Ecosystem services

Making policy line up with ecology

11/05/2009

Anyone who has been talking to Defra or Natural England lately can’t have missed the fact that they are always on about ecosystem services – indeed it has been hailed as the next big thing after biodiversity. In truth it’s not such a new idea. In 1984 The World Conservation Strategy set out as the first of its three main objectives “to maintain ecological processes and life-support systems”; the other two being biodiversity and sustainable use.  While it might be cynical to suggest that Government wants draw attention to this “new” issue because its biodiversity objectives set out after the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity (1993) are likely to fall short of their 2010 targets, perhaps the main reason is that predictions about climate change have raised questions about such things as flooding and the carbon stores of natural ecosystems.

Timely then that the Institute of Biology and others should organise a big conference on the subject in London last week. Titled “Valuing our Life Support Systems” it drew in some impressive speakers and invited delegates to discuss solutions.  We didn’t learn much new ecology as most of the subjects have been well aired for years on the pages of New Scientist and other journals, but it is always good to hear pithy and cogent presentations by famous ecologists like Lord May and John Beddington (the Government Chief Scientist).

The real difficulty with a subject like this is that it is pretty simple to explain to people the interconnectedness of practically everything and why natural cycles of water and life-giving elements like carbon and nitrogen are important, but it is a challenge to devise policies that make people act for the good of the planet - not for themselves. It seemed to be universally agreed that market mechanisms were unlikely to succeed – thus implying that a lot of central planning was bound to be involved. Given that probably around half of the delegates were public employees either in government, agencies or academia, this was not surprising. However, some of the best evidence pointed to the contrary. For example in New York the principal water utility company found it was better to invest in habitat improvements in the watershed mountains of the Catskills than spend huge amounts of money on filtration equipment at its municipal water works. Likewise, in the UK, United Utilities have come to a similar conclusion in relation to their Bowland and Pennine water catchment areas.  Left to their own devices people and businesses often collaborate to do the right thing without any help from Government. Planners would do well to go back and read a chapter or two of Matt Ridley’s book “The Origins of Virtue” which gives a number such examples relating to water resources, grazing and fishing rights, and sustainable forest use. Often governments make things worse by interfering with local arrangements.