Speech by Jonathan Shaw MP at the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund Promotional Event, Hyde Park, London- 13 March 2008
Thank you for inviting me to launch these benchmark reports and to Simon for his introduction.
Defra has recently reviewed its strategy to ensure that the government is ready for the environmental challenges facing us in the 21st century. One planet living certainly applies in the case of aggregates with the finite resource we have.
We identified two high level goals which are essential to the overall aim of living within our environmental means: “tackling the causes and consequences of climate change” and “securing a healthy natural environment”.
Quarrying is a vital economic activity. It provides materials to support the country’s wider economic development. It provides around 40,000 jobs and a high proportion of these in rural areas.
But, like other types of economic activity, we need to consider environmental impacts at the same time – the damage that can happen to our landscapes and more local impacts like dust and noise. There are also benefits for the natural environment from well restored former quarries.
Since 2002, Defra's Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund has invested nearly £40 million in 360 research and development projects to advance knowledge and the techniques for the environmental management of land-based aggregates production. This is around a third of the total spend.
While some of the work funded through the Levy Fund provides immediate physical benefits to local communities and the environment this research, and the parallel research we are funding on marine dredging, is about ensuring we know how to shape the sustainable industry of the future.
I am impressed by the range of subjects this research has covered. from managing local impacts such as noise, dust and vibration in local communities, to characterising the archaeological resources at extraction sites, to improving the techniques and data to inform restoration of sites after extraction.
One project which struck me was the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds project -Nature After Minerals. This estimated that quarry restoration could create enough priority wildlife habitat to exceed Government Biodiversity Action Plan habitat creation targets for nine different habitats. This includes over 8000 hectares of reedbed and 25,000 hectares of lowland meadows - a great opportunity.
There are big differences between well-managed quarries, and those that need to be managed better. We need to deal with those sites, because they’re responsible for a large proportion of the quarry-based impacts that concern us.
One of the answers is spreading good practices, giving them a profile, and training people to take them on board.
So I think it is very important to have this series of 'benchmark reports' which showcase the findings and advances of this work.
Delighted to launch them and the website that goes with them.
The reports will make this information more accessible to those of you who can use it to improve our environment. This event marks the launch of the reports and the start of the dissemination process.
I would like to congratulate the writers and teams of you who put them together.
As for the future, I am delighted we were able to secure funding for a further three years in the recent Comprehensive spending review.
We are consulting on what the Fund should do in the future .
Turning to Defra’s other goal, on climate change, we have taken the opportunity to add in some new work on carbon reduction. I was pleased to see the work that the Quarry Products Association are already doing with their statement of intent on carbon.
It is true that, in our consultation, we are not proposing to be as generous on research funding as in the past. But our reading is that the need is for a more focussed programme of work in key areas such as how do we establish the right combination of aggregates from the various sources, taking account of environmental, social and economic factors. And we also see it as very important that we keep up this work on knowledge transfer. This event is only the starting point.
But Defra doesn't have all the answers here and I look forward to hearing your views on the proposals we have set out in our consultation.
Finally I would like to thank English Heritage and the Minerals Industry Research Organisation for organising this event and English Heritage for the use of this great venue.
I look forward to hearing Duncan's view from the industry and talking to you later.
Page published: 14 March 2008