ensure the provision of key ecosystem services, such as clean water, food, flood protection and control of our climate on which we all depend;

Work with local authorities to identify ecological networks as part of the Local Plan;

Inspire individuals and communities to get involved and take action to improve the quality of their local environment.

We believe that dynamic, credible Local Nature Partnerships, supported by civil society, have an important contribution to make to drive nature’s recovery. The Government should champion their role, as they have done for Local Enterprise Partnerships, indeed Local Nature Partnerships should be considered at least as important as Local Enterprise Partnerships.

We’ll see what our MPs say in response to this letter and maybe I’ll reproduce some of the more significant statements in a later blog.

Is the environment just “red tape” to business?

2011-04-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Taking a look at regulation to see if there is anything that can be rationalised is, perhaps, not a bad thing in itself. I don’t like the pandering to popular paranoia that seems to underpin the exercise, as I said in my last blog; however it might be argued that regulation does bare re-examination from time to time.

What is more, DEFRA has now written a “mythbuster” claiming that the aim is not to scrap important environmental regulations (http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2011/04/24/myth-bust-red-tape-challenge/). I am not sure how convincing this is. If this is the case then why are the very regulations that the DEFRA mythbuster claims will not be removed listed in the public consultation? If DEFRA sets hares running by listing environmental regulation that could get a shake up then it should not be too surprised when it gets a firm response from the public. This is not myth busting, it is public consultation and I thought that was the idea.

However, there is something more worrying underneath this exercise. Department sources are again saying things like they’ve “got to look at things from both sides…”. They don’t wish to “side” with either the environment or business and are implying that sustainable development is about balancing the environment with business and society. This is an attempt to change a 25 year old definition of sustainable development which seems to be going almost unnoticed. Sustainable development is about delivering win-win-win solutions, delivering environmental, economic and societal objectives together in a mutually supportive way. The nature of the discussion at the moment implies that environmental regulation has gone too far and needs to be brought back under control so that poor old business has a chance to thrive again. This is a 1960’s approach. In the 21st century business will only thrive in a healthy, protected environment.

I also do not believe that businesses themselves wish to be stereotyped as inevitably a sector that wishes to throw-off environmental regulation, cast a blind-eye to any environmental damage and get on with the important work of making money. A high quality environment is now seen as a business asset (for instance boosting house values, attracting inward investment and keeping good staff) and there is an increasing number of studies that show how a high quality environment and a stimulated economy go hand in hand. See for example Ruth Chambers’ (Council for National Parks) blog (http://parkcampaigner.wordpress.com/) for a couple of examples of how good regulation in National Parks has stimulated the economy, not held it back.

So – presumptions about environmental regulation constraining and acting as a burden on business should not be the background to any review. A sensible review should be more open ended, should not start with the expected answer (slash red tape) and may indeed find that we need more environmental regulation not less.

If you are worried about this you may wish to consider signing the 38 degrees petition: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/dont-scrap-environment-laws#petition, as well as making comments on the DEFRA web site: (http://www.redtapechallenge.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/environment/).

Red Tape Challenge?

2011-04-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

It sounds so popular. The “burdens” of red tape must be challenged! In moments of paranoia we all like to imagine the armies of pen-pushers who like nothing better than to stop ordinary people from getting on with their everyday lives. No doubt there are dozens of newspapers where you can read all about this, and no doubt there are armies of people delighting at the fight-back against these “jobs-worths”.

But when you start looking at this presumed red tape then you have to ask questions about what we are being asked to dump and why.

Furthermore, I work a lot with government bodies and local authorities and I simply don’t recognise this description of bureaucrats battling against a downtrodden public. Regulations are generally there for a good reason and the people implementing them are trying to get good results in practical situations. Generally they are trying to protect (using regulations that are far too weak) all the things we want protected. At least that seems to be the case with the environment. The main problem is the weakness and inconsistency of regulations against the well-funded tide of pressures against the environment.

So up for grabs, along with anything else you can imagine (except tax laws, they, of course, are inviolate) are all the wildlife and environmental regulations. After decades of fighting to get some measure of defence for the environment on which we all depend, this is now just labelled as “red tape” to be dispensed with.

Rather than challenge presumed red tape perhaps we should challenge some of the attitudes behind this exercise. Since when has having a healthy environment been a “burden”? Why is it that wildlife, clean air, clear water, a pleasant place to live and an attempt to prevent climate chaos are now just “red tape”?

According to an article in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/17/environment-green-laws-red-tape) a source said that government has a responsibility to business as well as those concerned about the environment. “Those concerned about the environment”!! It seems that government are portraying “those concerned about the environment” as some small special-interest minority. Both business and “those concerned about the environment” should be offended by this sort of attitude. Everyone (with any sense) is concerned about the environment, including business. Putting these on opposite sides of the fence seems to imply that government has given up any attempt to reconcile our economy with our environment.

Now the “onus” is on those wanting to keep regulations to make the case for keeping them, not on those wanting to get rid of them. Well, we’re talking of about 21,000 pieces of complicated policy and legislation. Yes its all up for public consultation, but have you got the time to go through all of it to say what you want to keep and why?

A response is clearly needed so in case you have got time to at least try to defend the 278 regulations that try to keep our environment habitable, here’s the link to the consultation: http://www.redtapechallenge.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/environment/

Please do make some sort of response!

A step back for Society?

2011-03-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

I’ve just looked at our Wildlife Trusts National Office response to the Governments planning reforms announced as part of yesterday’s budget. It seems that whilst this Government may consider itself to be the greenest ever, this approach is more a blast from the past – a retrograde step for Society.

Increasingly it is clear that we can’t go on sacrificing the natural environment. The debate is not jobs or wildlife but jobs and wildlife. It seems this Budget is all for Big Business but not the Big Society.

The Sussex Wildlife Trust is not against all development and clearly some aspects of the current regime could be simplified. Indeed we often work with businesses to ensure opportunities are taken to put wildlife back on the map and create truly sustainable development. However, this promise of a faster planning system could lead to missed opportunities.

Nature is not a luxury but a necessity we cannot afford to do without. The Chancellor has missed an opportunity to put in place positive planning for nature’s recovery and to optimize strong public feeling for the natural environment; so clearly expressed during recent consultations on both the public forest estate and Natural Environment White Paper.

Planning must focus on adaptation to protect, restore and create a robust and resilient natural environment which can stand up to the challenges of climate change. We fully support the recommendations made in the Making Space for Nature report, including the establishment of Ecological Restoration Zones.
http://ww2.defra.gov.uk/news/2010/09/24/nature-news/

The uncertainties of a changing climate are just as relevant for people as they are for wildlife. Well connected, landscape-scale areas for wildlife are great for people and the economy. The added benefits of creating, or restoring, wildlife habitats include flood control, pollution control to food production and long-term solutions to climate change impacts.

Paul Wilkinson, head of Living Landscape for The Wildlife Trusts, said: "Opportunities for people to enjoy the countryside, coast and seas, and the green spaces in towns and cities, are crucial to our health and wellbeing. The natural environment provides a source of inspiration, refreshment, excitement and challenge. Experiencing the environment has repeatedly been demonstrated to be an influential factor in assisting in the development of individuals’ personal character and confidence.” This all seems to have been put on one side in a rush to push through planning decisions (“the answer is yes – now what is the question…”) as we go back to a simplistic view of development no matter what the cost.

The independent panel on forest policy

2011-03-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

It’s good to be wrong sometimes! I mentioned, in a previous blog, that the proposed forestry panel was going to comprise just 5 people. This turns out not to be the case – in fact it will consist of 12. I had heard that it would be only 5 “somewhere” and had simply passed this on in my blog. This goes to show that I should always check back to an original reference rather than re-stating hearsay!

So – I was wrong, it is 12 people not 5 (or did someone change their mind somewhere!). However, this is good news as a panel this size is far more likely to cover a range of interests. It is also good news that key NGOs are represented, and I’m particularly pleased that Steph Hillbourne (CEO of the Wildlife Trusts National Office) is on the panel.

Some, however, have mixed feelings about the make up of the panel. And some grass-roots campaign bodies are less than happy with NGOs being there at all. They feel that these same NGOs were not active in opposing the government’s plans to dispose of the public forest estate and in effect have put themselves into position to “cherry-pick” the best sites for themselves. My view is that this is unfair; the NGOs were pretty active, although not as visible as some of the grass-roots campaigns, and are certainly not there top facilitate a government sell-off.

Nevertheless, it is a fair point that there is no representative from these grass-roots campaigns. With a panel of 12 it should be expected that at least someone from an on the ground campaign should be there. The representatives who are there need to bear this in mind. If local campaigns are not represented then at least us in the NGOs should be prepared to pass on their views.

I was reminded of this in an excellent example of local action in Friston Forest, Sussex, last weekend. A local group (Keep Our Forests Public) organised a rally and walk around the forest. Nearly 100 people turned up and we were fortunate to hear an impassioned, principled talk from Dave Bangs (who fronts the group) and a valuable overview from Kate Ashbrook (Chair of the Open Spaces Society). I felt particularly privileged to be asked to speak – bearing in mind that some there felt let down by the NGOs. No doubt some still feel that we have not been principled enough in our stance but I do hope that campaigns like this will realise that Steph, and other NGO reps on the panel, will be doing their best to get the best outcome for the nations estate.

It was a great day out in a site that is an excellent example of how a partnership in a forest can deliver great multiple public benefits. This is a privately owned site, managed by the FC and with a small area managed by us at the Sussex Wildlife Trust – so government, non-government and private all working together. It’s just the sort of partnership that should become “normal” in a positive new approach for the Forestry Commission.

Friston Forest Rally

2011-03-09T06:57:00.000-08:00

The sale of public forests may have been delayed and the consultation on the future of the estate has been closed, but the future of the Forestry Commission is still unsure.

The government is now very aware of the public concern for the nation’s forests and is looking again at forest policy. A panel is being set up to look at the future and the Wildlife Trusts, along with the other major conservation NGOs, are hoping to influence this and push for a positive role for the public forest estate.

This is still very much a live issue.

It would be all too easy to slip back into the programme of cuts and forest sales that has been going on for years.

Local campaign groups are therefore keeping up the pressure by holding events around the country. A local event in Sussex is being held at Friston Forest by the “Keep Our Forests Public” campaign.

The views of this campaign are not the same as my views or the position of the Sussex Wildlife Trust, but they do show good principled support for the public forest estate and have galvanised public interest perhaps more than us in the conservation NGOs. They deserve our support. I aim to be there and hope others will be able to join in as well.

The plan is to meet in Exceat car park, Friston Forest on 20th March at 12 noon. This is located off the Litlington Road, near the junction of A259, by the Seven Sisters Country Park Visitor Centre. Map reference: TV518995.

Speakers will include a Forestry Commission trade unionist; Kate Ashbrook (Open Spaces Society) and Dave Bangs (Keep Our Forests Public).

The rally will be followed by a picnic and at 1.30pm there will be a guided forest walk with two stop-and-return points for those who do not want to do the whole ramble. The maximum distance will be 6 miles. Wear strong walking shoes, bring lunch & refreshments. The campaign group asks people to bring along banners, placards, friends and family.

Email for any more info - Keep-our-forests-public@live.co.uk, or FACEBOOK - Keep Our Forests Public

2 further walks are being planned by the Keep Our Forests Public campaign at St. Leonards Forest, Horsham (Saturday April 9th) and at Abbots Wood, Wilmington (Saturday May 7th)

A future for the Public Forest Estate

2011-03-02T06:50:00.000-08:00

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 Forestry Commission – still a shaky future?

2011-02-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

The current round of forest sales may have been postponed and the consultation on a new proposal for the public forest estate after 2014 cancelled but the future of the forestry commission is still unsure.

The FC is still a very under-funded organisation yet a key thing that has come out of the recent public interest is a realisation of what amazing value for money we are getting.

For a net cost of about £20m per year we get a forest estate of about 250,000 hectares managed to deliver public benefit. A bargain!

Of this £20m, about £12m to £13m comes from the public purse (from DEFRA) the other £8m comes from money ploughed back into the FC from the sales of forests (the government has been quietly getting FC to sell woods for years). The current situation, however, is that the funding for FC is still being cut. First, some £2.6m is being cut from the DEFRA money to the FC, reducing the public funding from just over £12m to about £10m. Second, the £8m per year from the sale of forests is no longer going to be ploughed back into the FC, it will all go straight to the treasury.

So FC is still being cut by about £10m per year and FC are still likely to loose about 25% of its staff.

Some of the current threats may have died down but an already slim organisation is being cut still further. And, as I’ve explained in previous blogs, this is not going to raise any money for the treasury – an extra £10m per year to the treasury will soon be lost in grants to the new owners. This “cut” will just appear as an expense somewhere else. It is not simply a matter of FC having to share some of the pain we all have to suffer under the current thrust for cuts in public spending.

The government has done the right thing in holding back on making any decisions and setting up an expert panel to look at wider issues of forest policy. It looks like it will be a rather small panel, however – just 5 people – so I’m not sure how it will be able to represent a good spectrum of views. Obviously I feel that someone from the Wildlife Trusts should be there, or at least one of the conservation NGOs. But it should also invite people from the grass-roots campaigns that have sprung up around the country. Add in a few academic experts, industry representatives and politicians and it sounds like a panel far larger than 5 is needed.

Hopefully any output from the expert panel will link in with the emerging Natural Environment White Paper. But in the mean time the government should not be eroding FC still further while the panel sits. For the time being the current £12m that FC gets from DEFRA should be increased to £20m and the sales of forests halted.

Forestry Commission sell-off – 4: A government change of heart.

2011-02-17T04:45:00.000-08:00

It is welcome news that the government has changed its mind over the dismantling of the Forestry Commission (FC). It might be a little uncharitable to call this a u-turn; the proposal was only a proposal and it is sensible to think again in the light of both public concern and the clear arguments against the direction proposed.

I am glad that the government has decided to take more time over this. Instead of the proposal it now looks like a panel of experts will be set up to look at public access and biodiversity in publically owned woodlands. This sounds good and I hope it will address wider aspects of the role of the entire public estate in landscape-scale ecological restoration. The future of the Public Forest Estate is part of a much bigger discussion as Stephanie Hilborne OBE, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, says:

“From the start The Wildlife Trusts have called for more time to have this debate and so we welcome this announcement.

“This is, however, part of a much bigger picture about the future of England’s natural environment. The context is that our first Nature White Paper for 20 years is being prepared. The new panel and the debate about the public forest estate must feed into this or we will lose sight of the big picture and miss a big opportunity.

“As local organisations with a long track record of working with the Forestry Commission and local communities on the ground, The Wildlife Trusts are keen to play our part in the debate.”

We are, however, left with the spectre of continual sales of the estate and a continual haemorrhaging of FC staff. And it is now clear that this practice will not make money for the treasury, so why continue?

Wildlife Trusts around the country are very pleased to be working in partnership with FC. This will become very difficult as staff levels go down, offices close or move and FC officers inevitably become more remote. This is the opposite of what should be happening. We need to build on strength – more, better partnerships delivering still better public benefit. This can be delivered on the public estate, and, through partnership, on land in private and charitable ownership as well.

I talked in a previous blog about an example in Tilgate Forest. This is a normal partnership, replicated many times around the country, engaging local communities in their local forests. It is only held back because of lack of capacity (i.e. we’re all too busy to develop it as fully as we would like). These sorts of projects are surely good examples of what is meant by the “big society”. Instead of cutting back, we should be investing more, giving FC the steer and capacity to build on this success.

The government may have changed its mind – and good for them for doing so – but the genie is out of the bottle now. They can’t go back to quietly selling-off 15% of the estate every 4 years, and laying off staff accordingly. Forest policy and wider policy regarding the public estate, must now be part of much larger, positive, forward-looking policy for the natural world as a whole and should be linked in with the emerging Natural Environment White Paper. This will require commitment, investment and reasonable staffing levels. In practice it may be justifiable to “re-configure” the public estate so that it continues to deliver public benefit and this may result in the sale of parts of the estate but the purchase of other areas. However, as the public estate needs to be of a sufficient size and diversity in order to be effective in contributing to the delivery of policy it is likely that we should be expecting a net increase in the public estate not a net reduction.

In 2009 the FC itself did a consultation to see what the public wanted from the public forest estate. I have not seen the results of this but I wouldn’t be surprised if it showed a great level of support for FC and a general desire to increase the estate, not reduce it.

Forestry Commission sell-off, 3: How much does the Forestry Commission cost us?

