Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-87)
MR NEVILLE
ASH, DR
STEVEN WILSON
AND DR
DANIEL OSBORN
1 NOVEMBER 2006
Q80 David Howarth: And the international
funding situation?
Mr Ash: I have a small thing to
add. I think there is some concern that the funding for international
monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem services is in fact in
decline. For example, we now have less hydrographic monitoring
going on around the world than we did 30 years ago. The data now
is poorer than it was 30 years ago in temporal terms. There are
a wide range of mechanisms going on internationally for monitoring
both biodiversity and ecosystem services, for example some forestry
resources assessments coming out from the UN FAO and others, some
of the work going on to monitor global biodiversity in support
of the 2010 biodiversity targets, and even within the Millennium
Development Goals, where there are targets on forest cover and
protected areas. Whilst the information is slowly improving, these
processes are vastly under-resourced. In some cases—I mentioned
the water monitoring programmes—the funding availability
is in fact in decline.
Dr Osborn: We are trying to get
a bit smarter in monitoring some of these things in the research
communities and Steven might be able to say something about earth
observation.
Dr Wilson: I will say something
about earth observation. I also agree with Neville's point that
at an international level across the environmental domain observations
and monitoring and doing that on an organised basis is still proving
to be a real challenge. There are some sectors which are extremely
successful internationally and very well co-ordinated. They tend
to be, for example, those areas that have grown from meteorology,
which has always had a very natural international outlook. On
the remote sensing side, observations from satellites, which provide
quite a lot of information relevant to this area, there is growing
co-ordination of observations at an international level through
the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) and at a European level something
called GMES, Global Monitoring for Environment and Security, but
I would say for other sorts of observations and monitoring and
in general that the situation is probably far more patchy. I also
suspect that there are issues here for us in the UK as to how
we play into those international discussions and, without wishing
to be too negative, we are not always necessarily as joined-up
nationally as we could be in those international fora.
Dr Osborn: There probably will
be some opportunities in the European Framework Programme as well
for research of an appropriate kind. You might not find the words
"MA" very much in some of the programme documents but
in the thematic document of the European Union the MA is right
up there, and so clearly that is influencing thinking at that
level and that should make sure that some of the international
issues at least are dealt with.
Q81 Mr Caton: Can we go back to something
that you have already touched on very briefly and that is basically
the application of the MA approach within the UK. We have had
a fair bit of evidence to this inquiry calling for a UK level
assessment based on the MA methodology. From what you said in
a previous answer, Dr Osborn, it sounded like you did not think
that was very valuable and then, on the other hand Mr Ash, I think
you are saying that Defra research is already following the MA
approach, although perhaps it has some characteristics missing.
Can you both expand first on the positions you are taking and
then say whether you think there would be any value in actually
upgrading that Defra research so it took on all the characteristics
of the MA.
Dr Osborn: I suspect there is
not as much between us as perhaps we have given the impression.
What we have got at the minute within the research community is
the fact that researchers are always looking to what is tractable
and where they can have a good-quality research project that will
test a hypothesis, for example, or develop a predictive model.
For the research community, that is most easily done if the focus
of the work is narrowed so you can address the issue and get a
firm answer. That is where I said earlier people see opportunities
for most progress perhaps by studying specific ecosystems. I did
not mean to give the impression that we should not do the type
of work that would lead us to have the knowledge necessary to
follow through on the MA. In actual fact, you could envisage by
putting together various pieces of research being done by the
research councils and government departments, you would get quite
close to a UK MA on the basis of what we already have to hand,
let alone what we will have to hand in a year or two after, for
example, we have done the Countryside Survey. So there are some
very promising ways in which we could do an MA but it is probably
more for departments to decide whether they want to have that
type of information available in the round or whether they want
to make progress on specific ecosystems and make more rapid progress
across a narrower front.
Q82 Mr Caton: Before Mr Ash comes
in because this will save me asking you another question in a
minute, that approach you have said of tying the research together
so you have got a MA; do you see value in that?
Dr Osborn: Yes, I do see there
is value in that.
