Examination of Witness (Questions 1-18)
26 MAY 2004
DR PAUL
JEFFERISS
Q1 Chairman: We are in a position to
start and I am sorry, Dr Jefferiss, for the delay. Also I am aware
that some of my colleagues need to move on quite quickly so what
I am going to attempt to do, with your agreement, is have a dialogue
with you for half an hour and then move on to the next witness
and give him half an hour as well. If we run out of time there
may be questions which we would like to address to you in writing,
if that is alright. Thank you. Can I begin by questioning the
term and the usefulness of the term "sustainable development".
One of my colleagues said to me in the tea room this morning that
the trouble with the word sustainability is that it does not mean
anything at all. Indeed, it is now being peppered around all sorts
of government documents to such an extent that it may undermine
the original purpose of developing the idea. What are your thoughts
on that?
Dr Jefferiss: I think the words
"sustainable development", like any other words, can
be abused by people who wish to cloak whatever agenda they may
have under some kind of respectable brand, but I do not think
that that necessarily undermines the validity of the concept of
sustainable development so long as some responsible authority
is prepared to define that concept closely and in, I suppose,
a more concrete and tangible way perhaps than it has been, and
that authority is obviously government. I think part of the point
of the sustainable development strategy review is going to be
precisely to try and focus the definition of sustainable development
in a way that is useful and I am happy to give you some suggestions
as to what direction we think that focus might take.
Q2 Chairman: Please do.
Dr Jefferiss: I think we would
want to emphasise the notion of quality of life. The goal of sustainable
development is not just to enable us to meet our needs without
compromising the ability of the future to meet their needs but
to meet our needs at the same time as enhancing the ability of
the future to meet their needs. And in that context I would seek
to redefine particularly the environmental objective within the
current suite of objectives, not just to protect the environment
but to protect and enhance the environment in the same way that
currently we are seeking social and economic growth or progress.
At the same time I would recommend considering reviewing the economic
objective to downgrade its importance or at least the intensity
with which it is expressed. I think the economic objective is
qualitatively different from the others in that economic growth
is a means to an end, not an end in itself, in the way that social
and environmental objectives are, and I think that high levels
of economic growth have not been shown empirically to be compatible
with sustainable development. On the other hand, I think all four
objectives should usefully be placed in the context of the need
to respect the carrying capacity of the earth's ecological limits,
which I see again as a qualitatively different form of objective
from the other four. Another important concept to focus our understanding
is the notion of integration of the four objectives rather than
prioritising one or another or trading one or another off against
the others. The final thing I would say is that it would be crucially
important for the strategy to give a clear commitment to policies
that will enact how the strategy defines sustainable development.
Broadly speaking, what I mean by that is a commitment to internalising
external costs in one way or another. That can be through regulation,
standards, or holding various actors liable for the damage they
cause through environmental taxation or through setting limits
which can be met through various forms of market trading. I think
the other part of policy will be education and communication,
both through formal education systems and through political leadership
and ministerial speeches, to let people know what sustainable
development is about and why there is a need to internalise external
costs. I think if we can change prices and change people's values
then we will see real change in behaviour.
Q3 Chairman: That all makes a lot of
sense and I am grateful to you but immediately you have raised
an issue which is one of the problems. Your definition of sustainable
development is actually slightly different from that of the WWF,
whom we will be meeting next and who set out in their memorandum
a definition which is not the same as yours. We have got the Office
of the Deputy Prime Minister's definition of sustainability which
will be different again. Clearly the Department of Transport has
a very different approach towards the notion of sustainability.
I just think one of the problems we have all got in trying to
move forward the agenda you so eloquently describe today is that
we do not have a consensus on what it is we are trying to do or
a label we can agree to pin to it.
Dr Jefferiss: I think that to
some extent you are bound to be right. It would be very difficult
and it would be unreasonable to expect there to be absolute consonance
between various interpretations of sustainable development. But
I hope that events like today's and the process of the review
of the sustainable development strategy will enable a dialogue
to be undertaken both at a national policy level and at a local
level on the ground whereby we can come to more of a consensus,
or at least a better understanding of the differences between
various interpretations.
Q4 Chairman: Is there not another problem
which is that the Government's approach to the whole strategy
is based on trying to achieve four different things simultaneously
so that is bound to give rise to tensions, is it not?