2011-02-11T07:36:00.000-08:00

With the pressure to dispose of the public forest estate, you might be forgiven for imagining that the Forestry Commission (FC) is a fat, inefficient, bureaucratic body that spends huge amounts of public money but delivers little. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The FC looks after a huge estate for us – over 250,000, or about 18% of all woodland. Many of the familiar forests that you might list are actually owned and/or managed by the FC – the New forest, the Forest of Dean, Thetford Forest, Grizedale Forest and, more locally, Abbots wood, Friston Forest, St Leonards Forest and Tilgate Forest. Virtually all are managed to deliver multiple public benefits with nature and wildlife pretty near the top of the list.

So how much does it cost us to have them look after this enormous estate?

Figures from year to year vary but the difference between the FC’s income from sale of timber against the cost of management is just £13m. So it costs us just £13m per year to have a FC that looks after over 250,000 ha of some our most cherished areas.

Let’s put this into perspective.

This works out as about 30p per person per year. 30p – that is about the same cost as going to the toilets at Victoria Station once (per year!), it’s about half the cost of a newspaper, one sixth the cost of a cup of coffee and quite a bit less than the cost of a decent bar of chocolate. And for this we get over 250,000ha of forests. Not bad for 30p!

It would be incredible, but maybe you consider 30p per year too high a price to pay. Maybe we could even save this if the forests were sold, then perhaps you could enjoy an extra one sixth of a cup of coffee instead. Maybe not though. If charities like us or the private sector took over the estate then we would be eligible for grants to help us manage these forests. Grants that come from public funds. It wouldn’t save money, it would probably cost more.

So - what are the benefits that the public would get from this public asset being disposed of?

In order to judge this we would need to know how badly FC is failing in its duties. If this is clear then perhaps this would justify a change.

Are they failing to manage woods? Well they provide 60% of England’s timber from just 18% of the woods, so the woods are being managed and timber is being produced.
But are they destroying the environment in the process? Well the whole public forest estate is independently certified as sustainably managed by the Forest Stewardship Council - a pretty good tick in their favour.
Are they destroying nature (which might have been a criticism over 30 years ago)? Well, as a measure, 99% of the Sites of Special Scientific Interest in their care are in favourable condition, which is better than we in the Wildlife Trusts achieve, so there isn’t much room for improvement there.
Are they keeping people out? Well with around 40 million visits per year, obviously not. Not only are people welcomed but FC have legally designated the public forest estate as open access land in perpetuity, so no failure here either.

So – FC are doing everything pretty well, they don’t seem to be failing at anything and they are doing it all at a negligible cost – it may even save us money!

I can’t see this as a reason for break-up.

Forestry Commission sell-off – 2: An example.

2011-02-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

Some of the concerns about the Forestry Commission sell-off can be illustrated by taking an example and looking at how things might play out.

Tilgate Forest is a conifer plantation just outside Crawley designated a “small commercial” forest in the consultation document. At present we in the Sussex Wildlife Trust work with the FC (through the Gatwick Greenspace Project – see the link in my previous blog) to open up the canopy in target areas, holding back the dark conifers, letting light in and encouraging the development of heather-covered heathland. This is good for wildlife (we are noticing increases in common lizards and adders for example) and is also improving access and peoples enjoyment. And all this can be done alongside timber production. FC’s forest plan for the area will continue this enhancement, linking up heathland blocks and maybe encouraging less common species (such as the bird the Nightjar) to colonise again. As it is so close to Crawley, there are immense opportunities not just for improving nature but also to encourage quiet enjoyment by people. It sits adjacent to an urban area where open space is much appreciated. We are developing an exciting vision for a Living Landscape in the area where enhancement takes place on a landscape scale for people and wildlife.

That’s how it is at the moment. What of the future under the new arrangement?

As it is a small commercial plantation the proposal would result in a long term lease on the site being sold to the private sector. Charities and community groups may put in an offer but it is unlikely that they could raise enough funds. A private landowner would wish to see a return on their investment so the emphasis would be on commercial forestry. It may be possible to protect what is there to some extent, through restrictions placed on the lease arrangement, but it is most unlikely that any further enhancement would take place. Indeed the new owner only has to “neglect” management of the recently restored heathland for it all to be lost. Whilst access could be legally protected, this too needs investment in order for access to be maintained in practice.

The best that is likely is that the existing value might be preserved, but not improved. In practice even this is unlikely.

And the money gained by the Treasury? There would be some income from the sale, and FC would not be spending money on management, but the new owner would be eligible for a range of grants. Any net gain to the Treasury would be small or even negative. There is no financial benefit to the public in doing this.

So - there would be no financial gain to the government coffers, wildlife and access might not even be maintained, let alone improved, a fruitful partnership between FC and the Sussex Wildlife Trust would have been brought to an end and any vision of landscape scale enhancement for people and wildlife will be forgotten. Not only this but we will probably spend hours in meetings trying (and probably failing) to get the best for wildlife in any future arrangement. So what are the benefits? Why are we even talking about this?

Forestry Commission sell-off 1

2011-02-01T10:04:00.000-08:00

I have had the chance to have a glance through the public consultation on “The future of the Public Forest Estate” since my last blog. We can now see some more details but concerns remain. I’ll just highlight one in this posting.

Woodlands have been classified in the consultation as large commercial, small commercial, multi-purpose and heritage. The first question here regards which wood is classified into which category as this will make quite a difference to the outcome.

The proposal seems to be to transfer the freehold of heritage woods on to a charity or community group without charge. This could include woods like St Leonards Forest, near Crawley. This might be a reasonable idea but there are questions. How about long-term funding? It costs money to look after woods so any community group will wish to ensure that funds are available, long-term, to enable such management. At present Forestry Commission grants could be sourced to achieve this. However, as an intention seems to be to save money one has to question whether government will continue these grants long into the future now that there will be far more people applying for them. This will be quite an expensive part of the proposal. FC already manages these sites very efficiently, probably at a lower cost than would be the case if charities did it with the aid of grants. More community and charity owned woods with local people more involved in their care – this could be a good thing. Maybe this is the only part of the proposal that is at all innovative and worthy of further consideration. But it will cost money.

More serious, however, are some of the other woods. We in the Wildlife Trusts may still consider some commercial and multi-purpose woods as very important ecologically, and could be made more so with sensitive management.

This might include sites like Friston Forest
http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/living_landscapes/page00008.htm
near Eastbourne
and Tilgate Forest
http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/community/page00001.htm
near Crawley
where the Sussex Wildlife Trust is already active.

Government seems to have the intention of offering these to charities first, but we’d have to buy at “open market values” (i.e. a lot of money). There is an ethical question here for charities. Should we be giving money to government in order to purchase public woods in order to keep them as public woods? Indeed I wonder whether the Charity Commission would consider that a good use of charitable funds. Assuming we did purchase any then once again these would have to be managed utilising FC management grants. Even considering the income government could get by selling to charities (or selling long leases to commercial companies) it is unlikely that government would make much (if any) money from the process.

The “background” section in the consultation makes interesting reading. It reads as a list of major achievements delivered by the FC. I agree with this (and much more could be said). FC is an efficient and effective body delivering much public benefit. So I am still left with the question “why?”

Forestry Commission sell-off

2011-01-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

A consultation starts today about a proposal for the government to sell some or all of the land looked after by the Forestry Commission – the Public Forest Estate.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/forests/20110127-forestry-consult-doc.pdf

Governments (of whatever political colour) tend to do this from time to time – the last consultation along these lines was only just over a year ago. In fact government has slowly been nibbling away at the estate for years. Every now and then it tries to work out why we have a public forest estate, but even when it satisfactorily answers the question it can’t resist the urge to sell-off some of the family silver to fill a short-term financial hole.

To some extent this is quite reasonable. We have had changing needs from forestry over the last few decades. So it might make sense to look at the resource again to see if it is satisfying its purpose. This may result in selling, or buying, some sites to make sure it is still delivering public benefit.

Unfortunately this sort of logical thinking is rare and it is not happening now.

There is no strategy to this particular sell-off, in my mind this is its biggest flaw. Government is writing a Natural Environment White Paper and early signs are that this could be quite good. The logical thing would be to publish the white paper and then see how the public forest estate is delivering its objectives. Government might then have some rationale for deciding what to do with our public forest estate. Instead, however, we are given the answer – to sell the estate – without really knowing what the question was!

Obviously, the reason given in the current climate is money. No need to mess about with strategy – times are hard and the country needs cash. The proposal will probably involve selling off about 15% of the estate in the next few years, maybe more (or all of it) later. Estimates I have seen indicate that this will make about £100 million. Not much for a valued natural asset. However, even this sum is unlikely. The first thing a new owner will do is look to see what grants they can get for their new acquisition – for replanting, management and capital items. This is perfectly reasonable – if the Sussex Wildlife Trust acquired a site this is what we would do. In practice these grants can often add up to more than the cost of buying the wood. So, government would make money from the sale but then give it all away again in the form of grants. No gain to the treasury there!

However, how much threat would these sold-off woods actually be under?

Woodland is one of our most protected habitats, there is a lot of regulation to prevent damage, and loss of ancient woodland is rare these days. Also those grants are often paid to private landowners to deliver just the sort of wildlife gain that we would want - and some private landowners look after their woods better than the FC. Also, government has indicated that if there is a hole in the layers of protection then they will do more to enhance protection. Nevertheless, I remain concerned. FC often lead the way in the way it does conservation management. It has become a very effective organisation in trialing approaches to deliver good results. Some major aspects of conservation management might never have got going if it was not for the initiative showed by FC. This trial of policy and practice is unlikely to be as effective if the estate is disposed of.

Access for the public might also be a problem. Most of the public forest estate is designated as open access land so access rights should not alter. However, in practice a landowner can do quite a lot to discourage access, whereas FC very effectively encouraged it.

It is not a matter of privately owned woodlands being worse that the publically owned estate. In Sussex we have some fantastic woods owned and managed by estates and private landowners. But public and private should be complementary. For example, FC has been able to support the timber industry by using their “selling power” to help support the market. Trees take a long time to grow; a landowner needs a decent amount of certainty about future markets.

On balance my view is that FC has turned into an efficient and effective body that is doing a great deal to look after the nation’s forest. This proposal comes at the wrong time. Government should work out what it wants from its public estate first and then see whether it should be selling (or buying) land in order to support its objectives. Do the Natural Enviornment White Paper first.

The National Ecosystem Assessment

2011-01-21T08:30:00.000-08:00

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.

It’s a bit cold this winter – has climate change ended?

2011-01-05T09:06:00.000-08:00

The appearance of a bit of snow over the Christmas break has brought out the usual questions about whether climate change is actually happening or not. Well, with unusually cold weather, as much with unusually warm weather, a few local and short term events do not alter the clear and increasingly firm evidence of global warming. You can’t draw conclusions, in any direction, from one or two events.

Indeed the Met Office holds this view regarding our recent couple of years of cold winters. This is just normal variation and is nothing to do with global warming. I am sure this is true, but I think it is quite possible to construct an argument linking this to global climate change. Furthermore this is not to suggest that climate change is not happening but on the contrary may actually be one of its effects.

I stress that this is almost certainly untrue and I will say why later but the argument could go as follows:

In 2007 and again in 2010 the arctic lost huge amounts of ice to the sea. You can look at the evidence for this at the brochure on the Met Office web site at:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change/policy-relevant/evidence
This ice loss did not fully recover in subsequent years after 2007. This would mean that large amounts of fresh water would have flowed into the arctic sea so reducing the salinity of the sea at that point. This in turn has the effect of weakening the Gulf Stream, and as we all know, it is the Gulf Stream that brings warm weather up to our islands.

So, global warming has melted ice which could now be weakening the Gulf Stream reducing the tendency for warm weather systems to come in from the south-west and allowing cold polar air to penetrate from the north.

In addition, we also know that the poles are warming up faster than average. The average global temperature increase in the last century has been about 0.8 degrees but at the poles it has been nearer 4 degrees. Furthermore we also know that unusually warm air in the stratosphere over the North Pole in 2009/10 had a knock-on effect of reversing the normal direction of wind over the UK – changing it from warm western winds to cold eastern winds.

So again the polar weather system has become more active and as a result could be pushing cold polar air further south.

It’s interesting to look at the weather maps sometimes and try to guess where the “jet stream” (a narrow band of high speed air marking the boundary between polar weather systems and our temperate weather systems) sits. My perception is that it often sits further south than it did in the past. Even in summer it seems that a run of several weeks of good weather suddenly collapses sometime in July as the jet stream, which should sit over Scotland, suddenly shifts south to run over the Bay of Biscay, and we get nothing but rain! Again is this all a possible effect of more active polar air pushing further south?

At the end of all this, however, it is probably far more likely that, as the Met Office suggests, this is just part of natural variation. All these effects do just happen and are not exceptional or part of a trend. For instance melting ice switching off the Gulf Stream has happened in the past, about 10,000 years ago, but it took truly huge amounts of ice when most of North America was covered in an ice sheet which all suddenly fell into the sea at once. And our ice loss, huge though it is, is nothing like on the same scale.

I’ll be interested if these effects keep happening though!

Record response to the Natural Environment White Paper

2010-12-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-15T04:47:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

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:

Does the network support the full range of biodiversity?
Is the network of adequate size?
Do the network sites receive long-term protection and appropriate management?
Are there sufficient ecological connections to enable species movement?
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

2010-09-07T03:24:00.000-07:00

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:

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.

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.

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

2010-09-02T03:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-27T04:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

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.

A Natural Environment White Paper

2010-08-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

Could this be a major turning point for the environment and its wildlife?

For a few years now the Wildlife Trusts have been lobbying the main parties to develop a major new driver for the natural environment. On Monday 26th July Caroline Spelman announced the start of a consultation period for a new “Natural Environment White paper”. Could this be the Living Landscape White Paper that we were proposing? See the discussion document “An invitation to shape the nature of England”.

http://ww2.defra.gov.uk/our-responsibilities/nat-environment/

Current approaches to the natural world focus on protecting what we have – think of nature reserves or Sites of Special Scientific Interest. The basic method is to put a line around an important area and look after it. We should not be derogatory about this - it is the vital first step. However this is less than the basic minimum, it could not work by itself as there are inevitable continual losses through compromise and “balance”. So, over the years we have seen strengthening protection for our natural world but (with a few significant exceptions) we continue to see the loss of species and the degradation of habitats.

We also see that, whilst people do cherish the natural world, it is still totally under-valued in political and financial terms. We know the financial cost of nature conservation but we don’t know the financial benefit. So whenever there are cuts, the axe falls heaviest on “nice to haves” like the natural world.

A new approach is needed – one that not only protects but which fully recognises the value of nature and which restores, expands and connects our natural environment to make it a healthier place that enhances the wildlife we cherish and provides the services we rely on.

Before the election the Wildlife Trusts lobbied all the major political parties to get commitment for a major re-think over the natural environment. We were delighted that they all seemed open to the idea, but would anything actually happen when a new government was formed?

Well this “Natural Environment White paper” could be the product we are after. There is now a 12 week consultation period, in which people will be asked for their views. And after that people will be organising workshops to bring ideas together.

The introduction to the consultation document makes interesting reading. It reflects much of the “Living Landscape” thinking that the Wildlife Trusts have been promoting for several years, now picked up by several other environmental NGOs as well. Maybe this reflects some success from the political lobbying the Trusts have done around the country. Perhaps the time we took in Sussex to talk to our own MPs, some of whom had major shadow positions before the election, was time well spent.

The Trust will be writing to all of our members in the next few weeks with more information and to ask you to become involved in the consultation. This is a major opportunity – indeed if you do only one thing for wildlife in this decade then I would suggest that engaging in this consultation this should be that one thing one thing!

The Value of Nature and the Nature of Value

2010-07-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

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."

Wishful thinkers lose again.

2010-07-12T08:37:00.000-07:00

After a third enquiry the scientists at the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia have been exonerated again. (You remember – that great outcry caused by some leaked emails that had the media wondering if scientists were just making all this climate change nonsense up). And with this another straw that the climate change deniers have been grasping at has also been taken away.

Even if any fault could ever have been found, this ridiculous hounding of a very small number of legitimate scientists does nothing to counter over 200 years of climate change science.

Around the world there are thousands of scientists working on climate change and the overwhelming vast majority say not only that climate change is happening but that it is humans that are causing it. The wishful thinkers, hoping that this can all be made to disappear, are always looking for any scam to try to deflect reality.

There is a clear and obvious strategy in place by climate change deniers. Make climate change look complicated, confusing, “just a theory”, invent controversy, imply disagreement amongst experts and deflect with all sorts of unsubstantiated claims. It was exactly the same when pro-smoking lobbies tried to undermine the link between smoking and ill-health.

