The disappearance of income support for grouse moors in a post-Brexit world is apparently on the cards – and is a sound policy route to follow as a small aspect of making our money work better for taxpayers, consumers and farmers alike.
But the other side of the coin is that more money should be spent, and better spent, on encouraging environmental delivery by land owners. This is the ‘public goods for public money’ agenda.
A Holy Grail of this area of public policy is to couple payment to effective delivery of objectives – land owners would be paid for Lapwings, carbon storage, water quality etc, and the more you deliver through your efforts on your land, the more money you get. Such an arrangement would be efficient and attractive if only we could come up with accurate, simple, relevant and, most of all, ridiculously cheap means of measurement. Everyone wants this (even though there would be a big argument over what those measurable public goods should be) but no-one has come up with a good enough scheme.
However, the principle of paying for environmental goods is a very sound one because the market doesn’t naturally deliver these things but we all want them (whether we know it or not).
In a post-Brexit agricultural world where environmental delivery is properly delivered I think we can expect that the delivery of biodiversity will be a smaller part of the story than it has been in the past. This is probably right and proper (although in some ways rather irksome) and we may look back on the last 20+ years as decades when governments and the EU (but, let’s be clear, mostly national governments) failed to make the most of Pillar 2 payments to save declining wildlife. Ecosystem services will form a much larger part of the future agenda, and may prove much easier to measure too.
In the lowlands, in the fields of Northamptonshire for example, I can imagine, and hope, that farmers will be rewarded for bringing back plant species that have disappeared (at a faster rate than almost any other county in England by the way!) and Turtle Doves and Corn Buntings. They may be rewarded for reducing agricultural run-off including soils and nitrogen, and in some places for better water retention which reduces flood risk down the Nene Valley and saves spend on flood defences. We’ll see.
But there is a strong argument that the emphasis of this environmental spend should switch more strongly (obviously not entirely) to the uplands with their vast carbon stores and their supply of water for drinking and flooding. A complete review and recalibration of environmental payments in the uplands would change the game massively.
In her poor speech in closing the grouse moor debate it is possible to see glimmers of light in what Therese Coffey said, but the way she said it reduces any faith in her belief in what she was saying. We know that carbon storage, water quality and flood alleviation are all damaged by intensive moorland management for the hobby of grouse shooting and we know that this is a widespread land use in 
northern England. Removal of direct income support for areas primarily used for the hobby of shooting Red Grouse for fun, and targetting of environmental payments for water quality, carbon storage and reduced peak flows of run-off would dramatically change the economics of heather burning and would also signal that society as a whole wanted something new from upland landowners. Although the sums of money would be less than those that can be accumulated (it would be wrong to call them earned) from shooting birds for fun they would be honestly earned and not through enterprises underpinned by wildlife crime. It would be an opportunity for upland shooting estates to restructure their place in their local communities and also to position themselves as being of value to the people who live in towns and never visit the countryside. It would, dare I say it, be a move on the road to the sunlit uplands sketched out in Inglorious (pp 260-68).
Of course, grouse moor owners would rather be paid for Lapwings than for water quality, because Lapwings are an unintended beneficiary of management to create unnaturally high densities of Red Grouse for shooting whereas high dissolved organic carbon is an unintended cost.
It would also be difficult to structure payments for biodiversity in the uplands for ground-nesting birds without mentioning the elephant outside the room – the Hen Harrier (and other raptors). No-one could get public payments based on biodiversity value in areas which lack natural raptor numbers – could they?
To make the most of these opportunities the NGOs, particularly the RSPB, need to push home the strong scientific arguments about intensive grouse moor management and ecosystem services. I know the RSPB is contemplating some reports along these lines – great idea, best to get on with it quickly!
