In the first century AD, the Roman agriculturalist Lucius Columella exhorted his countrymen to prevent the degradation of the earth via good farming practices. Two thousand years later, we find ourselves continuing to grapple with this issue. 

 

The argument of this paper is a simple one. Nature has declined because it sits outside our economy — its value to us is underpriced and funding its protection is left to an overstretched state that can never hope to foot the bill alone. Even if the Government were flush with money, as conservatives we know that state-funded projects are plagued with delays and bureaucracy. The conservative answer is not to demand ever-greater sums from the taxpayer, but to put a price on nature and let the market restore it at the lowest cost. By embracing the polluter pays principle and channelling private capital through robust natural capital markets, we can turn nature recovery from a charge on the public purse into an investment opportunity, with government funding through schemes like the ELMs acting as the seed that draws private money in rather than crowding it out.

 

But these markets will only flourish if we are prepared to nurture them. That means insisting on the integrity that gives buyers confidence in what they are purchasing; it means slaying the larger beast of a risk-averse regulatory system that fixates on narrow outputs rather than wider outcomes. And it means trusting private markets to deliver. Similarly, healthy catchments can filter our water, hold back our floods and store our carbon - if only our water companies are given the power to choose nature where it pays to do so. 

 

From restored peat bogs and new woodland to natural flood defenses, a nation that harnesses its natural environment is one made more resilient against the ever-more extreme weather that a changing climate is bringing.