Speech by Hilary Benn at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington - Confronting resource scarcity and the crisis of sustainability, 14 May 2009

Thank you Rob Litwak (Director of the International Security Studies Program, Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars).

It is a great pleasure to be back here at this centre which honours the memory of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States.

He was, of course, known the world over for his commitment to peace and to justice; great causes for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. He was an internationalist, and his vision helped to reorder the world, and still guides the politics of Europe today.  

And it is about the great threat to peace and justice in our age that I wish to talk principally today.

President Wilson was alive to this threat. In his inaugural address, delivered  96 years ago, he listed what he described as ‘the things that ought to be altered’.

Among the ‘chief items’ were:

‘an industrial system which.... exploits without renewing or conserving the natural resources of the country; a body of agricultural activities not served as it should be by science; watercourses undeveloped, waste places unreclaimed, forests untended, fast disappearing without plan or prospect of renewal.’

Now, this was a litany of environmental degradation, in a country, studied in the techniques of production, but casual about its costs. And this was true of a lot of countries in the world.

A century on, our world has changed – in many ways for the better – and yet these problems persist, deepened over the years by the very forces that Wilson himself identified.

The consequence is that we are today faced with a crisis of sustainability.

The most glaring threat is that of dangerous climate change. But it is not the only example of the problems we create when we exploit the world’s resources unsustainably.

The spiralling price of food in 2008 was a wake-up call.

Riots threatened political stability. Export bans threatened world trade. Wheat prices doubled, rice quadrupled. And another 75 million people were threatened by poverty and hunger  - in a world in which one billion people are overweight and another billion go to bed hungry every single night.

Josette Sheeran, of the World Food Programme – her organisation priced out of buying food on the open market – called it a ‘silent tsunami’. She was right.

And although prices may have fallen back today, the problem has not gone away. Demand is growing and global food production will need to double by the middle of the century to meet it.

And that means there will be more pressure on land and more pressure on water – the two things we need to grow food.

We are already seeing a new Klondike scramble for land as potentially food poor, but income rich countries rush to secure fertile farmland in Africa and across the developing world. They probably remember Mark Twain’s wise advice to buy land because ‘they’re not making it anymore.’

Private companies and countries – China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and many others – have been doing just that. And, as I understand you were discussing at your ‘Land Grab’ conference here just a week or so ago, millions of hectares of earth are changing hands.

In the past, increased agricultural yields have fed the world and eased the pressure on land. Norman Borlaug – the man who more than anyone else revolutionised agriculture in the developing world – pointed out that if yields had stayed where they were in 1950, then by the start of this century we would have needed an extra 1.8 billion hectares of land to grow the same amount of grain. Now that’s an area roughly the size of South America.

We don’t have any more land. So while we need a new agricultural revolution, we also know that the intensive production of the last one did not come without a cost.

So, this time, the increase in global production must be achieved in a way that is environmentally sustainable. The expansion of biofuels to the detriment of food production and vulnerable ecosystems is an example of where we can get the balance wrong.

But it’s not just land that we need to produce food, it’s water too – and we need to start recognising just how valuable and precious this stuff is.

A third of the world’s population is today living in places where water is scarce. A third.  By 2025 it will be two thirds.

Lake Chad provides water for more than 20 million people, across four countries. In the 1960s the surface area of the lake was over 25,000 square kilometres; today it is less than 1,500.

When I visited the Miyun Reservoir last November – it’s about two hours drive north‑east of Beijing – I learned that it is the main supply of drinking water for the capital. It can sustain about 10 million people, but is now struggling to serve a population closer to 18 million.

Over the last decade water levels in the reservoir have sunk lower and lower. What was four billion cubic metres of water is now down to one billion, and it is not being properly replenished.

So the Chinese Government has acted. They are planting forests on the catchments around the lake to act as a sponge to capture water that would previously have run-off the eroded soil and evaporated. They are paying farmers to change from rice to less water-intensive crops. And they are now building a canal to divert part of the Yangtze River by almost 1,000 miles; it’s like pumping water from here to Texas.

