Respondent 7 (Environmental campaigner)
Interviewer(s): Me
Interviewee(s): Respondent

Me: I was interest in your opinion as to whether biodiversity offsets are likely to lead to tighter or less stringent regulations around infrastructure?

Respondent: I personally think it's going to lead to less incentives to protect biodiversity already there, less incentives to ensure their developments are designed around the landscape they want to change and also they have more chance of getting planning, which has been proven. There are a couple of case studies on the SoW website where a previously rejected planning application got through on the premise that they can offset elsewhere. So it's already been proven that it definitely lessens regulations around infrastructure projects.

Me: Are you worried about it becoming a mandatory scheme? At the moment it's only voluntary. Are you concerned about it being scaled up?

Respondent: If it's gonna become a scheme, voluntary is nonsense, it's either mandatory or nothing because if you've got developments going through and if they like they can offset then it's just a joke.

Me: Not just if you're undertaking biodiversity offsetting, but any kind of compensation, do you think it's important to consider the actual social access to the ecosystems, instead of just ecological compensation – the actually community.

Respondent: Yep – [revealing information] - and one of my biggest concerns throughout this whole process is people haven't been consulted, like civil society, has known nothing about it, their well-loved NGOs had been partied to creating the pilot schemes then partied to being in the pilot schemes for two years nearly and no one in the communities knew. The case studies I told you that exist, where planning got through on biodiversity offsetting, communities went to those NGOs expecting them to fight, protect local green space, only to then find out they were part of it and they are on their own - we have no support and don't know where to start. So, they are on the back foot immediately. Actually, its disempowering for communities on that basis, it drives a wedge between people and their natural environment, people and their NGOs and people and eachother in their community because it's such a grey issue, it sort of sounds nice, unless you look into it a bit further. Why wouldn't you want to do that! Well actually, there is a shitty end of the BO stick and all they are showing you is the shiny end and their helped with NGOs being a part of that shiny end. Actually, it's important the focus is balanced and we see that nasty end as well. Because you don't get an offset site without a site being destroyed. Now, what could of been done to protect that site in the first place, again, you're gonna get me ranting again. I'm trying to stay calm… The thing with development, particularly with green belt sites, they want to get in to the greenfield sites because it's too expensive often to develop brownfield sites. It's not that they can't develop them, it's that no one is taken the opportunity, to go to a brownfield site and say, here's what needs doing to make this suitable for development.

Me: So it promotes lethargy towards developing in brownfield site?

Respondent: Exactly, so you have for example, The Woodland Trust, they went in that direction for their recent five million pound head quarters, on a greenfield site in Grantham. They got an architect to design a wonderful building and built on a greenfield site. Around Grantham there are loads of Brownfield sites. But for the developers to restore that site costs a lot of money, so really, that's something that's a huge problem that needs to be addressed. That's where energies should be going before thinking about destroying biodiversity

Me: So higher up mitigation?

Respondent: So choosing which bits of land very carefully.

Me: The pre-planning application stage?

Respondent: Yeah

Me: So at the moment, after speaking to a few of the offsetters, they were talking about scaling it up to an actual market, a kind of biodiversity offsetting market or habitat market. I was wondering to what extent do you think the benefits derived from ecosystems or forests can be actually valued economically?

Respondent: Funnily enough, I wrote an article on SoW this morning and it's basically saying what I'm doing. One of the things I have to do is secure a budget. It was estimated 250,000 ha of public forest estate gave approximately, very roughly, £400m worth of natural capital. Again, that is a nonsense, because you cannot measure at all the vastness of what benefits we derive from natural habitats. So my actual position is that a price cannot be placed on nature, we will never understand the depths to which we rely on natural systems and we tinker with them at our peril as we all know, but I have to accept there is a huge war waging between development, economy and environment. So if we have to put a price on things in that way, I can see it as a tool, but when it first started coming out it was going to be turned round on us all and used against us and what biodiversity offsetting is turning into. It's a really sensible tool if we're in an ideal, fluffy bunny world where everyone is out for the best, but unfortunately that isn't the way things are run. The time it's passed through the policy process, it's going to become a tool that enables the speeding through of development. You've got to remember the national planning policy framework which changed last year or the year before, that was all changed to speed through development. The treasury when they first got in, they put out a document that said our aim is to get you planning permission within a year and to actively seek out and encourage large infrastructural developments in England. That has been their aim from the start. What they have done since then has just changed policy, law la la la, until they have got to now, where the last nail in the coffin is biodiversity offsetting - a policy based on that tool, and that is it, y'know, what then… it just totally weakens any communities position to fight against it - just totally weakens it - because you cannot go up against a charity who everyone in their heart thinks is shinier than anything and they must know best etc.

Me: Some of the respondents said that's the job of green infrastructure, to see to the community, but then if biodiversity offsetting undermines that then they are in direct conflict of each other?

Respondent: Yeah... No: this is the responsibility of the democratic structure that we are living in. If things are going to be changed in order to disable the rights of people in the community to have a say over what happens with their landscape, then that's a cut in democracy as far as I'm concerned, another one. The NPPS did the same. It was going to be all these changes - oh it's going to be sustainable, sustainable this, sustainable that. Well actually, it was me and my colleagues that made them define what they meant by sustainable. What do you actually mean by sustainable. Of course it sounds great, it's a great green wash, but actually what they meant, it's going to be economically sustainable, not environmentally sustainable, socially sustainable. Not any of those things.

Me: That's very insightful... and what affect do you think the increasing emphasis on market based instruments will have on the conservation objectives of the EU and the protection of the Natura 2000 network?