This time, or course, the deniers have a lot on their side. Giving up smoking is easy by comparison. Accepting climate change means that we may have to change our lives – and few people want to hear that. Nevertheless, climate change is happening and trying to find imaginary cop-outs simply delays necessary action.

Perhaps a particularly bad aspect of climate change denial is the anti-intelligence, anti-education culture it relies on. As a result, scientist who have spent a career studying climate change (or anything else for that matter) have become “experts” or worse “government scientists”, so are thought of as esoteric, unreliable and out of touch. I have seen blogs where the view of a self-appointed “man on the street” thinks himself far more respectable than any number of climate change professors. Maybe we should use the same principle in other sectors? Medical doctors for example, have spent decades perfecting their skills so obviously must be way out of touch with reality! Next time we need an operation maybe we should consult some man in the pub instead.

In spite of the deliberate strategies to confuse there are some basic facts from which it is impossible to escape.

200 years of climate science amassing vast amounts of evidence points in the same direction – climate change is happening and we are causing it.

Carbon dioxide is known to create a greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide is increasing and the greenhouse effect is getting stronger.

The measured effects of climate change cannot be explained by natural processes alone. It can only be explained when human-emitted greenhouse gasses are included.

Every year our society emits carbon dioxide that it took nature 3 million years to lock-up! Any logic should tell you that 3 million times too much of anything is unlikely to be good!

At the same time human-caused damage to the world’s ecosystems has never been greater, reducing the ability of nature to respond to any imbalance.

You might claim, against all the evidence, that there is some unknown natural process that is going to save the day. Some unknown negative feed-back loop will appear and soak up the surplus carbon dioxide, or counter the effect of increasing temperature. It would have to be an unknown phenomenon because all the known ones are already incorporated into climate change models. This strikes me as wishful thinking at a neo-religious level! We would not take this approach in the economic arena (just keep spending the money, our bank accounts will magically top themselves up at some stage!) so why does anyone give it any credibility when deniers wish to magic climate change away using the same logic?

Let us be clear. Human-induced climate change is a reasonable hypothesis supported by the vast majority of the evidence and the experts in the field. I have only ever met one or two climate change deniers that I would give any credibility to at all; by and large climate change denial is just an emotional response.

At last, some news in a newspaper!

2010-05-25T09:20:00.000-07:00

Well maybe I’m being unfair, but I don’t tend to buy national newspapers as the news is always the same – and usually badly reported. But at last, on Saturday 22nd May the Guardian ran an article on things that actually matter. And it was given a decent level of priority – front page news.

This was a full article making the economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/21/un-biodiversity-economic-report

To some of us it may be sad that we have to make an economic case to conserve the natural world. Surely the natural world should lie above the petty economic squabbles that seem to dominate the world. But if that is what it takes to make the bean-counters take notice then maybe that’s what we should do.

The gist of the article is that, while we always seem to know the cost of looking after the natural world, we seldom calculate the benefit. Costs are easy and obvious – benefits are hidden but vital. Not surprisingly, if you do some calculations then the economic benefits from the natural world are 10 to 100 times greater than the cost of looking after it. A while ago I heard someone refer to calculations like this as a “poor approximation of infinity” – and I tend to agree, but even so this approach can be helpful. At least it should make the politicians and policy-makers sit up and take notice.

This is not a new subject. The idea of ecosystem services has been around for a long time. For those of you who want to find out more the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is where some of the recent impetus sprang from, so here is the link:

http://www.maweb.org/en/index.aspx

The work that the Guardian referred to is a major international initiative called “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” (TEEB) – and this has some fascinating stuff:

http://www.teebweb.org/

It also has to be said that some good work is being done in Britain – see the UK National Ecosystem Assessment at:

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

If all this work is taken seriously then, fairly soon, there should be a shift in how economic valuing works. Nature will be viewed as the huge asset it really is and will be taken properly into account in all decisions. If it is not taken seriously then the same shift will be painfully forced upon us, in the longer term, as we end up paying for services that were once provided by nature for free.

Just to make sure I do not get too optimistic though – in the same issue of the Guardian there was a shorter report on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It was reported in the same old way – an oil spill was in the process of damaging some wildlife-rich piece of coastline. Dull-headed people could still read this and conclude “a shame, yes, but we need oil and maybe the loss of some pretty wildlife is unimportant by comparison”. If on the other hand it was presented in terms of the huge and long-term economic loss due to damaged ecosystems as a result of the oil then maybe the equation might look rather different.

The Coalition Government should now have a higher ambition for nature

2010-05-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

As the new coalition government publishes its agreements, The Wildlife Trusts around the country are calling on it to raise its game in policies on the natural environment and commit to a White Paper on Nature.

Not only is nature conservation a fundamental “good” that any government should be aiming to enhance but there has been a growing recognition that our natural environment provides vital life-supporting services as well as enriching our sole. We need to take a long hard look at the way we make decisions about our land and ensure that the natural environment is restored. The Wildlife Trusts including us at the Sussex Wildlife Trust have therefore been calling on an incoming government to produce a new White Paper to fundamentally shift the ground in terms of the ecological restoration of our environment. Our wildlife is not just something we should “try not to damage too much”, it should be something that we positively aim to restore. A White Paper would identify the policy changes needed to restore our natural environment and ecosystems”.

The Wildlife Trusts, including the Sussex Wildlife Trust, have been working with the main political parties nationally to encourage them to be more ambitious with our environment. Before the election, The Wildlife Trusts wrote to the Leaders of the three main parties urging them to commit to introducing a White Paper on Nature and also to ensuring the designation of an ecologically coherent network of Marine Protected Areas by 2012. These letters and the replies from the Party Leaders can read at
http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/index.php?section=generalelection2010

The Sussex Wildlife Trust also asked the Prospective Parliamentary candidates about their commitment to the natural world and their responses can be read on our web site.
http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/general_election/index.htm

We have had some measure of success in that all three main parties recognized this in their manifestos. All have promised to do more for the environment including, in the case of the now ruling party, a promise to develop a White Paper. In a letter to the national office of The Wildlife Trusts during the election campaign, our new Prime Minister, David Cameron, recognized the importance of conserving our natural world for future generations. He said it was important to ‘make a clear pledge that a Conservative Government would produce a White Paper on protecting the natural environment, including a focus on restoring habitat.’

Furthermore commitments have now also been made in the recent coalition agreement to develop measures to promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and restore biodiversity.

So - the commitment is there, the promises have been made and there is plenty of help available from non-government organizations like The Wildlife Trusts. OK – it is early days but hopefully we can expect some delivery soon!

What your Prospective Parliamentary Candidates say

2010-05-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago the Sussex Wildlife Trust sent a questionnaire out to each of the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates in Sussex. We asked some basic questions about where their parties stood on a few key questions regarding wildlife and our environment.

It is slightly disappointing that relatively few responded. This is a busy time for all candidates so perhaps we should not be too uncharitable, we have had contacts with MPs of all persuasions over the years and have generally been given a good hearing. But as a key wildlife charity for Sussex I would have thought that they could have at least replied with a link to their own manifesto statements on the subject -I suspect that if we were a health charity asking about the NHS or a Chamber of Commerce asking about plans for the economy then we might have got a stronger response. I hope (and trust) that this rather weak response is not a measure of the various candidates commitments to the environment.

Nevertheless, we do have a range of responses from politicians from various backgrounds and I would encourage you to take a look to see where they stand.

http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/general_election/page00001.htm

As a charity the Sussex Wildlife Trust will not be making comments on the relative merits of the responses; we will leave that to you.

Blue Bliss!

2010-04-22T01:06:00.000-07:00

“Contrails”, “condensation trails”, “vapour trails”, “the fluffy white lines that follow jet planes around” – whatever you call them, we’ve had around a week without them. Clear blue skies, and for those living anywhere near Gatwick, a week of tranquillity that normal countryside residents enjoy all the time.

Now we’re back to skies criss-crossed with contrails, the sound of birdsong once again drowned out and Sussex once again relegated to the position of a transport hub.

It’s good to live life with quandaries, and flying is one of them. I love flying – if I had my life again I’d probably want to be a pilot. And we do make use of planes to enrich our lives by experiencing places we’d otherwise not be able to get to. What is more, planes are far quieter and more fuel efficient than in the past. But there are just so many of them. Part of me was celebrating the unexpected quiet of skies without planes; the other half of me was worrying about a rare trip to Europe I have planned next week to learn about ecological networks in Germany. A classic quandary – a conservationist doing environmental damage in order to learn more about conservation!

These choices are unpalatable. We live in a global society so have friends and work/personal relations all over the place. We also rely on resources and communications at a global level. Yet the act of living and benefiting from such a society is destroying the things we like, and is ultimately damaging to our very existence. Climate change deniers get over this by pretending it is not happening; extreme environmentalists get over this by opting out. The rest of us sit in the middle feeling guilty. I even heard a poet on Radio 4 put in verse how selfish she felt for enjoying the quiet!

So – I have worries and concerns about the features of modern life and yet by living in modern society I contribute to these concerns, whilst also gaining from their benefits. We are all hypocrites today.

We’ve heard a great deal about the terrible consequences to the UK from the lack of flying in terms of damage to the economy, but very little about the benefits to the environment. We’ve heard even less about whether we should be flying as much as we do at all.

Airports can be hugely damaging to their local environment, with much habitat loss directly caused and also caused by associated infrastructure. Air travel is also the fastest growing contributor to greenhouse gases. Furthermore, the gases produced by flying have a greater effect than those produced at ground level. If we are serious about reducing greenhouse gases, but also want the planned growth in air travel, then in a few decades the only industry left in Britain will be air travel – Britain’s emission allocation will be totally taken up by flight so no other industry will be allowed to produce any emissions at all. If economists saw the choice for the economy as flying or every other industry then we may get a different perspective on what air travel actually does to the economy.

Cheap air travel might be seen as a temporary window on the world. It has only started very recently in human history and it is unlikely to last very long – at least for the majority of us. So how can we make best use of the short-term bonus of cheap air travel?

Pester your Prospective Parliamentary Candidates!

2010-04-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

As we rush towards another general election we find that, as usual, the huge interest in wildlife and the environment is once again marginalised as the media focuses on more traditional election topics. But the high level of support for organisations like the Sussex Wildlife Trust (there are far more members of conservation organisations than there are members of political parties!) shows that our natural heritage is important to people as well.

Despite huge conservation effort and great successes, like the designation of the South Downs National Park, our wildlife is still under threat and in decline. The next government faces real challenges to reverse this trend. We have therefore contacted all the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates to ask them how their parties will tackle the threats to our natural world and how they plan to protect and enhance the wildlife and landscapes of Sussex.

We will be putting their responses on our web site, as we get them, after 19th April. They should make interesting reading and perhaps give an insight into a potential new government so please take a look on:

http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/general_election/index.htm

In addition we would like our supporters to speak up for wildlife by asking Prospective Parliamentary Candidates questions about how they plan to safeguard our natural heritage. We suggest you ask the following (all members will have received a suggested list of questions in the last mail-out):

Now that 30% of Sussex is within the South Downs National Park, how will you ensure that the rest of Sussex is protected against threats such as development pressure?
Disposing of our rubbish in landfill is damaging our natural environment. How will you ensure the sustainable management of waste so that we can become a zero waste society?
Climate change poses a serious threat to wildlife. What measures will you take to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change?
How will you ensure the species and fragile habitats of our marine environment are protected?
The UK has failed its international obligations to halt the decline in biodiversity by 2010. How will you ensure that we meet new targets to prevent further loss and damage to wildlife?

Stop The Adversane / North Heath Development

2010-01-28T01:45:00.000-08:00

4000 houses – a development the size of Billingshurst and Pulborough added together – are threatening to engulf the tiny hamlet of Adversane.

This area, at the moment, is quintessential rural Sussex – just look at the pictures in my October 2008 blog. It lies alongside the picturesque Arun valley, within sight of the New South Downs National Park, surrounded by ancient woodland and a matrix of species rich hedgerows and grazing land . Government policy itself says that we should be putting new development on “brown field” sights, not in the heart of the countryside.

The Adversane New Town proposal fails any test of reasonableness in so many areas – yet proposed it is.

STAND (Stop The Adversane/North Heath Development) is a small group of concerned local people who have formed to oppose this proposal. And yes I do have a vested interest in that I live in the area as well!

STAND, along with many individuals and organisations, has already written its objections. It is continuing its campaign by organising a petition in an effort to persuade Horsham District Council to remove this threat

Please Sign this Petition without Delay

STAND’s Petition, for ‘signature’ by those who object to the proposed New Community, is now available online at www.saveourcountryside.com (Please visit regularly). If you prefer, you can obtain hard copies of petition forms from Andrew Swaffield at Beverley, Gay Street Lane, Pulborough RH20 2HW. There will also be a paper Petitions posted to people who live in the area.

The purpose of the Petition is to show the extent of continuing opposition to the proposal by those who live or work locally or who may be affected by the development. Please sign and ask others to do so.

The Petition asks for first and last names, postcode and email address (these are mandatory for the online version). We also ask you to volunteer your home address, telephone number; these are optional but will help show that the Petition is genuine and that the results have not been fabricated. The details may be used specifically to keep those interested in STAND’s objectives informed of news and progress unless we are told that you do not want them to be used for that purpose.

STAND is anxious that its Petition has the highest credibility and, thus, by signing it you will be confirming that you have not signed another identical Petition arranged by STAND, e.g. a paper one. This confirmation will not stop anyone from sending a separate Submission to Horsham District Council with reasoned and detailed objections.

This development is only one of many being proposed around Sussex. It is not a matter of objecting to one and trying to push the development somewhere else. The whole concept of continual growth in housing numbers needs to be questioned along with the many dubious proposals for their location.

No Laybrook Landfill

2010-01-22T08:17:00.000-08:00

Last night I was delighted to go along to a local group meeting, excellently chaired by Shipley Parish Council, to hear objections to a large landfill site being proposed between Thakeham, Coolham and Ashington. Evening meetings may not be everyone’s cup of tea but it is always an education and I am always impressed with the quality of the case that local people can put together when they are worried about something.

And the proposed landfill at Laybrook is a major worry. Over 4 million tons of rubbish over 21 years, many thousands of lorry movements per year, destroyed tranquillity, impact on local wildlife including the threat of damage to one of the most innovative wildlife projects in the country. http://www.knepp.co.uk/

The developers, however, have “Thakeham Village Action” to contend with and the case being put together is not just a NIMBY reaction, but an excellent articulation of how we should not even be thinking about landfill in the 21st century. We are running out of holes in the ground anyway and this should stimulate us to find much more appropriate solutions to our waste problems. There are many alternative approaches out there and practically every other European country is doing far better than us. Why is it that German people only send 3kg of waste per person to landfill, whereas we send 320Kg?

Throwing things away is an unacceptable side of our consumer society – there is no “away” left and every time we put something in the rubbish bin we should think where it will go. We can’t complain about rubbish dumps at the end of our gardens if we fill up a wheelie bin every week. The only long-term solution is a zero-waste society – create less waste, recycle much more, and even the waste that remains should be a resource for something else.

We now have just a week to object to this proposal, and I would recommend that everyone who chances upon this posting should put in an objection. The details are on the “no Laybrook landfill” web site. http://www.nolaybrooklandfill.co.uk/

Also, of course, these holes in the ground are not devoid of wildlife. One of my previous blog postings includes some excellent information from Pip Edgecombe showing just how valuable this particular area is. These sites are assets and we should be able to come up with far better ideas of what to do with them than fill them with rubbish. The company at the Laybrook site has been making profit out of brick making from clay won from that site for a very long time. And good luck to them. But rather than trying to make yet more money by turning it into a waste dump, surely the more responsible thing to do would be to turn it over to the local community, maybe developing it as a local nature reserve so it can add to the value of the Knepp Wildland project next door rather than threaten it.

A winter wonderland

2010-01-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

Snowy weather, like we’ve had over the last couple of weeks, always makes us wonder about how wildlife copes in such conditions. Between now and spring is generally the time of year when most mortality happens. Food, for most wildlife, is scarce at the very time when they need it most so, unfortunately, this is the time when the weakest tend to die.

Even in a truly wild situation, when all the predators were still roaming the primeval wildwood, it is likely that it was winter, rather than large carnivores, that had most effect on the populations of herbivores like deer and small mammals.

At present we have more deer in the countryside than at any time in history, and their grazing is often damaging woodland. If their numbers are knocked back by a harsh winter then plants and regenerating shrubs will stand more of a chance in spring.

