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This article presents arguments in support of the following three contentions:

• Farmers' leaders have been misguided in encouraging their members to oppose open access proposals for walkers.

 • Walking tourism contributes to the objectives of CPRW

Jobs and the Natural Heritage

In 1998 Scottish Natural Heritage (broadly, the Scottish equivalent of our own Countryside Council for Wales) published statistics which undermine this plausible and frequently stated view. SNH asked the question how many jobs in Scotland depend on the natural environment (1). They found that expenditure on open-air recreation directly attributable to the natural environment in Scotland created 29,000 jobs (full-time-equivalent). Of these, 9,400 were related to walking and a further 3,950 to hillwalking/ mountaineering. In addition, there were 6,700 jobs caring for the natural environment. All these jobs would be at risk if the environment were damaged.

Ramblers in Wales had long been arguing that walking had the potential to make a major contribution to the rural economy of Wales but lacked firm evidence for Wales as a whole. The figures most frequently quoted were those for the Pembrokeshire path (2) which showed £14m. of spending in the area of the path during the survey year, a return of £57 for each £1 spent on path management. The number of jobs generated along the trail corridor was put at 567. Intuitive extrapolation from these figures made it obvious that walking must be a significant contributor to the rural economy, but the SNH report sparked the search for more precise evidence.

The Midmore Report (3) provides "tentative but conservative" estimates for Wales. Unlike the SNH study, it confines itself to walking (including mountaineering); furthermore, it provides estimates of the number of jobs created in rural Wales as well as figures for Wales as a whole. Amongst the major conclusions are the following:

• Walking (including hill walking and mountaineering) generates incomes in rural Wales of £77m. a year and creates 4,250 jobs.

 • This represents around 2% of rural Gross Domestic Product and 1% of rural jobs. (To put this in context, agriculture - including subsidy - also contributes, at present, some 2% to GDP, but provides 7% of rural jobs.) 

• The cost of creating a walking-related job via the mechanism of improving Rights of Way is about one-tenth of the cost to the public purse of maintaining a job in agriculture. 

Walking-related jobs have the following advantages: 

• they are widely dispersed (they benefit those parts of the rural economy that other developments cannot reach);

 • they have a low environmental impact; 

• they have a much less narrow seasonal pattern than bucket and spade holidays;

 • and they tend to generate expenditure that is recycled locally rather than syphoned out of the local economy (e.g., as profits to multinationals). 

• The potential of walking as a means of rural regeneration is currently under-exploited.

The Midmore Report confirms for Wales what SNH found for Scotland: many of our jobs depend on the natural environment. To damage the environment may worsen our economic prospects rather than enhance them.

The Agricultural Industry and the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill

 The widespread reports on the current crisis in agriculture sometimes give the impression that what is happening is an unfortunate blip. A longer term perspective shows that this is not true. In Ceredigion, for example, the number of jobs in agriculture declined from between ten and eleven thousand in 1911 to about three thousand in 1991 (4) - a decline of two-thirds before the current crisis was generally observed.

It is often claimed that "agriculture is the backbone of rural economies" and there is much truth in the claim. Unfortunately, this is a weakness, not a strength. Wherever agriculture remains important it will retain the power in the twenty-first century, which it had throughout the twentieth, of acting as the engine of rural decline. In the past, the loss of jobs has generally been amongst farmworkers - not a notably powerful group. If there is a difference to be expected in the future, it is, that with few farmworkers left, the loss of jobs is now more likely to be amongst farmers. And though farmers are better organised politically than farmworkers, they are unlikely to be powerful enough to withstand the pressures (5).

In a word, unless "something is done" there will be a continuing decline in the economic base of rural areas. There will, in consequence, be strong pressure to create new jobs at any cost. That cost could include devastation of the environment. In much of rural Wales, Objective 1 money will be available to provide the means to ensure that this actually happens - despite the sustainability constraint that is supposed to be attached to it.

There is no simple solution to these problems, but the following three principles are suggested.

• In seeking new jobs - which we must - we need to find ones that are also dependent on and therefore protective of the natural heritage. 

• The farming population itself cannot be maintained unless there is a shift of focus away from the narrow issue of the farm business to the broader concern of how to make the farm household viable. Many farms are already effectively part-time and more will become so. What is needed is complementary employment for the farmer and farm family so as to enable the whole household to survive - with the farm as just one of its sources of income. There is plenty of evidence on the extent to which farms in Wales are already "pluriactive" (6), but little indication that farmers' leaders recognise the need to seek ways of extending it.

No one would suggest that the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill is a complete solution to these problems, but it does offer opportunities that farm leaders should be grasping rather than rejecting. The Bill covers three main issues:

• Changes to Rights of Way legislation. The provisions for establishing Definitive Maps of Rights of Way were contained in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949. Fifty years later, more than 40% remain obstructed (7) - despite their historical importance, despite their tourism potential, despite the duty which Highways Authorities (Unitary Authorities) have to assert and protect the rights of the public and despite the government's long-standing target of having them all in good condition by the year 2000. The Bill offers a number of ways to improve the situation, including in particular powers for the public to force Highways Authorities to take action. 

• Open access for walkers to mountain, moor, heath and down and also common land. The Bill makes extensive provisions to prevent inappropriate activities and behaviour, it limits occupiers' liability, it provides for exclusions and restrictions by the landowner for management purposes and also by CCW (in Wales) for conservation reasons. In broad terms it enacts much (though not all) of what was envisaged in 1888 by T. E. Ellis's Mountains, Rivers and Pathways (Wales) Bill (8).

The Midmore Report shows how much walking contributes to the rural economy already - without clearly defined open access, without a reliably usable Rights of Way structure, and without serious publicity to attract walking visitors. How much more might rural incomes be raised if the provisions of the Bill become law? Is there any reason - other than historic prejudice - why farmers and ramblers (and others too) cannot see that they have a mutual interest in a beautiful, prosperous countryside?

Walking and the Objectives of CPRW

CPRW's objectives are summed up in the phrase "living landscape". In the past it was, above all, the farming industry which both created the landscape and the wildlife habitat that we all enjoy and which also provided the economic basis for those who live in the country. But as the numbers employed directly and indirectly in farming have fallen, those who remained have sometimes succumbed to the pressures to damage what their forefathers created - inappropriate farm buildings, "improved" grasslands, drained wetlands and so on.

CPRW's focus on people as well as landscape requires us to seek forms of employment that are not only consistent with the kind of landscape we want to preserve but are dependent on it. In that way we can ensure that our efforts flow with the tide of economic pressures - not against them.

Walking is one such activity. We need to foster it.

David Bateman is Secretary of the Ceredigion Branch of CPRW. He was previously Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. Since retiring he has been active as a member of the Ramblers' Association and the Open Spaces Society as well as CPRW. He writes here in a personal capacity.

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www.cprw.org.uk/magartcl/batwalk.htm 19/6/00