RSPB Policy Officer Nik Perepelov describes the RSPB's ongoing work with water companies in England
RSPB exists to give a voice for nature and to halt the alarming decline in England’s habitats and species. Though we are a major landowner in our own right, owning or managing some 0.6% the UK’s land for wildlife and plants (and people who want to enjoy them), we know that we can’t achieve this alone. Reversing biodiversity loss is an economy-wide mission, with every sector needing to play its part. In our view, radical change will therefore involve familiar names operating in a profoundly different way. Entities that are currently part of the problem will need to become key players in driving forward the solution.
There is an interesting parallel here with the UK’s decarbonisation of the power sector since the 2010s. The companies that own the bulk of our renewables infrastructure- such as Orsted, Centrica and SSE- were the oil, coal and gas majors of the 1990s. Some have transitioned to renewables-only businesses, others have retained their fossil fuel interests to varying degrees. Rightly, this association with previous and current climate harming activities can elicit strong feelings. At the same time, the results speak for themselves: in the last decade, though there’s much more to do and progress has not been constant, the UK’s power mix transitioned from predominantly coal-based to majority renewable, with the polluting energy majors of the past playing a leading role in the transition.
The lesson we take from this is that our environmental objectives- net zero, nature recovery- are not just positions to adopt and defend, but processes too. Given our starting point now – harmful activity across the economy as the norm – the position and process may not always sit comfortably together, and especially not in the early days where practically everyone is a sinner.
Despite these tensions, we are incredibly proud to have worked variously with quarries, housing developers and even Crossrail to help kickstart the turnaround. We still have a long way to go, of course, but these partnerships have yielded massive benefits already and have set the scene for normalising nature within otherwise damaging economic activity.
Water companies have been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons of late and we have not been shy in condemning behaviour that is unlawful or otherwise unacceptable. And yet we are equally proud of our long-standing partnerships with the likes of United Utilities, which has seen us restore meadows, woodlands, bogs and rivers in some of our most treasured landscapes. At our flagship sites Dove Stone , Haweswater, we lease the land from water companies and have been able to create beacons of nature, which are enjoyed by tens of thousands of visitors each year.. Long term, we want to see a sector that not only reduces harm to the environment, but actively drives its recovery by delivering green infrastructure as default. Our partnerships projects are an early preview as to what this could look like if rolled out at scale.
We are well aware of public concerns about the performance of sector, concerns we largely share. Some activities are simply unacceptable, some even unlawful and others regrettable. It is precisely because we share these concerns that we want to work with like-minded partners in starting to turn the ship around and halting the decline, as we have done so spectacularly in Haweswater and other such sites. If we keep in mind the distinction between position and process, in our view there’s no contradiction here. To stand a chance of saving nature, everyone will need to play their part, including those organisations and people who shoulder their share of the blame for getting us here in the first place. But instead of pointing fingers, the critical position we are in compels us to get on with delivering solutions. Every nature-based partnership scheme is one less grey infrastructure project and one step towards our urgent vision of a healthy and resilient natural world. We hope these ‘ones’ turn into many more. There is an irony that the companies which move first to address their impacts will invite the most scrutiny for past and present failures. Others may feel the inevitable backlash is simply not worth sticking their necks out for. So whilst we engage in robust scrutiny in our policy and casework functions, we are also keen to foster an environment where it is easy to get on with doing the right thing.
As a nation, we are just at the start of our nature recovery journey. RSPB stands ready to support and work with organisations who genuinely share our vision and will work honestly and meaningfully to move away from the harmful economic activities of the present. We will judge them (and in turn expect to be judged) not on their words, but on their actions and successes. Today’s polluters must become tomorrow’s protectors, and as long-term protectors ourselves, we have the passion and expertise to help drive the transition.