I’m a little bit puzzled by Kew Gardens. I’ve been asked a few times to sign e-petitions asking for their budget not to be cut but so far I haven’t done that.
Here are two rather contrasting e-petitions:
Urgently reverse existing, proposed, and further cuts to RBG Kew’s annual operating grant in aid (105000 signatures)
Save Kew Gardens ‘World Heritage Site’ (2 signatures)
I need some help. Why should I leap to the defence of Kew? I’m not saying I shouldn’t but I’m not quite sure why I should. I’ll be happy to sign the top e-petition if someone can explain why.
There is a link in the first e-petition which will take you here. This shows the allocations of cuts for all Defra arms-length bodies after the Comprehensive Spending Review in autumn 2010 within a few months of the coalition government coming to power. The proposed cuts for Kew seemed to be more or less in line with those proposed for other Defra agencies though, as anyone who has had to implement a programme of cuts will know, there are special circumstances attached to every line of every budget.
I wish I could show you a similar table for how those cuts have actually been implemented for all the defra arms-length bodies but I can’t find one. But I can show you what has actually happened to Kew according to these figures. So that is quite different from what was planned. I wonder what the similar figures would look like for NE etc? Maybe I should dig them out.
But it is slightly more difficult to feel sorry for Kew when seeing what has actually happened to its grant in aid rather than, as the very successful e-petition does, looking at the plans.
Q is right between P and R in the alphabet and Kew seems to have got its PR well-honed too. The union which is behind the successful e-petition may have chosen change.org as the home for its e-petition because that might be the easiest way to get signatures from across the world from non-UK nationals and non-UK voters who have very little skin in the game (eg see here). That was a very smart move.
So, if you were in charge of the Defra budget and had to make cuts, would you really exempt Kew from those cuts? If so, please explain that to me.
Should Kew get off scot free? I’m not so sure. But I was interested to read about the origin of the term scot free here.
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“not quite sure why”
Well here’s a thought experiment that might help you in your dilemma. Imagine that plants had feathers and laid eggs. Would you still be asking the question?
Otherwise – public money should be hypothecated to fund the serious stuff like the Kew Millenium Seed Bank which isn’t at Kew at all and the Kew Pleasure Gardens should be self-funding. This is the basis of the model that operates for the London zoos, I believe.
filbert – not a great answer. Why is Kew different from the other Defra arms length bodies? Not -is Kew a good thing? I’m sure it is. But is it such a very good thing compared with flood defence, nature conservation, forestry etc that it should be such a special case. You haven’t answered that question.
Just one comparison: the NE and Kew allocations show projected cuts of 21% and 30% respectively from 2010-2015, so NE was treated to kinder cuts at the outset.
By the end of 2013/4 Kew’s actual was £31.3M over the 2010-14 projected. You say you can’t find the actual figures for all the Defra ALBs apart from Kew but then ask why Kew is so different from the others that it should be considered a special case. Without evidence that it was.
A better question to ask Filbert would be to ask whether Kew would be better served by removing it (at least partially) from government control. I agree with Mark that Kew is vital and does an awful lot of good but the point being that no DEFRA ‘section’ should be seen as a sacred cow if it becomes an exercise in robbing Peter to pay Paul. Indeed, your point about the Zoological Society is not far away from a similar idea. OK, switching from a government quango to an NGO is not an easy thing to achieve (as the British Waterways (transition) to Canal & River Trust is showing) but I think it is right to ask the question. As happened with the C&RT, it was changing government priorities that necessitated the change, particularly in the post-recession period after 2008. Irrespective of the party in power, I see this as a more likely trend for change for the future than pulling quangos back into the fold and reversing funding trends.
Good questions, and thank-you for the linked info. I suppose it depends in part on what you think about ‘The Cuts’ in general; whether you’re all for smaller government and ever-expanding privatisation of everything, or not.
From my political perspective I think that the public purse has withdrawn far too far from what I see as vital public goods like higher education and research into the environment and food security. This withdrawal of public funding, eg the loss of the PBI, has led to these crucial sectors being captured and distorted by big business for its own interests, to the detriment of the public good. Looking at the DEFRA ALB Allocations I’m horrified to see the position of the JNCC. In contrast, why can the Gangmasters LA not be funded by levies on the businesses that are profiting from what seems rather a dubious practice?
