Transcript Green Infrastructure Warwickshire 14th May 14

Green Infrastructure – The Economic
Benefits.
Martin Moss.
Natural England.
Senior Advisor – Green Infrastructure
Operations England.
Why is GI of interest to you?
• A view from Cumbria.
• Cumbria GI Investment Strategy – March 2014.
• Cumbria LNP – GI Thematic Group.
• “Green Infrastructure is relevant to you because it involves
every organisation that has an interest in Cumbria’s
economy, environment and people. It provides wideranging benefits; from inward investment, to health and
well-being. But it requires a co-ordinated approach from
those organisations to realise its potential”.
• Conclusion – the benefits of GI are derived from working
together – it’s a complex game.
Green Infrastructure – some key
points.
• What is this thing called GI?
• Natural systems of
infrastructure delivering
ecosystem services.
• Ecological benefits – the
Ecological Network.
• Community benefits – health
and well-being, live-able
places etc.
• Economic benefits – how
natural environment helps
support and deliver economic
activity.
What do we mean by “economic
benefits” ?
• We can talk about
economic benefits in
different ways.
• From an Economists
perspective.
• From a general
perspective.
An Economist Would Say …
• Benefits from
environmental features are
identified through logic
chain analysis, or “theory
of change”.
New/improved
environmental
feature
Change in
environmental
service
provided
• But not all benefits behave
the same.
Change in
benefit to
people
• We can talk of “economic
value” and “economic
impact”.
Important distinction – what sort of
economic benefit is it?
ECONOMIC VALUE
ECONOMIC IMPACT
The effect of a change on the
happiness and welfare of
society, regardless of whether
this effect is felt through the
market.
The effect of a change on the
size of the traded economy,
commonly measured using GDP
High
value
Low
impact
A more general understanding – how do we
get them?
• In a non-technical sense
economic benefits are
sometimes described as;
•
•
•
•
Direct.
Indirect.
Cost reduction.
Risk management.
• Direct – cash economy –
transactions for goods and
services (requires
interaction between green
and business
infrastructure).
• Indirect – societal values
or supporting transactional
economy.
• Cost reduction –
reduction of heating /
water bills, better resource
efficiency (cost to profit).
• Risk management – eg
reduced flood risks (profit
to cost).
The evidence base – a bit of
advertising.
• Extensive, increasing,
multi-disciplinary – but still
early days.
• Many research questions
are being identified as
gaps in understanding
become apparent.
• BUT …
• Natural England have
compiled a broad literature
review.
• First published in 2012 –
MEBIE 2 is due to be
published soon.
• Thorough review of
literature on the benefits of
investment in the natural
environment.
• Over 100 new pieces of
evidence.
• Simplified format.
•
•
•
•
New chapters on;
Consumer Spending,
Pollination and
Pest Control.
MEBIE 2.
• Three key sections.
• Relating evidence
(services) to significant
themes (Social welfare,
economic growth, climate
change).
• Economic competitiveness.
• Services provided by
nature.
• Reflects the fact that
interest can be either
about a specific ecosystem
service or broad societal
interests.
Economic Competitiveness.
• Considers;
•
•
•
•
•
Consumer spending;
House prices;
Labour productivity;
Regional investment;
Tourism and recreation.
Summary of findings (1)
Section
Availability of
evidence
Effect of natural
environment
Economic competitiveness
Consumer spending
Average
Positive
House prices
Good
Positive*
Labour productivity
Poor
Unclear
Regional investment
Good
Positive
Tourism and
recreation
Good
Positive
Key
Availability of evidence: Poor/Average/Good
Effect of natural environment: Positive/Negative/Unclear
*Locally negative effects have been observed for poorly maintained
greenspaces, but on average the effect is positive.
Tourism and recreation
New/improved
environmental
feature
Visitors
attracted to the
area
Visitors spend
more in the
area
Many tourist and recreational
activities are heavily driven by the
natural environment. The
economic value of these activities
can be significant.
