Sea Birds on the Scottish Coast

I recently came across the concept of Caring for Nature Day. However since I found about five different dates for this day I realised that it was probably not something very significant.

Sadly, it dawned on me that Caring for Nature is not something crucial to many people.

I have often wondered why not. Why can we not see that Nature, the love of family and friends, and a useful purpose in life give us everything we need? We don’t seem to know that ruining the planet so that we can buy more “stuff”, will not bring us joy?

Mary Oliver, in my opinion, puts it beautifully:

“What if you suddenly saw that the silver of water was brighter than the silver of money? What if you finally saw that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day and every day — who knows how, but they do it — were more precious, more meaningful than gold?”

Are We Caring for Nature?

I could give you endless examples of how the world is not caring for Nature but I am not going to do that this time round. Antonio Gutteres ( Secretary General of the UN) declared in his speech at the opening of COP 30 in Brazil that mankind’s failure to make the changes required to keep the world’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade was “deadly negligence” and that says it all for me.

However, I believe that in order for people to become active we need hope. Some time ago I wrote a blog called Active Hope. That blog stresses that Active Hope is not a vague form of optimism but something that requires action. I think we need to be clear what we want to achieve and decide how we are going to get there, then all of us need to contribute to that process.

So despite the terrible news that we hear daily I believe that we can still make a difference. In fact, there are many people out there working hard every day doing their very best to create a more liveable world.

What is happening that should make us hopeful?

Business

The Global Biodiversity Framework has the mission of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030. “This means focusing on how corporate leaders can transform their businesses to help secure a nature-positive world.” See this link.

It is easy to see how business can be very bad for Nature. Every day we read of companies damaging Nature by cutting corners to ensure maximum profit or over-using resources. The “It’s Now for Nature Organisation” believes that “businesses could create opportunities worth $10 trillion a year by 2050” if they shifted to Nature-positive models of doing business.

In the meantime, there are companies out there doing just that. Companies that are already caring for Nature over profit. This article shows a number of well-known and not so well-known examples of sustainably-run companies that put Nature over profit. They include Patagonia and 4Ocean .

My favourite company from this list is called Clean the World. It recycles used soap bars. Apparently, it has already diverted over 27.9 million pounds of waste from landfills and donated over 86.3 million bars of recycled soap since its inception in 2009.
This reduces pollution from landfills, saves water and reduces emissions from thousands of hotels worldwide.

C40 Cities

City Green Spaces

I have mentioned the C40 Cities before, and I do think they are a wonderful example of non-governmental power being used to make a real difference to our world. This organisation consists of a global network of mayors driving the future of climate action. There are 97 cities that represent 23% of the world’s economy. Many, but not all, are major important cities like London and Paris. See their details here.

As an introduction to what they have done let me just quote the results of some of their work:

• More than 10 million people are breathing cleaner air.
• 73% of cities have peaked their carbon emissions.
• 50 million new green jobs are on track to be created by 2050.

Clearly these are not the only cities making changes for the better, but they are working in a group where the mayors can share knowledge, ideas and positive experiences.

Real life examples of their successes are well worth reading:

• The city of Medellín in Columbia has planted 30 green corridors across the city to reduce urban heat and improve biodiversity and air quality. This has so far produced a reduction in urban “heat island” effect of 2° C since it started
• Nature-based solutions are also an important tool for flood prevention in cities. Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, has experienced devastating flooding and landslides due to heavy rains and deforestation in recent years. Since 2020, the city’s #FreetownTheTreeTown initiative has planted and verified more than 500,000 trees, prioritising areas at risk of landslides, riverbanks and low-income areas that are most in need of re-greening. An innovative tree-health tracking app has ensured a long-term survival rate of 80%. In addition to protecting the city from floods, the trees represent a valuable carbon sink.
• Wuhan (in China)’s ‘sponge city’ programme makes use of green infrastructure to prevent flooding. The city has initiated 389 sponge city projects, including urban gardens, parks and green space, which are designed to allow water to infiltrate when it rains and direct water away from urban areas during flooding. As well as preventing flooding, the project brings multiple co-benefits – the area around the city’s Yangtze River Beach Park sequesters 724 tonnes of carbon annually, while temperatures in the park can be three degrees cooler than the rest of the city.
• Copenhagen set itself the target of being the world’s first CO2 neutral capital city by 2025 with a vastly improved air quality. At last counting they had reduced emissions by 75% compared to 2005.

Agriculture

An article by WWF on regenerative agriculture gives us an idea of how we can help Nature.

An organisation called Climate Farmers has brought together farmers who use regenerative agriculture successfully, and there are a number of interesting examples of their success here. The organisation’s goal is to create “a world where humans live in harmony with Nature.”

Unilever also shows how some of their farmers are helping Nature by the use of this technique. They have set a goal to implement regenerative agriculture practices across 1 million hectares of agricultural land by 2030 and by last year had implemented it on 130,000 hectares globally. Their projects aim to help Nature by improving soil health, sequester carbon and reduce water use, while enhancing biodiversity. Clearly this is not enough but if these farmers can use this technique while also making a living for themselves, the idea will spread worldwide, as it is already doing.

Universities

Nature Positive Universities write of how they are educating their students to promote Nature on their campuses, and also to be able to take these skills home to their native countries. 726 universities have now joined the network from 104 countries.

The Law

An aspect of the fightback for Nature, one that you might not have thought of, is the power of the law. An environmental law charity called ClientEarth is using the law “to drive transformational change to enforce the right rules to support a healthy planet where Nature and people can thrive together.”

They work with campaigners to hold governments and businesses to account in the fight for a better deal for Nature.

What have they achieved?

• Portugal abandoned plans to build a new airport in important wetlands in the Tagus Estuary as a result of their lawsuit
• They are challenging plans to build a massive plastics plant in Belgium
• They protected a lake in Italy from pollution and forced authorities to reverse damage done.
• They forced coal mines in Greece to close and helped prevent a massive new one being built in Poland
• They took (with others) the UK government to court to prove that its climate strategy was not “fit for purpose”
• Many other governments and businesses have been held to account for damaging Nature

Individuals and communities

There is so much going on at this level to bring hope, from individuals clearing rubbish-filled beaches, to renewable food production systems, to fighting with local governments to bring in renewable energy, it is just amazing. We need to be aware of what is going on under our noses.

Garbage on a Beach

I would just pick out one example. A Dutch citizen called Boyan Blat started a clean-up system to remove plastic from the ocean. His company is now tackling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So far they have removed “tens of millions of kilograms from the oceans”. They say they want to have cleaned up 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.

I think what they are doing is incredible. Plastic has a devastating effect on wildlife and marine ecosystems. It can last in the oceans for decades and eventually enter the human food chain.

Looking for Hope

My blog is a little longer than normal as I found so many reasons for hope. There are some wonderful carers out there doing their best for the planet. We all need to do what we can and we need to talk about it very loudly to as many people as possible.

I can’t say the situation in our world is getting better. Clearly it is not. But we can limit the damage to our futures if we all do what we can. Doing the recycling won’t do the trick but if everybody piles in and joins the challenge we can do a great deal.

Please help.

If you are not yet on my mailing list and wish to be on it, please use the form on the Home page, this will help our administration and ensure you receive your own copy.

Photos by Doreen Hosking, and by kian zhang and John Cameron on Unsplash