Biodiversity

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Barry Gardiner

Thursday 16th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

It is a delight to take part in the debate. I was glad to see, among the various pieces of business that we are dealing with in this fortnight in which Parliament has resumed, this debate on the international year of biodiversity. The debate is timely and I am glad that it is happening so early in the Minister’s career. It allows us to put down a few markers and, I hope, make some helpful suggestions.

At the outset, I want to welcome not only the debate, but the work that has been done by and the briefings that we have had from various groups. I shall mention just a few: the Wildlife Trust, the RSPB and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. There are others. I also want to mention the work of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which has pushed forward the agenda generally. Some of the issues discussed today are not new. Members of all parties on the EFRA Committee have been pushing this agenda forward for some time. It is also very good to see a couple of the vice-presidents of GLOBE present. I acknowledge the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has been doing with that organisation. It is very important and I shall return to it.

Let me turn to some of the comments that have been made. I shall start with the very good contribution made by my hon. Friend. He brings great experience and expertise to the Opposition Benches, both from his ministerial role and from his various roles with environmental organisations. He plays a prominent and active role in that regard. He gave us a timely reminder of the importance of considering natural capital, which we often ignore because we tend to focus on top line economic gain. He mentioned, for example, that only one third of the value of our forests is captured by classical economic analysis. The same applies across the board. That is the way we traditionally regard those priceless assets in government and in policy making and decision making. I say “priceless” because this is a classic case of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. Today’s debate has shown that we need to move way beyond that. We have started work on some of the helpful mechanisms that could lead us to move beyond that point, but we now need to do it.

My hon. Friend’s account of natural defences was interesting. It reminded me of two things. One is a domestic issue. As we consider the increase in storm surges and the increasing prevalence of flooding and of coastal erosion, it is important that while we are employing a huge armoury of different approaches to deal with those things, we do not negate the role of natural defences but actively encourage them as part of the toolbox that we have to respond to such eventualities; otherwise, we are resorting purely to the old hard-style defences. Things have moved on significantly and I know the Minister will be keen to continue with what I have described domestically.

My hon. Friend’s comments also reminded me of observing at first hand the replanting of mangrove plants in the Cayman Islands in little concrete wellies. The idea was to hold them down and embed them sufficiently before the concrete fell to bits. They had to have something that weighted them down sufficiently, given the storminess there, and very successful it was. It was hard work, but it was a case of rebuilding natural defences and recognising the wide benefits that come from valuing that natural capital, rather than choosing hard technical solutions all the time.

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend has just given a fascinating illustration of the point. I suspect that he may have visited that project because it was one of the Darwin projects. Does he agree that of all the things that the Department does, if it protects anything in the comprehensive spending review, it should be the Darwin projects? Nothing can be more innovative and valuable than the work that has been done under that relatively tiny budget.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Indeed. In terms of bang for our buck—or whatever the sterling equivalent is—we cannot do much better than the Darwin initiative. I applaud the Minister for not going through the political rote that we sometimes hear at the moment of “Times are terrible.” I know that he faces challenges, but I agree with my hon. Friend; the Darwin initiative is a singular example of an initiative in which a little investment goes a long, long way. That investment sits alongside an investment of expertise from people from the natural history museum and Kew gardens, and the use of committed people in the overseas territories, volunteers and so on. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that announcements will be made about the next round of funding under the scheme. We look forward to that. I ask him please to keep that momentum going.

My hon. Friend moved on, in the latter part of his contribution, to some excellent ideas about embedding the values of natural capital in our policy making and decision making. That is one of the big ideas whose time has come. He talked about Departments having natural capital auditing and evaluation and every policy being assessed according to its contribution to increasing natural capital wealth or to denuding natural wealth. Another idea was the use of ecosystem services instead of hard technical solutions and weighing those up every time a hard technical solution is proposed. Sometimes we will need hard technical solutions; that is without a doubt, but they need to be weighed in the balance against whether there is a softer, longer-lasting, enduring, multifaceted-benefit approach that might be better.

That very interesting concept of departmental budgets of natural wealth should, after a trial, be incorporated into the Treasury. I would not give up on that. I know the Treasury is often portrayed as the ogre of Government, sitting there jealously guarding the keys to its bullion, or whatever it has, but it can be open to persuasion if a good case is put forward, particularly if the denuding of our domestic natural wealth affects us in a very anthropocentric way—a purely selfish way. When that is done, both globally—in terms of impact on global poverty, migration flows, our own shores and indigenous communities—and here, it is better to weigh these things in the balance. I genuinely offer the Minister and the Secretary of State my support. The Minister should advance that argument because it is time to do so. I will return to that.

