Environment protections not ‘anti-growth’ and support the economy, researcher argues

Recent policies unveiled by the government don’t make environmental or economic sense, according to a leading Exeter academic.

Professor Ian Bateman OBE was a member of the Natural Capital Committee which advised seven former Environment Ministers, including Liz Truss, on policies, such as the government’s 25-year Environment Plan.

Now he’s warning that the economy is heavily dependent on the environment and any damage to the former also impacts the latter, despite the Prime Minister accusing environmental groups of being ‘anti-growth.’

In a Green Alliance conference today, Economic Prosperity: is it actually in our nature?, the professor will highlight how portrayals of environmental protections as a barrier to economic growth are ‘specious, wrong-headed and dangerous.’

‘Wherever you are right now, just look around you … all economic output is just one or two steps from its origin in the natural environment,’ he is set to say.

Some areas of policy will not only ‘degrade and already degraded environment’, but ‘make absolutely no sense in terms of their economic impact’.

These include Investment Zones which are planned to boost economic growth through lower taxes and streamlined planning rules.

But Professor Bateman argues environmental protections within the zones are likely to be watered down and competitiveness of areas outside the zones undermined.

He is also concerned about plans to ban solar projects from farmland and the 100 new drilling licences for oil and gas projects in the North Sea, as he says it can take 13 years from initial exploration to land a barrel of oil.

Renewable energy, on the other hand, already provides over 40% of the UK’s energy needs and is much cheaper than oil and gas.

‘If we took just a fraction of the estimated £90bn that is being given to fossil fuel companies and instead invested that in renewables, the UK could have cheaper, independent and secure energy supplies that could never be held to ransom by some overseas power and would massively contribute towards avoiding the environmental and human disaster of climate change,’ he will say at the talk.

Bateman played a crucial role in forming the Environment Land Management Scheme (ELMs), which subsidises farmland that benefits the environment, thanks to his research Public funding for public goods.

He believes plans to review the ELMs are another example of ‘environmental destruction which makes no economic sense.’

A report released earlier this year found delaying ELMs by two years would halve agricultural emissions saved by 2035, while a return to payments of a flat rate for land per hectare would ‘massively benefit rich, large landowners’, with ‘no incentive for farmers to excel at producing environmental benefits.’

The professor will also call for a strengthening of biodiversity net gain rules, as not enough is being done to produce the real environmental gains the policy could deliver, as he says planners are often just planting a few trees or installing a pond ‘encased in clipped grass and tarmac’ on site.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop