30 by 30 (also available on Linked-In )
Once in a while, society reaches a point where an issue, that was previously considered normal, becomes totally unacceptable. The trigger point may be a slow, drip feed of evidence or a monumental change that renders the issue impossible to ignore. Once there is a realisation that there is no going back, society will make that decision to change no matter what the individual costs or sacrifices may be inflicted for the good of society. The issue of slavery and of the transatlantic slave trade in particular, is one such example. Slavery as a concept was deemed ‘normal’ for thousands of years by many nations, societies and communities. In the Western world, the transatlantic slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries impacted everyday life for citizens across the British Empire, whether they knew it or not; from the clothes they wore, to the food they ate. But by the middle of the 19th century, the West was firmly rejecting slavery, and it was abolished over the span of a single lifetime.
The unsustainable use and destruction of the earth’s natural resources is also such an issue. By any measure, nature in the UK is in an appalling state. Millennia of neglect and exploitation has resulted in biodiversity collapse on a massive scale.
The aim of the 30 by 30 campaign is to return 30% of all land and sea in UK to nature by 2030, to restore a vibrant, balanced and diverse level of biodiversity. Focusing on supporting nature and restoring biodiversity like this is a good way of tackling the problems that beset our planet because to make that 30% work for nature, you have to sort out all the other issues as well. For example, plastic pollution, climate change (CO2 pollution), water supply and purity etc. Additionally, a rich and resourceful country like the UK has no right to pressure other countries to, for example, protect the Amazon rain forest or the African elephant, if it cannot look after its own biodiversity.
The current area of the UK’s land surface amounts to 24,249,500 hectares. If we assume that all the 30% required had to be bought, then a ball park cost would be approximately £255 billion (approximately 7.275 million hectares x £35k a hectare/£15k an acre). The UK government’s budget is approximately £1 trillion (2022 figures) which means that this would be a one-off cost that equated to about 25% of the budget. This is a clearly a lot of money, but to put the figure into perspective, the direct cost of abolishing the slave trade amounted to 40% of the then government’s budget (the government debt for which was only finally paid off in 2015).
In comparison dedicating 30% of the sea to nature is easy and cheap. The seas within the UK’s jurisdiction are owned by the Crown and the cost of financially compensating the fisherman to avoid these areas for a few years, while fish stocks are allowed to recover, is very small by comparison. The entire industry is currently only worth about £180 million a year to the UK and the experience in New Zealand was that once the no-catch zones have established themselves over a period of a few years, there will be a greatly improved fishing harvest from the more mature fish that migrate out of the no-catch zones.
Leaving aside the obvious glaring problem with the slavery and transatlantic slave trade comparison, which is that the wrong people were compensated (the slavers were paid off rather the than the enslaved people recompensed), it does provide a comparison to gain perspective. The country came to the dramatic conclusion, after centuries of acceptance, that slavery and the slave trade was morally reprehensible. The country not only accepted that the government would pay, but by abolishing the use of slavery, the country would put itself at an economic disadvantage. Products produced by enslaved people naturally cost far less than those by non-enslaved people, and therefore slavery continued to undermine the trade in products produced without it (for example, the price of sugar to the British customer went up dramatically post abolition – it is estimated up to double the price ). Another example was the cost of maintaining forces like the Royal Navy West and East Africa Squadrons to police and break up the slave trade in British spheres of influence for the 50 or so years it took for other nations, such as the United States, to follow suit with abolition.
Critically, the voluntary actions taken by British citizens helped drive the abolitionist movements forward. The sugar boycotts, that started in the 1790s, undermined the profit from the sale of sugar and helped give the parliamentary campaign the evidence to claim widespread national support for abolishing the slave trade. In addition, after abolition in the UK and the British Empire, similar efforts helped undermine the use of slaves elsewhere in the world. In the 1860s Manchester mill workers refused to handle slave picked cotton from the Confederate states. This caused unemployment, hunger, hardship and even violence against the participants. But the boycotts held and, after the American Civil War ended, ships were sent to Britain from the USA with food and gifts for the workers and their families in thanks. Abraham Lincoln described their sacrifices as ‘Sublime Christian Heroism’.
