Transcript Slide 1

Making Space for Nature –
the current thinking
Cotswold Conservation Board Annual Forum
2nd March 2012
Sir John Lawton
MAKING SPACE FOR NATURE
•Brief history of report for those less familiar
•The competition to create 12 Nature
Improvement Areas (NIAs) – where
are we currently?
•‘Mind the gap’
•What next?
Making Space for Nature ToRs
• Examine evidence on the extent to which England’s collection of
wildlife sites represents a coherent and resilient ecological network
capable of adapting to the challenge of climate change and other
pressures (looked at 2OC temp. rise)
• Examine the evidence base to assess whether a more interconnected network would be more effective today and in the future
and, if so, how this could be delivered
• Taking account of the ecological, economic and social costs and
benefits, make costed and prioritised recommendations
Commissioned by Defra Sept. 2009; reported Sept. 2010
Terrestrial, freshwater and coasts (i.e. not marine)
Looking forward to 2050
Natural England provided the Secretariat
Three tiers of wildlife sites
• Tier 1 sites - primary purpose is nature conservation and which have a
high level of protection either due to their statutory status or
ownership.
SSSIs, SACs, SPAs, Ramsar, NNRs, Local Nature Reserves, and
voluntary conservation-sector owned reserves (6.9% of England’s
land-area, including fresh-water sites)
• Tier 2 sites - areas designated for their high biodiversity value but
which do not receive full statutory protection.
Local Wildlife Sites and Ancient Woodland Inventory (6.5%)
• Tier 3 sites - primarily designated for other reasons but wildlife
conservation included in statutory purpose
AONBs (14.4%) and National Parks (9.1%)
CBD in Nagoya October 2010 aims to protect 17% of terrestrial and
freshwater habitats (beware ‘double counting’ e.g. 23.5% of NPs is
also SSSI).
N.B. Many other important areas have no designation
So why don’t England’s wildlife sites
comprise a coherent and resilient network?
• Many of England’s wildlife sites are too small
(77% of SSSIs and 98% of LWS are smaller than 100 ha)
• Losses of certain habitats have been so great that the area
remaining is no longer enough to halt additional biodiversity losses
without concerted efforts (e.g. 97% sps. rich grasslands 1930-84)
• With the exception of Natura 2000 sites and SSSIs, most of
England’s semi-natural habitats important for wildlife are generally
insufficiently protected and under-managed
• Many of the natural connections in our countryside have been
degraded or lost, leading to isolation of sites
• Too few people have easy access to wildlife.
What do we need to do? - ecological solutions
“MORE, BIGGER, BETTER AND JOINED”
• Improve the quality of current sites by better habitat management
(and enhance heterogeneity)
• Increase the size of current wildlife sites
• Create new sites
• Enhance connections between, or join up, sites, either through
physical corridors, or through ‘stepping stones’
• Reduce the pressures on wildlife by improving the wider
environment, including through buffering wildlife sites
Better management of existing sites > Bigger sites >
More sites > Enhance connectivity > New corridors
On a large scale all these activities underpin Ecological Restoration
Zones (ERZs, which became Nature Improvement Areas or NIAs)
‘Reducing the pressures’ sits outside this hierarchy
ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION ZONES
• Making Space put forward 24 recommendations, all of which
are necessary
• Recommendation 3: “Ecological Restoration Zones (ERZs)
need to be established within which significant enhancements
of ecological networks are achieved, by enhancing existing
wildlife sites, improving ecological connections and restoring
ecological processes”
Consortia-led, from the bottom up (not imposed),
involving local authorities, local communities and
landowners, utility companies, voluntary conservation
organisations, national agencies etc. etc.
• Recommended national competition to establish 12, now
called Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs) with £7.5m for 12
initial projects announced in Environment White Paper (June
2011), each from ca. 10,000 to 50,000 ha
COMPETITION FOR NATURE IMPROVEMENT AREAS
Where are we and how did we get there?
• Competition announced July 2010, with outline
bids by 30th Sept. I Chaired awards panel
• 76 valid bids received
• ‘Long’ short list of 20 produced 21st October
• Final bids 16th December
• 20 reduced to 15, 16th January 2012 (really
tough)
• Interviews for remaining consortia 7th – 8th
February, to select final 12 (even tougher!)
