Posts Tagged ‘Government’

What a bitterly disappointing week the start of December was for the environment!

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

Fracking and gas energy

First, we had the official announcement that “fracking” has been given the go-ahead.  Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a process of releasing natural gas from oil rich rocks.  We don’t yet know which parts of the UK might be impacted by fracking, but the impacts could be widespread.  The announcement followed hot on the heels of a little-reported decision to give the go-ahead for more gas power stations.  Not the most convincing strategy for reducing our carbon emissions!

Marine Conservation Zones

Sadly, this was not the only bit of gloomy news the government had up its sleeve.  As many of you will know, the Wildlife Trusts have been campaigning for proper protection of the marine environment for decades.  A central plank of this was putting in place a network of Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs), to protect the best and most threatened habitat.  We have worked intensively for several years with industry, fishing interests and others to select the best possible sites.  This locally-led process, an inspiring example of Big Society in action, put forward 127 potential sites.

Our suspicions that the government was not overly enthusiastic about MCZs were first raised a year ago, when the process was put back a year and the fisheries minister talked of designating a much reduced number.  Despite intensive lobbying, our fears have now been confirmed; no more than 31 will be put in place in 2013.  More may be designated in future, but there is no commitment to do so.

This is less than a quarter of the sites put forward.  Worse, it omits at least 18 sites that were highlighted by the government’s own advisors as being at high risk.  Some sites on the east coast have already been damaged in the last year.  What a set back to such a forward thinking initiative!

But what does it mean for Devon?  The blunt answer is that a mere four of the 17 sites proposed may get designated next year.  One of these, Lundy, is already a no-take zone and so we are only really looking at three new sites.  None of the south Devon river estuaries has been included, and no sites at all have been included on the north Devon coast!

Why has the government taken such a half hearted approach?  It has pleaded lack of evidence for some sites, and concerns about impact on commercial activities for others.  The first of these is intensely frustrating, because there already is a good evidence base for many potential MCZs.  The second is more worrying because, contrary to some of the rumours that have been circulating, MCZs are only intended to stop damaging activities, such as dredging or trawling along the sea bed.  Should we only protect sites that aren’t under threat from damage – and leave unprotected all those that might be?

This is a short-sighted approach that lacks both imagination and political courage.  Like so many aspects of contemporary environmental policy making, it appears to favour short term expediency over long term sustainability.  But there is a lot still to fight for.  There are plenty of voices within government who are equally disappointed with the announcement and support our cause.  So what we do next matters an awful lot.

First, we need to make sure that all the 31 potential sites are designated next year – this is certainly not a foregone conclusion, and we can expect plenty of resistance.  Secondly, we will be pulling out all the stops to gather the evidence needed to make the best possible case for designating the remaining sites over the coming years.  And finally, we will be pushing as hard as we can for effective protection of MCZs once they are officially in place.

A public consultation on MCZs has just opened, to which we will be responding in detail.  We will put more information on our website early in the New Year to let you know how you can help us push this forward.

This is still plenty to fight for.  We mustn’t let the best opportunity to protect our marine heritage in decades to slip away!

Help the marine environment – become a Friend of Marine Conservation near you.

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Climate change

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Harry Barton, DWT CEO, looks at the challenges of climate change and economic growth

‘In the volley of headlines about budget difficulties this summer, three bits of news quietly slipped under the radar.  The first – sea ice in the arctic melted to a far greater extent than ever before.  The second – half of the Great Barrier Reef destroyed in 25 years.  The main culprits for both are warmer temperatures and more acid seas.   Both of these are liked to CO2 emissions.

The magnitude of these findings is shocking.  The Great Barrier Reef is one and a half times the size of the UK.

I don’t believe we are yet at the point of no return.  But the time for action is running out.  Which bring me to the third piece of little reported news.  Our greenhouse gas emissions have gone up sharply, despite the recession.

This may be sounding like a dire old testament prophesy, but there is a glimmer of hope here.  Our emissions and climate change may not be so directly at odds with economic development as some have claimed.  It’s not so much whether, but how we develop.

Progress doesn’t have to mean bigger and more energy demanding.   Think of Alan Churing’s gargantuan 1950s computer and compare it to modern laptops which are infinitely more capable, more energy efficient and a tiny fraction of the size.

Complex challenges like climate change are amazing opportunities for us, if only we choose to look at them that way.