But, walking around, you may be able to see another side to winter. If you walk through the woods you see trees bent over because of the weight of the snow, often there are major branches broken off and lying on the ground. If you look at woods in parts of Europe, where snow is more common, even in summer you will often find trees and shrubs inexplicably bent over in an arch-shape. This is cause by the weight of snow in winter. You can start to see some examples of this in our woods following the snow. Evergreens like holly seem to be effected most and I have seen several large well-shaped holly trees broken to pieces because of all the snow that had built up on them.

To start with this looks like more death and destruction. But this is part of the ecology of the area – an intimate part of the way the environment works not just some disaster that it has to recover from.

A winter like this changes the “structure” of habitats like woodland and forest. It re-shapes them, damaging some trees but leaving others, opening up the canopy in places. This is creating diversity. A winter like this could well help make our woods more open and sunny when the spring does eventually get here, allowing plants that were becoming overshadowed to thrive.

I can make one guess at what might happen as a result of winter 2010. Woods in England have gradually become more overshadowed over the last few decades. This may partly be because there is less management - less cutting to provide firewood and so on. But it could also be part of an ecological change because of a lack of harsh winters. Holly has become more abundant in some woods and, as a dense evergreen, many other plants have been overshadowed and woods have become poorer. As conservationists, we have become a little worried that this apparently natural change seems to be having a negative effect on nature. Perhaps this is where harsh winters come in. Holly seems to have been most heavily effected by the snow so may now be at a disadvantage. Furthermore, animals like deer and rabbits have very little to eat at this time of year. It is likely that they will turn their attention to the bark of holly trees – not something they would do if there was something else to eat (have you tried tasting holly trees?!) but surprisingly nutritious. So, as well as being knocked back by physical damage from snow, holly bushes may now find themselves killed by ring-barking. Effectively, in the absence of harsh winters, holly may become too competitive and so reduce the richness of a wood. When a harsh winter hits then holly is knocked back, enriching the forest.

So, the direct effects of winter may be harsh and will indeed kill a lot of wildlife. But it may be that the structural diversity will improve and this could create the conditions suitable for a rich wildlife in the future.

New Marine Act to Save our Seas

2009-11-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

This week is an historic occasion for marine conservation. It will be remembered for years to come as the time when the landmark Marine and Coastal Access Act came in to force.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/marine/legislation/index.htm

For over a decade the Wildlife Trusts have been campaigning for holistic and coherent laws to better manage our activities at sea and properly protect our marine habitats and species, which have been declining for years as a result of our actions. Finally, the hard work has paid off and we have a Marine Act. http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/index.php?section=environment:marine

The seas around Sussex are home to a wealth of fantastic wildlife, however, we have put our seas under sustained pressure and our marine habitats and the wildlife that they support have suffered as a result.

At present less than 0.001% of the marine environment around Britain is fully protected from damaging activities. The Marine and Coastal Access Act allows Government to designate new Marine Conservation Zones, areas where activities and exploitation can be managed so as not to damage the environment. This network of protected zones will allow degraded habitats to recover and wildlife to once again thrive. New legislation, however, is only the beginning and we will continue to press for strengthened provisions for marine wildlife through the implementation process. The decisions made, and actions taken, over the next five years will determine the future of the UK’s seas. This is a unique opportunity and we must seize it.

If you would like to read about how our seas are now but a shadow of their former selves I suggest you read “The Unnatural History of the Sea” by professor Callum Roberts.

This is an incredible eye-opener. The history of our marine environment is one of long term damage from unsustainable activities and poor regulation. It is a classic “tragedy of the commons” situation. Nobody will restrict their use of the sea, even if it would protect dwindling fish stocks because others would always step in and exploit them instead. The statistics are daunting. There would probably be about 20 times as many fish in the North Sea, if it was not fished, and the over-fishing of the last century means that we are now landing less than 10% of the fish that were landed in 1900.

Callum Roberts’ view, supported by clear logic, is that we need to protect as much as 30% of the sea and reduce the intensity of use over much of the rest. Far from disadvantaging the fishing industry, this is probably the only action that will save it. Protected zones are massively productive, so areas around them have significantly increased fish stocks. For example one small protected area near Devon has a lobster population 8 times greater than outside, and fishers benefit from this as stocks spill out into surrounding areas.

My feeling is that the situation in Sussex is actually improving. Much of the remaining fishing industry is conducted on a more sustainable basis and the trick will now be to make sure that regulation boosts local fishing, perhaps protecting it from over-exploitation from further afield. There are even ideas that the whole of the Sussex fishery should be certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. If this was done then it would mean that anyone buying local fish could be confident that they weren’t damaging the marine environment by doing so. (If it is not done then perhaps people should question whether they should really buy endangered-fish-and-chips for supper).

Implemented well, the Marine Act will not be a case of conservation versus fishing; it will be a case of conservation ensuring the survival of fishing.

And there is more to the sea than fish for the dinner plate. Taken as a whole the sea is the fundamental regulator for the functioning of the whole planet. From the weather, to nutrient cycling and the provision of oxygen for us to breathe the sea is pretty important! World wide, the expansion of “dead zones” – zones where the ecosystem has essentially collapsed – should be a concern for all of us. Sorting out our approach to our own seas is vital. But we can’t just push the problem off to somewhere else.

Chris Packham at SWT’s 2009 AGM

2009-11-05T07:54:00.000-08:00

Over 200 people came along to our AGM on Saturday 31st October and were treated to an excellent presentation by Chris Packham.

It would have been great to get him along just to hear about his favourite wildlife observations, and maybe listen to some stories from the Autumnwatch programme. But what we got was an inspiring challenge – recognising what we have done so far but spurring us on to do more.

Before Chris’s talk I gave a rather disorganised ramble through SWT action over the last year – a discussion of the projects we are engaged in. This had a positive slant because, obviously, I am quite proud of what the Trust is doing. He said that while this is great – it is not enough. We have still not turned the tide and reversed the wildlife losses of the last decades. We are still not winning.

And he is right. To highlight the size of the challenge he read back some of the points made in our own pamphlet “Sussex Wildlife Today”. This was a short document we produced to report on how we felt wildlife had faired since we produced our “Vision for the Wildlife of Sussex” in 1996. http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/about/page00006.htm

So what were some of the key points he pulled out:

Lowland meadows still suffering a greater rate of loss than any other habitat.
Coastal habitat still being lost in spite of projects to create more.
Reactionary objection to environmental schemes where they are being promoted.
Targets for heathland presented in the Vision not achieved.

And so on.

He summarised with one of the key conclusions that we drew in “Sussex Wildlife Today” –

The scale is unbalanced; we have big threats but only small opportunities.

So we have to make best use of those small opportunities.

Having said this Chris was very positive about the approaches that Wildlife Trusts are taking all over the country, including here in Sussex. The Living Landscape approach http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/living_landscapes/page00002.htm was praised as an initiative looking to work at a larger scale to deliver nature conservation over whole landscapes. Nature reserves are important, but they must be part of the wider landscape and be of value to people. He liked some of our large scale approaches, like the West Weald Landscape Project, and also liked the way that projects like this aim to integrate benefits for wildlife with the benefits for people.

Whilst we in nature conservation may be fascinated by the re-appearance of a wood boring beetle thought extinct in England for 150 years, to most people this would be of little more than passing interest. Being inspired by nature, recognising its value, demanding it and being a part of it are much more important. If we achieve that then perhaps everyone will be fascinated by rare beetles.

When I ask people what they remember about his talk they often point to one particular example. I will probably summarise badly, however one of his key points concerned what to give children and grand children for Christmas this year. Instead of giving children some piece of plastic, consumer rubbish he said spend time with them, instead of spending money on them. Take them out into an area of green space and encourage them to experience the real world. Show them nature, get them to see it, hear it, smell it – and hopefully value it. Most of the people in the audience will probably have been turned on to nature by some direct experience in their past – not by seeing it on TV or over the internet or even by reading books. So we owe it to our children to give them that experience, rather than palm them off with just another “thing”.

Maybe this is not just a message for children though – perhaps we should all forget the shinny things and go out and enjoy nature instead!

How will a New Town improve this!!?

2009-10-12T12:32:00.001-07:00

This is the countryside between Adversane and North Heath - not far from Billingshurst. How will 4,000 houses improve this???!!

Adversane New Town

2009-10-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

We knew it would happen. If government tries to force large numbers of houses into an already crowded part of the country then conflicts were bound to happen. The South East Plan puts local councils in the invidious position of being forced to build over their own countryside.

This is what has happened in Horsham District and this is why we are now faced with mad schemes like the Adversane New Town.

A quiet, rural part of West Sussex, a small hamlet with just a few houses, will turn into an extended sub-urban settlement – 4,000 houses, as many as in Billingshurst and Pulborough combined. We will end up with ribbon development – continuous housing from north of Billingshurst to south of Pulborough – effectively doubling the population of the area to around 26,000 people.

But even bearing in mind the developer’s charter that is the South East Plan, is this inevitable?

The SE Plan dictates that the District must find locations for 13,000 houses yet all the proposals in Horsham’s Core Strategy add up to over 20,000.

Furthermore the SE Plan says that only 3,800 should be outside the Gatwick area (so why are there proposals for at least 4,000 in Adversane alone?).

Carry on reading the SE Plan and you find clear policies stating that at least 60% of any new development should be on previously developed land, otherwise known as brown field land. What is more, there are key policies about protecting the landscape, conserving and enhancing wildlife and building in such a way as to retain and enhance the character of an area. None of the plans in Horsham’s Core Strategy are for houses on brown field land and all the proposals will harm the character of the area.

Do the sums. Even if we accept the SE Plans demands (which I do not) we should be looking for locations for 3,800 homes in rural Horsham, of which 60% (2,280) should be on brown field land. This leaves only 1,520 to be placed on green field sites in rural Horsham. A large number certainly, but nothing like the 20,000 in the current Core Strategy.

Maybe it is disingenuous of the SE Plan. There may not be enough previously developed land in rural areas, like Horsham, to be able to keep all this housing away from green field land. Maybe Horsham District Council are not trying hard enough to find brown field sites, or maybe they are just not there to be found.

But government would never dream of reducing the housing allocation because it can’t be met on brown field sites.

Why is it that every time there is a conflict of policies it is always the environment that looses out?

The pattern is always the same:

You can’t put all the houses on brown field land so don’t reduce the number, just put them on green field land – forget environmental protection.

If there isn’t enough water then just find some more, no matter what the environmental damage.

The roads get congested, so just build them bigger and don’t listen to the complaints of the people who have had their lives ruined.

And so on

We are often told, in situations like this that “difficult choices may have to be made”. In practice, whenever people in authority say this, it means they want to be able to make the easy choice, not the difficult one.

In this case the easy choice will be to ignore everyone and over-develop the area come-what-may.

The difficult choice would be to plan within the ability of the area to absorb development. And if this means less development – then that is the difficult choice.

Concreting over the countryside

2009-09-24T08:54:00.001-07:00

A “strategic site option”. This is code for a New Town, and that is what is threatened between Billingshurst and Pulborough around what is now the small hamlet of Adversane.

The proposal is for between 4000 and 5000 houses on about 155 ha of quiet rural West Sussex. That will be a population of around 10 to 12,000 people – bigger than both Billingshurst and Pulborough added together, and about the same size as the much criticised Ford “Eco” Town south of Arundel.

A new town of this size would essentially join up Billingshurst and Pulborough, making an expanded settlement of over 8,000 houses. Add in the 1750 houses also proposed for Billingshurst and 280 for Pulborough and we are heading for a major urban settlement of around 10,000 houses (total), more than 25,000 people. I thought that amalgamation of settlements into a large sub-urban mass was something that we were trying to avoid these days!

Swept away will be ancient woodlands, species rich hedgerows and the foraging areas of one of Europe’s rarest bats. Tranquillity would disappear to be replaced by many thousand extra car movements along the A29 and surrounding roads. This major development would completely devastate the area, changing it from a rural location into an expanse of suburbia.

And how do we know about it - through one of the passages in the Core Strategy of the Horsham District Councils Local Development Framework. Hardly bed-time reading for normal human-beings, but it shows how astute you have to be to stand a chance of arguing against major urban expansion.

I have seen reports tucked away in some of the local papers and the magnitude of the threat is slowly dawning on people. The Local Parish Councils, to their credit, are doing what they can to raise awareness. But I am slightly amazed that our local media, normally so good at these matters, are not jumping up and down.

So who would live in this new town and where would they work? There is no demand for a large work force in the area and no proposal for major industrial development to support the huge population increase. The consultation document itself says that this development would not support a range of services - an admission that it will be a dormitory town for people working elsewhere, probably in London. As such this form of town could be placed anywhere around London, there is no overriding need for it to be in Adversane. There is nothing wrong with people working in London whilst living in and appreciating Sussex. But we are now being threatened by a waste tip for London’s waste down the road at Laybrook, and a sub-urban sprawl designed only to be a dormitory town for London. Isn’t this all getting a bit unbalanced?

This is so often the case. We get big, menacing plans for housing development, being told that we are forced into this because of the South East Plan. But there are other policies in the SE Plan, including policies for nature conservation, and all policies are supposed to be balanced against each other. We have the site allocations for housing, so where are the site allocations for nature development?

Perhaps some policies are more equal than others.

Have your say!

Get the documents and response forms at http://www.horshamdistrictldf.info/LDDS/local_dev_documents_4625.asp
and go along to the exhibitions at Billingshurst Village Hall on 10am on 26th September and at Adversane Village Hall on 3rd October.

Let’s not sleep-walk into a miniature Milton-Keynes.

This is not a barren quarry devoid of life!

2009-09-02T03:31:00.000-07:00

My last blog posting outlined my general concerns about our throw-away society, in particular highlighting concerns about the proposed Laybrook landfill site as an example of the damage that can be done. I do not know the site but I had an excellent comment back from Pip Edgcombe who has clearly done significant research in the area.

I think this is a comment well worth reading so rather than leaving people to click on the comments box, I though I'd just publish it word for word as a separate blog posting:

This hole in the ground, Laybrook brickworks, does have significant existing wildlife interest. Far from being a barren quarry devoid of life, the varied mosaic of different habitats in and around the brickworks and the fact that it remains relatively undisturbed for much of the time has resulted in a site which supports a diverse mix of invertebrate, bird and mammal species. Many of the UK Biodiversity Action Plan priority species and other high conservation species are represented.

23 bird species with high conservation status were recorded by Cory's consultants (ESL) but based on other records and local knowledge this is a very conservative figure, it could be as high as 45.

There is a considerable bat population at the site with 8 species (including barbastelles) being recorded by ESL at the site and another over the adjacent fishing ponds. Many of the foraging habitats and the hedges used as flight lines by the bats will be destroyed. Work being undertaken at Knepp indicate that ESLs records are incomplete.

Water voles are also present on the site. There are very few colonies anywhere in the Adur, and the existing populations are extremely fragmented and vulnerable to extinction. The proposed landfill, rather than affording protection that is required by law, will result in the total destruction of their habitat.

As far as invertebrates are concerned the site is incredibly rich which is why it can support so many other species. Of the 565 species recorded by ESL, 60 have formal conservation status. ESL themselves describe it as a ‘site with a wide diversity of invertebrate interest’. The reason there are so many insects is because of the wide variety of habitats. Most of these will be destroyed during the construction and running of the landfill site. Mitigation measures are proposed to replace the hedges and plant new trees. However the current habitats have developed over tens, probably hundreds of years. They cannot be replaced overnight. The result will be habitat simplification, with a concomitant simplification of biodiversity that again the more common, competitive, species at the expense of far rarer niche-specialists. In addition, there will be a considerable delay before any restoration is carried out and be functional even at a basic level.

Landfill gas, landfill gas flare emissions, leachate, polluted surface water, dust, litter, noise and vermin are known to impact flora and fauna. Planning permission for the landfill should be refused as it is not needed and not wanted but also on the basis that this is an area of great biodiversity value, the ecology reports submitted by Cory's consultants are not complete and that the full impact on the ecology of the brickworks and the surrounding area has not been assessed.

Very many thanks, Pip, its good to have an insight from someone who knows the area.

We can’t throw things away – because there is no “away” left!

2009-08-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Chucking things away on a huge scale is a painful symptom of our modern society.

When you think about it, this makes no logical sense. We take resources that have taken millions of years to build up, make something briefly of use to us and then chuck them away where they become pollutants, make mess and take up space.

This is clearly unsustainable (yes – that “sustainable” thing again – it’s not jargon, it just means you plainly can’t do this for ever!). Furthermore, this causes damage to wildlife in all sorts of ways. One result that is all too obvious to people living in parts of Sussex is the need for landfill sites. We are running out of holes in the ground where we can casually throw our cast-offs so what we are left with is getting more and more damaging.

