Protecting and Restoring Nature: COP15 and Beyond

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whom I congratulate on securing the debate.

Here is my perspective. Life on this planet has been going for 4.5 billion years—4,500 million years. Human beings have been on this planet for 6 million years. That means that we have been around for 0.013% of the time that life has existed on this planet. We are cashing in 4.5 billion years of planetary saving bonds and blowing it on bling, and nothing but our own hubris gives us the right to do so. Exponential growth within a finite system leads to collapse, and that is what is happening—collapse. We know it is happening. Only last weekend, as I was in Durham, the IPBES report set out again what we already know: the global rate of species extinction is between 10 to 100 times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years. We are living in the Anthropocene—the sixth great extinction event. Human activity is actually being compared to the asteroid that obliterated the dinosaurs—except that unlike the asteroid we know what we are doing. We know that 12% of tree species and over 1,300 wild mammal species are threatened by unsustainable logging and hunting, more than 25% of the world’s forests are subject to industrial logging, and 34% of marine wild fish stocks are overfished—but the plunder goes on.

We politicians are strange creatures: we say we want to do the right thing but so often we end up doing the easy thing instead. We spend our lives trying to win, but in this struggle between ourselves and our planet, there is always going to be just one winner: planet Earth will continue in a new form long after we have made it impossible for our own species to live on it. Reversing the trend of biodiversity loss requires urgent, transformative change. That is code for saying that we need to consume less, because at the current rate of consumption, we would need three planets-worth of resources by 2050. That means that we must examine our economy. It is not just about reducing our consumption; it is about changing our economic accounting model in order to account properly for the free goods and services that we are destroying. Pollination services, clean air, the purification of water by forests and the protection of coastal cities by mangroves are all regarded as externalities by classical economics.

Let me now enter into the earlier debate between the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—my hon. Friend on this side—and the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), whom, certainly in terms of conservation, I am happy to call an hon. Friend on the other side. Our obsession with GDP suggests that the coastal surge that destroyed cities such as New Orleans—under hurricane Katrina—resulted in the growth of GDP owing to the economic activity when all the new levees were built. The disaster that destroyed so many lives and so much wealth is counted in our economic system, GDP, as a positive, but the loss of the tupelo and cypress forest swamp, which had previously—when the trees were not being taken down—reduced the surge swell and protected the city, was not counted as a negative in any economic calculation.

The Dasgupta review, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred, set out with great economic force the consequences of what Professor Dasgupta termed “impact inequality”: the imbalance between humanity’s demand and nature’s supply, and the need to reconstruct economics so that nature is an essential part of it and ecosystem services are properly valued. It was disappointing that when the then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee to discuss the Dasgupta review, it became clear that she had not read it. Yesterday, when the chair of the Committee on Climate Change appeared before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and was asked about DEFRA’s plan for net zero, it was notable that he said not only that there was no clarity for others, but that there was no implementation that it was possible to judge because the metrics were not there. Just as the Government should implement net zero stress tests for all budgets, so they should implement net nature tests against all expenditure to ensure that alignment with our post-2030 biodiversity framework is maintained.

That brings me to the importance of data. We are extraordinarily blessed in this country to have more than 250 years of amateur scientific data-gathering. We have baselines against which we can say, with real confidence, that 41% of all UK species have declined in the past 52 years, since 1970, but under-employed Church of England vicars and other gentlefolk going back to Georgian England provide us with a database that other countries can only of dream of. May I ask the Minister to ensure that our support for COP15, and the financial assistance that we make available to countries, focus on enabling them to have an accurate dataset of their own natural and biological assets.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I will give both ways, but not simultaneously. I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend. What he is saying about data is a huge issue for the small island developing states, because there is so much biodiversity, particularly in the territorial waters, and populations of perhaps a few hundred are somehow expected to manage a vast space. I agree with what he said about the importance of supporting them, and our overseas territories, so that they can do that work.

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. One of the constant problems, particularly in our overseas territories, which do not have the resources to be able to establish their own datasets, is the gaming between them and the Foreign Office, because technically, through the convention on biological diversity, we are responsible for the biodiversity in those overseas territories.

