Big Bad Offsetting

The Government has published it's Biodiversity Offsetting paper at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/biodiversity-offsetting

I think we need to refresh our minds and ask ourselves what and who is driving this. Biodiversity Offsetting is largely driven by developers and not environmental managers. Their motivation is to build at the cheapest cost, greatest profit, as all developers make money before products. The things that drive development are issues such as population, a growing population leads to increased need for infrastructure and housing and the most profitable way to do that is on previously undeveloped land.

Land is finite, there is fixed supply, unless we consider the Netherlands in which case you can occasionally steal some land from the sea. As a rule though land is finite, as developers relentlessly gobble up green land the net area for offsetting reduces and the connectivity of habitats diminished. This damage to habitats at the point of development serves to weaken buffering habitats, devaluing their ecological capacity and coincidently making them viable for development as they become degraded habitats. So the question is when do you stop? Eventually a situation will arise when the offsetting land becomes viable to develop and then where does one offset the previous offset? Over time and after much habitat destruction has taken place the whole concept becomes unsustainable. It’s a thin end of a very bad wedge. As an environmentalist I don’t like the idea of anything being unsustainable. So why are we encouraging a non-sustainable proposal? To say that development is minimal because we have so much other land in the UK ignores other demands on the finite resource. The more I look at a hectare of land the more I see a huge array of demands placed on it; housing, roads, rail, agriculture, forestry, wind farms, solar panels, recreation, sport etc etc. I call it the hectored hectare and as more green field is lost these pressures amplify. We already don’t have enough land.

And should we not be considering that in ever increasingly growing society (both population and needs) that poor quality green space on the urban fringe has a greater value than a SSSI on Shetland? Therefore offsetting needs to fully consider the loss of common, even pest, species from the communities that enjoy the occasional glimpse of a grey squirrel robbing a magpie’s nest! The offsetting should be proportional to the availability of green space particularly in urban settings.

Why are we being led by the developers? Surely we as environmentalists should not be responding defensively to proposals that are developer led. Are we no longer creatively able to lead? There appears to be no alternatives other than the continued and unsustainable loss of green land. I live in a place where there is a derelict mill, left there now for many many years, meanwhile I sit on the local plan committee trying to ‘accommodate’ the need for more housing and the only development that has taken place is on green field. Green field development should be taxed at a rate that stimulates re-use of buildings and brown field. That is the alternative way at looking at Offsetting.  To quote Dieter Helm; “[development of green belts] simply compares and contrasts what exists with a proposed development and concludes that because what is can be poor environmental and amenity value, that therefore inevitably concludes it will not be a great loss to concrete over it. This is bad economics and bad planning – and very bad environmental policy.”

Have we sold our souls? Consevation (dis)credits. Да ли смо продали наше душе? Цонсеватион (не) кредита

Apologies for the lack of posts. Moved house again and consequently busy, and before you ask I didn't buy one on a desecrated greenfield site, I bought a recycled shop that's a 150 years old that used to be a cobblers and corsitiers. We are recycling in the housing market. Builders are renovating some parts of the house, so in mid recession we support local business and the local economy.

Since the 21st April I have been keen to blog, for there is sinister news afoot from the world of 'development'.

On that Sunday the Times published a story entitled 'Developers can pay to rip up nature'. For many years the environment sector has striven with tenacity and intellect to demonstrate to Government and others that nature has an economic value whether that be an inferred value or a direct functional value. In the past we have used this argument to justify funding for the delivery of environmental work. The Newlands Project strongly demonstrated that non-environmentalists can see that the green environment can assist in development and economics. The North West Regional Development Agency would not have spent £50 million with the Forestry Commission and Community Forests without a realisation that the environment had a role to play in inward investment and image of a region.

It now seems we danced with the devil.

The devil, in the guise of the UK Government, is now heading for an interpretation of these values as an environmental offset for development. The direction now seems to be that any development could happen so long as a developer puts money aside for 'conservation credit' - a thorough juxtaposition if ever there was one! The proposals for the biodiversity off-setting suggests habitats can be disemboweled from locations and established on farm land elsewhere. I am sure the farmers who lose production as a consequence will be falling over themselves to give land away from food production to conservation....

Furthermore there seems to have been zero consideration to domestic food security and land supply under this proposal.

Some conservation groups are now desperately back tracking by saying it is difficult to put meaningful values on conservation assets, yet we have used this to fund environment work in the past! The problem lies in the fact that we have waltzed with Beelzebub and now we pay. It is however just another ruse for Government and Developers to avoid planning and sustainable development issues. As said before little boxes for us to live in must be built at all costs, apparently.

