Yesterday morning was spent with RSPB Council but the afternoon was spent near Parliament.
The streets were full of students and teachers. I know copying things is one way to get your homework done but I smiled slightly when seeing some placards saying 'Some cuts never heal!' - I think we got there first!
Caroline Spelman was giving evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee and I sat in and listened.
Before she went in, I had a brief chat with the Secretary of State about the CSR outcome and her success in Nagoya. And I thanked her for her hand-written thank you letter for the book of images and thoughts of RSPB members that we gave her. She said that the book had travelled with her to Japan and that she had looked at it several times - she actually said that it 'meant Nagoya' to her.
But the Committee weren't giving out many gifts and one of the bees in their bonnet was to try to give Ms Spelman a hard time on the abolition of the Sustainable Development Commission. I'm not sure they really landed a heavy blow on Ms Spelman. Her argument was that sustainable development was now mainstreamed within government and there was no need for an external body to nag. Her evidence was that 1) Oliver Letwin is apparently going to 'SD-proof' the Business Plans of all government departments, 2) there is plenty of evidence of sustainability thinking in the other Departments' Business Plans already and 3) the EAC should itself take up some of this task and invite other Ministers in front of them to quiz them on their intentions. Let's take these one by one.
It's good that Mr Letwin is going to do this - we might send him some helpful suggestions in due course. When will the Department of Transport ditch the anti-rainforest Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation that puts biofuels into your petrol and diesel whether you like it or not?
Ms Spelman had clearly done her homework for this meeting and she gave a list of evidence, department by department, of the green-ness of their Business Plans:
We'll have a look at them all and see how green they seem to us.
Ms Spelman came back again and again to the suggestion of getting other Ministers in to account for their actions (will this make her popular with her colleagues, I wonder?).
Zac Goldsmith said that he was delighted to hear that HM Treasury were keen on having audits of natural capital to set next to those of financial capital (why was I the only one who laughed at his dry humour, I wonder?) and asked Ms Spelman who, precisely, in the Treasury was interested in all this sustainability stuff. Ms Spelman replied that the Chancellor himself was terribly green - we must check the official record to be sure of her exact words as those certainly weren't them. I would pay money to see Mr Osborne answering questions on the sustainability credentials of the Treasury as I am sure he would do it brilliantly.
Ms Spelman clearly wanted to talk more about Nagoya than the Committee wanted to hear - I wanted to hear about it! An interesting point she made was that the £100m that she was able to announce in Nagoya in the REDD+ talks for rainforest protection came from the DFID budget. I was impressed that she said that DFID, DECC and Defra had worked hard to send one Minister to Nagoya with a brief for all three departments and that the same would happen in Cancun in December where Chris Huhne would be going. But that there would be one team of officials from across the three departments involved. This actually does sound very much like joined-up government.
The Lawton Review got a thumbs up (but no promise of enough money to implement it all - but that's hardly surprising) and the Natural Environment White Paper was given plenty of mentions - there's a lot hanging on it, I think.
The extra money for HLS was mentioned as a sign of government commitment to the environment - that's how we see it too.
I cannot help but think that Ms Spelman is quite a 'good thing' - she has won me over with her words and a growing number of deeds. I'm half hoping she will do something awful (no, not really) so that this blog could be more interesting on the subject!
Ms Spelman has even got to a similar position as Hilary Benn - although she expresses it slightly differently. I was struck, and I mentioned it here a few times, by the previous Secretary of State's suggestions that climate change, food security, biodiversity loss etc were only separate issues like the fingers of the same hand are separate - they are all joined together in reality. Ms Spelman has got the same message - that poverty alleviation, climate change and biodiversity loss are all part of the same picture and need to be dealt with together not separately. A very similar analysis to Mr Benn's, and just as true.
NGOs even got a positive mention. The Secretary of State said that she had lots of very good NGOs as stakeholders in her department, some of whom were household names, with large memberships, with good ideas and some of them were probably listening to her words. The RSPB certainly was.
But lest you think I have lost all critical faculties, it would have been better if Ms Spelman had got the right name for the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution as she is abolishing it. It wasn't just a slip of the tongue as she said that everyone now believed in Environmental Protection, it was mainstreamed, and so one didn't need a Royal Commission to do that job. A small slip, which in my very positive view of Ms Spelman I hesitate to mention, in what was a polished performance in front of the Committee.
Thanks for all your reporting Mark, it is really interesting to keep up to date like this.
This is a fantastic review of the ways that money may be invested in rainforests and provides an awful lot of opportunity for contemplation. Bob Philpott (above) mentioned ways to take costa rica out of poverty and this relates to these opportunities.
www.rainforestconservation.org/.../14-institution-of-economic-measures-favorable-to-rainforest-preservation
Mirlo
the politest thing i can say is that if you continually carp on that the £460 million grants given as environmental grants are wasted you may end up with them being taken away with very little detrimental effect to farmers but seeing the RSPB are very keen on HLS suggest they are at least stopping things getting worse and perhaps someone from RSPB needs to tell you they support them or you directly ask Mark.I have never heard anyone else suggest HLS a waste of money and lots of us would prefer money due to U K to be used in U K but do respect the different view but lots of overseas aid ends up where it shouln't.Everyone is to blame for wildlife going backwards over the last 50 years not just farmers,for instance you seem obsessed with the damage farmers have done and yet you have not mentioned the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico and of course hundreds of other things.Find it very hard to understand how you bring criticism of say HLS into a blog WESTMINSTER HOURS.I do not intend to comment or even look at the blog Westminster hours again but it is time Mark told you Environmental Grants to farmers are doing good at least stopping things getting worse.You will not find on any blog or comment where i have said that wildlife not gone backwards in the last 50 years but we all have to live in today's world not middle of last century.
Hate against farmers just has to come in somewhere,pity those people have a full belly on cheap food.
All these high politics with reams of platitudes are all well and good but down at the rockface things look very different. Many biodiversity projects are about to get trodden on by one of horsemen of the apocalyse wielding a very large axe. With many Councils front loading massive cuts there's little hope. Years of work and knowledge are going to get dumped in the nearest skip, local partnership working will break and the progress of the last two decades reversed. It will be impossible to rebuild. All that will be left will be the charities who may find they have little option but to withdraw to their nature reserves.
So you'll forgive me for being cynical about such blogs. Time to get out into the real world and see what's really happening. The charities are our last best hope. Pressure on the centre yes but pressure at the local level vital. And it's now or never. Pickles and Local Authorities need to be your target as much as Spelman.