In ECOS 28 (1), Catherine Shellswell and Allan Beechey reported on work along the River Chess in the Chilterns to provide habitat management advice and mink control for riparian landowners, in order to counteract a decline in the water vole population.
Here, in unabridged form, Trevor Lawson, author of an earlier article on the same subject*, challenges the authors (in black text below), and Shellswell and Beechey reply (in blue text).
1. Trevor Lawson:
The authors comment on their provision of fencing to provide "buffer zones" for water voles and other wildlife, yet the linear extent of these buffer zones is not quantified. They are very limited. Criticisms about the wholly inadequate depth of the buffer zones are not addressed. Further, the authors make no attempt to distinguish between the contribution that the alleged buffer zones made to water vole recovery, compared to the benefits delivered by mink culling. It is, of course, impossible to distinguish between the benefits of habitat and culling using the methodology adopted in this study (and adopted in other Environment Agency-supported projects). The Chilterns Conservation Board was warned of this weakness in the methodology prior to initiating culling and strongly advised to address it, but ignored the advice.
Catharine Shellswell & Allan Beechey reply:
Whilst in an ideal world the desirable buffer zone width would be 6m, in practice a pragmatic approach must be taken to negotiate a buffer zone. In the majority of cases the landowner will be unwilling to lose a 6m deep section of his/her land. In this instance a fence was erected along a 500m stretch of river 1m away from the edge of the watercourse. The adjacent field downstream had already been fenced by the landowner. The first two metres are the most important for water voles and the fence has stopped horses and cattle entering the river enabling lush marginal vegetation to develop. The decreased disturbance has also benefited the water voles. Placement of this fencing has clearly enabled the water vole population to increase and it is hoped that the area of bank fenced from the field could be extended in the future. Currently there is a project being undertaken by WildCRU investigating water vole population growth and individual vole growth compared to amount of bankside habitat. This type of project has not been undertaken before and hopefully it will provide weight to the provision of more bankside habitat for water voles.
2. Trevor Lawson:
One landowner allegedly trapped nine mink in 2003-4, prior to the culling scheme. None were made available to WildCRU and no records are available viz the age, sex or health of this sample. Yet a trout fishery less than two miles downstream trapped no mink. Polecats have returned to the Chilterns since 1997. What attempt was made to validate this sample?
Catharine Shellswell & Allan Beechey reply:
The eight mink trapped by the landowner were caught in a trap that he had been running for a number of years. We know that they were a female and young. Unfortunately we do not have any other information on the mink as they were caught prior to the start of the trapping scheme organised by BBOWT and the Chiltern Chalk Streams Project, and therefore did not fall under the remit of providing them to WildCRU. At the time when the first mink was caught (September 2003) the young mink would have just started to disperse away from their mother, but would still stay fairly close to the natal territory (which is approximately 3km in length). This would have restricted the range of the juvenile mink and they may not have ventured downstream to the fishery. There is also the possibility that the mink dispersed across land rather than along the watercourse (males tend to live away from the watercourse for the majority of the year and come back to breed with females in autumn, winter and early spring). The ninth mink was killed on a nearby road in March 2004 and it is believed that this was the last mink to be caught from this group. It was very difficult to determine the gender of this individual once it had been flattened and it was also considered unsuitable for WildCRU to autopsy. The two mink sent to WildCRU were incorporated into their mink and polecat project which has been running since 2003.
3. Trevor Lawson:
A 2003 water vole survey found that the voles had "dramatically" declined since 2001. Yet their disappearance was reported from sites where I continued to observe them.
Catharine Shellswell & Allan Beechey reply:
Unfortunately, it is very hard to prove a negative survey as there is always an element of observer error. For example, surveys carried out from the bankside may miss signs close to the water edge (this is only undertaken where the watercourse is too deep, and once the vegetation has grown field signs may have been missed. This is stated in the survey results. BBOWT collects sighting reports from people who have seen water voles, and if these occur along stretches of watercourse which haven’t been surveyed every effort is made to survey these areas to confirm the presence of water voles. Water voles can also live at low population densities, and this reduces the number of field signs that they leave. Might I suggest that Mr Lawson sends in his water vole sighting to the Water Vole Recovery Project (please see the online record form at www.bbowt.org.uk for details) as we would be interested in any information that he could provide.
4. Trevor Lawson:
The subsequent mink culling scheme initiated in February 2004 along virtually the entire catchment, only removed two mink, even though the project had concluded that mink had dispersed along the river and were breeding.
Catharine Shellswell & Allan Beechey reply:
Mink were breeding along the catchment at the time of survey (August-September 2003) near to Bois Mill where eight mink were caught and one killed on the road (as mentioned earlier). The placement of mink rafts allowed the watercourse to be monitored for mink (using a footprint tracking pad) and once footprints were identified a live capture trap was placed on the raft and the mink removed accordingly (these were the two caught in march 2004). In actual fact without any form of mink control eleven mink would have been able to disperse along the river. The mink rafts are primarily a monitoring device that can be used as a trap once mink have been identified in the vicinity.
5. Trevor Lawson:
Mink signs have only been found since at the site where nine mink were allegedly trapped in 2003-4. The authors make no attempt to assess why this site, which is not at the confluence with any other water course or dry valley, and where the Chess is particularly canalised adjacent to a busy road, should be the focal point for mink arrival and dispersal.
Catharine Shellswell and Allan Beechey reply:
The site where the mink were caught is in farmland and is not canalised. It is also fairly wooded at the location where large and small mink footprints were found. It is also near a stocked lake and the confluence of two channels. It is an ideal den site as it is undisturbed.
6. Trevor Lawson:
Water vole signs increased five-fold by 2005 and this improvement is attributed to mink culling. Yet no other variables – in particular the impact of winter flooding - have been factored into this analysis. Much of the river Chess has no suitable banks for water voles to burrow in and where those banks do exist there is a risk of flooding due to the rapid run-off from intensively managed land. Flooding is a known major cause of water vole mortality.
Catharine Shellswell & Allan Beechey reply:
Generally the land alongside the River Chess is not intensively managed. Very little is cultivated and most of the pasture is remnant water meadows. The water meadows are grazed, but on the whole stocking levels remain low as the land does not support a high proportion of animals. Where stocking densities are slightly higher fences have been erected to protect the banks. Therefore, flooding due to runoff from intensively managed farmland along the River Chess is not an issue. Between 2001 and 2003 there were no large flood events that affected the entire valley which would have caused the demise of the water vole population by 98%. There were also no local flood events which would have had a greater impact than normal. Water vole populations can reduce by up to 70% during the winter period and flooding is a cause of death. The lack of flood events in this time period and the extent of the decline points to other factors affecting water voles such as the dispersal of American mink along the river rather than a large flood event.
7. Trevor Lawson:
The authors should have considered other possibilities before drawing their conclusions. For example, that before the 2001 baseline survey, water voles had expanded their range to less optimal parts of the river. Subsequent flooding or another factor (mink are a possibility, of course) then reduced the population to those optimum parts of the river identified in the 2003 study. It is surely no coincidence that these sites also have the very best vegetative habitat and structural diversity.
Catharine Shellswell & Allan Beechey reply:
Water voles follow a metapopulation structure and do experience population rises, where they disperse along the river corridor, and falls, where their range contracts. The water vole population along the River Chess decreased by 98% according to the surveys. The surveys were both carried out at the same time of year; this avoids seasonal population density variation when comparing the two surveys and also points to the decline being extreme between 2001 and 2003. All three surveys were carried out using the standard methodology for surveying water voles (described in the water vole conservation handbook). It would be beneficial if we had information about the water vole population prior to this date to assess whether the water vole population in 2001 was unusually high, unfortunately this is not the case. As stated earlier, flooding had already been discounted as a cause of the decline.
The mink trapped in March 2004 were caught between the two remaining colonies of water voles, and if the female had stayed in this area (which is a high possibility as mink were seen entering a good den site under a nearby barn, and the river at this location is fairly undisturbed), both colonies were within an average territory size of a female. Furthermore, not all the water vole field signs were located along the optimal habitat. Some were located in back gardens which had close mowing regimes. BBOWT and the Chiltern Chalk Streams Project have been providing advice to landowners to help them encourage water voles through sympathetic management of the bankside. This includes leaving areas of uncut vegetation along the river which provides cover from predators.
8. Trevor Lawson:
The authors state: "Mink control should always be implemented where habitat advice is also provided to landowners." Many landowners receive habitat advice but it is clearly impractical for mink control to be implemented in every instance. Perhaps the authors actually mean: "Mink control should only be implemented if habitat advice is also provided to landowners." This, too, is unwise. Habitat advice is quite different from actual habitat creation or restoration. Advice alone will not contribute to water vole recovery.
Catharine Shellswell & Allan Beechey reply:
We stand corrected in that mink control should always be implemented (where practical) where water voles are found to be present and habitat advice should always be provided to landowners. Mink control is not always practical for example in areas with high human activity as they tend to disturb mink traps and rafts. However, the rafts are placed at 1km intervals (optimum density according to the Game Conservancy Trust) and usually these areas can be avoided. Mink were found to be present during the 2003 water vole survey and are considered the larger threat to water voles in Berks, Bucks and Oxon. The water vole colonies have shrunk to such a degree that there is a great amount of habitat available for inhabitation by water voles, but their population is controlled by mink. This means that in most cases a monitoring scheme to investigate the presence of mink is implemented at the same time that habitat advice is provided and mink are removed (resources and landowners allowing) once their presence has been found. Where areas of unsuitable habitat provide a barrier to dispersal (such as heavily scrubbed sections of watercourse over 1-2km in length or artificial banks) habitat advice is provided and where funding allows habitat enhancement or restoration is undertaken. Farmers are encouraged into agri-environment schemes, homeowners are encouraged to leave uncut strips and mitigation is provided as part of planning applications. Habitat management is carried out to create a mosaic of habitats along a watercourse which would benefit a range of species rather then just one, and it is not suitable to make every stretch of watercourse ideally suited to water voles, otherwise you would be destroying the optimum habitat for otters. There is no legislation to enforce provision of habitat for water voles, only to protect water vole burrows, and therefore we provide advice to landowners where they can be persuaded to carry forward action. This may be provided through agri-environment schemes or other local grant bodies interested in water vole conservation. As there is a large amount of habitat available along the River Chess, it was felt that habitat was not the influencing factor in the water vole decline and since mink were found during the water vole survey it was determined that resources were best placed in a monitoring and trapping programme along the watercourse.