We are the first generation to realise that the power to shape our planet’s future lies entirely with us.  The question is, do we have the will and the stomach for the challenge?’

Have a look at what DWT is doing locally for the environment

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It’s been a wild week for the future of the countryside

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
DWT CEO Harry Barton

DWT CEO Harry Barton

Well, it’s official at last.  Protecting our most important habitats and threatened species is not standing in the way of economic growth.  And neither is there any evidence that the European legislation, on which this protection hinges, is gold plated.  These are among the principal findings of a Defra report published last week.

The Defra report reflects just one of a number of moves by government that are questioning, and possibly unpeeling, the laws and policies that protect our environment.  Hot on its heels is the government’s reform of the land use planning process, launched this week and to come into effect immediately.  Last autumn the government suddenly got cold feet about protecting our undeniably threatened marine wildlife.  And yet another review of wildlife legislation will be taking place over the coming year.

So far, the worst fears expressed by many green groups (Devon Wildlife Trust included) in response to these changes have not materialised.  But one could be forgiven for thinking that a bunch of people in the Treasury don’t like the environment an awful lot.  The Chancellor would appear to be among them.  In his autumn budget statement, he adopted harsh tones, with talk of “gold plating”, “ridiculous costs to business”.

More concerning than the rhetoric (no doubt intended to please particular interest groups) was the language that pitted the economy and the environment against each other.  The message seemed to be – if you want to get rich, then the natural environment must be sacrificed.

This is of course simplistic nonsense.  For starters, a number of recent studies have placed huge financial values on services, such as flood protection and a clean water supply, which wildlife habitats provide.  One such study – which to its credit the Defra report quotes – valued the services of the sites protected by EU wildlife laws alone at 200-300 billion euros per year.  That’s up to six times the funds spent by the tax payer to bale out Royal Bank of Scotland.  The fact that we currently place no financial value on these “ecosystem services” does not mean that it is in our economic interests to ignore them.

It’s not overly surprising that many developers would happily see the back of laws and policies that place controls on what they do and where they do it.  Few of us want to be regulated.  But let’s keep this in perspective.  Only 6% of land in England is protected by EU wildlife laws, considerably less than the European average.  In Devon, these areas include some of the wildest bits of Dartmoor and Exmoor and some of our most stunning coast.  In short, places where most of us would agree development ought to be controlled at the very least.  The government’s wildlife agency, Natural England, objects to less than 0.5% of the development proposals it receives each year relating to these sites; and in most cases the objections are satisfactorily resolved at an early stage.  Is this really what is holding back economic growth?

Our natural heritage means much more to us than can ever be expressed by dry financial statistics.  A recent poll found that the most common reason people cited for being proud to be British was our beautiful countryside – even more than our sense of humour!  Surely there’s some value in that, even if we haven’t yet worked out how to express it in sterling or euros?

There will always be an argument for adding value to our home by building an extension or a bigger garage.  But there comes a point when we have no garden left, and suddenly we don’t want to live there any more and it’s a lot less attractive to a potential buyer because there is nowhere for the children to play.  Wildlife laws are not there to stop all development and atrophy the landscape. They are there to achieve a sensible balance, to allow us to thrive and progress but also to live in places we value and of which we are proud.  This is the essence of sustainable economic development – and it is not the same thing as growth at any cost.

There is little evidence that weakening environmental controls will help bring back growth.  There is a great deal of evidence that weakening it could threaten or destroy the natural environment that so many of us value, and much of which is irreplaceable.
In fairness, there are many people in government who understand this.  We can only hope that the Treasury joins their ranks, and soon.

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Celebrating 50 years of protecting wildlife

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

A few words from Geoff Hearnden, Vice Chair of DWT Board of Trustees

‘Fifty years ago otters were regularly hunted and the large blue butterfly was drifting into extinction. Hedges were grubbed out and many wetlands drained, both aided by government grants.

Now entering its fiftieth year, Devon Wildlife Trust has been part of a mind changing process, which has resulted in a different attitude to the countryside and its wildlife. Those far sighted individuals who founded the Trust knew there was a problem but perhaps never expected that the Trust together with other organisations would collectively be so successful.

Yet now much of our wildlife is again threatened. Cuckoos are suddenly scarce, eels, crayfish, water voles and many butterflies vulnerable. Our Government is still not persuaded that urgent action is needed to save our sea and coasts.

So this is no time to feel complacent and relaxed, the second fifty years will be more demanding than the first.’

