Examination of Witness (Questions 100-117)
Barry Gardiner MP
22 November 2006
Q100 Mr Caton: You mentioned the
financial limitations of some of the overseas territories and
that that might affect their ability to deal with conservation
and ecosystem questions. Is that an argument for the UK Government
to put in more resources to specifically help with those?
Barry Gardiner: I am sure that
somebody could make it an argument! I am not seeking to do that.
What I am seeking to do is genuinely say that I think we have
to recognise that there is an issue here because it is clear that
many of the overseas territories would find great difficulty in
tackling the sorts of habitat degradation that may be affecting
species that are located within their borders on their own and
I do think we need to not just look at what we can do at an international
level such as through conventions like ACAP and so on but we do
need to recognise here what the overseas territories are facing.
Q101 Mr Caton: I would like to ask
you how we measure economic growth. Is there any consideration
of using a different measure of economic growth which takes into
account natural resources and their finite nature in order that
we can better ensure that sustainability is at the heart of economic
policy as well as environmental policy?
Barry Gardiner: I think this is
very much one of the areas that the MA has highlighted as requiring
further work. It is exactly the flipside, if you like, of what
I said about moving to a metric and trying to get a proper system
of valuation. Only if we do that, only if we can actually begin
to quantify the value of ecosystem services and the cost of their
degradation, are we going to be in a position then to start talking
in the way that you have of measuring economic growth in this
way. I would say that what you have put before us is a very attractive
vision but first of all we have to learn how to walk and actually
getting that basic agreement on a valuation system is something
that economists have found very hard to do for a number of years
and I think that we need to, as we are doing, renew our research
efforts in that area so that ultimately we can get to the sort
of position that you are suggesting where we really do have a
much clearer picture of the total value of ecosystem services
to the economy because what is absolutely clear is that for a
long period of time we have regarded these as free goods essentially,
whether it is pollination, water regulation, flood defence and
climate control, all of these services that the ecosystem provides
for us we have taken for granted and what we must now do is start
putting a value on them either through carbon in terms of sequestration
and so on or in some other way, but we have to get the economist
and the natural scientist speaking the same language.
Q102 Mr Caton: I would like to bring
you to the comprehensive spending review because some of our witnesses
are very worried that funding for UK conservation, ecosystem management
and environment research is under threat in the CSR. Can you this
morning reassure us that the CSR will not squeeze the funds for
this important work?
Barry Gardiner: The CSR does not
report until next year. What I would say to you is that Treasury
have been collecting evidence over the summer and ministers are
presently considering next steps both in Defra and the Treasury.
We have shared information about the MA and there has been discussion
at official level about how an ecosystems approach could be used
as an organising principle for information and environmental impacts.
Defra will be using the ecosystems approach to quantify and value
environmental impacts as part of our revised guidance on policy
appraisal and the environment and I have already indicated to
you that, as part of that working towards the CSR 07 process,
we are putting together the three case studies that I mentioned
to try and demonstrate how the approach can be used. We are working
with the Department for Transport, DCLG, the Environment Agency
and the Treasury on this to include a road scheme, a flood defence
scheme and land use change and look at how this can all feed into
the CSR 07.
Q103 Chairman: Is the department
considering new PSA targets and will the MA have an impact on
that?
Barry Gardiner: The answer to
that is, yes, we must always look at our PSA targets and see how
they can be improved. There are some specific ones at which we
are looking at the moment. The department is actually going through
what we call a strategy refresh process at the moment which has
been very positive and very healthy thinking within the department
about exactly what our objectives are and, as part of that, one
of what we are calling the enabling projects is an ecosystem services
approach. Certainly what I hope you will see in the future is
that that ecosystems approach is fundamental to the delivery of
all the set of different complex problems that the department
is dealing with because we really do want to break down the sort
of silo mentality and try and make sure that we are looking at
this from an ecosystems point of view.
