The RSPB's Mark Robins considers the challenges and opportunities for nature conservation in South Devon as the governement talks about moving power away from Whitehall and putting it into the hands of people and communities
I am looking forward to an intriguing ‘summit’ meeting this coming Monday 28th February 2011, at The Riviera Centre, in Torquay. This is an early stage in a new collaborative project and the day will help steer the direction and work in its first year.
For what its worth I am chairing this event, so hold some responsibility for what I hope will be a successful day. The new project takes the zone from the Tamar to the Exe in South Devon and says ‘how can we do more for nature here?’. As one of a set across England of curiously named ‘Integrated Biodiversity Delivery Areas’ (I promise not to mention the IBDA acronym again!) we are at a very interesting moment for action for nature – self critically acknowledging the limits of previous approaches and searching for better ways of doing things.
Why this ‘SUMMIT’ - why a crisis? How are we doing at a global level on this extraordinary, beautiful, diverse living planet?? WWFs ‘Living Planet index’– a FTSE 100 - measuring declines and increases across thousands of species on land, in rivers and at sea (8,000 populations of more than 2,500 different species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish) – has declined by 30% overall, and by a massive 60% in the tropics. (since 1970’s). In the parlance of today - "a bonfire of biodiversity".
That’s a crisis!! You will have heard all this before but lets just remember.... healthy ecosystems form the basis of all we have - lose them and we destroy our life support systems (the stuff we smilingly teach our young children). And there’s a fag paper between healthy wildlife, biodiversity and healthy ecosystems.
Again in a contemporary parlance - "we're squandering the natural capital we have on this planet". Alongside the fiscal deficit we have a massive ecological deficit.
This all says that if we care about this place, this point on the globe, carrying on, carrying on, is not good enough. South Devon has a real role to play – can we lead the recovery of biodiversity in this diverse part of England?
Second thought - let's notice that the new Government is making radical commitments to transform the public sector. Most obvious is deficit reduction, but alongside this lies a radical "theology" that promotes a shift from ‘bureaucratic accountability:’ everything measured or judged against a set of targets and performance indicators, monitored and inspected - to a new system of ‘democratic accountability’: taking power away from Whitehall and putting it into the hands of people and communities through increased transparency, local democratic control, competition and choice.
Some will rejoice, others will wonder where this ‘creative destruction’ of a status quo is taking us? I just want to ask you to note that each approach has its limits, but that just now there is some opportunity here for people, communities and places to do more for nature as power is shifted downwards and outwards.
Final thought for the moment- if it’s become a fair cliché characterising the environmental movement – as one that trades on nightmares. Are we in the wrong space?
So this is why this summit is being held – the need to do things differently, to meet new challenges, to find out how to do MORE for nature.
We need to do some CRITICAL THINKING on this – a summit gathering to tap wealth of ideas and willingness.
In due course the IBDA (OK I failed to not mention again) steering group will report back on what we learnt and how we intend to respond. Not sure yet where that report will be made but probably at the Biodiversity South West website