Stepping Up for Nature – a look back to the launch

At last I’ve got a few moments to reflect on yesterday’s hectic activities in London as we launched our new campaign – Stepping Up for Nature

You can see pictures from yesterday by looking at the earlier posts – it was fun getting impressions of the day out as it happened, it’s the first time we’ve done that.

In the evening Mike Clarke, our chief executive, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman and our president Kate Humble spoke to our invited audience.

Caroline Spelman, Kate Humble and Mike Clarke at yesterday’s event (photo credit David McHugh)

If you would like to catch up you can read the background to our new campaign here, and on BBC Radio 4’s blog by Tom Feilden, here.

Here’s a summary of the speeches given by Mike Clarke and Caroline Spelman.  Mike Clarke opened the evening:

The case for action has become all the more compelling

• Global Biodiversity Outlook concluded that we had failed to halt the loss of biodiversity
• In the UK, we have made some good progress but widespread species are still in decline.
• Business as usual means that nature will go through the first mass extinction event in 65 million years.

And this really matters.

• We believe that there is a moral imperative to conserve nature and that indeed was the starting point for the previous Conservative Government in the country’s first ever white paper on the natural environment.
  Nature is crucial for our quality of life.
• Vital role of nature in the planet’s life support systems.
• So, now is the time to step up to meet the challenge.

The agreement at Nagoya (last year’s international conference on biodiversity in Japan), in which our Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman,  played a central role in securing the negotiations, was a clear message that we have to commit to halt the loss of biodiversity and begin restoring it by 2020.

RSPB’s members, volunteers and staff will play our part to the full and continue to do what we do best, as part of BirdLife International the largest global nature conservation partnership.
We plan to encourage millions of steps by our supporters for nature and enable those taking them to see how their action fits with the bigger picture.

And we will continue to offer advice, encouragement and, where necessary, provide scrutiny and challenge to ensure that the Government is also stepping up for nature.  Only the Government can take some of the big steps that are needed. We look to the Government to show leadership both at home and on the international stage. Indeed in the words of the last white paper on the natural environment – no function of Government is less optional.

The forthcoming Natural Environment White Paper provides a wonderful opportunity for the Secretary of State to outline her ambition.

First, if we are achieve the global targets for 2020, the Government needs to set out how it will measure annual progress in terms of outcomes for Nature and commit to actions that ensure the milestones on the way to 2020 are reached.

Second, finding new money to support nature conservation in these austere times is vital and doing more to make polluters pay and a levy on the use of peat in compost is something that would fix an acute problem quickly.

Third, agricultural stewardship and the planning system are the two most critical tools for implementing a vision for the natural environment. The Secretary of State did well to secure funding for the HLS scheme in the CS Review, we now need her colleagues in Department of Communities and Local Government to ensure that the new planning framework continues to protect wildlife, encourages local people to make a positive choice for nature on their doorstep, and empowers local nature partnerships to help restore nature at a landscape scale.

The challenge we now face after Nagoya is too big for one organisation. It needs concerted action by civil society, business and government. The RSPB is stepping up to the challenge and I hope Government is prepared to step up too.

Every step you take for nature is a step towards a healthier and more sustainable planet. So my question to you all is, what will your next step be? Commit to it now and make it happen.

Caroline Spelman responded:

We are looking at how to join up wildlife sites, establishing the green infrastructure and ecological connectivity Professor Lawton described in his report Making Space for Nature, published last year.

We want to take forward Professor Lawton’s recommendations, and encourage these new approaches in our Natural Environment White Paper and we are actively exploring how we can do this.

One way will be to tap into the expertise that is on offer through groups such as the RSPB. Thousands of individuals will walk past the same neglected area each day – but there will be some who will recognise its potential, and who can help turn it around.

They will see it as a piece of natural capital; that, if nurtured properly, could return extraordinary wealth to the community. This is where members of wildlife groups and local communities can make a difference: spotting the areas and what needs to be done to them, galvanising communities, linking up with groups in other areas. This is truly where the Big Society can make a difference – helping to build these stepping stones and wildlife corridors that Lawton talks about for the benefit of the country.

By using the unique passion that exists up and down the country through member organisations and groups such as the RSPB, we can set up a network of local advisors to farmers, helping them to achieve positive outcomes from High Level Stewardship Schemes. We know it can be done. The RSPB has been running the Volunteer and Farmers Alliance that has surveyed over 5000 farms since it started in 1999. It’s just a case of building on it and having the right frameworks in place.

By working together with farmers these groups can help us gather the information to effectively monitor how our money is being spent and the success it is having. We have invested significantly in HLS schemes, and we managed to get an agreement in the Spending Review to increase it by over 80% over the next four years. If what farmers are doing is not working, then with this help, changes can be made to make sure we are getting value for money.

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