So how will this con-trick work, well Government reckon they can assign generic values to meadows, woodlands and the like so, according to the Times, a meadow maybe worth £10,000/ha and a woodland £40,000ha and a developer will have to quantify how much of these habitats they will destroy and make a payment to the laughably named Environment Bank as the leading broker in this scam. I am looking forward to seeing how these valuations take place. A scrub woodland on the edge of London must have a different value from and Ancient Woodland Site on the HS2 route of destruction. Who will assess this, who will agree, will the developers negotiate it downwards to a low value in any case?

Indeed the rows have started already, I dare anyone to logically put a value to Nightingale habitat who works in the development sector or indeed the environment sector. The Kent Wildlife Trust have one heck of a job on their hands in attempting to credit the conservation value of Lodge Hill (see http://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/what-we-do/planning/lodge-hill). More here too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/29/nightingales-lodge-hill-mod-site. The ignorance of non-environmentalists knows no bounds, the council says it can move Nightingales to any new woodland created out of the Conservation Con Credits, however that new woodland will be too young to provide the correct habitat and how do you tell a small brained avian that it needs to redirect the post!

Sadly I think we have lost, the Environment sector did engage the devil and this is our payback. Fools we have been, conned by Con' Credits.

It's so sad, but I hope this at least leaves you smiling and warm (unusually - thanks to the Daily Mail, it's not often you'll read me write those words!):

'That was wonderful, darling. Did the earth move for you too?'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2332433/Mac--The-Governments-housing-policy.html#ixzz2WBzvQcte

Also reference: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331847/Houses-better-green-fields-Ministers-explosive-claim-unveils-new-plans-concrete-countryside.html

STOP PRESS

It seems DEFRA will consult on these proposals from 18th July. I also hear that the drive will be about making the planning process quicker (ie to favour developers) and that developers will only have to mitigate for loss associated directly with their development, the inference being there will be loss of habitat from historical misuse of natural resources, therefore one can assume a previously damaged ancient woodland will not be treated as such even though it may still be a wood....one to think about - will developers target damaged conservation assets for new build? The scheme is also likely to be national, ie it assumes loss of woodland in Aberdeen may be compensated for by habitat work in Penzance!

As I have seen Marc Naura write Conservation Credits are morally wrong, in that it suggests damaging ecology and habitats is fine as long as you do something (anything) good elsewhere! As Marc rightly says this will lead developers to show scant if any regard for ecology.

Also I wonder what percentage brokers will take from this scam.

I bet developers won't be bothered to find mitigation sites and the money sits in the interest accounts of the brokers and Government.

It is not good, not good at all.

Felling the Oak and Insincerity - Сечење храст и искреност

I am not anti conservative, I am not anti labour. I view myself as a free thinker, not politically aligned, but if you want to put me in a red/yellow/blue box then that is your choice, not mine. I don't like insincerity and double-speak from any party. The party presently in power said in their manifesto:

We will protect the environment for future generations, make our economy more environmentally sustainable, and improve our quality of life and well-being. There is no contradiction between going green and supporting the economy – we can and will do both.
http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Environment.aspx

I wholly support the concept that the environment and economy go together. As a society that aspires to be civilised this is exactly the right approach (three pillars of sustainability being Environment, Economy and Society).

Conservatives in their budget said:

An extra £15bn for new road, rail and construction projects by 2020, starting with £3bn in 2015-16(BBC Website)

While at the same time failing to recognise our roads and infrastructure are falling apart. Why are they falling apart? Because the maintenance budget is already unsustainably high and every local authority in the country has no money left, or staff left. or both.

The Government worsened this situation by capping public sector pay rises to 1% = the brain drain in local authorities continue and the cap means a 1.5% cut in pay for the employee in real terms. You pay peanuts and you'll get monkeys; mind you the more monkeys the Conservatives get in to Local Authorities the more they can turn their myth of the public sector as useless in to fact. Furthermore why do all parties say you can't cap or tax the high flyer's in business because we will lose those great people to other countries, yet it is acceptable to not allow the high achievers in the public sector to flourish or be rewarded. The Local Authority brain drain accelerates with this budget.

So we're going to spend £15billion on roads and construction but have absolutely zero idea where the maintenance cash will come from.

I also read:

Pottery industry in Midlands to be exempt from climate change levy................

So the Government believes in climate change clearly as they have a climate change levy, strange that, Mr Gove wants to remove it from our children's education at school (see: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/why-its-a-mistake-to-trim-climate-change-from-the-curriculum-8540423.html). So let's get this right, Government taxes business and individuals for the affects they have on the climate (unless you live in Stoke) and have a Department of Energy and Climate Change, but they don't want your children educated in climate change. I wonder why. This will keep future generations in the dark for sure.