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Interesting opportunities here, Mark. I agree that extra attention needs to be paid to the uplands. Actually I wonder if the transaction costs of agri-environment delivery in the uplands would be a lot lower than in the lowlands. In the lowlands, we’ve managed to create a hideously complicated set of tightly defined management prescriptions, the aim being to recover wildlife populations in lowland ‘wildlife-friendly farming’, whereas in the uplands – and if we embrace at least in some areas a ‘rewilding’ approach – on the whole the prescriptions would be a lot more simple and the options fewer, thus cutting the costs of working up agreements and monitoring outcomes. So I think the per-unit-area costs of delivering public goods in the uplands would be lower than in the farmed lowlands.
I also think we need to move away from the Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 language of the CAP, and consider Dieter Helm’s third way of simply offering contracts for delivery of public benefits for whoever is willing and able to deliver them. Rather than talking about Pillar 2 ‘agri-environment’ payments, why not simply offer public Payments for Ecosystem Services. I’d like to see a move towards civil society land trusts as a major delivery mechanism for biodiversity recovery: marginal farmland could be acquired (by purchase, lease or other approaches) by civil society land trusts who’d them be able to bid to deliver public benefits on that land (as would other land holders, such as farmers and moorland managers).
Messi, thanks for mentioning land trusts and eroding my general ignorance.
https://www.biodynamiclandtrust.org.uk/about/what-is-a-land-trust/#further-work
Were you thinking of this?
This certainly looks interesting. I’d say there are a range of land trust models, all with a role to play, ranging from trusts that set land aside for re-wilding and non-consumptive uses (i.e. walking about and enjoying wild nature), to trusts that use land for community food production. I get slightly frustrated when I hear people say that every square inch of farmland – even the most marginal farmland – must be farmed in order to ‘sustain rural communities’ when slipper farming (i.e., for subsidies) does no such thing. I’d rather such marginal areas were taken out of ‘subsidy farming’ entirely and used for other things, like nature recovery.
Agree.
And as well as marginal ground, there’s the question as to why large acreages of poor soils are being used to produce successive high carbon footprint crops courtesy massive artificial nitrate inputs. Yes, many such fields have been around for a long time. But pre the modern era of the Haber Process/Green Revolution, they were farmed successfully using four crop rotational arable husbandry interspersed with fallow-type pasturing.
If farm subsidies are to be cut, a good place to start is with Grade 4 and 5 lowland soils. Exemptions could be made for those who wish to go organic.
All the soils of the UK have been mapped and graded – it shouldn’t be difficult to locate poor and very poor fields. The result would be either biodiverse mixed farming or reversion to heath, scrub and woodland. At the same time the carbon footprint status of such land wouldn’t just be reduced it would eventually become carbon capture land.
Perhaps the National Parks could help deliver…….”Got a good idea that could bring positive benefits to the National Park? We have the cash that could make it happen” (Fron Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority Twitter feed yesterday)
This from The Monboit:
http://www.monbiot.com/2017/01/04/the-hills-are-dead/
Thanks for this link. Excellent piece.
Yes, George has excelled himself with this summary, and I find very little I can add to it.
Monbiot’s terrific piece should be compulsory reading for all those involved in upland land management.
Payment by results is a great idea in theory but as you say, Mark, no-one has come up with a good way of doing it. Unless such a scheme was run by a really tough and independent regulator, who was prepared/allowed to withhold payments if results didn’t materialise, then it could easily be money for nothing…and as potentially large amounts of money might be involved it would almost inevitably get bogged down in court cases. As ‘Messi’ says, upland prescriptions could actually be pretty simple – strict limits on grazing, no burning, restoration of any damaged hydrology, reintroduction of trees and shrubs in the right places- would pretty much do it in most cases.
A much more positive post, one that gives me hope for our wildlife’s future.
I can understand the concept of paying for ecosystem services, and why some advocate this. However, generally I think the idea is seriously problematical, and would have unforeseen adverse consequences.
