The Economically Necessary Beaver...

My talk last week at the Necessary Beaver Conference on Scotland

Beavers and Ecosystem Services & a plan for Scotland’s Ecological Renaissance, with the help of Robert Burns…..?

The study of ecology and economics has resulted in a growing interest in the economics of nature which has been shown in sharp relief by the arrival of the Tay beavers. Peter Smith will take you on a quick journey into the emerging world of environmental economics and ecosystem services– where many of the benefits go unrecognised and much of the cash costs cause fear and opposition to the return of wildlife

Beavers make a big difference to our rivers and this means there are winners and losers. There are many obvious and subtle benefits to beavers living in our water ways once again: wildlife, water quality and the buffering of floods & droughts, carbon sequestration are the most obvious, . But how can we measure these benefits, what are the leading scientists and economists thinking when it comes to putting monetary value on these benefits

A proper compensation strategy, based in land values & taxation, could be the Solution to the whole problem of protecting nature and stimulating human progress, by getting to the very economic roots of the problem– we can see how simple economic steps, such as Land Value Tax & Green taxes, can efficiently and effectively internalise the costs and benefits of Scotland’s Ecological Renaissance by following the forgotten advice of Scotland’s Greatest minds including, Adam Smith, William Ogilvie & even Robert Burns himself!

Getting a Job in Wildlife Conservation

I gave a lecture on careers advice to my old Academic Institute to PhD Students this week. At the lecture I was presented with an article that I wrote over 20 years ago on finding employment after my Masters course there (see below):

Video of Lecture:



obviously the 'in-joke' will be lost on most

My Job Hunting Statistics 6 months after leaving DICE in 1994 ( UK in Recession a bit like today)

Speculative applications                                214
Job applications                                             357
Job interviews                                                5
PhD applications                                           67
PhD interviews                                               8
Jobs or PhDs offered                                      0

GETTING AHEAD IN CONSERVATION

(Or Working for Free: The Perils of Being a Volunteer)

By Peter Smith

Since leaving the DICE family nest I've tried in vain to get that ·"job in international conservation" or start my meteoric rise to become the next Charles Darwin. So I decided to offer my services free of charge while supported by our much burdened tax payers. Firstly, I did some work for the Northumbrian Centre for Ecology, but identifying leaf hoppers is not to my taste. As I'm interested in conservation genetics, these silly little protein machines which surround the genome hold little interest for me. 

But there is another side to conservation which is probably the most important and that's raising money and campaigning, which I am interested in. So I sent my C.V. to every conservation organisation in the country. Along with a number of dubious offers of voluntary work filling envelopes or sitting around in a field banging fence poles into the ground, I received an offer from Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) to compile the "Head On Collision (Scotland)" report. Guess what! I had to be interviewed for this. So eventually, off to Edinburgh I went... Talk about being dropped in at the deep end, Christ I thought . I was back at DICE trying to organise my dissertation!!! Not only was I not paid but I had to do all the fund raising myself to pay for publishing, travel, and administration costs. But this was nothing compared to the horror that was awaiting me at the scenic and beautiful headquarters of SWT. Yes folks, NO DESK!

Can you imagine the pain and humiliation of working in an office of high flying conservation professionals with the indignity of not having your own desk. Thankfully all the boxing training I did at Canterbury was not in vain for now I descended into a pit of neo-social darwinistic experimentation and fought tooth and claw with my fellow volunteers to secure my desk space. I was of course triumphant and after many battles the best desk and computer were mine. I have the most efficient Nth dimensional hyper volume, I am the Alpha male, Silverback Smith rides again, and nobody can say "Nuaulu" to me and get away with it! Now I'm working on getting my boss' job and he knows it! Distant glances across the computer strewn office, the worried looks on our secretaries' faces, a still calm atmosphere punctuated only by the tapety-tap of keyboards, all show the underlining tension, a new dominance battle is about to commence, and I'm not the one with beads of sweat appearing on my forehead, In fact, I'm sure we're being observed by a number of behavioural anthropologists and a BBC wildlife camera team, is that the distant voice of Sir David I hear ...