Find out how you can get involved in DWT’s 50th celebrations

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Winter chill comes from Autumn statement

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Yesterday morning we heard the Chancellor give his autumn budget statement.  I don’t imagine many of us were expecting a lot of good news.  What we were not expecting was a whole swathe of measures designed to emasculate years of carefully thought through and hard won environmental safeguards.  Among the most alarming were a significant weakening of the carbon tax on the most polluting industries, and a promise to review the laws that protect our most precious wildlife habitats and rarest species.  In comparison to this, the announcement of no fewer than twenty major road building schemes, and all the havoc they will inevitably wreak to local wildlife sites across the country, seems relatively minor.

As Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent with the Guardian starkly put it: “George Osborne’s message was clear – where green goals are in conflict with economic concerns, business interests will win.”

This comes at the end of a bleak year for the environment.  First we had the proposed sell off of the state’s forests. Then the proposals to tear up much of the planning system.  And less than a fortnight ago, the sudden back peddling on protecting marine wildlife.  What we are witnessing is nothing short of an assault by government on the environment.

It is tempting to believe that decisions like this are driven by immediate necessity.  In desperate financial circumstances, surely jobs should come first?  In reality, George Osborne had a choice of options, and he appears to have chosen those that please particular groups – those that see environmental legislation as no more than an annoying hindrance or bureaucratic meddling from Brussels.

It didn’t take much time for the government to realise that there was no real saving to be made by selling off the state forest.  The planning system may be frustrating but, despite what some commentators claim, only a small proportion of developments are actually stopped by it, and even fewer by wildlife protection laws.  In the few, often high profile cases where environmental and business interest really do clash, it is refreshing to know that there are still some places that are just too special to destroy.

The most worrying thing about all this is not the specific proposals themselves, which will hopefully be short lived or never come to be, provided we make enough noise.  It is the justification that is being given for them.  Most political decisions are underpinned by a narrative – a set of beliefs that convert the hard, dry world of policy into something more emotionally engaging.  Since the late 1980s, the narrative on the environment and development has revolved around the challenge of how we can find ways to increase our quality of life whilst staying within the planet’s natural limits – albeit with plenty of disagreement as to what those limits are and what quality of life actually means.  Naively or not, mainstream politicians have argued that we can get wealthier, we just need to develop differently, more sympathetically and with fewer fossil fuels.

The Chancellor has taken a subtle, but hugely significant step to change that narrative.  He has stated that environmental (and social) goals, however worthy or important, can only be considered if they don’t hinder business.  Which roughly translates as saying that there should be no limits on commercial activity, other than opportunity.  Or if you prefer your messages short and blunt, greed is good.  That’s talk which we haven’t heard openly from leading politicians for 25 years.

The most simplistic political messages are usually the easiest to sell, but they are also very often the most dangerous.  The challenges we face are complex and require us to think about the long term implications of what we are doing now.  The National Ecosystem Assessment, compiled by the government’s own advisers and published this autumn, looked at a number of different long term scenarios.  They found that the scenarios that emphasised environmental awareness and ecological sustainability were the ones that led to the largest medium to long term economic gains.  Exactly the opposite was found with the scenarios that favoured short term economic growth at the environment’s expense.

The good news is that this doesn’t all have to happen.  At this stage the Chancellor is making noises, possibly seeing how much resistance is out there.  We need to let him know there is plenty of resistance.  We need to remind him, and the Prime Minister, of their pledge to make this the greenest government ever.  We need to remind him of the massive benefits a high quality environment brings to society and the economy – £30 billion every year in terms of access to green space, £1.5 billion for providing clean drinking water, for example.  That’s why forward thinking water companies like South West Water are investing in protecting natural rivers and wetlands – it pays great dividends.

The Chancellor’s statement may not have made the headlines on a day when the national strike eclipsed pretty much everything else.  But it is, I honestly believe, a crunch point for those of us who care about the environment.  And that’s a whole lot of us.

We expect to hear very soon about the review of wildlife policy and how the government intends to handle it.  And as soon as we do, we’ll be letting you know. I’m hoping you’ll be supporting us just like you have done with marine wildlife. We can stop this!

