We need to be far more intelligent in the way we use land. In truth, we need to pay the true cost of using it – and this applies to development as much as to growing crops. Currently, compensation for impacts to the environment through development planning is insufficient. But the adversarial approaches to development planning just exacerbate the problem. In fact, biodiversity and landscape conservation, together with the other "ecosystem services" that land provides, could be provisioned by a proper engagement with the development industry.
"Biodiversity banking" or "habitat banking" – similar to the conservation credit scheme favoured by the Conservatives in the UK – is an economic strategy that funds conservation actions intended to compensate for and mitigate the unavoidable environmental impact caused by development projects. By brokering arrangements between developers, landowners and planning authorities, a lot of money can be found to help create and manage habitats in the natural environment – something we all want.
Ecologists and conservation groups would, in many circumstances, release developers from the physical task of providing on-site compensation. This makes possible landscape conservation projects of much greater value. This is an extension of biodiversity banking, a successful mechanism that has been working effectively in the US for a couple of decades. Habitat banking can provide an abundance of new, high-quality natural habitats – thus supporting greater biodiversity, sustaining soils and water, and increasing the aesthetic and recreation value of the landscape.
Habitat banking has sustainable development as its core objective. It is not a "licence to trash". The planning system will still operate on the basis that acknowledged and protected sites of nature conservation value are protected by policy.
A key benefit of habitat banking is the pooling of credits from a range of development schemes. There would be agreements to monitor and manage habitats over the long term. In future it could, for example, be used for targeting areas of the country where landowners are already showing a commitment to nature conservation, biodiversity and landscape.
In the US, wetland mitigation banking alone was worth $3bn in 2008. There is no reason why we could not stimulate a similar system in the UK. The Environment Bank Ltd, which we run, is committed to introducing the benefits of habitat banking to the UK, and numerous developers and landowners have signed up to our proposed scheme. We have also assisted with the development of the conservation credit scheme advocated by the Conservative shadow environment secretary, Nick Herbert. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also has positive things to say about biodiversity banking.
Here is an opportunity to apply market-based conservation that can deliver enormous long-term benefits to UK biodiversity. The evidence and expertise we require already exists in this country. We have to plan for the future of nature conservation and biodiversity in the UK, and this is the best option.