Return to the green goddesses

We've seen the Woodland Trust before. They look like a National Trust for woodlands, and they're largely paid for by taxpayers through grants from various bodies, but they also have a radical agenda which includes creating big new woods and fighting climate change. Subsidised eco-nuts in conservationists' clothing.

They now propose to create a new forest near St Albans, and are appealing for funds. But who's going to provide the £8.5m needed to cover land purchase, tree planting and management costs for the first five years?

Such schemes sound jolly nice. People tend to like the ideas, on the assumption that the money is somehow free. But it is not, dear taxpayer. The costs may be less visible as they are filtered through various bureaucracies we have never heard of. But it is still our money - or rather, it was our money until the state removed it.

Martin Thornhill, St Albans organiser of the Taxpayers' Alliance, is asking pertinent questions, reproduced here with his permission.

The plan of the Woodland Trust to turn ancient unforested land north of Sandridge into forest raises many questions about the sustainability of the proposed forest.

Having checked the website of the Woodland Trust, I can see no indication of how - or whether - the forest is going to be managed after its 12 years maturity, so there is no indication of what permanent annual expenditure - if any - the forest will require to keep it.

Moreover, the website carries no due diligence on the effects of the proposed forest.

It looks set to become the taxpayers' problem within 15-20 years.

In 2007, the Woodland Trust received about 13.2% of its gross income from grants - i.e. £3.697m - of which the majority comes from a variety of government- or parliament-controlled bodies, funded by the taxpayer. The Heritage Lottery Fund, the Forestry Commission, local authorities (probably county councils for the most part, they have the least democratic visibility), Department for Communities etc, European structural funds, Department of Environment etc, Rural Payments Agency and so on all contribute to the income of the Trust.

So the taxpayers of St Albans are already substantially paying for the forest, even before it has started.

According to a leaflet from The Woodland Trust that local residents recently received, the Trust seeks to raise £100,000 from its local appeal. For the year ending 31 March 2007, St Albans District had 50,322 dwellings. A contribution from each taxpayer towards the £100,000 would thus be as follows: band A £1.11, B £1.30, C £1.48, D £1.67, E £2.04, F £2.41, G £2.78 and H £3.34.

Those numbers are small, but they represent only the £100,000 opening gambit. Because the Woodland Trust has no analysis of future costs, risks and externalities, it is impossible to gauge the permanent on-going cost that the Trust would somehow need to fund.

Until we know more about how the proposed financing of the forest's management, maintenance and protection over the next 20 years (at least), we should remain sceptical about the sustainability of the forest. I would like to see credible numbers that stand up to due diligence.

There are many reasons to support the project, ranging from a symbolic atonement for climate change to providing biodiversity that we need for our everyday lives (for example, a shortage of bees or other insect pollinators means the price of bread goes up. Yes, seriously. It does).

But if climate change has taught us anything, it is that we must measure every aspect of a man-made idea to ensure its sustainability. Any idea that simply sounds like a "jolly good idea" or "broadly right in principle" should be immediately suspect. Sustainability includes aspects environmental, economic and financial. All three must substantially prove sustainability for the proposal to count as sustainable.

A failure in any one of these aspects guarantees non-sustainability, meaning that we will have wasted resources in building something flawed that simply creates future problems (that we are too lazy to think about in the present). For this proposed forest, potential future problems will range from the effect on the local water supply to the incidence (or risk) of insect-bourne diseases not yet present in the UK. The planet is still going to warm up. Having used resources planting the forest and having spent as-yet unforecasted resources on maintaining the forest, will we in the future find that our cost of delivering water to local residents increases, or that the cost of more accessible medical treatments (once thought a preserve of exotic holidays) increases?

As the forest will be substantially a public good, how do we fund these likely future costs? Taxation? Exactly: that's my point. The population will continue to age over the next 20 years, meaning that there will be fewer and fewer people of working age paying tax to feed a state that continues to grow and spend and grow and spend more. There will be less private cash to bequeath to the Woodland Trust, making it more reliant upon grant funding from the state. A vicious, greedy, state-centric circle, a reality far removed from what you thought would be a "jolly good idea".

The solution is to press the Woodland Trust repeatedly until the numbers fall out. I would like the Trust can prove the environmental, economic and financial sustainability of the forest - without reliance upon any taxpayer or grant-issuing body - and show legal steps to entrench its sustainability, independent from government.

This blog is a global warming sceptic, but Martin's argument is well made. Indeed any proposed state spending should have to answer the Thornhill questions.

Would that were true. A lot of state spending would fail Martin's tests. That's probably why they're not applied.

Another question might be: could they raise £8.5m plus the other costs from a charitable appeal? If not, arguably there is not the public will for the spending to happen. If they could raise the money that way, let them do it!