I had a good morning with Biodiversity Minister, Richard Benyon, yesterday.  While the weather was a little disappointing, Old Hall Marshes was looking great, hooching with waders and marsh harriers.  We discussed some of the challenges we face on the site and set it into the wider Essex/national context.  The reserve provided a much better backdrop for our discussion compared to the usual office environment. 

Mr Benyon's attention, like all his parliamentary colleagues, will turn today to the Queen's Speech: a moment for pageant and political intent.  I'll offer a view on its content tomorrow. 

In the meantime, I promised to pick up the offsetting theme continued by Sam Vine yesterday.  Sam outlined some of the challenges they are dealing with as biodiversity offsets are rolled out at state and national level (link here).  Much of what Sam said resonates with the RSPB’s thoughts, particularly the need to adopt a principled, robust and pragmatic approach to the development of any offset system to ensure that nature does not lose out.

Our interest in offsets is not to facilitate economic growth per se, but to see if they offer a way to stem decades of gradual biodiversity loss to development that has gone on outside our protected areas, with little or no redress.  Our starting point is that compensation (or offsetting) is an absolute last resort, once all measures to avoid and reduce possible impacts have been taken, and there is a clear need for the development that justifies damage to our steadily eroding natural capital.  We are not alone in wanting to avoid short cuts being taken – the Government’s own National Planning Policy Framework agrees, as does its Natural Capital Committee.

A well regulated, mandatory national system of offsets could offer one possible way of making those fine words a reality.  This could ensure, as the NCC’s report suggests, that development no longer leads to the erosion of our natural capital.  Designed properly, it could offer more effective ways to provide habitat and species compensation when it is considered necessary, while complementing wider landscape scale conservation and lowering overall costs through economies of scale.  However, we do agree with the NCC this should not be rushed in to headlong – that it should be ‘carefully explored after a clear set of principles and a policy framework has been developed.’  Scratch the surface of the biodiversity offset issue and you reveal a complex web of interrelated issues that all need to be got right if the goal of no net loss of biodiversity is to be achieved for real, rather than on paper.  Careful thought and real political will, based on robust science, is needed to implement an offset system worthy of the lofty ambitions often claimed for it.

Comparing the situations here and in Australia reveals some interesting similarities and some real differences.  The first is that a successful offsets scheme relies upon there being the political and social will to meet no net loss of biodiversity.  This means having strict rules about what has to be offset, when, and how it is done. At the same time, accepting that it will often not be possible to replace a lost habitat or species, so damaging development in the wrong place should not proceed.

But there are real differences that, in some ways, makes developing and implementing offsets in here more complex.  For example, unlike Australia, we do not have significant areas of native vegetation where little intervention and cost would be required beyond getting the habitat to a point where it can be left alone.  Our rich heritage of semi-natural habitats means knowledge of how to restore or create the conditions required by many habitats and species is still in its infancy and largely experimental.  As in Australia, sound science is essential.  Simply increasing the area of replacement habitat by five or ten fold and hoping it will work cannot make up for the permanent loss of valued biodiversity.  Even where we do know how to guarantee success, there is normally a need for continuing active intervention which brings with it associated costs over the course of decades.

So, we wait to see how the Coalition Government wishes to take forward its current work on biodiversity offsets in England.  The RSPB will continue to give serious thought to this issue that at one and the same time offers real opportunity for, and considerable risk to, the conservation of the natural world around us.

  • It is excellent that there is good dialogue between the RSPB and the Government. This has to be an absolute "MUST" if stemming biodiversity loss is to have a chance of succeeding. I do sometimes wonder though, that while Richard Benyon may be well intentioned on this front, whether, with Mr Paterson sitting above him and to a much greter extent Mr Osborne above him, if it is really in Mr Benyon's power to "deliver the goods". In the final analysis it boils down to whether this Government as a whole really  has the will to assist and help nature. I have to say going on the evidence of their actions, this is very doubtful. In making this comment this does not deminish in any way the need for dialogue and the RSPB is doing a brilliant job in this area.

  • If we accept the principle of offsetting (and that is itself debateable) then the mitigation hierarchy has to apply to the site affected - as you say Martin, offsetting has to be an option of last resort. Once that approach has been applied to the affected site, I would also suggest that the principles enshrined within the mitigation hierarchy should apply to the acts of offsetting ie restoration of degraded but surviving habitats should take precedence over creation of new ones; and actions to restorat threatened populations of species should take precedence over introductions. This approach is consistent with the "Conserve, Restore, Create" mantra.

    This begs the question "which habitats and species" should offsetting apply to? In theory SSSIs are not part of the offsetting approach, but what about unprotected areas of priority habitat and populations of priority species outside SSSIs? Is it justifiable or desirable to use offsetting "credits" to pay for restoration of unprotected priority habitat or priority species populations that are declining or disappearing? I would suggest it was - and a higher priority than creating new habitat or introducing species to create new populations.

    A pragmatic approach would be to look at where the resource described above exists, how amenable it is to restoration, and to what extent mechanisms are already in place to get the restoration happening quickly and relatively easily. I would suggest the obvious place to look is in publicy owned land, whether it be Forestry Commission, Defence land, Crown Estates, Local Authorities, former RDA owned land etc. These estates are either in danger of being sold off (eg Lodge Hill), built on (LA owned playing fields), or falling into neglect. Funding for their managmeent will continue to be cut under whatever government, and changes in CAP rules may well prevent them receiving that type of support. I hear some people crying "Biodiversity Duty" but in truth that has never worked despite valiant efforts to make it.

    This would be a good way of recycling private money back into the public sector in a highly hypothecated way - and rather than sites like Lodge Hill, or FC owned land being seen as "ripe for development", they could be seen as highly valuable public land, delivering multiple benefits, managed for public benefit in the long term, rather than short term private profit.