It is a great tragedy that this palming off of responsibility between the two continues. I know that the Minister is new in post, and I welcome him to his post, but I hope he will have robust discussions with his colleagues in the Foreign Office about this. Perhaps he could whisper something to that effect in Lord Goldsmith’s ear, given that he is Minister of State in both DEFRA and the Foreign Office. This really does need to be sorted out. The overseas territories need that support to get the database.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is right that we need to look at land restoration as one of the key indicators. It is particularly the case in sub-Saharan African countries, which are facing an increasing challenge of desertification from climate change, which they are having to fight against, rather than just looking at the land that is already semi-desert and trying to see how to restore that. It is a huge problem. The NBSAPs must be living documents, which is why they need to be ratcheted up, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, every five years between major COPs.

Let me turn to finance. I pay tribute to Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, who spoke at the beginning of COP26. For my money, she was the most powerful speaker at the whole event. She pointed out to the politicians assembled for the launch of COP26 that the promise we had given was for $100 billion a year to be put into the global planet fund to help the global south to cope with climate change and to take effective mitigation efforts. We have not delivered that, and we are nowhere near delivering it. She pointed out that it was not because we could not afford it, because we had just spent $9 trillion—trillions, not billions—bailing ourselves out over the covid pandemic. The funds are available and they must be made available.

The extent of quantitative easing that the global north has allowed itself since the 2008 global financial crisis has been more than $36 trillion. What is COP15 asking for? It is asking for the same as was promised at COP26: $100 billion a year, rising to $700 billion a year. That is essential. If we are to enable those developing countries in the global south to do exactly what the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell was talking about with regard to the restoration of degraded land, and if we are to deal with these problems, we have to be serious. As the human species, we do not have the right not to be.

[Kerry McCarthy]

On the amount of money we need to give to help countries in the global south to cope, those countries are often faced with crippling debt—we had the whole jubilee debt campaign. Belize, for example, is a small island state that is right in the forefront of the impacts of climate change. It has incredible biodiversity that needs protecting, but is crippled by debt repayments. If we do not deal with that side of the equation, there is not an awful lot of point giving such countries money to help them invest in the sort of projects my hon. Friend is talking about.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend made that intervention at precisely that moment, because it enables me to talk about green finance, and the importance of involving the private sector and ensuring that critical private finance is coming in. Green bonds and debt-for-biodiversity swaps are innovative and fundamental ways in which we should facilitate countries such as Belize to tackle the environmental problems they face. It cannot be done without money, and it cannot be done simply with public money. In fact, green bonds are now classed as more attractive than ordinary, vanilla bonds, because they tackle not one issue, but two; they mitigate risk on two factors. The secondary market in green bonds has really taken off.

I want to talk about the way in which the financial sector needs to be regulated and guided through the issue. The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell spoke about the way in which our financial sector was incentivising deforestation, particularly in Brazil. He is absolutely correct. We should not simply say, as is the Government’s position, that companies need to declare their climate and sustainability actions in their mandatory annual reporting, and that they should not fund any activity, such as ranching in Brazil, that drives illegal deforestation. That is not good enough. When those stipulations were put in place, countries such as Brazil simply changed the law to make it legal so that they could continue to receive the finance. There must be objectivity about whether something is or is not deforestation.

I am conscious that I should not take up too much more time, but it is critical that COP15 addresses access and benefit sharing. We will not have global agreement and global co-operation on the environment and our failing global biodiversity unless biopiracy by pharmaceutical companies is addressed. These companies must not go into communities—my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred to this—and say, “We are going to take the genetic sequences of these two trees and use them in our pharmaceutical products, but you will not get any advantages from it.” That is why the UK must be foursquare behind access and benefit sharing at COP15.

An ecosystem has the right to exist, to flourish, to regenerate its vital cycles and to evolve naturally without human disruption. Nature has rights. We often think that rights apply only to us, but trusts and institutions have rights, and those rights are safeguarded by trustees and guardians. That is us. Nobody else is here to argue for nature. We must be the guardians of that trust. We have been on this planet for only 0.13% of the time that biodiversity has existed. We have no right to destroy the world around us.

