‘HDC should start to value its green spaces properly’

Last week the HM Treasury’s report on the Economics of Biodiversity: The DasGupta Review was published.

The headline messages available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review show where we have got it so wrong in treating nature as a commodity to exploit and how endangering biodiversity endangers our future prosperity.

We are all at fault, but institutional failure is clear too: institutions have systematically under-valued nature and paid others to exploit it.

The Wilder Horsham District, greatly welcomed by the Horsham Green Spaces Forum, is an initiative to improve biodiversity in the district. It may be a small step in the right direction, but an important one. We were greatly encouraged by the enthusiasm of Richard Black, the project’s landowner adviser, when he visited Horsham to review the connectivity between Horsham’s green spaces from Warnham Nature Reserve to Chesworth Farm via the Riverside Walk.

As a forum we are looking at initiatives to increase biodiversity and wildlife corridors across the town.

This is in addition to what we already do at our own sites, such as the bee and pollinator bed in Horsham park.

As volunteers we are able to take action because HDC is the landowner and the parks and countryside team encourages projects improving biodiversity.

Richard Black has a harder job to persuade farmers and other private landowners to take action to increase biodiversity on their own land, for example losing field space for thicker hedges to provide habitat for birds, insects and mammals.

This shows why it is so important that HDC should start to value its green spaces properly and hang on to them.

As landowner, it is holding extremely valuable natural capital and has total control for using it to improve biodiversity and so prosperity for future generations.

Describing Rookwood golf course with its range of wildlife habitats as an ‘underperforming asset’ is exactly what the DasGupta report demonstrates is based both on the wrong calculations and flawed economic models.

The report demands ‘We need to change how we think, act and measure success.’

A step would be to start measuring the success of our green spaces not in profit and loss terms, as capital assets to be sold for profit, but as places critical for nature and the wellbeing of residents.

Our green spaces need proper protection. They need to put out of the reach of flawed institutional thinking, of current and future administrations.

I urge our strategic planners and councillors to read the DasGupta Review.