At this week’s excellent conference hosted by the Zoological Society of London, there was considerable debate about how much space for nature was needed to stop species extinction, reverse declines and restore the services that nature gives us for free. Estimates ranged from current targets of 17% of land and 10% of sea, through to 30%, 50% and even 100% of the planet sustainably managed. The conservation community will need to agree its ambition soon, especially as the world leaders will gather in China in 2020 to agree new targets for nature.
As directed by the Sustainable Development Goals, we shall also have to be clear about how this ambition for nature helps address the other major societal challenges of preventing catastrophic climate change and ensuring a growing population also has food to eat – essentially offering, what one participant at the conference this week called, a joined up and just approach to saving the planet.
The conference concluded with a healthy discussion about the means by which any ambition will be achieved: regulatory protection, strategic planning, good governance and, of course, finance.
We must get this right because the current state of affairs is simply untenable. We know why we are losing nature (through habitat destruction, invasive non-native species, pollution – especially climate change - and over exploitation), we also know that saving and restoring it is both cheap and fantastic value.
RSPB Forsinard (Andy Hay, rspb-images.com)
Domestically we need a mere 0.1 per cent of GDP and globally, just $150 billion a year would go a long way to achieving global biodiversity targets. Yet we currently spend a mere quarter of what’s needed domestically and just a sixth globally. Incredibly, we spend five times more a year on pet care products (us$103 billion) worldwide than we do on the entire global network of protected nature areas (us$22bn). If that’s not bewildering enough, a recent estimate of the benefits of global nature suggests that spending us$150bn would yield a benefit to cost ratio of 1000. As Pavan Suhkdev, banker and leader of the TEEB Report into the economics of nature, observed, our current economic compass is remarkably faulty.
Last year, as part of their Social Impact Programme, the financial consultancy Oliver Wyman, provided the RSPB with ten weeks of pro bono, expert support to explore the possibilities of scaling up private sector investment in nature conservation activities. The experience was hugely educational and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Oliver Wyman project team for accelerating our understanding no end.
At a separate Conference – this one on Conservation Finance - at the British Library yesterday we launched a discussion paper summarising the key considerations arising from our explorations. Although we didn’t uncover any great, untapped sources of money, future prospects look challenging but good. The Finance sector, which has money to lend, is sympathetic to innovative investment ideas and the concept of impact investment that delivers social and environmental outcomes, grows apace.
Combine this trend with the flux, created by Brexit, to reform environmental funding and there are good reasons to believe we really can transform the conservation financing landscape. The Government’s 25 year Environment Plan for England already provides a strong tail wind. This Plan, echoed by the future of farming and land management Command Paper issued this Tuesday is framed around natural capital delivery and the possibilities of using public payments for public goods, like biodiversity, to ‘crowd-in’ additional private sector money to support conservation.
To meet the conservation ambition we need to transform financing in three ways.
First, we need to redirect all investment away from unsustainable activities by incentivising sustainable alternatives. This is precisely what we did with renewable energy, where technologies like solar and wind generation are rapidly achieving commercial parity with carbon based alternatives. We believe that sustainable food, timber and resource production will exhibit the same efficiency gains especially as the environmental costs of unsustainable methods escalate. Second, we need governments to continue to play their part. Currently, UK public spending on nature conservation both nationally and internationally is in decline. There is a danger that the funding environment will also be negatively affected by Brexit. As well as boosting the amount of money available for wildlife friendly farming as signalled in this week’s Defra Future of Farming consultation, we need the governments of the UK to work together to ensure they replace the lost EU environmental funding (estimated as £428m) which will arise once we leave the EU.
Third, we need to create new investment flows for the protection and restoration of nature. Two decades of brilliant science has shown us the scale of the human benefits conservation delivers, but economics shows us that many of these benefits - carbon, water quality and so forth - are complex, hard to measure and virtually impossible to market. Our report outlines the options we think are available and what needs to happen to unlock new investment.
Conservationists and investors already have the will to grow conservation financing but governments hold the key to finding the way. Fortunately, we have the example of social impact investing, where the UK Government led the world in innovative financing approaches for valued public services and good purposes. Financing nature is a challenge that a concerted effort by a coalition of government, conservationists and financiers can, and must, overcome.
I hope and expect that this debate will intensify in the run up to and beyond the crucial meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in China in 2020.
Isn't it as much a question of what we can't afford not to do ?
It's becoming increasingly obvious that a whole range of issues we used to think solvable by pouring concrete or spraying pesticides can only be tackled by relieving the pressure on the environment. Unlike the easily costed things given priority today, like food, many of them can only happen here in Britain - flooding can only be dealt with in the affected catchment, and access to the natural world close to our towns and cities is very site specific.
There are two huge streams of finance held back only by our inability to change: the savings from removing the collateral damage from intensive agriculture in particular, and, as Labour is rightly highlighting, doing something about the rationing scheme that is our planning system which has been allowed to evolve into little more than financial speculation, enriching the richest whilst hitting the poorest and the environment hard.
One further point. I realise it is probably mission impossible, but may be it is worth exploring how the UK might still be linked into the EU Life Fund. The Government is suggesting that links are maintained with certain other European Institutions so may be the EU life fund can be included. It is so vital for wildlife that UK conservation organisations, especially the RSPB, maintain strong working relationships with the EU., including financial ones.
This suggestion may sound silly but may be its worth a try, one never knows ones luck.
redkite
Well done RSPB and all the other conservation organisations for addressing here and now the coming problem of finance for nature. It is certainly a vitally important one.
I think it will be a tough one to solve and to maintain the current levels of finance.
Unfortunately Governments, politicians, and institutions have a habit of saying comforting words but not matching their words with deeds
Good luck and thank you for all your efforts on this front.