Horsemeat

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is very much the point I am making. It is so important for people to know what goes into their food, but there is a conspiracy to keep that information from people.

[Barry Gardiner]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Government have just concluded a consultation on the EU food information for consumers regulation, under which they are asking for a derogation so that they do not have to reveal that information on the label to the public in Britain? Mince, which is not allowed to be sold with 35% and 15% respectively of fat and collagen in it, will not be allowed to be sold on the continent, but it will be sold in Britain under that derogation.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Exactly. I raised that very issue with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs yesterday, and I have to say from his response that it looked as if it was the first he had heard of it; he simply said that we rely on scientific advice, which I think is scandalous.

I am just halfway through my description of the process involved in producing pink slime. The recovered beef material is then processed, heated and treated with gaseous ammonia or citric acid to kill bacteria. It is then finely ground, compressed into pellets, flash frozen and shipped for use as an additive. There was a public outcry over this issue a while ago, and we saw Jamie Oliver appearing on American TV decrying its use. There was a real backlash, and companies such as McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell announced that they would discontinue its use. There was also an outcry about it appearing in meals in the public sector, and promises were made that that would no longer happen. Once consumers knew that there was pink slime in their food, they did not want it and wanted the meat industry to stop producing it.

There is also a substance that has become colloquially known as “white slime” in meat products. It is officially known as “mechanically separated meat” or “mechanically recovered meat”. This is the product most likely to be used in highly processed meat products such as burgers or pies. It is a paste-like product produced by forcing beef, pork, turkey or chicken under high pressure through a sieve to get every last little scrap of meat off the bone. Questions have been raised about its safety and some have argued there should be limits on how much of it should be used in a food product—for example, no more than 20% is allowed in hot dogs. The fact is, however, that consumers do not realise that this is in their hot dogs. Finally, there is advanced meat recovery, which separates meat from bone by scraping, shaving or pressing the meat from the bone—again, typically used in hot dogs.

Let me quote what John Harris said in an excellent article in yesterday’s The Guardian—it may sound a bit of a cliché to keep quoting this newspaper, but it is not particularly fond of vegetarians generally. He said that EU regulations insist that if a product is to be called “meat”, it has to be

“skeletal muscle with naturally included or adherent fat and connective tissue”.

He said that our Food Standards Agency insists that economy beefburgers must contain at least 40% of this product, which must come from cows. That is not very reassuring; I think people expect their beefburgers to have beef in them, not cartilage, fat and connective tissue.

In talking about the relentless search for profits from cheap food, John Harris cited a Financial Times article saying that Findus products came from a factory in Luxembourg, which was supplied with meat by a company in south-west France, which had acquired frozen meat from a Cypriot trader that had subcontracted the order to a trader in the Netherlands—who was then supplied from an abattoir and butcher located in Romania. As John Harris says, how messed up has our food system become? All this is a far cry from the sort of meat that many Members praised during yesterday’s statement on horsemeat. The advisability of buying local meat from a local farm sold by a local butcher was highlighted, where the path from the pasture to the plate is a matter of public record. Indeed, I have heard people saying that they take local sourcing so far that they even know the name of the cow they are consuming.

It is very easy to say that, and in ideal world, people would be looking to buy organically reared locally produced products, but that is very expensive. Yes, it can be said that people should try to cook their own food and source it locally instead of buying ready-made meals, but I am sure many MPs grab a ready meal from Tesco or Marks and Spencer on their way home after a vote. We should not be too judgmental about people who turn to value ranges and ready-made meals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said. If someone has only a couple of pounds left in their purse and there is a £1 lasagne ready meal or an eight-pack of Tesco economy burgers left in the shop, they will buy one of those rather than buying the mince, the sheets of pasta, the flour, the butter, the tomatoes, the herbs and the cheese that they would need to make lasagne from scratch. Many people do not even have the necessary cooking facilities in any case. I have seen single men in my constituency living in bedsits with just a microwave for cooking.