Conserving Biodiversity: Kew Gardens
| Kew Gardens covers an area of 120 hectares of land alongside the River Thames in the south-west of London. Both the site itself and its buildings are of significant historical and cultural importance, and recently have been nominated by the UK government as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From the standpoint of biodiversity conservation, however, we are interested in two particular aspects of the role that Kew Gardens plays. a library of scientific information on the diversity of the planet's flora. As well as providing a home-away-from-home for an abundance of plant life and genetic material from around the world, Kew is also a centre of excellence for research into conservation. This work is of critical significance. Society currently faces a difficult problem in that it is in practice impossible, or at least prohibitively expensive, to conserve all currently threatened plant or animal species and their habitats. In recognition of this, policy-makers must use what information is currently available so as to ensure that those aspects of biodiversity that we are able to save are the most important ones. Knowledge arising from basic scientific research, for example, on the use of plants as future medicines and foodstuffs could provide one important building block for making these key decisions. Of course, scientific information is not the sole influence guiding decisions on which aspects of nature should be prioritised by society. We also value species, habitats and landscapes for their aesthetic appeal. For example, debates about public policies concerned with reversing the decline of living species, such as farmland and woodland birds, in the British countryside have sought to ask what principles should determine the future character of rural landscapes. That is, what is the appropriate balance between conservation and development in the form of farming and other commercial uses of land?
LSE | The Pagoda at Kew Gardens is one of the best known and most recognisable features of the site. It was built in 1762 as a surprise for Princess Augusta, the Dowager Princess of Wales and mother of George III. After the death of her husband, Frederick, Princess Augusta had continued developing the estate at Kew, starting the first botanic garden there. The Pagoda was one of several buildings designed by Sir William Chambers, Princess Augusta's official architect, to ornament the estate. It is heavily influenced by some principles of Chinese architecture.
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One way in which households reveal their views about the aesthetic value of nature and landscapes is through their recreational behaviour. This brings us to a second aspect of Kew Gardens; namely, its role as an amenity for its many visitors, through the provision of a wide variety of flora and natural spaces. How might we assess what value visitors place on biodiversity conservation? One clue is provided by the costs that visitors incur through their use of natural spaces, such as Kew, as recreational resources. For example, visitors might pay a fee for entry and, in addition, incur 'out-of-pocket' expenses in getting to and from a natural area. Now add to this the value of the time that people spend travelling and wandering around the site. In some part, these costs will reflect the value that a household places on visiting a natural area, and thereby the extent to which that household cares about the conservation of such a location. | |
| Thinking Point | | | In what ways does Kew Gardens contribute to the conservation of biodiversity? | | |
Of course, although it is a major visitor attraction, the people who do not visit Kew in any given year vastly outnumber those who do. This is true also of other natural areas in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. However, it is also plausible that non-users place some value on the most important of these natural resources in that they might be willing to pay for the continued conservation of, for example, national parks regardless of whether they intend to visit these protected areas. Determining how much non-users value such resources in practice, on the one hand, and how these values might be captured so as to generate the funds necessary to finance costly conservation programmes, on the other hand, both represent significant future challenges to policy-makers.
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