Supplementary memorandum submitted by
English Nature (V14a)
This supplementary memorandum adds to English
Nature's written evidence, submitted in September 2004, and the
oral evidence given at the sub-committee's session on 9 November
2004.
ENGLISH NATURE'S
FUNCTIONS IN
THE WIDER
ENVIRONMENT
English Nature's statutory role empowers it
to give advice to any person or organisation about nature conservation,
and to do anything that furthers that and its other aims. This
function, which we expect to be inherited by the "Integrated
Agency", provides a very wide geographical and advisory scope
to our work, and we apply the term "wider environment"
to those parts of England—rural, urban, coastal and marine—that
lie outside our regulatory responsibility for SSSIs. This includes
our role as statutory consultee by other parts of local and national
government.
OUR APPROACH
TO THE
WIDER ENVIRONMENT
Throughout England, and especially in the lowlands,
a long history of intensive land-use has tended to lead to "islands"
of high biodive value surrounded by large areas of lesser value.
Small isolated patches of biodiversity[5]will
lead to species decline, disrupted ecosystem functions and will
weaken the resilience of ecosystems, to the extent that they are
unable to recover from adverse impact. Isolating biodiversity
in patches places them under greater threat from the effects of
widespread factors such as climate change, agricultural or atmospheric
pollution or invasive introduced plants or animals. This fragmentation
of habitat and isolation needs to be reversed by introducing policies
or practices that allow the biodiversity of the wider environment
to recover and become more diverse; by direct intervention such
as linking sites though "corridors" or the creation
of stepping-stones and the expansion of sites.
English Nature has a long experience of using
science and evidence to conserve vulnerable sites and species.
Maintaining this scientific expertise and developing it further
is essential to both the conservation of special sites, the wider
environment and policy advice, and to meet the challenges ahead.
This work has been begun by English Nature and needs to be carried
through into the "Integrated Agency" as well.
THE ECOSYSTEM
APPROACH
The ecosystem approach is a strategy for the
integrated management of land, water and living resources that
promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way.
It is the primary framework for action under the Convention on
Biological Diversity. English Nature has actively assisted in
its development and application and promoted its use by others.
The ecosystem approach has 12 guiding principles
shown below.
The 12 principles recommended by the Conference
of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2000) to
guide signatory countries in the practical application of the
Biodiversity Approach
1. The objectives of management of land,
water and living resources are a matter of societal choice.
2. Management should be decentralised to
the lowest appropriate level.
3. Ecosystem managers should consider the
benefits (actual or potential) of their activities on adjacent
and other ecosystems.
4. Recognising potential gains from management,
there is usually a need to understand and manage the ecosystem
in an economic context. Any such ecosystem management programme
should reduce those market distortions that adversely affect biological
diversity; align incentives to promote biodiversity conservation
and sustainable use; and internalise costs and benefits in the
given ecosystem to the extent feasible.
5. Conservation of ecosystem structure and
functioning, in order to maintain ecosystem services, should be
a priority target of the ecosystem approach.
6. Ecosystems must be managed within the
limits of their functioning.
7. The ecosystem approach should be undertaken
at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales.
8. Recognising the varying temporal scales
and lag effects that characterise ecosystem processes, objectives
for ecosystem management should be set for the long term.
9. Management must recognise that change
is inevitable.
10. The ecosystem approach should seek the
appropriate balance between, and integration of, conservation
and use of biological diversity.
11. The ecosystem approach should consider
all forms of relevant information including scientific and indigenous
and local knowledge, innovations and practices.
12. The ecosystem approach should involve
all relevant sectors of society and scientific disciplines.
These principles are being applied to commitments
made by European Heads of Government, including the target to
halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010.
WORKING AT
A LANDSCAPE
SCALE
Ecosystems vary in size and structure and a
number of ecosystems often make up characteristic landscape areas.
To restore ecosystem structure and functions so that they continue
to provide the resources and services on which we ultimately depend
requires conservation action to be taken at the landscape scale
and not just at a site level. Even if the Government's Public
Service Agreement target of 95% of SSSIs achieving favourable
condition by 2010 is reached, this will not be sufficient to conserve
biodiversity across England. With SSSIs covering only 7% of England's
land surface, this is not enough to provide either a rich natural
environment or adequate experience or enjoyment of biodiversity
for people across the whole of England. Critically, without progress
beyond SSSIs, they will come under ever-increasing threat and
the progress we have made at site level will be jeopardised by
the increasing and widespread pressures outside the sites.
English Nature also contributes to the Government's
PSA target on reversing the decline in farmland birds. Our approach
to the wider environment also plays an important contribution
here as well.