"Here, situated in the most exclusive suburbs of Scotland's capital, nestling in its palatial grounds, lies Cramond House, headquarters of the Scottish Wildlife Trust. In this most idyllic of offices there is a titanic struggle, leviathans of the most competitive of all professions are locked in mortal combat. We see before us a system analogous to a troupe of baboons on the high African plains. There is the dominant male, surveying his territory (tall, semi-bearded figure, feverishly typing, looks around office). 

A vicious looking challenger whom we have named Peeta circles the troop leader's position (large bear-like Geordie looks menacingly at said bearded conservation professional), enviously watching. The fixed stare of this young usurper scrutinises his adversary, the gaze only broken by quick glances at the copy of Machiavelli he holds close to his chest. The pretender, awaiting his opportunity to break into a torrent of mindless violence and destruction, usurping the old order and entering a new age under the iron fist of his rule, his domination. .. " 

As the months draw on, and I am into my second major temperate forest's worth of rejection letters, there has been a new development, an interview in the next office for a job! Can it be, yours truly getting an actual paid job. Can the alpha male of the volunteers make it to the next stage and enter the domain of the conservation professional? The saga continues ... 

Well, my fellow DICE alumni, let me take you back to when we all first met. Young and naive at that little reception, and old Uncle Swingland standing on a chair giving us his little speech about all DICE students getting jobs. Of course he was right, but he neglected one little bit off that sentence: most of us won't get paid, and the ones who do get paid will be saying "is that extra mozzarella sir!"

As yet another year of competitors - whoops I mean fellow DICE graduates - begin to make themselves felt on the Job Market, let us take succour in the knowledge that every tuppence ha'penny academic establishment is churning out thousands of suckers - I mean Conservation MSc graduates. 

But as biologists we know the importance of natural selection, so in this vein may I suggest what the DICE Alumni Association should be about: 'Jobs for the boys', or as they call it now 'effective networking'. The sad truth of course is that I'm loving it here at SWT, and get along with everybody in the office. So DICE has given me a number of opportunities, and I hope the rest of the DICE alumni are enjoying their career advancement as much as I am. Send me a xmas card and happy job hunting, we will all get there in the end.

Scottish Wildlife Trust, Cramond House, Kirk Cramond,

Cramond Glebe Road, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH4 6NS.

"Everyone who does this course gets a job in

international conservation"

Prof. Ian R Swingland, October 1993,

standing on a chair at the DICE M.Sc.

Conservation Biology welcoming party.

"The young chicks may be eaten by flying predators

such as rabbits"

Dr. Massimo F-andolfi, October 1993, on the

ecology of the ground-nesting Montague's

Harrier (either he meant 'raptors' or they have

some pretty ferocious rabbits in Italy!).

"Mating usually occurs after the cow shit"

Dr. Massimo Pandolfi, October 1993, on the

breeding biology of the Montague's Harrier

(we think he meant 'courtship'?).

"Hunter-gatherers live by hunting and gathering"

Dr. Roy Ellen, February 1994, Lecture 3 in the

Human Ecology course.

"Nuaulu"

Dr. Roy Ellen, February 1994, throughout the

Human Ecology course.

"If you are small there is more of you"

Melissa McDonald (M. Sc. student 94/95)

explaining biodiversity indices.

The Solution to War, Poverty & Environmental Destruction - Putney Debates 2014

My impassioned speech about the causes & solution to war, poverty and environmental destruction in a Q&A at the 2014 Putney Debates as a member of an invited guest panel after the screening of the film by Carlo Nero called the Killing fields in which I featured which you can whatch here: http://youtu.be/TTiVS2lhMuY

The New Putney Debates aims to emulate the original putney debates wich saw soldiers and officers of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, including civilian representation, hold discussions on the constitution and future of England. These historic events saw ordinary soldiers take on their generals to argue for greater democracy and provided a platform for 'common people' to make their voices heard. These debates, forced by the Levellers, paved the way for many of the civil liberties we value today.

