well thank you for the warm welcome Iwould like to invite you today todisobey the instruction on this cartoonand think with me outside the box we'regoing to think positive in fact we'reactually going to think net positive andbecause the subject is one of today'sexistential challenges there's a littlebit of bad news coming up early on buthang in there because I promise thatthere's good news coming later and evenbetter it's good news to which you cancontribute the incredible variety andabundance of life on Earth is beautifuland it's essential to all of usbiodiversity provides us with medicineswith food and with countless otherproducts living organisms perform a hostof environmental services they purifythe air we breathe they regulate waterthey stabilize soils they protect usfrom floods they pollinate our crops youname it and over and above that everyoneneeds nature for inspiration and forrecreation in the great outdoors but wehave a problembiodiversity is being lost at anunprecedented rate species are goingextinct at over a thousand times therate during periods when people weren'tlargely responsible about a decade ago abig international study was a wake-upcall because it showed that 60% of theenvironmental services we rely on arealready degraded and since then evidencehas been building up that we'regradually unraveling the web of life andthat's just the picture today if we lookahead to 2050 the global population willhave risen to nine point seven billionthat's up nearly a third from today thedemand for food will have doubled andthe demand for energy will be up by 80%so it's very clear that all the benefitswe enjoy from biodiversity in fromnatural systems are under growingpressure and the space available forwildlife is shrinking and you knowthat's something of a dilemma for usbecause not only do we need a reallythe environment we survive on it butwe'd also like a healthy economy givingus jobs and goods and services manypeople in developing countries stilllack access to safe water and food andsafe energy and for their developmentand construction is essential and thesame actually is true even in developedcountries for example here in the UKthere's tremendous demand for newhousing and of course it's exactly theseactivities of construction ofagriculture and of extraction thatdestroy habitats and caused much of theloss of biodiversity and that brings meto the billion dollar question in theheart of my talk today how can wereconcile these two seeminglycontradictory demands for development onthe one hand and for conservation of ahealthy environment on the other and Ifeel passionately about finding goodanswers to that question and the firsttime I can remember encountering it wasas a little girl on an amazing adventurewhen I was 11 years old my parents and Idrove overland from England to India andback and many of the people that westayed with in Iraq Iran Afghanistan andhere in India relied entirely onbiodiversity and the environment fortheir livelihoods and I got to see atfirsthand how they paid the price forenvironmental degradation and pollutionand you can imagine those impressionsreally stayed with me and by the time Iwas at university the term sustainabledevelopment had been kind and it got methinking can we really develop andconserve the environment at the sametime and ever since then my work withthe United Nations with Kew Gardens witha commercial bank and for the lastseveral years with conservation charityforest trends has been all about tryingto find practical solutions to thisproblem so let's take a look at that Ibelieve we can transform the way that wemanage development to secure a farbetter outcome for nature and helppeople and companies at the same time wedon't need to accept thedevelopment projects inevitably resultin today's dreadful loss of habitats andspecies that is not the price we have topay for jobs and a healthy environmentrather we can raise the bar and we canvery deliberately plan for no net lossof biodiversity and preferably for a netpositive impact and the way to do thatis by following the mitigation hierarchythat you see here the idea is that ifyou're planning a project that willaffect the environment first you takemeasures to avoid and minimize harm tothe extent possible and then you restorein the areas affected afterwards andfinally you offset any remaining impactsleft over unless concentrate on twoimportant elements of this today thefirst is we need to be way better atavoiding and preventing harm than we aretodayfor instance we need to look atalternatives for projects much betterthan we do and secondly we need toencourage developers to take an extrastep beyond what's typical today tooffset their residual impacts and whatthat means in practice is that thedevelopers themselves or partners theypay like local communities orconservation groups undertake extraconservation of habitats and species onthe ground over the long term and theydo that deliberately to balance anyunavoidable impacts that are left overnow the problem is that really top-notchavoidance and high quality biodiversityoffsets remain the exception and not therule let's take a look at a good projectin Madagascar and compare it withbusiness as usual Madagascar isconsistently in the world's 10% ofpoorest countries and mining isimportant to the economy and as I'm