Specifically in terms of Kew, as a research and gene-banking facility it is of global importance. This pretty much relates to your post of yesterday “Protect the Protected Areas”. We take the world’s biodiversity for granted at our peril, and we need to put our money where our mouths are and fund both in situ and ex situ conservation to a much greater extent than we do, before it is eroded any further. Leaving it all to private corporations and big business bottom-line would be a disaster for humanity.
It is getting harder and harder to engage people with nature, as you know. But a place like Kew is also a flagship show-casing the beauty and wonder of the natural world and reaching through to the public to show how amazing nature is and how important it is to protect and conserve our environment for the future, before it’s gone. Kew’s work can help inward-looking Brits look outwards to a whole world out there and see how inter-connected we all are. A teaching much-needed in these days of narrow ukipism!
That’s all I’ve time to write at the mo, but their youtube page has plenty, I especially like their videos on Crop Wild Relatives as well as the one on Kew’s work conserving the unique high endemism ecosystem at Itremo Massif in Madagascar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqmBsUHSkBg&list=FLdbxjCEyIMJMWvYCDZNvlgA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdb9QGjUREE&index=3&list=FLdbxjCEyIMJMWvYCDZNvlgA
The crime in which PBI was engaged – according to the evil Mrs Thatcher – was near-market research. The danger of leaving the development of food crops to the market is that their race to the top is simultaneously a race to the bottom in terms of crop genetic diversity – a dangerous place to be. UG99, anyone?
With respect Serena, you’ve laid out a very good case why Kew does excellent work (no dispute there from anyone) and why cutting our investment in environmental goods and services generally is a bad thing (few here would disagree I’m sure).
But we in the UK have other responsibilities of global importance, to habitats and species in the wild, and many other organisations and funds increase people’s access to nature.
Why is kew more important that in situ conservation of species and habitats? Why is the exposure to nature provided to the few people in the SE who might go to kew occasionally more important than routine opportunities for people closer to thier homes, or in Manchester or Glasgow say?
The petition wasn’t about investment in the natural environment, it was about funding for kew. More money for kew =less money for the rest. Had the petition been about recognising the social, wellbeing, and economic importance of the natural environment I’d have signed and promoted it gladly, and been happy to see kew get its fair share of any additional funds/reduced cuts. But the petition wasn’t about that; it was about kew, alone, in isolation. That’s why I didn’t sign it.
You could argue that Kew is of global scientific and conservation significance, unlike our national flood defence, forests etc.
This raises the interesting issue of individual countries being (financially) responsible for globally significant resources/reserves, e.g. Brazil’s Amazon, Tanzania’s Serengeti or Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. As a developed country and something like the 6th richest in the world we have less excuse than most to ignore our global responsibilities.
Absolutely Hugh and that is why we probably should look at protecting it in some other way. As I mentioned in my reply to Filbert, I doubt we can have any real confidence that current funding trends will ever be reversed and this potentially creates an uncertain future. It would be horrific to see Kew’s seed bank disappear quietly, as it faces a reassessment of its future needs simply because everything cannot be saved. In an ideal world, we would be able to support flood defences etc too but I doubt we have that luxury from defending the decisions when they are given a certain spin in the news. It is difficult not to paint too bleak-a-picture in conservation at the moment when people are becoming more occupied (and by default, less occupied with conservation) with such political hot potatoes as immigration and religious fundamentalism. The gist of Mark’s original post was spurred by two contrasting e-petitions and this may well be a common trend where people are quick to offer alternative suggestions. I cannot say I like the idea of this but I think we have to face up to it.
“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” Aldo Leopold
As an (occasional) amateur mycologist the decrease in Kew’s resources in this field has been apparent over a number of years.
Most people going out on Fungus Forays in Britain will use on-line resources such as the Fungal Records database (FRDBBI), the Checklist of Basidiomycetes, Index Fungorum (all run at least in part by CABI), and recorders will send the more interesting collections to Kew for verification whereupon they get added to the Mycology Herbarium. Therefore there are quite a few names of people who used to be at Kew which are likely to be familiar to many amateur naturalists. Perhaps unusually for a Kew department, Mycology, fulfils an important role in sustaining the countrywide community of amateur naturalists. These, in turn, lead walks, volunteer at nature reserves, educate, promote suitable conservation policies, spot dangerous fungi on street trees , and so on. Of course regional natural history museums also have this under-appreciated role of supporting the community of amateur naturalists, but these bodies have suffered far more than national museums (see, for instance, Nick Moyes or Steven Falk (British Wildflife, Feb 2012 ). Properly written up this would fulfil high external impact factors as used in the recent Research Excellence exercise. Citizen Science is becoming more, not less, important, but it has always relied on nurture & support from full-time scientists.