From this perspective there are significant similarities between the slave trade and biodiversity loss. What we have accepted and done in the past is now obvious to us as morally unacceptable and while there would no doubt be some direct economic impacts on the UK, it is still the right thing to do. In any case, not taking this course of action will have a much higher economic impact in the long run, due to the collapse of ecosystems, food production and human health. Not to put too fine an edge on it, we are stealing from our children and future generations to support our current lifestyle. The living conditions of UK citizens in the 21st century are so much better than those in the 18th and 19th that surely, we should be prepared to also accept some sacrifices to help prevent the destruction of nature and the world as we know it?
We will need a similar, two-pronged approach for 30 by 30 as was used against slavery. One to campaign for parliamentary legislation and another to call for boycotts of companies that profit from destroying biodiversity and climate change.
Forming a political consensus on 30 by 30 may be prolonged and nuanced, but let’s assume that it has support from the UK population and it will be possible to do. The land is purchased and the UK incurs the debt. This land is then set back to nature, which as Knepp Estate has shown is relatively cheap if done on a large scale. Nature is left to do its job and trees and plants return naturally (initially with some active management, perhaps, to kickstart the process) and an appropriate mix of herbivores is reintroduced (e.g. Horse, cattle, deer, pig and beaver). From then on, all humans have to do is act as the predators to keep the herbivore populations under control while another discussion is had (and research is undertaken) to work out what natural predators can be reintroduced (e.g. Lynx, wolf, bear etc.) to maintain the balance.
The resulting land would have economic value in Biodiversity Credits. This could also form a key part of the UKs economic transition to sustainable activities. If this land was allocated to a UK sovereign wealth fund, for example, then revenue could be generated from the sale of these credits to institutions required to offset their impacts on biodiversity. The current government figures for biodiversity credits range from £48,000 per hectare (£20,000 per acre) for poor, un-improved land to £125,000 per hectare (£52,000 per acre) for mature woodland and forest. If you compare these figures with the £35,000 per hectare base purchase cost used above then we can see that the scheme could even eventually generate income for the nation. Over time the land within the scheme would have real value and should more than pay for itself.
There is another relevant lesson from history here. Just eight years after the abolition of slavery the 1846 Sugar Duties Act removed the preferential rates for sugar imported from the Caribbean colonies to the UK. These colonies were then unable to compete with imports from Brazil and Cuba where sugar was still produced using slave labour and this caused economic collapse and hardship to the newly freed enslaved people. A strong regulatory regime will be required to ensure that multi-national corporations or arbitragers cannot exploit the use of biodiversity credits in order to pollute in laxer regimes.
We must learn from our experience of the way the multinationals manage their tax liabilities through complex arrangements and pay little tax in the countries where their revenue is derived. There will have to be two regimes in place – one for companies that comply and a punitive one for those that don’t. For example, we would need to avoid doing the equivalent of what the UK government does at the moment where, it procures phones and cloud computing hosting from multinationals that avoid national taxes (this isn’t difficult to do, the Norwegian Sovereign wealth fund applies this sort of rule to tax avoiders).
The current state of the UK Water industry provides another salutary lesson. Free Markets are great when they work. Free Markets work like Free Societies, enforced rules apply to everyone equally, regardless of size. It is always going to be hard to operate any sort of market in natural monopolies – whether nationalised or free market oriented. So, legislation like, for example, that Sewage Spillage is only allowed in exceptional rainfall circumstances has to be enforced (which it hasn’t been). Otherwise, the 30 by 30 scheme will fail, just as our seas and rivers have been failed by the UK water system.
In the UK, the liabilities for the water industry also seem to have been pushed onto the government/tax payer and the profits to private enterprise. The water companies took on the businesses with no debt, and since have borrowed £70bn which were largely paid in dividends. The servicing of the debt is then paid for by the customers and to make matters worse, the investment in the infrastructure has been totally inadequate. This is another bill that the water companies are trying to load onto the customers.
All this has happened under the watch of the regulator. Similarly, the failure of the electricity resellers to hedge their exposures fell to consumers, who pay for their collapse in higher standing charges, whereas the profits taken in previous years were shared amongst the investors and staff. The legislation to stop all this happening exists – the regulators just haven’t enforced it.
