Respond to environment White Paper, farmers urged

Farmers are being urged to help shape a new approach to environmental policy, due to be launched by the government next year.

Producers now have less than two months to respond to a government consultation that will shape a Natural Environment White Paper to be unveiled in spring 2011.

The document will be the first environmental White Paper in 20 years.

During this time, the government believes piecemeal degradation has led to an ongoing decline in the quality and sustainability of many of our natural assets. It believes these pressures require new approaches and solutions.

DEFRA secretary Caroline Spelman said the economy and the natural environment had historically been pitted against each other as if they were competing choices, rather than being mutually interdependent.

Reducing the deficit and ensuring economic recovery were top priorities but the value of natural systems and the high costs associated with their degradation meant the economy and environment couldn’t be separated.

“Two thirds of agricultural land in England and the majority of our most spectacular landscapes are part of thriving agri-environmental schemes. But we need to make progress at a faster rate to redress the degradation and loss of species.”

The government believes the ability of soils to continue to provide essential functions is threatened by intensive agriculture, pollution, development pressure and climate change.

Although progress has been made on biodiversity, a government discussion document warns that many priority habitats are still declining and many species remain under threat.

“Whether we live in towns and cities, small villages or open countryside, we rely on natural systems for our food, our water, the very air we breathe,” says the document.

Land, seas, rivers, woods and fields, parks and open spaces provide benefits so fundamental that they are often overlooked, it states. Yet these natural assets have an enormous collective value.

Many people feel they have little control over an ongoing decline in many aspects of environmental quality, the document warns. The social and economic costs of this degradation are unacceptable, it adds.

The deadline for responses is 31 October.