Across the world, people are now recognising just how precious our resources are. Steven Chu, your new Energy Secretary, has issued a stark warning that California – which currently provides about half of America’s vegetables – could become an agriculture-free state by the end of the century because there simply won’t be enough water available.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, sees an even greater risk. At the 2008 World Economic Forum he said:

‘The challenge of securing safe and plentiful water for all is one of the most daunting challenges faced by the world today. Too often where we need water, we find guns instead.’

The terrible conflict in Darfur, for example, has been made worse by extended droughts as pastoral farmers clash in their search for food. And what will we do when human beings start to fight each other, not about politics, or religion or land, but about water?  

The truth is, these threats are real, they are immediate, and they will affect us all. Environmental degradation is putting an increasing strain on our natural resources, and it is both a cause and an effect of climate change.

So in the year of Copenhagen, the most important gathering in human history – in my view, an agreement on cutting emissions would be the biggest single step we could take to safeguard these resources.  And yet even such an agreement will not – indeed cannot – encompass all of the things we need to do to safeguard our environment. And the most difficult task we face is to reconcile reducing emissions with reducing poverty – in other words the need for more development.

Many developing countries are already faced with the stark reality of environmental degradation. 

Take Haiti. Massive deforestation has left the country vulnerable to devastating floods. Its watercourses are polluted and laden with sediment. Almost ninety percent of children are chronically infected with intestinal parasites from the dirty water they have no choice but to drink. Ninety percent.

It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and its over-exploited environment is now bankrupt as well. As Franklin D Roosevelt once remarked: ‘a nation that destroys its soil destroys itself’.

Haiti may be an extreme example, but it shows the urgency of the problem, and the necessity to match action on climate change with action on environmental degradation. Those countries which may in the past have regarded worrying about the environment as a luxury for the wealthy, are now becoming aware that they and we need to do something.

Why?  Because the destruction of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity is a problem the world over.

The Millennium Assessment showed us that 60% of our ecosystems are now being degraded or used unsustainably. And so, two years ago, at a meeting of the G8+5 in Potsdam, an initiative was taken to try and transform the debate about natural resources, just as Nick Stern has done on climate change with his ground-breaking report. And the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project, led by Pavan Sukhdev, is now taking forward  some remarkable work.

We all value the natural environment for its beauty – it is part of who we are; it nourishes our souls. But this project seeks to define the economic value of what nature provides – from food and fibres, to fertile soils and carbon storage – much of which our markets take for granted.

There is a different way of seeing nature; people are already paying for the services it can provide. In Brazil communities in forested areas are being paid for their ‘eco-services’ in helping to preserve the trees. In China, they are paying farmers to change their crops in order to improve the soil. And closer to home – my home – in the European Union, we already make payments to farmers for what we call environmental stewardship – ensuring that they farm in an environmentally sensitive manner and recognising the public benefits they provide.

Thomas Friedman talks about two ecosystems; the ‘policies, investments and people’ that it will take to save our ‘plants, animals and forests’. He envisages conservation projects around the world, run by local people, providing jobs that enable communities to thrive without exploiting the local environment – creating what he describes as ‘a million Noahs and a million arks’.

This is the aim of the UK’s Darwin Initiative – working with countries that are rich in biodiversity but unable to provide the money to protect it. To date we’ve funded over 670 projects in more than 140 countries.

We’re also supporting the Congo Basin Forest Fund. We’re seeking to halt the entry of illegally logged timber into the EU market. We’re pushing for an effective agreement on preserving forests at Copenhagen.

And because we cannot count what we cannot measure, we need the help of science, just as we have had on climate change. That is why we strongly support the establishment of a new intergovernmental science body on ecosystems and biodiversity – to undertake a similar role to that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. US support for this will be vital.

There is of course another cause of resource scarcity, and that is increasing demand.

By 2050 there will likely be over 9 billion of us living on this small and fragile planet. So, of course, it prompts the question: can we provide the resources – the food, the water, the energy – to sustain the equivalent of another two Chinas?

It may seem strange in the midst of a global recession, but prosperity is rising in parts of the developing world and this new middle class is a willing consumer. Demand for meat and dairy products is increasing as the western way of eating becomes the latest export. In developing countries it is set to rise by around 25% over the next 10 years.

