This month’s special edition of the journal Ecological Economics focuses on Payments for Environmental Services: Reconciling Theory and Practice. Of particular interest in this edition is an article reporting on a study which developed a framework for deciding when payments are a suitable tool for delivering ecosystem services.

Ecosystems provide vital services to humans, which are public goods, but private landowners often own the physical structures of ecosystems; so policies are needed to encourage landowners to provide the desired ecosystem services. The study identifies five types of policy tools for providing ecosystem services on private land: prescription (regulations), penalties (taxation), property rights (alteration to protect ecosystems), public information (used to change landowner behaviour) and payments for ecosystem services (PES), which compensate landowners who supply ecosystem services on their property.

The study focuses on PES, proposing a framework for deciding when payments are a suitable policy option for delivering ecosystem services; this framework takes into account the attributes of the ecosystem services provided by a particular area of land, including the concepts of rivalry, excludability and the extent of the distribution of the service.

The study also suggests that creating a ‘monopsony’ (a market with only one buyer) can provide an effective way of delivering ecosystem services, because it is relatively easy to calculate the willingness of a buyer to pay by measuring the benefit of the service to an organisation or individual’s well-being. For example, a hydroelectric company could pay upstream landowners to manage their land in order to reduce the amount of silt downstream. The authors also suggest that bundling of ecosystem services could be a useful approach for implementing PES for complex ecosystems which provide many services: the services can be bundled together and multiple sources of funding can be found to support them.

Source: Science for Environmental Policy Issue 193

Original Article: Kemkes, R.J., Farley, J., Koliba, C.J. (2009). Determining when payments are an effective policy approach to ecosystem service provision. Ecological Economics. Doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2009.11.032.

The Natural Capital Initiative has two volunteer opportunities to assist the Secretariat in the planning and running of its activities. Volunteers would need to commit a minimum of three days per week. Each placement would be for a minimum of two months full time equivalent and for a maximum of three months full time equivalent. Volunteers will help:

•Investigate topics related to NCI work themes (volunteers are likely to need to work on multiple work themes)
•Assist with the organisation and running of NCI events
•Assist with the preparation of reports and articles
•Assist with administrative tasks

One volunteering period would be expected to start in summer 2010. The other would be expected to start in the autumn of 2010. NCI partner offices are in Oxfordshire and Central London. Wherever possible, volunteers will have an opportunity to choose their primary work location. Lunch expenses and limited costs for travel between partner offices will be available, subject to prior agreement.

Further details about these opportunities, the knowledge and skills required of applicants and how to apply, are available from the internship advertisement, which you can download from the British Ecological Society’s website.

Closing date: 21st April
Interviews to be held in London on 9th June.

The Policy Lunchbox network was today joined by Sirini Withana, Policy Analyst at the Institute of European Environmental Policy. Sirini led a fascinating discussion to explain the structures and processes of policy-making in the European Union. The EU has grown from a loose organisation of six Member States in the 1950’s, established to deal with economic issues, to a coalition of 27 Member States which now generates over 80% of the UK’s environmental policies.

Sirini began by outlining the three main structures of the European Union: the European Commission; the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union.

The European Commission
The European Commission is essentially the ‘civil service’ of the EU, politically independent and in charge of initiating European community policy. The Commission comprises the ‘College of Commissioners’ and ‘Commission’s Services’. Within the College each Member State is represented by one Commissioner, appointed for a five-year term. The UK Commissioner is Lady Catherine Ashton, also HIgh Representative of Foreign Affairs. The Commission’s Services is the permanent apolitical administration for the the Commission, charged with preparing policy proposals. The Commission’s Services is organised into Directorates, such as DG Environment and DG Research. Within DG Research, the Joint Research Centre provides scientific and technical advice to the Directorates.

