“Nature reserves are often islands of biodiversity. If they are cut off from each other, there is little opportunity for wildlife populations to spread. They need connecting corridors . . . Most of us – 83% – live in towns or cities. This has helped foster a sense that nature is what happens elsewhere, in the countryside, so we donʼt recognize wildlife in our own neighbourhood. More species could thrive if we helped; and creating greener, more biodiverse cities would improve our wellbeing too.”
We have woken up to the climate emergency — well, most of us, anyway. In an impassioned plea this past week in the Guardian newspaper, Green candidate for Brighton Pavilion and former UK Green Party leader Caroline Lucas argues that the threat to nature and wildlife is equally urgent, and the issues are inextricably intertwined.
That may seem obvious, but on the eve when voters in the UK appear poised to elect a party of right-wing climate deniers and pro-Brexit political agitators — and by substantial majority — that connection can’t be emphasized enough. Climate change and species extinction are linked, as they have been since life has existed on Earth.
A report earlier this year on the state of nature in Britain — and, by implication, everywhere else in the post-industrial world — paints a bleak picture. Nearly half the plant and animal species assessed showed a decline in numbers over the past decade; fully 15% of the UK’s wild species are threaten with extinction. Birds and animals familiar to today’s parents and grandparents, such as the curlew, water vole, adder and common toad, are now rare sights. The common toad is no longer so common, it would appear.
With less than a week to go, the polls point to a decisive win for Boris Johnson and his like-minded right-leaning partners-in-climate-crime; Johnson himself refused to even turn up at a leaders’ debate focusing on the climate emergency. Those same polls suggest climate change is high on the minds of voters, but it wouldn’t be the first time that hypocrisy — or an unwillingness and/or inability to connect the climate dots — led to an election result that didn’t make sense.
Lucas gave a shoutout to conservation organizations, helped in no small part by committed volunteers, that are doing yeoman work, from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust to the Marine Conservation Society, but it is not enough. “They have not been able to halt the precipitous decline in our wildlife,” Lucas wrote. (Lucas herself has been an MP in the UK parliament since 2010 and her seat seems safe; in politics, though, especially in these febrile times, nothing is certain.)
The Green Party, much like Green parties across continental Europe and in my own country, Canada, has always laid claim to the most ambitious policies on nature of any of the major parties — no surprise there. The Greens perform best, do the most good and effect the most change, where there is proportional representation; the UK — and Canada’s — first-past-the-post system makes it hard for political parties on the outside to gain electoral traction in real-world terms.
As the climate kids — my label for the youth-driven Fridays for Future movement, and meant in a respectful and hopeful way, with boundless admiration — have shown, the old way of doing politics is no longer good enough, not when a 16-year-year-old Greta Thunberg or 14-year-old Alexandria Villasenõr wake up in the morning and realize that they and their generation’s future is finished.
Lucas commissioned a report earlier this year from half a dozen leading conservationists and environment writers in the UK to produce a blueprint for how best to ensure the survival of what little nature is left in Britain, titled A New Deal for Nature.
The resulting proposals covered the usual basics, though even the usual basics seem beyond the capability of the Boris Johnsons and Jair Bolsonaros of the world to understand: namely, a holistic, connected approach that links farming, biosecurity, food security, the role of wetlands, fishing, the state of the marine environment, fossil fuels v. renewables, you name it.
A refreshing — refreshing both figuratively and literally — add-on this time is a renewed focus on education to do with the outdoors, by giving children access to nature, putting them more in touch with the natural world, to give them a sense of meaning, to be able to feel nature firsthand and understand the need to protect it. (Lucas’ specific recommendations include a GCSE in natural history and setting aside an hour of outdoor learning every day in primary school, even in inner-city neighbourhoods where outdoor learning might seem like a bit of a stretch; with determination and a little creative thinking, such as urban gardens and observation of urban wildlife, anything’s possible.)
“We need to be pushed out of our comfort zone of weekend walks in the country, occasional visits to national parks, or curling up on the sofa in front of Countryfile — which give the impression that all is well,” Lucas wrote. “It isn’t.”
Lucas has said throughout the UK election campaign that this election is the climate election, and that nature and the climate crisis are tightly linked.
“We need to have a healthy natural world if we are to have any chance of tackling the climate emergency.”
That ship may have sailed, but still. As one commenter noted, if we don’t act soon, sound recordings and David Attenborough documentaries will be all we have left.
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