Dr Jefferiss: I think yes and
no. If you look at endeavours to achieve four things simultaneously
from society's perspective, and especially over the longer term,
then I do not think that there are tensions necessarily, especially
if you can identify and incorporate external costs in one way
or another because I think in that way you will achieve long-term
benefits for society as a whole. It may be that in doing that
there are short-term costs for particular groups or particular
individuals. But I think it is a mistake to distort policy for
the achievement of sustainable development in the short-term interests
of particular individuals or groups. Instead, long-term policy
for the achievement of sustainable development should be maintained,
and the needs disadvantaged groups addressed separately and directly.
To give you an example of what I mean, many analyses suggest that
energy efficient measures will yield long-term carbon and economic
benefits. We [the RSPB] have done an analysis of the ODPM's Sustainable
Communities plan that suggests that if the housing developments
in that plan were required to meet the Building Research Establishment's
Eco-Homes Standards for energy efficiency, then it would cost
about £130 per house in the short term but the cost/benefit
ratio over 30 years would be about one:six. It is in society's
interests to achieve that for environmental, social and economic
reasons but it is not going to be in the short-term interests
of individual home buyers, particularly poor people. Likewise,
putting up the price of domestic fuel will certainly reduce fuel
consumption but will adversely affect the fuel poor. However,
rather than structure energy and housing policy to accommodate
those individual needs it would be more rational and more in the
interests of long-term sustainable development to set much more
stringent building standards, to increase the price of fuel, and
to make sure that policy is in place directly to address the needs
of socially disadvantaged communities. That would be a more socially,
economically and environmentally effective way of dealing with
the issue.
Q5 Joan Walley: If I can just pick you
up on one of the things you said there. You talked about the importance
of internalising environmental costs and then you went on and
you talked about what is in the long-term interest is not necessarily
in the short-term interest and you gave the example of energy
efficiency and building regulations. What I really wanted to ask
you is how do you see a value being placed on time in all of this,
because it occurs to me, for example, when the Government is looking
at aviation policy, it may well see a possibility of moving towards
reduced aircraft emissions over a period of time but the time
is not internalised in terms of cost in any way. With many of
these things it is a trade-off between now and later but there
is no way of putting a value on time and costing that into the
way in which we need to change the way we do things in order to
get that long-term viability. I really would be interested in
your comments on that.
Dr Jefferiss: Economists would
say that there is a way of valuing time and that is by using a
discount rate. The problem is that the choice of the discount
rate crucially determines the outcome of the cost/benefit analysis
and, by and large, the discount rate used is that which would
be relevant in the commercial sector which is operating over a
two to three-year time horizon, rather than a social discount
rate which would be much lower. It is interesting that in that
regard the Treasury itself has recommended a 3.5% social discount
rate for the purposes of calculating the trade-offs between long
and short-term benefits, and it was using that discount rate that
we arrived at the six:one benefit to cost ratio. Even using a
10% discount rate for the particular analysis we did you would
still come up with a 4.5:1 benefit/cost ratio. In addition to
the time value of money, there is also the issue of whether we
have actually included all of the costs and benefits in the calculations
to which we applied the discount rate. The RSPB undertook a study
with Cambridge University of the relative economic sense of either
conserving wild nature or converting wild nature to various forms
of human land use, and found that in all cases we studied—and
this article was published in Science so it was a credible,
peer-reviewed scientific article—it made no economic sense
whatsoever to convert wild nature particularly to unsustainable
forms of land use and the benefit/cost ratio was at least 100:1
for preserving wild nature. But, even then, the benefit/cost ratio
was under-estimated because there were many forms of value that
we simply did not incorporate because we could not possibly calculate
them. They were fundamental values, various forms of ecosystem
service, like climate regulation, water cycling, nutrient cycling,
and so on. I think there is the time issue and the question of
the scope of the costing and benefiting. Finally, I would say
if we do not take account more adequately then there is a possibility
that we will create problems that are irreversible or very long-term
indeed. Climate change is the most obvious example.
Q6 Chairman: You argue very strongly
that the concept of equity should become the eleventh principle
in this context but what actual role do the principles play in
practice? The first one is putting people at the centre. What
is the practical value of these principles and what impact would
inserting equity actually have?
