Sunday 13 September the BBC broadcast a special documentary entitled “Extinction: The facts” narrated by Sir David Attenborough – and the title of this blog were the final solemn words of that documentary. The programme was a grim reminder that the natural world on which we depend for life itself is under great pressure and even threat. Many would have been upset at the footage of the last two white Rhinos – mother and daughter, but also the scenes of animals fleeing burning forests. And all this while the news bulletins are full of the west of the USA burning. Having lived through the last Australian “black summer” in January I could easily identify with many of the scenes and messages in the broadcast.
Globally, the UN Environment Programme GEO6, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services -IPBES - Global Assessment, and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 (to be launched this week) have conveyed the same message – biodiversity and thus ecosystem services are under pressure as never before. The problem is that none of this is new, it has been endlessly rehearsed through similar assessments and outlooks since the 1980s. So, what should happen next?
A typical response is that we need more land and sea in protected areas. A few weeks ago, Bright Blue organised a lunch-time presentation from Lord Zac Goldsmith who gave some interesting perspectives on a green recovery. One area he especially focused on was the great strides the UK is making in nature conservation through Marine Protected Areas in waters around the UK and the Overseas Territories (also known as the Blue Belt). In response to a question, he acknowledged that sometimes declaration of a park or protected area is easier than subsequently managing it but vouchsafed that “paper parks” may be better than no park.
The term “paper parks” was first used in the World Parks Congress in Venezuela in 1992 referring to an area dedicated as a park or protected area that, while dedicated, has few or no resources with which to perform management. Whether such paper parks really are effective, or could even possibly be a negative, is a topic on which there can, and should, be a lot of argument. Over the last few decades, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and several International NGOs, have provided funding for developing protected areas in less developed countries. The typical length of such funding support is 3-5 years, after which continued funding for ongoing management and surveillance of the area is frequently left to the scarce resources of the funded country, with the inevitable consequences.
In general, declaration of any protected area, marine or terrestrial, without an assured continual stream of funding for management, maintenance and surveillance should be undertaken with the greatest degree of caution. The most successful cases have been where local communities become energised following declaration of a protected area and in effect act as the guardians/mangers/stewards of that area. The marine protected area (MPA) “core” of the El Hierro Biosphere Reserve in the Canary Islands is a great example where the local fishing community of the Island act as unofficial stewards/guardians of the core - a nursery site for the fish populations on which their livelihood depends. This model of government-civil society cooperation to become stewards of biodiversity and ensure good management of the MPA is one local communities of the UK Overseas Territories will undoubtedly wish to emulate as the blue belt is expanded.
To make sure, then, that “what happens next” is positive for all of biodiversity, including ourselves, we must become stewards of land and sea. Until we do, we cannot achieve even the modest UN Sustainable Development Goals set in 2015. We must develop better visions of what a good life is - and how we can achieve it - while living comfortably with our fellow denizens of planet Earth. In talking sustainable development, much is often made that our economic models are leading us down the pathway to greater disconnection with nature. But if we understand that ecology and economics both derive from the Greek word οίκος (which refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family's property, and the home) then a way forward becomes clearer. And perhaps the review of economics and biodiversity by Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta currently underway will offer new ways of thinking about ecology and economics and how people must relate to the rest of nature.
For multilateral conventions dealing with nature, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention on Migratory Species etc, successes are difficult to find. These three conventions have failed to achieve their founding objectives, and in all three cases the situation they were to resolve has deteriorated further. This is largely due to a need for action on biodiversity to be local and national, rather than global. In the UK, the 25-year environmental plan is offering positive, proactive ways forward. But in the end, environmental plans, policies, and parks (on paper or in reality) only are only effective if the resources to manage, monitor and steward our shared environment are also secured and available. Post-covid, this is the world we must strive for, together. And that is what happens next, with a part for each of us to play.
Peter Bridgewater is a Senior Fellow at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Canberra, Australia. The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Bright Blue.