Speech by Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP to the Landscape Institute Conference on Climate Change, London - 1 November 2007
Thank you Nigel, Mary.
It’s a pleasure to join you in Regent’s Park today.
According to Wikipedia, the word landscape comes from the Basque word landa meaning ‘laboured earth’.
You probably know that of course, but it’s a really good description of how landscapes are created – shaped by human as well as natural forces.
I’m glad you’ve made climate change the theme of your conference, because it’s something that’s making us all think more about our countryside, our environment, and our planet’s future.
Making us think more about how our choices – as professionals like landscape architects, as a society or as individuals – make an enormous difference to our environment, our precious natural resources and the beauty of the countryside.
I spend much of my working life in London – and much of the rest in Leeds. Having been born in one of our great cities, and having the privilege to represent another I greatly value our city parks and trees.
In our urban areas, trees act as a buffer against noise and they soak up CO2. Parks soften the landscape, they are beautiful to stroll in and they give us the opportunity to stop and to contemplate. They are the green lungs of our cities.
The 410 acres of Regent's Park which Nigel mentioned were designed in 1811 by John Nash who really did see the connection between people and outdoor places.
And later, Dickens wrote about the “children who were sent with their nurses, for air and exercise, into the Regent's Park”.
My contribution has been using the football pitches on which I used to spend the odd Sunday morning. They used to get rather waterlogged, I seem to remember.
I gather Nash turned to your profession to recover from bankruptcy. Nash ended up backing a winner. And your Institute has established a record he would be proud of.
Whether greening gardens or greening the 2012 Olympics, from being leaders in the design of cleaner, greener neighbourhoods to pioneers of green energy and green infrastructure projects.
If I may say so, you bring together the skills, knowledge and passion that we need for the 21st Century in the way that engineering shaped the 19th Century. We need you in the fight to tackle climate change.
My predecessor in this job used to say that we are consuming resources as if we had three planets. We don’t. We only have the one. This is our greatest challenge – to live within the earth’s capacity.
I’m an optimist by nature, but anyone reading the latest IPPC reports or Nick Stern’s profound warnings will understand how climate change will affect the lives of people around the world. Simple things like getting water. Having enough to eat. Being able to live healthily, free from disease.
It seems strange in the context of this summer, but what are we going to do when humans start fighting about water? When we have to deal with refugees fleeing environmental catastrope?
In my old job, I visited a town called Wajid in Somalia – where 11,000 people had turned up because it had stopped raining where they had been living. The human instinct for survival means this happens – so we need the capability to adapt.
This is happening already on a wider scale. The World Health Organisation has estimated that over 50,000 deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2000 were due to climate change. These deaths were due to diarrhoea, flood injury, malaria and malnutrition. Of course it is those who have least, and those who did least to cause it, who are bearing the greatest burden.
Climate change is already happening and some change cannot be reversed.
Increases in the severity and frequency of flooding are already happening, here in the UK. And look at droughts in Australia, Greece and elsewhere in the world.
June 2007 was our wettest June on record. On my first day in this job I saw at first hand the devastation caused to businesses and schools, and to people’s homes in Doncaster.
I’ve also seen the fantastic response of local communities, local government, the emergency services and neighbour helping neighbour.
We can’t prove that any one event is definitely linked to climate change – but we do know that this is happening and that we can expect more of this in the years to come.
As you know the Government is spending more on flood and coastal defence. And over the last decade, we have shown that progress can been made.
The economy has grown, but UK greenhouse gas emissions are 19 per cent lower since 1990. We’ve shown that economic development is possible while tackling climate change – an important lesson for other countries who are concerned that action to mitigate climate change will harm their growth.
But we need to do much, much more.
That’s why we’re introducing the Climate Change Bill to make us the first country to introduce legislation on binding carbon targets.
Alongside this, an improved Climate Change Levy should deliver annual emissions savings of around 27.5 million tonnes of carbon by 2010.
And businesses will be required to reduce their emissions through the carbon reduction commitment.