Dr Jefferiss: With one exception,
which is the economic principle of an open and supportive economic
policy (which I can come back to if you wish) I think the principles
can serve two functions. One is that they can form a general backdrop
to policy decisions that may create a general awareness of a variety
of issues that need to be taken into consideration alongside meeting
the four primary objectives. However, I think it would be a useful
exercise for policy makers to screen their decisions explicitly
against the principles. So for example, with the polluter pays
principle, we would have had a more sustainable outcome to the
EU Liability Directive if decision-makers had considered closely
whether or not the final version of that actually met the polluter
pays principle, which I do not think it did. So both to create
the scene and as a specific screen for decision-making they can
be useful. On the economic one I would question its use simply
because it is entirely unclear, to me at least, what it means.
If it means supportive in the sense of supporting subsidies under
CAP or CFP regimes then clearly that is damaging to the economic,
social and environmental agenda. If it means open and supportive
in the sense of fully liberalised markets that do not take account
of external social and environmental costs, then likewise that
will lead to environmental and social degradation. So without
a much clearer definition of what that principle is about I would
simply remove it.
Q7 Chairman: There is another principle
which is the precautionary principle. How do you feel that relates
to the need to work on an evidence-based approach?
Dr Jefferiss: I do not see any
incompatibility between science-based approaches and policy making
and the precautionary principle. I think it is quite possible
to conceive of situations in which we have more than adequate
scientific justification for believing that a problem might well
occur but insufficient scientific evidence to know whether it
will occur or to what extent it will occur. And it will be rational
under those circumstances to wait and try and find out. Examples
of that obviously are genetically modified crops where I think
it was extremely rational to instigate the field trials. Another
example that the RSPB is centrally concerned with at the moment
is the impacts of renewable energy on birds. There is scientific
evidence to suggest that there may be a problem and under those
circumstances we think it would be rational to examine whether
there is a problem before proceeding too far and too fast.
Q8 Mr Thomas: That is precisely what
I wanted to ask you about because any strategy has to deal with
these conflicting aims and, as you just mentioned, the RSPB itself
has had to face up to the potential effect at one level on bird
wildlife of renewable energy, and I am thinking of wind farm developments,
and you have also got to take into account what effect climate
change will have on the bird population. How can any strategy
deal with an evidence-based approach in that sense, not only from
yourselves as an NGO but also from government. You are under pressure
from your members who want to see bird life protected and conserved.
The government is under pressure from voters; is there any sense
that a strategy can seriously address these issues and come above
the narrow political constraints that both NGOs and government
operation within?
Dr Jefferiss: I think the answer
is yes. Again, I do not think those kinds of science-based needs
are necessarily incompatible with moving the sustainable development
agenda ahead. I do not think the instigation of field trials for
GM crops has done anything other than give us a more rational
basis for decision making. If it incurred a financial cost and,
in the scheme of things, a relatively short delay, then I think
those costs are more than adequately compensated for by the benefits
of increased knowledge that they yield. In the case of wind specifically
I would like to go on record as saying the RSPB sees climate change
as the single largest global threat to the environment. Again
we contributed to an article in Nature suggesting that
17 to 35% of species may be committed to extinction by 2050 under
the IPCC mid-range climate scenarios. So, we recognise that climate
change is the worst possible threat to birds over the not so very
long term. For that reason we are strongly committed to the Government's
renewable energy targets. We run our own renewable energy product
and sell a rooftop PV system to members (and anyone else who wants
to buy it). We are building renewables on [RSPB] reserves. But
we think it would be rational, on the basis of what we know, to
learn more about the effects of large and broad scale deployments
of renewable energy before proceeding too fast. We do not think
that that would incur an undue delay in rolling out the renewables
programme. On the contrary, we are concerned that if we do not
understand these effects better than we do now it might precipitate
some kind of backlash that in the longer run would do more to
delay the development of renewable energy. To give you a sense,
I think we could address the problem by simply putting considerably
more resources quickly into gathering the kind of knowledge that
we do not yet have about bird movements, behaviour and locations
and about the impacts of renewables on them.
Q9 Mr Thomas: Are not the effects of
climate change, which you acknowledge yourself is the single biggest
threat to our environment. so pressing under recent information
that we have had (in the reports we have had this week for example)
all this debate, in this kind of context is not the precautionary
principle that you are advocating now one that de facto
will lead to the development of rather less amenable forms of
energy and the Government needs to crack on and not hold back
on development of a renewable future?