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Stormy waters ahead for Marine Act

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Humankind is being challenged to rethink its relationship with the natural world.  The years ahead are going to have to be very different from the years behind.  Ever since we, as a species unlike any other, stepped outside the confines of the Earth’s natural systems and began to manipulate them for our own ends, it has been inevitable that one day consumption on demand for a growing population was going to hit the buffers.  Planet Earth is a very big place – but it is finite and so are the resources on it.  Some of those resources – metals for instance -  are non-renewable.  Others which are renewable – such as oil – take geological time scales to form.  It is estimated, for instance, that it took 3 million years to produce the amount of oil we use in one year!  With the non-renewables we only get one chance – hence the need to recycle.  However, miraculously, life on planet Earth throws up a whole host of regularly renewable resources, most of which have as their primary ingredients carbon and sunlight!  Food is clearly the most important of these.  A lot of our food now comes from plants and animals which we grow to eat on land – but in the sea we are still essentially hunter gatherers.

It is estimated that about one-sixth of the world’s protein is provided by fish.  Worryingly, this level of exploitation is clearly unsustainable.  Any number of studies in the last ten years have spelt out this message very clearly.  The evidence shows that at least one quarter of marine fish stocks are overharvested.  In many sea areas, the total weight of fish available to be captured is less than a tenth of that available before the onset of industrial fishing.  One of the most famous fish stock collapses of all times was on the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland.  From 1850 to 1950 the catch of cod was between 100,000 and 300,000 tons per year.  Then we got greedy. By 1970 it had peaked at 800,000 tons.  Today it is dead as a fishery – and not recovering.  This is a pattern broadly replicated across the planet;  since the 1980s the quantity of fish caught by humans has been in decline – despite improvements in technology and increases in effort.  Worse still, the techniques being used to secure this excessive and unsustainable catch are in many instances damaging the wider marine environment, making it less capable of producing more fish for the future.

What does this mean at a local level?  Well, in Europe, we know that most fish stocks are being fished beyond their maximum sustainable yield and that 30% are outside safe biological limits.  This is the tragedy of the Grand Banks being revisited nearer home.  The sea could offer an endless annual harvest, fished within sustainable limits.  Once you start taking more than a species can sustain, you are in a downward spiral.  We are currently in that downward spiral – and also largely in denial about it.

Ahead of us lies a crucial event which will set a radically new direction – or put the final seal on our failure.  The Marine and Coastal Access Act provides for the establishment of ‘ecologically coherent network of well-managed marine protected areas’ in which all marine life, fish included, can thrive.   The decisions we make in responding to the challenges of this laudable aspiration will affect the ability of our descendents to avail themselves of food (and other services) from the sea.   That is a grave responsibility!

The fish we love to eat do not live in isolation in the marine environment.  They are part of the same complex networks which apply on land.  You can’t grow cows and sheep without grass;  you can’t grow cod and mackerel without plankton.  Fish need to live long enough to spawn successfully before being caught.  Their young need nursery areas which offer food and protection before they have any chance of reaching eatable size.  Our present management of the marine environment is diminishing breeding stocks, breaking food chains and destroying nursery areas.  Common sense requires us to change our ways.  Establishing an ecologically coherent network of marine protected areas would be a very good first step.

It is entirely understandable that the main economic beneficiaries of humankind’s unsustainable management of its marine environment should be concerned about change.  Of course it will affect them – how can it not?  Fishermen are now calling for ‘traditional’ fishing grounds to be excluded from the network.  Traditional is an emotive word.  Modern fishing has not been bound by tradition when it comes to fishing gear and fish-tracking technology.  If ‘traditional’ means carrying on as before, it is not an option.  It is traditional approaches which have brought us to this point;  sustainable practices are the only way out.

The quality of the network will in the end depend on political will.  Since political will is sensitive to public opinion, it is to be hoped that society is ready to support change as a gift to future generations.  There will be no gain without pain but, if we carry on as we are, the future will eventually be more painful as fish stocks collapse – and the potential gain will be gone.

In Victorian times, Thomas Huxley declared that the sea was too vast and bountiful for human activity to ever have a damaging impact.  We now know that not to be true, not least because of the 400 (and rising) dead zones now to be found in the world’s oceans.  Our impact to date has been profound, reducing life in the seas to a shadow of its former self.  Our future depends on getting the best out of our seas, sustainably.  If we fail, it is likely to be part of a much wider collapse of natural systems which will throw up challenges to dwarf those we face today.  Society must work with those affected by change to ease their pain;  they have acted in good faith to meet society’s needs by legal means thus far.  But it must not duck the challenge and leave the future to pay the price.

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