How is your ‘natural capital’ doing? Are you getting good value from your
‘ecosystem services’?
If you don’t have the faintest notion what I’m talking about then
it is possible that you are not at the cutting edge of current environmental
thinking. These are terms in the new
lexicon of market based ecology.
According to this school of thought we have to recognize the economic
value of nature in order to safeguard it.
The reason we have been so cavalier in destroying our natural
environment is because we don’t recognize what it’s worth. If you regard nature as worthless and
infinite then of course it is expendable.
If you can put a monetary value on ‘green infrastructure’, forests,
hills, rivers etc. in the jargon of this philosophy, then you will go a long
way to ensuring their survival.
The UK government is at the forefront of this movement. The Natural Capital Committee was established
last year ‘to provide
independent expert advice on the state of English ‘natural capital’. It reports not to the Environment Secretary
but to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
‘Natural capital’ is simply ‘nature’. ‘Ecosystem services’
are natural processes that benefit mankind, as if helping man was the whole
point of nature. For instance if bees
didn’t naturally pollinate our crops as an ‘ecosystem service’ we would
presumably have to get the local council to do it. But surely man’s tendency to put himself
outside the natural world, rather than as a player in it, is the root of most
of our present and historical ecological issues?
There is no question, that mankind benefits enormously from
natural processes in all kinds of ways.
Forests and oceans act as carbon sinks, rivers and lakes provide
drinking water and places of recreation, upland moors regulate water runoff and
prevent flooding of lowland cities, and so on.
In 1958 in China Mao Zedong launched a famous campaign to extirpate
sparrows, which were charged with stealing the peasants’ rice. Millions of sparrows were killed as the birds
were driven to near extinction. In the
following years rice yields plummeted as the crops were ravaged by insects, and
an estimated 20 million people died of starvation. Far from being a pest, the birds had been
providing an ‘ecosystem service’.
If we can adequately recognise these beneficial effects in
advance then we can balance the value that nature provides alongside the
proposed ‘benefits’ of destroying it.
It’s tempting to dismiss this way of thinking as some sort
of neoliberal market based snake oil being peddled by right wing politicians
and businessmen, the very people environmentalist have been fighting against
for years. And it’s true that when
ecologists start speaking the language of economists it’s bankers who are the
first to recognise the opportunities. In
Wall Street and Canary Wharf people in investment banks are trying to work out
how to measure ‘blended revenue streams’ including contributions from nature
along with traditional economic valuations of land. Could such ecosystem services be securitised and
then traded on a new green exchange? If ecology can be ascribed a
monetary value then it becomes possible to trade offsets. A company can destroy a forest in one place
by paying for another one to be created elsewhere.
Yet the idea has gained traction with some deep green
environmentalists too. Tony Jupiter is a
former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and Northern
Ireland) with a string of green credentials to his name. In his recent book, “What Has Nature Ever
Done For Us”, he argues that he and others have spent decades campaigning for
the protection of nature for its own sake and, despite occasional victories,
the trend has been one of managed retreat.
The moral argument does not seem to be enough. Only by recognising that the environment has
an economic value that can facilitate economic growth will we prevent the further
destruction of forests, loss of soils, depletion of aquifers, extinction of
animals and plants and plunder of the oceans.
This way of thinking is increasingly common in environmental
debates. In the recent fight to get the
EU to apply restrictions on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, various bodies
calculated the potential economic loss to Europe if bees and other pollinators
were not available to provide free pollination as an ‘ecosystem service’. (The Soil Association put the figure at £430m
per annum for the UK alone.) Indeed
these arguments may have helped sway the argument in favour of a limited
ban.
In making the case for new Marine
Protected Areas on the Scottish seabed, the Marine Link Taskforce claimed that
MPAs could be worth £10bn to the Scottish economy by “mitigating against
extreme weather impacts, boosting fisheries and securing Scotland's tourism
appeal.”