There is seemingly a contradiction here. Development is the best way of lowering the rate of population growth and so, in turn, lowering the pressure on resources. But development also increases income, and therefore demand.

The way out is to create a green economy, for developing and developed nations alike, that is truly sustainable and equips us for the long-term problems we face.

So what needs doing?

The first task is simply to recognise this truth; we need to live within our environmental means. It will be the low carbon and the resource efficient that will inherit the future.

Second, we need to help build the green economy of tomorrow as we respond to the economic crisis of today. The London Summit of G20 leaders saw agreement on putting money into the green economy.

South Korea has led the way with its green plan. Here in the US, the fiscal stimulus passed by Congress is going to provide a huge boost for renewable energy. And in the UK we have provided an additional $2.3 billion for the low carbon sector. We are investing in waste into energy through anaerobic digestion. We are building new flood defences to protect communities. And, in March, I had the rare opportunity to create a new national park – sixty years after the legislation was passed by the UK Parliament to create the first national park. 

But this is just the start. Our goal must be to make every building energy efficient, all our transport sustainable, all our energy clean or renewable, and all our agriculture sustainable and productive.

Third, to do this, we have to change incentives in our economies; for how else will we make investment change course so we can meet demand with fewer resources?  We will need regulation – like new product standards; financial incentives – like the landfill levy (which has resulted in a big increase in recycling in Great Britain); and encouragement – people making the change themselves in their own lives.   

Fourth, we must seize the opportunities – and create the jobs - that this new era will open up. We will need engineers to build the wave and wind turbines and anaerobic digesters; agronomists to help farmers walk their land with a lower carbon footprint; auto workers to make electric cars – and consumers to buy them; scientists to help us combat new and changing diseases; and landfill miners who will dig for precious raw materials in what we used to call waste.

Fifth, the world needs to come together to deal with water scarcity, the damaging loss of biodiversity, and the challenge of producing enough food. The World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and others, need to respond to crises and support the investment that will secure supplies in the long-term.

The Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security – an initiative of the UN SG which the UK strongly supports – is the best way to do this. But more than anything else, farmers need markets – people with money to buy what they produce. And getting the Doha deal done would be one of the most important steps we could take.

Sixth, and the reason I am here, is that we need America to apply all of its great energy to the task we, together, face.

And we need you to lead.

President Obama’s commitment on climate change is the best hope we have of an agreement in Copenhagen. At the UNEP meeting in Kenya in February, nine years of failure to deal with mercury were transformed by America’s new direction. And the 2010 UN Biodiversity Conference will need you, too.

And the message we hear is loud and it is clear. 

America is back.

And that gives us confidence. Because, above all, we need confidence in ourselves and in our ability to do all this.

The politics of climate change and environmental degradation may not be new, but the world today is smaller than it has ever been. We are more interconnected than ever before. The problems of finance, health and the environment in one nation are the concern of all nations.

And we need to bring new leadership to bear if we are to build our sustainable world.

There are many ties that bind our two countries together – in my own case, my father was from London and my mother from Cincinnati - and I hope that our response to this crisis will forge new bonds.

But by a quirk of history – a coincidence of two centuries ago – there is an old bond that unites us still.

On 12 February 1809, two babies were born. One in a log cabin in Kentucky, the other on an English country estate.

These two children would never meet, but each changed the way we see society, the way we see the world, and the way we see ourselves.

Each challenged the assumptions of his day. And each became an enduring symbol of the quest for truth and reason.

Their names were, of course, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

An American dedicated to a new birth of freedom; an Englishman to the birth of a new science, so forming, as Adam Gopnik argues in his book about these two great, parallel lives, the twin pillars on which our societies now rest.

And as we confront the great questions of our time, we would do well to remember what Darwin’s painstaking research taught him – and us. He wrote:

‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. Rather, it is the one that is most adaptable to change.’

Well, change is coming. We must adapt. It is the challenge to which our generation must rise. And the time to start doing so is now.     

Thank you.                                                                                                                                             

 

Page published: 14 May 2009