Martin
Horwood: I warmly congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on
his extraordinarily eloquent speech and on his amendments and new
clause. He repeatedly apologised for potentially boring the Committee,
but I was not bored—I was inspired by his brilliant
contribution.
My only
small quibble is that the references to the rise in global temperature
in the amendments would be accommodated in almost any review of the
scientific evidence on climate change. It is difficult to see how such
reviews could otherwise be
conducted. The
right hon. Gentleman’s references to biodiversity and world
forests were spot on. He has revealed a rather strange aberration in
the Bill. Clause 11 states that carbon budgets will overwhelmingly be
set on economic and social criteria. We all love the Stern report,
which is an important document that changed the terms of the debate on
climate change in this country and that has been influential worldwide.
After the Stern report, it has become almost axiomatic that the cost of
doing nothing about climate change will be economically greater than
the cost of doing something about it, especially if we act
quickly. As
the right hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, the economic
justification is not the only justification for acting on climate
change. Even if there were no dramatic economic costs, it is important
to protect the biodiversity of the planet from the impact of climate
change. The figures on biodiversity are truly alarming. The right hon.
Gentleman gave many of them, and he went into great detail. The UN
millennium ecosystem assessment reported in 2005 that approximately 60
per cent. of the ecosystem services that it examined are being degraded
or used unsustainably. Those
include “fresh
water, capture fisheries, air and water purification, and the
regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards and
pests.” The
latest red list of threatened species in 2007 shows that one in four of
the world’s mammals, one in eight of its birds, one third of all
amphibians and 70 per cent. of the world’s assessed plants are
in jeopardy. The UK biodiversity action plan, for which the Government
should take due credit, has identified 1,149 species and 65 habitats as
priorities for conservation in the UK
alone. On
forests, it has been estimated that about half of the mature tropical
forests that once covered the planet have been felled. That is between
750 million and 800 million hectares out of the original 1.5
billion to 1.6 billion hectares that once covered the planet.
Deforestation probably contributes to 20 per cent. of world carbon
emissions. The situation is extremely grim. The most obvious and simple
impact is on the beauty and diversity of life on Earth, and there is a
moral and a spiritual reason for trying to protect our biodiversity on
that basis. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, there are
massive impacts in terms of the potential for science to discover new
medicines, treatments and
painkillers. Most
importantly, there is an enormous impact on the ability of the world to
feed itself. The right hon. Gentleman light-heartedly mentioned the
price of fish. I assure him that the price of fish will be massively
impacted. In February, the United Nations environment programme report
pointed out that all the major world fisheries are at some risk of
complete collapse within decades if the combination of overfishing,
climate change and pollution is allowed to proceed unchecked. It
pointed to the fact that 2.6 billion people derive most of their
protein from fish. The impacts of such a loss of biodiversity are
almost
incalculable. 3.30
pm As
the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, if the ecosystems start to
collapse, that is a feedback mechanism that will in turn make climate
change even worse. The threat to the Amazonian rainforest, as
highlighted in the Stern report, is such that it would enter
irreversible collapse if we allow the global temperature to rise by
only 2° C above pre-industrial levels. That should focus our
attention. It is right that biodiversity should be a prominent concern
in the Bill, and the amendments deserve our warm support. It is a
matter of some embarrassment to me that we did not spot that enormous
omission before and were not responsible for tabling the amendments. I
warmly congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on doing
so.
Miss
McIntosh: I, too, congratulate and pay tribute to my right
hon. Friend for his amendments, research, the passion and eloquence
with which he spoke and for spotting an omission from the Bill. May I
also establish my eco-warrior and environmental claims, which go back
to about the age of nine, 10 or 15?
The
Committee may recall that Professor David Bellamy made his name as a
lecturer in botany at Durham university. One of the great campaigns
that he supported at that time, but which, regrettably, was not
successful, was the drive to protect the blue gentian, an alpine flower
that grows in this country in only one part of the north of England.
This is not a private Committee meeting, but I do not mind sharing this
story with the Committee. I was brought up in that place, known as
Upper Teesdale, which remains relatively unspoiled, compared to the
Lake district.
At
that time, it was proposed that part of Upper Teesdale should be
flooded to create a reservoir to help people further downstream on the
River Tees, and that plan went ahead. Professor Bellamy and those who
supported him failed to protect the blue gentian. Outside Austria and
Switzerland, that flower grows only in Upper Teesdale, so there are few
left. The tragedy is that the water that was damned by the reservoir
was never needed further downstream. I hope we can all learn from
that. The
amendments and new clause tabled by my right hon. Friend propose that
the Secretary of State should take into account such matters when
making decisions about carbon budgets and the duty to report on them.
