13/02/2019

The launch of the long-awaited 25-year environment plan has come and gone, mostly submerged beneath the ‘war on plastics’. There were sensible political reasons for tapping into the popular consciousness via the Blue Planet factor, but where has this approach left all the major aims and objectives of the environment plan? It’s an important vision and foundation for action, and there is a need for a greater awareness and sense of urgency that goes far beyond the plastics waste issue.

It’s the chance to establish the key concept of ‘natural capital’ - accounting for the value of good air, water and soils in both the economic and physical health of the nation - to make the term an essential part of the language around any and all decision-making of planners, developers, business and industry. In the context of setting out post-Brexit priorities, for example, this is the opportunity for the UK to detach itself from the Common Agricultural Policy, and to create its own version with natural capital at its heart.

This is going to take a shift in attitudes, understanding and support from across the range of stakeholders, including the general public. We need to stop thinking in terms of ‘ecosystems services’, the environment as the provider of free resources. It all comes at a cost of one kind or another, a drain on the stock of our natural capital, and this always needs to be taken into account. And there’s the problem. Decision-makers in business or in planning new developments have tended to see only the immediate costs of measures that avoid or mitigate environmental impacts.  What’s needed is a mindset which thinks about whole life costs, the long-term implications and associated costs of not investing into maintaining and improving the stock of natural capital: what happens if farmers don’t de-intensify and limit use of chemicals; if new developments don’t include sustainable drainage; if industry doesn’t find better ways to re-use its by-products? Seeing environmental resources integrated with economic terms - capital alongside natural capital, rather than hard capital versus the principles of an ecosystem - it’s possible to demonstrate cost reductions and cost benefits.

Natural capital is based fundamentally on co-ownership, meaning more attention to chains of responsibility and impacts, and the necessary co-operation involved will be essential. So, for example, why shouldn’t farmers be paid for allowing their lands to act as floodplains, diverting water away from homes and businesses? In this way, they are providing ‘public goods’, and making huge savings for public services and individuals. If landowners are incentivised to restore peatlands and uplands then there’s less soil erosion, a reduced flow of nutrients into water systems, less need for water treatment. Anglian Water is one example of an organisation collaborating with farmers on their use of slug pellets, working with them to find alternatives that mean less contamination and lower costs for itself and, ultimately, for customers. We can’t, of course, start paying organisations and landowners to obey the law - this is something different, a recognition that actively contributing to protect and improve natural capital leads to tangible returns.

We need to start establishing natural capital benefits onto balance sheets. Government plans to fund the planting of 11 million trees are a good example. It’s a cost of millions to the taxpayer, but the returns will be far higher: as new resources of timber, areas for recreation, and in creating the kind of landscape people want to live in, that has been proven to be important to both physical and mental health.

The first step to moving forward with the plan is to create a consensus on what success looks like. Generally speaking, we know that air, water and soils are in a state of degeneration in the UK - so where do we want to get to in 25 years’ time? What are the realistic milestones we can expect along the way, to know we’re getting there? And that means participation from the start from the public and all stakeholders, to ensure the vision of our major and significant environment plan isn’t ignored and pushed aside. No-one would deny the seriousness of the level of plastic wastes in our oceans, but the rush of public interest in this cause can’t be allowed to become a blinding distraction.

 

By Professor Leon Terry, Director of Environment and Agrifood, and Paul Leinster, Professor of Environmental Assessment and former Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, Cranfield University