One last thing to consider is how future generations will look back on this issue.
We all look back at the era of slavery with horror and shame. So how will future generations look back at us if we leave the earth with a collapsed eco system that is increasingly hard to live in? Do we want to be remembered as the generation that changed direction and started to protect the planet or just one of those who continued to benefit from destroying it?
Just like the iconic British recruiting poster from the First World War, asking “Daddy, what did You do in the Great War?” Your children will ask: “What did You do to save the planet, when you had the chance to act?”
Michael Wigley – January 2024
Annex A – Non-Governmental action.
Not all the work for 30 x 30 has to be undertaken by the Government. The National Trust, for example, is the UKs premier nature-oriented charity with a huge membership and large land holdings. It would to be uniquely placed to help 30 by 30, not only through campaigning and political pressure but it could also start putting some of these ideas into practical action. Its participation would help kickstart the market in green credits and there will be many crossover skills in the NT staff and tenants, from current land use, that will be needed for 30 by 30 use. The NT will be uniquely positioned to help identify these skills and work out how best to redeploy them, to set up training programs and to work out career paths etc. Livestock farming is an obvious example. The large herbivores required for 30 by 30 will need some sort of management for the foreseeable future, it will just be different. Maybe a group of like-minded NT members could get together and submit an AGM motion on the topic?
Annex B – Negative Economic Externalities
Externalities are what economists call costs (or benefits) that impact third parties that are not incurred (or received) by the producer involved in economic activity. (https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/externalities/). Increasingly these need to be accounted for or a realistic cost of something cannot be calculated. Slavery was historically an ‘externality’. Pollution is another one that has frequently cropped up – if one company can get away with not clearing up its pollution then its products will often appear cheaper than those that do have to clear up after themselves. When addressing 30 by 30 the following are some of the externalities that cannot be ignored:
- Food security and exporting our problems One thing the UK must not do is return 30% of its land to nature and then cause other countries to further damage their own diversity by, for example, causing yet more of their land to be used for food production or consuming scarce water supplies. A biodiverse UK will produce some food as a by-product (the herbivores culled will be the highest grade, free range, organic meat possible) but it will be very inefficient in terms of land area used. A lot of the current sheep farms and deer estates are also massively unproductive in terms of land use and we will have to think more clearly about how we eat and farm. A good way of producing quality food from limited land areas is by using hydroponic greenhouses. In the UK Thanet Earth is a great example, this is something we need to do more of.
- Modern slavery Sadly, in an article that talks about the abolition of slavery, the issue has not totally gone away even today. It hangs on in a limited fashion in situations where, for example, domestic staff have their passports taken from them and are then subject to blackmail and coercion but it is also a part of how some totalitarian states run. China is the key issue here. It supplies a lot of high technology equipment that would be useful in a green transition but it is also a serious user of forced/slave labour.
This means that the prices it charges do not reflect a balanced free market and we are back to the 1846 sugar duties issue mentioned above. To a large degree China can set its own prices based on political aims as it did with Solar Panel production and can artificially dominate a world market if it chooses. There are three aspects to Chinese ‘slave’ labour. (1) the use of prisons housing criminals. The use of convicts to work isn’t unusual in the world however but (2) The use of political prisoners in internment camps and (3) the use of what China calls ‘poverty alleviation’ which is in reality the forced conscription of rural peasants to work in factories are concerning. This is a major topic that needs more in depth consideration but China is to all intents and purposes using slavery and this will need to be addressed before any Chinese infrastructure is used to support 30 by 30. - Multinational Tax avoidance. This was mentioned in the main article but is something that western governments appear to find particularly difficult to address. Again a fundamental aspect of a free market is that all participants bear the same level of tax or the market becomes unfair and distorted. The Tax Justice network and the Fair Tax mark are good sources of information on the topic.
Annex C – Fitting Humans in around nature
Something like 6%-8% of the UK land surface is built on or ‘urban’. While we are setting aside 30% for nature it might be advisable to add a couple of extra percent to the total to help alleviate the housing crisis in the UK. The main problem with house building in the UK is the cost and availability of land and this land would then be used to build ecological housing that maximised biodiversity, by-passing the traditional house building process. Being part of nature is very good for human health and with the huge number of humans in the world working out how to fit humans into nature will be very good for nature too!
