The privatisation of nature: Conservation the Cameron way

“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.”
- Albert Schweitzer.

In the seminal and uncompromising book Silent Spring, author Rachel Carson begins her Magnum Opus with this prophetic statement. She then goes on to graphically describe the devastation that was at the time being wrought on North America’s intricate, finely tuned ecosystems, as well as on human health, by the yearly application of hundreds of tons of organic compounds, thought by most to be relatively harmless.
The book was intended to alert a complacent public to the dangerous lack of regard for the environment and the ecological communities within it that the agri-chemical industry of the day was demonstrating.

Her aim was true. The book’s power in conveying the principle tenet of ecology: that everything in the natural world is inextricably linked to everything else captured the attention of then president John F. Kennedy, who ordered his Science Advisory Committee to investigate what impact the injurious over-use of certain pesticides and herbicides was having on both wildlife and human populations. On May 5th 1963 the committee published a report that validated Carson’s findings, and legislation was consequently introduced to limit the application of these chemicals until more research had been carried out. Ultimately DDT and PCB’s were banned outright.

To say that thousands of lives, human, bird, and insect, were saved as a result of this action is no over statement, and is a fact that Carson’s biographer, Linda Lear, uses to argue that Silent Spring must easily rank among other history-changing works by the likes of Marx, Smith, and Darwin to name a few.
Needless to say the book’s revelations were followed by some fairly vigorous attempts to silence Carson. Some well-funded parties, whose profitability rested on the continued rate of use of these pollutants, unsuccessfully attempted to sue the book’s publishers. They also spent large sums of money on a PR campaign designed to sell the benefits of their products, as well as trying to discredit the science behind Rachel Carson’s conclusions. It wasn’t long before her critics resorted to issuing personal attacks, as the science itself was racking up more and more incontrovertible evidence in support of the book’s assertions. I’ll leave you to draw your own parallels with events that have recently occupied the media spotlight.

The upshot of the book’s publication almost half a century ago is that numerous organisations and grassroots movements hastened into being soon after. Their establishment heralded a common interest in the preservation of the earth’s natural habitats, and brought to public consciousness an idea of the immeasurable value that they possess in their own right. So it is a little surprising to discover that any knowledge of these activities has thus far apparently failed to permeate the deep swaddling of privilege that cossets the leader of the opposition, as he recently unveiled his party’s plans to issue ‘conservation credits’ with the vapid assumption that they are “placing a value on biodiversity for the first time, because only if you place a value on something can you truly compensate for loss”.

In short, it seems, David Cameron has struck upon the ingenious idea of commoditizing nature itself, and plans to quantify its value and sell it off in neat little packages to the highest bidder. To this end the Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Nick Herbert has been doing the rounds and taking the message to the masses, in a dazzling demonstration that theirs truly is the party that knows the price of everything, yet the value of nothing.

Though the plan is still pretty nebulous in form, the Tories have made assurances that sites currently protected from development, and sites of special scientific interest (SSSI’s) will escape the advancing bulldozers. What they have still to make clear is exactly how they plan to place a value on the biodiversity of any area being considered for development. I wouldn’t be astonished to learn that it’ll work like some kind of giant pick ‘n’ mix; great crested newts, 40p for each one whose habitat you destroy, 30p for every fritillary butterfly, etc. Considering that new species are being discovered in people’s back gardens all the time (must be true, Stephen Fry said so on QI), how do you go about factoring in the undiscovered critters? Since the beginning of last century we’ve managed to lose 183 species worldwide. Those are just the ones we’re aware of. As eminent biologist Professor Edward O. Wilson despairingly points out, our actual knowledge of species diversity barely scratches the surface, with only 1.9 million species having been catalogued by scientists, out of an estimated 20-30 million. How can a habitat destruction compensation scheme begin to account for as yet unknown members of any habitat? It can’t.

The free market seems to my mind an odd choice of force to invoke as custodian of our biodiversity, and history contains no shortage of examples where a conflict of interest between the two has been inherent. The question of whether we should leave the protection of our natural habitats up to developers (a stratum of the business world that is often the first to suffer heavy casualties every time the economy wobbles) is not one we ought to ask lightly. Who will underwrite the loss when they have to call in the receivers, and we suddenly find that they can’t pay compensation? At any rate, some things are simply irreplaceable, established habitats being one example.

David Cameron has recently appointed eco wind-bag and fellow Etonian Zac Goldsmith as the Tory candidate for Richmond. Meanwhile, William Hague is off cosy-ing up to Europe’s climate change deniers and neo Nazis, and the famously skeptical, febrile paleoconservative Lord Lawson of Blaby is busy rounding up various sorts to form the think tank; the Global Warming Policy Foundation, with the stated intention of having an “open and reasoned debate” on the issue of climate change, on the run up to Copenhagen. The Foundation will derive funds from another body set up by Lord Lawson; the Central Europe Trust Ltd. This trust’s clients include: Elf, Total, Shell, BP, Amoco, and Texaco, and as Labour’s most rotund representative John Prescott pointed out, looks “less like a think tank and more like a petrol tank”. While the Conservative’s representatives seemingly occupy such polar and irreconcilable positions on environmental issues, it’s no wonder that the party’s stance on urgent ecological matters comes across, at best, as a bit schizophrenic.

In the interests of disclosure I feel I should point out that I’ve never, to put it mildly, been the Conservative Party’s number one fan. As startling revelations go I’m fairly confident that this won’t have anybody blindly groping for the nearest seating arrangement. But it’s a real worry for me to think that this time next year they’ll almost certainly be holding the keys to number 10. This time next year will also mark the end of the International Year of Biodiversity. Oh sweet providence.
The combined effect of the near future probability of Tory rule and the degree of public complacency about today’s pressing environmental issues (revealed by a quick scroll through any public opinion forum like Cif, and not from the usual shower of mouth-breathers either but from, you know, the normal ones, too) leaves me cold. As things stand, and with the likelihood that Copenhagen will at best yield a defanged and eviscerated Kyoto mark 2, despair is my home, fear is my landscape, and hope is the contents of my toilet cistern.
On that slightly hysterical note I leave you with the prescient words of one of my all time heroes, Henry David Thoreau:
“In wilderness is the preservation of the world”.
Read them and weep heartily.