Yesterday I attended the dissemination event of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow-on project in London. As a member of the expert panel and a Principal Investigator of one of the work packages, I must confess to a significant stake in both the process and the outcomes. Yet many readers will perhaps switch off by such an academically laden project title, questioning its relevance to them, quite rightly. Yet, the results of this work are key to all of us living in the city and suburbs and rural fringes of the West Midlands. And especially so to those engaged in making tough decisions about where future housing and other vital infrastructure should go. This post therefore unpacks the academic jargon to help us all think about how we might make better decisions that can actually create more robust economies, communities and environments in the West Midlands.
The West Midlands region faces many challenges and through various agencies is trying to capture the benefits of economic growth as we emerge from the recent recession. This issue of benefits is crucial. We can all easily understand the benefits of new development in terms of the employment created and the economic outputs it delivers both directly and indirectly. However, it is less clear to see how a bit of environment delivers benefits. Indeed, all too often it is seen as a constraint in the development jigsaw; something to be overcome.
I use three examples below to show how nature provides economic help and support in terms of the multiple benefits its delivers. This is often forgotten in decision making and can come back later to bite decision-makers who are fixated on short term economic gains.
Our city parks are more than attractive green spaces in our urban areas. They improve air quality and help to minimise the heat island effect, they provide a natural health service for people to walk and relax. Their presence actually raises nearby house prices. If they are well designed they can also provide flood protection and important biodiversity functions. All these factors contribute to the productive economy and also play a key role in securing quality of life. Yet we read in a report on the state of our urban parks that they are under threat as lack of management erodes their benefits and councils are considering selling them off to raise much needed money. This kind of disintegrated thinking in the long run adds cost to the economy.
Our major tree planting programmes have previously taken place in remote upland areas; on moorlands and uplands. Yet these are where our carbon is locked up and such planting activities are damaging to climate change mitigation strategies. Furthermore they impact on biodiversity value of the moorland ecosystem. Crucially they provide recreational benefits to a limited number of people who can secure access to enjoy them. This is a lose-lose situation. However, if we plant major forests on the urban rural fringe of the West Midlands this will deliver maximum benefits to major centres of population in terms of access to health and recreation benefits, it will again, if sited correctly, provide important flood prevention functions to enable new housing and economic development.
Last winter the West Midlands saw plenty of rainfall with its attendant problems of flooding. Our climate is changing and thus we will experience more extreme forms of weather; floods, droughts, gales and storms. Rather than deal with the aftermath of such events at great cost to the economy and peoples’ well-being, we need to think now and build more pro-active defence into our cities and towns to help address these problems. This is challenging for developers as they will see an increased upfront cost which questions viability. But this where the government departments need to join up their policy responses (Defra, DCLG and DECC).
Our city roof scape has huge potential for green roofs; cumulatively this can help delay water run off that is so damaging in intense rainfall. Equally we need to understand that our drinking water comes from Mid Wales and thus if we can help by paying landowners to rewet eroded and damaged moorland, we can actually hold back water that caused so much damage in Worcester and its environs in upland catchments. This duty to cooperate enables the beneficiaries of such actions to pay some of our water bill to help flooding using nature rather than always relying on more costly engineering solutions that over time make us more vulnerable where we continue to build in flood plains.
Equally we must plan for drought and think about having rainwater (grey) capture systems to for reuse. It is economic madness to use fresh potable water to flush down our toilet. Our understanding of conservation of water in building regulations is poor when compare with New Zealand for example.
These three examples show us that nature can help provide positive input into the economic growth equation. It is far more than a bolt on or constraint. Previously it has been forgotten in development decisions and seen mistakenly as the enemy of enterprise. So we all need to start thinking about how nature can be an asset to development and thus, in the long term, save money and deliver multiple benefits. To help we have developed a NEAT tree to help people engage with these ideas using a web portal. http://neat.ecosystemsknowledge.net/. In essence working with nature as a friend rather than a foe is a NEAT way of working. My worry is that we are still working in an ad-hoc messy way that creates disintegrated thinking and policy. Ironically this will lead to increased costs to our economy.
* The synthesis of the National Ecosystem Assessment Follow on project is http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/Resources/tabid/82/Default.aspx
