It’s different in Scotland. True in so many ways. The RSPB works throughout the UK and this means respecting and working within the devolved structure of Government. During a year that has seen unprecedented grass roots activism around forestry and planning in England, I’ve detected a certain schadenfreude from colleagues in the other three countries watching as the nature of the shires comes under siege.
The game has changed. For three decades we’ve had a legal framework that has enabled a measure of success in holding onto some of our best and most iconic wildlife. One indicator of this is that before the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher passed the Wildlife and Countryside Act in 1981, 12% of our nationally important Sites of Special Scientific Interest were damaged each year.
Each year!
Effective protection, enshrined in law, averted a disaster by stopping this progressive loss of nature’s richness.
We only got an effective Wildlife and Countryside Act because the public mobilised and lobbied MPs in unprecedented numbers. Because the conservation movement united. And because a landmark piece of European legislation – the Birds Directive – mandated the Government of the day to take action.
But let not the shock and outrage of George Osborne’s brutish autumn statement, dripping with contempt for our natural heritage, disguise the fact that the UK has so far failed even to get to the baseline standard of designating the best sites and implementing the European nature directives. On land – real progress on sites (though great gaps – witnessed by the collapse of bird populations across the wider countryside) at sea – hopeless, thirty years of failure to get to grips with protecting our best sites at sea and now even that, we are told by the Treasury, is too much.
Gold plated? Fools gold Mr Osborne. The UK is at the bottom of the league of EU countries in terms, even, of designating their top wildlife sites.
There’s one crucial point that should not be lost in the current economic turmoil. The creation of the Birds Directive was driven principally by a requirement that the member states of the then Common Market were not allowed to grab a competitive advantage by trashing their natural environment. A progressive and, frankly, civilised view that holds more relevance today as the economic pressures are greater.
The Chancellor is re-writing history if he thinks that environmental legislation (let alone the environment itself) is the reason for our economic ills. He must know that, it must be obvious we’ve had decades of growth with the legislative framework in place. It should be clear that in the vast majority of cases development is not stopped – and is often improved by being tested by the ‘habs regs’ (the domestic Habitat Regulations that provide the way the European laws are enacted in the UK). Three recent ones – the London Array offshore wind development (goes ahead, red-throated divers protected) London Gateway port development (goes ahead, damage to the Thames estuary compensated before construction) and the A11 (just getting underway, mitigation to avoid damage to the Breckland population of stone curlews agreed).
Development secured, damage sorted – surely the politics of ‘and’ rather than ‘or’ that the Chancellor espouses.
So what is the new game? A review of the Habitats Regulations shouldn’t (if it’s objective and not politicised) hold many fears. It’s unnecessary as they were reviewed a few years ago and found to be fit for purpose.
Perhaps the Chancellor’s rhetorical bravado is really just a means of calming the markets – get tough on the natural environment, lop some of it off and lob it on the fire of the economy. Or perhaps it reveals a bleak lack of care about the quality of our lives, of our towns and countryside, of our coasts and hills; at the heart of the Coalition Government.
Why is the Treasury so wilfully ignoring the mounting evidence of the economic importance of ‘things like habitats’ to use the Chancellor’s own words. The 2004 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Stern Review in 2006, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (2010) and, most recently, the UK National Ecosystem Assessment – a canon of work that is difficult to ignore all concluding that the environment underpins the economy.
But that can’t be the whole story – are we not to believe the balm from DEFRA? We want to; there is much sense and real vision in what we are told; the Natural Environment White Paper contains the potential for real substance – signals that the Coalition Government is prepared to step up and make the commitment to stop the loss of wildlife and our natural environment
Where is the centre of environmental gravity in the Coalition Government? It is important we know – given it is signed up to a global commitment to halt and reverse the decline of biodiversity by 2020. If the Government’s words are to be believed – we need to know which ones they mean.
And it is important to our natural world – if halting the loss and starting to restore nature is to be an achievable aim, then Governments, businesses, organisations, civil society and individuals need to step up their game, painting the natural environment as a mere constraint is a very bad place to start.
And if you want a place to start – to step up at a time for nature at the most challenging time for nature for a generation – click here.
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