people have never seen or heard any of these anyway, and probably never will, except on a screen. They might watch the BBC’s Planet Earth and be sad that so much is being lost (and angry about the pollution), but in our democracy access to housing and health services counts for much more. When it comes to actual spending, the environment comes way down the list of priorities, and where spending does come into play, it has often been to pay farmers to do sometimes dubious things to what is left of nature. The planned high-speed railway project, HS2, has a budget of over £50 billion; the core annual budget for DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and its associated agencies – spent on foods and farming, rural interests, and the environment – is less than £3 billion. In other words, it would take more than 15 years of DEFRA environmental spending to exhaust the HS2 budget. Already, before even starting, HS2 has burnt through more than one year’s total DEFRA spending.1
Faced with this onslaught, and the relative indifference of much of the population, those for whom nature really matters have been ploughing their own narrow furrow. Naturalists study in meticulous detail the declines of particular species and habitats. They band together to oppose building on sensitive sites, and they talk to each other in trusts, charities and campaign groups. It is largely a voluntary, amateur and charitable crusade, and it always has been. They feel under siege and try to hang on to what is left. They stand on the beach Canute-like and try to hold back the tide. They count the losses.
It has been a picture of comprehensive defeats, punctuated by the occasional success. These are often hugely symbolic, and where they focus on readily observable species, they garner a lot of support. Farmers may gripe about the impact on lambs, and grouse-shooters might complain about their precious game birds, but the recovery of the golden eagles, the reintroduction of sea eagles and red kites, and the sound of buzzards now over much more of the landscape are all hard-won victories for the small bands of environmental brothers and sisters.
The public can empathise with big birds of prey. They also see the merits of beavers and even lynx back in what passes as wilderness – the managed landscapes of Devon rivers and the Kielder Forest respectively. But what they do not see is the broader tide of destruction that tells a very different story – the insects that have gone; the soils that are depleted and soaked in chemicals; the rivers that are full of agricultural run-off; landscapes that are fragmented; wildlife corridors that are closed off; and the seas that are full of plastic.
In the agricultural battle against nature – to destroy everything that competes with the crops and livestock – agrichemical companies get better and better at doing their job. Now non-selective herbicides like glyphosate can kill off all the vegetation after crops have been harvested, ready for the next, and a host of genetically modified (GM) crops are specifically designed to be glyphosate-resistant. Neonicotinoids (new nicotine-like insecticides) are another chemical in the armoury, and the combination of glyphosate and neonicotinoids is now deemed by the farming lobby to be essential for maintaining crops and farm profitability, even as attempts to ban them gather momentum. Look closely at a crop of oilseed rape. Note the absence of insects and the brown, dead undergrowth. It is an example replicated for maize and other cereals, and is evident in the poverty of biodiversity in much ‘improved grassland’ too.
The technology is advancing at an ever-faster rate, as genetic engineering, precision applications and chemical advances get better at eliminating those ‘enemies of agriculture’. The collateral damage is not something that matters much: the crop is what yields the profit. The farmer does not pay for the consequences to the pollinators, for the river life impacted by the chemical run-off, and for the ‘silent spring’ predicted so long ago by Rachel Carson.2 She focused on DDT (the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), and her silence was about birds. She was right in her dire warnings, and on a scale she could not have imagined. It is a silence not just of birds, but insects, amphibians, reptiles and small mammals. The farmers’ response is predictable: if they are to be persuaded to pollute less, they must be paid to do so. The pollution impacts are other people’s problems.
Yet technology does not need to lead to an ever-greater destruction of nature. It is not the technology itself but some of its uses that is the problem. The tide of destruction is eating away at the very economic growth that has been bought partly at nature’s expense. This recognition is also the consequence of new technologies. The extent of micro-plastics pollution and its consequences for marine life is now beginning to be understood because we can measure it. We have much better technologies to measure air quality, and medical advances allow us to see the link between the pollutants we put in the atmosphere and people dying from the consequences of inhaling dirty air. Just as it took several decades to prove the link between tobacco and lung cancer, so it has taken these new technologies to pinpoint the scale of the impacts on us of the destruction of nature. The impacts on mental health of a loss of nature are now becoming evident and measurable too.
In the past, diffuse pollution was often hard to pin on any one polluter. That is no longer the case. We can increasingly see down to the smallest areas who is doing what. The anonymity of the polluters that allowed them to deny specific responsibility is now being gradually blown away by GPS drones and other high-resolution mapping. While we might forgive those who know not what they are doing, it is much harder to forgive them when we and they do know. And they (the developers, the waste criminals, the packaging companies, manufacturers, service industries and farmers) do now know.
Over this century these impacts will play out and undermine our prosperity unless we actively head them off. The trade-off between more economic growth and less nature that has been the hallmark of human history so far is no longer benign. Destroying nature is beginning to eat into economic progress. Climate change is the obvious example, but in hogging the limelight it has eclipsed the myriad other impacts. The costs of polluted waterways, of polluted seas, and of soil degradation, the loss of pollinators and the impacts on humanity of the loss of nature to anchor our lives by, relentlessly keep going up. One incremental loss after another may eventually trigger systemic consequences as key thresholds are crossed. As we create an increasingly brown world, we create a less prosperous one too.
Among the many reasons why nature matters, one is that it is part of the economy. It is a vital element of the resources that the economy allocates, and the economy can no longer get by with less and less of it. Technology brings with it an increased capacity for destruction, but it also brings routes to a better and greener world – and a more prosperous one too. We can have a greener and more prosperous country. Conserving (and enhancing) nature increases our prosperity. Economic growth, properly measured, is driven by developing human ingenuity, placing in our hands technological tools that previous generations lacked. It need not be in conflict with the environment. We can be green and prosperous.
There is no lack of ideas and projects to make this transition to a greener and more prosperous state. At the national level we know what to do. The river catchments need integrated management, reducing costs at the same time as improving outcomes. The way forward in agriculture is pretty clear too. Just stopping the perverse subsidies and enforcing the law would be a good start. Making polluters pay, and focusing subsidies on the public rather than private goods would greatly improve economic efficiency and transform the agricultural landscape, capture and retain carbon in the soils, and protect the pollinators. Enhancing rather than encroaching on the Green Belt would bring nature next to people, with big health and leisure benefits. Ensuring that there is net environmental gain from development would transform the impacts of new housing. Landscape-level wildlife corridors would give nature a chance to recover.3 The railway lines, road verges and canal paths are obvious ways to build green corridors that millions of people can enjoy. Getting serious about Marine Protected Areas, including prohibiting fishing in them, would allow fish to bounce back and provide more sustainable stocks. Turning the coastal paths around Britain into major wildlife corridors would be good for people, tourism and nature.
At the local level, there is a cornucopia of economic and environmental opportunities. Initiatives here are often specific and highly focused, including restoring village greens; protecting and enhancing urban parks and green spaces; planting trees along the streets; getting children to participate in local environmental projects; enhancing the biodiversity of churchyards; cleaning up the litter on beaches; taking responsibility