9. Trevor Lawson:
Loss and fragmentation of habitat is the primary cause of water vole decline and impacts on a wider range of species, too. Had this project been planned strategically, with rigorous scientific methodology, with the needs of other wildlife in mind and for the long term, the authors would state: "Mink control should only be considered when habitat restoration has been successfully implemented but has failed to reverse the decline in water voles."
Catharine Shellswell & Allan Beechey reply:
The statement ‘loss and fragmentation of habitat is the primary cause of water vole decline’ can not be verified scientifically. It is currently considered that habitat loss and the dispersal of American Mink throughout the countryside are jointly considered to have caused the decline (see the Water Vole UK BAP). Habitat loss has caused the decline over the greater part of the 20th Century, but the decline was particularly severe after the Second World War when the government encouraged increased agricultural production and during the 1970s-80s due to increased urbanisation and installation of flood defences. During the 1980s it was realized that American mink were spreading throughout Britain (as well as Europe where they threaten the European mink) and the water vole population appeared to be declining in their wake. There are numerous examples of mink predating water voles to extinction through radio-telemetry studies and mink scat analysis. It is unlikely that we would still be losing water voles without mink as habitat is not sufficiently poor in many areas to explain their more recent demise. The biggest single barrier to their recovery would seem to be a non-native predator which has an almost unique ability to exploit this species. Concentrating on habitat to the exclusion of mink will unfortunately not stop the decline of the water vole. Implementation of mink control is not taken lightly and all factors are considered prior to any mink rafts and traps being deployed. Certainly in regard to the River Chess the mink control has stopped the demise of the water vole. If the two mink were not caught in March between the remaining water vole colonies, it would probably be another sad story where water voles have become extinct. The mink rafts now provide a valuable monitoring tool for both ad hoc water vole presence and also to provide an early warning system of any mink that may disperse back to the river. The increase in the water vole population between 2003 and 2005 shows that mink control and habitat enhancement has been successful at the moment and we hope that the water vole population will continue to increase. The survey will be repeated next year (with the landowners permission) to assess the range of the water vole population.
* Lawson. T (2005) 'Seen a mink? Unleash the dogma!', ECOS 26 (3/4) pp81-85.
Thursday, 12 April 2007
Thursday, 29 March 2007
ECOS EXCHANGE
Home Counties Wildland: new nature, old continuities?
(An abridged version of this exchange appears in ECOS 28 (1))
David Bangs responds to Peter Taylor’s article in ECOS 27 (3/4) on the wilding project at the Knepp Estate ...
Peter Taylor’s eulogy on the re-wilding experiment at the Knepp Estate intrigued me. I have known that countryside intimately for over 40 years. So we rushed to return there to look at some of these changes. What we saw depressed us at least as much as it excited us. To be sure, we, like Peter, had ‘The Tamworth Pig Experience’. We came across them in a park woodland where they nuzzled us and let us scratch them and won our hearts. Their welcome, though, was not replicated by the park’s human inhabitants. We were challenged by two separate people for straying from the footpath, though we were in the open park on improved pasture in full view, where we could not possibly have been up to harm. The Exmoor ponies did not seem to mind our presence. We left with a vivid impression of kilometres of high deer fencing around the boundaries and within the woodlands.
Just four miles to the west of this estate another square kilometer of attractive Low Wealden oak-and-pasture countryside has been recently enclosed and a new stately home built to grace a new deer park. And four miles to the east the most intact relic of the old healthy wood pasture of St Leonard’s Forest is surrounded by similar excluding deer fencing, though it was a candidate open access site. You have to pay proper money to visit that place unless you are prepared to do risky fence climbing. To the south east you cannot now enjoy the ordinary woods-and-hedgerows countryside round Glyndebourne because the same two meter excluding fences keep us out and exotic llamas and alpacas in.
I share Peter Taylor’s passion for ending our alienation from nature. I think, though, that his piece misses a whole other dimension of our alienation. That is, our social and economic alienation from access to resources which should be our ‘common treasury’. And unless that alienation, too, is addressed squarely by us wildlifers, then the crisis of the countryside and of nature’s survival will be resolved – yet again – at the expense of ordinary working people and the poor. The countryside and nature will continue to be re-made in the image of capital’s needs, not of the needs of capital’s servants.
Knepp’s core business – wildlife or property?
The example of the Knepp Estate shows this plainly. The loss of farming’s profitability was resolved by the sacking of existing farm staff. Like any other capitalist enterprise this estate solves its problems by sacking the ordinary foot soldiers, not the generals. The estate had previously laid the groundwork for this straightforward solution by widespread conversion of its tenanted farms to in-hand management. The estate has taken full advantage of the Countryside Stewardship scheme and Single Farm Payments. They are, after all, not means tested, though every poor pensioner or benefits claimant has their paltry earnings and savings means tested and monitored up to the hilt. Charlie Burrell is entitled to state support to staunch the failing profitability of his landed property on a scale that no ordinary poor family could dream of, except by a lottery win.
And, in any case, as Peter himself puts it, “the estate’s core business is now property management”. Indeed so. Its website advertises a three bedroom village cottage for rent for £3,500 per calendar month (for god’s sake!), and a lovely old farmhouse with dressage square, 37 acres of paddocks and all posh mod cons for a rental to be revealed, modestly, on application.
Playground for the rich
Peter on his visit will have seen what is happening to this wider local countryside. It is a landscape which is being transformed into a playground for the rich. Mostly you cannot live there unless you are already well-off or (for a minority) servicing the needs of the well-off. Public housing has largely disappeared, though it was always inadequate. And those attractive cottages, villas and farmhouses smell far more of money than they do of woodsmoke and chickens.
Most of the folk of London, Crawley and Brighton who are Knepp Estate’s real neighbours do not visit this countryside, would mostly not imagine that such visits were a rewarding option, and would not have the cultural or financial resources to enjoy it if they did. That is the real alienation from nature that we must address.
This estate’s choices are traditional ones. They choose to continue shooting and polo-ing (sorry about the hunting!) and enjoying nature as their pleasure ground as their forebears did. Whilst this land – low-grade though it may be – could still make a significant contribution to local food needs and provide honourable work in its production, we are invited, instead, to collude (and dig into our pockets to do so) in the re-wilding fantasies of its owners, though we get precious little public benefit from it. (We did not even bother to visit the few acres licensed for public access around the paltry remains of the Norman castle – the noise pollution from the A24 made that anything but a tranquil piece of re-wilded wilderness).
Meanwhile, Peter’s way forward suggests no real challenge to the main motors which drive the profit or loss of our countryside – the shifting fortunes of different capitalist blocs and sectors, currently dominated by the madness of global free trade and the yawning inequalities between rich and poor countries. His article is about a very tame re-wilding indeed – one that offers no fight against the existing global madness of GATT and our very own EU.
Sadly, though, there is no way round these big tasks that history dumps on us all. If Peter is to see the revolutionary ending of our alienation from wild nature that he so plainly yearns for then we will all have to help get that revolutionary inversion of the present relationship between the excluded majority (both locally and globally) and the owners of capital in land and elsewhere. Without that we will all just have to put up with the horrible dawning global reality - one in which a major part of the world’s population will be living in gigantic slum cities, in a sea of ecological desolation, whilst the rich live in their fortresses of relatively-preserved nature.
Our best allies in the preservation of nature are not those same rich folk. Our best allies are those who have little or nothing, and thus have nothing to lose in the task of re-working our damaged world.
David Bangs
An active example of positive change - Peter Taylor replies …
I find myself in a paradoxical position responding to Dave Bangs – having been further left than Mao Tse Tung as a young man, determined to bring some political as well as environmental enlightenment to the ordinary working people (and the poor) he also wishes to enfranchise, yet I also support Charlie Burrell’s private initiative, including the deer fences.
It is not that I have given up revolutionary yearnings, more that I have seen how change can come from unlikely quarters. Like the corporate executives I met in the power generation industry who were diverting profits to sequestrate carbon and regenerate degraded ecosystems in South America long before the public had heard of such schemes. The other side of the coin was my beloved RSPB becoming rich enough from its burgeoning mass membership to buy up the gem of mystery and isolation that was Leighton Moss and turn it into a visitor centre with hides and boardwalks through the reed beds – the birds did not mind, but the intimate contact with nature, including the teenage thrill of dodging the old gamekeepers, was lost.
Landowners are ahead of the game
I understand the unease with respect to wealthy landowners leading the dreams of rewilding – whether, as at Knepp, entirely for its own sake, or as in Paul Lister’s Alladale safari-enterprise with its equally high fences, but I do not see anyone else taking these steps. The National Trust and its alliance with the Forestry Commission and United Utilities in Ennerdale have chosen a fence-less middle road with tame herbivores and continued low-intensity farming, and the John Muir Trust, despite its wild image and wide-ranging popular support has no dreams of restoring ecological health to the degraded wildernesses it purchases, mainly in Scotland and Wales. Somehow, the more support an organisation gets from a broader public base, the less innovative it can become. It then falls to private individuals with some power to make decisions to engage in innovation. The introduction of beavers to Lower Mill Estate in Gloucestershire is a recent example.
It is one thing to be involved in mass access as a political issue – quite another to work for innovation on a rewilding that includes the human heart and imagination. Sadly, the masses and their representative organisations are not taking the lead and it is falling to private landowners who at least are spurning the diversification opportunities of mega-golf or the subsidised lure of GMO bio-fuels.
