The RSPB view

Saltholme landscape

After a decade of painstaking work, and with huge support from our partner, the Teesside Environmental Trust, and many others, we recently opened our Saltholme Wildlife Reserve and Discovery Park.

It is a fabulous place. Watching scores of lapwings tumbling above the newly restored wetlands is a heart-warming sight and people are flocking to see it. In just six weeks, 15,000 visitors enjoyed the wildlife spectacle and we expect that Saltholme will grow to attract at least 100,000 visits each year. Clearly, people want nature in their lives and, perhaps, in these difficult economic times more of us will turn back to the simpler things in life.

Our nature reserves offer an alternative day out at little cost and a chance to reconnect with nature. There has never been a better time to come along to our reserves and make a date with nature.

All those visitors to Saltholme help to support local businesses and have created 55 full-time jobs in the local area—including 15 on the reserve itself. Given the current state of the economy, it is refreshing to be able to report the creation of new jobs. So, Saltholme stands as a case study where environmental restoration has provided a real economic boost to the local area and provided an asset which local people appreciate—a small but significant example of sustainable development.

As world politicians respond to the economic crisis, they need to think beyond the banks. It is not just financial debt that has escalated, but an increasing ecological debt that threatens our future prosperity. The twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change are global proof that we are living beyond our means. Politicians must be prepared to address ecological debt as well as economic debt.

Unless we invest in protecting and restoring our natural world, we are not just borrowing from future generations, we are in effect stealing from them.

Ecological debt is essentially a loan from our children and grandchildren—unless we invest in protecting and restoring our natural world, we are not just borrowing from future generations, we are in effect stealing from them.

This month, our Government announces its Budget and measures to help restart the economy. We are not expecting the Chancellor to announce plans to create local nature reserves across the country (though come to think of it, why not?), but it surely makes sense to invest in measures to protect nature and reap “free” public services such as flood control, carbon storage and spiritual enrichment.

And this is a crucial opportunity to ignite a low-carbon economy. Sir Nicholas Stern, the economist who famously argued that it pays to take action to prevent climate change rather than wait and deal with the consequences, has suggested that the scale of any economic stimulus package should be about 4% of a nation’s Gross Domestic Product and that about 20% of this package should support low-carbon infrastructure.

If the Chancellor accepts this argument, we might expect around £14 billion to support measures to cut the energy we consume and help deliver renewable energy. This would be extremely welcome and could help restructure our economy to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel.

Though the case for action is evermore urgent, the RSPB will continue to argue that public policy should not support energy projects that needlessly damage the natural environment. Over the coming months, the Government has to make decisions about more wind farms on land, the location of wind farms and oil and gas explorations at sea, and the preferred option for harnessing tidal power from the Severn estuary.

An enlightened Government would choose the most environmentally benign solutions, which produce clean energy at an affordable cost.

In 2005, the UK Government outlined its vision for sustainable development. It acknowledged that a strong economy was not an objective in its own right, but rather a means to delivering its twin targets of a healthy and just society, living within environmental limits. During this period of genuine economic pain and uncertainty, we hope that the Government’s actions will reflect the principles they set out in easier times.