• Formal announcement of winners 27th February
Successful consortia start work 1st April 2012;
implementation over next 3 years to be
carefully monitored
BRIEF SUMMARY OF NATURE OF BIDS
• On average each successful bid will receive £625k
– viewed as ‘seed-corn’. In the ‘top 20’ bids:
• Many ways of levering more funds e.g. with Utility
Companies, EA flood-control, voluntary sector
funds, Biodiversity Offsetting, Visitor Payback
Schemes, private landowners, Local Enterprise
Partnerships, National Parks, AONBs, etc.
• Range in size from 11,100 to 72,000ha, with mode
ca 50,000ha (only part of which ‘restored’,
involving trivial loss of good agricultural land)
• A wide range of habitats: wetlands, upland and
lowland peat bogs, urban green-spaces, chalk
downland, river catchments, heathland,
coastal systems, forests
• Many kinds of consortia: including farmers, local
authorities, utility companies, Wildlife Trusts,
RSPB, EA, NE, FC, AONBs, National Parks etc.
Remarkable set of truly inspiring bids
From the long shortlist of 20:
“Never before has there been such an opportunity …[the
NIA] has brought together a partnership of
unprecedented scale and scope with a shared vision”
“Our decision- and policy-makers understand that
prioritising the quality of the environment is a key to
future regeneration and prosperity, not a threat”
“…the interest evident at the key partnership meeting,
held to develop the project, was overwhelming. The
Steering Group had not seen such a range of ideas
coming forward and so many groups together”
“It is clear that a number of influential [private land
owners] are already keen to be enhancing their land in
line with our [NIA] vision
The 12 winners
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Birmingham and Black Country
Dark Peak
Dearne Valley
Greater Thames Marshes
Humberhead Levels
Marlborough Downs
Meres and Mosses of the Marches
Morecambe Bay Limestone and
Wetlands
9. Nene Valley
10. North Devon
11. South Downs Way
12. Wild Purbeck
But we need to ‘Mind the Gap’ between
inspiration and some hard realities
• Most bids only viable in longer term with
finance from agri-environment schemes,
particularly HLS. Uncertainties over CAP
reform therefore a worry (e.g. loss of
support for ‘non-farm’ enterprises)
• Water Framework Directive a major driver in
several bids. Political hostility to Europe
could threaten this (?)
• Ditto Birds and Habitats Directives
These worries of course equally well apply to
many areas important for conservation outside
NIAs
Planning
Recommendations 1 and 2 in Making Space for Nature
stressed need for planning authorities to recognise and
protect ecological networks (existing sites and restoration
zones), and for Government to support them in these aims.
Attack on planning system by Government as a ‘constraint on
economic growth’ therefore deeply worrying
And yet some hopeful signs emerging from several NIA bids:
• Recognition in several bids, by local authority leaders, Local
Enterprise Partnerships etc, that a healthy
environment rich in nature is good for inward
investment and good for people
• Where development is essential, several bids propose to use
Biodiversity Offsetting and the new Community Infrastructure Levy to fund conservation activities, and to
recognise and protect sites in local and subregional planning (localism might actually work!)
Ecosystem Services
Recommendations 4-7 and 17 of Making Space for
Nature emphasised the value of ecosystem
services for e.g. delivering clean water, flood
control, coastal protection, carbon storage and
public health
Most of the bids for NIAs ‘got this’ very clearly,
and will push recognition of, and payment for,
delivery strongly up the political agenda
Also some interesting research projects proposed
in a few bids to use habitat restoration and
recreation as experiments to explore linkages
between biodivesity and ecosystem services
Threats and Opportunites
THREATS
As well as the issues already touched on,
government sees NIAs as ‘the answer’ to
declining biodiversity and through a whole
series of other actions (or failure to act) we go
backwards
OPPORTUNITIES
The NIA competition has unleashed some
amazing projects by some amazing people.
Government cannot argue that nature
conservation is a fringe activity which somehow
inhibits economic growth. We need to hammer
that home at every opportunity
LETS HAVE EVEN MORE, BIGGER, BETTER AND
JOINED UP NIAS OVER THE NEXT TEN YEARS!!
For more information go to:
• Making Space for Nature
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/biodiversity
/documents/201009space-for-nature.pdf
• Government’s response in White Paper, June
2011
• Information on NIAs on Natural
England website:
http://www.naturalengland.org.uk