Firstly there is a general problem. Most ecosystem services are not fully understood, and indeed many are unknown, not thought about, or have too many layers of complexity to be properly defined. Therefore any attempt to codify these ecosystem services will be a distortion of the actuality. It would give the misleading impression that far more is known about the ecosystem services that are provided by particular habitat, than is actually known. This is not so much a problem for a specialist ecologist with an in depth knowledge of the subject, and who is aware of what they don’t know. Unfortunately the system will be administered by those with absolutely no ecological knowledge, who will mistake the map for the territory.
A very serious problem with intellectual understanding is that the less someone knows about something, then the simpler the subject appears to them. Whereas the more someone knows, the more aware they are of how little they actually know. You could end up with bureaucrats who understand the framework in depth, and who therefore consider themselves experts, whilst having very little real ecological knowledge, and who make disastrous decisions as a consequence.
What I’m trying to say is that the real expert will know that if this was put into a framework, that it would be all very approximate, and you would need good judgement to administer it. Whereas the none expert would simply see it in absolute terms, and the framework as absolute. They would have no idea how much is unknown. Nowhere is this clearer than with climate change. The Paris agreement may look fine, but there is simply no way with the policy of most governments around the world, that these targets will be ever met. So we fool ourselves the problem is being addressed whilst we hurtle towards disaster.
There is a very serious danger with this approach that it would actually further lead to the commodification of the natural environment. Rules tend to have unforeseen consequences when clever people try to use them for their own ends, in a way they were never intended to be used. Let me give a simple example. The offside rule in football is simply meant to prevent goal hanging, which could distort the skill in a game of football. The rule was not mean to be used by teams to create offside traps, but that is how it is used. Maybe a better analogy might be rules on taxes, and how clever, manipulative wealthy people use them creatively to avoid paying tax. Clearly this was not the purpose of these tax rules, but this is how they end up being used.
The serious problem with our society is how little ecological knowledge there is. Only a small proportion of our society is scientifically literate, and this goes for politicians and bureaucrats. Yet only a very small proportion of the scientifically literate, have studied any ecology. Even many of those who have studied ecology formally, and who are professional ecologists have thought about this deeply in a joined up way. This is what makes it so difficult to have useful dialogue over ecological matters. The specialist ecologists with the in depth knowledge have a completely different reference point, than the ecologically ignorant who see things in very simplistic terms.
SteB1 – many thanks for that. The problems with setting objectives for biodiversity are even greater for similar reasons.
If anyone remembers the film Amadeus you might remember the criticism of Mozart; ‘too many notes!’. That is often the perceived problem with biodiversity in terms of designing policy solutions; ‘too many species!’.
public policy is necessarily a fairly blunt instrument which will rarely wok perfectly and rarely without unintended consequences (both bad and good), but a blunt object is better than no weapon at all if you need to clobber something.
Mark – When it comes to conservation, and protecting the environment I think we need blunt instruments i.e. clear lines in the sand. Let me give an example. If Hen Harriers were protected in the way endangered species were elsewhere, and it was considered a very serious offence to kill them or interfere with their nests, I doubt you’d have had to write Inglorious.
One of my lecturers at Uni was a friend of the late Derek Ratcliffe. He told me how what was to become the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act was originally meant to be groundbreaking legislation with real teeth to protect SSSIs i.e. real penalties for those who damaged them. However, as soon as the Conservatives (Thatcher) were elected in 1979 big landowners, who as you know are the power behind the throne in the Conservative Party started heavily lobbying the government to water down the proposed legislation. As a consequence when the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act was finally passed it was a pale imitation of what it was supposed to be. Instead of serious penalties for damaging SSSIs, landowners were able to demand large compensation for not developing them or farming them. Some of the wealthiest landowners in the country got massive payments for simply threatening to damage SSSIs. It was quite the opposite of what was intended.
The problem is the way certain vested interests can lobby behind the scenes and get legislation watered down. Protecting the natural environment isn’t very difficult if there is the political will to do it.