Mr Ash: The reason why I think
that England (but not the UK) is already doing ecosystem service
assessment is because of the activities underway in terms of looking
at data availability for ecosystem services, looking at trends
of ecosystem services, looking at the evaluation of ecosystem
services through time, and doing that at an England scale, and
in this case four sub-England scales. There is the Thames catchment,
the M6 corridor link in Lancashire, the Parrett catchment in Somerset,
and the wetlands in Oxfordshire, which are entirely analogous
to many of the 34 sub-global assessments in the MA. There were
certainly more characteristics in some of those assessments than
we are seeing here in England and certainly in most cases the
stakeholder arrangements were broader than we are seeing here
in England. As Dan has mentioned, this is very much a research-led
initiative going on at the moment which Defra is funding. That
said, the findings that come out of the process will be very analogous
to those coming out of very similar processes throughout the rest
of the sub-global assessment. Although the global MA has the three
key components of the condition and trends assessment, the scenarios
assessment and the responses assessment, in fact many of the sub-global
assessments focused almost entirely on the condition and trends
assessment, as we are seeing here in this England scale assessment
activity. I think by not looking at scenarios in this case and
not looking at the effectiveness of policy responses, it is in
no way dissimilar to other sub-global assessments of the MA. The
stakeholder and institutional arrangements for this are more science-led
than many of the other MA sub-global assessments. In terms of
the on-going follow-up and co-ordination and sharing of lessons
learnt within a sub-global assessment within UNEP, we are seeing
this England and sub-England assessment very much as one of the
sub-global activities of the MA.
Q83 Mr Caton: You make a good point
that we are talking just about England. What is happening in Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland and is there a case for trying to create
a UK MA?
Mr Ash: Ecosystems do not stop
at the borders so I would think the answer to the second question
is yes. I do not know myself what is happening in those devolved
administration countries.
Dr Osborn: Certainly in terms
of Scotland and Wales, for example on the question of the Countryside
Survey, which is very useful in MA terms, then the Scotland and
Wales departments are fully engaged in that process. As far as
I know, they are contributing financially to those activities.
I think that shows that they are very much engaged with the process
and certainly their scientific officials are fully aware of the
MA findings and are engaging in workshops, et cetera, to address
some of the issues. I think what Neville has said about where
there has been a focus so far in the sub-regional assessments
and that similar things are going on in England, what activity
there is is very much determined by the data availability and
the nature of the information that can be gleaned from that data.
That suggests there is a gap in linking across to other disciplines
other than perhaps the natural science one, and that emphasises
the point Steven Wilson made earlier about the need to link up
between different groups such as economists and social scientists
as well to be able to look at some of these policy responses.
We need links between the medical sciences and natural sciences
as well to look at some of these issues such as diseases and disease
control. We need links to engineers to look at things like flood
alleviation and issues of this kind. Where there are gaps there
is also an awareness of that willingness to talk and take on some
of these issues in a research sense.
Q84 Mr Caton: Is there anybody auditing
the UK's current policies and practices against the MA and, if
so, is it going beyond the conservation biodiversity area to look
at things like transport, taxation and other policies?
Dr Osborn: There is quite a lot
of talk across government about issues like transport, as I am
sure you are aware. The Foresight Office had an intelligent infrastructures
project recently which took on issues that you could say were
related to the MA—about what would the environmental interactions
of a transport system be. I think there are a lot of appropriate
discussions going on. I am certainly myself going to spend some
time looking at the cross link at a strategic research level.
Whether there is a specific person in a government department,
I do not think that is something that we can necessarily answer,
but I do know that Defra are taking this issue of ecosystem services
extremely seriously and the work they are doing is, in fact, quite
leading edge and would lead to questions being asked in the area
which you have referred to. You would have to ask the departments
if they have people actually doing this kind of work at the moment.
Mr Ash: I was encouraged by the
workshop Defra held yesterday or the day before on the question
of evaluation of ecosystem services. That has come up again and
may be as an indirect consequence of the MA taking place and highlighting
the importance of evaluation of ecosystem services. Defra is taking
a strong lead in that area.
Dr Osborn: Defra is also joining
with learned societies to try and get some of these issues discussed
and to make sure that they get a wide spectrum of views from people
on this issue of ecosystem services.
Q85 Mr Caton: If we went ahead with
a UK MA how would we incorporate our international objectives
into that?