My right hon. Friend seeks to amend clause 11 so that rises in global
temperature, the impact of climate change on world biodiversity and
loss of world forest, with particular reference to rain forests, would
be added to the list of matters to be taken into account. He wishes to
put a duty on the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before
Parliament on the impact of biodiversity loss on the UK and on meeting
our carbon budgets and for the theme to be included in the title of the
Bill. The
amendments relate to clauses 11 and 14 and the title of the Bill. It is
interesting that the much-flaunted theme of sustainable development is
often described as a three-legged stool, the legs being a sustainable
environment, a sustainable society and a sustainable economy. It is
claimed that, without one of the legs, the stool would fall over. The
Minister might want to comment on why no reference is made to the
impact on the environment in clauses 11 and 14 and in the
title.
The case for
amending the clauses and the title in order to consider the loss of the
world’s forests and the impact of climate change on biodiversity
is a noble one, and my right hon. Friend is right to express his
concern about those vital issues. I share his mother’s concern
for the wee beasties, and was moved by his reference to the cone snail,
of which I confess I was not aware. I hope that it can be protected and
can continue to be used for the purposes he
described. The
World Bank estimates that approximately two thirds of tropical forest
is under moderate to high pressure from agricultural expansion and
timber industry expansion. My right hon. Friend spoke at some length
about the impact on the rain forest, but I am sure he would wish to
draw attention to previous incidents at Carlisle in Cumbria and at
Boscastle in Devon, and incidents during last summer’s floods
which, although they caused devastation elsewhere, were particularly
acutely felt across Yorkshire and the Humber and the north Lincolnshire
regions. Agricultural land was lost for part of the summer, as were
many crops. It is important to see the issue in terms of UK losses as
well. The
Minister is aware that prime agricultural land is increasingly
encroached upon by the Government’s ambitious plans to build 3
million houses by 2020 and by their separate proposal for eco-towns. In
considering the amendments, it is important to look at the impact that
those Government plans will have on our own biodiversity.
A recent
report for McKinsey estimates that the world could avoid 3.3 gigatons
of CO 2 equivalent in annual emissions from tropical
deforestation by 2030 if we were able to price the carbon stored in
these rain forests at less than €40 per tonne of carbon dioxide
emissions. Such an analysis must make us seriously
consider the benefits of avoiding rain forest destruction not purely as
the morally correct thing to do, as my right hon. Friend argued, but
because the value of the ecosystem services that those forests provide
is immeasurable. If, in the years ahead, we continue to lose the rain
forests at the current rate, we can almost certainly give up hope of
keeping warming under 2°C. I warmly
welcome my right hon. Friend’s aspiration for biodiversity and
deforestation issues to be brought to the heart of our carbon reporting
procedure, which is as an eminently sensible idea, and especially for
them to be taken into account in setting the carbon budgets in the
annual report and in the long title of the Bill. I look forward with
great interest to hearing from the Minister why she believes that there
was no place for the environment in the original drafting of the
Bill.
Mr.
Gummer: I shall be brief. We were all moved by the words
of my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border in
introducing the amendment. I hope very much that the Minister will not
say that those matters are implicit in the Bill, but will understand
why a specific reference is so important. The reason is that it is
extremely easy for these things to be forgotten because they do not
happen to be the fashion of the time. I remember when the rain forests
were at the centre of attention, and gradually they declined and other
topics came up. It is very important that we should not miss them out.
I have three more quick
points. First,
we should remind ourselves that the importance of biodiversity has an
additional dimension to the one to which my right hon. Friend referred.
The retention of biodiversity is vital for the poor. The fish example
is very strong. Rich countries steal the food of the poor. That is what
happens. Local material becomes less and less available, so people look
further and further abroad, and because they are rich enough they can
grab a higher proportion of what is there. That is the injustice of the
world, and it is crucial to those of us who recognise that social
justice is at the heart of any policy to deal with climate change. We
cannot deal with climate change without dealing with social justice,
both nationally and internationally. Biodiversity is a key issue for
social justice.
That leads
to the second point, which is that we must have a degree of imagination
and a willingness to extend the issues that are covered in the Bill
more widely than is sometimes thought. I shall give an example. I am
lucky enough to do business in Brazil and I recently returned from a
conference there. One of the interesting issues raised was the work
done by non-governmental organisations to provide jobs and
opportunities for the indigenous people who would otherwise cut down
the rain forests. It is all very well talking about cutting down rain
forests, but it is often not wicked outsiders but poor people who do
it, as part of the means to getting some sort of livelihood
for themselves.
An excellent
NGO is trying to help indigenous people to farm in a sustainable way.
