Page 16 - Wildlife News April 2015

matthew roberts burning and excessive grazing pressure, it
It is time to break with history and
invest in nature for our health,
wealth and security
to serious damage in recent decades, with
huge costs coming as a result.
For example, the estimated annual cost
of soil damage to the UK is between £900
million and £1.4 billion. This includes the
effects of soils clogging up rivers and in the
process increasing flood risk, and of course
raises questions about our longer-term
ability to produce as much food as we do
now. The same thing can be said about the
loss of pollinators, which provide crop
production services worth an estimated
£430 million per year. Then there is the half
a million tonnes of food we get annually
from the seas around Britain. Improving
the health of marine environments would
not only secure the future nutrition from
that source but increase it, while in the
process delivering gains for nature
conservation.
Then there is the job of reducing carbon
dioxide emissions. Later on this year
countries will hopefully agree a new
international plan to cut the pollution
causing climate change. In addition to
energy and transport, a major area of
opportunity for doing this is the
conservation and restoration of different
16 Wildife news
is not only our wildlife that is being lost,
A huge body of research shows that local but huge economic value as carbon
access to semi-natural areas improves storage capacity is removed. We have also
physical and mental health. lost carbon storage capability through the
loss of woodlands, dunes and saltmarshes.
There is good reason to see multiple
benefits in not only conserving what
remains, but also in an ambitious
programme of restoration.
ecosystems. For the UK the biggest single
store of ecosystem carbon is in our On top of all this are the health benefits
peatlands, including the blanket bogs that we gain through contact with nature. Many
sprawl over the uplands of the north and studies confirm a strong link between
western UK. access to natural areas and wellbeing – and
with psychological health in particular. By
Many of these ecosystems are in a state expanding access to wildlife-rich natural
of progressive degradation, emitting areas we can expect positive impacts for
millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide in the our collective health at the same time as
process. Caused by (among other things) helping to reduce pressure on our strained
health services. People enjoying nature
What Nature does and wildlife is, of course, also the basis of a
for Britain multi-billion pound tourism industry that
employs many people in some of the
Tony’s new book looks at how our remotest and most economically stressed
environment provides the things we need parts of the UK.
most – soil, water,
food, health, That nature is a fundamentally important
energy – and asset with multiple social and economic
concludes that values (as well as intrinsic ones) is not in
our economic doubt. Knowing what we know, it is time to
system is working break with history. Instead of seeing a
against our own choice between healthy ecology and
best interests. His people’s interests, we should invest in the
solution is to work growth of nature as a major plank of our
with nature, future health, wealth and security. One way
rather than to do this would be via a new Act of
against it. Parliament for Nature and Wellbeing.
Based on the inspirational aim of ensuring
the recovery of nature in a generation, the
new legislation would (among other
things) lay out plans to rebuild ecological
networks, reverse the decline of
threatened species and enable more
people to have access to natural places.
Such a new law could mark a turning
point; the moment at which the relentless
and centuries-long decline of nature in our
islands is halted and reversed. Considering
what nature does for Britain, and will need
to continue doing, it would be a moment
celebrated with pride by future
generations.
Before any of this can happen though,
we need to win the argument that looking
after nature is not an impediment to our
national interest, but is rather an essential
prerequisite for it.
n READER OFFER
Signed copies of Tony’s book are available
at £7.99 inc. p&p. Call 020 7841 6300 or
email ali.nadal@profilebooks.com and
quote ‘WTNATURE’. Valid while stocks last
or until 31 July 2015.