Will putting a value on nature’s services for society serve nature’s best interest?

Tim Burns, Head of Community Engagement

We have just seen a flurry of policy activity released aiming to protect nature by placing an economic value on the critical services it provides humans. Last week DEFRA released three papers from the UK National Ecosystem Assessment and it was a hotly debated topic at last week’s UN Biodiversity Summit in Japan. This is part of a global movement initiated in 2007 and lead by the G8+5 countries, the World Bank and the UN Environmental Programme. The original goal was to initiate the:

“process of analysing the global economic benefit of biological diversity, the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the failure to take protective measures versus the cost of effective conservation”

At its heart it aims to restructure the economy through putting a value on ecosystem services that we currently take for granted as being free. For example because of overfishing we are reducing the potential income from fish stocks by $50bn annually, or halving deforestation rates by 2030 would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and therefore avoid climate change damages estimated at $3.7 trillion.

This could shift our economy to price in the environment costs of goods and services that are currently excluded, for example the associated climate change, land, water and energy costs into our food consumption for high impact foods such as coffee, meat and air freighted vegetables.
Whilst Waste Watch broadly supports activities that shift the world towards a greener economy, we have key unanswered questions and concerns about this approach:

1. It stipulates that for nature to be valued it must provide a service for humans rather than having inherently value in itself
2. How do we make sure the costs of nature truly reflect their worth to society (now and in the future, rich and poor societies)
3. What about social capital – how do we cost this into the equation?
4. Whilst valuing nature’s services will price in environmental externalities into our economy, the economy is still built upon increasing production and growth. For growth to occur something has to give – this will inevitably be social or environmental capital.

The findings of DEFRAs National Ecosystem Assessment are feeding into DEFRAs Natural Environment White Paper. This is currently out for public consultation until the 30 October 2010. This is a key document from which much of UK environmental thinking and policy will stem from so make sure you get your views, concerns and viewpoints across quickly.

What is value?

Tim Burns, Head of Community Engagement

When most people are asked the question ‘what is value?’ they may either think of buying a half price pair of jeans in the sale or our internal values we try to live by. But are these two concepts of value really that different? Or if they are not right now should they be in the future?

Let’s start with economic value or the price of stuff, taking water and diamonds as an example. Water allows us to survive and is fundamental to all life on earth unlike diamonds that are merely an accessory. Yet diamonds are typically thousands of pounds more expensive than water.

Adam Smith, a pioneer of economics, suggested two different reasons for this – the word value can be used to express the utility of a particular product in use or the power of a product in exchange. The evolution of culture can encourage and normalise higher values for products if they become fashionably desirable, coupled to this as these products become rarer demand exceeds supply and the price increases further. For our diamond, it is now the norm that men should spend two to three months salary on an engagement ring (incidentally this originated from marketing campaigns run by De Beers , a diamond mining company).

Another example is the bluefin tuna. This beautiful fish up to 5 metres in length was once plentiful and affordable to most people but has since been hunted towards extinction and now fetches up to £470 per kilogram. Sadly the rarer this fish has become, the higher its value at market making it more sought after and more hunted by fishermen across the oceans. The only thing that could have possibly stopped this charge was government intervention formally designating bluefin as a protected species. Earlier this year, however, a UN vote to protect bluefin was decisively quashed by countries across the world. Unsurprising, when the economic stakes are so high. The value of this example to the tuna is if you are in danger be cute and cuddly and not a luxury foodstuff, or for us do not always rely on the market to point us towards sustainability.

Prices can also differ on face value at the checkout to the consumer as a result of what is and is not covered in the cost. A fast food burger meal deal bought in the UK will cost around £3.99. The total price of this dinner is artificially cheap and favoured by a growing number of people especially from lower socio-economic backgrounds. But is this the true cost of the burger and what other costs are hidden in the price that we are not paying for?

If we start with health, the nutritional content of fast food is low and the growth of eating in this way has lead to corresponding increases in obesity, heart disease and diabetes. This not only reduces well-being and happiness but also be a huge economic drain on the health service paid for by the UK taxpayer.  Efficiencies in lowering the price of food have also lead to dramatic increases in incidences of food borne illnesses. Lastly on the social side we have unethical labour costs across the supply chain. At the farm or in the fast food outlet for example many workers are paid only minimum wage, whilst cattle farmers themselves are often poorly paid, in debt through contracts to the companies they supply, and have the highest work sector suicide rates across the world.

