1 / 12

‘PPM-Nutrients’ Project Policy and Practice for Management of Nutrients

Beijing, 25 th February 2014. ‘PPM-Nutrients’ Project Policy and Practice for Management of Nutrients The mitigation framework for non-point source water pollution in the UK. Professor Laurence Smith, SOAS, University of London. A mitigation framework based on two key policy instruments:

ernie
Download Presentation

‘PPM-Nutrients’ Project Policy and Practice for Management of Nutrients

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Beijing, 25th February 2014 ‘PPM-Nutrients’ Project Policy and Practice for Management of Nutrients The mitigation framework for non-point source water pollution in the UK Professor Laurence Smith, SOAS, University of London

  2. A mitigation framework based on two key policy instruments: • regulation • financial payments • Supported by a third instrument: • advice and information. • Thus the framework incorporates both “polluter pays” and “payments for ecosystem services” principles within a tiered approach which aims to influence both land management and in some cases land use. • And all of this is supported by research and the scientific knowledge base, including recommended Best Management Practices/technologies.

  3. Regulations designed to ensure farmers are taking basic measures to prevent pollution from taking place on their land holdings. Enforcement is by the government regulator (The Environment Agency). Basic measures that farmers should adopt to meet these regulations include: • Adequate storage for slurry, silage, manure and chemicals to ensure they do not leak into nearby watercourses and can be used when risk to environment is minimised • Avoiding application of organic and inorganic fertilisers and pesticides when it is likely to run off into a watercourse or not be taken up by a crop • Cultivating land to prevent soil being eroded, and on high risk soils putting in place measures that ensure eroded soil doesn’t enter water courses or get carried onto nearby roads • Ensuring that land is not so compacted that it results in erosion and overland flow to nearby fields, roads or watercourses • Not letting livestock have unrestricted access to watercourses and managing livestock to minimise poaching especially near water courses • Operating within the terms of licences and permits (e.g. complying with conditions in abstraction licences, and permits relating to the application of pesticides and operation of sheep dips). No financial assistance to meet these regulations, i.e. the polluter pays.

  4. Summary of main water quality relevant regulations • Multiple and complex legislation on the statute books relevant to the protection of freshwater water systems including: • The Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) Regulations 1998; • Anti- Pollution Works Notices, Section 161A, Water Resources Act 1991; • Water Protection Zones, Section 93, Water Resources Act 1991; • The Control of Pollution (Silage, Slurry and Agricultural Fuel Oil) ‘SSAFO’ Regulations 1991; • Groundwater Regulations 1998; • The Waste Management (England and Wales) Regulations 2006; • Environmental Protection Act 1990; • Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations 2000; • EU Environmental Liability Directive 2003; • Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; • Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975; • The Sludge (Use in Agriculture) Regulations 1989; and the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. • However, it is only Anti-Pollution Works Notices (APWNs) within the Water Resources Act that are currently available to address pollution issues on farmland in any location, and thus non-point source pollution.

  5. Financial Payments (to deliver enhanced environmental outcomes) • Payments for additional measures which deliver environmental outcomes beyond those required by law (payments for delivering ecosystem services). • Two categories: • Cross Compliance Payments – 95% of farmers receive a per hectare subsidy under the EU Common Agricultural Policy, the Single Farm Payment (SFP) on condition that they adhere to a set of farm practice measures designed to deliver Good Environmental and Agricultural Condition (GAEC). A form of indirect payment for a set of environmental services (PES) that go beyond statutory minimum requirements. • Bespoke Agri-Environmental Payments – in addition farmers have the option to apply for additional state funded payments to deliver bespoke environmental measures on their farms which deliver specific biodiversity, water quality and recreational benefits. Some of these payments are only available in certain locations. • Plus: • Embryonic development of private PES, particularly the example of private sector ‘downstream’ drinking water suppliers offering payments to farmers to undertake measures which improve water quality at source.

  6. Advice Provision • State funded extension services provide soil and water management advice to assist farmers to implement regulations and adhere to cross-compliance requirements. • NGO providers of advice operate along side the state funded advisors. • Advice is generally provided in clinics or workshops involving 20-50 farmers. • One-to-one advice provision is favoured by farmers but is in limited supply because of its costs. • Two main government funded farmer advice services (in England): • The Farming Advice Service (FAS) provides advice on Nutrient Management, Cross Compliance, Competitiveness and Climate Change Adaptation. Delivered by a network of private contractors and partnerships with industry-related bodies. Available to all farmers and land managers in England. • The Catchment Sensitive Farming programme delivers practical solutions and targeted support in 80 priority catchments to enable farmers and land managers to take voluntary action to reduce diffuse water pollution from agriculture to protect water bodies and the environment. Free advice and capital grants are available.

