New power brings a noisy spring

We live in amazing times. 

In the week of mass demonstrations by Extinction Rebellion in London, the incredible life-force that is Greta Thunberg gave her blunt assessment of the UK’s track record on tackling climate change (“beyond absurd”) and laid a gauntlet to build climate change thinking into all parts of decision-making.

Her own Friday-school strike was the catalyst for an estimated 1.6 million young people – including my two - to follow her lead through #YouthStrike4Climate.

Nobody knows where this will lead but it has already proven to be a brilliantly disruptive intervention which has forced climate change back into parliaments across the world, onto the front pages and even onto the 5-Live phone-ins. 

But these are not the only environmental disruptors we’ve seen this spring.

A single video by local campaigner @NorfolkBea of a sand martin exhausted after its spring migration failing to access its nesting borrow due to netting on Bacton cliffs has had nearly 2 million views.

In fact, no one predicted that public concern about the use of netting to deter nesting wild birds would snowball to such an extent that more than 330,000 people have signed a petition calling for a ban on the Number 10 website in one month.

So far, this has forced u-turns over the use of netting by Tesco and from a local authority, triggered a Secretary of State to make an intervention and we have used it to put a spotlight on the need for new laws to restore nature.

And this week, Wild Justice (a crowd-funded campaign group) forced Natural England into a rethink over their use of the general license in England.

The environmental crisis is becoming more acute and the window of opportunity to tackle it is closing fast.  It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that environmental activism is growing.  We are living in a new world power is shifting and people are mobilising autonomously.

Yet, as a brilliant book by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans points out, this “New Power”, poses both jeopardy and opportunity for traditional “Old Power” institutions like governments, many businesses and, dare I say it, even big charities like the RSPB.

Get on the wrong side of the argument, as happened with Norfolk District Council and you might get death threats.  Get on the right side of the argument and you may win support and even save some nature.

My overwhelming feeling from this noisy spring is that we have a massive opportunity to exploit the current zeitgeist for climate change action and nature’s recovery and remain relevant to those people that care passionately about what’s happening to our environment.

It may feel like a pretty anarchic future, but ignoring the power shift is not an option.  While it may feel a bit messy and chaotic, environmental organisations must be creative and brave to harness this reinvigorated public to deliver the systemic changes that nature needs.

So, if you like this noisy spring and want to #LetNatureSing, then as well as downloading our single of pure birdsong, please join us at a mass lobby of Parliament on 26 June to support the introduction of a strong environment bill to drive nature’s recovery in England and amend the Climate Change Act to commit to a target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.