Annex D – Adding the UK’s National Parks to 30 by 30
Although the UK’s national parks cover something like 9.5% of its land counting them into 30 by 30 is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, a lot of what the UK calls national parks aren’t what the rest of the world call national parks. Many are just areas of private land ownership that have strict planning laws applied to them. In addition, many have been subject to hundreds if not thousands of years of agricultural use and are not biodiverse at all. The New Forest in Hampshire is often held up as a good example of what biodiverse countryside looks like – a mixed landscape of woodland, grassland and scrub. On the other hand, much of the uplands in the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, for example, has been heavily grazed by sheep and in diversity terms nothing really grows or lives there. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature grades protected land worldwide from 1 to 6 (1 is best). Most of the UK’s national parks get a grade of 5. Their 2022 report concluded that “UK National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty may not currently meet the IUCN definition of ‘protected areas” . If these areas were incorporated into 30 by 30 then they would have to change dramatically and this is going to be highly controversial.
Annex E – Obtaining the Land for 30 by 30 (compulsory purchase!).
The land for 30 by 30 is not going to accessible on the open market. Compulsory Purchase orders are going to be required. Ironically these orders are what have been used many times in the past to buy up countryside for motorways and construction. Some, for example those used for the Newbury and Winchester by passes and for HS2, were bitterly fought over by protesters (remember Swampy?). With 30 by 30.the proverbial boot would be on the other, compulsory purchase, foot – buying land for nature, not for building. It doesn’t mean it would be any the less controversial and would probably be fought through the courts (if not by people chaining themselves to trees). Guy Shrubsole, author of the book ‘who owns England’, covers the options well on his website. About 50% of the land in the UK is owned by about 0.5% of the population and a significant portion of that still belongs to descendants of family and friends of William the Conqueror. In 1967 a journalist Roy Perrott did some detailed research and reckoned that about 3,000 of the UK’s nobility (0.005 % of the population) still owned 17.9 million acres or 30% of the UK. They still own some of the 97% of the land that was seized by the Normans during the conquest and then gained further by the Land enclosures in the centuries that followed – between 1604 and 1914 some 6.8 million acres of common land were enclosed by acts of parliament – 20% of all England. You don’t have to be a raving Marxist to be uncomfortable about this but in a property owning democracy land rights have to be respected and compulsory purchase for 30 by 30 would be a good way of restoring land to the ‘commons’. This is again where we get a tiny bit of insight into what was going on in the UK during the abolitionist era. At the time some made the argument that buying out the so called ‘property rights’ of slavers would avoid possible conflict with the colonies. Considering what happened in the American Civil war, which was at least partially about the issue of slavery, they may have been right. Natural England and the Forestry Commission already have the powers of compulsory purchase, they just need the money, so let’s just do it!
Annex F – Water quality
The mess caused by the UK’s Water Companies to our seas and rivers is at last getting some national attention but unfortunately we are only just touching the surface of the issue. The current furore is about the biological waste that is being released untreated. Even if the water companies were doing their job as defined in their charters they aren’t doing enough. They are only treating biological waste. The ‘treated’ output is still full of chemical waste. It contains nutrients that cause algae blooms that kill off all fish life. The contain hormones that interfere with fish reproduction and decimate their populations and it also affects human fertility. Male sperm count across many parts of the world has dropped by 50% since the 1970’s and this is directly due to the quality of our water. The cost of IVF to the NHS is another hidden cost of our water industry dodging its obligations. All you have to do, to clean the water of chemical waste, is give nature a chance to work on it. You slow it down and pass it through ponds full of reeds and water plants and nature does the rest. These are called Integrated Constructed Wetlands. The Norfolk river authority has used this to great affect to ensure that the Ingol chalk stream is protected from water pollution. In biodiversity terms these ICDs would count towards the 30 by 30 targets as they are very biodiverse (and score ‘high’ in the Governments biodiversity credit scheme).