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The European Union has protected lands
of more than 26% as of 2023.
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They are doing this so that they can have
a variety of different elements impacted,
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like restoring vegetation cover and also
improving biodiversity.
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But how do those policies work?
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Are they as effective as they can be?
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Pleasure to be joined by Arthur Van
Benthem, who is a Professor at the Wharton
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School of Business Ethics and Public
Policy.
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He and a group of his
colleagues have been working on
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focusing on these policies
and he joins us right now.
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Arthur, great to catch up with you.
How are you, sir?
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I'm doing fine.
Thank you for having me.
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Thank you. So I guess let's start
with the research itself and why it's
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important to truly understand
the impact of these policies.
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Yeah, I think nature is in a pretty dire
state in many continents.
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So there is this push globally to protect
30% of the Earth's lands and waters in an
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effort to fight back against biodiversity
degradation.
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So from that perspective,
it's truly important
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to see our countries
reaching those targets.
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And if they're reaching them, are they
actually effective at restoring nature?
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How do you gauge then the effectiveness of
these policies?
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How does that occur?
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Well, we focus specifically on the
European Union, which is the continent
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that is closest to reaching that 30%
target by 2030.
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They're actually getting there,
27 percent at the moment.
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And the way to do this is using
satellite data.
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So Europe is adding more and more protected
areas in the various countries every year.
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And what we track as researchers is the
greenest of those lands.
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Of course, you don't expect a lush forest
the year after you protect a piece of
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grassland, but slowly over time,
you expect to see forest regrowth and
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maybe people moving out in the areas that
are protected.
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So we use a lot of satellite data,
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nightlights,
greenness, those kinds of measures.
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And I noticed that in the paper you talk
about, there are some areas that seemingly
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have done a very good job in terms of
recovery, and other areas that have not.
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How then are you able to better understand
what's going on in these different areas
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and maybe what has gone right and what has
not?
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Yeah, that's, of course, the key question
in our research, right?
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So actually the reason we started studying
Europe is we read a couple of years ago,
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me and my co-authors,
that Europe is a fair
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bit greener today than
it was a century ago.
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So it's sort of across the continent.
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There's more forests, for example.
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We've also seen that more land has become
protected.
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But what we tend to see in a lot of areas
in Europe is, you know, the comparison we
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need to make is, is
it really the protection
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that led to that increase
in vegetation cover?
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Or is that something that would have
happened anyway, perhaps as urbanization
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happens and agricultural imports are
increasing and less is grown in Europe itself?
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There could be other explanations.
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What we find is that there's a lot of
areas in Europe that are getting greener.
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It just doesn't seem to be the protection
that triggers it.
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So that suggests that a lot of protection
is happening in areas that were already on
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a path of greening.
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So then what is happening that is leading
to this higher level of protection if it's
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not the policy that's kind of having the
impact?
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Yeah, so that's a question that there's
lots of speculation and thoughts about.
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I haven't seen the definitive answer to
that.
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I will add, this is for parts of Europe.
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So about half of it is seeing these
improvements.
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Nature is also under tremendous pressure
in other parts of Europe.
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But the question why in the Baltics and,
for example, in northern Europe and
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southeast Europe, that that greening trend
is happening in general,
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people have attributed to various things,
including sort of a change in the economy
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over the last several decades away from
agriculture and industry towards services.
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People have thought about climate change
even as explanations, but I don't think
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the answer to that has been proven in any
definitive way.
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And if I read it correctly, I believe you
mentioned in the paper that you also have
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to take into effect what the, for lack of
a better term, the federal government in
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each of these countries is doing from a
policy perspective to in some cases what
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local governments are doing on this topic
as well.
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Yes, I need to explain to you a little bit
about— so, what does protection mean?
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So protection can mean lots of different
things.
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Like you may think about the Grand Canyon,
which is very strictly protected,
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and there's some of that in Europe.
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But there's lots of different categories.
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Anything from a big national park to a
local county park is in my data set. Okay.
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Now, the EU federally
dictates to the member states
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that they should reach
that 30% slowly over time.
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Then think of, say, a country like France
is going to outsource a lot of that to its
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local government, and they are the ones
that then have to have the stakeholder
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meetings to get people together about, can
they protect some new area?
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And what tends to happen in a lot of
European countries is that's a fairly
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consultative process, right?
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You need the local
communities, the farmers, the
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scientists, the water management
bodies, everyone to agree.
