Let’s look on the bright side for a change!

17 January 2021

Some of us have always believed that the health of the planet and health of people are inextricably linked and, that if we hurt the natural world, we hurt ourselves. Over the decades the science regarding the inter-connectedness of the living world has become irrefutable. That’s good.  We have moved seamlessly from ‘crank’ to ‘woke’.

 I’m not suggesting that the journey has been painless because it hasn’t. Sometimes it really did seem that ‘fast fashion’; ‘fast food’; ‘jet setting’; the veritable roller coaster of consumption was endless, but this year the machine stopped.  This year, many more people began to see the importance of the natural world to us all and environmental destruction,  industrialization of crop and livestock farming, wildlife exploitation and trafficking and human disease are part of the same continuum.

This year, even I believe that human beings are sitting up and taking notice.

In Myanmar 386,00 acres of remote, high-altitude forest home to the critically endangered Myanmar snub-nosed monkey and the red panda has now been given protected status.

 In Nepal’s Himalays an area almost twice the size of New York city has been designated a critical wildlife corridor from Nepal’s lowlands up into the high mountains where animals such as Indian pangolins, snow leopards and Himalayan black bears live.

The Ivory Coast has announced the creation of a 1,000-square-mile marine protected area,  home to threatened shark and turtle species.

At home, the beavers are back! These fabulous creatures were last recorded in England in 1526. The white tailed eagle is again flying in our skies after 240 years, an unbelievable achievement. Three pairs of white storks have successfully bred in West Sussex, the first chicks to be born in Britain since 1416. Cranes and bustards are also back and doing very nicely thank you!

The Antarctic Blue Whale is back where it belongs in the South Georgia Sea, fifty years after almost being hunted to extinction, humpback numbers are also increasing.

In China, new restrictions have been placed on wildlife trade and consumption and there is a shift toward favouring stricter animal protections.

‘Kopenhagen Fur’, located in Copenhagen, is the world's largest fur auction house; annually, it sells approximately 14 million Danish mink skins produced by 2,000 Danish fur farmers, and 7 million mink skins produced in other countries. A shameful trade. The good news is that 2020 called time on the fur industry and the auction house will probably close for good next year! Excellent.

Some long over-due recognition for indigenous women. In 2020 a few of those women were given some much-deserved credit for their work and leadership. In 2019 Nemonte Nenquimo, a leader of Ecuador’s Indigenous Waorani nation, filed a lawsuit against the Ecuadoran government won her case and successfully protected 500,000 acres of Indigenous territories and Amazon rainforest from oil exploration and extraction, setting an important legal precedent.  Leydy Pech, a Mayan beekeeper, lead a coalition that prevented agrochemical giant Monsanto from planting genetically modified “Roundup ready” soybean crops in seven states in southern Mexico.

America will soon have a new president and New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland has been nominated by president-elect Joe Biden to head the Department of the Interior. She would become the first Indigenous cabinet member in U.S. history. That is good news.

Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, in his Reith Lecturers argued that there is a strong movement away from investment in fossil fuels and that this is set to accelerate over the next few years. 

So, at long last it seems that some small, but hopeful signs of change are beginning to emerge,  so now is the time to increase the pressure, not relax.

 






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