The New Putney Debates can be viewed here:
http://thenewputneydebates.com/2014/10/18/the-crash-cuts/


The Killing Fields Film that was screened at the debate can be viewed below:

Bloody Immigrants! European Beavers & Polish Plumbers

The natural fear of immigrants is often displayed by many people, but that fear is manipulated by unscrupulous politicians for their own benefit. To understand why we must understand the deeper economic forces at play and reject guttural hostility to immigrants or the reintroduction of formally native animal species. This is demonstrated by Government efforts to trap the beavers in Devon or the pantomime of UKIP and Conservatives pretending to want to stop Polish plumbers and their ilk from entering the UK.

Government policy is determined to enact effective legislation to stop us returning the former native animals of the UK but perversely seem completely unable to implement effective legislation to stop foreign workers working in the UK. Why?
My thesis is that formally native animals when reintroduced will take 'rent' from 'rent seekers', those that hold land and natural resources and the Government acts on their behalf, not for those of us that want to see wildlife return to the UK. This is best shown by the DEFRA plans to trap the beavers living on the river otter in Devon, whose presence will help the riverbanks return to a wild state and harbour more wildlife, (also helping prevent flooding & help purify water) at a small cost of those that farm its river banks.
The failure of Government policy to halt illegal immigrants working and thier ways of tax avoidance are highlighted well in this blog post by Tax Researcher (and Wildwood Trust member) Richard Murphy:

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/10/19/camerons-immigration-controls-are-a-joke-because-he-wont-control-uk-companies/

There is a failure in Government policy as this Government, though professing to want to halt immigration, will not actually enact any effective measures to stop illegal workers from working in the country.

I saw a really interesting interview a couple of years ago of the Mayor of Calais on local BBC South East who basically said the same thing - our failure to properly regulate work with work permits, and allow unregulated private limited companies as shells for illegal workers, was chiefly responsible for the flood of legal and illegal immigration and to stop this we could issue work permits at any time and enforce that just like the French.

But the issue is more than just regulation - who benefits from illegal workers? - not just unscrupulous employers of which I have first hand knowledge of employing hundreds of highly skilled foreign workers who formed their own companies and then skip the UK avoiding taxation and VAT. But more insidiously this is really just a battle between rent seekers and workers as the rent seekers who's income  is mostly derived from the possession of monopolies in the UK (chiefly land) as those assets and revenue are pushed up in value thanks to the influx of hard working foreigners, while at the same time lowering the cost of labour which means a double benefit to those rent seekers seeking to access the fruits of other peoples labour. 

So the solution is to shift taxes and Government fees from wages to monopolies, best achieved through Land Value Tax and other government taxes on resources rents, government sanctioned monopolies and pollution. Cameron et al, UKIP (and labour policy sadly) is on the side of the rent seekers; so will always say they want to control immigration but never do anything to stop it as it benefits the people who control those political parties and so will never do anything to increase the value of labour against the value of rent.

So the workers of the UK are always at a disadvantage, they cannot benefit from the animal immigration of formally native species like the beaver, which help prevent flooding, purify water and bring wildlife back to our riverbanks but will continue to have their environment eroded. But will also continue to suffer from  house prices increased to unaffordable levels and lower wages due to high levels of human immigration. This connection between high 'rents'(high house prices) and low wages is directly responsible for high unemployment and poverty and has been well observed by most economists, especially my personal economic hero Henry George. 



The solution to both animal and human immigrations is Land Value Taxation where those that benefit from the increased rents of monopoly pay it back to the community(who generated it anyway), so the benefits & costs of immigration, whether it be Polish plumbers or European beavers, are shared by all.

Sir Richard Attenborough & his Beaver Obsession

Sir Richard Attenborough & his Beaver Obsession

Tributes pour in for this great man but it is fitting that just as his death marks and end of a venerated British Institution, his secret passion is flourishing and may be the best legacy of his life. Beavers are finally returning to Britain.

And the story of beavers in Britain looks like a script for a future film; this battle of cinematic proportions is breaking out as we speak to save these beavers form the dark forces of dominion and insidious privilege that Sir Richard so detested.