I agree entirely that a great madness faces us – with Third World city slums coupled with globalised food production continuing the process of alienation with the land and nature. And I am no advocate of a depopulated unproductive countryside in this country as a result, however many wolves and lynxes it might support, but when it comes to allies in the process of rewilding, where are the urban or rural activists that advocate organic production, wildlife corridors, eco-tourism, and a healing contact with the land? And how many farmers think beyond their role as another industrial concern in the general business economy? At least in these respects, Charlie Burrell offers an active example of change.
Peter Taylor
David Bangs’ follow-up response …
I’m sorry Peter is so despairing about the possibility of working people being the social agents of change to protect nature and end exploitation.
Yes, we are, indeed, in a period of deep defeat.
This period, though, is one of continuing possibility as well as continuing disaster. The Russian and Chinese revolutions blossomed out of the wreckage of two consecutive world wars. Venezuela may see a Chavez-inspired revolution flowering in this present neo-liberal desert.
I feel more than “unease with respect to wealthy landowners leading rewilding”, for they are part of the problem, not the solution. It is the irrationalities of capitalism (of competitive production for profit, of massive waste and duplication, of cyclical collapse, and of profound global and local inequalities) which power the destruction of nature and natural systems, create unsustainable consumerism, and foment wars.
Of course, there is an ongoing debate in the owning class between those that value nature as a locus of consumption of profit (such as, perhaps, Paul Lister of Alladale and all those rich folk who value preserved nature for their lifestyle) and those who emphasise nature as a locus for the production of profit (such as agribusinesses, other extractive industries and developers).
The problem with allying with the former is that it is so easy to forget that they, too, only enjoy their ownership of nature with profits gained from its exploitation and damage elsewhere.
Peter’s strategy will only blind him to those forces that do exist and which need leadership and victories to give them the confidence to rebuild a project for a world free of exploitation of both nature and humans.
He would do better to remember the model of the Green Bans movement in New South Wales, where building labourers’ unions led a huge movement against environmentally and socially destructive developments in alliance with middle class groups and inner city communities. For half of the 1970s they had the developers pinned to the wall. He is old enough, too, to remember the Lucas Aerospace trade unions ‘Combine Plan’ of the same period, which united a 14,000 strong national workforce in a plan for converting weapons production into socially useful products from kidney machines to low pollution cars and energy saving household goods.
Judi Bari the American socialist Earth First! activist fighting to preserve west coast old growth forests is a better model than a thousand landowner wildlife hobbyists. She did the hard slog of making the links with hostile logging communities, not wasting her time courting rich patrons.
Of course, most owning class people do not wish to commit collective ecocide (though there will always be Dr Strangelove’s and George Bush’s). They will make what environmental reforms are necessary to preserve their way of life and they will preserve sufficient of wild nature to enable their continued enjoyment of it.
But that will not be a world most of us can enjoy. It will be a world vastly reduced in biodiversity and wilderness.
Peter needs to choose some different friends if he wants to help us avoid that eventuality.
Dave Bangs
Links: http://www.knepp.co.uk/
David Bangs responds to Peter Taylor’s article in ECOS 27 (3/4) on the wilding project at the Knepp Estate ...
Peter Taylor’s eulogy on the re-wilding experiment at the Knepp Estate intrigued me. I have known that countryside intimately for over 40 years. So we rushed to return there to look at some of these changes. What we saw depressed us at least as much as it excited us. To be sure, we, like Peter, had ‘The Tamworth Pig Experience’. We came across them in a park woodland where they nuzzled us and let us scratch them and won our hearts. Their welcome, though, was not replicated by the park’s human inhabitants. We were challenged by two separate people for straying from the footpath, though we were in the open park on improved pasture in full view, where we could not possibly have been up to harm. The Exmoor ponies did not seem to mind our presence. We left with a vivid impression of kilometres of high deer fencing around the boundaries and within the woodlands.
Just four miles to the west of this estate another square kilometer of attractive Low Wealden oak-and-pasture countryside has been recently enclosed and a new stately home built to grace a new deer park. And four miles to the east the most intact relic of the old healthy wood pasture of St Leonard’s Forest is surrounded by similar excluding deer fencing, though it was a candidate open access site. You have to pay proper money to visit that place unless you are prepared to do risky fence climbing. To the south east you cannot now enjoy the ordinary woods-and-hedgerows countryside round Glyndebourne because the same two meter excluding fences keep us out and exotic llamas and alpacas in.
I share Peter Taylor’s passion for ending our alienation from nature. I think, though, that his piece misses a whole other dimension of our alienation. That is, our social and economic alienation from access to resources which should be our ‘common treasury’. And unless that alienation, too, is addressed squarely by us wildlifers, then the crisis of the countryside and of nature’s survival will be resolved – yet again – at the expense of ordinary working people and the poor. The countryside and nature will continue to be re-made in the image of capital’s needs, not of the needs of capital’s servants.
Knepp’s core business – wildlife or property?
The example of the Knepp Estate shows this plainly. The loss of farming’s profitability was resolved by the sacking of existing farm staff. Like any other capitalist enterprise this estate solves its problems by sacking the ordinary foot soldiers, not the generals. The estate had previously laid the groundwork for this straightforward solution by widespread conversion of its tenanted farms to in-hand management. The estate has taken full advantage of the Countryside Stewardship scheme and Single Farm Payments. They are, after all, not means tested, though every poor pensioner or benefits claimant has their paltry earnings and savings means tested and monitored up to the hilt. Charlie Burrell is entitled to state support to staunch the failing profitability of his landed property on a scale that no ordinary poor family could dream of, except by a lottery win.
And, in any case, as Peter himself puts it, “the estate’s core business is now property management”. Indeed so. Its website advertises a three bedroom village cottage for rent for £3,500 per calendar month (for god’s sake!), and a lovely old farmhouse with dressage square, 37 acres of paddocks and all posh mod cons for a rental to be revealed, modestly, on application.
Playground for the rich
Peter on his visit will have seen what is happening to this wider local countryside. It is a landscape which is being transformed into a playground for the rich. Mostly you cannot live there unless you are already well-off or (for a minority) servicing the needs of the well-off. Public housing has largely disappeared, though it was always inadequate. And those attractive cottages, villas and farmhouses smell far more of money than they do of woodsmoke and chickens.
Most of the folk of London, Crawley and Brighton who are Knepp Estate’s real neighbours do not visit this countryside, would mostly not imagine that such visits were a rewarding option, and would not have the cultural or financial resources to enjoy it if they did. That is the real alienation from nature that we must address.
This estate’s choices are traditional ones. They choose to continue shooting and polo-ing (sorry about the hunting!) and enjoying nature as their pleasure ground as their forebears did. Whilst this land – low-grade though it may be – could still make a significant contribution to local food needs and provide honourable work in its production, we are invited, instead, to collude (and dig into our pockets to do so) in the re-wilding fantasies of its owners, though we get precious little public benefit from it. (We did not even bother to visit the few acres licensed for public access around the paltry remains of the Norman castle – the noise pollution from the A24 made that anything but a tranquil piece of re-wilded wilderness).
Meanwhile, Peter’s way forward suggests no real challenge to the main motors which drive the profit or loss of our countryside – the shifting fortunes of different capitalist blocs and sectors, currently dominated by the madness of global free trade and the yawning inequalities between rich and poor countries. His article is about a very tame re-wilding indeed – one that offers no fight against the existing global madness of GATT and our very own EU.
Sadly, though, there is no way round these big tasks that history dumps on us all. If Peter is to see the revolutionary ending of our alienation from wild nature that he so plainly yearns for then we will all have to help get that revolutionary inversion of the present relationship between the excluded majority (both locally and globally) and the owners of capital in land and elsewhere. Without that we will all just have to put up with the horrible dawning global reality - one in which a major part of the world’s population will be living in gigantic slum cities, in a sea of ecological desolation, whilst the rich live in their fortresses of relatively-preserved nature.
Our best allies in the preservation of nature are not those same rich folk. Our best allies are those who have little or nothing, and thus have nothing to lose in the task of re-working our damaged world.
David Bangs
An active example of positive change - Peter Taylor replies …
I find myself in a paradoxical position responding to Dave Bangs – having been further left than Mao Tse Tung as a young man, determined to bring some political as well as environmental enlightenment to the ordinary working people (and the poor) he also wishes to enfranchise, yet I also support Charlie Burrell’s private initiative, including the deer fences.
It is not that I have given up revolutionary yearnings, more that I have seen how change can come from unlikely quarters. Like the corporate executives I met in the power generation industry who were diverting profits to sequestrate carbon and regenerate degraded ecosystems in South America long before the public had heard of such schemes. The other side of the coin was my beloved RSPB becoming rich enough from its burgeoning mass membership to buy up the gem of mystery and isolation that was Leighton Moss and turn it into a visitor centre with hides and boardwalks through the reed beds – the birds did not mind, but the intimate contact with nature, including the teenage thrill of dodging the old gamekeepers, was lost.
Landowners are ahead of the game
I understand the unease with respect to wealthy landowners leading the dreams of rewilding – whether, as at Knepp, entirely for its own sake, or as in Paul Lister’s Alladale safari-enterprise with its equally high fences, but I do not see anyone else taking these steps. The National Trust and its alliance with the Forestry Commission and United Utilities in Ennerdale have chosen a fence-less middle road with tame herbivores and continued low-intensity farming, and the John Muir Trust, despite its wild image and wide-ranging popular support has no dreams of restoring ecological health to the degraded wildernesses it purchases, mainly in Scotland and Wales. Somehow, the more support an organisation gets from a broader public base, the less innovative it can become. It then falls to private individuals with some power to make decisions to engage in innovation. The introduction of beavers to Lower Mill Estate in Gloucestershire is a recent example.
