Whose side are you on?

A colleague sent round a rather provocative email last night.  It was stimulated by a story told by a Defra civil servant at a seminar about the Nagoya Biodiversity Conference in December.  The civil servant said that the head of the World Bank turned up at the Nagoya meeting but was asked by surprised conservationists what on earth he was doing there.  The World Bank chap said to them that "the reason you are failing to save biodiversity is because you don’t get more people like me turning up to things like this".

It's true that sometimes we (in the nature conservation sector) occasionally do spend too much time talking to ourselves rather than reaching out to others who do not necessarily share the same beliefs and values.

My colleague (and I have confess at this point, that, yes, he is an economist) made a distinction between those that are focused on delivering nature conservation for its own sake (let's call them ‘supply-siders’ - S) and those that are more focused on addressing people's concerns (let's call these the ‘demand-siders‘ - D).  The former care about delivering more conservation directly, the later care about delivering more conservation indirectly (through changing the way the world works or the way people behave).  Its easy to identify an S from D.  If you want to play at home,  just answer the following questions. 

 ·        Are intrinsic/ethical reasons values more important to you than economic ones for saving nature?

·         Which Westminster department do you think is more important to influence if we are to save nature – Defra or the Treasury?

·         Close your eyes and think of an ecosystem service?  Did you think of an ecological function (carbon sequestered, water flow) or did you think of a human benefit (maintenance of a liveable climate, health benefits etc)

·         Does education constitute conservation delivery?

·         Is it more important to influence things like the NEWP or Lawton review or more important to influence the Treasury Green book or the National Planning Policy Framework?

A classic supplyside organisation might be one where the Chief Executive buttonholes the rich and mighty on golf courses and uses the dosh to get on with conservation rather than waste time on politicians.  A demandside organisation might be more focused on tackling the root causes of decline by seeking to influence economic drivers.  (I have to confess I have never seen or heard of any senior RSPB exec anywhere near a golf course).

Does this matter? Well, the evidence suggests that it should matter:

a)      The drivers of loss are accelerating and unless we can understand and change what people do we will fail to save nature

b)      The nature conservation sector has attracted more support over the years and as a result has grown.  We, and I am sure others, have ambitions to do more, but the next decade looks extremely challenging.  Nature conservation is tumbling down the list of government’s priorities for funding – if wildlife needs to compete with jobs, schools, or even weekly bin collection for more resources, it is unfortnately all too clear who'll win.  Defra has done remarkably well to retain the resources it currently has, but will need to smarten its act over the coming months and years if it is to attract new resources. 

c)       All of us may gradually become worse off as escalating resource prices (especially for energy) reduce our real incomes and as a smaller minority have to start finding enormous sums to take care of our ageing relatives.  In the 1970’s there were 10 people of working age to support each retired person by the 2030’s they’ll be less than 2.  You can imagine the stress such financing will place on an already challenged economy?

So we have a choice - stay on the supplyside and do what we can for nature directly or engage with those on the supply side to get us on the front foot to enable us to engage constructively with more challenging audiences including big business and thereby perhaps, just perhaps, begin to tackle some of the root causes for decline in nature.

So the question is whose side are you on? Are you instinctively an S or a D?   And, if you want to save nature does it matter?

It would be great to hear your views.