A year ago today we handed the Prime Minister a list of 360,000 people that had signed the RSPB’s Letter to the Future. The letter was simple – it called upon politicians to think about the health of the planet while making big decisions about where to invest and where to make public spending cuts.
This was also the day that we launched our Stepping Up for Nature campaign. We wanted governments, businesses and individuals to work together to help meet the international commitment to halt the loss of biodiversity and begin its recovery by 2020.
One year on – how well are we all doing?
I am staggered that, since our launch, three million steps for nature have been taken. The millions of small steps taken by individuals certainly add up - from making homes for wildlife in people's gardens through to giving gifts of time by volunteering at our nature reserves.
We've played our part as well. We launched our Together for Trees partnership with Tesco to boost rainforest conservation. This is a great expression of what we are trying to achieve with the campaign: Tesco will help to raise £1million by engaging its customers and by working to reduce the forest footprint of its supply chain with a plan to sustainably source tropical commodities. We’ll work hard with our partners in seven countries to protect and restore 240,000 hectares of rainforest. And we will hold the UK Government to its commitment to finding the finance needed by other countries to help keep their tropical timber standing.
The UK Government also deserves credit for providing seed funding for the launch of 12 landscape-scale conservation projects (Nature Improvement Areas) in England. This has helped to create new partnerships that will leverage in an average £4 for every £1 invested by Government. That's a pretty decent use of public funds.
But, but, but...
Progress will be limited unless others in government listen to what those 360,000 people were saying last year. As with economic debt, any ecological debt that we create will be felt by our children. Sacrificing our natural assets for the sake of short term economic stimulus (such as buidling a new airport in the Thames Estuary) will sell our children short. The Budget will be a big test of whether those at the centre of government "get it".
So, I would like the Messrs Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Alexander to take a moment to re-read our Letter to the Future, which more than 360,000 signed. The message is as pertinent today as it was a year ago. Once they've read it, I hope that they will decide to take their own steps for nature. They could start by greening the Budget and by recognising the positive role that environmental regulation (including the planning system) can play in safeguarding these assets.
Here is the letter in full.
I'm writing this now to make sure our children have a chance of growing up in a world worth living in.
Today there's still time to save nature.
If we act now, our children may yet be able to share their world with sparrows and polar bears, eagles and tigers. There's still a chance that they'll inherit a world where the engines of life - the air, seas, rivers and forests - are healthy. Where bluebell woods and rainforests won't be lost forever.
Yes, I accept that recovery from recession has meant spending billions of pounds - one way or another future generations will have to pay for this. The least we can do is to use this money to create a future they'll thank us for. I want governments to invest in a healthy economy and a healthy environment. As well as protecting jobs, I want them to tackle climate change and to protect our seas, countryside and wildlife.
I'm signing this letter to show that I care deeply about nature and the world we are creating for our children. In years to come I hope they'll be able to see that their world is a richer one because of the action we took today.
I'm hoping that many thousands of people will join me in signing it.
Together we can be a powerful voice for nature.
Yours in hope.
Have you taken a step for nature recently?
It would be great to hear if you have.
I agree with all the sentiments expressed in the Letter and I signed it but I do remember that I found the timing difficult. The letter was launched just prior to the 2009 Copenhagen summit when I certainly felt that everyone should have been simply pulling on the rope to deliver a meaningful agreement there. RSPB went off tangentially on the letter to the Future while not a word was expressed in the relevant Birds magazine prior to Copenhagen re its importance; I put this down to a "centrist" positioning strategy at RSPB re climate change whether consious or unconsious.
This government is deeply corporate and neo con. Its philoposophy seems to be that well being is delivered simply by the market and market freedom is paramount. It seemed to me that the Chancellor has signalled to his right that he is privately a climate sceptic and it would be interesting to push him on this. This is all a deeply regressive political climate. It is worth noting that peak everything on the resource front demands a strategy towards sustainability and particularly a fast drive out of carbon addiction; this will bear down on future energy costs and our current increasing foreign dependance as North Sea production collapses. The immorality of oil is of course not a subject that any of us really addresses in our daily political discourse. Its simply too dramatic.
Yes, I e-mailed Mr Osborne yesterday. I gave a further example of how environmental regulation does not harm economic development, if that development is properly assessed before hand. The example I gave was the Wytch Farm Oilfield development in Purbeck in which I was involved in the 1980s. This was a major industrial project located in a very very sensitive wildlife and landscape area with as many regulations applicable to it as one could possibly imagine. BP took a lot of time and trouble consulting with a huge number of organisations and particularly the RSPB to come up with the right and sustainable development schemes. As a result it was, I believe, a win win situation all round. It was a great example of how regulations supported and helped biodiversity but did not prevent the development.
These days in this complicated world, issues are never simple and straight forward and there are no quick and easy solutions as substitutes to hard work. Unfortunately many of our politicians find these facts of life hard to understand and to grasp.