It is one thing to be involved in mass access as a political issue – quite another to work for innovation on a rewilding that includes the human heart and imagination. Sadly, the masses and their representative organisations are not taking the lead and it is falling to private landowners who at least are spurning the diversification opportunities of mega-golf or the subsidised lure of GMO bio-fuels.
I agree entirely that a great madness faces us – with Third World city slums coupled with globalised food production continuing the process of alienation with the land and nature. And I am no advocate of a depopulated unproductive countryside in this country as a result, however many wolves and lynxes it might support, but when it comes to allies in the process of rewilding, where are the urban or rural activists that advocate organic production, wildlife corridors, eco-tourism, and a healing contact with the land? And how many farmers think beyond their role as another industrial concern in the general business economy? At least in these respects, Charlie Burrell offers an active example of change.
Peter Taylor
David Bangs’ follow-up response …
I’m sorry Peter is so despairing about the possibility of working people being the social agents of change to protect nature and end exploitation.
Yes, we are, indeed, in a period of deep defeat.
This period, though, is one of continuing possibility as well as continuing disaster. The Russian and Chinese revolutions blossomed out of the wreckage of two consecutive world wars. Venezuela may see a Chavez-inspired revolution flowering in this present neo-liberal desert.
I feel more than “unease with respect to wealthy landowners leading rewilding”, for they are part of the problem, not the solution. It is the irrationalities of capitalism (of competitive production for profit, of massive waste and duplication, of cyclical collapse, and of profound global and local inequalities) which power the destruction of nature and natural systems, create unsustainable consumerism, and foment wars.
Of course, there is an ongoing debate in the owning class between those that value nature as a locus of consumption of profit (such as, perhaps, Paul Lister of Alladale and all those rich folk who value preserved nature for their lifestyle) and those who emphasise nature as a locus for the production of profit (such as agribusinesses, other extractive industries and developers).
The problem with allying with the former is that it is so easy to forget that they, too, only enjoy their ownership of nature with profits gained from its exploitation and damage elsewhere.
Peter’s strategy will only blind him to those forces that do exist and which need leadership and victories to give them the confidence to rebuild a project for a world free of exploitation of both nature and humans.
He would do better to remember the model of the Green Bans movement in New South Wales, where building labourers’ unions led a huge movement against environmentally and socially destructive developments in alliance with middle class groups and inner city communities. For half of the 1970s they had the developers pinned to the wall. He is old enough, too, to remember the Lucas Aerospace trade unions ‘Combine Plan’ of the same period, which united a 14,000 strong national workforce in a plan for converting weapons production into socially useful products from kidney machines to low pollution cars and energy saving household goods.
Judi Bari the American socialist Earth First! activist fighting to preserve west coast old growth forests is a better model than a thousand landowner wildlife hobbyists. She did the hard slog of making the links with hostile logging communities, not wasting her time courting rich patrons.
Of course, most owning class people do not wish to commit collective ecocide (though there will always be Dr Strangelove’s and George Bush’s). They will make what environmental reforms are necessary to preserve their way of life and they will preserve sufficient of wild nature to enable their continued enjoyment of it.
But that will not be a world most of us can enjoy. It will be a world vastly reduced in biodiversity and wilderness.
Peter needs to choose some different friends if he wants to help us avoid that eventuality.
Dave Bangs
Links: http://www.knepp.co.uk/
Is Sustainable Development an Oxymoron?
by Ralph Underhill
The ‘exciting’ world of planning can be incredibly frustrating, even when you discount the ridiculous management speak, lack of humour and excessive use of acronyms. The frustration I am talking about is that which comes from knowing that, each time there is a significant step forward for the environment, the balance will be redressed quicker than you can say ‘sandal-wearing hippy’ … and economic considerations will once again prevail.
The balance is likely to see another dramatic shift towards the interests of the economy in the forthcoming planning White Paper. This White Paper is likely to be heavily influenced by two key reports: the Eddington Transport Study and the Barker Review of Land Use Planning. The recommendations of Eddington and Barker are definitely causes for concern for environmentalists. The environmental agenda has not simply taken a step backwards, it has been kicked in the privates, pushed over, stamped on a few times and then had its wallet/handbag stolen (which would probably be empty anyway).
Throughout her review of the planning system, Barker views environmental legislation, such as Environmental Impact Assessment, as time consuming and overly restrictive. Barker also feels that uncertainty should lead to a presumption in favour of development. She suggests that if local planning policy is unclear or out of date then a development should be given the go ahead … so in other words if you haven’t planned for something it must be good and should be given permission. This leap of logic manages to turn the planning system completely on its head and undermine one of the central tenets of the planning system, which is that development should be planned (I suppose the clue is in the title).
“So what qualifications do these two authors have?” I hear you cry (or at least mumble … come on, stick with it! I know planning is boring, but it has important implications for conservation), making them so well suited to reviewing the plan-led system? Barker is an economist, while Eddington is the former head of British Airways (therefore a great advocate for sustainable, reduced-carbon transport). It is reassuring to see that such experts in planning and sustainable development get to decide how the planning system should be reformed. It is hard not to view this as a laughable double standard – just imagine if the government had announced that the planning system was going to be reviewed by an environmentalist, perhaps George Monbiot, Jonathan Porritt, or even Swampy of Newbury bypass fame (Note to self: find more easily recognisable environmental role models). Of course it would never happen. The mere suggestion would cause a huge outcry, but why is it so unthinkable?
Most definitions of sustainable development state that economics and the environment must be given equal weight. Giving an environmentalist control could, if the right candidate was chosen, mean a strict regard to environmental limits and better assessments of what is really needed. It is unlikely that any environmental candidate would be so radical as to deny the need for any development at all (OK, maybe Swampy would), but they would be likely to demand that such development must be carried out with a long-term view. Until someone who understands the environment is given decision-making power, sustainable development will never happen. The real problem is that economic considerations are often very short-term and unsustainable. When markets change, the developments associated with them also change. The simple truth – from my heavily-biased perspective – is that twenty years’ worth of employment will always trump millions of years of evolution.
With the recent changes in understanding of our impact on the planet, it is possible that environmental and social justice will finally be seen as being as important as the economy. This challenge has become increasingly difficult as money has become the only way we have of valuing anything, to the extent that we put approximate values on individual species. Even if something is not quantifiable in economic terms, we are still forced to put a monetary value on it. How many jobs is a great crested newt worth? How much money does a national park designation bring to the local economy? Conservationists must use these monetary values if they are be taken seriously and have their voices heard, and I am certain that adopting this stance has been an important advocacy tool. However, I think it is fair to say that by doing so we may end up paying a much higher price in the long term. We have been forced to play a game that was not created with conservation and wildlife in mind. It is possible that we will come to a point where there is nothing left that can be considered to have its own intrinsic worth.
If all Barker’s and Eddington’s changes where adopted, it would certainly call for a restructuring of the Government’s definition of sustainability. Currently the Government’s sustainable development strategy states that social justice, environmental limits, wise use of resources and economics are all supposed to be equal supporting pillars of sustainable development. It seems that economics is, like Orwell’s pigs, more equal than the others. One thing is for sure: if sustainability is a table, the dinner plates are sliding rapidly towards the floor. Quick, someone shove the fork of long-term sustainable economic goals under that plate! Okay, so it’s not a great analogy, but you get what I mean.
With the other, less fundamental changes proposed for the planning system, the worry is that it will be hard to tell how damaging they will be until they are actually implemented. The Catch-22 here is that, once these measures are implemented, the chance to influence them will already have slipped away. Many of the recommendations could be positive if implemented by a government that truly considered each component of sustainable development equally … doh!!!
I am off to listen to some Joni Mitchell … paradise, parking lot? No? Oh, well never mind …
Useful links ...
CLG News Release 21May07: http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1002882&PressNoticeID=2425
Barker Review of Land Use Planning: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/barker_review_land_use_planning/barkerreview_land_use_planning_index.cfm
Eddington Transport Study: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/eddington_transport_study/eddington_index.cfm
NGO response to proposals: http://www.planningdisaster.co.uk/
The ‘exciting’ world of planning can be incredibly frustrating, even when you discount the ridiculous management speak, lack of humour and excessive use of acronyms. The frustration I am talking about is that which comes from knowing that, each time there is a significant step forward for the environment, the balance will be redressed quicker than you can say ‘sandal-wearing hippy’ … and economic considerations will once again prevail.
The balance is likely to see another dramatic shift towards the interests of the economy in the forthcoming planning White Paper. This White Paper is likely to be heavily influenced by two key reports: the Eddington Transport Study and the Barker Review of Land Use Planning. The recommendations of Eddington and Barker are definitely causes for concern for environmentalists. The environmental agenda has not simply taken a step backwards, it has been kicked in the privates, pushed over, stamped on a few times and then had its wallet/handbag stolen (which would probably be empty anyway).
Throughout her review of the planning system, Barker views environmental legislation, such as Environmental Impact Assessment, as time consuming and overly restrictive. Barker also feels that uncertainty should lead to a presumption in favour of development. She suggests that if local planning policy is unclear or out of date then a development should be given the go ahead … so in other words if you haven’t planned for something it must be good and should be given permission. This leap of logic manages to turn the planning system completely on its head and undermine one of the central tenets of the planning system, which is that development should be planned (I suppose the clue is in the title).“So what qualifications do these two authors have?” I hear you cry (or at least mumble … come on, stick with it! I know planning is boring, but it has important implications for conservation), making them so well suited to reviewing the plan-led system? Barker is an economist, while Eddington is the former head of British Airways (therefore a great advocate for sustainable, reduced-carbon transport). It is reassuring to see that such experts in planning and sustainable development get to decide how the planning system should be reformed. It is hard not to view this as a laughable double standard – just imagine if the government had announced that the planning system was going to be reviewed by an environmentalist, perhaps George Monbiot, Jonathan Porritt, or even Swampy of Newbury bypass fame (Note to self: find more easily recognisable environmental role models). Of course it would never happen. The mere suggestion would cause a huge outcry, but why is it so unthinkable?
