and the sheer power of the hostile lobbyists, there needs to be an overarching legal and constitutional framework. As with climate change, politicians are good at the rhetoric, and they may well mean what they say, but permanently delivering it requires something more. The 2008 Climate Change Act changed the game. It is very hard to get out of its targets and the carbon budgets. We need something similar, a proper Nature Act that enshrines the principles in the 2011 White Paper and the 25 Year Environment Plan.
There is a choice: we can impoverish ourselves by continuing down the current path, or we can have a greener and more prosperous land, and one that is pleasanter too. The book concludes with this choice.
Imagine what our natural environment could look like in 25 years. Imagine bright colourful hay meadows full of wild flowers, birdsong and butterflies. Imagine cities with green trees along the streets, green parks and green Green Belts. Imagine the sounds of uplands, of golden plovers and curlews. Imagine beaches without plastic, and the loud noise of winter waders in the estuaries and marshes. Imagine wildlife corridors all around the coastline and across the land and along the rivers, roads, railways and canals. Imagine a marine world full once again of fish and free from the harrowing of the seabed by trawling. Imagine colour and beauty restored to the landscape. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?
This prize is not just a dream. It is perfectly practical and achievable, within our reach, and it would greatly enhance our lives and our economy. We don’t have to ‘go back to nature’, become austere and abandon capitalism. None of that is likely to happen anyway. Instead we need to embrace the most important type of capital: natural capital – the stuff nature gives us for free. We would be much more prosperous as a result. To make this possible, stand back and think big.
The prize comprises two parts: holding the line against further deterioration of existing natural capital; and creating and enhancing more of it. That is what leaving the environment in a better state for the next generation means. Not to go down this path is to court a significant loss of prosperity and make the next generation worse off. The question is just how much worse off. This chapter is about that prize; the next is about what happens if we don’t halt the destruction.
No more declines
The natural capital that really matters is the renewables – the stuff that nature keeps on giving us for free for ever, provided we don’t deplete it below a threshold so it cannot continue to deliver its free bounty. Nature at threshold risk is the stuff of red lists and endangered species, and some of it is well known. To hold the line means that the sounds of cuckoos and turtle doves and nightingales and corncrakes are going to continue – for ever. But it also means protecting those renewables that are less obvious to the casual eye, and those assets we take for granted but that are actually in considerable danger. It is about the things we no longer see so often, like insects and butterflies, and about the once-common that is slipping from our grasp. How many people realise that the rabbits, which were ubiquitous, have now almost vanished from some areas? That the hares may follow? And how many have failed to notice that the swallows are harder to sight now? It means fertile and productive soils, lots of pollinators, clean water and clean air, and natural flood defences too. These rely on a host of creatures at the more microscopic level, and beneath the soils and under water.
The focus is often on the more iconic species at risk, since these are usually easy to measure and easy to design conservation strategies for. In almost every case, what is required is a habitat within which they can thrive, and an end to persecution. Species protection is all about these underlying critical natural infrastructures, which are every bit as important as man-made infrastructures in energy and transport. Although it might not actually matter greatly in the scheme of things if there are no bitterns or ospreys, it would matter if the reed bed ecosystems are gone and there is more eutrophication of rivers and lakes. Protecting particular species on the brink of their thresholds is typically good conservation generally, and the result is all sorts of other species benefits.[1]
Holding the line is not straightforward for the obvious reason that we are going backwards. Simply stopping more direct damage would not stabilise the natural environment. It is clearly on a downward path, notwithstanding a host of projects to turn things around in specific areas and for specific species. So much damage has been done over the last half-century that resilience is low. Even where there are attempts to halt the declines, as in the case of river quality, the cumulative damage means the underlying conditions could continue to worsen. In the case of rivers, the fly life continues to decline and groundwater pollution will worsen even if the polluting stops now. It is not enough to cease further damage. We need to stop the slide through remedial actions – the natural capital maintenance we should have done long ago.
There are various ways of going about this. We could start at the species end or we could start at the habitat and ecosystem end. In practice it will be both. This book looks in detail at each of the main habitats – the river catchments, the landscapes and agriculture, the uplands, the coasts and the urban countryside. But first let’s just take a preliminary look at each to get a handle on the overall prize.
Stopping the environmental damage in river catchments starts with the chemical inputs into rivers and the silting from soil erosion. As urban centres developed and the Industrial Revolution got going, rivers were treated as sewers. The Great Stink of London in July and August 1858 is but one example of what was going on in all the great rivers that had the misfortune to flow through towns and cities. The Taff in Wales and the Mersey in northwest England died because of mining and industrial effluent.
Both of these forms of gross pollution have been tackled at source, but sewage still ends up in rivers and industrial pollution remains in some pockets. The river sediments contain lots of heavy metals, and many estuaries – like the Thames – have serious residuals. Dredging to develop the new Thames Gateway container port revealed its scale. Halting the decline means not only stopping further pollution, but also dealing with the continued and long-lasting damage it has caused. We have to deal with not only our mess, but that of previous generations too.
When it comes to sewerage, existing systems continue to overflow in heavy rain through the storm overflows. Stopping the declines means increasing the capacity to contain sewage and prevent overflows. The Thames Tideway aims to do just that, carrying it all to the east of London to the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. What happens there continues to be a problem, and the estuary remains the final repository. For many sewerage works, it means going down the natural capital route with reed beds and other natural options, and dealing with the sewage at source too. This is both cost-reducing, so our water bills don’t go up, and it creates great habitats for birds, insects, amphibians and aquatic life. The phosphates the water-treatment works pump out into the rivers need to be reduced, partly by stopping them at source from getting into the river in the first place, and partly by better treatment.
The decline of heavy industry and the development of sewerage systems have put a stop to some of the grossest pollution, but river pollution is a moving target. Since the middle of the twentieth century, intensive and agrichemical agriculture has done immense damage. Stopping the further declines here means the creation of significant buffers between the rivers and the arable fields, limiting fertilisers near rivers, putting an end to maize and cereal crops close to rivers to stop the silting, and seriously controlling the application of pesticides and herbicides. It means