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And the more people that need to agree on
something, in practice, the weaker,
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of course, the consensus or the agreement
becomes.
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So we tend to see a lot of protection on
paper, but then those tend to be fairly
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minimally protected
areas, say agricultural areas
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where there's some
restriction on economic activity.
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But this is far from a pristine nature
that's regrowing or protected.
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So you bring up something I wanted to ask
you anyway, is that, how then do these
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countries go about kind of marking off
what are going to be those protected lands
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in comparison to areas that
they may want to develop
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for business, for the economy
of their country as well?
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Yeah, you're getting
at the reason why this
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is a complicated
statistical problem, right?
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There's a lot of selection.
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It's not random which areas are protected.
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So countries would prefer, if they can,
to protect areas where the economic cost
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of reaching that 30% target is relatively
minor.
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So what can you do?
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Well, you can do two things.
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Either you look at far away, remote areas
that are, say, forested or natural,
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and you say— you put a stamp on it,
right?
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And say, like, "Oh, this is now strictly
protected."
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There's a lot of that has been happening
in Northern Europe, for example,
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in Scandinavia, which is, you know,
useful on paper, but not particularly
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changing the course of nature in those
countries.
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Or you say, I'm protecting lots of land
near cities, but then I am going to assign
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it a fairly weak protection
status that doesn't
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interfere too much with
my other development plans.
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And I think, in a nutshell, that is really
sort of the reason why we across four
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decades, across all European countries,
do not detect a very impactful policy.
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Can you start then to better understand,
having done this research, the level of
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quality of work being done by the European
Union in terms of protecting these lands?
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Well, let me put out first that we point
out that this particular policy that the
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European Union has been pushing,
which is really laser focused on achieving
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that quantity target, that 30%, that that
might have been a bit counterproductive.
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I guess the EU has been focused too much,
and we need to reach the 30% without
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asking perhaps the question, is that 30%
having a large effect?
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Is it changing what would have happened
otherwise?
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That said, I think the EU has been very,
very thoughtful in its environmental
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policy in general, including its policies
to protect nature.
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There's a different policy called the
Nature Restoration Law, which isn't
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focused as much on protecting new lands,
but to improve the quality, the
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deteriorating quality of the existing
protected areas.
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And that might be much more impactful.
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And that's, in fact, another angle I'd want
to go into in future research.
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So I applaud the EU for being thoughtful
in general, but we're hoping to point out
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that just a percentage alone is not enough
to have real impact.
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Right, exactly.
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And then the other question, from my
knowledge, is when we're talking about a
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30% piece of territory within,
are we talking within each country,
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or are we talking about the European Union
as a whole?
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Like, you know, the levels
may vary from country
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to country, but it's
30% on scope.
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Yeah, the EU passes down to 30% to each
individual country.
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It is, of course, much easier to meet that
for a country like Sweden that has lots of
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areas with low population
density and lots of
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forest, than for my home
country, the Netherlands.
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So when you look at the map, it's kind of
interesting.
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You see these large connected contiguous
areas in some countries.
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And then in a densely populated country
like mine, you will see a patchwork of
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tiny areas because they're really
scrambling to find the 30%.
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What then does this research, and does it,
kind of open the door to understand how
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the United States is looking at having
protected lands?
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Right.
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So our paper at Europe
has studied a policy that— it's
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the flagship policy for
protection, or one of those two.
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And then we're showing, unfortunately,
that it hasn't worked too well.
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So that has somewhat of a limitation that
it hasn't proven that a policy that we
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could import here into the United States.
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I do think that what's happening here in
the US is very different.
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The current federal administration is
actively taking away nature protections.
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Think about the waters of the US,
the Endangered Species Act.
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And I think in general, we see both in the
US and in Europe, a pretty alarming speed
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of deterioration of our natural
ecosystems.
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And I think that this approach to trade
a quick economic gain here in the US by
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weakening those standards is unbelievably
short-sighted.
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And I really hope that everyone can agree,
whether you're Republican, Democrat,
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or Independent, that
we all benefit from the
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beauty and the economic
value of our natural land.
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So I think it's more— in
the US, it's about,
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you know, let's at least stop
weakening those standards.
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And I hope we can get to a
point where we can discuss
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about how do we tighten
them in a more effective way?
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Arthur, great to catch up with you again.
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All the best on this research and the
follow-up research to come. Thank you.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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Thank you. Arthur van Bentham,
who's a Professor of Business
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Economics and Public Policy
here at the Wharton School.