Respondent: It's not something I would really know much detail about, not enough to comment on, simply because I'm not a conservation NGO per se, I am actually a farmer and I have got a bee in my bonnet about all this crap happening and I was one of those people that relied on my NGO to step when I needed them to and instead I had to take control myself because they didn't step up and didn't support the people that I represent. So I'm not up and all of that detail...

Me: Maybe on that point, what's your perception as a land owner to offsetting and being in between the broker and developer?

Respondent: Well, it puts me in a very difficult position because I have the perfect land - 50 odd acres in a national park and 20 acres in South Devon that I am currently farming. I know that sounds all lofty and everything but actually we are skint and we lived in a yurt, it just so happens we have got this land. Anyway, what has been dangled in front of my eyes is up to £2000 per hectare for becoming an offset site. Now, biodiversity on my land is one of the best examples in our small area. So, within the national park and Exmoor, our farm is one the most biodiverse in the area. So, for me to get paid £2000 essentially just to carry on what I am doing, so absolutely nothing has been added, I would be doing it anyway, I would just be taking money basically.

Me: Yes - I think that's the additionality problem of it all, actually proving that you have added anything to the habitat.

Respondent: Exactly, how can you prove that, you can't and you won't... There's not enough money in the pot to monitor SSSIs now. We are supposed to be - well we started the process of becoming a SSSI. We have the best example of meadow in Exmoor national park, but there isn't enough staff to do the job. They want to push it through and they said it is going to take 2,3 maybe 4 years. I was like - I'm not waiting that long. Obviously I will if I have to, but the fact is, the land at the moment needs those protections and designations and we can't get them for another four years - so what happens in the meantime? So how many areas of land are people phoning up saying, do you know what, I've got this really rare plant or really rare habitat and really would like to get some protections on it. Oh yeah, y'know, you'll have to be really exceptional to get the status, before we even bother starting the process, because it will take us at least two years. It is completely ridiculous, fix that before you... assess the landscape as it is now.... ensure you know exactly what the bloody hell it is you're planning on developing and then offsetting... you can't do that in the 20 minute environmental assessment that they are recommending. It's just a joke, a joke.

Me: That's very interesting... I was speaking to local authorities and it seems they are kind of caught in between a vice, they want to provide this sort of conservation service in the public sector, but then don't have any funding, so I think that's where they are saying there is an opportunity with the private sector.

Respondent: They do have funding! The chief executive of the Woodland Trust gets over £100,000 a year. The Chief executive of the National Trust gets over £250,000 a year. Their executive tiers take well over a few million quid a year. They have the money, they choose to spend it in a different way to me.

Me: What about local authorities..., not wildlife charities, but just the local authorities?

Respondent: Ha ha... the local authorities are definitely under the cosh and they have been squeezed even more and I do appreciate that, but again, you need to question where they are spending their money. Also, there is the option - this is something people can't seem to get their heads round - but communities are often the experts of the landscape, so people that are living in that place and often have lived their all their whole life... the local naturalists or whatever. They might not work for the Wildlife Trust but I bet you anything he knows better than the Wildlife Trust about his own area. So, why not spend some time encouraging an ecological assessment done by locals. I've got examples in the South East of people doing that for their trees. In France, people are trying to protect a site and because the ecological survey was done in a drought, they were like, there are no streams, not habitats. In fact, it was mostly streams and water for most of the year. So, they took it in their own hands, they went out and did the ecological survey themselves. That was hundreds of people from the local community, all together and they won their case based on it.

Me: I think citizen science is very interesting, definitely.

Respondent: Yeah, but calling it citizen science - that is a term created by NGOs and the government, which again distances people from the project. It's not something to be run by some lofty organisation somewhere. They could be part of it of course, but part of it on equal footing with the community. It's this separation... people need to be encouraged to go out into their landscape and document it and be part of it and be fully informed to protect it. None of that is happening... NGOs don't do it, local authorities don't do it and it is something I am working with my friends to see if we can find a way to encourage that to happen. You wouldn't believe the obstruction we are getting from charities - that's why I am a bit bitter about them - every step of the way and everything I've tried to do and protecting the public forest estate and other stuff, they have been obstructive and taken the side of money.

Me: I suppose every charity is being run like a business

Respondent: I do sympathise, we all need to make money, we're all skint, but until charities stop paying £250,000 for a reception desk which is what the Woodland Trust did I'm not going to take to heart what they say. I'm a bit down on all that and I'm a bit up on people. Because people always say, I'm always told by charities oh people don't care. I think that's rubbish, people do care and that's why there is always a campaign kicking off or somebody wants to cut down a tree. It’s just they are not given a chance to express that other than when their landscape is threatened. So get them involved at the decision making stage. Get them involved way before the decision making stage.

Me: Which it sounds like they haven't been in the case of biodiversity offsetting?

Respondent: Absolutely nothing. I mean, there has been pilot sites for nearly two years, where's the connection with the people in those communities. Absolutely bollock all. It's a nonsense and nowhere near ready to put into legislation.

Me: Yes - I think that was the motivation of the study. I think Market Based Instruments are being mainstreamed at such a rate when we don't actually know their full extent and application. We don't know what conditions make them effective and we don't know what conditions make them complete failures.

Respondent: Exactly, I mean I could talk about it all day, but to be honest I am not an expert.

Me: Oh no! What I wanted to do was get stakeholder opinions and I think you're really well positioned to give the people's side and kind of NGO side. I think people work at different interfaces so it's really important to get a broad range of stakeholders.