Biodiversity

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, as usual, I declare my interest in this area as chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership. In terms of some of the related climate finance, I also declare my role as a trustee of the Green Purposes Company, which holds a green share in the Green Investment Bank.

I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for having brought this debate to Grand Committee. It is great that we are actually giving this subject the level of attention in the House that it deserves. Her reminder that we have only one biosphere is particularly important. I liked—or disliked—her reference to vultures. I remember my first visit to south Asia in the early 1980s. You knew you were coming to a settlement well ahead from the fact that large black vultures circled above these settlements. When I visited there more recently, they were almost completely absent. She is right to show that as an example of a loss of biodiversity, but also to show its implications throughout human society.

I welcome the fact that the Treasury is involved in this issue and that it took the initiative to have Professor Dasgupta produce this report. We as parliamentarians all know that the Treasury actually does stuff and decides stuff, which is not true of many of the departments that we sometimes talk about and deal with. This is a serious subject in a serious department of government.

A number of things are absolutely clear from the Dasgupta Report and this debate. First, biodiversity is a real problem: it is a big issue, and we are failing in that area. The statistics are not just bad but continuing to get worse. In the period from 1970, not just globally but equally in the UK, there has been a 40% fall in a number of key indicators of biodiversity, but they have been even worse since 1990.

Some 10 years ago, there was the UN conference on biodiversity in Japan; the 20 Aichi targets were laid down there, and globally we have met none of them. The Government suggest that we have met six of them in the UK, but NGOs suggest that it is only one. My noble friend Lady Parminter mentioned the National Audit Office report, which was very condemning—regrettably—about the progress in relation to the 25-year environment plan, which we all welcome but want implemented and to be successful.

The other thing that we have all now recognised is that our national accounting does not work in the way that we need it to. As the report says so well, it takes account of produced—and perhaps human—capital to some degree, but not natural capital. GDP, described as a “flow” of economic activity, does not include depreciation, as I understand it from the P&L accounts that I look at. This cannot work well for us into the future; it is important but needs to be supplemented.

This issue of biodiversity is complex, and we should not ever run away from that. It is not an easy issue to measure or solve. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, mentioned, we need metrics, but those are not easy here. Climate change is so much easier in terms of tracking what is happening in relation to greenhouse gas emissions or the proportion of CO in the atmosphere—that is not the case for biodiversity. As Professor Dasgupta himself says, the economics of biodiversity is a hard subject, and we should not underestimate that.

We have also learned that we have the twin emergencies of not just biodiversity but climate change. Although there are clear areas of common interest, such as nature-based solutions and carbon sequestration, we know that we cannot solve just one of these; we have to solve both. We cannot have one without the other; both are fundamental to the survival of not just us but our planet in the way that we know it.

Contentiously, Professor Dasgupta mentions food production as being one of the biggest problems. That is the case, and it is also true in the United Kingdom, regrettably. I do not blame farmers for this; I blame the way that they have been incentivised in the past. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Curry, mentioned ELMS, which I hope will reorient that sufficiently—it is a big ask. Of course, my noble friend Lady Walmsley mentioned the soil—again, ELMS will be important in making sure that we give that greater attention.

As my noble friend Lady Miller mentioned, the other area is that we are consuming more than our planet can provide; that is very clear in this report. We consume 1.6 planets’ worth, in comparison to what we have available to us, and we have to look at that. We are embedded in nature, and we have to make sure that our consumption, as well as the way that we treat nature, is managed.

As such, we have no easy answers; we have only glimmers of the solution. A number of those are mentioned in the Dasgupta Report, but we do not, by any means, have a comprehensive answer yet about how to deliver in relation to biodiversity challenges. However, one thing that comes out to me from this is that we have an emergency. We need look no further than the World Economic Forum in Davos, which sees biodiversity as one of the top five challenges to the global economy into the future.

My questions to the Minister are as follows. First, on finance and coming back to the way capitalism can work, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, we found good ways that capitalism and green finance can work for climate change and renewable energy. Does the Minister see such ways forward for biodiversity? There is much work being done—the Green Finance Institute, which the Government support, is looking at that—but do we see answers on that in the near future?

Secondly, will the Government continue to look at alternative ways of accounting? It is not about getting rid of GDP but about using additional methods, as Professor Dasgupta mentioned. As he said,

“nations need to adopt a system of … accounts that records an inclusive measure of their wealth.”

That is: the stock of the economy’s assets, of which nature is one. I read a book recently by Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics, as many others will have done. Is the Treasury looking at those areas as well? Will it discuss this report with other countries? In my own area of Cornwall, we have the G7 happening in June. Will Professor Dasgupta be there with the Treasury to put forward those arguments?

Thirdly, will a Treasury Minister be at the CBD COP 15 conference in Kunming in October? I think that will be so important. Finally, will the Government have the guts and determination to declare a climate emergency?