And we’re investing – over £570m – in the development and deployment of low carbon and energy efficient technologies. We’ve just given the go-ahead to the world’s largest offshore wind power project – the London Array – which, when completed will produce enough power for 1 in 4 of the homes in Greater London.
Twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have thought that was possible. Today it is, when we work together.
We will need your help, input and enthusiasm on a whole range of important issues. You can help show people how it can be done.
So what should we be doing?
Firstly, we need to think how we can do more to highlight the potential of land and land management to deliver benefits – for climate change, for wildlife, for communities and for the rural economy.
Look, for example, at the Great Fen Project which is working to restore over 3,000 hectares of fenland in the east of England. This is creating new wildlife habitats and helping us adapt to climate change, at the same time as enhancing flood protection, promoting public access, supporting tourism and creating new opportunities for local businesses. Multiple benefits from a cracking project.
Although the Fens are unique, that project is just one of many around the country where we are working with landowners, businesses and the others to best use our land. I firmly believe that these type of partnerships are the way to bring about lasting change on the ground.
We are working with Natural England, the National Trust and others to see what lessons we can learn from these projects, both in terms of what they can achieve and what we can change.
That’s not to say however that there isn’t intense competition on what to do with land – there is, and we have to deal with it.
Secondly, I think we should be devoting more time, imagination and effort to green infrastructure. I’m encouraged by what you had to say in your survey on how you’re doing exactly that.
The chance to shape and manage watercourses to support flood storage capacity and enhance habitats for wildlife.
Or planting new woodlands to improve air quality. And being aware of the resilience of trees like the English Oak to adapt to the drier conditions of a changing climate rather than the shallow roots of the beech tree that doesn’t cope so well.
It’s already happening in areas like the Thames Gateway where the focus on green infrastructure ranges from the formal parks and gardens of the inner city out to the expansive coastal marshes.
Forests, trees and woodlands are so important for this country and the world – look at the Congo Basin where governments face a choice about whether to cut down trees or to protect them as carbon sinks.
Thirdly, flood management.
Today, this is obviously at the front of our minds in the context of climate change impacts and the need to adapt.
The Thames Barrier is already being used about 5 times a year. By 2030 we expect to be closing it as much as 30 times a year, probably more than doubling again by the 2080s.
We need to do all we can to assess the risks from flooding, taking the right decisions about where we build things, and use that information to implement the appropriate risk reduction.
And we need to consider all the possible options – building new flood defences, providing flood warning systems, refining our approach to development in flood risk areas.
We also need to integrate flood defences and the natural environment as much as possible, making the maximum possible use of washlands and wetland systems.
And on surface water flooding. We need to think carefully about urban areas - if we concrete over our cities where do we think the surface water will go?
Fourthly, agriculture and farming.
80% of our landscape is in the care of farmers. What they do – or don’t – has a huge impact on our landscape.
That’s why agri-environment schemes are so important. Why reforming the CAP – shifting public money from subsidy to securing benefit for the environment and encouraging the growing number of people in the farming industry to see the benefits – all matter so much.
Finally – the public, us.
40% of emissions come from individuals. When we say ‘Government must do more’ - we all need to do more. If I were to tell you “the Government is sorting out this problem” that wouldn’t be true. We need to combine what we do as individuals with what we ask our politicians and institutions to do.
That’s one of the reasons why a new international agreement is so important. If the developed world upped sticks tomorrow there would still be a huge problem for the developing world to deal with.
One of the great memories of my life was walking alongside the thousands and thousands who marched in Edinburgh before the G8 Summit in 2005 to Make Poverty History. There was a common bond of humanity, which people put at the heart of their individual choices. I want to be able to Make Climate Change History. If each of us takes a step, this will all add together to make more progress than any of us might expect. We must look each other in the eye and say: “I will if you will” – and if we do that then we can meet the challenge.
I wish you the best of luck, and I hope your conference is successful.
Thank you.
Page published:
1 November 2007