Q104 Mr Caton: Sticking with the
budgets but moving now to the EU Budget, you seem quite sanguine
about the EU response to the MA and you have mentioned the European
Commission Biodiversity Communication, but that itself pointed
out that we were at risk of missing EU biodiversity targets and
it also says that limited funds are part of the problem. We have
been told that the recent EU Budget made this situation much worse
by lowering the amount of money available for wildlife protection
whilst neglecting to address the problem of inappropriate farm
subsidies. Is it not a fact that the EU is completely failing
to address the challenges identified in the MA?
Barry Gardiner: No other Member
State has called louder or longer for reform of the Common Agricultural
Policy than we have. Do we need to see a greater transition from
pillar 1 to pillar 2 to meet precisely the objectives that you
say? Yes, of course we do. We hope and we will be working towards
achieving a greater role in the review in 2008 but it is absolutely
essential and it has been highlighted—and again I go back
to what the MA Board said—that we to move away from subsidy
to paying land managers for the environmental benefits that they
provide. They are very, very clear about this. If I sounded sanguine
about the communication, that is in the true spirit of European
collegiality that I have. If I am less than sanguine about the
process to date in the shift of resources from subsidy through
to environmental benefit in the CAP, then that is an indication
that I share some of the frustrations that you have.
Q105 Mr Caton: What is your perception
of how other Member States are responding both to the Biodiversity
Communication and Action Plan that it proposes?
Barry Gardiner: Are you talking
about other Member States within the EU?
Q106 Mr Caton: Yes.
Barry Gardiner: It is clearly
mixed. There are those who feel that certain of the . . . For
example, if you look at Natura 2000 in the Habitats Directive,
there are certain Member States whose ministers have spoken up
against some of what they see as constraints imposed upon them.
I am not telling any tales here; this is their own public pronouncements.
There are differences of approach. These, I think, to a certain
extent are things that we should not be surprised at. Let me return
to one of the other things that the MA highlighted and that the
Board highlighted. What I think is very interesting about the
approach which the MA adopted—here we are talking about
1300-odd scientists coming together and presenting us with the
best state of our planet that we have ever had but their own expectations
were not that there would be the turnaround and the halting of
the loss of biodiversity. They themselves, whilst setting out
very clearly what the strategy to reducing that loss in biodiversity
must be, are clear that they are anticipate that it is something
that will continue for some time and they expressed their own
reservations about the capacity of the global community to turn
that around in such a short timescale as we have by 2010, partly
for the development pressures, pollutant pressures and so on,
but also partly because of the climate change that is already
in the system. I do think that we have to realistic here if the
MA itself, whilst absolutely identifying the problem and whilst
absolutely specifying what we need to be doing and the approach
that we need to be taking to resolve it, was not optimistic that,
in the short term, this could be turned around and the decline
halted. I think that part of the reason why they were less than
optimistic on that is of course because, in the same way that
we hear from developing countries that the pressures for development,
the pressures for growth and the pressures of taking people out
of poverty often mean that issues of environmental consideration
are of a second order of importance in their thinking, I think
that one can see that to a lesser extent also even within the
EU. I think it is important that we get across the Stern type
messages, but actually there is no development without sustainability
and that actually taking action now is going to make things a
lot easier and a lot cheaper and we are going to achieve success
a lot faster if we act within the next five to ten year period
rather than delay.
Q107 Chairman: Owing to the pressure
of time, we will have to move on to the next set of questions;
we will take this session up to 10.40 if that is okay with you,
Minister.
Barry Gardiner: Absolutely.
Q108 David Howarth: I want to ask
mainly about the place of the MA in UK policy making, which we
have already touched on. May I return briefly to the research
programme and put to you that you have mentioned two things that
clash: one is you said, quite rightly, that you can have too much
analysis and you have to get on with doing something but, on the
other side, you said that the research programme, although it
looks a bit like an MA, is not really an MA because, as you said,
it does not cover different scenarios and it does not cover different
policy responses. Could it be said that if we went the whole hog
and we went for the full MA and put in different policy responses,
then it would be more policy relevant?