I can guarantee that if persecuting Hen Harriers was treated like drug offences were, that there would be no illegal persecution of them. If those responsible were given stiff prison sentences, with a chance for this sentence to be reduced if they cooperated by naming those behind it, our uplands would suddenly have lots of successfully nesting pairs of Hen Harriers. Why not? In terms of culpability, wildlife crime like this is up with drug dealing. People don’t kill Hen Harriers in fits of temper, because they are starving, and it is not generally done by those from broken families living on the outskirts of society.
The problem is a lack of political will to do these things, because landowners, and other vested interests have far too much influence behind the scenes.
Why do we have to pay landowners and farmers to protect the biodiversity and habitat? With the right blunt instrument legislation it would be protected, and there would be limits on how the land could be managed and farmed. We’ve been inculcated into believing that the only way to protect the natural environment is to pay landowners not to damage it. It doesn’t have to be done this way. Landowners and farmers have been paid such huge subsidies from the public purse that they don’t have the right to demand that it is their land, and they should be able to do whatever they want with it.
I do agree with you, StebB1. I studied post-graduate ecology yet remain largely ignorant as to how the natural world actually works! In a sense, the more we know about farmland bird ecology (for example), the more precise, varied and complicated the agri-environment prescriptions have become! So knowing more ecology doesn’t necessarily lead to simplified delivery mechanisms. If one designs a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme in a similar way to, say, Countryside Stewardship, by researching in detail how nature delivers each and every good and service, and then designing detailed prescriptions that’ll deliver each one of these, the system will be a nightmare.
I’d rather we embraced our relative ecological ignorance and designed a simple PES scheme that simply says a square kilometre of rough grassy / scrubby / wooded habitat will likely deliver these sorts of things for nature and people, and the land trust / farmer / whoever will get a fixed rate per square kilometre for delivering and ill-defined ”it”. Such a scheme would deliver re-wilding if achieved on contiguous areas at a sufficient scale and would be incredibly simple to administer.
This isn’t an alternative to agri-environment schemes – we need those to recover wildlife on the higher-yielding farmland and on high nature value ‘old farmland’ patches like chalk downland SSSIs – but it could be a scheme to target at marginal farmland currently used purely for subsidy harvesting.
SteB1, thanks for your wise and interesting comment – no surprise to regular Guardian readers.
Narrow, simplistic targets lead to simplistic solutions and play directly into the hands of the ‘If you want more of species A, you just have to cull species X, Y and Z. Simples!’ brigade, where X, Y and Z are anything that predates, competes with or might transmit disease to the target species.
Unless applied carefully (and I have little confidence in that happening), these blunt instruments can do more harm than good. Broad-brush prescriptions are probably safer, more ‘natural’ and can provide more wide-ranging benefits. Unfortunately, they don’t suit the accounting mentality that currently prevails.
Really good post, Mark, and very good comments.
My feeling is its both very simple and very complicated – most complicated if you start from where we are, rather than scratch.
I would suggest the secret is to work back from objectives, not forward from mechanisms. You only have to look at Brexit to see the problem of policy without objectives !
Both the objectives and physical mechanisms for some of the most obvious things we want to achieve are quite simple – I suspect people in York don’t want to get flooded again. The impact of returning rivers in the New Forest from their straightened to their original course was staggering – far more than any of us had expected – we know a lot about what we can do to, its just the scale is taking a long time to grow from villages – Pickering – to cities – York. The growth of spaghnum in the Border Mires after tree clearing & drain blocking was amazing – I’d got the idea that recovery would take centuries ! Similarly, look at Knepp’s Turtle Doves.
I agree with SteB1 that institutions are probably the biggest barrier – simple lack of knowledge, but in a layer above that the ability to weigh and balance good advice from different expertises – the ability to spot the biodiversity gains in a water led project, for example. It I very interesting that Dieter Helm, in direct opposition to current (flawed) Government thinking is advocating breaking up the EA into its different and often completely unrelated activities.