Most definitions of sustainable development state that economics and the environment must be given equal weight. Giving an environmentalist control could, if the right candidate was chosen, mean a strict regard to environmental limits and better assessments of what is really needed. It is unlikely that any environmental candidate would be so radical as to deny the need for any development at all (OK, maybe Swampy would), but they would be likely to demand that such development must be carried out with a long-term view. Until someone who understands the environment is given decision-making power, sustainable development will never happen. The real problem is that economic considerations are often very short-term and unsustainable. When markets change, the developments associated with them also change. The simple truth – from my heavily-biased perspective – is that twenty years’ worth of employment will always trump millions of years of evolution.
With the recent changes in understanding of our impact on the planet, it is possible that environmental and social justice will finally be seen as being as important as the economy. This challenge has become increasingly difficult as money has become the only way we have of valuing anything, to the extent that we put approximate values on individual species. Even if something is not quantifiable in economic terms, we are still forced to put a monetary value on it. How many jobs is a great crested newt worth? How much money does a national park designation bring to the local economy? Conservationists must use these monetary values if they are be taken seriously and have their voices heard, and I am certain that adopting this stance has been an important advocacy tool. However, I think it is fair to say that by doing so we may end up paying a much higher price in the long term. We have been forced to play a game that was not created with conservation and wildlife in mind. It is possible that we will come to a point where there is nothing left that can be considered to have its own intrinsic worth.
If all Barker’s and Eddington’s changes where adopted, it would certainly call for a restructuring of the Government’s definition of sustainability. Currently the Government’s sustainable development strategy states that social justice, environmental limits, wise use of resources and economics are all supposed to be equal supporting pillars of sustainable development. It seems that economics is, like Orwell’s pigs, more equal than the others. One thing is for sure: if sustainability is a table, the dinner plates are sliding rapidly towards the floor. Quick, someone shove the fork of long-term sustainable economic goals under that plate! Okay, so it’s not a great analogy, but you get what I mean.With the other, less fundamental changes proposed for the planning system, the worry is that it will be hard to tell how damaging they will be until they are actually implemented. The Catch-22 here is that, once these measures are implemented, the chance to influence them will already have slipped away. Many of the recommendations could be positive if implemented by a government that truly considered each component of sustainable development equally … doh!!!
I am off to listen to some Joni Mitchell … paradise, parking lot? No? Oh, well never mind …
Useful links ...
CLG News Release 21May07: http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1002882&PressNoticeID=2425
Barker Review of Land Use Planning: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/barker_review_land_use_planning/barkerreview_land_use_planning_index.cfm
Eddington Transport Study: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/eddington_transport_study/eddington_index.cfm
NGO response to proposals: http://www.planningdisaster.co.uk/
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
Warming or Cooling?
by Peter Taylor
An almighty battle is about to be engaged between proponents of solar theories of climate change and adherents to the supposedly standard carbon dioxide model. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is about to issue its fourth scientific assessment - a summary was published in February - and this argues that solar effects are minimal. Meanwhile solar scientist Henrik Svensmark, funded by the European Space Agency, has demonstrated a mechanism that will explain the thinning clouds phenomenon picked up by satellite data, but not as a feedback to carbon’s increasing concentration, rather as a primary driver which leaves little over for carbon. In other words, the human influence on climate has been seriously over-estimated. If Svensmark’s theory is accepted, less than 30% of the changes we see are due to human activity (and only 15% due to fossil fuel burning). If the sun’s magnetic field drops, as some scientists expect, it could dramatically cool the planet.
Surely, two thousand of the world’s top scientists cannot be wrong? Would that this were so. Not so long ago, select UN committees were locked in an argument over the effects of low-level radiation and a stolid defence of the widespread practice of X-raying pregnant women. They - and all of the top scientific institutions - were wrong, but it took Alice Stewart, a ‘maverick’ scientist, ten years to persuade them. In the end, it was steadily-accumulated, contradicting evidence (leukaemia in the children) that won the day, along with Stewart's dogged determination against funding cuts and mud-slinging from people who should have been the first to support her. She saved hundreds of thousands of lives, yet received no honours, while her chief detractor was knighted.
Something similar is afoot with global warming. The standard model may be flawed. It relies on assumed water vapour feedbacks that have not been validated. It was pointed out at the first IPCC meeting by Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT, that if the water vapour turned to cloud, the feedback could be negative. He later resigned when he failed to get this caveat written in to the first IPCC report. The real rise in global temperatures has been taken as validation of the model, but Svensmark’s work suggests that this rise is due to another factor: an increased solar electromagnetic field thinning the cloud over the oceans, which then receive more sunlight and so heat up. Satellite data analysed in 2004 support this theory. Moreover, following a dip in the sun’s field, global ocean temperatures have been falling after the El Niño peak in 1998, something which is difficult to explain with the standard model. In fact, during the two years 2003 to 2005, the oceans lost one-fifth of all the heat accumulated in the previous fifty years.
Over 75% of the planet’s surface is ocean. The defensive response to this ocean cooling has been to refer to it as a ‘blip in the general trend’ and ‘we have seen such blips before’. Yes, but only after major volcanic eruptions ... and there were none in the period 2003 to 2005.
The oceans are cooling and, according to oceanographers (who, along with solar scientists, are being ignored by the IPCC), it is due to changes in low-level cloud formations that correlate with solar cycles. There is a time-lag as the oceans release their heat and it is that heat that is melting the Arctic rather than any greenhouse effect.
But what about all these sophisticated computer models? Well, they have had their critics - always ignored by the scientists seeking ever greater funding for their models - and the main criticism has been that they are unable to model cloud responses. Now, the new science cannot be ignored. Henrik Svensmark, after beavering away quietly since 1991 on his theories of solar influence, has discovered the mechanism (published on 22 February 2007 as The Chilling Stars), namely a modulation of cloud seeding over the oceans by the electromagnetic field. As the sun’s field builds up, cosmic radiation is deflected and less clouds form because the ionising radiation field controls cloud seeding. The sun began to ramp down in 1990 and, although there is an oceanic time lag, the globe is cooling, more so where the currents disperse the heat rapidly, as in the southern hemisphere, less quickly in the northern hemisphere.
We will know the full extent of the cooling this year. If El Niño fails - the US specialists think it will, whereas British commentators think it won’t - the oceans will cool further and, if the next solar peak (on an eleven-year cycle) is lower than the last, even more cooling will follow in five years time.
So, we can relax? No more need for ugly wind turbines on blue-remembered hills and no more excuse for revamping nuclear power? Yes and no. Even the most optimistic emission controls will have virtually no effect this century on atmospheric carbon levels anyway ... and the only proven mechanism for reducing demand for fossil fuels was always price, so the oil ‘peak’ expected in 2015 will see to that. But the real challenge is going to be feeding the extra one billion people who will be born in the next thirteen years, most of them into food-deficit countries, which currently cannot compete in a globalised food market and are very vulnerable to climate swings in either direction. Global cooling will compromise the productive northern grain belts upon which a world food surplus relies - and probably more so than continued warming. The paradigm is shifting rapidly. If Svensmark is right, food and water will be the big issue in five years' time and nobody will talk then of global warming.
An almighty battle is about to be engaged between proponents of solar theories of climate change and adherents to the supposedly standard carbon dioxide model. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is about to issue its fourth scientific assessment - a summary was published in February - and this argues that solar effects are minimal. Meanwhile solar scientist Henrik Svensmark, funded by the European Space Agency, has demonstrated a mechanism that will explain the thinning clouds phenomenon picked up by satellite data, but not as a feedback to carbon’s increasing concentration, rather as a primary driver which leaves little over for carbon. In other words, the human influence on climate has been seriously over-estimated. If Svensmark’s theory is accepted, less than 30% of the changes we see are due to human activity (and only 15% due to fossil fuel burning). If the sun’s magnetic field drops, as some scientists expect, it could dramatically cool the planet.
Surely, two thousand of the world’s top scientists cannot be wrong? Would that this were so. Not so long ago, select UN committees were locked in an argument over the effects of low-level radiation and a stolid defence of the widespread practice of X-raying pregnant women. They - and all of the top scientific institutions - were wrong, but it took Alice Stewart, a ‘maverick’ scientist, ten years to persuade them. In the end, it was steadily-accumulated, contradicting evidence (leukaemia in the children) that won the day, along with Stewart's dogged determination against funding cuts and mud-slinging from people who should have been the first to support her. She saved hundreds of thousands of lives, yet received no honours, while her chief detractor was knighted.
Something similar is afoot with global warming. The standard model may be flawed. It relies on assumed water vapour feedbacks that have not been validated. It was pointed out at the first IPCC meeting by Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT, that if the water vapour turned to cloud, the feedback could be negative. He later resigned when he failed to get this caveat written in to the first IPCC report. The real rise in global temperatures has been taken as validation of the model, but Svensmark’s work suggests that this rise is due to another factor: an increased solar electromagnetic field thinning the cloud over the oceans, which then receive more sunlight and so heat up. Satellite data analysed in 2004 support this theory. Moreover, following a dip in the sun’s field, global ocean temperatures have been falling after the El Niño peak in 1998, something which is difficult to explain with the standard model. In fact, during the two years 2003 to 2005, the oceans lost one-fifth of all the heat accumulated in the previous fifty years.
Over 75% of the planet’s surface is ocean. The defensive response to this ocean cooling has been to refer to it as a ‘blip in the general trend’ and ‘we have seen such blips before’. Yes, but only after major volcanic eruptions ... and there were none in the period 2003 to 2005.
The oceans are cooling and, according to oceanographers (who, along with solar scientists, are being ignored by the IPCC), it is due to changes in low-level cloud formations that correlate with solar cycles. There is a time-lag as the oceans release their heat and it is that heat that is melting the Arctic rather than any greenhouse effect.