Dr Osborn: This is the issue of
the UK's extended environmental footprint. How could we measure
that and get a handle on that? I think there have been some interesting
things of late. For example, there has been a study published
quite recently under World Wildlife Fund auspices involving the
Institute of Zoology looking at the different footprints of different
countries to see, for example, how much land UK citizens use fundamentally
with the lifestyle and approach to life that they have got at
the minute. So there are ways of thinking about some of these
issues at the moment, but I do not think necessarily we are terribly
clear about how we would do that in great detail in terms of assessing
the proportion of the ecosystem service degradation that might
be going on somewhere else that could be tied to UK activities
solely. I think you need an international effort to try and work
that sort of thing out. I do not think the UK could do it, for
example, by itself. It would have to do it in association with
the EU and the Americans and Chinese.
Q86 Mr Caton: What do you feel about
sustainability indicators to measure our environmental footprint,
whether on an international basis or on a UK basis?
Dr Osborn: I think there have
been a number of efforts to try and do things of this kind. Perhaps
what is happening is that natural scientists have come up with
a set of indicators which they think are good measures of sustainability
and then some economists have tried to work with natural science
data to come up with a number of indicators, shall we say, of
how far different communities around the world are vulnerable
to climate or something of this nature. Work of this kind has
been done within NERC, for example. What we have not had is groups
of natural scientists and economists combined together to develop
indicators of that kind. Again, there is a gap there and people
need to talk to one another. Again in the Defra workshop yesterday
I believe it talked about some approaches that might be taken
to that sort of issue, but it is quite a complicated and difficult
one.
Mr Ash: On UK global impact, there
are a couple of projects going on at the moment which are making
some contribution to that, although I agree a much broader effort
would be needed to get to the bottom of that issue. One is with
JNCC going on at Peterborough and we are involved with that in
UNEP, a global CMT, looking at the global impact of UK commodity
trade, looking at a set of commodities, and looking at the ecosystems
from which they are derived in different parts of the world. We
are very much working with national contacts through UNEP and
other organisations to get a handle on the kind of impact that
UK trade (typically consumption) of these commodities is having,
in terms of area of ecosystem affected by plantations, in terms
of water diversions, and these kinds of things. That is a project
going on at the moment under the JNCC global impact programme.
I mentioned earlier that DFID are interested in commissioning
a report at the moment on the UK global impact on biodiversity,
although the scope of that could be vast and so needs to be prioritised
in terms of the kinds of UK policies that are analysed in terms
of their impact.
Q87 Mr Caton: One last question from
me: have you seen the EC's Biodiversity Communication and Action
Plan and, if so, what are your views.
Dr Osborn: Yes I think I have
seen that and the things that are coming out of that, like in
so many other instances, line up rather nicely with what the MA
is saying. The EU are translating that into action certainly on
the research front in the Framework Programme, and I think it
provides an opportunity for Member States to respond appropriately
and say what they are doing in those areas. I think that the plans
that have emerged, if they are followed through, will do quite
a lot to move the MA conclusions and findings into action on biodiversity
in the Member States.
Mr Ash: I have not seen that document
specifically, but on a point within the EC, in 2001 there was
a lot of effort to bring on board the European Community to be
involved in the MA process. There was strong resistance at that
time for any kind of involvement from the EC, whether financial
or otherwise, despite a great deal of involvement of EC nationals
in the process and here in the UK, Cambridge University and other
institutes around the country. That has changed dramatically over
the four or five years since then, in fact the European Communities
are now taking up on the MA in ways in which it would not have
been envisaged five years ago. I have not seen that document specifically,
but certainly within the Community there has been a much broader
buy-in to the concepts of the MA than we had five or six years
ago.
Dr Osborn: There seems to be a
much wider appreciation of the role that biodiversity plays, not
only economically but also in terms of social benefits et cetera,
and the way in which biodiversity can be used in a variety of
constructive ways. There is a lot more effort on coming to a balanced
sustainable view about how resources in biodiversity could be
best managed in future.
Chairman: That is a very suitable point
at which to conclude our hearing this afternoon. Thank you all
very much for your evidence, it has been very useful. If anyone
was expecting to see the Minister, Barry Gardiner, immediately
after this session, I am afraid he has been struck down ill and
we will have to rearrange a new date for his hearing, so sorry
if you were waiting for him. Thank you again.
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