One site that is causing well-deserved concern is a proposal to fill a clay pit at Lay Brook with waste. This is a site near Ashington, immediately adjacent to Knepp – one of the country’s leading conservation projects.

I have talked about the Knepp estate in this blog before. For more details go to the estate’s own web site at http://www.knepp.co.uk/.

Suffice it to say here that the Sussex Wildlife Trusts has long supported the project and we consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have one of the country’s best re-wilding projects on our doorstep. What is more, it is not just us that support it – friends of the project come from all over Britain (e.g. the Environment Agency and Natural England) and Europe. It has also received warm support from the Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment. See:

http://www.nickherbert.com/Nick_Herbert_visits_Knepp_Wildland_Project.aspx?ArticleID=3356&PageID=65&RefPageID=23

The presence of a landfill so close to its borders could have a major effect. The proposed pit is wet – i.e. it fills up with water. Filling this up with any old waste would be extremely damaging. Dumped waste here would rot, chemicals would leach out and surrounding rivers would be devastated. This pit would leach directly out into the river Adur as it runs through Knepp. That would be the end of any re-wilding attempts. This would clearly not be allowed so, generally, two solutions are proposed. First the pit would be “sealed”, so nothing could leach out. Second, only inert waste that would not rot would be allowed in.

The trouble is that I am not sure this really works in practice.

First a pit will never really be sealed permanently – polluted water will always get in and out somehow, getting into surrounding rivers. Preventing a pit from flooding into surrounding steams becomes even more difficult with the increase in severe rains storms that we are now getting.

Second, can we really trust people dumping waste to only dump the most inert material into a big wet hole? Would anyone really notice the odd rotting refuse sack, oil drum or paint pot (until it started leaching into the surrounding river)?

Furthermore, these holes in the ground often have significant existing wildlife interest, or have the potential to develop it. The largest sand marten colony in Sussex is in an old sand pit for example. Holes in the ground are not just wasted land waiting to be dumped in – they are assets that could have a very positive potential use.

The current issue - Laybrook landfill - will shortly be considered by the County Council. For further details, with advice on how to make representations on the proposal, then the web site http://www.nolaybrooklandfill.co.uk/ is perhaps a good starting point.

However, we shouldn’t only be fighting against landfill sites, instead we should be forming partnership to work together and make best use of these potential assets. In other words we should be pushing for what we do want in these places, not just having to fight against what we don't. For my part I’d like to see a restored, re-naturalised lake and wetland there.

But all of this comes down to our attitude to consumption and waste. If we can’t consume without wasting then we shouldn’t consume in the first place. It may be reassuring to blame the County Council or the landfill companies (and the Sussex Wildlife Trust will oppose damaging landfill along with everyone else), but really they are just dealing with a problem that we are giving them. Obviously we have to produce less waste, obviously we have to reuse and recycle more and maybe there will always be some residue left to dispose of (maybe in an incinerator outside somebody else’s house). But the only real answer is to move to a no-waste society. Idealistic? Well I would say not, indeed our current get it, use it, chuck it approach is a silly ideal, and one that is now failing.

Book Review: “Where the Wild Things Were” by William Stolzenburg

2009-08-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

I haven’t yet reviewed a book on my blog but this one was so good that I thought I would make a start. “Where the wild things were” looks pretty drab when you first pick it up but when you start reading it a fascinating story unfolds of how big fierce things rule the world (or should do).

We’ve all seen the nature programmes on TV. They are excellent and I am not one to criticise them. Good ones might tell you all about an animal – maybe giving you a year in its life. The very good programmes may tell you more about the habitat in which an animal lives. But there’s the rub – a habitat is generally portrayed as something an animal lives in. It is very rare for us to get a picture of how an animals shape the world they live in. This is a huge gap in the way nature conservation is put across to people - what we should be seeing is animals as integral parts of their habitat.

Animals often drive the ecology of an ecosystem rather than just live within it. For example large herbivores graze areas so, obviously they create grasslands, similarly beavers build dams, blocking rivers and so create wetlands. You can therefore see how animals impact on vegetation and so alter ecosystems. Large predators, however, are often just thought of as something that sits at the top of the food chain. We may think of them as a method of keeping the numbers of herbivores down, but surely a few lions or tigers wandering around cannot have much effect on what a forest looks like?

Stolzenburg, however, shows, in a clear, entertaining and readable way, how top predators are fundamental in shaping whole ecosystems, effectively driving the ecology of areas. Furthermore, he shows that many ecosystems around the world are in a tail-spin of degradation and collapse because they lack predators.

This is an excellent book. We may know that wolves are back in Yellowstone, USA, but nowhere else have I read such a clear explanation on how wolves have changed the behaviour of other species and in the process beneficially altered the vegetation. We may have seen cute pictures of sea otters off the Canadian coast but did you know that they eat large numbers of sea urchins and without otters sea urchin populations would explode leaving them to graze the marine kelp forests to destruction. So, centuries of hunting otter for fur actually resulted in the destruction of a major marine ecosystem.

He introduces us to concepts such as a “trophic cascade”, the idea that if you remove predators then the effects bounce around the ecosystem in unpredictable and destructive ways. For example when wolves were hunted to extinction in Yellowstone then, predictably, deer numbers exploded, vegetation became over-grazed and many plants and animals declined. Less predictably, without wolves, coyote populations increased which hunted Pronghorn Antelopes. When the wolves returned, the coyotes received a tough lesson in top-dog diplomacy! And Pronghorns increased. An interesting insight of how a predator can increase the population of a prey species. Also surprising was the effect on riverside vegetation – when the wolves came back the grazing animals avoided rivers as that is where they got ambushed. The result was less grazing alongside rivers and a huge flush of regenerating wetlands.

Examples pour out of this book developing a powerful argument to show the critical value of predators. From the effect of starfish on mussels to cougars on white-tailed deer, to coyotes on domestic cats, in each case the presence of a predator sends out ripples giving a richer, more diverse, more stable and better functioning ecosystem.

Discussions on what drives the ecology of ecosystems are always fascinating. The world is so diverse that most views are probably right somewhere – often the keystone species will be predators, often large grazers, sometimes ants, fungi, even midges! Stolzenburg makes an excellent case for predators.

Stolzenburg also does not shy away from “political” implications. The deepest resistance to the return of wolves in Yellowstone came from hunters who wanted the maximum number of docile deer that are easy to shoot. Killer whales are now eating otters and seals because we have killed off their main prey – the large whales. This is uncomfortable to both whaling commissions (unhappy that whaling could be damaging ecosystems) and conservationists (who consider over-fishing as the main cause of seal decline).

This book also boosts the case for re-introducing predators, or for carrying out management practices that mimic the effect of predators. Whole ecosystems are suffering, in Britain as anywhere, through lack of predators. We need them back for the health of our own environment, and if we do not get them back we need to find ways of controlling the things that top predators would have controlled.

The Big Biodiversity Butterfly Count

2009-06-30T06:55:00.000-07:00

The Big Biodiversity Butterfly Count is a fantastic event that takes place between Saturday 4 July and Sunday 12 July. It aims to do what the name implies – to encourage people to engage in the identification and counting of butterflies in Brighton and Hove. To take part, you can pick up a butterfly identification guide and recording form at any library in Brighton & Hove or follow the link on the Big Biodiversity Butterfly Count web site.

http://www.sussex-butterflies.org.uk/BBBC/

Butterflies are easy to identify and are sensitive to changes in their habitat. They are, in most of their characteristics, typical insects, and the impact of environmental changes on butterflies is probably similar to the effects on many other insects. So by counting butterfly numbers we have a measure by which we can easily monitor the rest of biodiversity.

Much of this information you can pick up from the BBBC web site, but I also asked Dr Dan Danahar, who is leading this project, for some further information for me to post on my blog. I expected something about butterflies and just how nice they are. What I received was an excellent articulation of nature conservation philosophy! So rather than plagiarise it and claim the credit, I thought I’d quote it directly – so here it is…..

If you were born during the 1950's you belong to the first generation of human beings to see the world population double during your own lifespan, which is of course part of the exponential growth pattern currently happening to the human population.

Of course if you were born in the fifties, many of you will be coming up for retirement soon and will have had a pretty good life, if you lived in the west. As it currently stands 6.5 Billion people live on the planet and it is estimated that global human population will plateau at between 8 & 10 Billion by 2050. This is rather worrying when you consider that most young people know no other life than one of consumption, utilising natural resources at an ever increasing rate.

Since around 68% of the worlds terrestrial ecosystems have already been damaged by human activity, and around 75% of our marine fisheries are unsustainably harvested, only a small proportion of the earths natural ecosystems remain intact. As we destroy more and more of the worlds natural ecosystems so we also degrade the invisible environmental services that they supply, free of charge.

Ultimately this can lead to one of two possible scenarios. Either keystone species will become extinct and the planet will suffer ecosystem collapse and the sixth mass extinction or the earths biodiversity will become increasingly impoverished, so that when you travel from one part of the planet to another you will only ever see the same species of animal and plant, the weeds that can cope with what humans do to their environment.

So, one of the reasons why we are running the BBBC is to encourage people to become interested in biodiversity, wildlife, to make them bio-literate because we believe that we all need to be as aware of our local biodiversity as stock brokers are aware of the stocks and shares on the stock exchange.

We hope that by looking people will become involved in the fascinatingly complex life histories of our local natural history. We hope that people will learn to value biodiversity.

Let me put it another way:

TRY NOT TO READ THESE WORDS. Of course this is a paradox - as soon as you have read them its too late, because you had to read the instruction to be able to realise you weren't meant to read them. If you can read it is impossible to look at any words with out comprehending their meaning.

So what if it was in some other language that you can't read, like Chinese? Then the information would be concealed until you became familiar with Chinese. Reading the natural world is pretty much the same thing, we have become so unattached to our local environment that we no longer have any real sense of how to read it.

Becoming familiar with local biodiversity is rather like learning to read. So, if you are new at this, the BBBC is like your first reading lesson. Your ABC to Biodiversity if you like. If you can't, read how can you be adequately informed about what's happening in your world?

Of course it’s also true that butterflies are great indicators of environmental change because they are easy to identify, there are currently only 45 species in the Sussex. They are sensitive creatures to, dependent on subtle changes in microclimate, habitat structure, etc., as are most insects.

So by identifying and recording butterflies we hope to make two gains:

1) increased knowledge about year on year changes in our local environment and

2) an increasingly bio-literate populace, a community that values the natural world more that it currently does."

Well done Dan!! Butterflies are nice to look at and a world with them is far better than a world without them. But we all need reminding now and then about the deeper need for nature conservation and the need to re-engage with the natural world.

Climate Change - a major report indicates what we can expect in the UK

2009-06-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

Climate change is on the agenda again today (indeed it is such an important issue that is should never be off the agenda) as Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, launched the UK Climate Projections (UKCP09). These give detail to how we might expect the climate of the UK to change in coming decades. for an introduction to these projections go to http://ukcp09.defra.gov.uk/

No-one should be surprised!
Predictably, the projections are not good news, but they should be no surprise to anyone. A “greenhouse effect” was first proposed about 200 years ago and carbon dioxide was identified as the main greenhouse gas around 100 years ago. By the 1970’s it was very clear that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (by burning coal, oil etc), while at the same time damaging the earth’s ability to react to these changes (i.e. by damaging biodiversity) was bound to change the balance of this greenhouse effect - hence global warming. After 30 or 40 years of procrastination at least the subject of global warming is mainstream even if our reaction to it is sluggish.

Inevitable change – adaptation is as important as reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
The government claims that it will pursue a concerted action programme to address climate change. It remains to be seen whether this will be the case, but they have set out a broad 5-point plan and I am glad to see that “preparing for the future” (i.e. adaptation) is included. Temperatures are very likely to increase by around 2 degrees before 2050 even if we react responsibly now (which we probably wont!), and continue to grow even further after that point. I am not convinced, however, that predictability can be that precise. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if our current relatively amicable climate changed into something that was much more unpredictable, with perhaps wide swings between hot and cold, wet and dry.

A healthy environment must form the basis of any future strategy for climate change.
Whatever happens, our environment must be able to adapt. Consequently we need a long-term vision for land-use. We need a healthier environment where the best sites for nature are conserved, enhanced, expanded and joined up to make the natural environment more robust, allowing people and wildlife to adapt to these changes. For a better idea of what we mean by this see our climate change strategy at:
http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/page00029.htm
and see our Living Landscape documents at: http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/living_landscapes/page00002.htm

Furthermore, restoring the natural environment will enhance our essential ecological services, such as carbon storage in peatlands, purification of water through reed beds and flood management in wetlands.

A brave new approach is needed.
However, the current approach of fiddling around the edges of existing policies has failed us for too long. Without a long-term vision for the future of our land with joined up decisions on agriculture, planning, water management and more, the future looks very bleak.

Furthermore, the impacts of climate change on wildlife are not restricted to land. Marine wildlife also needs the flexibility to adapt to climate change. More than 50% of the carbon dioxide we produce is absorbed by the sea which is why we must act now to ensure we manage our marine environment sustainably.

A brave new approach with a large-scale vision is what we are seeking from government.
The Government must now show political will by investing in large-scale habitat restoration and creation. It is vital for the natural environment to be placed at the heart of adaptation programmes.

Natural Solutions to Flood Management

2009-04-28T09:13:00.000-07:00

It is interesting how the tide is turning (no pun intended!) regarding flooding in this country. Not long ago the only answer seemed to be to just keep pouring the concrete to build up hard defences along rivers and coasts. But - like trying to squeeze yourself into clothes that are far too small – all the excess has to bulge out somewhere. Hard flood defences in one place just mean that the spate in a river builds up and it simply spills out, often catastrophically, at the next weak point.

The Wildlife Trusts’ report - Nature’s Place for Water - launched in November 2008, shows how The Wildlife Trusts are working with nature to provide sustainable solutions to flood management. While flood defence walls remain vital in protecting homes and farmland, if the UK is to address the future effects of climate change, natural solutions to flood management must play a significant role. You can download the Wildlife Trusts report here http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/files/uploaded/Flooding%20web.pdf

There is now a Draft Floods and Water Bill which seems to take a more natural approach to flood management. I haven’t read this yet but, going by recent releases from Natural England, it does seem to recognise that conventional methods of managing floods and coastal erosion may no longer be adequate or sustainable especially in the face of climate change.

Helen Phillips, Chief Executive of Natural England, said: “This Bill must ensure that our natural environment plays a pivotal role in flood management. If we increase its capacity to retain more water it will play a greater role in reducing flooding and consequently our reliance on miles of costly concrete and earth embankments”. She stresses that flood management should embrace natural solutions, such as restoring river channels, increasing floodplain wetlands and allowing re-alignment of the coast.

If you look at a map of Sussex you will often see places that are referred to as flood plains. Now there is a reason for the word “flood” in flood plain – and that is that they tend to flood! Fighting against this is not always successful and even when it is it might just mean that somewhere else might flood instead. Well government policy, it seems, might be accepting this now and as a result we might see more naturally functioning wetland, more wetland habitats and more wetland wildlife (along with better flood defence and a much improved landscape).

The way rural land is managed can reduce rural and urban flooding at the local level. Both the Environment Agency and Natural England should work even more closely together to deliver more schemes that work with natural processes. There are, of course, examples of work progressing in Sussex, with re-naturalisations schemes planned for the Cuckmere (for which I have praised EA in the past) and the possibility of more wetland establishment being discussed for rivers like the Ouse. There are also imaginative schemes being put forward by private landowners who aim to re-naturalise upstream river sections to create attractive wetlands and reduce flood risk down stream.

These ideas, good though they are, will all effect somebody’s land. A more natural approach to flood defence should not just be something that is imposed to the disadvantage of the landowner who happens to own part of a flood plain. Flood management is something that we will all benefit from so it wouldn’t be right if the wider public gained the benefit but the landowner had to bare the cost. This approach must therefore be done in parallel with advice, support and incentives to make this a viable option for a landowner.

So –
- flooding events are likely to get more frequent with the changing climate,
- working with nature is a more sustainable approach to flood management
- working with nature delivers other public benefits as well (wetland wildlife and an improved landscape) and
- advice and incentives should be available to landowners to make re-naturalisation of river catchments a more viable option.

If the Floods and Water Bill achieves all this then we will be moving in the right direction.

To those who are not so pleased about the National Park

2009-04-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

Well the National park is here and, while the majority of people are delighted about this, there are a few who are less than pleased. To read the media one might be excused for thinking that the years of work to get the Park had been marred by unpleasant antagonism between the “pros” and the “antis”. You can perhaps imagine a clash of the titans with the irresistible force battling against the immovable object!

