What do we need now?
31/07/24
Substantial shifts are underway, but more are needed and we all need to work towards a better future for nature and us. We need to forge new relationships with nature and appreciate how much we depend on nature for our very existence. Without nature there is no economy and no us! Without us nature thrives, so a new respect for, and protection of, nature is required from us all. A fundamental philosophy shift to the Ecozoic paradigm is needed https://ecocitybuilders.org/the-antropocene-vs-the-ecozoic/
What other mental shifts are needed?
We need to realise that our current economy is not sustainable and so deeply flawed. Dieter Helm’s book ‘Legacy’ https://dieterhelm.co.uk/books/the-sustainable-economy/ explores the concept of what a sustainable ECOnomy would look like and what do we have to do to mend our ways. We simply can’t go on like this.
Fossil fuels still make up 80% of the world’s energy, global temperatures have risen by over 1 degree C and no serious progress on climate change has been made. Neither has progress be made limiting global population growth. Rainforests continue to be lost, oceans are more acidic, rivers polluted and we’re heading for a biodiversity great extinction event.
Do we really care about the next generation?
We need to focus on the needs of the next generation and the inheritance we are leaving them with. What will the world be like when a 10 year old in 2024 is 80 or 90 years old? What will the global temperature be like then? How much biodiversity will be left? How much plastic will be in waterways and oceans? I think we can all take a guess at this!
Put simply, we all need to stop living beyond our means and downsize our expectations for travel and our commercial aspirations. We need to focus more on quality of life and appreciate that nature can improve our health and wellbeing if we let it. We need to change our diets and focus less on meat (beef farming is one of the greatest carbon emitters) and eat a more varied plant based diet to enhance our gut biomes as well as get more exercise.
How is the ocean relevant?
It controls everything, from the air we breathe to the planetary climate systems upon which we depend for our food and water. But the ocean is a new commercial frontier. Are we going to trash this as we have trashed terrestrial habitats and species? Much of the ocean is still unexplored. I don’t just mean the deep oceans rarely, if ever, visited by people – I mean just offshore. Most sub tidal habitats and species have never been researched. I have lived here for 30+ years and I don’t know what lives in the sea in our local bay…no-one does, as it has never been seen by most of us let alone been mapped or surveyed.
Coastal activity has grown rapidly over the last few decades from industrial fisheries and transport right through to recreational activity. Now we have seabed mining, a huge range of renewable energy developments, aquaculture, carbon capture schemes and geoengineering projects. We want to do more with the oceans, but without knowing what is already there, how can we assess the services provided and likely impacts?
What have we learned?
A few things come to mind - we need to:
Have relevant experts in lead roles governing the country
A longer term view than a governing cycle of 5 years
Provide more funding for statutory agencies and improve their reputations through action
Put nature first and front and centre of everything we do
Take a big picture view for the greater good
Bust the myth that thriving economies and thriving nature are at opposite ends of a spectrum, instead they are intrinsically intertwined. The environment is not a blocker to economic success but a building block of if
Be brave, act faster and act selflessly
Include communities in decision making processes
Appreciate that taxes are a good thing, provided they are efficiently spent
Statutory agencies can’t do it all. They are underfunded, have limited resources, rapidly changing staff turnover meaning expertise is quickly lost. This needs sorting out. Partnerships and networks need to be greatly enhanced with the community voluntary sector to build capacity and capability for the longer term.
Communities are usually the last to know what is happening near them, so all they can do is protest, but they have the greatest local knowledge. Co-design of projects means less wasted resource from poorly planned programmes that were not fit for purpose.
We need a huge effort to find out what is already in our oceans in terms of water, biota and abiota before any development can be effectively planned for. This is not a time waster, it means we can prioritse the best places for development for the benefit of nature and us. Cornwall FLOW has been a great example of how this can be done.
There have been developments in the right direction. Here are just a few examples:
A focus on emissions reductions and net zero is underway
Defra’s 5 Environmental Principles and the concept of net gain, but these all need to be applied with greater urgency, aspiration and ambition
Technology enables remote access to environments, knowledge, experts, networks and skills. But we do need to learn how to use it more collaboratively and interactively.
More people have become greener, flight free, plant based with spaces for nature in their homes and gardens.
We all need to act at all levels of our lives at work, home and play and work smarter together in collaborative networks to benefit nature and ourselves.