  7. Overview of the Mitigation Framework in England Area coverage

  8. Evaluating the current mitigation framework in England: • Enforcement of the regulations is weak: • lack of political will, and strong farmer lobby • practical problems - APWNs to require farmers to prevent or remediate pollution are time consuming and costly to prepare and deliver, requiring establishment of source, pathway and receptor impact evidence. • Water Protection Zones could go further than APWNs by specifying areas within which all farmers must undertake mandatory activities. But again this requires robust evidence to justify imposing costs on one group of land owners compared to others. • Cross-Compliance has several loop holes and is weakly enforced, for example: • for soil erosion risk, farmers can be compliant by completing a review and identifying risks and measures but implementation of this plan cannot be readily monitored and enforced • no mandatory requirements to prevent degradation of river banks from livestock, a common cause of soil erosion • no requirements to regulate timing, method and rates of phosphorus applications (comparable to nitrogen limits in Nitrate Vulnerable Zones).

  9. Financial payments are not targeted sufficiently at the key issues: • In the Entry Level and Higher Level Environmental Stewardship Schemes incentives for measures such as riparian buffer strips have been insufficient for the loss of productive land involved. Those adopted tend to be sited on marginal land not at greatest risk from soil and nutrient erosion. • The Higher Level Stewardship scheme has targeted biodiversity, and historic landscape, objectives. Qualifying measures for soil erosion and nutrient leaching from high risk arable land are limited, and again incentives may be inadequate. • Capital grants through the Environmental Stewardship Programme and the Catchment Sensitive Farming initiative similarly require better targeting and coverage of a wider range of investments such as winter livestock housing. • Measures to reduce phosphorus levels in soils through management of manure applications have tended to only be adopted by farmers already extensive in their operations and unlikely to have high phosphorus indices on their farms. • The CSF capital grants programme has funded manure storage and slurry storage roofing, but many livestock farms require significant increases in storage capacity to ensure improved timeliness of soil applications.

  10. Advice is not reaching those farmers causing the greatest problems: • Targeting payments, grants and advice has proved difficult because of data deficiencies and uncertainty about the nature and scale of water quality problems in any given catchment. • Information (data) exchange between EA and other agencies and NGOs varies between catchments. • Different levels of government and different organisations have different opinions on targeting. • Programmes generally fail to reach the ‘difficult to engage’ farmers i.e. those who do not proactively seek advice. These may be the worse polluters. • Advisors need more training in ‘cold-calling’ and engagement. • Multiple extension providers operate at various levels across the farming sector, with different remits, modes of operation and messages. There is a lack of coordination and coherence. Farmers may be both confused and disillusioned. • NGOs demonstrate the best performance in building trust and effective long term engagement with partners. With the constraints of the prevailing policies they achieve better targeting of payments, grants and advice, but are frustrated by failures in monitoring and enforcement of the basic measures regulation.

  11. Conclusions: We need to improve robust and cost effective enforcement of regulations, targeting of payments and coordination and delivery of advice. How to do this is a matter of on-going debate. The catchment based approach (CaBA) is being rolled out nationally (83 management catchments) to develop locally owned catchment plans within which the mitigation framework can be applied more effectively. Objectives are:

  12. Evaluating the mitigation framework in China? Our observations to date and some points for discussion. • Regulation: • Regulations relating to fertiliser and agro-chemical usage, and diffuse water pollution in general are lacking. Recommendations are provided at a National, Provincial and City/District level but these are guidelines only with no enforcement. • But enforcement challenges are clearly even greater than in UK. • Financial payments/incentives: • Some examples exist, but limited in scope. How, well are they targeted at the main issues? Is there scope to increase and improve? • Advice: • Comprehensive hierarchical provision in intensive agricultural areas. Well resourced in terms of staff compared to UK? But still a narrow focus on agronomic advice and raising productivity? A one-way flow of advice with weaker assessment of local conditions, environmental issues and the problems of farmers? • Plus: • Lack of a coordinated catchment-based approach to facilitate the above. Similar problems to UK in terms of lack of communication and data exchange between relevant agencies?

More Related