Many of Sir Richard’s most ardent admirers are today mourning his parting, but the many who understand his beaver obsession are preparing to do battle in the British countryside and stop the dark forces about to be unleashed upon the beavers in an attempt to remove them from the riverbanks of Devon’s river Otter.

Sir Richard, though not  immediately taken by the profound story of the beaver was fascinated by his mother’s and brother David’s (the famous conservationist and BBC wildlife presenter) captivation by the speech of Grey Owl they saw as children in the 1930’s, later so beautifully shown in the film Grey Owl, portrayed by Pierce Brosnan. Grey Owl brought to light the plight of the beaver and how whole ecosystems would collapse without the beaver to manage the water ways of Canada, just as they collapsed when we hunted the beaver to extinction in Britain and Europe.

“Not surprisingly, Dave's memories of Grey Owl's lecture are very different to my own. He was bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day.”

Sir Richard’s mother was equally taken by Grey Owl and after his death after he was exposed as Archie Balaney, and said this of him:

"His identity doesn't matter a damn," she, who never uttered an oath, said firmly. "The only important thing is what he came to tell us."

The great actor and directors life has demonstrated a hidden obsession with beavers and their positive virtues.

His London home he called the beaver lodge, where he lived from 1949 until October 2012, in Richmond Green in London (only leaving due to his failing health)

His production company, Beaver films, is renowned for some of the greatest cinematic works in the history of film.

Once Sir Richard’s career was established he sort out a retreat to write his films in solitude, again his obsession came to the fore when he purchased Rhubodach estate on the Isle of Bute. His office was known as the beavery, in the castle, famed because of the old Duke’s love of beaver, who built a ‘beavery’ in the grounds when her tried to reintroduce beavers.

Sir Richard’s greatest work was carried out in the beavery overlooking the real beavery, sadly devoid of beavers. But the island has seen the possible return of the beaver with the nearby Knappdale beaver reintroduction project. One beaver was found washed up and it may not be long before beavers once again surround the castle and its grounds and the nearby beavely hills.

Sir Richard’s life is a model of hard work and dedication to all that is best in humanity & the arts. We must try to live up to his example to continuously ‘beaver away’, never giving up, if we are to create a better world. The story of the beavers obsessed Sir Richard, just as it has obsessed so many conservationists including myself, we must never give up in our quest to rewild the countryside and bring back the functioning ecosystem that beaver, and other keystone animals, can bring about.

The one project Sir Richard never completed was his life-long ambition to make a film about his hero Thomas Paine, whom he called "one of the finest men that ever lived". He said in an interview that "I could understand him. He wrote in simple English. I found all his aspirations - the rights of women, the health service, universal education... Everything you can think of that we want is in Rights of Man or The Age of Reason or Common Sense”.

Not surprisingly Thomas Pain was an advocate of Land Value Tax, the collection of publicly created rent and its fundamental importance to abolishing poverty. This interestingly is the economic model I propose that would save all the wildlife of Britain and help foster the return of the beaver, although I do not know if Sir Richard ever made this connection between the economics of land, wildlife and the betterment of society.

Good bye Sir Richard, A life well lived & thank you for all your hard work.

GDH - Gross Domestic Health & Dodgy Economics

Hooray GDP is up, headlines are plastered across the papers this weekend. The UK beats GDP growth of all the major G7 countries. Britain can be proud of the work of our great financial leaders have done restoring the wealth to our country. But what does GDP measure, well the answer is not a lot. And a lot of our growth is just the fallout of lending more money into the housing bubble (which will come back to haunt us very soon, robbing the poor & hard working to feed the rich & lazy)

As my Friend Fried Harrison points out in his thesis on 'ecocide' http://www.sharetherents.org/thesis/just-prices-riches-nature/

"Driving the destruction are land-use and tax policies that reward speculators who engage in urban sprawl. We wreck habitats (deforestation), dump waste into the oceans, and even the heavens are littered with waste from disintegrating satellites. The catalogue of disasters cannot be blamed on nature.

