Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-225)
9 NOVEMBER 2004
DR MIKE
MOSER AND
DR ANDY
BROWN
Q220 Mr Jack: Can I as a postscript ask
you to explain in paragraph 3.3 what you meant by this: "Working
at the landscape scale will not only ensure that change addresses
multiple public policy objectives but also provide a link to people's
sense of place and their cultural heritage." What does that
mean?
Dr Brown: We deal with ecological
systems, and ecological systems together make up landscape areas.
There is a very big agenda about maintaining the character of
different landscape areas. It is often what people value highly
and it is often what drives a lot of the tourist industry. But
we do need to ensure that our biodiversity objectives, different
land use, flood management and so on, are all properly integrated
at a landscape scale to deliver a range of public benefits. If
I could just refer you to one example that the National Trust
used in their evidence, they gave an example of the High Peak
area in Derbyshire, where we are working already with them and
the water company to try and bring these different objectives
together to work out what it is you would need to do at the scale
of a whole landscape so that you deliver the biodiversity gain,
you reduce over-grazing and the problems of flash-flooding downstream,
you reduce erosion of soils, you reduce the problems of water
quality which you then have to clean up before you put it into
supply and so on. So it is trying to bring these different objectives
together in a properly integrated way at the larger geographical
scale.
Q221 Mr Jack: I got that bit, but where
does the linking to people's sense of place and cultural heritage
come in?
Dr Brown: I think a lot of these
are culturally valued landscapes. You talk about the Lake District;
everybody has a mental image of the Lake District and the people
who live there have a sense of their place in the Lake District.
People do not necessarily value Special Scientific Sites; they
value these broader areas. It is playing to that agenda.
Q222 Mr Jack: All of what you have said,
though, does seem to suggest that if we take the Ribble Estuary
pilot river basin management project, which is the precursor to
the Water Framework Directive's wider implementation, everything
you have just described is what that project is doing, and therefore
perhaps the real model is one that should be about all the partners
within the catchment areas working together and being linked up
nationally where appropriate. If you are nodding in agreement
with that message, then the integrated agency does not appear
to be configured to perhaps deliver that type of policy objective.
It comes at it in a different way. What worries me in all that
you have said, if you nod towards that suggestion, reinforces
the point that is being made that what we have got is architecture
and chairs being moved around, without policy and purpose having
been thought through as thoroughly as it should be. You can answer
"yes" if you want to.
Dr Brown: I think bringing the
functions together into one body integrates part of that agenda,
but the body will still need to work in partnership with a range
of other bodies to deliver the whole of the kind of agenda you
describe. Can you bring about that partnership working without
institutional change? I suspect you can go quite a long way with
delivering it without institutional change.
Q223 Mr Drew: Can you give us a feel
for what is happening internationally? I always think that one
of the problems is that we sit in this little capsule called the
United Kingdom; we are supposedly part of a wider community called
the EU, which certainly has impacts on the way in which we are
funding economic and environmental strands, but is there any commonality,
given that the world is beginning to wake up to global warming—even
the Americans? Is there some sort of road map out there which
gives us a view that we are moving in the right direction with
the sort of rural diversity that we are trying to encourage,
with a strong environmental underpinning, or are we lone rangers,
and we are out there so far ahead of the game and we are just
waiting for them to catch up?
Dr Moser: There is some reassurance
out there. I am going to use a word that you are not going to
like at all, ecosystem management, which is something that is
being debated very, very extensively in the world community, particularly
by the Convention on Biological Diversity, which brings together
all of the key players. It is also being debated heavily by the
World Conservation Union, IUCN, and they have provided a lot of
the technical expertise going into that. Ecosystem management
does not mean anything to anyone really, but there are some principles
underplaying it, there are actually 12 principles that have been
outlined. These talk about going out into the wider landscape,
not just focusing on protected areas, looking at landscape-scale
approaches; they talk about getting people more involved in choosing
and supporting what is done in the environment; they talk about
valuing the services that the environment can deliver, both in
terms of the products, the functions, that the environment can
deliver and actually using those to build the sustainable development
agenda. I think that the whole of that process, which is now maturing
quite well—it has been going on for about five or six years—has
brought a new paradigm for the way nature conservation is moving.
Some developing countries possibly got there ahead of us. There
is a lot more going on at grass roots level in terms of societal
choice and in terms of looking at protected areas. Some have gone
in the other direction and said protected areas are fenced off
and people cannot go in, but others are going in exactly the opposite
direction and saying these are a fantastic resource for not only
delivering ecosystem services but really giving people better
quality of life. So there is some reassurance there.
Dr Brown: If it would help the
Committee, we are very happy to provide a note about these principles
of ecosystem management.
Q224 Mr Drew: That would be very interesting.
I am just intrigued at what you say, because I just wonder what
level of engagement there is with the general public. Everybody
thinks the environment is terribly important but it never seems
to make a blind bit of difference at elections. We have these
great international soirées every now and again whereby
people do come together and make the right noises. If we got this
right in this country, we could genuinely engage in a better way
with the rest of the world.
Dr Moser: I think the level of
public support for the environment in this country is phenomenal.
I have worked internationally all my life. I only came back to
England five years ago. So you asked the right question. The issue
for us, I think, is we have an awful lot of people who are supporters
out there. What we need to do is to get to the other parts of
the communities that really are not benefiting, the urban
communities, some of the disadvantaged communities, and give them
the benefits of what the environment can deliver to them.
Q225 David Taylor: I declare an interest
as a member of Friends of the Earth. They see and saw your absorption
into an integrated agency as the equivalent of a wildlife watchdog—and
I am paraphrasing at this point—trotting into the Defra
canine training department to have your teeth removed, to be neutered
and to go through a set of obedience classes and to come out the
other side as a government poodle. Is there not a risk of that?
I made up the middle bit, but that is the thrust of what they
said.
Dr Moser: Providing we can maintain
the independence, not compromise the independence as a statutory
NDPB, my own view is that we can maintain the very strong advisory
role, the watchdog role that we have maintained as English Nature.
There are going to be some challenges out there, bringing landscape
in. It is easy enough for us to talk about wind farms; that is
a good example. They have rather a small impact on habitats but
they have a huge impact on landscapes. So there are going to be
new issues that we are going to have to address but, providing
we stay as an evidence-based operation, that science underpins
everything we do, then I think we can continue to play that role.
Chairman: Dr Moser, Dr Brown, thank you
very much. Can you drop us a note about ecosystems, and if there
is anything else that you think you should have told us, please
put it in the note. Best of luck on the way forward.
| 
