Biodiversity offsetting - a licence to trash nature

A cynic, wrote Oscar Wilde, is a man “who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. Climate change denier Owen Paterson, the ConDem anti-environment secretary, fits this description down to his toes. 

He is championing “biodiversity offsetting”, which puts a market price on habitat so that

developers can destroy protected wildlife and woodland areas, if they create a new habitat elsewhere.

Patterson, who earlier this week said that global warming might be a good thing, claims: "Offsetting is an exciting opportunity to look at how we can improve the environment as well as grow the economy. There is no reason why wildlife and development can't flourish side-by-side."

Driving the government’s plans is the Environment Bank which is described as the “leading trader in the UK in environmental assets”. It brokers deals between buyers (developers, corporate, investors) and sellers (landowners, farmers, conservation bodies, land management companies), according to an EU project on the concepts of “natural capital”.

Like all offsetting projects, this is a market-driven concept that creates a profit for the “broker”. As the bizarrely-named Operationalisation of Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services project acknowledges, “biodiversity offsets have recently been identified in the UK… as one of the top business opportunities related to valuing and/or protecting nature”.  

Value and sell nature. You couldn’t make it up. But that’s capitalism for you. The replacement habitat doesn’t even have to be in the same area as that which has been lost - presumably it can be on any old bit of waste land. You can be sure it'll be land the developer is happy to be rid of.

Patterson’s department seems to believe (or pretends to believe) there is some equivalence between a developed habitat and a piece of disused land. It's like saying that destroying a 1000- year old hedgerow can be offset by planting a privet hedge!

There is no recognition of the complexity of eco-systems, where species exist in a naturally occurring web of interdependence that you can't just reinvent.

As Sandra Bell, nature campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "Nature is unique and complex – not something that can be bulldozed in one place and recreated in another at the whim of a developer." Others have called the plan a “licence to trash nature”.

Environment Bank CEO Tom Tew claims that “when you put a value on biodiversity you are putting a financial incentive for developers not to trash it". But how does that work exactly? There is no explanation of how these benefits will accrue. And this is the whole problem with this now fashionable approach, where all of nature is classified as "environmental services" or "green capital".

"Green capitalism" was the mantra at the Rio+20 summit earlier this year, and of course governments are going to snatch at this idea. It suggests you can protect the environment whilst encouraging growth, without challenging or regulating the activities of the corporations.

But suppose they succeed in fully incorporating every molecule, every leaf and drop of clear water, into the global capitalist system - then what? Why, they do what capitalism always does, of course – you work out a way to make that capital work for you in order to generate profits. That's what's happening already as corporations buy up wholesale patents on natural products.

The reality is that the concept of building "whole earth costs" into planning for development and production can only contribute to the protection of eco-systems if it is part of a not-for-profit economic system. Instead of trying to force nature to operate according to the laws of capital, we need to regenerate and refound our human society to operate in line with the laws of nature.

As the Cochabamba declaration on Mother Earth rights states: "The creation of new market mechanisms for nature, the development of a market for environmental services, will bring us toward a collapse. We believe it is wrong to break down nature into simple environmental services subject to economic valorization and market exchange. The laws of the market, of supply and demand, are in conflict with the laws and natural cycles of the Planet Earth."

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Menace of deep water Shetland oil project

Environmental organisations have joined forces to plead with environment secretary Chris Huhne not to give BP the chance to repeat the oil giant’s disastrous mistakes, by allowing expansion in deep water west of Shetland, in the sea area known as North Uist.

The oil-leaking corporate giant BP has just got permission from the UK for a £4.5bn expansion of drilling in the Clair field west of Shetland. But the North Uist project is in far deeper water.

And we know all about BP and risky drilling. The US government has just served them, and their partners, formal notice of 15 safety violations leading up to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year that could mean fines of up to £45m. You win some, you lose some - that's the oil business.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Friends of the Earth have warned that a spill in North Uist would ruin one of the UK's most environmentally sensitive areas.

The Deepwater Horizon well was 1,500 feet down - the North Uist wells could be 4,000 feet. The company's “safety plan” for North Uist admits any leak could be the biggest ever, pouring 75,000 barrels into the North Sea for 140 days. That is more than double the rate during Deepwater Horizon disaster.

But BP says we should not worry because whilst legally they must model the worst-case scenario “the reality is the chances of a spill are very unlikely”. That surely has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

"It would be utterly reckless for Chris Huhne to approve this plan as if the Deepwater Horizon disaster never happened," said John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK.

"Instead of chasing the last drops of oil from one of our country's most sensitive and important natural environments, ministers should be developing a comprehensive plan to get us off the oil hook."

But that is not going to happen. Prime Minister David Cameron was cock-a-hoop about the Clair development, because, he claims, it will provide a “massive boost for jobs and growth”. Growth at any price is the Coalition's holy grail, as the economy stagnates and unemployment soars.

Development west of Shetland will bring almost £10 billion of new project investment by BP and its partners into the UK continental shelf over the next five years - and of course massive profits. The claim is that there will be 3,000 new jobs building platforms and 3,000 operational jobs from Clair alone.

By permitting high-risk projects like North Uist, the “free money” pumped into the UK economy since the oil started flowing in the 1980s, can be dragged out a bit longer.

The fact is that capitalist governments will permit any kind of growth, because the plans and projects of the corporations are the only economic plans they have. The Coalition has a destructive deficit reduction plan for the public sector, but absolutely no positive plans for the future of the economy.

Even in the face of a crisis in the biosphere that threatens the chain of life (including human beings) energy planning, if you can dignify it with that term, will be left in the hands of corporate cowboys.

