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 Harriet Mead who is on the steering group for New Networks for Nature as well as president of the Society of Wildlife Artists.
So much of our perception of the natural world and the environment seems to be coloured by guilt. Guilt on a personal level: that we may use the car too often or that the green beans we want in November were grown in Kenya, but also guilt at just being a member of the human race with our relentless need for space, fuel and food. We are bombarded with stories of looming environmental catastrophes: melting ice caps, disappearing rainforests, insecticides killing bees, ash die back…it goes on and on. The feeling of helplessness is tinged almost with resentment that just by existing we are having an impact on the natural world.
The sense of guilt is hardly a positive way of getting the environmental message across. Of course we need to know the perilous state of the world and take responsibility and try to make a difference at whatever level, be it globally or locally. And on many occasions we do need to shock and rally responses. But guilt can make people turn away from things. We need people to turn towards the natural world so that they realise that it belongs to them, that they actually can help. The natural world is something that they can take pleasure in and have an influence on, not something that is nagging, wounded and desperate and perhaps cannot be saved.
It is worth taking time to actually look at what it is we are saving and why we should care. And this is where I feel there should be more cross over between art and conservation. I believe that creatives are invaluable for breathing life onto the bones of research. Artists who celebrate the natural world through their own personal view of the subject can convey a sense of place and show us why we should care. Like our artists, the great nature writers and poets can celebrate the unassuming and transport us to the heart of the subject, and film makers and photographers find beauty and wonder in nature and the environment and document the individuals and build stories. It’s all about seeing and communicating. It’s a fresh way of looking that can work alongside conservation and communicate on many different levels with all ages from a multiple of backgrounds.
I’m not some hippy wandering around with rose tinted spectacles thinking that all we need is love to save the world. We need science. We need research. We need solutions. I just think we also need to remember to celebrate. We need to bang the drum for what we have and make the person on the street turn towards conservation rather than shuffle away. By lighting and feeding that spark of care and involvement the fire of hope will burn brighter. And hope is the ultimate weapon in our armoury. Without hope the army of scientists, conservationist and creatives working for the natural world would have to admit defeat. Creativity is another language in which to spread the message of conservation. Let’s face it we need as many voices as we can get.
Do you agree with Harriet? And what would be your One Big Thing for Nature?
It would be great to hear your views.
Mankind is increasingly estranged from the natural world, for which it continues to hold many romantic notions; it was after all, our ancient home. For the wild creatures that inhabited the prehistoric world, including our ancestors, it is hard to imagine there being much romanticism; one imagines lives dominated by constant struggle - the struggle for birth, for food, for shelter, for mates - in short, theirs would have been a relentless struggle for life often ending in premature, violent death. However, in these dangerous and uncertain times our antecedents - predator and predated – would have been an integral, functioning part of the primeval ecosystem, conjoined with and inseparable from the natural world. Of all wild things, mankind alone, by virtue of genes, ingenuity and luck (?) made a physical and psychological journey, resulting in our becoming increasingly set apart - estranged - from the natural world. This ‘duality’ and the extent to which it shapes objective, detached and token/benevolent approaches towards the natural world are, I believe, significant impediments to the contemporary challenge of ‘saving nature’. The duality of mankind and the (rest of the) natural world is something which Darwinian theory and all scientific understanding since have been unable to dispel. We must therefore look to Harriet and to art, in its all its forms, if not to God, as formidable expressions of the human condition holding the capacity to reveal the unity and sanctity of all living things.
Some more comments from Twitter:
@PFSPURR says:
We are only custodians of the Natural World, our duty is to leave it in better shape than we found it.
@jfitz42 says:
I think not so much 'it belongs to them', but we belong to it.
@yesigiveadamn says:
The natural world is good for us too: 2010 studies showed that 5 minutes with Nature can help boost people's mental health.
Some thoughts from Twitter
@busylizzy says:
agree about feelings of guilt switching people off, the mountain feels so insurmountable at times I think people don't try
my one thing would be everyone with a garden creating a wildlife corner, mine is only a few square feet but attracts loads
@KateRisely says:
What a great post by @HarrietMead1 on celebrating nature through art
Linking art and nature is the aim of New Networks for Nature newnetworksfornature.org.uk
Also can I say that beans or flowers from Kenya is often quoted as a source of "green guilt". This is Soil Ass. nonsense. Kenya desperately needs foreign currency with 100 kids to a class in primary school and individual carbon use per capita is far lower than UK so I have to defend her right to export "green beans". I also pray that Kenya and the entire Rift area of Eastern Africa from Ethiopia south makes good progress to wards developing the power potential of geo-thermal which could make a great deal of their power not only cheap but clean/CO2 free.
You are so right, Harriet, art needs first to celebrate nature, and then extend to the problems. Nietsche said that life without music would be a mistake - so too for art and nature. How do we build stronger links between artists (across all arts) and conservation people to work more closely and creatively together, to inject nature more strongly into the public consciousness?