The European Parliament
The European Parliament meanwhile is composed of 736 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), directly elected by the electorate in Member States. Of these, 72 MEPs are from the UK. Each MEP has a five-year term of office. MEPs organise themselves into political groups within the Parliament, of which there are currently seven, with the European People’s Party (EPP), a centre-right group, currently the largest and most powerful.

The European Parliament shares the power to make laws and control over the EU budget with the Council of the European Union.

Legislation proceeds through the work of specialist Parliamentary Committees, of which there are 20. Once a proposal has been put forward by the Commission, a lead Committee is identified to take this forward, with an MEP from this Committee appointed to act as a ‘rapporteur’, leading the work on this area of legislation by the Committee. Once the Committee has considered the proposal and collated information a report will be presented and voted on at a plenary session of all MEPs.

The Council of the European Union
As already mentioned above, the Council of the European Union passes legislation and has control of the EU budget, jointly with the European Parliament. The Council meets in nine different ‘formations’, one of which is the ‘European Council’, which represents Member States’ interests and comprises the Heads of State of each EU member country. The current (first) President of the European Council is Herman Van Rompuy. The Presidency (Chair) of the other eight ‘formations’ of the Council of the European Union rotates between Member States, once every six months.

Decision-Making: European Parliament and Council of the European Union
Decision-making usually occurs via a process of ‘Ordinary Legislative Procedure’. The European Commission tables a proposal which is then allocated to one of the nine ‘formations’ of the Council of the European Union. The Parliament and Council then take it in turns to consider the proposal and issue a formal opinion upon it. If both bodies disagree at this stage, a ’second reading’ of the proposal takes place. If there is still no agreement after this stage a ‘Concilliation Committee’ is formed. If after the process of Concilliation the two parties still do not agree the proposal is dropped.

The UK feeds into this process through the UK Permanent Representation to the EU (UKRep), which receives its negotiating mandate from the UK Government.

Following this very useful overview, Sirini offered a few tips for how best to influence policy-making in the EU:

- Keep track of upcoming developments: review the annual strategy and work programme for the EU, one launched in March and the other in the autumn each year;
- Influence the development of proposals: identify the desk officer working on a particular proposal and engage with them; respond to open consultations;
- Exercise influence during the legislative process: engage with the rapporteur (MEP) leading the development of legislation for a particular Parliamentary Committee and engage too with other MEPs on that Committee. Many will not be specialists in the area they are reviewing and will welcome input;
- Influence the UK Government, thereby influencing the negotiating position put forward by UKRep.

Overall, Sirini encouraged us to ’stay ahead of the game’, influencing policy at the earliest opportunity. Identifying and building relationships with key people in Brussels, including through receptions and events, is important, as is providing clear, concise and evidence-based input. Being clear about the steps in the EU decision-making process will help organisations to target their input in the most effective way.

Policy Lunchbox is a network for policy professionals maintained by the Biochemical Society and British Ecological Society. For details of forthcoming events please see the Policy Lunchbox webpage on the Biochemical Society website.

The three major political parties have launched supplementary manifestos: A green future fair for all”>Labour and the Policies for the environment”>Liberal Democrats launched their ‘green’ manifestos on 25 April whilst the Modern Conservatism; our quality of life agenda”>Conservative Party launched their supplementary manifesto, including a chapter on ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’, on Monday 26th. All three contain information in addition to the commitments made in the main party manifestoes, launched two weeks ago.

The Guardian website carries a useful article by Damian Carrington outlining the headline messages from the Labour and Liberal Democrat documents.

On March 5th, the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) wrote to the leaders of the main political parties asking them to set out their policies on science and engineering prior to the election (the letter was also published in the Times). Responses have been received from David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party and Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats. A response from Gordon Brown, leader of the Labour Party, has not yet been received, but his party have promised to respond before the election. A summary will be posted here when the response is received by CaSE.