sureyou know is also home to incrediblebiodiversity found nowhere else on theplanet that has been disappearing as youcan see here alarmingly fast this nickeland cobalt mine in Madagascar willcertainly have a significant impact onbiodiversity particularly at the minesite here and along this 200 kilometerpipeline that brings the oreto the coast and the company hascommitted to plan and operate this minefor no net loss of biodiversityrecognizing that really stringentavoidance measures have to be the firstpriority so for example it has set asidefor permanent conservation part of thearea on which it had permission to mineand that's quite an economic sacrificebut it's really important particularlyin a place like Madagascar to ensurethat no biodiversity is lost there mightbe special to the mine site it's alsotunneling part of the pipelineunderneath mountains to reduce and avoidover ground impacts and for the rest ofthe pipeline route it's picked areasthat have already been deforested and asfar as the offsetting activities thatlast an extra step I mentioned areconcerned the companies undertakingconservation activities on and aroundthe mine site and along the pipelinethrough partnerships is also conservingand connecting up much larger areas offorest all around the footprint andincluding this area here it just ratherfurther afield that's a really highpriority for conservation this activeconservation and restoration involvesjobs for local communities andcollaboration with conservationorganizations and the government ofMadagascar and I must say that withoutthis conservation activity it'sextremely likely that much of thisforest would be degraded and deforestedover time through other pressuresparticularly slash-and-burn agriculturewhich has been a cause of loss over manyyears in this area so what's reallyhappening that's new here is two thingsthe company is measuring theconservation outcomes to check that theyreally balance the residual andunavoidable losses that will be causedby the project and it's also putting inplace legal and financial arrangementsfor the long term to secure theconservation outcomes for instance abudget to cover the conservationactivities and monitoring over decadesto come so let's take a step back andconsider business as usual mostcompanies would mine the entire comesthey picked the simplest most directroute for the pipeline and they'rehighly unlikely to undertakebiodiversity offsets thereby leading toa much greater loss of biodiversity nowthis project is by no means perfect butit's a really serious effort of planningfor no net loss of biodiversity and ofcourse it's just one project in onesector in one country just imagine thedifference we could make forconservation if we could ensure reallyhigh standards of no net loss and netpositive impact for all the projectsaround the world so how is this ideacatching on well I'm glad to say that atforest trends we've seen some reallyencouraging developments particularly inthe last five years so there are atleast 39 governments that now have lawand policy on this and over 20 arepreparing more 83 financial institutionsfrom around the world that's mostlyreally big banks now make their lendingto their clients subject to no net lossand a net gain and a growing number ofcompanies have made commitments to a netpositive impact or similar concepts likezero net deforestation and in my groupthe business and biodiversity offsetsprogram Beebop has set a high standardin this area and we bring togetherconservation groups and companies andgovernments and banks from all aroundthe world to put into place bestpractice and our groups growing so thatsounds great and after all it's prettyintuitive first to try and avoid harmand then to clear up your messafterwards but it's surprisinglydifficult to get this done really wellall the time around the world so what dowe need to do to flip this on its headand make sure that planning for a netpositive impact is really the rule andno longer the exception I think we needto make headway in three areas first weneed to build public support many peoplebelieve that biodiversity offsets are abad idea like a kind ofget-out-of-jail-free card allowingcompanies to make a horrible impact inone place and do some conservationelsewhere in a manner that doesn'treally remedy the situation and I thinkthat's a really legitimate concern sohow do we build public trust well firstwe need to recognize natural limitsthere are plenty of situations in whichit is plain impossible and unrealisticto undertake biodiversity offsets togive you the most extreme example if aproject were to make a species extinctyou can't offset that by conservingsomething else another example here inthe UK you cannot offset the loss ofancient woodland and most certainly notjust by planting few oak saplings otherthings we can do to build public trustit will be fantastic if people could goand visit lots of sites where they cansee net positive impact in practice andnot only see it themselves but bereassured that it's independentlymonitored and verified and that anyagreements are enforced now the theme ofthis ted is think and I believe we needto think extremely carefully about whatkind of future we would like it'sabsolutely fine to say that we wanteconomic development and growth and jobsbut then let's plan those thoughtfullyso that