Barry Gardiner: Please, do not
interpret anything I have said as ruling out going through to
conducting a UK MA. What I was keen to do was to distinguish the
research programmes that are currently under way, the natural
environment research programme and the natural environment policy,
with that and I was keen to clarify that they are not exactly
the same because some people have suggested that in effect they
are and that is why I wanted to be clear on that. I hope I did
not say that one can have too much research, but you are right.
What I was trying to get at was that actually there is no point
in having more and more and more research unless you do something
with it and I think that our obligation now, which I hope you
will feel we are taking very seriously, is to try and see how
we can use the research that has been done through the MA to inform
policy making and to inform decision making both within Defra
and by developing tools that will help other government departments
make better policy decisions on the back of that ecosystem services
approach and having a metric that enables them to do that. I take
what you are saying that if you went the whole hog and feed in
alternate scenario planning, that may ultimately enable us to
identify the policy lines that are going to be most helpful in
the future. I am certainly not ruling that out. I am saying that
we have a heck of a job of work to do already trying to integrate
into our thinking what the MA has already come up with and I think
that we do have to take this in a systematic way.
Q109 David Howarth: I suppose it
is the difference between not ruling it out on the one side and
having a clear direction of travel on the other side. If it were
a clear direction of travel towards an MA as opposed to not ruling
it out, would that not help to bring more coherence to it in terms
of research programme? The Chairman has mentioned the idea of
a UK, or perhaps it is technically an English, MA as a kind of
Stern type review which would then help to make the case for ecosystems
services policies in the way to which you seem to be quite clearly
committed.
Barry Gardiner: I am not yet at
the stage that you are suggesting that we should move to. I do
want to take things not slowly but methodically and I want to
be sure that we have incorporated all the lessons of the MA into
our thinking. We are doing a tremendous amount of work on our
own biodiversity action plan. In fact, earlier this month, we
had a meeting with stakeholders about the future plans and, in
January, we will be engaging with all of the ecological biodiversity
community precisely to set out where we go from here and some
of the remarks that I put in at the end of my opening remarks
about how we integrate the ecosystem services approach into that
thinking I think would be really relevant to the sort of stakeholder
thinking that we do in January because we have tended to adopt
a very species based approach. The species themselves of course
are of intrinsic value. They are also of real value in terms of
the indicators of the health of the ecosystem. When it comes to
the point of having 364 or 367, whatever it is, separate species
orientated and habitat-orientated action plans, I think that actually
we do need to say, let us integrate the thinking of the MA here
into all of this and, rather than simply pursuing more and more
information, yes, let us use that information as a guide/indicator
of what is happening with the ecosystems but how do we focus on
the ecosystems themselves? How do we take a much more integrated
and holistic approach to this to ensure the healthy ecosystems
that are actually going to ensure the health of the individual
364 species?
Q110 David Howarth: I will leave
the research programme now and move on to the place of the MA
in UK policy making. We gather that a mapping exercise is going
on to assess the UK response to the MA. That is obviously a good
thing. I am slightly unclear about a couple of matters. First,
what will that feed into? What is the endpoint of this? Secondly,
are we talking about simply assessing new policies or are we talking
about assessing all the current policies against the MA? For example,
is the process we are talking about going to use the MA to reconsider
what is in the UK Sustainable Development Strategy? You are talking
about refresh and so on, is the MA integral to the refresh of
existing policies?
Barry Gardiner: Yes it is, is
my clear answer to that. We are looking at an ecosystem services
approach as an enabling project within the whole strategy refresh
of the Department, to help us think more clearly, to help us deliver
more effectively on the goals that we have already set—which,
by and large, you will not be surprised to hear, we think are
the right sort of goals in sustainable development or sustainable
consumption and production and so on—but we need to be feeding
in the lessons and the approach of the MA in helping us deliver
on that. I feel very confident that adopting that ecosystems approach
will be helpful in enabling us to deliver better. We will be more
effective in achieving our objectives if we use an ecosystems
approach.