But what about all these sophisticated computer models? Well, they have had their critics - always ignored by the scientists seeking ever greater funding for their models - and the main criticism has been that they are unable to model cloud responses. Now, the new science cannot be ignored. Henrik Svensmark, after beavering away quietly since 1991 on his theories of solar influence, has discovered the mechanism (published on 22 February 2007 as The Chilling Stars), namely a modulation of cloud seeding over the oceans by the electromagnetic field. As the sun’s field builds up, cosmic radiation is deflected and less clouds form because the ionising radiation field controls cloud seeding. The sun began to ramp down in 1990 and, although there is an oceanic time lag, the globe is cooling, more so where the currents disperse the heat rapidly, as in the southern hemisphere, less quickly in the northern hemisphere.We will know the full extent of the cooling this year. If El Niño fails - the US specialists think it will, whereas British commentators think it won’t - the oceans will cool further and, if the next solar peak (on an eleven-year cycle) is lower than the last, even more cooling will follow in five years time.
So, we can relax? No more need for ugly wind turbines on blue-remembered hills and no more excuse for revamping nuclear power? Yes and no. Even the most optimistic emission controls will have virtually no effect this century on atmospheric carbon levels anyway ... and the only proven mechanism for reducing demand for fossil fuels was always price, so the oil ‘peak’ expected in 2015 will see to that. But the real challenge is going to be feeding the extra one billion people who will be born in the next thirteen years, most of them into food-deficit countries, which currently cannot compete in a globalised food market and are very vulnerable to climate swings in either direction. Global cooling will compromise the productive northern grain belts upon which a world food surplus relies - and probably more so than continued warming. The paradigm is shifting rapidly. If Svensmark is right, food and water will be the big issue in five years' time and nobody will talk then of global warming.
Tuesday, 6 March 2007
Climate Change, Scientific Consensus & the Media
by Peter Taylor
Ed. - Peter was prompted to respond to a slide from an internal presentation by a UK agency which presents and compares the following statistics: (1) of 928 peer-reviewed articles appearing in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, none were "in doubt as to the cause of global warming"; and (2) of 636 articles in the US popular press between 1988 and 2002, 53% were "in doubt as to the cause of global warming". The original sources of these data are (1) The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes of the University of California at San Diego - see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686; and (2) Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: Creating controversy where science finds consensus by Jules Boykoff and Maxwell Boykoff - see http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978.
Of course, it depends upon what is meant by 'in doubt as to the cause of global warming'. Anyone who gets to write a peer-reviewed article knows full well that 'global warming' is caused by BOTH natural and human factors and that the key question is 'how much of each'? Almost all accept that warming prior to 1950 (about half the rise) must have been caused by mainly natural factors, that is to say, cycles of solar activity. The crucial question relates to the post-1980 warming (there was a worldwide drop between 1945 and 1978 that is not explainable by aerosols or volcanoes, but correlates to a downturn in the solar cycle). Computer modellers believe that the post-1980 rise cannot be explained by natural factors and is the signature of human emissions, but there are many in the oceanographic, solar-terrestrial physics and paleontology community who have published their doubts about the strength of that signature, as well as the scale of 'warming' compared to previous warm periods. The problem is: scientific papers use very diplomatic language and for good reason.
If someone would like to fund me a very small amount, say £1,500, I will go down to the British Library (BL) and look at every one of those 928 peer-reviewed papers, extract the conclusions and analyse them for the following:
The most telling of Svensmark's* non-computer-model papers produces a watt/sq. metre estimate of the solar cloud effect at 1.4 and comments: 'this is a significant finding, comparable to that claimed for carbon dioxide'. Now that sentence might not be construed as doubt as to the cause of global warming - it depends upon the intelligence of the reader.
If you want an explanation of why Svensmark should be so careful in not overtly criticising the consensus, read his book, The Chilling Stars, and you will see how much trouble he had funding the research, even with his head well down below the parapet.
It's cheap propaganda - the sort that Al Gore is using - and it does not become the debate in our circles. Let's talk instead of the quality of cosmic ray data, the flux over the last century, oceanic time lags, the cloud cover data, NASA's GISS files and their failure to update them after the "instrument error" that detected a massive LW (long-wave? ed.) pulse to the upper atmosphere at the same time as oceanographers were logging the one-fifth loss of all the heat accumulated in the past fifty years of ocean monitoring, and the albedo readings for the year 2003-2004 that also shot off the scale, indicating massive cloud changes, and which are also now claimed as instrument error ... all of which cannot be explained by the CO2 model, but which are predicted by solar models.
Let's, for science's sake, get scientific about this and devote some resources to thinking, reading, listening to the scientific debate, instead of dutifully accepting authority from above like little boys at school. The RSPB, the Environment Agency, Greenpeace, WWF and FOE all have the resources critically to review the science - and I mean critically review it - but that attitude seems to have died out in the late 1980s. Now it is more convenient to jump on the climate-modellers' gravy train and chant the scary mantras about melting ice-caps and dying puffins, whilst coining it with specially adapted credit cards that tie-in to renewable energy companies - I call it 'corporate creep'.
Having bought into the mitigation nonsense that is peddled by governments who have absolutely no intention of significantly reducing demand and who, in time-honoured fashion, go for 'supply options' because that is where business can profit and government can be seen to be doing something - check out the stats for Spain, the world-leader in renewable supplies, with a doubling of CO2 emissions - the environmental groups are now reaping the fruits of their Faustian bargain. The monsters of supply will consume not just sea eagles and the incredible scenery of Skye and the Hebrides, geese and tranquility on Romney Marsh, and sustainable community in the Mendips, but eventually the whole Severn estuary with a tidal barrage ... and add another ten nuclear reactors to churn out their wastes and dangers. And that is just in the UK, because we will also extend our decarbonised ecological footprint to the forests of Borneo, the Amazon and Latvia in search of biofuels and woodchips.
I am sorry to get steamed up - particularly since I have just carbonised my dinner in the process ... can I put in a claim for sequestration credits under the Kyoto protocol?
Regards,
Peter
*Ed. - For more on Professor Svensmark's work, see, for example, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3036032.stm, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece and, for the more inquisitive, http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/.
Ed. - Peter was prompted to respond to a slide from an internal presentation by a UK agency which presents and compares the following statistics: (1) of 928 peer-reviewed articles appearing in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, none were "in doubt as to the cause of global warming"; and (2) of 636 articles in the US popular press between 1988 and 2002, 53% were "in doubt as to the cause of global warming". The original sources of these data are (1) The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes of the University of California at San Diego - see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686; and (2) Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: Creating controversy where science finds consensus by Jules Boykoff and Maxwell Boykoff - see http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978.
Of course, it depends upon what is meant by 'in doubt as to the cause of global warming'. Anyone who gets to write a peer-reviewed article knows full well that 'global warming' is caused by BOTH natural and human factors and that the key question is 'how much of each'? Almost all accept that warming prior to 1950 (about half the rise) must have been caused by mainly natural factors, that is to say, cycles of solar activity. The crucial question relates to the post-1980 warming (there was a worldwide drop between 1945 and 1978 that is not explainable by aerosols or volcanoes, but correlates to a downturn in the solar cycle). Computer modellers believe that the post-1980 rise cannot be explained by natural factors and is the signature of human emissions, but there are many in the oceanographic, solar-terrestrial physics and paleontology community who have published their doubts about the strength of that signature, as well as the scale of 'warming' compared to previous warm periods. The problem is: scientific papers use very diplomatic language and for good reason.If someone would like to fund me a very small amount, say £1,500, I will go down to the British Library (BL) and look at every one of those 928 peer-reviewed papers, extract the conclusions and analyse them for the following:
- the number that do not question the consensus, but suggest that solar factors can produce a signal as great as carbon dioxide (I know of at least three), thus implying, but not stating, that carbon dioxide is not the main driver;
- the number dealing with satellite data on SW (short-wave? ed.) flux to the oceans and land surfaces that show significant cloud thinning and give data on the size of the effect, which implies, but does not state, that this mechanism must be the main driver (another three);
- the number that question whether the current warming is unusual on a longer timescale of 10,000 years, representing the natural cycle of an inter-glacial, that is, the Holocene post-glacial optimum, the Roman warm period and the medieval warm period (another five at least);
- the number that state that 'the cause' is BOTH natural and possibly human but that the ratio is still unclear (another three);
- the number that show correlations of solar cycles and sea surface temperatures, as well as other oceanographic phenomena that cannot be explained by the current CO2 model (perhaps ten or so).
I know of these papers: I read them in the BL last spring. There are, I would estimate, at least another twenty that I have not seen.
Of course, it may be that the researchers who wrote the '928' assessment did not include these papers, or if they did, did not understand them. But if you search for a phrase, 'we disagree with the current model', you are unlikely to find it: science papers in these political times are seldom so bold (there are a few).
The most telling of Svensmark's* non-computer-model papers produces a watt/sq. metre estimate of the solar cloud effect at 1.4 and comments: 'this is a significant finding, comparable to that claimed for carbon dioxide'. Now that sentence might not be construed as doubt as to the cause of global warming - it depends upon the intelligence of the reader.
If you want an explanation of why Svensmark should be so careful in not overtly criticising the consensus, read his book, The Chilling Stars, and you will see how much trouble he had funding the research, even with his head well down below the parapet.
It's cheap propaganda - the sort that Al Gore is using - and it does not become the debate in our circles. Let's talk instead of the quality of cosmic ray data, the flux over the last century, oceanic time lags, the cloud cover data, NASA's GISS files and their failure to update them after the "instrument error" that detected a massive LW (long-wave? ed.) pulse to the upper atmosphere at the same time as oceanographers were logging the one-fifth loss of all the heat accumulated in the past fifty years of ocean monitoring, and the albedo readings for the year 2003-2004 that also shot off the scale, indicating massive cloud changes, and which are also now claimed as instrument error ... all of which cannot be explained by the CO2 model, but which are predicted by solar models.
