TAPESTRIES OF LIFE
Uncovering the Lifesaving Secrets of the Natural World
by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson Mudlark/Harper Collins
In the past year, I’ve spoken with people who have embraced birdwatching, discovered local parks, found new footpaths, or simply stopped to look at the natural world during lockdown. It has been a life-support system. In Tapestries of Life, bestselling author and professor of conservation biology Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson sets out to examine the elements of this support system, and how ‘our ability to exploit the benefits of nature also risks undermining the very foundations of our own existence’.
Tapestries combines curiosity and a capacity for wonderment – qualities that Sverdrup-Thygeson values, and which sing throughout the book. The original Norwegian title of the book, On the Shoulders of Nature, illustrates that nature is the ‘whole and entire basis of our wellbeing’.
Part of that wellbeing today comes from the horseshoe crab, which lives on the East coast of the USA and in Asia. The blood of the crab is known to coagulate bacteria and since the 1970s it has been used to check that medical equipment and vaccines – including COVID-19 vaccines – are not contaminated. Readyto-use blood sells for $15,000 a litre. In the USA, the process is regulated but in Asia, it isn’t. The discovery meant that life suddenly became tough for these creatures, which have lived on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. Thankfully, synthetically made alternatives have this year been approved for use. Tapestries is full of such facts and stories, underlining the extent to which we rely on the natural world for medicine, food, fibres, ideas, mental health and more. According to a World Economic Forum 2020 report, the top five threats to humanity over the coming decade are all environment related. To practise conservation biology is, the author says, ‘to deal with a never-ending series of dilemmas’. Most believe that ‘we must find a set of realistic compromises between the naïve-romantic and the hyper-pragmatic approaches’. Whatever we do, we must talk more about the issues, conscious of the limits of our own perceptions. Sverdrup-Thygeson helps us to do that; offering up wonder and reality, concern and hope, scientific facts and philosophical questions. It is a fascinating, enjoyable and important book for our time.