In doing so, they have found what is thought to be the original place
where the cocoa bean comes from and are beginning to farm those
original cocoa bean plantations in a way that will have a remarkably
sustainable mechanism. They run into two kinds of problems. One is
getting it started and teaching people; the other is being able to sell
the high quality cocoa bean outside the area in which it exists,
because the international organisers of such commodities do not like
making the distinction between that special product and the generality
of cocoa beans. In order to
meet the demands of my right hon. Friend’s proposals, we will
have to look further. The matter should be talked through with the
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. It is the
kind of issue that we should be thinking through when we deal with our
overseas aid. It is a Foreign Office matter, as well as something that
we do at home. I emphasise that a failure to look further might
undermine the broad way in which the Bill should be
applied.
Martin
Horwood: I agree with almost everything that the right
hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal said, in a valuable contribution. As
chair of the all-party group for tribal peoples, I should say that
although I am sure the organisation that he mentioned is doing valuable
work, traditional tribal peoples in the rain forest live on a
sustainable basis, do not damage the rain forest and are widely
recognised as the best stewards of the forest. Protecting their land
rights is an important contribution to the battle to protect
biodiversity.
Mr.
Gummer: I agree. The traditional mechanisms of groups
living in the rain forest are some of the things that we have done much
to damage and have ignored and treated badly. I am merely saying that
much of the damage done to rain forests is done by people who are poor
and who do so because they have no other way to ensure that they and
their family’s livelihoods are protected. Remembering our
responsibility in that respect is important.
I know that
the Minister will have been advised that all that is included in the
Bill and that reference to biodiversity may well suggest that other
things are less important, may upset the balance and so on. I think I
know what has been written beautifully for her. I hope I am wrong, and
if so I apologise. If I am right, I suggest to her that this is an
opportunity for the Government to remind the nation that combating
climate change is a much bigger business than merely the mathematics of
targets, budgets and the like. It requires us to try to understand our
world in a wholly different
way. 3.45
pm My
right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border has reminded us
that we have been unbelievably cavalier with the riches that we have
inherited. The willingness to destroy without thought is a serious
statement about humankind at this moment and over many centuries.
Climate change is about reminding us that the human attitude to itself
and its planet has to change radically. That was why I said during the
previous sitting that this is the most exciting time for us to be
living, because it is a time in which we have to become different about
ourselves and each other in a way that we have not had to since the
huge changes of the enlightenment and the
renaissance. I
hope that the Minister will set aside any temporary, narrow or less
than excellent proposals that she has from her civil servants and
instead say that she will rise to this, because it is necessary to
remind the nation and the world that biodiversity is so important as
part of the fight against climate change because it represents the area
in which we can see most dramatically where humankind has behaved at
its worst and where the biggest changes have to take
place.
Joan
Ruddock: It is a pleasure to serve under your
chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. First, I join in the general
congratulations to the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border on
how he presented his case. The inspiration of Rio lives in him. He has
given us a huge opportunity to remind everyone who hears the debate
about the extraordinary importance of the world’s biodiversity.
He did that not only because its intrinsic value and moral status, but
for our self-interest. I think that if climate change affected only
human beings, it would not be so dangerous. It is the fact that it
affects the totality of the natural world that makes it such a terrible
threat. The
right hon. Gentleman referred to the contribution of ecosystems and,
especially, the contribution that the new natural world has made,
through human discovery, to our medicines and thus our well-being. I
join him in underlining that value. I will dwell a little on the threat
for a few
moments. The
Stern report revealed that an increase of just 1° C could lead
to at least 10 per cent. of land species facing extinction, with 80 per
cent. bleaching of the coral reefs, including the great barrier reef.
Within the 2° C increase, which we have all pledged not to
exceed, the extinction figure rises dramatically to between 15 and 40
per cent. We also know the enormous value of biodiversity in mitigating
climate change. For example, the amount of terrestrial carbon stored in
peat lands is equivalent to 75 per cent. of all atmospheric carbon and
about 100 years of emissions from fossil
fuels. We
recognise the link between biodiversity and climate change. We make a
link in our efforts to tackle climate change and our efforts to tackle
biodiversity loss. In a previous intervention, the right hon. Gentleman
referred to “The Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity”, which is an extremely important report, supported
by the UK Government. We are also chairing a group of experts on
biodiversity and climate change for the convention on biological
diversity. At home we have established a climate change adaptation work
stream, as part of the English biodiversity strategy, to promote
adaptation of relevant policies and programmes in all relevant sectors,
which include agriculture, forestry, water management and land-use
planning. The
right hon. Gentleman’s amendments focus on the loss of the
world’s forests, particularly rain forests. Again, I support his
passion to see that sufficient attention is given to these terrible
threats. Let me give him the further assurance that that goes for the
whole
Government. The
UK is working actively in the EU and with our international negotiating
partners to reduce deforestation in developing countries by achieving a
successful outcome to the UN climate negotiations. We have also
recently allocated £50 million from the new £800 million
environmental transformation fund to help to slow the rate of
deforestation of the Congo basin. Let me make it absolutely clear that
our overall aim is to reach international agreement on the use of the
carbon market for the second commitment period under the Kyoto protocol
to give positive incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation in
developing countries.