Let's, for science's sake, get scientific about this and devote some resources to thinking, reading, listening to the scientific debate, instead of dutifully accepting authority from above like little boys at school. The RSPB, the Environment Agency, Greenpeace, WWF and FOE all have the resources critically to review the science - and I mean critically review it - but that attitude seems to have died out in the late 1980s. Now it is more convenient to jump on the climate-modellers' gravy train and chant the scary mantras about melting ice-caps and dying puffins, whilst coining it with specially adapted credit cards that tie-in to renewable energy companies - I call it 'corporate creep'.
Having bought into the mitigation nonsense that is peddled by governments who have absolutely no intention of significantly reducing demand and who, in time-honoured fashion, go for 'supply options' because that is where business can profit and government can be seen to be doing something - check out the stats for Spain, the world-leader in renewable supplies, with a doubling of CO2 emissions - the environmental groups are now reaping the fruits of their Faustian bargain. The monsters of supply will consume not just sea eagles and the incredible scenery of Skye and the Hebrides, geese and tranquility on Romney Marsh, and sustainable community in the Mendips, but eventually the whole Severn estuary with a tidal barrage ... and add another ten nuclear reactors to churn out their wastes and dangers. And that is just in the UK, because we will also extend our decarbonised ecological footprint to the forests of Borneo, the Amazon and Latvia in search of biofuels and woodchips.
I am sorry to get steamed up - particularly since I have just carbonised my dinner in the process ... can I put in a claim for sequestration credits under the Kyoto protocol?
Regards,
Peter
*Ed. - For more on Professor Svensmark's work, see, for example, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3036032.stm, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece and, for the more inquisitive, http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/.
Thursday, 15 February 2007
I Nearly Counted!
by Ralph Underhill. Photos © Andy Hay, rspb-images.com.
It isn't easy being climate-friendly. Last November a group of us thought it would be appropriate to attend the Stop Climate Chaos - I Count event in Trafalgar Square on bicycles. We set off from Bedfordshire with high hopes and good spirits on our suitably carbon-friendly steeds. One brake pad, a crank, one inner tube, several wrong turns (all of which, Escher-like, involved steep hills) and several hours later, we got to the big event just in time ... to see some discarded banners, a small crowd of people milling about and a small canine wearing a sign that read I don't want to be a hot dog! But, to be fair, it looked like it was probably a good and fun event for those who arrived on time.
The turn-out was around 25,000 and, although sizeable, I view this as somewhat disappointing when you consider that the Stop Climate Chaos coalition includes 49 different groups (according to its web site, http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/), many of which have considerable memberships. The overall figure works out as just 510 people per organization, which feels doubly depressing when you think that over a million Tory voters dressed in tweed made it to London to complain about not being able to kill a native species for fun.
Why is it so hard to enthuse people about climate change? I have conducted a less-than-scientific study - of a couple of people down the pub - and come up with the following reasons.
1) It is not really happening;
2) It's too depressing to think about: Ignorance Is Bliss;
3) What's the point? Look at China and India!
How can we address these issues and galvanize the masses? Here are a few incompletely-formed ideas:
1) It is not really happening
Thankfully, this reasoning is becoming less and less common. In ECOS 27, Peter Taylor suggests that only about 10% of climate change is human induced (although this is only the CO2 component) and that changes in solar radiation are more important. However, a 2006 study and review of existing literature, published in Nature, determined that there has been no net increase in brightness since the mid-1970s, and that changes in solar output within the past 400 years are unlikely to have played a major part in global warming.
Furthermore, in February the IPCC released part of its fourth report on climate change. Regarded by many as too conservative with its predictions, the report still concludes that there is at least a 90% certainty that human emissions of greenhouse gases, rather than natural variations, are warming the planet's surface.
I am interested in the work to which Peter refers, but he is talking about an area of investigation that is nowadays up against a huge scientific - not political - consensus. Of course we should continue to investigate other scenarios, but if I had cancer and I saw 100 more-or-less equally-qualified consultants and 98 of them told me that an operation could save my life, while 2 said that it wouldn't make a difference ... then I think I would go under the knife!
2) It's too depressing to think about: Ignorance Is Bliss
You are right: it is quite depressing. We could cheer ourselves up and examine the good things climate change will bring, like the ability to have your own vineyard. But will being less negative really help us to act or, more likely, will it give us further excuses not to? Surely, the real way to address this issue is to show people that small changes in their lives could produce significant reductions in their emissions. A sense of our recent history is also important: although air travel and exotic foods are commonplace now, they were restricted luxuries only a few decades ago. The modern way of life for developed countries, such as our own, is now considered a human right, despite the fact that we put even the Romans to shame in terms of consumption and waste.
The most important point is that there is a flip side to the doom and gloom and that is that we still have some time, maybe ten years, until there is no turning back, so there is still hope ... let's rejoice! As you can probably tell, I am not terribly good at this upbeat stuff.
3) What's the point? Look at China and India!
China is growing so rapidly only because many countries, including our own, are consuming the products that they make. To make out that their growth is nothing to do with us and completely unstoppable is simply untrue. We all need to change the way we live and to stop using others as convenient excuses.
Conservationism vs Environmentalism ...
There used to be a great divide between the sandal-wearing, bearded lentil eaters and the sandal-wearing, bearded, real ale drinkers. It is now increasingly difficult to be a conservationist without considering how both your own work and life are affecting what you are trying to conserve. Even if we ignore climate change, it will not go away. If we try only to adapt to the changes, they may well be too big for the majority of species to survive. There is no doubt that every effort must be made to adapt to the inevitable changes that will come, but, if we really want to conserve species and ecosystems, we must also try to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
The Times They Are a-Changing ...
Four months ago people thought I was a mad loon, or at least more of a mad loon than they do now! I was the respectable version of a drunk. My rants about the dying planet were met either with complete boredom or more frequently with raised eyebrows. I might as well have worn a 'The End is Nigh' sandwich board.
Now it seems things have suddenly changed. Now when I rant others agree, the only raised eyebrows being my own at my friends' change in opinion. I am no longer mad - at least with respect to my opinions on climate change - HOORAY! However, in a strange way, I think I preferred the good old days of a few months ago. At least back then I had the hope that, when everyone eventually came round to the inconvenient truth about climate change, things might actually start to change. It is the biggest single threat to the planet ever faced and people are starting to realise this - unfortunately they don't want to change they way they live to accommodate it. We have a situation now where people still fly to their holidays, but they feel guilty about doing it.
I am aware that I might not be giving everyone a fair chance, after all, four months is not a long period of time, especially not for political change, and the changes in opinion that I have noticed are massive. I am sure that, if I wasn't such a miserable git, I would be drawing many more positives from this perceived change. After all, if opinions can change so quickly, maybe there is something to be hopeful about, maybe - just maybe - we can all change in time.
Until next time ...
Chicken Little
Interesting Links:
www.greenpeace.org.uk/whatarewewaitingfor
IPCC Report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_02_07_climatereport.pdf
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,9061,1431398,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2004399,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
It isn't easy being climate-friendly. Last November a group of us thought it would be appropriate to attend the Stop Climate Chaos - I Count event in Trafalgar Square on bicycles. We set off from Bedfordshire with high hopes and good spirits on our suitably carbon-friendly steeds. One brake pad, a crank, one inner tube, several wrong turns (all of which, Escher-like, involved steep hills) and several hours later, we got to the big event just in time ... to see some discarded banners, a small crowd of people milling about and a small canine wearing a sign that read I don't want to be a hot dog! But, to be fair, it looked like it was probably a good and fun event for those who arrived on time.
The turn-out was around 25,000 and, although sizeable, I view this as somewhat disappointing when you consider that the Stop Climate Chaos coalition includes 49 different groups (according to its web site, http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/), many of which have considerable memberships. The overall figure works out as just 510 people per organization, which feels doubly depressing when you think that over a million Tory voters dressed in tweed made it to London to complain about not being able to kill a native species for fun.Why is it so hard to enthuse people about climate change? I have conducted a less-than-scientific study - of a couple of people down the pub - and come up with the following reasons.
1) It is not really happening;
2) It's too depressing to think about: Ignorance Is Bliss;
3) What's the point? Look at China and India!
How can we address these issues and galvanize the masses? Here are a few incompletely-formed ideas:
1) It is not really happening
Thankfully, this reasoning is becoming less and less common. In ECOS 27, Peter Taylor suggests that only about 10% of climate change is human induced (although this is only the CO2 component) and that changes in solar radiation are more important. However, a 2006 study and review of existing literature, published in Nature, determined that there has been no net increase in brightness since the mid-1970s, and that changes in solar output within the past 400 years are unlikely to have played a major part in global warming.
Furthermore, in February the IPCC released part of its fourth report on climate change. Regarded by many as too conservative with its predictions, the report still concludes that there is at least a 90% certainty that human emissions of greenhouse gases, rather than natural variations, are warming the planet's surface.
I am interested in the work to which Peter refers, but he is talking about an area of investigation that is nowadays up against a huge scientific - not political - consensus. Of course we should continue to investigate other scenarios, but if I had cancer and I saw 100 more-or-less equally-qualified consultants and 98 of them told me that an operation could save my life, while 2 said that it wouldn't make a difference ... then I think I would go under the knife!
2) It's too depressing to think about: Ignorance Is Bliss
You are right: it is quite depressing. We could cheer ourselves up and examine the good things climate change will bring, like the ability to have your own vineyard. But will being less negative really help us to act or, more likely, will it give us further excuses not to? Surely, the real way to address this issue is to show people that small changes in their lives could produce significant reductions in their emissions. A sense of our recent history is also important: although air travel and exotic foods are commonplace now, they were restricted luxuries only a few decades ago. The modern way of life for developed countries, such as our own, is now considered a human right, despite the fact that we put even the Romans to shame in terms of consumption and waste.
