Platitudes and broken promises won’t save the planet

IN the run up to the climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow next week there has been a rush of doom and gloom stories about the closely linked problems of the natural world.

And last year the Natural History Museum produced a report which said that the UK has lost half of the wildlife we used to have.

The RSPB estimates that 40 million birds have disappeared from our skies.

We are now the most naturedepleted of the leading industrial nations and in the worst 10% globally, leading the report to assert that the UK has ‘led the world in destroying the natural environment’.

You may wonder, therefore, what our nature conservation organisations have been doing for the last few decades.

Have such as the Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB and the Woodland Trust been completely wasting their time?

Of course not – without them things would be much worse.

They and many others have saved thousands of hectares of threatened habitats, endangered species from extinction, and engaged millions of people in nature conservation activities.

They have brought nature out of its protected enclaves and into people’s everyday lives.

The current crisis is fuelled by the uneven nature of the struggle.

The nature conservation sector may be better resourced and skilled than ever before, but the forces of industry, agriculture and consumer demand are many orders of magnitude greater.

Nature continues to be ravaged and plundered.

Whilst once it could be said that no one knew what was happening, now we can all see the bigger picture.

We are able not just to observe, but also to count and quantify the damage.

In a sane world governments would be the referee in this unequal fight.

We are, after all, talking about our life support system here.

You could reasonably expect effective regulation to rein in not just the worst excesses, but the routine and everyday damaging actions, such as river pollution by water companies.

Such regulation requires that first, effective regulations are developed, and second, sufficient resources are provided to ensure compliance.

Currently neither is happening; the prevailing mood is to reduce regulation, and while the crisis grows the Environment Agency’s budget has been slashed by two thirds.

The Government has almost completely failed to address the problems.

Urgently needed legislation is continually delayed, promises are broken and targets are repeatedly missed.

Platitudes and good intentions abound while the declines continue.