The document summarizes key lessons from the National Ecosystem Assessment report. It makes four main points: 1) The NEA report provides important messages about the value of nature, but needs to communicate using clear and accessible language for the public and policymakers to understand. 2) Nature is too important to privatize, and coordinated action is needed to address ongoing habitat and species decline through our "National Environment Service". 3) Long-term support for nature is needed to maintain its values of life, health and well-being, but budget cuts threaten this. 4) The environment needs to be prioritized within improved governance championed by the government. The NEA and planning framework can help if

1. The National Environment Service: Paying the Price for Nature.
Professor Alister Scott writes on the recent publication of the National
Ecosystem Assessment
“Good planning is key to the delivery of a good quality natural environment.
We have today a Natural Environment Service in crisis which needs protecting
and investing in”.
There is much to welcome in the recent National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) report1. The value of
nature has always been under-represented in resource management decisions and whilst many
might be troubled about putting financial values on nature, it certainly reveals to people that nature
has wider value to us all and is not just the preserve for David Attenborough’s and scientists. It gives
people a stake even if they are unsure how such values were ascribed and how they vary from place
to place and from person to person.
It is interesting to note that much of the press focus has been on these ascribed values (eg £300 view
of green space) but the report has much more to offer. However, reading it in its entirety is likely to
be something that few public ever do; its sheer size makes it challenging and the summary report is
still 60 pages long, way beyond the scope of many politicians! One early finding in the report is that
the public do not really understand the ecosystem approach and ecosystem services. This is serious
as it reflects the malaise of ‘scientific elitism and imperialism’ which alienates the public and makes
them increasingly sceptical of scientists. Surely as academics we need to make the problems we
research and our frameworks, findings and debates more intelligible rather than remaining
‘intoxicated by the eloquence of our own verbosity’.
Lesson 1 : The NEA report is welcome and provides important messages concerning the value of
nature but it needs to convey its messages in clear, accessible and meaningful vocabulary using a
conceptual framework that is understandable by the public and policy makers alike. Currently it
runs the risk of being marginalised as people fail to engage with the EA idea; ecosystem approach
and services are not user friendly terms and we need to be smarter in the way we develop and
communicate science at all levels.
The report does contain a useful and valuable inventory of what is happening to nature in the UK. It
is clear from the evidence presented across the different habitats that many of our ecosystems and
their associated ecosystem services are declining and have been for some time. This demands
urgent action involving Defra and its key agencies Natural England; Environment Agency and
Forestry Commission and, crucially, local decision makers and land managers. Yet despite the recent
Environment White Paper,2 the significant cut in budgets for these agencies may jeopardise such
1
Defra 2011 The national ecosystem approach http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/
2
Defra 2011 Environment White paper
http://www.archive.defra.gov.uk/environment/natural/documents/newp-white-paper-110607.pdf

2. action. With previous plans for privatisation of forests and ideas for privatisation of national nature
reserves there is a real worry that nature itself might become embedded in some form of
privatisation agenda now that there is a databank of values, which suggests that there is a profit to
be made somewhere by someone. Nature is perhaps too important to be reduced to such vagaries;
here I offer a similar argument to the reforms of the NHS. We have a National Environment Service
where competition, profits and margins are not helpful concepts and risk distorting or hyping the
true value of nature and the need for its effective management for short term gain. So whilst the
Defra White Paper is welcome in providing targeted opportunities for nature we need to be mindful
of the risk of privatisation and indeed recognise that many of the new schemes in the White Paper
are merely recycling much of the monies previously available within what were successful
Biodiversity Action Plans (BAPs) - now cut . This recycling of old wine in new bottles for ‘cheap’
coalition gains is counterproductive and threatens many of the good partnership working schemes
and relationships previously set up.
Lesson 2: Nature is too important to be privatised. In effect we have a National Environment
Service and given that habitats and species are still declining and deteriorating, co-ordinated
action is needed to address this at the appropriate scale.
In stressing this need for action, the NEA report used various scenarios (green; business; top down;
bottom up and status quo storylines) to illustrate potential future impacts. Yet there is still inherent
fear amongst policy makers that following a green agenda is inimical to economic growth. The NEA
shows that our natural environment has real benefits to society and has ascribed values for
comparative purposes. However, maintaining and improving those values depends on long term
actions and resources which improve the quality of the resource. The spatiality of ecosystem
services means that there are currently winners and losers and there is an urgent need to improve
the quality of the environmental resource to all. Here, landscape and health agendas (cultural
services) can be subject to ‘postcode lotteries’. Moreover, historically designation was expert-led
and focussed attention and human and financial resources on the ‘best’ or most ‘valuable’
landscapes, habitats and species with implicit assumptions about those areas or features not worthy
of designation. Today we have more egalitarian agendas based on new approaches involving
connectivity, inclusion, green infrastructure and active public engagement. Whilst practice still has
to fully embrace such considerations there are emerging examples of good practice; however my
own research tends to find that these are in spite of policy initiatives rather than because of them.
Lesson 3: Nature in its (often unacknowledged) role of our fundamental source of life, health and
well-being needs continued long term support set within notions of environmental and social
justice. Budget cuts threaten this in the short term.
There remains one principal challenge of the NEA which hasn’t really featured in press reaction thus
far relating to the tension and separation between the environment and the planning system. NEA
falls under the mantle of Defra. However, this framework needs to involve all the key government
departments, particularly DECC, BIZ, and CLG to be successful. The planning system is perhaps key
here given its central role in shaping places and managing the environment. Today, planning is
under the helm of ‘Captain Pickles’ and is sailing its own course of reforms in somewhat stormy
waters. On the face of it, this course seems ill-prepared to engage with the NEA. First the National
Planning Framework needs to incorporate the ecosystems approach to shape planning policy and

3. guide decision making requiring ecosystem services to be specified, analysed and used in planning
decisions (as material considerations). Yet there is clear evidence that the framework will be
nothing more than a synthesis of existing statements, set within ideas of maximising sustainable
economic development. Second, nature and ecosystems do not recognise boundaries. Yet the
abandoning of a regional tier hinders such strategic planning and, with a focus on localism, will
ensure that local authorities and their elected councillors look inwards to their populations rather
than outwards to their wider environment. Third, Local Enterprise Partnerships, the principal tool
for economic development, scarcely have any environmental remit or representation which again
presents a piecemeal and potentially contradictory approach to development. Fourth, at the local
level we will have neighbourhood plans which, by definition, will not be considering wider
environmental linkages. There is an urgent need to plan at a landscape/ ecosystem scale through
collaboration with interested stakeholders. The models provided by the Water Framework and the
Habitats Directives through river basin management groups and special areas of conservation
committees respectively are useful here but need to command a stronger government steer beyond
a simple duty to co-operate. We need to respond to the NEA within a new model of environmental
governance that plans at the ecosystem scale and that does mean refocusing on strategic planning.
The worrying fact is that the planning system is going in exactly the opposite direction to this.
Lesson 4: The environment needs to be elevated up the policy agenda within improved
governance championed by the Coalition government. The NEA and emerging national Planning
Framework provide the primary vehicles to achieve this. Policy also needs to be co-ordinated
across the government departments in order to prevent contradictions.
In summary good planning is key the delivery of a good quality natural environment. We have a
Natural Environment Service which needs protecting and investing in. The NEA has identified real
challenges for all of us interested in championing nature and preventing its free riding. The dilemma
is that policy is creating a situation where such knowledge will be lost amidst a plethora of different
strategies and plans all being pursued in splendid isolation whereby this country and nature will be
in a right pickle.