The most important point is that there is a flip side to the doom and gloom and that is that we still have some time, maybe ten years, until there is no turning back, so there is still hope ... let's rejoice! As you can probably tell, I am not terribly good at this upbeat stuff.
3) What's the point? Look at China and India!
China is growing so rapidly only because many countries, including our own, are consuming the products that they make. To make out that their growth is nothing to do with us and completely unstoppable is simply untrue. We all need to change the way we live and to stop using others as convenient excuses.
Conservationism vs Environmentalism ...
There used to be a great divide between the sandal-wearing, bearded lentil eaters and the sandal-wearing, bearded, real ale drinkers. It is now increasingly difficult to be a conservationist without considering how both your own work and life are affecting what you are trying to conserve. Even if we ignore climate change, it will not go away. If we try only to adapt to the changes, they may well be too big for the majority of species to survive. There is no doubt that every effort must be made to adapt to the inevitable changes that will come, but, if we really want to conserve species and ecosystems, we must also try to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
The Times They Are a-Changing ...
Four months ago people thought I was a mad loon, or at least more of a mad loon than they do now! I was the respectable version of a drunk. My rants about the dying planet were met either with complete boredom or more frequently with raised eyebrows. I might as well have worn a 'The End is Nigh' sandwich board.
Now it seems things have suddenly changed. Now when I rant others agree, the only raised eyebrows being my own at my friends' change in opinion. I am no longer mad - at least with respect to my opinions on climate change - HOORAY! However, in a strange way, I think I preferred the good old days of a few months ago. At least back then I had the hope that, when everyone eventually came round to the inconvenient truth about climate change, things might actually start to change. It is the biggest single threat to the planet ever faced and people are starting to realise this - unfortunately they don't want to change they way they live to accommodate it. We have a situation now where people still fly to their holidays, but they feel guilty about doing it.
I am aware that I might not be giving everyone a fair chance, after all, four months is not a long period of time, especially not for political change, and the changes in opinion that I have noticed are massive. I am sure that, if I wasn't such a miserable git, I would be drawing many more positives from this perceived change. After all, if opinions can change so quickly, maybe there is something to be hopeful about, maybe - just maybe - we can all change in time.
Until next time ...
Chicken Little
Interesting Links:
www.greenpeace.org.uk/whatarewewaitingfor
IPCC Report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_02_07_climatereport.pdf
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,9061,1431398,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2004399,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
Wednesday, 1 November 2006
Natural England - notes from the launch
by Diana Pound
On Wednesday 11 October, Natural England (NE) was launched in the grand surroundings of the Foreign Office's Locarno Room. There was a generous quantity of champagne, tasty morsels, and fine words from Rt Hon David Miliband MP (Secretary of State for the Environment) Helen Philips (NE Chief Executive) and Martin Doughty (Chair of NE’s Board). The event was attended by Margaret Beckett, four other Defra Ministers, and the great and the good from other organisations.
The room was packed, sweltering, and with everyone standing, David Milliband decided to abandon his speech and ad-lib. He said that ‘Natural England is core to what Defra is about’ and essential to help people in England work towards ‘one planet living’. He spoke of the need for a NE to help form ‘a new environmental contract between citizens and government’ just as the ‘social contract’ was formed in the first half of the 20th Century and is now part of our psyche. He welcomed the fact that at last the historic divisions between access, landscape and biodiversity had been brought together and said that the shared values and shared ideas of staff would underpin NE’s work. He was careful to acknowledge the concerns raised about the ‘baby being strangled at birth’ following Defra clawing back money from all its Agencies in August to help fund agricultural payments. Some hoped that he would use the launch to announce improvements to NE’s budget, but he said this would not happen until Defra could consider all the relevant agencies' resources together.
Martin Doughty looked back at history and spoke of a new approach with a focus on resilient ecosystems, improved connectivity, a decrease in fragmentation, and helping people ‘connect to nature’.
Helen Philips surprised some of us by committing the agency to being a ‘campaigning agency’, which she declared a ‘radical approach’.
There were many other inspiring and motivating words, and if these are backed by enough funds, motivated staff and effective delivery then things will definitely change for the better.
Helen Philips acknowledged that from her perspective, birthing Natural England was ‘quite an ordeal’. Change is always difficult; and NE was bound to have some teething troubles. We’ve all heard of confusion about roles and responsibilities, experienced ecologists being shifted from conservation work to process payments to farmers, and practical things like office addresses and IT systems not working the way they should. These are the kind of things that can be ironed out, but what is of greater concern is that the process of transition seems to have left many of NE’s staff feeling pretty demoralised by the ‘ordeal’ Helen Philips referred to.
Natural England’s staff are passionate about their subject and committed to making a difference. But many are struggling with how to get on with the real job - delivering NE’s challenging remit of conserving and enhancing landscape and biodiversity, and improving access and education.
All of the 5 Directors and Helen Philips are from outside Natural England’s constituent bodies. Having all fresh faces at the top should help to form a new culture with fresh perspectives and without carrying over the baggage from the previous organisations – but the new faces will need to listen and learn as well as lead. They must inspire staff and demonstrate that, like good cooks, they can bake something better than the ingredients.
If NE is to turn the inspirational rhetoric we heard at the launch into reality, the Directors have a challenging time in front of them. Helen Philips spoke of ‘customer care’ - but perhaps the greatest short-term challenge is to build up trust, and motivate and empower NE’s own people so they can regain enthusiasm for their work and deliver what’s needed.
In the end "The proof of the pudding will be in the eating" and in a year's time, the true test of NE will be if it is getting on with the job and delivering better and more integrated results for ecosystems, landscapes, and countryside access. My own hope is that the organisation will harness the best characteristics of the three constituent organisations; the Countryside Agency’s informality, flexibility, risk taking, and innovation, English Nature’s commitment to science and protecting the best bits of our wildlife and geology, and the Rural Development Service's ability to work with landowners to deliver change at a systems level.
I wish Natural England well and great success.
Diana Pound
For David Miliband’s Blog about the launch and copy of his prepared speech go to:
http://www.davidmiliband.defra.gov.uk/blogs/ministerial_blog/archive/2006/10/12.aspx
For Natural England’s launch Press Release go to:
http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/press/releases2006/111006.htm
On Wednesday 11 October, Natural England (NE) was launched in the grand surroundings of the Foreign Office's Locarno Room. There was a generous quantity of champagne, tasty morsels, and fine words from Rt Hon David Miliband MP (Secretary of State for the Environment) Helen Philips (NE Chief Executive) and Martin Doughty (Chair of NE’s Board). The event was attended by Margaret Beckett, four other Defra Ministers, and the great and the good from other organisations.
The room was packed, sweltering, and with everyone standing, David Milliband decided to abandon his speech and ad-lib. He said that ‘Natural England is core to what Defra is about’ and essential to help people in England work towards ‘one planet living’. He spoke of the need for a NE to help form ‘a new environmental contract between citizens and government’ just as the ‘social contract’ was formed in the first half of the 20th Century and is now part of our psyche. He welcomed the fact that at last the historic divisions between access, landscape and biodiversity had been brought together and said that the shared values and shared ideas of staff would underpin NE’s work. He was careful to acknowledge the concerns raised about the ‘baby being strangled at birth’ following Defra clawing back money from all its Agencies in August to help fund agricultural payments. Some hoped that he would use the launch to announce improvements to NE’s budget, but he said this would not happen until Defra could consider all the relevant agencies' resources together.
Martin Doughty looked back at history and spoke of a new approach with a focus on resilient ecosystems, improved connectivity, a decrease in fragmentation, and helping people ‘connect to nature’.
Helen Philips surprised some of us by committing the agency to being a ‘campaigning agency’, which she declared a ‘radical approach’.
There were many other inspiring and motivating words, and if these are backed by enough funds, motivated staff and effective delivery then things will definitely change for the better.
Helen Philips acknowledged that from her perspective, birthing Natural England was ‘quite an ordeal’. Change is always difficult; and NE was bound to have some teething troubles. We’ve all heard of confusion about roles and responsibilities, experienced ecologists being shifted from conservation work to process payments to farmers, and practical things like office addresses and IT systems not working the way they should. These are the kind of things that can be ironed out, but what is of greater concern is that the process of transition seems to have left many of NE’s staff feeling pretty demoralised by the ‘ordeal’ Helen Philips referred to.
Natural England’s staff are passionate about their subject and committed to making a difference. But many are struggling with how to get on with the real job - delivering NE’s challenging remit of conserving and enhancing landscape and biodiversity, and improving access and education.
All of the 5 Directors and Helen Philips are from outside Natural England’s constituent bodies. Having all fresh faces at the top should help to form a new culture with fresh perspectives and without carrying over the baggage from the previous organisations – but the new faces will need to listen and learn as well as lead. They must inspire staff and demonstrate that, like good cooks, they can bake something better than the ingredients.
If NE is to turn the inspirational rhetoric we heard at the launch into reality, the Directors have a challenging time in front of them. Helen Philips spoke of ‘customer care’ - but perhaps the greatest short-term challenge is to build up trust, and motivate and empower NE’s own people so they can regain enthusiasm for their work and deliver what’s needed.
In the end "The proof of the pudding will be in the eating" and in a year's time, the true test of NE will be if it is getting on with the job and delivering better and more integrated results for ecosystems, landscapes, and countryside access. My own hope is that the organisation will harness the best characteristics of the three constituent organisations; the Countryside Agency’s informality, flexibility, risk taking, and innovation, English Nature’s commitment to science and protecting the best bits of our wildlife and geology, and the Rural Development Service's ability to work with landowners to deliver change at a systems level.
I wish Natural England well and great success.
Diana Pound
For David Miliband’s Blog about the launch and copy of his prepared speech go to:
http://www.davidmiliband.defra.gov.uk/blogs/ministerial_blog/archive/2006/10/12.aspx
For Natural England’s launch Press Release go to:
http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/press/releases2006/111006.htm
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