And the oil slick on top of the cake is the a tax INCENTIVE for fracking;
Tax allowances for investment in shale gas (BBC website). I am no expert on fracking, but concerns have been raised and it's a desperate way to retrieve energy if it is true that the energy spent extracting shale gas is greater than what will be extracted. In other words wasting energy to get energy.

If this was a true green Government they should tax greenfield development to the value equivalent or more than brownfield development and/or regeneration and further tax incentivise wood fuel, solar and tidal energies. I think its time they felled the tree on their logo and replaced it with a logo consisting of an empty shopping mall and an unmaintained road leading to it.

PS, According to a BBC the Government also provided nil incentives in the budget for the self employed, small businesses and enterprises...and they wonder why Town High Streets are failing...?!

Hiding the Housing Reality Bomb - Скривање стамбене Реалити бомбу

I was reading in the Guardian business web pages that two very lovely UK building companies (Persimmon and Bovis) increased profits last year from 52% (€260.3m) and 69% (€62.5m)  respectively (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2013/feb/25/persimmon-bovis-homes-prices-rise).

Hoorah economic recovery must be on the way then as the UK Government keep telling me that recovery all depends on house and infrastructure building (and if it is on green field sites the margins are better than for derelict and neglected land - that can stay, well, derelict - so go on lads, build on the green!)

This is all great short term economic output, but what is the long term effect and is it economic in the long term. Well here's a thing I will try to explain, sustainability is not about houses with extra insulation (that's cost-saving) sustainability is about ensuring the three pillars of society, economics and the environment are not degraded for future generations.

Let us understand the time bomb, look at it's wiring and fuse before we fiddle too much. I have done a flow diagram below so that even developers can follow the story.

The green parts of the diagram are the good bits. I believe it was The Mersey Forest Project who used the phrase 'a great place to work and live'. This is the driver behind why I do the work I do, I want great environments for all to use be that an individual or a business. Great landscapes and green facilities attract top companies.

Building cheap boxes on greenfield land lowers quality and depletes places to go. When this begins to happen society enters the yellow zone as more and more of the aesthetic and natural capital is lost. On the whole the need for Government to get rid of planning controls, because the guidance was too long, means less quality in design and build. The need to meet alleged housing demand means that too many houses will be crammed in to green field spaces.

You can be assured the senior people at these 'development' companies won't be living in any of these 'sustainable communities'. No, they will be living far far away where there is green space and peace to count their % increase in profit. But oddly enough that's because they value a great place to live; they do actually understand that while there is no monetary value in the aesthetic, there is a value in buying aesthetic places. It is their paradox for which the negative part falls on those who are labelled NIMBY's.

So, in my yellow zone above land and buildings become increasingly threadbare and tatty over time largely through bad design and planning due to a lack of engagement with others and polarised debate. Need examples? I am sure we can all recall developments we see now from the 70's and 80's that are in decline.

Furthermore add to this the disinvestment in the public sector less and less things are being maintained, especially in austerity and the usual public sector bashing from the private sector and (again) polarised media. This further wearing out of the land and infrastructure result in people who can move away emigrating from the area and whether we like it or not the first to move will be the higher earners, leaving more lower earners in the area, this applies to businesses too. High flying businesses do not want to be associated with low value environments. So the downward slope continues to the red zone.

The red zone results in low employment, low staff retention, low investment, low quality housing, low health standards, high social cost, high crime and high unemployment, all for the sake of saving money by building on green space and leaving derelict land derelict. The net result over time is increased dereliction and all the socio-economic costs that go with that.

Somewhere out there an economist could extrapolate the costs of this, where y= the benefit and profit from a green field site turned over to little boxes crammed tightly in, and z is the saving they have made by not building on a derelict site or renovating empty properties.

y+z = a (Opportunity cost of building on greenfield and resultant profit)

I am sure this would be a pretty figure.

Now let us consider the future costs of

a = low employment

b = low staff retention

c = low investment

d = loss in housing value

e = costs of increasingly poor health

f = costs of a dysfunctional community/society

g = costs of crime

the list could go on so collectively we will call this 'n' as a whole for neglect or negligence or even nonperformance.

giving an equation of

a-n = j (real cost of squandering green space over time)

I am sure that figure would not be so pretty - but the economists nor the developers will ever tell you that 'j' even exists, let alone calculate the size of the bomb. Business confidentiality will always ensure you never know the real costs in any case.

So when the diggers start to rip up your fields, think of the company directors and others enjoying their aesthetics where they live, soaking up the visual and aural splendour of a rural retreat from the places where they work. From their iPad on the veranda they will be instructing others to remind us that it is our moral duty to accept housing.