David Cameron’s letter reiterated many of the commitments in the Conservative manifesto but also mentioned some additional plans, including establishing new Technical Academies for vocational education in each of the 12 largest cities in England. Regarding the proposed postponement and review of the Research Excellence Framework, Mr Cameron’s letter recognised the difficulties of measuring ‘impact’ of research, and stated that if it is not possible to find a impact measurement that is robust and accepted by the scientific community, then it would be removed from the framework. The letter emphasised the Conservative party’s focus on developing policy that would create the conditions for Britain to become Europe’s leading high-tech exporter. In the letter, Mr Cameron also highlighted plans to establish a clearer definition of the Haldane principle (that decisions on individual research proposals are best delegated to scientific experts).

Nick Clegg’s letter mentioned a key issue from the Liberal Democrat manifesto, which relates to planned measures to support women in science and engineering, including improving careers advice and examining ways in which the impact of the ‘publication gap’ for those who take a career break to raise a family can be minimised. The letter mentioned plans for improving career structure for young researchers through creating more post-doctoral positions, and making PhDs more industry friendly. Regarding research impact assessment, the letter stated that the Liberal Democrats would support making it a requirement for scientists to consider the potential impact of their work for all grant applications, but this should not be used to decide whether projects are funded or not. Mr Clegg’s letter highlighted plans to improve the use of Science in government, through moving the Government Office for Science from BIS to the Cabinet Office, and reforming the scope of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology so that it has a more proactive role in informing parliamentary activities.

Mass observations of frogs spawning have sounded a warning bell not only for the future of the common frog but also for Britain’s wildlife more generally.

Frogs are so locally adapted that they may not be able to cope with even modest climate change, new research led by Imperial College London has found.

What’s true of frogs is likely to be true for many other poorly-dispersing species. Their only alternative will be to move and that is not an option unless there is swift action to create landscapes that work for wildlife as well as people.

These are the conclusions of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It analysed more than 50,000 UK observations of first frogspawn from 1998-2006 collated by Nature’s Calendar, a national survey coordinated by the Woodland Trust.

A unique approach to assessing local adaptation was developed. It compared how relationships between temperature and spawning dates vary across Britain with how they vary over time.

All populations spawn earlier in warmer years but southern populations do so several days earlier than northern ones even if they experience the same temperatures, a difference that can be attributed to natural selection. Indeed, it was discovered that this local adaptation is detectable between populations throughout Britain in neighbouring 150km grid squares; areas the size of an average English county.

Data on frogspawning was collected by the general public

The paper’s authors come from Imperial College London, the University of Edinburgh, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, and the Woodland Trust.

Joint lead author Albert Phillimore, a Junior Research Fellow from the Division of Biology at Imperial College London, said “For frog populations to keep in step with medial projections of climate change for 2050-2070, they may need to spawn about 30 days earlier. Their current flexibility, however, may only enable them to spawn 7 days earlier. It’s unlikely that frogs will be able to evolve sufficiently rapidly, so they will need to move northwards. All frog populations face a challenge but the most southerly populations are in the greatest predicament because the English Channel provides a total barrier to immigration from further south.”

British frogs could be threatened by mild climate change

“Local adaptation has been assessed in relatively few species, as it has previously required logistically-challenging experiments”, said co-author, Richard Smithers, the Woodland Trust’s senior conservation adviser. “But like frogs, a great many other species are poor at dispersing and may be locally adapted.”

Jarrod Hadfield, joint lead author from the University of Edinburgh, added, “Our study demonstrates the great value of citizen science. The observations collected by the public have enabled us to gain important, if sobering insights, into the evolutionary challenges that frogs are likely to face”.

Article, Imperial College website, 20 April 2010, Lucy Goodchild

The deadline for applications to take part in the second BES – NERC Science Policy Interactions workshop is rapidly approaching. There are now only two working days left before the deadline of 5pm, 16th April 2010.

The workshop is taking place on 18th – 19th May at the Defra Innovation Centre, Reading. The BES and NERC will cover the cost of accomodation and a networking dinner for all participants.

