Over this century these impacts will play out and undermine our prosperity unless we actively head them off. The trade-off between more economic growth and less nature that has been the hallmark of human history so far is no longer benign. Destroying nature is beginning to eat into economic progress. Climate change is the obvious example, but in hogging the limelight it has eclipsed the myriad other impacts. The costs of polluted waterways, of polluted seas, and of soil degradation, the loss of pollinators and the impacts on humanity of the loss of nature to anchor our lives by, relentlessly keep going up. One incremental loss after another may eventually trigger systemic consequences as key thresholds are crossed. As we create an increasingly brown world, we create a less prosperous one too.
Among the many reasons why nature matters, one is that it is part of the economy. It is a vital element of the resources that the economy allocates, and the economy can no longer get by with less and less of it. Technology brings with it an increased capacity for destruction, but it also brings routes to a better and greener world – and a more prosperous one too. We can have a greener and more prosperous country. Conserving (and enhancing) nature increases our prosperity. Economic growth, properly measured, is driven by developing human ingenuity, placing in our hands technological tools that previous generations lacked. It need not be in conflict with the environment. We can be green and prosperous.
There is no lack of ideas and projects to make this transition to a greener and more prosperous state. At the national level we know what to do. The river catchments need integrated management, reducing costs at the same time as improving outcomes. The way forward in agriculture is pretty clear too. Just stopping the perverse subsidies and enforcing the law would be a good start. Making polluters pay, and focusing subsidies on the public rather than private goods would greatly improve economic efficiency and transform the agricultural landscape, capture and retain carbon in the soils, and protect the pollinators. Enhancing rather than encroaching on the Green Belt would bring nature next to people, with big health and leisure benefits. Ensuring that there is net environmental gain from development would transform the impacts of new housing. Landscape-level wildlife corridors would give nature a chance to recover.[3] The railway lines, road verges and canal paths are obvious ways to build green corridors that millions of people can enjoy. Getting serious about Marine Protected Areas, including prohibiting fishing in them, would allow fish to bounce back and provide more sustainable stocks. Turning the coastal paths around Britain into major wildlife corridors would be good for people, tourism and nature.
At the local level, there is a cornucopia of economic and environmental opportunities. Initiatives here are often specific and highly focused, including restoring village greens; protecting and enhancing urban parks and green spaces; planting trees along the streets; getting children to participate in local environmental projects; enhancing the biodiversity of churchyards; cleaning up the litter on beaches; taking responsibility for local footpaths; and planting wild flowers in every garden.
In between the local and the national, the environmental organisations all have a checklist of preferred measures, from restoring particular habitats, to making road verges and railway lines havens for nature, to bringing back beavers. The general bodies have lots of great ideas for plants, birds and bugs. The national bodies, like the Wildlife Trusts, have plans for key habitats, from the Brecklands and managing the grazing now that the rabbit populations have collapsed,[4] to restoring wetlands in the Upper Thames like Otmoor by keeping the floodplains of the River Ray wetter,[5] creating and enhancing green spaces in cities, and managing and enhancing woodlands.
All of this makes very good economic sense. It can all be done. This is not only a prize worth fighting for because nature matters in its own right, but represents good mainstream economic policy. We can stop doing stupid things like wasting £2 billion per year on paying farmers to own land;[6] wasting money on cleaning up water for drinking, which should not have been polluted in the first place; wasting money on creating hard flood defences when natural flood management can be much cheaper; and wasting money on cutting down urban trees, as in Sheffield. All of this money can be much better spent on actually enhancing nature. This is why we should do it – because we should care about nature, and because we will collectively be better off as a result.
Part one of this book sets out these great opportunities – the prize. The prize is what nature could look like by the middle of this century. It is all about what we could have, what a greener Britain could look, smell and sound like. It identifies the value of halting the declines and moving towards a richer natural environment, and explains how we can all be more prosperous as a result.
Set against this great green prize is the brown alternative: what happens if we don’t seize the opportunities, and what happens if we allow the destruction of nature to continue. The prize of sustainable economic growth is not the same thing as the fool’s gold of GDP. It is all about harnessing technology and human ingenuity to make us all better off, by maintaining the natural environment and seizing the opportunities to get much more out of nature. The brown alternative of business-as-usual is literally a waste of money. It is also ugly and often nasty, as beauty is translated into lifeless monoculture fields and bleak housing estates. The sounds and sights of nature are diminished, replaced by ever-more noise and vistas of the man-made. The scale of the destruction of nature coming down the track if we do nothing should terrify everyone.
Part two is the practical part. It is all about how to secure the prize, what can be achieved, and why it is sensible economics to do so. Pragmatically, it involves five key areas of the natural environment: the river catchments (chapter 3); the agricultural land (chapter 4); the uplands (chapter 5); the coasts (chapter 6); and towns and cities (chapter 7). For each you are asked to imagine what an enhanced nature might look, sound and feel like. For each a practical framework to achieve the greener outcomes is provided, and why we will be more prosperous as a result is explained. To whet your appetite, and to move from the wonders of the imagination to reality, in every one of these areas a few practical examples of initiatives and projects already under way, and potential new ones, are identified.
It is all about river catchment system operators and ensuring the polluter and not the polluted pays; about a new agricultural policy based on public money for public goods, not perverse subsidies for owning land; protecting and enhancing the uplands for their beauty, health and leisure, and the biodiversity, and again not damaging them through perverse subsidies; opening up the coasts and coastal fringes for their full public potential, and stopping destructive fishing practices, most importantly in Marine Protected Areas; and greening towns and cities with trees, parks and Green Belts to improve air quality, childhood experiences, and health and leisure. What is not to like about this, not just from a conservationist’s perspective, but also for the economic prosperity of Britain?
Part three turns to the money – how to pay for it all. Chapter 8 considers public goods, why they matter, why the market won’t deliver them, and how they should be paid for. Chapter 9 looks at the polluter-pays principle, compensation and net environmental gain, and perverse subsidies. The place to start is with the sheer inefficiencies of current policies. An efficient economy is one that internalises all the costs and benefits of economic activities into prices and decision-making. In an efficient economy pollution is charged: it is inefficient not to charge for pollution, resulting in a lower level of economic prosperity. This is both 101 economics, and rarely followed. Not even carbon has a proper price yet. Making polluters pay is the single most radical and effective policy that could be adopted, for economic prosperity and for the environment. The British countryside would be radically different, and radically less polluted, were this simple economic principle adopted. It would not cost anything to the economy in aggregate, and at the same time it would yield lots of revenue, some of which could go to repairing past damage and enhancing our natural environment.
Instead of demanding more public expenditure, conservationists would be better advised to