CLA Environmental Markets conference heralded as start of something big

The CLA's Environmental Markets Seminar was praised for its vision by ecology, media and industry figures.

The packed summit held in the City yesterday (May 12) highlighted the great need for - and huge potential of - environmental markets to harness private money to provide environmental services and, in the process, help the rural economy and economic development.

 

Dr Derrick Wilkinson launched the CLA's paper Private Solutions To Public Problems: Developing Environmental Markets to an enthusiastic reception.

 

Professor Dave Hill, Chairman of Environment Bank, said: "We may look back on this seminar today and see this as the 'tipping point' for the most important environmental initiative for decades. The people who will make it happen are you and the CLA."

 

Keynote speaker Tim Harford – a leading economist, author and Financial Times columnist, said: "I congratulate the CLA for convening this conference... We need to give the system a nudge to make it more environmentally friendly but how do you change a system that's unbelievably complicated? That's why economists get excited by the concept of environmental markets.

 

"Market prices coordinate this complex system and price changes will ripple through and change the system. It is probably the only way to get things done."

 

He added: "I'm hugely in favour of environmental markets because they are a response to the complexity of the modern economy. There is no doubt they can work."

 

Dr Derrick Wilkinson, the author of the report, said: "We need to increase production from land and to do so with higher environmental stewardship. . . We can't improve yield at the expense of the environment and we can't protect the environment at the expense of food security.

 

"We have here vehicles for attracting outside money for environmental stewardship. The environment might be able to get far better outcomes by motivating and incentivising private markets."

 

Katia Karousakis, an environmental economist at the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), mentioned environmental markets that worked effectively in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and The Netherlands.

 

She said: "Creating environmental markets for environmental protection and sustainable use can be significantly more cost effective than command-and-control approaches."

 

RSPB economist Emma Comerford spoke on how a reverse auction had delivered environmental goods at a lower cost to the tax-payer in Australia, and said markets need to be encouraged. She added: "It's been said that markets are not like weeds – they don't just grow. They are like hothouse flowers – they need nurturing."

 

Ed Mitchell, Head of Business Performance and Regulation at the Environment Agency, Mike Wells, Director of Biodiversity by Design, and Pete Brotherton, Head of Biodiversity at Natural England, spelt out the size of the environmental challenge that private markets could help to tackle.

 

And Helen Dunn, Senior Economic Adviser in the Natural Environment Economics Team at Defra, outlined the work that Defra is doing to prepare the ground in this area and said: "There is growing interest in market-based instruments."

 

The Environment Bank's Prof. Dave Hill wholeheartedly backed the idea of environmental markets, saying he was passionate about "getting money into the natural environment".

 

He added: "We work fantastically well with the CLA. It is really worth us doing this."

 

Professor Emeritus Allan Buckwell, CLA Policy Director, summed up the presentations and discussions at the seminar, speaking of the CLA's suggestion of a UK Biodiversity Business Partnership, convened by the Government, to help to put the idea into practice.

 

He said: "From today I can see there is more than a passing interest in taking this further. We can't let the idea drop here... Someone has to pick up the ball and run with it."  

 

CLA President Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, who chaired the seminar at the Smith and Williamson offices in the City of London, said: "The day was a tremendous success with enormous interest in the ideas that the CLA is pushing.

 

"We need political backing for these ideas to help make them a reality. Whilst Environmental Markets will never replace public funding for environmental management, properly constituted and regulated, they do have the capability to bring new streams of funding in to rural areas that could lead to a step change in the delivery of environmental goods and service"

 

Dr Wilkinson, Prof. Buckwell and Henry Aubrey-Fletcher are all available for interview.

 

A simple example of one way in which it could work is in Editors' Notes below.

 

To view a pdf of the CLA's paper Private Solutions To Public Problems: Developing Environmental Markets please visit:  http://www.cla.org.uk/Policy_Work/Environmental_Markets/

 

 

CLA MEDIA CONTACTS:

 

For further information and interviews:

 

Oliver Wilson, Director of Communications, 020 7460 7936 or 07702 928828, ollie.wilson@cla.org.uk,

 

Phillippa Coates, Press Officer, 020 7460 7934, phillippa.coates@cla.org.uk

 

Out of hours: 020 7201 9511.

 

 

NOTES TO EDITORS:

 

1. A simple example of one of the ways in which an environmental market could work: a landowner or farmer creates a pond on his land increasing habitats for wildlife and plants. As part of the planning process the project would be awarded a number of environmental credits which the landowner can either hold, or sell into the environmental market.

 

Meanwhile, a farmer in another part of the UK wants to build some affordable housing. This development will affect the environment, and the planning system insists he offsets this damage by buying a specified number of credits from the environmental market. By this means, managed development in rural communities can go ahead and land managers are encouraged to improve everyone's environment.