Following the launch of the State of Nature report, I am keen to stimulate a debate about what else we need to do to live in harmony with nature. Over the next few weeks, people from differing perspectives will propose their One Big Thing for Nature. Today, I am delighted to welcome David Fursdon, a farmer and landowner in Devon. David chairs the newly formed SW Rural and Farming Network and the established SW Chamber of Rural Enterprise. He is a Commissioner of both English Heritage and the Crown Estate and a former President of the CLA.You invite me to suggest the one 'big thing' that can be done to kick-start nature's revival. I believe that it is to have courage but probably in a different way than you might expect and I explain why.
In a world of competing pressures on land use; in a society with expectations of permanent economic development and in a democracy we will only improve the state of nature if the ideas of how to do this are acceptable to a wide sector of society. This means these ideas must be acceptable to those that create jobs as well as to those that have no jobs and to those that have expectations and aspirations in economic terms as well as to those for whom nature comes above all else. This means that we need to learn to stand up for nature in a world full of humans. While we live in a world where human needs have not been fully met, limiting the ambition to do so can only succeed if there is a convincing case around which a consensus can emerge.
When this is coupled with the effects of climate change (and I see little appetite for the self-control measures that mankind will need to take to slow this) we need to 'get real'. This means:
If you run a business you have to take hard decisions about priorities such as making people you like redundant; ceasing trading with a friend because you feel that they are in financial trouble or promoting one person and not another. Standing up for nature should also involve taking difficult decisions about priorities, about fanatics within our midst, about publicly debating difficult issues and understanding economic realities. Have we got the courage to do so?
Do you agree with David Fursdon? And what would be your One Big Thing for Nature?
It would be great to hear your views.
Mike gives us a glimpse of a pragmatic approach to reversing nature’s decline – a nature, the role and place of which, is subjugated to a ‘reality’ in which the varied and demands of mankind take precedence. It is no surprise, therefore, that there are difficult decisions to be made that will come at a price – a price, one suspects, which will be borne by nature. For this is no place for zealots ‘contemptuous of human needs’. This is the habitat of the realist: the scientist, the researcher and, doubtless, the accountant and the banker - a place in which nature will have to be measured, quantified, commoditised even, to give it due place and value in the world. Doubtless well-intentioned, I am left with the pervasive feeling that in this ‘brave new world’ nature will exist for the benefit of mankind, or it will not exist at all. Apparently, the nature here will serve as a key for cures to human disease, be available to inspire our art or poetry, and will provide solace for our holidays even. I’m sorry but I cannot warm to this prescription for reversing nature’s decline – rather, I prefer that we should be exposed to the ‘dangerous zealot’ - touched and inspired by the wonder of nature and preaching a vision of its sanctity - than we ‘get real’ and leave nature to the tender mercies of such pragmatism.