With all the hullabaloo over planning reforms in Northern Ireland, the anticipation over Defra's biodiversity offsetting announcement, and the England cricket team's heroics at Trent Bridge, I neglected to report on some good news.
Monday's guest blogger, George Monbiot may not be a fan of farm subsidies, but I hope that even he would be pleased to know that last week the Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, confirmed his commitment to funding for wildlife friendly farming in England. He said in the House of Commons that he would make use of the full flexibility allowed by the CAP and EU Budget deals to move 15% of CAP funding in Pillar 1 (the direct payments to farmers) into the next England Rural Development Programme, made up largely of agri-environment schemes.
This is good news for the natural environment and for those farmers that want to help recover the c60% of farmland species which have declined in recent decades. This is the benchmark against which Mr Paterson's counterparts in the devolved administrations should be judged.
The CAP reform deal fell a long way short of our aspirations for a Sustainable Land Management Policy but we now need to make the best of what we have. That means working with Defra and Natural England to help design agri-environment schemes to deliver as much for the environment as the funding allows and then supporting farmers put the right management in place.
And this makes me reflect on what George was saying in his blog this week. He wants us, and other conservation organisations, to go further and fast to remove human intervention from landscapes. I admire this aspiration - I know that I am not alone in finding wild landscapes and big predators awe inspiring. But it just isn't always possible or perhaps desirable in a highly fragmented and managed landscape like ours where there are so many demands from the land.
Our brilliant site managers have responsibility for looking after over 200 nature reserves and 150,000 hectares across the UK. They face constant choices, balancing objectives for the 15,000 species on our land as well as the needs and values of our neighbours and visitors. Whether they are restoring climax communities, such as at Abernethy and Mawddach Valley, managing semi-natural habitats like heathland and grasslands or creating new habitats at places like Lakenheath or Wallasea, I think our site managers do a remarkable job and our wildlife benefits as a result. It's worth noting that even in very big National Parks like Yellowstone, which is about half the size of Wales, there is still a fair amount of habitat management, including burning, but I'd hope that George celebrates what they have been able to do including, for example, reintroducing wolf.
And, as I have written previously, we do have to take some tough choices when trying to protect threatened species often struggling to survive on tiny postage stamps of land. Sometimes this may even mean trying to protect every individual. Crisis conservation sometimes demands intensive intervention and sadly this is what we face in parts of the country. So, yes, in extreme circumstances, we may try to find ways to minimise predation of lapwing chicks from buzzards by removing potential nesting habitat outside of the nesting season while enabling the buzzards to look for suitable habitat elsewhere. But to be clear, this certainly does NOT mean killing buzzards, or destroying active nests. We take action while still wanting to address the ultimate causes of species decline and investigating why predation is a problem. Our ambition is always to recover populations to such a level so that predation is no longer a problem.
I'd go further, our ambition is to go as wild as we can, working out what we can realistically do help restore natural processes for wildlife and, yes, for people as well. I hope that you, perhaps even George, would share this aspiration.
Hopefully I can provide some clarity around what funding transfers from Pillar I (direct payments) to rural development will mean financially.
Between 2014-2020, the UK is going to receive almost £20bn from the CAP - big sums indeed. But these are very unequally split, with 90% of the funds going to Pillar I, leaving rural development massively underfunded. In fact, compared the UK's current (2007-2013) allocation, we're facing a cut to rural development funds of over 20%.
Attempting to address this startling imbalance by transferring money from Pillar I to rural development appears therefore to be the only logical response. And it’s not like we haven’t got used to such transfers – in the current CAP we’re already transferring 19% in England.
It’s also important to remember that many agri-environment agreements will run into the new CAP period and will need to be paid for from its budget. Existing commitments in England will require some £1.8bn from the new allocation but when you consider that the UK’s entire rural development allocation (which covers England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland) is just £1.84bn it becomes very clear that modulation is not just logical, it’s a financial necessity.
It’s impossible to say exactly what a 15% transfer will mean for the English rural development budget because the decision on how to divide the £1.84bn has not yet been thrashed out by agriculture ministers across the UK. But given we’re playing with a much smaller UK pot of rural development money, and we can only transfer 15% into to it from Pillar I (not more, like we can currently), we’re likely to face a real terms cut to the amount of money made available for environmental schemes.
All this makes it even more important to spend this money well and on schemes that reward farmers who really deliver for wildlife on their farms. It also means we’re going to have to be smarter about what requirements are attached to Pillar I payments, such as cross compliance and the new ‘greening’ requirements many farmers will have to meet. Even with a 15% transfer, Pillar I will still represent, and by some way, the biggest source of funding for farming and in tough economic times, this money has to work harder – for taxpayers, for the environment and for the farming and rural community which depends on a healthy environment for food production, tourism and much more.