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MartinHarper

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 Richard Mabey, FRSL. Richard is a writer and broadcaster, chiefly on the relations between nature and culture.

How not to save the world
I'm appallled by the concept of One Big Thing for Nature. Nature isn't North Korea. It doesn't work according to On Big Ideology. It isn't threatened by One Overaching Enemy.  It won't be 'saved' by One Totalitarian Solution.

I resent also the assumtpion that it is in our gift to 'save'  it. What a great job we did of that in the 19th-20th centuries! The hubristic assumption that we are cleverer than nature is what got us in this mess originally. 

The natural world is infinitely complex and dynamic, declining in parts flourishing in others. We can only help it if we recognise all the myriad ecological networks we are involved in as individuals and institutions, try to behave in them as homeostatically as all their other citizens, and endeavour TO DO NO HARM.

That is not One Big Thing, but tens of millions of little things, which is what nature itself is.

Do you agree with Richard Mabey?  And what would be your One Big Thing for Nature? 

It would be great to hear your views.

Parents

  • Well done Richard ! A sharp and timely reminder (conservationists included !) that we aren't actually in control - other than continuing destruction, sometimes mindless, sometimes, appallingly,  positively gleeful as developers and 'business' seem to revel in their 'right' to destroy nature. What one learns as one understands more is just how difficult it is to artificially create the fine detail of natural systems - we're reaching a point where a lot of fondly held beliefs about conservation management practices will have to be questioned as our rule books  create yet another version  of a neatly mown lawn (neat swathes of even aged heather for example). A bi yes to DO NO HARM - I'd like to go further, and suggest MAKE IT BETTER - which we do have the capacity to do, largely because of the sheer level of damage we've done over the last 150 years.

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  • Well done Richard ! A sharp and timely reminder (conservationists included !) that we aren't actually in control - other than continuing destruction, sometimes mindless, sometimes, appallingly,  positively gleeful as developers and 'business' seem to revel in their 'right' to destroy nature. What one learns as one understands more is just how difficult it is to artificially create the fine detail of natural systems - we're reaching a point where a lot of fondly held beliefs about conservation management practices will have to be questioned as our rule books  create yet another version  of a neatly mown lawn (neat swathes of even aged heather for example). A bi yes to DO NO HARM - I'd like to go further, and suggest MAKE IT BETTER - which we do have the capacity to do, largely because of the sheer level of damage we've done over the last 150 years.

Children
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