Placing our faith in Rewilding?
Great Britain has been a plundering force that has narrated its own and the globes story through aggressive, self-serving colonialism. It has left not only vast swathes of the world bare but also the UK one the most naturally depleted nations in Europe. Telling the story of the United Kingdom is crucial in understanding the devastating impact humans have had on the natural world. Prior to the industrial revolution, the UK hosted an abundance of wildlife. The temperate, stable climate provided the perfect biome for a flourishing array of flora and fauna. Since the transformation of towns into cities due to the rise of industrialisation, the UK has lost over fifty percent of its wildlife. The networks of streets have sprawled out and into our last ecological spaces, houses have rooted, and our lifestyles have consequently mown down ancient forests, peatlands and treasured natural habitats. Alongside this, the UK’s countryside has been carved up by a network of hedgerows that have created patchwork of farmers’ fields. Therefore, this has left ecosystems unstable and out of its vital state of equilibrium. For example, ancient woodlands used to c of the UK’s iconic rolling hills and lined the Great British valleys but now only cover 2.5% of the nation’s countryside highlighting the tragic loss of precious ecological environments.
Biodiversity: what is it good for?
One of the driving forces that underpins these transformations is the increase in agriculture in the United Kingdom. The environment and agriculture have always been intwined in a constant tango. They are intrinsically linked and reliant upon each other. A one-degree Celsius increase can have a drastic and devasting impact on the yields of crops. Firstly, this will impact the fertility of the land through drastic shifts in the hydrological cycles that allow for the UK’s current climate. This will lead to less dreary days consisting of skies cloaked by clouds and will force a need for far greater amounts of man-made irrigation systems. The increased human intervention in the processes of nature will ultimately have an impact on the environment, through increased pollution and water usage. This highlights how even one aspect of our existence has and will constantly impact the environment unless restructured around protecting the ecological habitats that it is has uprooted.
Monetising the Climate Crisis for good?
To halt this environmental travesty the United Kingdom has implemented its largest ecological plan which it has faith will restore and reduce the impact of our lifestyles on the biodiversity of the UK. The UK has implemented the use of rewilding as a driving force in restoring our natural wildernesses. It has been heralded as a natural solution by groups such as Rewilding Britain. A crucial element of this policy is the monetarisation of wild spaces, which provides an incentive to even the least ecologically minded individuals. The UK has revolutionised climate policy through the installation of payments per hectare per year, for example individuals can claim £292 for peat bogs and heathland, £512 for woodlands, £144 for species rich grassland, £322 for saltmarshes, £204 for ponds and lakes (Rebecca Wrigley and Alastair Driver, 2021: p. 12). This appeals to the internalised capitalism that is inherent to Western culture and plays upon these traditions to motivate people to increase the levels of stewardship. Money is often described at the root of all evil but these policies aim to reconceptualise and create a green capitalist initiative.
While this is step in the right direction, there are still chasms that need to be crossed to rectify and prevent the crossing of irreversible tipping points. For there to true stewardship, we need a cognitive shift. Shielded by our concrete walls, we have created a fortress mentality which has placed people and the natural world as binary opposites (Rob White, 2014). The dualistic nature of our scientific society has prevented humankind from giving flora and fauna their own intrinsic value outside of their monetary worth. The very real risks of climate change have been placed upon the polars bears on the disappearing ice caps, the tigers that roam the tropics and pandas that plaster every WWF advertisement. We need to reconnect with the world outside of our doors and understand the real dangers that the degradation of our environment will present us. These hazards are not limited to the peripheral nations but our whole world. Climate Scientist Ben Santer has argued that by reconnecting society with nature, it will present both the joy and sadness which will help highlight our current cognitive dissonance. Our house is on fire, and only by shifting our mindset we will truly be able to implement policies such as rewilding that are effective and are not bound to our capitalistic ways. When we step out of our doors, we should want a world that is not void and bare, but a world that stimulates our senses through all the wonderful scents, sights and sounds that are intrinsically linked to the flora and fauna that have also evolved on our home we call Earth.