Q111 David Howarth: Might I come
back to the CSR, one of our obsessions in this Committee—although
my final question will be about another one of our obsessions.
You have talked about using the MA as an evidence base for discussions
between Defra and the Treasury. You have also talked about holistic
approaches and mentioned other policy areas and getting away from
policy silos. Is the MA being used solely as part of the discussion
about natural resource policies and so on with the Treasury or
is it feeding into transport policy, housing policy, economic
development policy, way beyond Defra, into the other departments?
Barry Gardiner: It is precisely
the latter that I want to see. In effect, the two questions you
have just asked are flip sides of the MA ecosystems approach coin.
One is that it should be able to help Defra be more effective
in achieving our own objectives and our own targets and our own
goals. The other is that if we can develop the evaluation approach
that I have outlined through the pilots that we have set up—and,
as I think I mentioned, they are with the Department of Transport,
they are with DCLG, they are precisely in the areas that you suggest—we
should also be able to help other government departments take
better policy decisions because they will precisely be able, for
the first time, to assess the true cost of policies because they
will take in the effect of decisions on the environment, on ecosystem
services into their calculations when making decisions.
Q112 David Howarth: That is very
good, but that is coming from your end, from Defra. It needs to
come from Treasury.
Barry Gardiner: I am delighted
to tell you that Treasury economists and Defra economists and
World Bank economists are all engaging on this. I do not feel
in any sense that this is something where Defra is waving a little
flag in the air and saying, "We've got a good idea, is anybody
out there prepared to take notice of us?" It is something
which the Treasury are keen to look at with us and with economists
from the World Bank as well. This is something that has been identified
by the MA as one of the gaps that they want to see us move to
fill. I should have mentioned that DFID also are using the MA
to educate their research programme on services[1]
and poverty. This is not something that is just confined to one
area of government. That is not to say that we yet have the tool:
we have not managed to develop it but we are all working together
to try to achieve that because we see the potential benefits.
Q113 David Howarth: You see our view.
The policy centre has to take this up.
Barry Gardiner: Absolutely.
Q114 David Howarth: Rather than saying
just one department has responsibility for it.
Barry Gardiner: That is absolutely
right.
Q115 David Howarth: My final question
is about another one of those tools of central policy-making,
the regulatory impact assessment.
Barry Gardiner: The environmental
impact assessment.
Q116 David Howarth: We have heard
evidence generally about the inadequacy of the present system
for incorporating environmental concerns into policy making. Specifically
on the MA, we have heard evidence from NERC that the present impact
assessments in no way help to incorporate MA-type considerations
to the policy. If you go to the summary, which covers one side
of an A4 sheet of paper, it has one line that says something like
"Does this policy meet the Government's sustainability policy?
Yes or no." That does not give a very wide opportunity for
discussion of specific policies of this sort.
Barry Gardiner: The past decade
has been a time of incredibly innovative fast-learning of these
issues. It is not to say that when the Government introduced environmental
impact assessments all policy decisions were going to be able
to bask in the glorious knowledge that the environment was secure
as a result of what had been done. Of course this is the sort
of thing that we need to refine, reappraise and improve upon.
I would say to you that there is a commitment not just within
Defra but wider in government to do that. It is equally important
that we see here that this is not something that is just: "because
it will keep those people in Defra quiet if we do". It has
to come from that fundamental understanding that this is the best
way of making policy decisions because we will establish the true
and proper cost of the decisions that we take if we incorporate
that MA approach into our environmental impact assessments.
David Howarth: Thank you.
Q117 Chairman: Thank you very much,
Minister. We have come to the end of our session with you. We
are very grateful for your time this morning and your comprehensive
answers.
Barry Gardiner: Thank you very
much. I have enjoyed it.
Chairman: We will get our report out
as soon as we can.
1 Witness Addition: ie ecosystem services. Back
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