So, why will
I proceed in the way in which I am about to proceed? Let me say to the
right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal that officials may indeed
provide me with information and even speaking notes, but I speak for
myself. I have given great attention to the amendments
and great thought to the vision that he and others have presented here
this afternoon. However, there are two issues that we need to look at
very carefully. I am the Minister who is dealing with both the
biodiversity and the garbage, and I hope that the right hon. Member for
Penrith and The Border will not find me among the garbage at the end of
what I am about to say. There are
two issues. First, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border
seeks to add to clause 11(2)(a), which
states: “scientific
knowledge about climate
change”. No
one could possibly argue that
“scientific
knowledge about climate change”
did not include
knowledge of both the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and the
way in which biodiversity might mitigate climate change. That is
absolutely taken for granted; it is in every discussion and in every
document. Therefore, I think that it is absolutely clear that that
provision covers the issues that he has raised.
I must also
say to the right hon. Gentleman, for the sake of accuracy—of
course, this is all boring, technical stuff—that there are many
causes of the loss of biodiversity that are not due to climate change.
We could think, of course, of change in land use patterns, overgrazing,
the introduction of alien species—that is a major factor that we
agree might be exacerbated by climate change—and the
over-abstraction of water.
Secondly,
the amendments attempt to draw a direct line between the UK’s
carbon budgets and the impacts of climate change on global biodiversity
and forests. I am genuinely sorry to have to tell the right hon.
Gentleman this, but I do not believe that that is sensible or even
possible. As we have already discussed, the impacts of climate change
will be driven by global emissions, not just emissions from the United
Kingdom.
I hope that
it will give the right hon. Gentleman some comfort if I say that there
is undoubtedly a case for linking any future global climate change
agreement to international biodiversity. That is why all the points
that he has made are absolutely clear and valid. Indeed, at the
conference looking at the convention on biological diversity that I
attended last month, we decided to make closer linkages between that
convention and the United Nations framework convention on climate
change. Specifically, the conference agreed to highlight the role of
biodiversity in mitigating climate change; to highlight the threats to
global biodiversity from climate change; and to look for ways to
minimise climate change. We also agreed to set up an expert group that
would provide biodiversity-relevant information to the UNFCC.
Let me turn
specifically to amendment No. 38. Clause 11 sets out matters
that the Committee on Climate Change must take into account when
providing advice on the level of carbon budgets, including economic,
social and scientific factors. That will be a complex task that will
require thorough analysis, advice and political judgement. I suggest to
the right hon. Gentleman that it is not possible to take account of the
effect of rising global temperatures on world biodiversity and forests
when considering specific UK carbon budgets if that assessment is to be
made in any meaningful way. That, of course, should not diminish the
right hon. Gentleman’s vision, and it does not diminish the fact
that it is precisely because of the potentially devastating effects on
global
biodiversity that we want to make our contribution to avoiding dangerous
climate change and to limit the increase in average temperatures to no
more than 2° C more than pre-industrial levels. To the
extent that there could be any linkage between the Committee on Climate
Change and such work, hon. Members should be aware that, under the
Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, all decisions that
the Government take must have regard to the purpose of conserving
biodiversity in the exercise of those
functions. Amendment
No. 40 builds on amendment No. 38 by requiring an explanation of how
proposals and policies to meet a budget will affect global temperature,
the loss of world biodiversity and the loss of world forests. I have to
say to the right hon. Gentleman that just as we cannot assess what
effect the particular level of UK carbon budgeting would have on these
issues, it is equally not possible to say what effect our particular
choices of policies would have. We need to remember that all our
proposals for emissions reductions have to be implemented within
existing law. The right hon. Gentleman will know the extent of existing
law covering biodiversity in this
country. While
we cannot directly determine, or expect a link with, what happens
overseas, we can expect that when we choose our new policies in the UK,
they will have to respect the habitats and birds directives and the
requirements for environmental impact assessments, where they apply.
Clause 13 requires that proposals and policies contribute overall to
sustainable development, which includes taking environmental impacts
into
account. The
hon. Member for Vale of York asked about the sustainable development
definitions. The whole Government have adopted a definition for the
sustainable development strategy, which says that a policy is
sustainable when it is in line with all five of the sustainable
development principles, one of which is the key to the hon.
Lady’s question: “Living within environmental
limits”. That is absolutely clear and the strategy says we must
have policies in line with all five of those
principles.
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