Dr Jefferiss: On the contrary,
as I said, unless we have greater clarity on these issues I fear
that the lack of clarity will create the possibility of using
it as a lever to slow down the renewables programmes. Parties
that are opposed to renewables development can very easily latch
on to the lack of scientific knowledge about various impacts to
justify delay. What we are saying is that we could expeditiously
gather the knowledge which would prevent that from happening.
At the moment the government is spending about £350 million
on direct grants for renewable development and the amount coming
through the renewables obligation will be in excess of £1
billion by 2010. By contrast, the amount being spent on research
to gather the kinds of information I am talking about is of the
order of tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Given the importance
of the issues we feel that it would be entirely sensible for the
Government to spend perhaps £3 million on gathering the kinds
of data that we are talking about in a period of two to three
years since that would effectively enable everyone—us, the
developers, government and everyone else—to move forward
with confidence. We do not think the cost and timetable for such
research need lead to the kinds of concerns you express—it
would remove them—but I can understand why you fear that
it might.
Q10 Mr Chaytor: Your written evidence
was quite positive about the impact of the Government's strategy
and I think you said that it has kept sustainable development
firmly on the table, but does that apply equally to all government
departments or do you detect a difference?
Dr Jefferiss: I do detect a difference,
yes.
Q11 Mr Chaytor: Are you prepared to name
and shame?
Dr Jefferiss: I would not put
it in quite such black and white terms as that. I think different
departments have shown strengths and weaknesses in different areas.
Defra as the lead department on sustainable development itself
has done well, by and large, on sustainable development itself,
on moving forward on agriculture policy, on sustainable production
and consumption strategies, and so on. I think other departments
are beginning to engage with the sustainable development strategy
but are not necessarily engaging with it in all its aspects. For
example, I think the DTI has made important strides on climate
change and renewable energy in the last three to five years—really
important strides—and I think that needs to be recognised,
but some of the balancing aspects of sustainable development that
I alluded to in the answer to my last question have not been fully
internalised yet. I think the Treasury, which obviously has a
very important role to play, and arguably the most important role
to play has made important contributions to sustainable development
through its statement of intent on green taxation for example,
through its commitment to subjecting departmental submissions
under the Comprehensive Spending Review to sustainability assessment,
and assessment against their public service agreement targets.
But at the same time I do not think the Treasury has necessarily
carried through the implications of those reviews into its actual
practice. For example, in maintaining momentum on the green taxation
agenda the Climate Change Levy was a very welcome introduction
but we have not seen very much practical progress since then.
There has been some progress on company car taxation and fuel
tax differentials but not as much as we might have hoped on pesticides
taxation or taxing diffuse water pollution, for example. DFID
is obviously committed to sustainable development and in its various
literature it is committed both to the notion of poverty eradication
as a means to protect the environment and environmental protection
as a means to eradicate poverty. But in practice it has tended
to privilege poverty eradication over environmental protection,
or at least explicit environmental protection, with the expectation
and assumption that environmental protection will necessarily
follow from poverty eradication when I do not think there is necessarily
the proof that that is always the case. Certainly with respect
to biodiversity conservation within environmental protection that
has received inadequate attention, not just from DFID but from
government as a whole.
Q12 Mr Chaytor: That is a very useful
survey of the contribution of departments but would those developments
not have happened without an overarching strategy? What I am interested
in is whether you think it would have been likely that individual
departments would have taken individual initiatives on climate
change, on green taxation for example, without the strategy, or
are we in danger of strategy overload because we have got a UK
strategy, presumably there is a strategy in the devolved parliament
in Scotland and the Welsh Assembly, we may have regional government
and regional government strategies. What is the real purpose of
the overarching strategy as against simply encouraging individual
departments as agencies to respond on very specific things?
Dr Jefferiss: I think the strategy—I
may be wrong and it is hard to prove this—has driven progress
further and faster in departmental action than would have been
the case without the strategy.
Q13 Mr Chaytor: You do not think we are
getting bogged down in too much strategy or too many bureaucratic
structures to deliver this?