This workshop is aimed at early career researchers who are members of the BES and/ or funded by NERC and is aimed at supporting attendees’ science to policy activities through:

- Provision of information about means of engagement with policy and how this can best proceed, with some sessions including input from Defra and Environment Agency policymakers

- An opportunity to practice communication skills

- Establishment of a science – policy professional network to facilitate ongoing science to policy discussion and sharing of best practice

The workshop itself is funded by NERC and BES, including accommodation in Reading for one night, refreshments for both days and a dinner on the evening of 18th May. Travel costs are not covered by NERC and BES. Further information and an application form are available from http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/policy/policy_training.php. If you require further information, please contact Lesley Aspinall at NERC (e-mail laa@nerc.ac.uk)

Adam Afriyie MP, Conservative Shadow Minister for Science and Innovation, joined policy officers and others at The Royal Academy of Engineering this afternoon at an event organised by PolicyNet. Mr Afriyie discussed the Conservative Party’s plans for Science and Engineering policy. A key message from the Shadow Minister was that his party believe that science is vitally important in helping to boost the economy and lift the country out of recession. He recognised the importance of long-term stable investment in science, which he said would be achieved through a ‘multi-year’ ring-fenced budget.

Although he emphasised that there are no plans for a major revolution in science policy, he mentioned several key areas in which the Conservatives plan to make changes. He spoke about how the Conservative Party plans to transform the UK into a European leader for high-tech exports (Britain is currently second in the EU, behind Germany). The science education system would be improved, by making studying triple science available to all students, and improving science teaching by repaying student loans of top graduates for every year they spend in the classroom. There are also plans to create a science literacy programme, open to all new MPs and compulsory for Conservative MPs, which would be run by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Adam Afriyie also mentioned that there would be a moratorium on the Research Excellence Framework for up to two years, until a full understanding of how best to measure impact is achieved, a plan which is likely to be welcomed by many scientists. However a perhaps less popular aspect of the Conservative’s plans was that Adam Afriyie gave the impression that his party did not see the importance of having a Science Minister in cabinet. In speaking on this point, Mr Afriyie suggested that more significant was that the Conservative Party, if successfully elected to Government, accepted the importance of science at the highest level of administration. Many in the science community will be disappointed that the Conservatives are not commited to giving science a seat at the Cabinet table.

In the coming weeks, science spokespeople from the other main political parties will be speaking at further events organised by PolicyNet. Meanwhile, each major political party will release its manifesto this week. Adam Afriye indicated that science would be included in the Conservative manifesto: the BES Policy Team will post more information here when it is available.

This week, as part of the Radio 4 series ‘Costing the Earth’, presenter Tom Heap interviewed various people who are interested in the idea of putting a price on nature.

Ian Bateman from the National Ecosystem Assessment explained how this project aims to use scientific assessment to put monetary value on the natural environment. This is important because decision makers need quantified information to be able to properly consider the trade offs of different decisions. Steven Trotter from Warwickshire Wildlife Trust gave the example of the planned development of a high speed rail link between Birmingham and London which will cut through an area of ancient woodland: the woodland is under threat because nature is not considered on an equal basis with the business case for development.

Pavan Sukhdev explained how The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study organises research into the valuation of global ecosystems so that policy-makers can use this in practice to assess the value of an area of land. Andrew Simms, Policy Director of the New Economics Foundation appreciated the importance of valuing ecosystems but warned of the dangers relating to the fact that pricing works on a short timescale whereas impacts on natural environments can work on a much longer timescale. In order to avoid degradation of ecosystems just because someone can afford to do it, it will be essential to create science based boundaries to cap the use of resources. Andy Atkins from Friends of the Earth expressed his concerns that focussing on the value of nature will detract from dealing with the root causes of destruction.

Tom Heap concluded by saying that it may be hard for people to accept that the implementation of a valuation approach to natural habitats will increase the cost of living, but this would be better than the current situation where these costs are being picked up by future generations and poor countries through destroying habitats for agriculture and importing food.