Recently built shop (chippy) showing signs of disinvestment

 Disinvested housing and perhaps a clear demonstration of why we should not be building more houses on greenbelt

New build with no maintenance, new disinvestment

A succinct list of further reading?

Dwyer, J.F., McPherson, G.E., Schroeder, H.W., Rowntree, R.A. 1992. Assessing the Benefits and Costs of the Urban Forest. Journal of Arboriculture 18(5): 227-233

Kuo, F.E., Sullivan, W.C. 1993. Aggression and Violence in the Inner City - Effects of Environment via Mental Fatigue. Environment and Behaviour 33(4): 543-571

Kaplan, R. The Role of Nature in the Workplace. 1993. Landscape and Urban Planning 26: 193-201

Peasants Democracy and Developers

An interesting week in the counter intuitive world of planning, localism and democracy.

I had the pleasure of going to a public ‘consultation’ on a proposal to plant 3,500 little boxes on a piece of green belt land. I am not opposed to new housing; I am opposed to development on green land. We have nearly run out of green land and it’s time to ponder when it should slow down or stop all together.

The developers and planners want to locate these new soulless boxes, probably on roads called The Oaks, Willow Grove, street names that are more like epitaphs, on an area already prone to ground water saturation and by a by-pass already choked at rush hour that can’t wait to be burdened by another 7,000 vehicles. A bypass funded by retailers that was a design disaster from the outset where the roundabouts should be sponsored by insurance companies and personal accident claim sharks.

Am I alone in recognising this folly and crass stupidity, apparently not, as well over 100 residents filled a youth centre to bend the councillors ear.

As the hall filled with residents who care I overheard a gentleman complaining ‘…we’ll all get frustrated, start shouting and let them off the hook’. A sad resignation that peoples frustrations were becoming fatigued already.

The councillor arrived, Dickensian in appearance, not an ounce of warmth in his gait and manner, Master of the House. He settled in to his seat ten minutes late, messing with his mobile phone two minutes in to the meeting, ill-fitting suit and an expression of disdain from his raised position above the uneducated peasants who should know better.  First impressions counted enormously here.

During the opening moments of the meeting the councillor came up with a rather startling approach to the challenge of local democracy working against the presumption to develop. The councillor seemed to threaten the audience with a wheeze along the lines of;

1.       Although elected by residents he said there was no point fending off development because they would win on appeal in any case. Sadly defeatist and powerless.

2.        If the residents fought against the proposal all that would happen is that more ‘aggressive’ developers would come and develop and residents would end up with more development.

Essentially those who care about their standard of living, their environment, their sense of place and community are burned at the stake for being witches or not!

So let’s get this right, a democratic elected representative, supposedly representing residents’ wishes and rights has no power. Developers, private companies, have more democratic rights than people, do you think that is right?

The councillor then went on to say something similar to what Michael Gove MP has said (the MP believes it is our moral duty to accept more housing!) Apparently our children (bless their innocence and naïvety of developers) won’t thank us for not allowing further housing supply to desecrate their green spaces. The green spaces they probably play and value already. Unfortunately I know my children won’t thank me for wrecking the environment and for allowing our elected representatives to shrink in the face of ‘development’!

Moral duty!! Think about that…. It always worries me when politicians talk about moral duty. The unfortunate souls of Germany were asked by politicians to have a moral duty in 1933.

The other interesting aspect from the platform was that apparently there isn’t enough housing to provide for future demand. Is that so? Where has that opinion come from? Where is the data? Who made the data? I wonder.  Well it seems this particular council has a rolling figure of around 2500 redundant houses at any one time. This figure is not for a particularly urban council area. Imagine what the figure would be for urban councils, imagine how much unnecessary building that would negate if the councils took more responsibility for empty buildings. Perhaps they could compulsory purchase them, rent them and use the funds to pay for other council services.

Furthermore the number of redundant retail outlets and even offices that could be converted to housing is ever increasing.

This brings me to a final point. The UK needs to wake up to the fact that small town high street retailing is dying a drawn out death. Alternative uses of town centres needs to be creative, imaginative, community owned and forward looking. Building new large retail outlets in towns is not the answer for community life in towns, although it is a great idea for developers to build speculative retail outlets as, in case one should forget, developers own democracy not you or I. Are we going to allow this to continue?

In summary, question where has your democracy gone? Fight against the word NIMBY, it is used by those who want to steal your green spaces for greed and mythical ‘progress’. Those who fear losing their local environment and qualities of life, are labelled NIMBYs in an attempt to discredit their equally valid concerns and distort it as a selfish and narrow minded response which damages the alleged greater good of 'development'.