It’s not just British amateur naturalists who have relied on Kew for a multiplier effect. As I understand it in the new structure at Kew, Mycology is not a distinct department; and Paul Kirk has left (see p. 40 in submissions to the Science & Technology Committee). Furthermore resources devoted to fungal taxonomy and the herbarium are dispersed across different groups, and (again according to submissions to the STC) this may result in the loss of skills. There is obvious significant concern amongst professional mycologists that these changes will impact fungal taxonomic work across the globe.
It may well be that there are other ways of retaining these capabilities in the current austere world, but they do appear to have been overlooked in the current Kew re-structuring. And, of course, what was not up for discussion was whether Kew was/is the best place for such activities.
I can comment much less on the Botanical side as it impacts rather less directly on the field naturalist in Britain. Others have raised similar concerns to those above, for botanical herbaria and seed bank collections, and taxonomy. Unlike fungal taxonomy, where it is a rare for a group not to represented in the British Mycota, there is taxonomic work at Kew (as at the NHM) which is tangential to understanding the British Biota, and, unlike in the past, has little clear economic relevance for the UK.
Botanical gardens are under threat throughout Europe: a combination of high labour costs, reduction in their use for teaching, low impact factors for professional staff and a general lack of appreciation of their potential role in science and education. From this perspective Kew is still doing rather well.
A final thought. It is alleged that, after visiting Kew, Francois Mitterand decided that Britain had to have some culture. Of course it was not the scientific work which impressed him, and I’m not sure that I would trust the cultural judgement of a man who illegally ate Ortolans. So I’m not even sure that the “greater glory” argument works.
Being Scottish the origins of the term ‘Scot Free’ in this posting drew my attention – the explanation I heard was that Scottage was a form of taxation for drainage works and if a farmer/landowner got of with not paying it then he was ‘Scot Free’. Recall that I read about this in ‘Taming the Flood’ by Jeremy Purseglove I believe. So difficult to track down origin of these terms, but fun though!
Prospect the principal Union behind the petition….is the main union which represents scientists and specialist across the public and private sectors…It is the main Union for DEFRA, SNH and all of our research institutes… one day it will probably represent RSPB staff.
I never think of Kew as a “garden”.. its world centre for taxonomic and ecological research. In the same way that the Natural History Museum is not just an accumulation of dead things…
I don’t think I can add anything to the details above…
I’d say the answer is that Kew ought to be under the dept of Education and Skills, not DEFRA and that it would ultimately pay the country to increase its activities rather than decreasing them.
Even the despised “public park” aspect is providing some educational benefit in terms of introducing people to an interest in plants, and it would be possible to expand their current apprenticeship scheme to give training opportunities for non-academic young people.
best idea I’ve heard!
It is a good idea. Something has to change.
The Defra ALBs are: British Waterways, Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Gangmasters, JNCC, Keep Britain Tidy, Marine Management Organisation, National Forest Company, National Parks and Broads Authorities, Natural England, RBG Kew, RPA, WRAP.
The projected spend on Overseas Development Aid in 2014-5 is £11.7BN. That would fund Defra’s ALB allocations of £1.14BN more than ten times over, or their total allocations of £2.43BN by nearly five times over.
So it’s not as if there isn’t any money sloshing about – there’s loads of it. And it’s ours …
Filbert, British Waterways has already left the fold so to speak. They applied for charitable status two years ago to become the Canals and River Trust. In theory, this allows them to better manage canals and reservoirs that they own with a little more flexibility. However, the disadvantage is that they are not developing their membership quickly enough and and this means they have to fund individual projects by single donations, rather like some of the regional Wildlife Trusts. A further extension of this is that it is tempting to accept individual funding with provisos if a particular project requires urgent funding. Indeed, C&RT are already under considerable pressure to do this on my local patch. To their considerable credit, they have so far resisted but I am sure there will (possibly, or already have been) cases where something has to go. On the other hand, I expect they will get things right with regard to membership once they start to think like an charity and not like an ALB.
Ian
The ALB list was from the link in the post – undated. WRAP is also a charity, according to their website. My point was about the relative size of hand-outs in one direction or another. Choice of ODA was because it was easy to find the sum – there are no doubt other targets of largesse that could be re-prioritised.