we can actually live with theenvironmental consequences at the sametime we all like to eat we all useelectricity we all like to travel soit's probably not realistic to thinkthat we can altogether halt and stop anyprojects that will have an impact onbiodiversity I believe that biodiversityoffsets need to be the last resort butwe definitely need them becauseotherwise we resign ourselves toterrible cumulative unavoidable lossesthat build up over time and that we havejust ignored in the past so to my mindwhat we really need to do is to setreally high standards for avoidance forminimization for restoration and finallyfor biodiversity offsets is the mostpractical way to manage the trade-offsinherent in Environment and developmentthe second thing we need to do is tobuild political will essentially itfalls to government to set really clearrules of the road so developers know inexactly what's expected of them and thatthey must plan for no net loss it's assimple as that voluntary measures willnot be enough to bring about the scaleof change that we need another thingthat falls to governments is planningtake a look here at coastal Namibia yousee here there's an awful lot ofExploration licenses for mines that havebeen granted here inside this broaderarea in green which is actually one ofthe country's really important protectedareas and that doesn't make sense butit's surprisingly common all around theworldfortunately the government of Namibiahas undertaken a really innovativestrategic environmental assessment whichallows all the cumulative impacts of allof these potential projects you see inthis region and in these landscapes tobe taken into consideration and to havea bit of a rethink and decide where andhow much development is needed and whereand how much conservation and that'sexactly the kind of strategic regionalplanning of which we need more now I'vespoken mostly today about single bigprojects your uranium mine you'll Roadan oil palm concession but there'sanother thing we need to think aboutparticularly here in the UK and inplaces like Europe there's a big dangerof death by a thousand cutsso these government policies and theseplans need to address the accumulationof lots of small projects all of themcausing a loss of biodiversity so how dowe actually bolster the will ofgovernment to do the right thing andmake a very good job of this well one ofthe most effective ways of doing that isby showing the economic case for doingso and to do that you need accounts goodset of accounts natural capital accountsnatural capital accounting can revealthe true social and environmental costof our economic decisions and it canalso show the economic advantages ofinvesting in nature and if this issomething you're interested in I commendto you the work of the natural capitalcommittee finally we need a breakthroughto come from comethemselves it's fantastic that morecompanies are making commitments to anet positive impact and we need toencourage them and their investors to doso and they'll need help from thescientific committee from the scientificcommunity from conservation groups andfrom members of the public but we doalso need to hold them accountable weneed to check that when they say they'reperforming for a net positive impactthat's really what they're doingparticularly since the crash andcommodity prices companies have beenconcerned that best practice like thisis going to inflate costs and causeddelays but actually planning for a netpositive impact is not a majoradditional expense for small projectsthere are plenty of simple and practicalapproaches you can take and for bigprojects like this one with budgets inthe many millions or even billions ofdollars the cost of doing a good job forthe environment is absolutely tiny bycomparison with the overall budget itcould be as little as not 0.1% ofcapital expenditure but even if it were1% or 2% or more that's a very smallprice to pay for no net loss which afterall is exactly what society needsessentially we need a change in mindsetso that planning for a net positiveimpact and budgeting for it just becomesa standard part of business as usual sowhere does that leave us I think we haveto be much more careful to avoidirreversible impacts from the get-go andnot just clear up our mess afterwardsbut we do also need to invest far morein biodiversityto address and tackle all thosecumulative residual leftover impactswhich we've ignored in a pasteveryone's sympathetic about conservingwildlife but we all want to eat andtravel and use our smart phones so weneed to take responsibility for ourpreferences and come forward withpractical suggestions now I promise yougood news and the good news is this wealready know how to do a far better jobfor the environment for communities andcompanies than we do now the question iscan we make sound personal choices andcan we push our leaders to reallyvisionary planning for a net positiveimpact so the theme of this TED sessionis think and I'd like to close byinviting you to think about how you canget involved for instance byvolunteering with a conservationorganization by speaking up in a localplanning hearing or perhaps byencouraging the company you work for tomake a commitment for a net positiveimpact I believe that if we're reallydetermined we can make a big differenceso think net positive thank you