People value biodiversity and the natural environment
within the setting of the landscape that holds them. England has
an unusually diverse geology, and this wealth of geodiversity,
together with centuries of interaction between people and nature,
has led to an unusually diverse landscape. The heritage and cultural
connections mean that there is a rich and widely varying sense
of place across England that contributes to people's well-being
and quality of life: the heathlands, woods and downlands of southern
England have been an important part of people's lives for centuries
in a very different way to the moors and fells of the north. These
differences are expressed in characteristic historical, cultural,
landscape and biodiversity features that taken together contribute
to a sense of place. Thus although the "Integrated Agency's"
outcomes will be aimed at biodiversity and landscape, they will
contribute to wider outcomes as well.
English Nature is already working at a landscape
scale with a number of large scale partnership projects in each
English region. An example is given below.
THE MINERALS
VALLEY PROJECT
The £5.2 million English Nature-led Mineral
Valleys regeneration programme in the Wear Valley, County Durham,
has received almost £3 million from the Heritage Lottery
Fund. It consists of a collection of regeneration projects which
aim to improve the quality of the environment and the well-being
of those living in the area. So far this has included transforming
a disused sewage works into reedbeds, wet grassland and marsh
habitat, completely re-landscaping a derelict town green space
and making it accessible to everyone in the local community, and
developing a nature reserve and eco-education centre at a disused
quarry. This is a massive regeneration programme in West Durham
which has made a real difference to local communities and has
enabled them to become positively involved in the environment.
Partner organisations in the project are:
— British Trust for Conservation Volunteers
(BTCV)
— River Wear Environment Trust (RWET)
— Durham Biodiversity Partnership
— Harehope Quarry Project
REALISING THE
BENEFITS
The "Integrated Agency" will realise
the benefits from this approach only if its independence, legal
framework, resources and skills are maintained. English Nature
is working with Defra to seek to ensure that the funding streams
work delivers the necessary range of financial incentives to support
our work with partners as well as individuals.
BOUNDARIES WITH
THE ENVIRONMENT
AGENCY
It is essential that in any draft legislation
there is clarity about the purpose, and functions, and that this
is distinct from, but complementary to, the Environment Agency
remit. English Nature, the Countryside Agency and other NDPBs
such as English Heritage work closely with the Environment Agency
and have effective working relationships at the policy and delivery
levels.
The Chairs' Group, led by Sir Martin Doughty,
Chair of English Nature, is guiding the interactions between the
component parts of the proposed "Integrated Agency"
and their alignment with other bodies such as the Environment
Agency, English Heritage, and the Forestry Commission. We aim
to revise and strengthen current memoranda of agreement to form
the basis for co-operation through the period of closer partnership
working in 2005 and 2006 and the creation of the "Integrated
Agency" in 2007. To help this process we have carried out
a high level analysis of each body's role in each part of the
natural environment, resulting in a detailed matrix setting out
whowo does what using existing functions. This analysis has confirmed
that there are no significant clashes or duplications envisaged
between the "Integrated Agency" and the Environment
Agency. Nor are there significant gaps which require either organisation
to take on a substantial new functions or roles in order to deliver
its contributions to natural environment protection.
This analysis has led to the following summary
of the essential differences between what we expect the functions
and activities of the "Integrated Agency" and the Environment
Agency to be:
— The Integrated Agency should
conserve and enhance biodiversity (including geodiversity) and
the landscape, promote their understanding and enjoyment, and
give opportunities for outdoor recreation and public access. In
so doing, its regulatory role will be the same as English Nature's
and the Countryside Agency's and confined to special sites and
protected areas and species. This will be complemented by an advisory
and influencing role that extends across England and across all
of Government as well. Its advice and influence will be aimed
at achieving better outcomes for biodiversity and the landscape
across England as a whole and for the public enjoyment and benefits
these outcomes provide. In doing so, both its regulatory and advisory
roles will also help to achieve a high quality natural environment,
for example in ensuring that pollution does not adversely affect
special sites, the biodiversity outside them or landscape quality.
— The Environment Agency protects
soil, air and water (and delivers flood risk and waste management).
It does this largely through advice, regulation and direct delivery
of flood risk management. The primary outcomes it seeks are to
maintain and improve the health of the physical environment and
by doing so human health as well. It also has a duty to promote
biodiversity and the landscape. Through its work it therefore
plays an important, though not primary, role in helping to achieve
biodiversity targets, landscape enhancement and access.
29 November 2004
5 Throughout this memorandum the term "biodiversity"
should be taken to include geodiversity as well. Back
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