Maybe I am naïve. Perhaps I do insist on solidly fixing my rose-tinted spectacles in front of my eyes, but I don’t see this issue as such an aggressive conflict. Yes, there may have been the occasional rant but, generally speaking, any opposing views have been very polite and “English”. People have heard each others views, recognised differences and, rather than putting up barriers, have got on with life in areas where they do agree.

It may have seemed hard, sometimes, if I was unable to persuade people about the Park but, over the years, I have come to the conclusion that this relatively well-handled difference has actually led to a kind of creative tension. With most people in favour but others against (but, generally, people are trying to get the best for the Downs) it means that the approaches are properly tested and whatever comes out at the end should be the best solution.

I will give a couple of examples to explain what I mean.

In general it is true to say that while conservation organisations have been in favour, many farmers, landowners and their representatives have been against. In my experience, however, this has been more a disagreement amongst friends than a clash of opposites. Conservation groups are not anti-farmer, and farmers are not anti-conservation (indeed the distinction between farmer and conservationist is itself blurred). Whilst I do not agree with the opposition from some landowners, their concerns are certainly legitimate. The point now is that we should work together so that their concerns are not realised. Farmers and landowners should not be disadvantaged by being in the Park. These are the very people who are looking after this nationally important landscape so the National Park should aim to provide improved mechanisms (whether grants, incentive schemes, improved markets or support for diversification schemes) to support environmentally-friendly farming. Farmers should do well as a result of being in a National Park. Ensuring this is the case should be the job of all involved in setting up the Park.

It is also clear that some of the Local Authorities have been firmly against the National Park, and have fought hard to prevent it. Whilst we disagree on this, these same Authorities have a good track record in other environmental matters (of course we would always lobby for them to do better but when you compare with others, these are pretty good Councils). For example, take the West Sussex County Council – the leader of the case against the Park. We have been able to put this disagreement to one side for nearly 20 years and the practice is that the County Council has been one of the most positive supporters of the Sussex Biodiversity Partnership and the Biodiversity Record Centre, they have one of the best systems to protect Sites of Nature Conservation Importance, have supported woodland management and hedgerow planting, have assisted us in major landscape projects and included us in discussions on key environmental issues. Nobody has slammed any doors because we disagree on the Park. Their opposition has probably meant that we have had to think carefully about how planning matters could be handled and the proposed outcome of delegating day to day planning back to Local Authorities could be a good solution.

I am confident that a National Park for the South Downs does provide the best way of looking after this landscape and its wildlife. The more important thing now, however, is that a decision has been made. I say to those who remain unhappy, sometimes it is better to have a decision than it is to have no decision – even if you do not like the outcome. At least there is now some certainty so we can plan for the future.

My conclusion from this is that, at the end of the day, there will be mostly the same people sitting around roughly the same table discussing broadly the same issues, and all concerned want the best solution for the Downs. The only difference is that we consider that a National Park will give us the best way of achieving this. A new, exciting chapter has been opened in the history of the South Downs and it is down to all of us to make best use of this opportunity.

Great News - At last we have a National Park for the South Downs!

2009-03-31T08:28:00.000-07:00

A National Park was first proposed for the Downs back in the 1930’s. In 1949 it was formally recommended as a National Park, along with 11 other areas, but we had to wait until 1999 before the government announced its desire to make the Downs a National Park. Even then it was still 10 years before we got there. Nobody could be accused of rushing into this!

However, here we are – 31st March 2009, near the 60th anniversary of the designation of our first National Parks, and at last we have proper recognition of the South Downs. We have our National Park.

See the map here:
http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/intended-boundary_tcm6-10442.pdf

and see the Secretary of State's decision letter here:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/pdf/protected-areas/national-park/south-downs/decision-letter.pdf

This is brilliant news. The South Downs Campaign, formed in 1990 at the initiative of the Sussex Wildlife Trusts (along with many others), has spent nearly two decades promoting the case for a National Park. In the end the logical weight of the argument, plus the support of the majority of people in Sussex (polls indicate up to 80% support) has eventually won the day. Furthermore the Secretary of State has agreed with the Campaign in most cases in relation to where the boundary should be drawn. We have a sensible-sized National Park that comprises the most important high-quality sweeps of landscape – not one just limited to one particular area.

With the announcement of a South Downs National Park it is a good time to review the benefits the decision will bring.

Governance:
The South Downs Joint Committee (SDJC), who manage the South Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is a good body but has significant shortfalls. Its funding is limited (it has to negotiate annually with 16 different bodies for funding, whereas a National Park Authority (NPA) receives funding direct from Government). It is not independent (being local authority dominated), has no planning powers, no duty to manage recreation, is not permanent and has less power for conservation than an NPA.

The NPA is a special type of local authority governed by elected members from local councils, parish councils and people appointed from the local area. An NPA does not undermine local democracy. (It is not correct to say that a NPA is an unelected, undemocratic body, and that its members are nominated by the Secretary of State.)

Funding:
The NPA is centrally funded at higher levels than for AONBs. In 2008/09 the 12 National Parks received £46.23 million, while the 36 AONBs received £9.48 million. In addition the NPA will have a greater ability to raise funding from other sources. Significantly, these funds would be available permanently, allowing the NPA to work to long-term objectives, which the SDJC was not able to do.

Protection:
An NPA will bring greater consistency and protection to the area. While there is no theoretical difference in the Government policy protection afforded to AONBs and National Parks, there is a crucial difference in the way that planning is delivered. With 15 Local Authorities each with their own plans and policies, Local Authorities struggle to make consistent planning decisions. A NPA has a single set of consistent planning policies for the whole area. Furthermore, the NPA’s planning powers are set out in legislation whereas the AONB body is purely advisory. In short NPAs are far more effective in the positive use of planning control. This does not mean a layer of bureaucracy designed to stop things happening. In existing National Parks there is a higher rate of planning approvals for higher quality development than in areas outside.

Economic benefits:
The South Downs is worth over £330 million to the regional economy. A NPA has a duty to foster social and economic well-being in pursuing National Park purposes and research has shown how important National Parks are in terms of the local economy and jobs. For instance surveys demonstrate that over half of a Parks’ businesses feel that National Park designation has a positive impact on their enterprise.

Public enjoyment:
An NPA is not an agency for promoting tourism. The South Downs already receives 40 million visits a year, more than any UK National Park and visitor numbers will rise regardless of National Park designation. An AONB body has no statutory duty to manage recreation, unlike an NPA. An NPA has a statutory duty to promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the Park’s special qualities by the public. Crucially, however, if there is a conflict between conservation and public enjoyment then it is required to give priority to conservation. In other words, an NPA is not an agency for promoting tourism but for improving the quality of the experience of people enjoying the National Park.

Environmentally sensitive farming:
An NPA will bring additional funding to environmentally sensitive land management and will be able to influence agri-environment funding at a regional level. National Park would not mean ‘nationalising’ the land; landowners will continue to manage their land. A South Downs National Park Authority is especially desirable because it would provide the focus and the mechanisms needed to conserve and enhance this internationally important landscape. It would bring additional resources to the area and allow the NPA to define long-term objectives in partnership with landowners. An NPA would have a strong voice in defining the priorities through its management plan and the new mechanisms being put in place to allocate funding for agri-environment programmes at regional level. Experience in the other National Parks has shown that NPAs are very well placed to drive forward schemes at the practical level.

Obviously we now have to move from campaigning for a national park to working together to make sure that it delivers on its promise. So, in some respects the work has only just started. Perhaps we can all now put the discussions about “whether or not” behind us and focus more on the issues affecting the Downs.

Clearly the Government should be congratulated for taking this visionary step by creating the National Park but on top of this there are a great many people who have pushed for a long time to achieve this status for the Downs. Of these I would like to pick out two for particular praise – Chris Todd, the Campaign Officer who has led the work for many years for the Campaign and, especially, Robin Crane, the Chairman of the South Downs Campaign. It was mainly due to Robin’s initiative back in 1990 that the people in the Downs were galvanised into action and, as a direct result, we now have a National Park.

Congratulations to the Environment Agency on the Cuckmere Valley!

2009-01-07T03:31:00.000-08:00

The Environment Agency (EA) has been looking at the future management of the Cuckmere for years now. Throughout this time it has preferred an increased reliance on natural processes rather than reverting to the heavy engineering of hard sea defences. To their credit the EA has stuck to its guns and is now withdrawing maintenance of these sea defences.

There are limited funds available for flood defence, no homes are at risk from flooding here and better public benefit can be delivered by improving the natural functioning of the river. It has therefore concluded that it is not in the public interest to rebuild hard flood defences in the valley. This is the right decision and The Sussex Wildlife Trust supports this view.

The valley is of very high importance for nature conservation. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, will be a National Park and is a very significant asset for public amenity and tourism. Nevertheless, past construction of an intrusive canal along the valley, along with hard sea defences, has isolated the valley from nature. It could be far better. Sea level rise plus general ware and tear means that these sea defences are near the end of their lives anyway so the EA had a choice – highly intrusive, ugly and expensive concrete sea defences or a more sensitive approach based on re-naturalising the valley. To their credit the EA chose the latter. A modern, environmentally sensitive approach will now be achieved by understanding and working with nature, rather than fighting against it with hard coastal defences.

Obviously there might be details that we could argue about but an approach that starts from the perspective of re-naturalisation is the right approach. Furthermore this could provide an excellent model for approaches to coastal defence in other areas. It will improve the area for wildlife, in particular by expanding areas of uncommon habitats such as salt marsh, mud flat and coastal grazing marsh (even if at the expense of the relatively wildlife-poor grassland in the valley). It should result in many more species able to use and live in the area, birds in particular likely to be especially benefited.

The Cuckmere meanders form one of the most valued views in the county. However, past engineering works have cut them off from the river system and so they are silting up. They will disappear under the current approach. Rebuilding the sea defences would keep the meanders isolated from the river and so lead to their eventual loss. Improving the natural functioning of the river is more likely to conserve them – even though their course will change with time (as they should – meanders are active, dynamic features, which should move).

The Cuckmere valley is a complex area catering for many uses so specific issues will need to be addressed. The canoe club, for example, provides an excellent resource for allowing access to the natural world. If the club has to be moved it should be re-sited to a location that takes advantage of the enhanced environment. Similarly the various paths, bridleways and campsites allow people to enjoy the area; these should be maintained and where possible enhanced. This is perfectly possible against the back-drop of a more natural valley.

There are some local concerns about the approach, however. Some of this is based on miss-information – for example a belief that the whole valley will be turned into an expanse of mud. In fact coastal mud flats are so rich (having the energy equivalent of about 17 Mars Bars per cubic metre!) that they support an enormous number of birds. However the area won’t all be mud flat – picture an area more like Chichester or Pagham Harbour rather than the Wash in Norfolk.

Some also have a perception that the landscape will be damaged – they like the way it is now so any change is threatening. However, change happens anyway – like the eventual loss off the meanders through silting up - and there are external forces acting on the valley, such as sea level rise and the erosion of current sea defences. So change will happen anyway but the EA’s plans are more likely to deliver positive change.

There is also a desire to make sure that specific issues are handled correctly, such as access around the valley. These are reasons get any plan right, not reasons to oppose a plan.

In my mind these concerns are a healthy sign that people are concerned about their local environment – it would be far more worrying if nobody cared what happened! The EA has tried to consult widely and engage people in these plans. Clearly there is a need to continue and expand this – people should be engaged and their comments (both positive and negative) carefully considered.

The basic principle of re-naturalising the valley is right but there are things that need discussing and details that need sorting out. There may also be extra benefits that can be worked into any plan (like re-located footpaths) that may need novel funding. However, this is the point of working in partnership. If a partnership develops a shared agenda for what is desired for the area then it is more likely to be able to source the funding to deliver it than if all are in opposition with each other.

Fortunately such a partnership already exists and this could be the driving force to move from conflict and opposition towards shared ideas and positive outcomes. This partnership is developing a web site and I believe this will provide a helpful forum to find out about plans for the area and input view and ideas about them http://www.cuckmere.org. Why not take a look and get involved in the discussion?

We have failed to halt the loss of wildlife - a government committee says so!

2008-11-19T06:50:00.000-08:00

The Sussex Wildlife Trust, along with most conservation organisations, has been concerned for a long time that wildlife is still going down hill. Our experience is of reducing habitats, species under threat and slow degradation of the environment. This is not to say that there are no good news stories out there. A lot of good things are happening and it is not all doom and gloom, but we have not yet turned the corner when it comes to maintaining our rich biodiversity.

It is therefore interesting to read that this is also the view coming out of the thirteenth report of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee – entitled “Halting Biodiversity Loss” http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmenvaud/743/743.pdf . The Committee concludes that despite some good work by Government many species and habitats continue to face severe declines and local extinctions across England. As a result it warns that the Government will miss a key international target to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.

The Committee said that there is a compelling economic case for the protection and enhancement of biodiversity. This is helpful because so often in our discussions we are arguing against people who merely consider wildlife as a “nice to have” rather than a key asset that we should value and look after.

While the Committee recognized that protected area arrangements (such as the designation of Sites of Special Scientific Interest) are largely adequate it believes the Government will have to go beyond traditional nature conservation policies to reverse the decline and enable growth in biodiversity into the future. Furthermore the Committee stated that government now needs to adopt an “ecosystems approach” - a much larger scale approach to ensure that wildlife survives, even thrives, throughout the whole landscape not just in special sites.

This agrees very well with the points that the SWT have been making for years. Looking after the best of what we have is the vital first step, but it is not enough by itself. We need a large scale agenda conserving wildlife in the entire landscape and maintaining quality in our whole environment.

This is further re-enforced by the Committees welcoming of government plans to conduct an ecosystem assessment for England. Hopefully this will follow the lead given by the UN when it published the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005. http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx . This set the scene, providing a method for assessing the wide range of benefits provided to people from a healthy functioning environment. These range from the essentials for life, including clean air and water, food and fuel, to things that improve quality of life and wellbeing, such as recreation and beautiful landscapes, and include natural processes, such as climate and flood regulation.

It will be interesting to see how government carries out such an assessment and whether in practice it will give proper recognition to the value of a healthy wildlife rich environment. A first step will be to improve cross-departmental working so that all government departments understand the value of biodiversity and take proper measures to conserve and enhance it. At present the Committee is concerned about a continued failure of departments, such as DCLG and DBERR, to consider biodiversity impacts.

So – there we have it! It’s official. There is a compelling economic case to conserve biodiversity and yet the ongoing loss of our wildlife has not been halted. I agree with the Committee in calling for an ecosystem assessment and will be pushing to make sure that any assessment makes reasonable consideration of all the benefits provided to us by a healthy environment. Perhaps it will be a good idea to do an ecosystem assessment for Sussex!

The Secretary of State’s changes to the South East Plan – How sustainable?

2008-10-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

You will find information about the current stage of the SE Plan on the Sussex Wildlife Trust web site, but I thought I would spend some time highlighting the size of the gap between the growth and development desires in the SE Plan versus the need for sustainability.

Even the Government’s own Sustainability Appraisal concludes that the changes now proposed by the Secretary of State will result in the environmental limits of the South East being approached and possibly even breached. These changes do not just increase the level of environmental damage associated with the Plan, but also substantially lower the quality of life of the region’s population. The Plan cannot even guarantee to protect the most important wildlife sites – those protected because of the international importance – so what hope is there for our nationally or locally important wildlife habitats?

If we look a little closer at the figures we can see the size of the problem we face.

Never mind “the environmental limits of the South East being approached”, work by the Government Office for the South East a few years ago has shown that the ecological footprint for the South East is already 29 times its physical area. That means that we need an area the size of France just to support our lifestyle.

So we already consume an area far bigger than we actually have – but we plan to grow further.

The plan has an economic growth goal of 3% per annum – very attractive in terms of our personal wealth, but what does this mean? A 3% growth rate results in a doubling time of 23 years (just longer than the life of the plan). In 23 years time our economy will be double the size that it is now and will have double the resource requirements that it has now. So, roughly by the end of the plan we will be using double the number of resources that we use now. How sustainable is that bearing in mind the ecological consequences of the resource use we have now?

The maths also draws us towards another startling conclusion. Take the period from now -2008 - to the end of that doubling period (23 years time) the year 2031. In that period we will use the same amount of resources as we have done in our entire history up until 2008. This is simply the maths of how exponential growth works.

I cannot see how some of our most cherished wildlife can survive even at the current level of human activity even if we could rely on an area the size of France to support us. How it could survive when we have double the level of activity and after using as many resources as we have used in our entire history is even more difficult to understand.