"People do not behave in such reckless ways within their private spaces (our homes). We tend to be tidy, economical, we conserve the products of our labour and we respect the rights of our neighbours. So what motivates the opposite forms of behaviour towards nature? Again, it boils down to the pursuit of (or the ripple effects from) the flow of rental income. Joseph Stiglitz observes that conventional indices fail to expose the full extent to which rent-seekers are wrecking the environment:“Sometimes the distortions of the rent seekers are subtle, not well captured in the diminution of GDP. This is because GDP doesn‟t adequately capture the costs to the environment….Industries like coal and oil want to keep it that way. They don‟t want the scarcity of natural resources or the damage to our environment to be priced, and they don‟t want our GDP metrics to be adjusted to reflect sustainability” (Stiglitz 2012: 98-99). If the services provided by nature and society were correctly priced, we would not waste them, and we would not shift onto others the costs of our actions (such as dumping waste into rivers or seas). "

If we really want statistics to measure the health of the UK a far better balanced scorecard of our nations health would be using stats such as modal and mot means and the variation within of factors such as:

1. Infant mortality
2. Average life span
3. Educational attainment
4. Disposable incomes
5. crime

Also highlight depletion of natural resources and dilapidation of infrastructure and projections of the future of all these stats that would highlight excessive personal, private and state debt.

Such a measure of GDH will be some percentage points down this week, with a trend that has been dropping for some time. The dodgy economics that masquerade as public information must be changed if we are to protect people and the environment instead so lets have some headline on from The Office for National Statistics (ONS) on GDH & consign GDP to the dustbin of dodgy statistics.

Dodgy theories and discredited statistics which are used by agencies like the OECD camouflage the trends that determine the health of the economy -- and people's welfare. Prof. Mason Gaffney explains why we should treat GDP data with extreme caution, and he identifies holes in the numbers used by governments.

"The Pricing of Everything" How can we really put a value on nature?

"The Pricing of Everything" by George Monbiot:

I loved Monbiot's latest lecture. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/jul/24/price-nature-neoliberal-capital-road-ruin

He evens mentions Land Value Tax, but did not explore its link with the protection of nature and properly valuing nature. But there is one thing I disagree with in that we can use a system of valuing nature in our economic system, that does not have the downsides he so rightly points out in the failings of the Neo Classical economic consensus that is so fundamentally flawed.

There is nothing wrong with ‘valuing nature’ the problem is not ‘valuing’ it properly, which Monbiot has been spot on. Efforts to value nature so far are complete rubbish, then even more importantly how does that value get internalised into our economy – again the neo-liberal ideas are pure rubbish in an economic sense.  But there is a way to value nature in a way that helps the economy and helps preserve nature. The simple solution is of course to transfer taxation off of incomes and trade and put it in the destruction of nature. So destroying an ancient habitat become extremely expensive, prohibitively so. Land and natural resources become expensive to exploit and when not a true economic benefit get left alone.

Taxation means we leave fossil fuels in the ground, we stop farming marginal habitat and it becomes wild again, we reduce the extraction of fresh water and it stops in rivers and wetland. Carbon will come out of the atmosphere and be sequestered back into the ground.

So get rid of subsidies for farmers and industry and tax the use of land & natural resources, proportionate to the damage their use causes. So special taxes for the destruction of high value habitats and pollution, and areas that provide specific ecosystem services such as flood prevention and carbon sequestration.

These taxes need to embody future destruction, and not at any ‘discount rate’, also land taxes should be yearly taxes so we properly value that destruction in the future and we do not undervalue the ecosystem we leave to future generations.

The idea of using nature as a means of rent seeking by those that ‘own’ it is an appalling idea and is the fundamental problem of ‘neo classical’ economics.

I attended a seminar organised last month by the New Economics Foundation and WWF and was appalled by the poor level of economic understanding and that organisation like WWF viewed ecosystem services as a fund raising exercise and had no comprehension of the problems outlined by Monbiot, myself, and the many proper green economists who have highlighted this over the years.

My view of how we value nature: