Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made, if any, of the total monetary value of the benefits delivered by urban wetlands.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
The Rt Hon. the Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
26 May 2023
Dear Lady Jones,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what assessment has been made, if any, of the total monetary value of the benefits delivered by urban wetlands (HL8042).
The UK Natural Capital Accounts produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) provide monetary estimates for the goods and services provided by a range of eight broadly defined habitats.
“Wetlands” is not among these, but can be found in several other habitats such as “Freshwater” and “Mountains Moorlands and Heath”.
“Urban” is one of these eight habitats, and captures a range of other ecosystems in and around dense population areas. We will be updating our approach in our upcoming Urban habitat account release this summer. In this, we plan to include data on the total area of sub-habitats that can be found within “urban” areas, including estimates of the total area of “urban-wetlands”. We would be very happy to discuss these results with you once they are available.
While the natural capital accounts are primarily national, in our 2022 Natural Capital Accounts Roadmap [1] we committed to increasing their spatial granularity. This will help us to more readily address questions requiring lower geographical levels.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/articles/naturalcapitalaccountsroadmap/2022
Asked by: Siobhan Baillie (Conservative - Stroud)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will make an assessment of the monetary value of the benefits delivered by urban wetlands.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the Hon lady Parliamentary Question of 22 May is attached.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will make an assessment of the monetary value of the benefits delivered by urban wetlands.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the Hon lady’s Parliamentary Questions of 22 May are attached.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will make an estimate of the monetary value of the benefits delivered by urban wetlands.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the Hon lady Parliamentary Question of 22 May is attached.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether he will make an estimate of the contribution of urban wetlands to the economy.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the Hon lady’s Parliamentary Questions of 22 May are attached.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to protect access to (a) green spaces and (b) Greenways in (i) Enfield North constituency and (ii) London.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The Government recognises the importance of providing access to the outdoors for people’s health and wellbeing and is working to ensure this is safe and appropriate. We committed in our Environmental Improvement Plan to work across government to help ensure that everyone lives within 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space.
The Government is delivering a number of policies to protect access to green spaces including in urban areas. Examples of these include:
Local highway authorities are responsible for the management and maintenance of existing public rights of way and are required to keep a Rights of Way Improvement Plan (ROWIP) to plan improvements to the rights of way network in their area. This must include an assessment of the local rights of way including the condition of the network.
In Enfield, Natural England is working with the Council in developing its local plan to create high quality places that tackle climate change, the nature emergency, inequalities, and promote health and well-being. This will also help Enfield to embed Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Standards into the plan and supporting documents.
In addition Enfield has been awarded £500,000 from the Landscape Recovery Scheme to support schemes to restore nature, reduce flood risks and boost biodiversity include creating hundreds of hectares of woodlands and grassland, wetlands and restore rivers and expanding the Enfield Chase Restoration Project.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to ensure the protection and preservation of (a) the Ribble and Alt Estuaries, (b) Southport’s sand dune habitats and (c) other aspects of Southport’s coastlines.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
This part of the coast is protected by the following designations; Sefton Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Ribble Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Sefton Coast Special Area of Conservation, Ribble and Alt Estuaries Special Protection Area (SPA) and Ribble and Alt Estuaries Ramsar. Natural England (NE) provides statutory nature conservation advice to Local Authorities, landowners and others on activities affecting these designated sites to ensure they are protected
NE’s aim for this area is to reconnect coastal designated sites to the low-lying coastal plain and the River Alt by a series of naturally regenerating wetlands and grasslands. Key to achieving this is NE’s work with farmers and landowners to encourage uptake of our Environmental Land Management Schemes and NE’s Catchment Sensitive Farming Advisers support farmers and growers to produce food in a way that protects water, air and soil.
The Environment Agency (EA) has created new saltmarsh habitat on the Ribble Estuary at Hesketh Out Marsh and is strategically looking at other coastal realignment opportunities for both flood risk management and biodiversity net gain benefits.
In 2022/23 the EA funded work with Mersey Rivers Trust investigating the nature and extent of pesticide and herbicide content within the lower reaches of the River Alt. Through Catchment Abstraction Management Strategies (CAMS) the EA also ensures the water resources of the catchments along the Ribble, Alt & Southport coast are sustainable.
Southport is a priority bathing water and the EA will be taking regular water quality samples throughout the coming bathing water season, 15 May to the end of September. Funding from Defra in 2021/22 provided resource for the EA to carry out farm inspections at an additional 30 farms in the South Fylde/Ribble Estuary area. These inspections were focused on developing improvement plans to reduce diffuse pollution impacting the receiving watercourses in the area and thereby the bathing waters at Southport.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Southwark (Bishops - Bishops)
Question
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the work of a British Museum team in the discovery of an early Sumerian Palace at Girsu/Tello, funded by the Getty Museum, and (2) making provision of similar funding for the training of Iraqi archaeologists and the conservation of Iraq’s antiquities under the Cultural Heritage Protection Programme.
Answered by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
His Majesty’s Government is proud of the partnership between the British Museum, the Getty Museum and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities. HM Government supports the protection of cultural heritage – particularly in regions at risk from conflict, instability and climate change – through the Cultural Protection Fund, which includes support for training and education.
Since its inception, the Cultural Protection Fund has supported and continues to support a number of projects in both Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. This included the Iraq Scheme which from 2015 to 2021 trained over 50 staff from the State Board of Antiquities. The Girsu Project builds on the legacy of the scheme and we congratulate the British Museum for its part in recent excavations in Tello.
In November 2022, 17 new Cultural Protection Fund projects were awarded funding. Four of these will support the preservation of cultural heritage in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. The projects include archaeological training, safeguarding folk music, and the preservation of maritime craft and life in the wetlands of Southern Iraq.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether (a) the Office of the Governor of the Cayman Islands or (b) his Department has (i) title to or (ii) direct interest in land in the Central Mangrove Wetland of Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Neither the Office of the Governor of the Cayman Islands nor his department has title to or direct interest in the land in the Central Mangrove Wetland of Grand Cayman.
Asked by: Julian Knight (Independent - Solihull)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of creating wetlands close to the route of the proposed HS2 line between London and Birmingham.
Answered by Huw Merriman - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
HS2 Ltd has assessed the potential merits of creating wetlands within the land required for the construction and operation of the railway and has included over 70 hectares of wetlands in the Phase One (London to West Midlands) design where considered appropriate; taking into account factors such as land use, hydrology and topography. One example is the Colne Valley Western Slopes on Phase One where HS2 Ltd is creating 127 hectares (314 acres) of wetlands, wood pasture and species-rich grasslands using chalk taken from tunnelling under the Chilterns.