The SE Plan has good phrases about stabilising and then reducing resource use, about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and responding to climate change, about protecting wildlife and the environment. And I do believe that the people involved are sincere, honourable people who are doing their best for the region. But a 30% increase in housing numbers for Sussex (even over the huge figures already proposed), a desire for economic growth of 3% (without any real question of the nature of that growth and its effects), population increase, “infrastructure” development, water use, resource use, energy use and land taken away from nature – all severely undermine any attempt at long term sustainability. The environment is going to be negatively impacted, we are going to loose wildlife and its habitats and the lives of the people in the region are going to get worse.

More on Eco-Towns "2".

2008-06-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

Recently the Government published the Challenge Panel's first report of their deliberations with the developers. In this the Panel went briefly through each of the proposed Eco-Towns and set out a challenging list of issues that any proposal will have to meet in order to become a viable proposition.

Have they been reading my blog?

The Challenge Panel's report recommends some very interesting requirements, at least a couple of which align closely with the needs I have laid out on this blog!

One test that I have proposed is that Ford Eco-Town should so radically reduce the need to travel that it would remove the need for an Arundel bypass. This demand is in direct opposition to both the proposers and the opposers of the Ford Eco-Town. The Challenge Panel, however, have also said that the proposal should "consider a radically different approach to transport" and that "funding the proposed A27 Arundel bypass should be abandoned as it is not consistent with sustainable principles".

The guidelines for Eco-Town development are generally light on requirements for improving the environment, and enhancing the natural environment receives little attention. To be fair the Eco-town proposers for Ford have talked about building ecological networks through the development, including a major area of wetland creation. Nevertheless, the Panel's report stresses that the proposal should "use the green space strategy as a starting point for the masterplan; the proposed network of green spaces, neighbourhood allotments, wetland habitat and the introduction of the canal could be instrumental to creating an identity for the area".

So - a better approach to transport and making the natural environment of a proposal a more leading theme. This is good stuff, but I am still concerned about whether Ford, located as it is in one of the few green gaps along the highly built up coastline of West Sussex, is fundamentally the right location for a major new development.

More on Ford Eco-town, following the opening of the Inquiry on 27th May 2008.

2008-05-30T01:26:00.000-07:00

Presentations given by the Ford Airfield Vision Group and the Ford Enterprise Hub at the start of Arun DC’s inquiry gave a good outline of their plans for the Ford Eco-town. The Trust does have issues with the proposals - see later on in this post - but the proposers are sincere people with a clear belief in the idea they are promoting. Several key aspects can be highlighted from their proposals:

Energy.
The development aims to be at least carbon-neutral. Ideas are for passive solar hearting by utilising south facing designs, photo-voltaic cells, solar panels and a possible hydro system based on a sea lagoon created from managed retreat of the coast. There is also a proposal for power generation from a hydro system under the bridge of a new Arundel bypass. These ideas, plus the energy from waste facility below should make the site a net exporter of energy.

Waste
The plan is to make maximum use of waste recovery, utilising a facility already on site. There are also plans for an energy from waste recovery facility. The claim is that with these systems there should be no off-site refuse trips.

Water
A sophisticated system of grey water recycling, water treatment and aquifer re-charge should result in a very low water-use foot-print, indeed they are aiming for “water-neutrality”. Water run-off from the development area will drain into canals (one a renovated existing canal, plus other new water-courses), and these will form the core of green corridors, with new habitat for wildlife meandering through the built development.

Greenspace
There are ideas for a central area of greenspace, connected by green corridors to neighbourhood greens and linking with the canals. A major feature will be an area of managed coastal retreat alongside the river Arun where coastal and salt marsh vegetation will be created, perhaps in a sea lagoon as part of a tidal hydro-power system. The new coastal marsh, canals and water inflow from water off the Downs will make a diversity of habitats that could be very beneficial for the local environment. This could be seen as a prime example of how nature development in an area can not only improve biodiversity but also provide services to the area in terms of flood amelioration, treatment of water run-off, amenity, access and even power generation.

Local food
Some mention was made of encouraging the use of gardens and allotments for the growing of food, and the use of local retail outlets for the sale of local food. A good principle but the Town will result in a net loss of good agricultural land.

Travel
There are plans to develop the railway station on a new site and to integrate this with bus routes, cycle ways and walking routes. The aim is to very considerably reduce car dependency and there is a vision to create a District-wide modal shift in favour of rail transport. The Eco-town will, however, be used as an excuse to develop roads in the area, especially an Arundel bypass, and where the proposed bypass crosses the river Arun there are ideas to develop some form of hydro power station.

Good ideas, but questions remain -

Much of this (except the road development) sounds quite good, indeed if your aim is to build an Eco-town then this is a pretty good way to go about it.

First, there are a whole range of questions regarding the process, and these are probably best targeted at government rather than the individual Eco-town proposals:

Why is it that the standards for Eco-towns are not the basic minimum for all new development?
After years of debating about the SE Plan and levels of regional development, why is it that Eco-towns seem to have come in as an extra idea separate to all these strategic discussions?

Housing numbers
There is a question regarding housing numbers. Government has stated that the number of homes in an Eco-town can be off-set against the housing allocation for the District – so, building 5000 homes here means that we should not have to build 5000 homes somewhere else. However, figures are likely to rise anyway and perhaps government are more likely to increase housing numbers in a District if it thinks there is a good chance of an Eco-town there. Furthermore, the planned 5000 homes may just be a start. The evidence from other places is that once development is allowed we could well find that numbers shoot up.

Even if 5000 homes is the actual number, and these can be off-set against the numbers planned for Arun, the question that will have to be addressed is will building 5000 homes here have a lower environmental footprint than if they were built elsewhere in the District, associated with existing developments.

Even if it is a good plan, is Ford a good location?
Coming to the Ford location itself, there is still a big concern as to whether, in principle, this is a good place for an Eco-town. It will cause the coalescence of several settlements, is mostly on green-field land, will result in the loss of prime agricultural land and is on a site that tends to flood.

Travel
The travel question could be the key test of the proposal.

At present all sides (pro and anti) seem to be pushing in the wrong direction on this. Currently the Eco-town is being presented as a development that can be used to press for “improvements” to the A27 and other roads in the area. This is self-destructive to the travel ideas for the town. Road improvements will simply mean that people will continue to use their cars (although change may be forced anyway with global warming concerns and oil price increases/shortages), so modal shift to public transport will not take place. The idea of adding to political pressure for a damaging road also does not fit with the stated aim of a “District-wide modal shift to rail travel”.

Any bypass around Arundel will cause unacceptable damage to the environment, as well as increasing car travel and so increase congestion elsewhere. This blind-spot illustrates that the proposers have not grasped the idea of the proximity principle. The development must be based on the principle that as much as possible should be provided as locally as possible, so reducing the need for distance travel. Furthermore, it is claimed that the Ford Eco-town will be an exemplar for others to follow. This is good. So, as an exemplar it would be expected that neighbouring areas will follow the lead of reducing the need to travel so in turn will reduce their car dependency.

The idea of putting a hydro-power station under the bridge of a possible bypass does not make it any more attractive. The river Arun is one of the most important rivers in Britain for its wildlife. The aim for the river should be to increase its natural functioning – any sort of barrage across the river will be counter-productive.

A key test of the Eco-town, therefore, is not whether it adds to the political pressure for a road, it is whether it reduces the need for travel enough to remove the need for an Arundel bypass.

How deliverable is the environmental vision?
Nevertheless, the outline plans for the Eco-town do include some good ideas and, notwithstanding the comments above, added together they could form the basis of a sustainable community. Perhaps the biggest question, however, is what will happen in practice?

In the past we have talked to developers about plans for an area and often what start out as radical, environmentally sensitive designs gradually become compromised as costs are cut. This is not to imply anything sinister regarding developers; it’s just the way it works out. A new railway station, bus routes, cycle ways, schools, affordable housing, education centres and community centres will all use up funding. If money gets frittered away trying to gain support for damaging roads as well then I can see all the environmental plans being lost.

Environmental objectives must remain central
This compromising away of enviornmetla objectives is a symptom of how we do town planning in this country. We start off with the economic and social “needs” and the environmental “desires” are added later. We still tend to see the environment as a “nice to have” extra, rather than a fundamental requirement. Any pressure on the design and the first thing to go is the environmental aspect. For an Eco-town to be an Eco-town, this must be reversed. The environmental vision must come first and stay as the basic need. Economic and social desires can then be worked in around the environmental vision. This is not to favour bugs and beetles over people! In practice grounding social and economic plans in a strong environmental vision will deliver a higher quality development and so is more likely to achieve social and economic objectives than a plan where the environment is a mere add-on.

So – in summary

The environmental vision appears good, including ideas for greenspace, water courses through the development and habitat creation on the river Arun. This must not be compromised away and, indeed, should be made stronger and have centre-stage in the range of objectives.
If Ford is to be an exemplar, then it should not only deliver sustainability objectives itself, but it should drive a change to a more sustainable community in the wider District.
One test of acceptability will be if the development removes the need for road development in the area.
A major flaw is viewing Ford as a way of increasing the pressure for an Arundel bypass. This alone should mean that this level of development is not realistic in the District.
The Ford location has problems, is it in basis the right place?
Will 5000 houses built here have a lower impact than the same number built associated with existing settlements elsewhere?
Is 5000 homes here of 5000 elsewhere the real choice? In practice will the Eco-town simply give regional government the excuse to increase housing allocation in Arun District?

A new Eco-Town for Sussex!

2008-04-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday government announced that 10 new “Eco-Towns” are to be built in England, and gave a short list of 15 from which the eventual 10 will be selected.

Maybe this sounds like good news, if you do not delve too deeply. These new towns are supposed to consist of carbon neutral developments, locations to act as exemplars of sustainable, environmentally friendly technology. Low impact, affordable, green homes – assuming you have to build new houses somewhere, what could be wrong with that?

Well, several things actually….

First – we have been talking for decades about the need to produce high quality, environmentally friendly homes that have a low ecological impact. Now, eventually and very late in the day, government reckons we should be building some, and it is in these Eco-Towns that they will be built. The first question therefore is why on earth should this approach be limited to so-called Eco-Towns? There is an accepted need that development should move ahead in a modern way. Climate change is upon us, long term development will only be possible if it delivers the needed energy efficiency changes. Hyper-efficient, carbon-neutral homes must be the norm, not the exception. Government has plans for 3 million homes in England. Assuming about 10,000 homes in each of the 10 Eco-Towns, this is only 100,000 homes built to a decent modern standard. What about the other 2,900,000?

House-builders and developers could not possibly complain about this. The writing on the wall could not be any larger – a universal, high quality approach is needed now, not at some indeterminate time in the future, or only limited to a few special places. And, of course, it would set a level playing field for all development, so no house builder would be disadvantaged.

The second point is regarding where these developments are going to be placed. The choice of the 15 on the shortlist seems to have come out of nowhere. These are not the result of a strategic assessment of where environmentally sensitive development could be placed for best effect. They are just somebody’s bright idea!

For example, Ford in West Sussex is one of the lucky locations on the shortlist. Who proposed this? Local Authorities, County Councils, local organisations and local communities are all against it so it seems to have parachuted in off someone else’s sketchbook!

The ford proposal could have a devastating effect on the area. Even if the site is developed in an enviornmentally friendly way, this would still bring a huge number of people into the area. The pressure for a very damaging bypass around Arundle would increase, road improvements would be pushed through and large amounts of other "supporting infrastructure" would be required. This all adds up to the urbanisation of the lower sectin of the river Arun valley.

Very complicated discussions have taken place, strategic plans written, controversies fought over and Inquiries held. Out of all of this has come a huge level of proposed development for Sussex (that the Sussex Wildlife Trust has consistently fought against). This is bad enough – but these new Eco-Towns are in addition to the painful levels of development already forced upon us.

The approach to Eco-Towns seems very narrowly focused. It is centred on creating carbon-neutral development. A laudable objective certainly, but surely only one part of a complete environmental agenda for an area. An Eco-town should have a much more rounded environmental vision. This must start with a proper understanding of the environmental assets (the wildlife, landscape and heritage) of the place and then deliver a proper plan for how these are to be conserved, managed and expanded as part of a wide package that enhances the area. Part of this will be energy efficiency, but developing a Living Landscape fit for people should also be central.

There is very little clue that this is what is in the minds of government, and this is exposed by some of the site choices. For instance the proposal for Shipton in Oxfordshire is likely to damage or destroy a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Site of Nature Conservation Importance and a Nature Reserve. This seems to start off, therefore, as a very non-eco Eco-Town.

Perhaps there is an old game in play here.

It has long been a tactic of those proposing development to suggest some absolutely appalling locations alongside the merely quite bad. In this way, it is hoped, rabid environmentalists will focus their attentions on the absolutely appalling and let the others slip through! Of course the worst locations may never have been serious options; they are simply there to draw fire away from the preferred developments. Eventually the worst options are withdrawn, us environmentalists claim a success, and the developers get what they wanted in the first place.

May be this is the point about Ford. There will be an outcry about Shipton in Oxfordshire, with a national effort to conserve designated sites. The Ford proposal, however will “only” erode one of the few remaining areas of rural countryside on the Sussex coastal plain, is “only” development in a flood plain (and that never stopped anyone anyway), it “only” has local County, District and Conservation bodies to defend it and will “only” upset the setting of a future National Park. Against Shipton in Oxfordshire it may seem the natural choice!

My message to government is to start again:

Criteria for carbon-neutral development should be applied everywhere not just in Eco-Towns
Any new development, especially Eco-Towns, should start with a strong, coherent environmental vision, aiming to look after and enhance what is there.
Part of this vision must be to conserve and enhance the wildlife value of these areas, developing a strong green network for people and wildlife that positively improves the area.
Eco-Towns should not be parachuted in to locations, they should be part of a strategic assessment of development need for an area, not separate from it.
All development, especially Eco-Towns should be assessed on their entire ecological impact, not just carbon footprint.

You can find out more through the link http://www.communities.gov.uk. The prospectus for Eco-Towns is available here as is the document "Eco-towns, living a greener future" which is the announcement made in April 2008. This contains details on how to respond.

A Chance for the Cuckmere Estuary

2007-11-19T10:25:00.001-08:00

The Environment Agency has recently put out the document “Cuckmere estuary: draft flood risk management strategy” – essentially an outline of a set of alternative proposals for managing the Cuckmere estuary.

The significant feature here is that the Agency’s preferred option is to achieve flood risk management by allowing the estuary to return to a more naturally functioning system.

I strongly support this approach.

The SWT has consistently supported an approach to flood risk management that works with, rather than against, natural processes. The Cuckmere estuary is a particular location where this sort of approach is very appropriate.

http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/page00016.htm

The estuary is a good place for wildlife, and a good place for people to visit. This is why it is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and is also a tourist hot spot. The Wildlife Trust itself has an education facility there and we make good use of the environmental assets of the valley. However the valley has been severely degraded by past flood defence. The straight canal cut across the valley has isolated the famous meanders, prevented flooding in the flood plain and degraded the habitats alongside the river. There would, rightly, be an outcry today if anyone proposed such a straight heavy-engineered structure in this attractive natural setting.

The impetus to taking a different approach, however, comes from several directions.

First these old flood defences are likely to fail in the near future, so an alternative approach is needed.

Second, with climate change, incidents of flooding are likely to increase. Sea level rise will increase flooding from the sea and increased storm frequency will result in more flood water flowing down the river.

Third is the realisation that with sea level rise we get coastal squeeze. Old flood defences prevent nationally important coastal habitats migrating inland so they erode away with loss of wildlife. If coastal habitats disappear then the full force of incoming waves will hit the sea defences, causing them to erode as well. Thus maintaining hard sea defences where they are requires far stronger, more imposing and unsightly structures than in the past.

Fourth, ironically, the use of modern technology means that the Agency can more accurately model the results of different management options. Therefore, smart use of technology means that they can model how nature works and work with it, rather than constantly battling against it. Smart use of technology means we can work more with nature, rather than against it.

There may be some who fear a change towards a more naturally functioning valley. As humans we sometimes do not like to think of a treasured landscape changing, but change is inevitable and when we compare the alternatives the restoration of a naturally functioning system is by far the best option. The other end of the spectrum is a continuation of hard sea defences, the loss of coastal habitats, the loss of the meanders as they silt up and a re-enforced, stone-lined canal across the valley. Opportunities to restore the wetland habitats in the valley would be lost for at least a generation and the degraded landscape would be unlikely to attract the affection of either visitors or local people.

Even official documents refer to the “deterioration of the meadows as mud takes over”, with concern about the effect to visitor numbers, illustrating a view that all change is bad. If coastal habitats were so unpopular then one would expect areas like Pagham Harbour, Chichester Harbour and the sea front at Bosham to be deserted because of their ugliness! In practice, of course, the opposite is true.

So we have the choice – a highly expensive concrete gutter (paid for by us, the tax payer) delivering virtually no benefit, or a more naturally functioning system with evolving and improving wildlife and landscape.

In practice, of course, there are several in-between possibilities. A more naturally functioning system can still have works done within it to influence the direction of natural change – a managed retreat option. These are progressively more expensive than leaving things to nature as the level of human influence increases. Option 3b, as presented by the Agency, is one of these. The best approach is probably to start from the perspective of a natural system and then add in sensible levels of influence as resources become available.

The alternative – that of hard defences – is more of an all or nothing approach. It is very difficult to add in a level of naturalness when the starting point is a hard engineered structure. Concreting over the Cuckmere estuary is not the answer.

The 1987 storm – have we really learned the ecological lessons?

2007-10-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

Well the 20th anniversary of the storm has now passed and there have been numerous television, radio and newspaper articles on the subject. But how much have we learned in two decades?

In some respects understanding seems to have moved on quite well. People should now realise that, from the perspective of nature, the storm was a good thing. Surely there is no need to go over the argument yet again (more openings in the woods, more light into previously dark woodland, more diversity, more tree, shrub and flower regeneration, more rotting wood, more living space for wildlife like insects, birds, plants fungi and so on).

Leave the wood alone after the storm and it will regenerate quite naturally and will generally be better as a result.

Furthermore, hopefully most people realise that storms are not only a good thing for nature, but are also quite normal – a storm every century or two is quite frequent in the life of a wood.

Nevertheless, I still hear people talking about a wood “recovering” from the “damage” caused by the storm. This is the wrong perspective. Storms are not damage they are natural disturbance! And it is this natural disturbance that is a good thing.

Move on from there and there are several more lessons that we should learn:

Storms disturb woods in a similar way that traditional management does (i.e. cutting small clearings and allowing natural regeneration). Conservationists have been saying for many decades that good management of woods is good for wildlife. Why? Because management is like natural disturbance.

Storms in woods are not an argument against management – instead storms provide the rationale for why management is so good for wildlife.

Perhaps a surprising lesson from the storm is a view that storms alone do not cause enough disturbance to create the conditions for all our native wildlife!

When I monitored woods after the storm I thought that this was how natural English woods get the open unwooded areas that are needed by all our species that like open habitat. Not so. 20 years later practically all the openings caused by the storm have disappeared. It is clear that other forms of disturbance are also vital to create the natural diversity needed by our wildlife. Disturbances like:

Floods Soil slippage and erosion
Accretion
Insect and fungal attacks
The grazing and browsing of large animals.

It is the last one here, grazing and browsing by large animals that we have perhaps underestimated in the past. Today most of our habitats are (or should be) grazed by animals – usually domestic animals. We often think this is not natural, something imposed by man, because we use domestic animals. In fact, however, these domestic animals are doing the same ecological job that wild grazers might have done in the distant past. Removing them from the forest and leaving a wood to grow tall and dark, may actually be less natural than including low intensity grazing within a forest. Thus most people’s view of “leaving things to nature” is actually incorrect, as we have already excluded too much nature.

The next lesson of the storm is therefore that we have to include more forms natural disturbance in our understanding of how nature works. When we do so this explains how we get our meadows, grassland, wetlands, heaths, pastures and so on.

In my view, however, the most important lesson of the storm is how we relate to nature. Many of us seem to feel that humans are in total control. We have beaten nature, we set the targets we want, allow things where we want them to be and that nature, generally, is just a green back-cloth against which “real life” is played.

This is not an attack of farmers, foresters or developers, but is just as true of conservationists themselves. The current trend of setting our conservation targets and then implementing management towards them sounds very business-like, and can deliver a great deal – but it’s not very natural! It implies a control and a superiority over nature that we don’t have.

The storm was a gentle reminder that we need to understand nature and work with it. It was a humbling event, outside our control and impacting heavily upon us. Yet it was good for nature. Instead of imagining we can dominate, crush or control nature, perhaps we should spend more time trying to understand nature and nature’s laws, work with it, maybe repairing natural systems that we ourselves have damaged, where possible encourage it to work better.

We should think less about the targets that we want achieved and more about enabling ecological processes like natural disturbance to function better.

Climate Change - How can wildlife adapt?

2007-10-09T01:12:00.000-07:00

Scientific certainty

There is a high degree of certainty in the scientific community that climate change is happening. The nature, scale and even direction of climate change is, however, probably unpredictable at a Sussex scale. It is also likely that there will be increasing variability in local weather with possible large swings in conditions and less certainty about seasonal weather patterns.

Nevertheless, uncertainty about how climate change will unfold, or what the response of plants, animals and their habitats to climate change will be, must not prevent us from taking action.

A strategy for wildlife conservation
A strategy is needed that presents the best course of action to conserve nature against an unknown and unpredictable future. This means that we need to develop an adaptable environment that is resilient to change, whatever that change might be.

The best chance for wildlife, and therefore for us will be to:

1 – Look after our existing wildlife and wild places.
Future wildlife can only adapt and evolve from the plants and animals that survive today so the importance of conserving current high quality places cannot be overemphasised.

2 – Reduce damage to nature from sources other than climate change.
Nature will have the best chance if we stop pressurising it in other ways.

3 – Increase the variety of our landscape at all scales

In this way so plants and animals always have somewhere to move to in their immediate area as conditions change.

4 – Build ecological networks throughout the landscape at all scales
Maintaining a diversity of habitats, increasing their area and the way they link up and allowing natural processes to shape the ecology and structure of whole landscapes will create the best chance for biodiversity.

The elements above make a good nature conservation strategy even if there was no climate change or if it was not caused by human activity. Building an adaptable, resilient environment is a good approach independently of climate change.

Providing the best chance for wildlife, as well as being a worth while objective in its own right, will also provide the best chance of maintaining a high quality environment that continues to provide the environmental services (such as flood amelioration, climate regulation, nutrient cycling and water purification) on which we all depend. This is not just about conserving the environment for nature, it is also about conserving the environment for people too.

An important element of a strategy for nature in a changing climate is the development of an ecological network for Sussex. This concept will be presented in “A Living Landscape for Sussex”, due to be published in early 2008.

However, and this point is vitally important, even the most effective biodiversity strategy will be overwhelmed if we do not take other action to address the causes of climate change: our continually growing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Put the western Weald back in the South Downs National Park

2007-09-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

Two years ago there was a Public Inquiry into a National Park for the South Downs. This was only the most recent event in the long running battle to gain proper recognition for the area. I believe the first proposal to protect the area in this way was in 1929, and it was on the original list of National Parks back in 1947. However, the public Inquiry was just the latest development and we have been waiting to see what the Inspector recommended.

I suppose there is good news and bad news. At least the concept of a National Park for the area has been supported. This is to be welcomed. Also there are some extensions recommended by the inspector to the Park. One of these is the inclusion of Woods Mill, the Trust's HQ, so we are very pleased about that. But the recommendation to exclude the western Weald, we consider, is ill-judged.

Why exclude the western Weald?
The argument to exclude this area seems poor. The claim seems to be that the western Weald, whilst being of national landscape quality, is not sufficiently similar to the main block of the South Downs to justify inclusion. This may have a sort of logic about it, but this approach is completely at variance to how National Parks are identified. Making a National Park that just sits on one geological feature (in this case the chalk of the South Downs ridge) is a completely new and fictitious criterion for drawing the boundary.

The fallacy of this approach is clear if you try to put a logical boundary roughly in the area that the Inspector suggests - it isn't possible! You find you inevitably have to wiggle a line through a landscape so crammed with wildlife, historical and landscape interest that any line is purely an act of the imagination. The high quality landscape runs from the top of the South Downs ridge and north well into the western Weald. That's why the original Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty boundary was drawn the way it was!

No-one seems to support this boundary. The vast majority of local people are outraged, first at the idea that their landscape is somehow now second rate, and also because there is a real risk that the area could loose it's protected status and so be subject to pressure for housing development. (Someone more cynical than I might look at the co-incidence of a White Paper requiring 10% more housing than previously with a proposal for a reduced National Park area and therefore fear for their local area!)

What to do?

It's now too late to respond to the Inspector's report but signing the on-line petition is still worth while. So please log in to:

petitions.pm.gov.uk/western-weald/

The Inspectors report on the south East Plan

2007-08-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

Last year a panel of Inspectors sat to examine the South East Plan. I gave evidence on behalf of SWT, and many other conservation organisations also spoke. This panel has now reported and we can now see their document.

Any report on a regional plan is bound to be vast so this is just a first impression. We must also realise that there is probably a limited amount that a regional plan, and any subsequent report, can achieve. But it is the most strategic document that we are likely to be able to influence so if we are not happy, we should not be shy saying so.

Just what is being proposed by the plan and now by the Inspectors?

First, the Inspectors recommend that house building numbers for the South East should go up from 29,000 per year to 32,000. In the plan period that’s an extra 62,000 houses. To put that into context that is larger than Worthing just for the extra houses!

The total amount of housing planned for before 2026 is 640,160 – that is equivalent to about 14 Worthing’s. At the recommended density housing will cover 16,000ha, or 160 sq km, (not allowing for infrastructure like roads, shops, businesses etc). This is nearly half the size of the Isle of Wight.

These are worrying figures!

Climate change and our ecological footprint.
Some aspects of both the Plan and the Inspectors report sound quite good. Addressing climate change and a reducing our ecological footprint are examples. Yet all these are merely aspirational. There may be good words on climate change for instance but the overall plan will result in massive increases in greenhouse gas – at a time when the scientific evidence is that a 60% reduction is probably far too little. The plan period runs until 2026, Climate change simply must be addressed in that time.

The panel even attempts to excuse likely poor performance in terms of the aim to reduce the ecological footprint of the South East. It indicates that the increased footprint form all the extra development will be offset by massively reduced resource and energy use elsewhere in the business sector. This may sound good but there is no evidence of these improved efficiencies. There will have to be an awful lot of efficiency improvements in existing businesses and buildings to counteract the increased ecological footprint of over 640,000 new homes.

Transport
Transport plans do have some good indications in that the panel wish to see car use reduced, with more restrictions on cars and road charging. The panel, however, “believe it to be unrealistic to achieve an absolute reduction during the life of the Plan”. This reflects a lack of urgency regarding climate change, resource use and the need to reduce our ecological footprint. Again we must bear in mind that this is a 20 year plan – such issues simply must be addressed in this time.

Similarly with airports, the report still asks the plan to cater for a possible extra runway at Gatwick. Again, there seems to be no recognition of the urgency of climate change and the need to consider what to do about the fastest growing contributor to greenhouse gases

Nature Conservation.
The nature conservation elements of the plan have remained intact, and this is welcomed. We have, however, campaigned for nature conservation to be pushed higher up in the strategy. We asked for a “green infrastructure” policy to be included as one of the cross-cutting policies. In doing so we wish to see an ambitious ecological network rolled out as a positive environmental agenda so development has to go hand in hand with environmental improvement. This should have been a real basis for a win-win approach. On the face of it we won the argument and a green infrastructure policy is now recommended. The policy itself, however, needs to be considerably improved. It seems simply to refer to urban greenspace – important in itself but hardly the large scale, integrated environmental enhancement that is required to counter-balance such huge development pressure.

Water resources.
Water resources are a problem in the South East, with less water per head of population than in Ethiopia. However, the panel considers that water efficiency measures and water resource development will answer the problem. This sounds good but Water Companies are sceptical that water efficiency can be delivered on the scale required. More importantly this report hits the problem that all reports do at this point – it is committing us to resource development that has not even been properly examined in terms of its environmental effects.

Disappointing!
All in all the report from the panel of Inspectors is disappointing but not surprising. People are doing their best but the engine that drives environmental damage grinds on.

This one change please!
If I were to ask for one big improvement that I think could be achieved it would be to have a very positive and expansive ecological network properly integrated into the spatial strategy of the Plan. If we are going to have to have all this development then it must go hand in hand with environmental enhancement. And this environmental enhancement must be orders of magnitude greater than we have experienced so far.

A Living Landscape for The South East

2007-08-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

THE FUTURE

Imagine recharging your batteries, away from hustle and bustle of cities and towns, in wild areas, managed by nature.

Imagine huge and exciting new wetlands, alive with wild birds, and holding back the water which might otherwise flood our homes.

Imagine nature reserves where flower-rich meadows, downland, and inviting woodlands stretch as far as the horizon.

Imagine being able to walk from your front door into a continuous stretch of wildlife-rich greenspace intermingling with urban areas and extending into the countryside for miles beyond.

Imagine countryside and urban greenspace richer in wildlife than it is today, also helping to maintain our climate, produce our food, and replenish our spirits – a countryside for the 21st Century.

That is what "A Living Landscape for the South East" is aiming to create - an ecological network, a matrix of wildlife habitat extending accross the county and linking up with similar nature networks in surrounding counties.

The need for an ecological network approach

Nature conservation in Britain has often focused on protecting special sites - Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), nature reserves, locally important wildlife sites. This has been essential to stem the huge loss of wildlife over the last century.

This approach has proved successful in defending wildlife where it remains. But it does not give us a way to restore and rebuild the natural environment in the wider countryside and town.

We need to increase the ability of the environment to protect us from flooding and erosion, to soak up carbon dioxide and to recycle nutrients and water (‘ecosystem services’). This will demand the restoration of extensive areas of natural habitat, particularly wetlands and woodlands.

Better access to the natural environment helps improve mental and physical health, and improves quality of life. We need to bring wild places to more people.

Isolated nature reserves and other protected sites are unlikely to be able to sustain wildlife in the long term. Sites will need to be buffered, extended and linked if wildlife is to be able to adapt to environmental changes such as climate change.

Outside of protected sites, once common and widespread species are in catastrophic decline. Reversing this decline needs a new approach.

Wildlife restricted to isolated patches in an otherwise hostile environment is vulnerable and unstable. The dynamic nature of species populations, the impacts of natural and man-made events, and the effects of climate change mean that wildlife needs large, functional areas or networks which give it room to adapt, resilience to change, and opportunity to spread.

"A Living Landscape for the South East" describes a landscape scale network of wildlife habitat that would ensure the long term ecological functioning of the South East Region’s unique natural environment. It expands horizons beyond the protection of existing wildlife sites, and offers a new and exciting agenda for habitat restoration and creation.

"A Living Landscape for the South East can be downloaded from teh Sussex Wildlife Trust web site. http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/index.htm . I am also in the process of writing a version of this focused much more on Sussex itself. This should be available in a few months time. In the mean time please download and read the south East version.

A Vision for the Wildlife of Sussex

2007-08-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Just over ten years ago, the Sussex Wildlife Trust published ‘Vision for the Wildlife of Sussex’, http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/about/page00003.htm an environmental agenda for the next 50 years. The Vision moved away from the defensive approach to nature conservation, in which the ‘best’ wildlife sites are identified and protected. Instead it painted a picture of the sort of environment we should like to see in 2045. To give this reality it set targets for the amount of habitat that might be needed in order to conserve the wildlife of Sussex.

The sussex Wildlife Trust is in the process of writing a document that aims to look at the progress against these targets that has been made over the past 10 years. This should be available in a few months time. It will give a broad overview of some of the major changes that have (or have not) been made over the last decade.

Much of the work in the Trusts Vision was incorporated into the Biodiversity Action Plan for Sussex. this includes a more comprehensive and continually updated audit of activity against targets. for this please follow the link: http://www.biodiversitysussex.org/

What next?

Ten years ago the Vision for the Wildlife of Sussex was imaginative and positive. We think that it has helped to make Sussex a richer county than would otherwise have been the case. We must be equally positive over the next decade. Indeed with the threats from increasing consumption, more population, development pressure, increasing resource use and the likely effects on biodiversity, there is an even greater urgency to produce biodiversity gains now than there was 10 years ago.

A key means of achieving this will be through maintaining the nature conservation value of the county as a whole. We will need to improve the way that wildlife habitats function within the wider landscape, especially with the threat of climate change. So SWT and other conservationists want to create an ecological network, larger blocks of habitat linked in a landscape through which wild plants and animals can move.

This ecological network approach to rebuilding biodiversity has already been taken forward in the “Living Landscape for the South East” ( see other postings on this blog, also: http://www.sussexwt.org.uk/conservation/index.htm ) produced by the Wildlife Trusts in the south-east. This builds on the approach promoted in Sussex Biodiversity Action Plans and in our Vision, providing an agenda that gives wildlife the best chance on a landscape scale.