While I definitely do not think the environment is worthless
or infinite I have a number of serious concerns with this approach.
While it is theoretically possible to put an economic value
on ecosystems or large geographical features, how do you calculate the ‘natural
capital’ of individual species? Would
the Kenyan safari industry collapse if there were no rhino left to satisfy the
tourists? Of course not, as long as
there are lions, giraffes and all the rest.
What about butterflies or penguins or cowslips? Are any of them worth saving for their
economic value?
What happens if you calculate the value of ‘natural capital’
of a given environmental feature and it doesn’t outweigh the economic benefits of its
destruction? By this measure the Dutch
sailors who drove the dodo to extinction while hunting them for meat made the
right decision.
One such test will be Lodge Hill in Kent. This former MoD training ground is home to
one of the largest populations of nightingales in the UK, a species which is on
the RSPB’s Endangered List. The
government is keen to develop the site.
5,000 new homes will provide jobs and growth, yet Natural England, the
government’s own environmental watchdog, has declared the area a Site of
Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) which effectively precludes
development. Supposedly the issue has
had Chancellor George Osborne complaining about ‘feathered obstacles’ to
development, and somewhat sinisterly Prime Minister, David Cameron, has told
Environment Minister, Owen Paterson, to ‘get it sorted’. If either the nightingales or Natural England
survive, clearly it will not be because of their economic benefit.
Arguably humans have always put an economic value on the
environment. Many invasive species were
introduced specifically to enhance that value, to increase the ROI in
contemporary financial parlance. Pheasants were introduced to England, and are now
fiercely protected by the shooting industry to the direct detriment of our
native raptors. Rabbits, originally brought to Australia to provide food for
European settlers are now regarded as the most significant known factor in
species loss in that continent. Surely,
both of these initiatives were attempts to enhance the value of ‘ecosystem
services’ provided by nature. What if you read the arguments about trees
providing a carbon sink but decide that imported, non native varieties do it
better? Exposing nature to free market
forces is not guaranteed to achieve ecologically sound outcomes. In fact it’s almost guaranteed not to.
As Joni Mitchel observed, it is very often easier to see
what you’ve lost than to understand the true value of what of you are
destroying. Plus, it is quite normal
that the people who potentially benefit from environmental destruction are
rarely the same as those who lose out.
Everyone’s personal cost benefit analysis looks different. Many adverse
environmental changes are brought about with only good intentions. Farmers in the North Yorkshire Moors who were
encouraged to drain peat bogs to improve the land for sheep grazing had no
notion that their efforts would cost the denizens of Richmond and York millions
in repairing flood damage.
We are getting better both at modeling potential unintended
impacts of environmental changes, and at ensuring that those companies who
destroy landscapes pay for their restoration.
To this extent, factoring the whole life cost in to a project and not
merely calculating the profits to be made say from extracting oil or metals are
welcome. But you can’t replace a thousand
year old forest or replace an extinct species when the wells run dry. Nightingales
migrate for thousands of miles and then return the precise tree where they were
born. How will we explain to them that
their home has now been relocated 100 miles down the A3? Turn right at
Petersfield, you can’t miss it!
However, my greatest concern is that commoditising nature
and reducing everything around us to its dollar value, is to lose sight of the
very thing we are trying to preserve, and also to lose sight of our own
humanity. I want to conserve the planet and every living thing on it not
because it may have some potential use of value to me, but because nature is
beautiful and wonderful in its own right.
We may have evolved to the point where we no longer see ourselves as
part of nature. All the more reason then,
that we should regard ourselves as stewards of the environment and do what we
can to protect and nurture wildlife for its own sake.
For me
environmentalism is about values not value. I admire the King James Bible as a
wonderful piece of literature, and the phrase that comes to mind the most readily
in this context is this one:
“For what doth it profit a man, if he
gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?”
It seemed like a bit of fun so I followed the link, and
guess what was the very first nomination vying for this prestigious accolade: of course it was the good old brock! 