Finally the environmental costs of producing our ‘meal deals’ are not reflected in the price. Beef is hugely resource intensive in comparison to healthier food, such as fruit and vegetables, and has a much larger water, oil, food (for feed) and land footprint. The consequences are climate change, peak oil, conflicts over local water supplies, biodiversity loss and human malnutrition from food price spikes in a system stretched so much that there is little resilience to absorb these shocks.

These external costs are often left out by businesses driven by profit and market pressures and it is left to society to pay these costs now and in the future. We can all start to price in some of these external costs, for example by choosing fair-trade, organic, local in season produce and ensuring where possibly we eat a balanced diet. We shouldn’t be afraid to ask more questions about where our food comes from and how is made especially when our health and the health or the planet is at stake. We should also demand better regulation from government to support this and ensure companies have to pay for the true cost of their activities rather than society.

Therefore a fairer system for our planet, ourselves and each other may entail paying a little more at the till but the overall value we get back is likely to be far better for ourselves, our society and our planet.

Read more about our views and our work themes.

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President Bill Clinton gives Future Friendly a cigar

Sam Jarvis, Head of Communications

Last Thursday night, Katie (our Fundraising Manager) and I attended the 4th Future Friendly Awards in the opulent (but eco, I’m assured) surroundings of Syon Park.

FF4, as we’ve come to shorten it, was all about celebrating individuals and communities up and down the country, who are inspiring others to live more sustainably.

Waste Watch has been a partner and judge for these awards since they began – along with Waterwise and the Energy Saving Trust – and every year they manage to create that warm, fuzzy (slightly emotional) feeling you only get from watching that other heart-rending celebration of people doing amazing things… ITV’s Pride of Britain Awards!

Arriving at the Duke of Northumberland’s residence bathed in a Halloweenie green light, it was hard not to be impressed by the efforts of the organisers (Hill and Knowlton PR) to make the guests feel special.

Inside locally sourced food and drink were scoffed and quaffed in equal measure. There were also ‘living’ table centre pieces of mossy logs and ferns (some looked like the deadly tree hollow in 70s cult classic Flash Gordon) and individual pots of ivy to take home for planting.

Then, on to the awards, and with £10k at stake, it’s always a nervous moment. In the end the Project Group won – a fantastic community recycled arts project based in Shropshire that helps people with mental health issues. For the runners up, disappointment but appreciation too that just being a finalist will help boost their local profile.

And then a surprise for Waste Watch. As the VT ran, President Clinton was projected on the screen praising Future Friendly and the work P&G is doing to reduce its use of resources. We were then called up on stage to receive our own award for the support we’ve given the campaign.

But the true heroes of the night were the five finalists whose projects can make us all feel proud… I can hear the strains of M People’s Heather Small right now.

Read more in News

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Top 5 digital tools to help you waste less

Laura Knight, Communications Officer

1. Store it online
Online file storage has pretty much changed my life. There’s a range of solutions out there to choose from, however, I have to say Dropbox has been my solution of choice. I can now drop the information I need into a file on my desktop at work and pick it up again at home, on my mobile or wherever I have an internet connection.  No bulging notepads, cumbersome ring binders or crumpled print outs.  I hardly print a thing if I can help it. I waste less time and paper but as the program is also free, I waste less money too.

2.  Get seasonal
The Seasons application for iPhone tells you what fruits, vegetables, lettuces, herbs, fungi and nuts are in season in your local area, meaning you can waste less fuel, energy and packaging.  The app will automatically detect where you are and will currently give you local information for the UK, Germany, France, the US and Ireland. A handy resource to have in your pocket and all for £1.19

3. Just print the good bits…
Printing from the internet can be challenging. 9 out of 10 times I guarantee that the bit of information I want is surrounded by images, banners and other information I don’t want. Or how about that last page you print that has a URL on it and nothing else? If you’re a Firefox user Nuke Anything is a great add-on that lets you choose the bits you want and hide the bits you don’t with a simple right click. It’s like customising the internet…and of course you waste less paper and ink by not printing all those unwanted images.

4.  Plan your portions
The art of portioning is surely one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the universe. How much rice does it actually take to feed four people? Love Food Hate Waste has it covered with their online portion calculator. Select the food type, the amount of people and they’ll tell you in measurements you’ll  actually understand. There’s even a party planner and, for those moments of doubt in the supermarket, there’s an iPhone application.

5.  Sort your margins out
Ok we cheated…this isn’t exactly a ‘tool’ but it is digital so here goes. Waste less paper by changing your document’s margin settings. There is no real technical reason for the default margin size so just see how low you can go with your printer and go for it. Tamara Krinsky over at Treehugger is pretty passionate about this, she’s made a petition for Bill Gates.

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