On May 2nd 2020 the Horsham Climate Cafe held an on-line forum where I was delighted to be invited to discuss my thoughts on our relationship with nature following the Coronavirus crisis. This was chaired and facilitated by Helen Whittington, Carrie Cort, Chloe Harrison and Vivaine Doussy. Around 100 people attended and we enjoyed a good interactive discussion. Below is a summary of my presentation:
Nature seems to be blossoming while
us humans are locked up indoors. We’ve
heard about goats taking over gardens in Llandudno in Wales and fallow dear
wandering round parts of London. There
are elephants on the streets of Thailand, elephant seals in Argentinian suburbs
and the penguins are taking back the streets in South Africa! There seem to be more butterflies and the
birds seem to be singing louder. Is
nature really recovering while we are locked up, is it the good weather, or is
it just that we are taking the time to pay attention and notice what has been
there all along?
Maybe it’s all three, but COVID-19
has made us press the pause button. Like
naughty teenagers, we have been sent into our rooms to think about what we have
done for the last few decades! Maybe we
will behave better when we are let out.
But it does seem to be true that all
sorts of people are noticing nature.
Whether simply looking out of the window, taking the time on an exercise
walk or cycle or doing garden bird surveys with the Wildlife Trust, people are taking the time to absorb the
natural world around them. Michael
Blencowe’s excellent daily nature diary on the Sussex Wildlife Trust web site is also proving incredibly popular, showing that people really want to
engage with the natural world.
Moreover, we are noticing that the
sky really is clearer, with less air pollution and the absence of vapour trails
from planes. Around the world air
quality has improved in cities; often markedly so. In China, the reduction of deaths caused by
air pollution is greater than the increase in deaths from coronavirus. In Britain we are racing towards 40,000
coronavirus deaths – but we lose 40,000 people a year to air pollution!
Ironically, the reduction in air
pollution may actually increase global temperatures, even though
greenhouse gases have gone down. Particulate
air pollution (as well as killing people) reflects sunlight so reducing
temperatures. If pollution goes down,
then temperatures may go up.
The message that human activity must
inevitably be bad for the environment is, however, rather a negative one. Whilst this might be generally true, it is
not always the case by a long way.
Conservation management, sensitive farming, sustainable forestry as well
as gardening and looking after community green spaces are all positive
interactions. If nature is being left
alone, aren’t we just rewilding? Well
no; rewilding is the positive rebuilding of natural systems and then encouraging
it to look after itself – it is not the same as abandonment! Furthermore, there are cases where essential conservation work cannot now be done because of the lockdown.
However, we should not have to
wait for a pandemic for nature to be able to recover!
Many people are therefore questioning
our relationship with nature at quite a deep level. We may get over the virus, but the climate
and ecological emergency is still with us.
We are at the beginning of the 6th
mass extinction. And this one is caused
by our own actions. And let us be clear
- extinction is not only something that happens to other species! 10 years ago it was only weirdos who talked
about human society collapsing and possible human extinction. Now it’s a common concern, indeed the younger
generation is beginning to see little else in their future.
If we look at some of the recent loss
statistics, we get an idea of the scale of our problem:
The 2018 World Wide Fund for nature
living planet report showed that there has been a 60% reduction in populations
of vertebrates since 1970s. and a study in German nature reserves
showed a 75% reduction in insects in just 30 years. I also remember David Attenborough
telling us that currently around 96% of mammals are either humans or our livestock. Only 4% is everything else (elephants,
rabbits, mice, badgers, etc – only 4%!)
I cannot help but conclude that we’ve
lost more than half of the vibrancy of nature within my lifetime.
Against this, one myth that we have
to bust is that nature is just for nature lovers and that looking after the
environment is only some form of favour to environmentalists – a nice to have. Pandemics are one symptom of the collapse of
our ecosystems, and these ecosystems are our life support system. No life support system – no life!
As we’ve pushed nature into its last
corners, whether in animal markets, in industrial farms or by destroying
ecosystems, these diseases are increasingly able to cross the species barrier
and infect us. It is estimated that
between 2 and 4 new viruses appear every year because of this. So some epidemiologists are now
saying that the last 20 years have been 20 years of near-misses – pandemics are
becoming more likely and we may not be so ‘lucky’ next time. Pandemics are a repercussion of our
destruction of nature and they may now become a long-term feature of our lives
– unless we change our ways.
The bigger question, therefore, is not
how is nature recovering now but how can nature continue to recover after we
come out of lockdown?
So, when we get into the new normal,
our relationship with nature must be different. The past was exploitative, the future must be
regenerative. What does this mean in
practice? Well that is not a question
that will be answered by simple take-home messages – it is the challenge to
humanity for the foreseeable future.
But at the centre of this must be a
change in our values. We must move away
from the old normal of consumerism, me-first, competitiveness, demanding never-ending
material growth (on a finite and degrading planet), treating animals, plants
and ecosystems as commodities to be exploited rather than assets to be cared
for.
The virus has brought out the higher
values in many of us – that of society, empathy, helping and sharing. Importantly it has also brought out a desire
to look after the vital assets that we all have, and we all hold in common – nature.
Our actions now must be regenerative of
nature, of soils and of society. We need
a carbon neutral, zero waste society.
And delivering this, very likely means a significant growth in localism. We will become closer to our local place and
to our local wildlife.
So, what is the good news? The pause button has been pressed. We have been sent to our rooms to think
about our behaviour over the last decades and we’ve started to realise what is
important to us – people, society, empathy, sympathy and sharing, and also care
of the things we all hold dear and rely on – nature. Against this, the never-ending impossible
drive to more wealth seems rather immature.
Perhaps we are leaving the mindset of the spoilt brat economy behind us.
We go back to Business as Usual at
our peril.
To end I would like to go back to the
African penguin I mentioned at the beginning.
The African penguin may be taking
back the streets of South Africa, but their population is in trouble – they are
in decline (from Philip Lymbery’s book “Dead Zone”). The reason for their decline is that the fish
they eat has been extracted from the sea by an industrial fishing fleet
(powered by fossil fuels). These fish
are then ground up into fishmeal and fed to animals, such as chickens, in
highly intensive industrial farms. These
farms often have thousands of animals packed-in tightly together, in highly
unhygienic conditions, forming the ideal breeding ground for diseases. These diseases could well include new viruses
which could cross the species barrier and become our next pandemic.
Species decline, ecosystem destruction,
fossil fuel use (and climate change), animal welfare and human health are
therefore not separate issues, they are entirely inter-connected.
I repeat, we go back to the old
normal at our peril!
No comments:
Post a Comment