Dr Jefferiss: As I say, I think
the issue of plan proliferation is a different issue and is a
serious one, but I think the UK SD strategy has caused departments,
like the DTI for example, to develop their own sustainable development
strategy to engage in the CO2 agenda. I think PSA targets like
the farmland birds target for Defra have encouraged it to accelerate
formal policy in the agriculture sector, for example. So I think
the strategy and its associated indicators and targets have had
a material effect. The question of departmental strategy proliferation
is a different and real one because not only do we have departmental
strategies, we have departmental strategies and departmental sustainable
development strategies, which are not always the same thing and
which do not always mutually acknowledge one another. We have
the EU internal and external dimensions of sustainable development.
As well as the UK strategy we have regional spatial strategies
and planning guidance, regional economic strategies, regional
sustainable development frameworks, the National Assembly for
Wales, SD strategy and so on. And I think you are right. We have
seen an explosion of these, which on the one hand is a good thing
because people are engaging with the agenda, but I think there
has been insufficient attention paid to making sure that those
strategies are joined up, are mutually consistent, and are focused
on priority issues. I am hopeful that one of the outcomes of the
current strategy review will be the setting of priorities at the
UK level which can then be interpreted flexibly but consistently
through a variety of devolved means.
Q14 Mr Chaytor: You have also said that
the time has come to move on from the incremental approach and
adopt some bolder shifts in policy. But is there a danger that
when governments do adopt bold environmental policy and come across
political resistance, the green lobby suddenly vanishes and is
no longer seen in support of it? I think of the September 2000
fuel duty dispute. What do you think the role of NGOs such as
yours is in further encouraging and then supporting bold strategies
when the Government has the courage to develop them?
Dr Jefferiss: It is a charge that
has been levelled against the environmental NGOs in the past and
no doubt—
Q15 Mr Chaytor: —Maybe again in
the future in October when the planned increase in fuel duty is
on the agenda again.
Dr Jefferiss: I hope that there
is an increase in fuel duty and I hope there are not the same
problems, but time will tell. I am sure we bear some responsibility
for not having anticipated that particular event or for not having
reacted more effectively when it did happen. Having said that,
we tried very hard both in individual NGOs and as a group of NGOs—and
I do not know what WWF will have to say about this, but we did
try hard. We tried to gain press attention. For example, at one
of the party conferences we held a joint press event which was
attended by almost no-one from the press. It simply proved impossible,
even for seasoned campaigning environmental NGOs, to garner much,
if any, press attention. Once the protests were underway the protests
themselves became the thing of the moment. It was particularly
difficult for us to gain any attention when—while NGOs were
being quite vociferous—government, as far as we could tell,
were almost completely silent on any kind of justification for
fuel duty from an environmental point of view. So I think it is
a responsibility that government and the voluntary sector should
share, with the business sector, for raising public awareness
in advance of events of that kind. I think that could be done
through the education system and through ministerial speeches
and so on. I think it can also be done through an actual policy
change, in particular the introduction of green taxation, which
is hypothecated back to various forms of activity that yield a
positive outcome for the environment. So, for example, fuel duty
should very well be recycled back towards sustainable public transport
and towards research into lower carbon modes of transport and
so on. That does not happen to nearly the extent that it should
and I think it would be very useful if the Government were to
comment on the fact that environmental taxation is qualitatively
different from revenue-raising taxation, in that revenue-raising
taxation as historically defined has been precisely about raising
money without changing behaviour whereas environmental taxation
is the exact opposite; it is about changing behaviour without
trying to raise revenue, other than recycling it, and so taxation
is actually perhaps not the right word.
Q16 Mr Challen: The RSPB is the largest
membership organisation in the country so during those fuel protests
what did you actually do to motivate your members to take action
in support of your policy that you have just referred to?
Dr Jefferiss: If I can cast my
mind back.
Q17 Chairman: You can write to us with
the answer on that.
Dr Jefferiss: The reason I am
hesitating . . . the difficulty I am having is remembering the
exact timing of actions we had taken.
Q18 Chairman: I think it would be interesting
for us to know. I am afraid we are going to have to write to you
with some further questions. We are extremely grateful to you
for your written memorandum which is a serious piece of work and
which is very helpful indeed, and also to you for being with us
today. I apologise for the brevity of this encounter but I hope
it will be continued in writing.
Dr Jefferiss: Thank you for the
opportunity.
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