• In 2012-13 there were an
estimated 2.85 billion visits to
the natural environment in
England. Total expenditure was
estimated at between £17.6
and £24.5 billion (Natural
England 2013).
Labour productivity
New/improved
environmental
feature
Improvements
in attention;
reduced fatigue
Improvements
in employee
productivity
Although plausible, there is a lack of evidence to suggest that
the natural environment directly contributes to improvements
in labour productivity.
It may contribute indirectly through improvements to worker
health.
Specific services provided by nature – 1.
Section
Availability of
evidence
Effect of natural
environment
Air quality
Good
Positive
Coastal flood risk
management
Good
Positive
Food, water and other Good
provisions
Positive
Freshwater flood risk
management
Good
Positive
Global climate
regulation
Good
Positive
Mental health
Good
Positive
Ecosystem services
Specific services provided by nature – 2.
Section
Availability of
evidence
Effect of natural
environment
Ecosystem services contd.
Noise
Average
Positive
Pest control
Average
Positive
Physical activity
Good
Unclear
Pollination
Good
Positive
Social cohesion
Average
Positive*
Temperature
regulation
Good
Positive
Water quality
Good
Positive
*Locally negative effects have been observed for poorly maintained
greenspaces.
Air quality
New/improved
environmental
feature
Improvement
in air quality
Improvement
in human and
plant health
Air pollution poses significant risks to
human, plant and ecosystem health.
Evidence is strong that vegetation,
particularly trees, can contribute to air
quality improvements.
• 547 ha. of mixed greenspace within a 10
x 10 km square of East London could
significantly reduce pollution with an
estimated effect of two deaths and two
hospital admissions avoided per year
(Tiwary, Sinnett et al. 2009).
Coastal flood risk management
New/improved
environmental
feature
Coastal
environments
such as
saltmarshes can
provide effective
flood protection as
well as
biodiversity and
recreational
benefits
Reduction in
flood height;
increased time
to flood peak
Reduced
damage costs,
social costs
Alkborough Flats
is a managed realignment scheme
on the Humber
estuary. The sea
wall was
deliberately
breached to allow
flooding of former
farmland. Cost
benefit ratio was
estimated at
1:2.72 (Everard
2009)
How can benefits be assessed ?
• An emerging discipline, still
very early days.
• A range of existing
toolkits.
•
•
•
• Tend to be either;
• Broad ranging but lack
robustness.
• Narrow range with higher
levels of robustness.
• NE review 2013.
• More work in progress.
•
•
•
•
•
•
CAVAT: Capital Asset Value for
Amenity Trees;
Green Infrastructure NorthWest‟s
Green Infrastructure Valuation
Toolkit
Guide to valuing Green
Infrastructure from the Centre for
Neighbourhood Technology
Chicago;
Health Economic Assessment Tool
for walking and cycling (HEAT);
Helliwell;
i-Tree Design;
i-Tree Eco;
i-Tree Streets, and
InVEST: Integrated Valuation of
Environmental Services and
Tradeoffs.
Some tips.
• Results from more than one tool, you may not always be
able to add the results together – different units and/or
overlaps leading to double counting risk.
• Different tools have different purposes – use should be fit
for your purpose - For example, CAVAT is designed to help
estimate the financial compensation for damage to street
trees. Therefore, it uses the cost of planting and
maintaining a tree as its economic value. This is fit for the
tool’s purpose but it is not fit for the purpose of cost benefit
analysis.
• Where you feel you are not sure about the suitability,
process and results of a tool, you should get in touch with
an appropriate scientist and/or economist! The results of a
tool are only ever as good as the quality of the data you
use.
Further information.
• Key links;
• Available via NE website;
www.naturalengland.org.uk/o
urwork/planningdevelopment
/greeninfrastructure
• Micro-Economic evidence
for the Benefits of
Investment in the
Environment.
• Green Infrastructure
Valuation Tools
Assessment.
• Green Infrastructure as a
Catalyst for Economic
Growth.
Thank You.