NATURAL ASSETS
Natural assets O
UR NATIONAL WEALTH is dependent on the natural environment. We rely on nature for the provision of food, water and raw materials, as well as
services such as water treatment and flood defences. But, as highlighted in the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, the goods and services that nature provides are currently undervalued in economic decision-making. Nearly three quarters of the land in the UK is agricultural, which includes land used for crops as well as grassland, mountain, moor and heathland. The total value of the goods produced from agricultural land to the UK economy is over £5 billion per year.
“ It has been predicted that climate
change effects may benefit agriculture in some parts of the UK
But the world’s climate is changing, and with it
the UK’s weather patterns. Extreme weather events have recently had an impact on UK agriculture, including drought, flooding, heatwaves and the freezing spring of this year. “Food and water security are big issues here.
”
Ecosystem services are vital to both food provision and water quality”, says Professor Ian Bateman OBE, Director of the Centre for Social and
All of the values associated with land must be considered when making decisions about whether we use it for agriculture, mitigating greenhouse gases, recreation, urban space or wild-species diversity. By Jennifer Garrett
Economic Research on the Global Environment based at the University of East Anglia. Professor Bateman led the Economics team for the first phase of the National Ecosystem Assessment, which was the first analysis of the UK’s natural environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society and continuing economic prosperity, within the context of climate change. “Different aspects are valued in different ways.
While food outputs can be valued using market prices, recreational values are assessed by looking at visitor behaviour and seeing how it responds as the type and quality of sites change”, says Professor Bateman. The Government has advised that farming
practices must change to maintain UK food production in a changing climate and to supply the needs of a growing population. Important decisions must be made by both policymakers and land managers to achieve optimal use of agricultural land. Land being used for crops in Britain has significantly increased, growing by 40 per cent from 1940 to 1980 and, since the Second World War, wheat yields have increased threefold. But these gains have negative impacts on ecosystems and the services they provide. An estimated 97 per cent of semi-natural grassland has been lost in England and Wales due to the intensification of converting arable land. Between 1970 and 1998, biodiversity on agricultural land has declined by 43 per cent according to the Farmland Bird Index. Degradation in ecosystem services, including
species diversity, has impacts on agriculture. Professor Bateman explains: “Soil fertility combines with other types of inputs, for example fertiliser and machinery, to determine food output. But if ecosystem services are degraded then vital goods are eroded.” Professor Bateman and colleagues modelled the future of UK land-use using different climate change and policy change scenarios. The research also considered different regions based on their environmental characteristics like soil type, temperature and rainfall. “Even within the relatively small area of Great Britain, variation in environmental conditions is sufficient to yield very substantial differences in agricultural productivity and, hence, land use”, he says. Typically, land use decisions are driven solely by the market value of agricultural produce. However,
10 SOCIETY NOW AUTUMN 2013
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