SWT declared a climate emergency in 2019 and made a commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2030. The outcome was a climate action plan that is updated annually and a climate and biodiversity working group. There is a terrific article by James Drever in the recent autumn edition of our membership magazine Wildlife. This explains what the Trust as an organisation has been doing to reduce emissions of CO₂ from its operations and activities.

We all love wildlife and the natural environment. We understand more than most the implications of biodiversity losses and how global heating is going to accelerate the changes in our natural environment. We can explain the implications of the interlinked climate emergency and biodiversity crisis to those around us. The message needs to be simple. The blanket of pollution trapping heat on Earth is made worse by burning more coal, oil, and gas. Another ten years of incremental changes will not be enough.

Tackling global heating and climate change and reversing ongoing declines in biodiversity are so often linked. Fenn’s, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses NNR on the Shropshire/Wrexham border is a good demonstration of nature recovery in practice. One of Britain’s largest lowland raised bogs is being restored after many years of damage from drainage and peat removal. Actively growing bog vegetation captures CO₂ and the carbon is held in the deeper peat layers. The restoration works have been significantly helped by the current £5 million grant from EU-LIFE under the Marches Mosses BogLIFE Project, a partnership of Natural England, Shropshire Wildlife Trust and NRW.

George Monbiot wrote a challenging piece about the inter-related climate emergency and biodiversity crisis for The Guardian in late August.

He says that “...We face the greatest predicament humankind has confronted: the erosion and possible collapse of our life-support systems. Its speed and scale have taken even scientists by surprise. The potential impacts are greater than any recent pandemic, or any war we have suffered. Yet the effort to persuade people of the need for action has been left almost entirely to either the private or voluntary sectors. And it simply does not work...All we can achieve by these means is petty, incremental change...Mass mobilisation behind a common good needs to be led by government…. But governments sit and watch as we tiny warriors flail in the face of the corporate army. We cannot build social consensus without the state...”.

Love him or loathe him, George Monbiot makes a telling point. We may feel that we are indeed ‘tiny warriors’ in the battles about these environmental crisis and that we need help from SWT as our local wildlife organisation.

However, building a social consensus requires the Government to participate actively if we are to gain the benefits of a low carbon world. What further actions should SWT take to persuade the Government to build a social consensus now?

John Box is a member of the SWT Climate and Biodiversity Working Group.
Contact John at john.box@knowlebox.co.uk