The fascinating idea of an audit of the state of the nation based on natural wealth, with an annual report, and with the EFRA Committee playing a scrutiny role, was, the Minister will be intrigued to know, part of a conversation that took place in discussions with the former Secretary of State. We frequently asked, “What comes beyond Pavan Sukhdev and TEEB? What comes beyond the internal work that we have been doing? What is the next stage?” If it is to be embedded in Government, it cannot be in DEFRA alone; that point is well made.

The hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) rightly mentioned the importance of community engagement and education. It is very often the simple, immediately identifiable natural phenomenon that can do that. I recall visiting a school just outside Newcastle early in my tenure as a Minister, where we were looking at the reintroduction of the red kite. It was being reintroduced not to a completely rural environment, but to an urban-rural mix. I had not seen a single red kite and came out of the school thinking that it was going to be a classic ministerial visit; they had brought me all the way up there to see it and I was going to have to say how impressed I was, but I had not seen a darn thing. The school had branded itself round the red kite and the kids understood—they get it in a way that an earlier generation has not quite. As I walked out of that school door on the way back, five of the magnificent red kites were swirling around in the air outside. Whether it be the red Kite or the blue iguana in the Cayman Islands, such events bring it home to me that single species can transform people’s understanding of the importance of biodiversity in the natural environment. They can also lead to habitat recreation and so on. It is a virtuous circle. We need to start with young people and community engagement.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) made a good contribution. I had never heard of the Teesdale array but I am glad that I have now. She reminded us of the intrinsic value of species. That briefly takes me back to the contribution made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) when he, as Secretary of State, announced the opening of the South Downs national park, the final bolt in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. I spoke just before him and I was like the greased mechanic in the bonnet talking about the nuts and bolts and how it had happened and so on. While I had spoken in prose, he got up and spoke in poetry and reminded us what it was about: the joy, the experience, the benefits for many people who will never see some of the species we are talking about. The fact that they are there is important. That has to be balanced against finding a way for policy makers and decision makers to see tangibly what that value is. How does one express that in decision making, so that Ministers, civil servants and international organisations can make sense of it and base decisions on it?

My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland also reminded us of the importance of volunteers and the great tradition of enthusiastic amateurs, in monitoring, recording and protecting our flora and fauna. She finished neatly by reminding us of that very good RSPB campaign, “Don’t Cut the Countryside”. I know that the Minister will be aware of it and will return in his closing remarks to how we can avoid that cut.

I welcome the Minister’s opening remarks to the effect that this does not have to be a matter of the economy or the environment. It is a matter of putting the triangle together: the economy, the environment and communities—national and international—and making sure that they are all delivered, at least in this international year of biodiversity.

The Minister noted the progress that has been made in some areas on SSSIs and on some of the UK species. He also rightly noted the accelerated loss of biodiversity as we run up to the countdown to 2010 and what will come after. He also rightly reminded us of the £42 billion cost per year in biodiversity loss. That is as real for us in developed nations as it is for poorer countries. We need to do something about the issue of access and benefit sharing, which is one of the pieces of unfinished business of Copenhagen, going into Nagoya. We need to find the right mechanism by which we can share the benefits that can accrue from sustainable exploitation of that natural wealth.

With regard to the CSR, I will go through some detailed and some big points, in as helpful a way as possible. I know that neither the Minister nor the Secretary of State intends to be the one who sacrifices natural wealth and environment on the altar of austerity. I welcome the Minister’s opening comments because I do not think he intends to be that person. The environment, the economy, society and communities go together. May he be the Minister who brings them together, domestically and internationally, within the UK Government and international institutions.

In a very good contribution, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) reinforced the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North and also rightly said that the tools we employ are not sophisticated enough; I will return to that. In a way that was slightly prickly and defensive, the hon. Gentleman perhaps glossed over, or was a little begrudging about, the contribution of the previous Government in moving this agenda forward. I think we moved it forward significantly, hence the nature and tone of this debate. It is now a matter of what the next steps are. Let me go back to the launch of the discussion document on the natural environment White Paper.