In a little under 36 hours, the polls will open and I shall visit a local community centre in Cambridge to mark a cross with a pencil against the name that I want to be my Member of Parliament. I have voted in every poll since the local elections on 4 May 1989 and always enjoy what feels like a national rite of passage.
While the election campaign has been unpredictable and punctuated by appalling acts of terrorism, early on Friday morning (barring a hung parliament) we shall know which party will form the next UK Government.
From an environmentalist’s perspective, there will be things we expect from the new UK Government - things that only governments can do such as setting ambition for nature’s recovery, supporting powerful institutions that speak up for nature, establishing the right laws, policies and incentives to make it easy for people to do good for nature and prevent people from causing harm.
But while we have high expectations of the next government (as I outlined here), we shall also be clear that we are here to help. The challenge of saving nature is shared and we all have our part to play. That’s why we always work to create powerful partnerships between governments, businesses and civil society – communities of citizens linked by common interest and collective activity.
Charities like the RSPB epitomise civil society. We have a clear mission to inspire a world richer in nature and the impact we have is dependent on financial, practical and moral support of 1.2 million members, and over 12,000 regular volunteers from all walks of life (including doctors, lawyers, architects as well as learning and development professionals) and all ages (from the under 16s to the over 75s) giving a gift of time of over 900,000 hours annually.
Our volunteers carry out a whole range of activities from fundraising and administration through to helping out on the reserve and a whole host of things in between (including of course the 550,000 people that take part in the annual Big Garden Birdwatch). Recently, we have been piloting a new approach to involve volunteers in species recovery and helping to run our ‘schools on reserves programme’ where volunteers support outdoor learning for groups of students.
I know that the RSPB and the other fantastic nature conservation charities will continue to benefit from the tireless commitment of volunteers and I also know that our members vote – 96% of those eligible.
I am confident that we (RSPB staff, members and volunteers) will continue to play our part. But, we also need the next UK Government to be active for nature: to protect our finest wildlife sites, to recover threatened species and tackle the threats that nature is facing.
So, cast your vote wisely, elect a politician that is prepared to use their voice for nature and remember that together – civil society, business and government – we can provide a brighter future for the natural world.
Photo: Volunteers taking part in the heathland restoration program at the RSPB Lodge nature reserve, January 2017. Silver birch is cut down, then collected and burnt to allow the heathland underneath to grow (Credit: Heather Stuckey, rspb-images.com)
This blog was written to mark National Volunteers' Week. You can read more about volunteering opportunities at the RSPB here.
I am quite certain The RSPB will continue to do much more than its bit to protect and enhance nature. I am much less confident though that any new government will do its bit. The record of successive governments recently in this area has been poor verging on dreadful. Perhaps once the form of any new governments becomes clear, some time after Thursday, this will be the time to really bang on their doors to say, let's have a much better performance from you than we have had recently. It could hardly be worse.
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