The only way to protect the environment is to remove this unelected power from determining the future of energy production and instead take all energy resources into common ownership, to use them carefully, safely and with an entirely different set of priorities than raw profit.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Creative accounting blocks climate action

Rich nations could go on increasing carbon emissions by up to 8% if they exploit gaping loopholes in a new draft agreement which is going to the next UN climate summit in Mexico in December.

An analysis compiled by the Bolivian government and published by the United Nations at talks in Bonn this week shows that using a series of accounting tricks, rich nations could carry on business as usual.

Selling surplus carbon credits created when the Soviet economies collapsed in the 1980s is one ruse. Using carbon markets to “offset” emissions and adopting new rules giving credits for palm plantations on areas cleared of virgin forest would also do the trick.

Christian Figueres, the new UN climate chief, admitted: “The pledges that we have on the table are not sufficient to meet the 2ºC pledge made in Copenhagen, and certainly not enough to guarantee the survival of the most vulnerable and poorest."

Without the loopholes, rich countries would have to reduce emissions by 10-14% below 1990 levels by 2017 to meet the targets agreed at Copenhagen last December. With them, they could increase emissions by between 4% and 8% above 1990 levels and still meet Copenhagen’s already shameful targets.

Bolivia’s UN ambassador Pablo Solon warned: “The new data shows a frightening chasm between what the science says, what the people have asked for and Earth needs, and what rich countries are saying they are willing to do."

Friends of the Earth is one of the organisations that will be excluded from the climate summit in Cancun in November because the major economies don’t want any kind of public pressure and debate around the talks. FoE international climate change campaigner said this week: "The proposals on the table are riddled with loopholes so its not surprising that current targets will do nothing to protect the world from climate disaster."

So now it is clear – even limiting warming to 2ºC is not an honest target for rich countries. Their servility to profit-driven growth and to the power of markets, could lead to 4ºC and more.

The absence of serious commitment to change was underlined this week by an International Energy Authority report, showing that fossil fuel subsidies rose to $557bn in 2008, from $342bn in 2007. Renewable energy innovators struggle to get any help, but subsidies allow fossil fuel to be consumed at less than market price.

There is a mood of gloom amongst some climate campaigners, who fear that the impact of the economic slump, spending cuts and unemployment, and the propaganda onslaught by climate change deniers, means people no longer care about climate change.

But a survey by Cardiff University shows that 78% of British people think the climate is changing, a substantial base to build on. Four out of ten thought that the threat from global warming is exaggerated, but 42% disagreed. And a similar survey in the US shows that public concern about the issue is increasing.

The UN Climate Change talks have become a diversion from real political action aimed at halting the rise in emissions, and a front for continued inaction. Qumrul Chowdhury, who is lead negotiator for the least developed countries' block, asked in Bonn what would happen if the talks dragged on beyond Mexico, warned: "It will be tragic, a holocaust. I warn all the world that it will be at the expense of 1 billion people. We cannot afford to lose this battle."

He is right. But what is needed is a bold approach that makes the connection between the economic crisis which is devastating people’s lives across the world, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy, where the views of the majority count for nothing.

For even if 100% of people in Britain wanted action on global warming, they could not get it within the national and global status quo of capitalism.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Warm words - and global warming - from G8 leaders

Global warming more than 2 degrees higher than today’s temperatures was accepted as inevitable at the G8 summit meeting in Italy yesterday, as the world’s richest capitalist countries failed to agree any measures to reduce emissions.

A 2 degree rise will have serious consequences for many large population areas. This reality was hidden behind a fake target of an 80% cut in emissions by 2050 or sometime around then, depending on which baseline year a country works from. But no interim targets nor any specific measures to reduce emissions were agreed.

As a result, discussions taking place today between the G8 and emerging economies led by China, India and Brazil seem doomed. These countries want to see specific commitments, and cash to help them make the transition to a lower emissions economy, before they will agree to any significant cuts.

The absence of any real commitment results from the Obama administration’s inability to move forward. A Bill on reducing emissions is struggling through Congress. The forces of corporate darkness are recovering from the shock of the election result and are forming a determined opposition to attempts to limit emissions by law.

In any case, as the US government’s approach is to adopt the failed European/Kyoto “cap and trade” model, it is unlikely that any emissions reductions would be achieved. However, there would be lots of potential new profits.

A recent report from Friends of the Earth warns that carbon trading is fast becoming the new sub-prime and that “sub-prime carbon credits ... are already being securitized and resold in secondary markets”.

This is confirmed by Bart Chilton, head of the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission, who told the Financial Times that the market in greenhouse gas emissions could become the biggest traded commodity: "The potential size and scope of a structured carbon emissions market in the US is unequivocally vast. It is certainly possible that the emissions markets could overtake all other commodity markets."

Tipping points will soon be reached where runaway global warming cannot be halted; already some reports suggest that the coral reefs are damaged beyond recovery as a result of increased ocean acidity. This could start a cascade of extinctions that would not only sweep through the marine environment, but also human communities reliant on fishing for survival.

What is patently clear is that capitalism will always have the ability to create new markets and sources of profit. But it does not have the capacity to halt global warming. It is not too late to prevent the capitalist system – the corporations and their compliant governments and states – from wrecking the planet’s eco-system; but it soon will be.

What does it take for us to wake up to this reality and move towards mass action to deprive the capitalist system of its power to determine the future of the earth? It is, more than anything, a belief in the existence of a credible alternative.

The challenge for A World to Win and all those who want to show that “another world is possible”, is to convince people that working together, they can create a different system of governance, ownership and economy.

It’s a tall order, but the Fast Forward 2009 film festival held by A World to Win in London last Saturday was a significant step forward. It brought together a group of dedicated, creative people from across the generations. Working with them, we can find new ways to show how this concept of life beyond global capitalism can – and must – become our current reality.

Penny Cole
Environment editor