‘A SUSTAINABLE w rld is full of GAINS’
Sir David Attenborough reflects on the changes he has seen in his lifetime – and offers his vision for a better future
Isaw my first orangutan on 24 July 1956. It was a memorable encounter with a giant male; a furry red form swaying in the branches, peering down at me with interest and apparently some disdain. I have visited the forests of south-east Asia many times. Beginning in the 1960s, Malaysia, then Indonesia, began to replace the dizzying diversity of their rainforest trees with just one kind – the oil palm. Borneo’s orangutan cannot live without the forest, and it has been reduced by two-thirds since I first saw one just over 60 years ago.
Orangutans are still easy to find, not because they are abundant, but because so many of them now live in sanctuaries and rehabilitation centres, cared for by conservationists alarmed by the pace of the loss. We cannot continue to cut down rainforests for ever, and anything that we can’t do for ever is, by definition, unsustainable. If we do unsustainable things, the damage accumulates to a point when ultimately the whole system collapses. No habitat is secure.
THE KEY TO THRIVING
I am 94 and I have had the most extraordinary life. I have been lucky enough to explore the wild places of our planet and make films about the creatures that live there.
For life to truly thrive on this planet, there must be immense biodiversity. Only when millions of species sustain each other can the planet run efficiently. The greater the biodiversity, the more secure all life will be, including ourselves.
Yet the way we humans are now living is sending biodiversity into a decline.
We live our comfortable lives in the shadow of a disaster of our own making. That disaster is being brought about by the very things that allow us to live our comfortable lives. Yet, there is still time to switch off the reactor. We must attend to greenhouse gas emissions, end our overuse of fertilisers and halt and reverse the conversion of wild spaces to farmland, plantations and other developments.
A revolution in sustainability, a drive to rewild the world and initiatives to stabilise our population would realign us as a species in harmony with the natural world. How would it affect our individual lives? In a thriving, sustainable future, we would follow a largely plant-based diet, filled with healthier alternatives to meat. We would use clean energy for all our needs. Our banks and pension funds would only invest in sustainable business. People would be likely to have smaller families. We would be able to choose wood products, foodstuffs, fish and meat thoughtfully, informed by the detailed information available with every purchase. Our waste would be minimal. The little carbon our activities still emit would be offset within the purchase price, funding rewilding projects all over the world.
CHANGE FOR THE FUTURE
There is some resistance. It is all too easy to focus on what we lose and miss what we gain. But the reality is that a sustainable world is full of gains. In losing our dependence on coal and oil and by generating renewable energy, we gain clean air and water, cheap electricity for all and quieter, safer cities. In losing rights to fish in certain waters, we gain a healthy ocean that will help us combat climate change and ultimately offer us more wild seafood. In removing much of the meat from our diet, we gain health and less expensive food. In losing land to the wild, we gain the opportunity to reconnect with the natural world, both in distant lands and seas and in our own local environment. In losing our dominance over nature, we gain an enduring stability within it for all the generations that will follow.
Everything is set for us to win this future. We have a plan. We know what to do. There is a path to sustainability. It’s a path that could lead to a better future for all life on earth. We must let our politicians and business leaders know that we understand this, that this vision for the future is not just something we need, it is something, above all, that we want.
• Extract taken from A Life On Our Planet (Witness Books) by Sir David Attenborough, out 1 October