Thinking ahead

2023/24 has been a rollercoaster of new experiences in terms of the larger and potentially more impactful actions we have taken as a charity to benefit seals and the sea. Our focus has broadened as a result and become even more holistic. This is a personal blog from our Director, Sue Sayer MBE, on where we are at and what we urgently need to do. We hope these reflections on a busy 18 months might be as thought provoking for you as they have been for us as we are thinking ahead to our future.

What do we need now?

Substantial shifts are underway, but more are needed and we must work towards a better future for nature and us. We need to forge new relationships with nature and appreciate how much we depend on nature for our very existence. Farmers, fishers and miners must start to restore, protect and enhance the habitats within which they operate. Without nature there is no economy and no us! Without us nature thrives, so a new respect for, and protection of, nature is required from us all. A fundamental philosophy shift to the Ecozoic paradigm is needed.

All new developments need to be:

• energy neutral (with their own solar panels, wind cylinders or ground/air source heat pumps)
• nature positive (with their own bird, bat and insect boxes wild space interconnected with others) enhancing existing habitat
• outside areas that are vital and special places for wildlife

What other mental shifts are needed?

We need to realise that our current economy is not sustainable and deeply flawed. Dieter Helm’s book ‘Legacy’ explores the concept of what a sustainable ECOnomy would look like and what we have to do to mend our ways.  We simply can’t go on like this.

Fossil fuels still make up 80% of the world’s energy, global temperatures have risen by over 1 degree C and no serious progress on climate change has been made. Neither have we limited global population growth. Rainforests continue to be lost, oceans are more acidic, rivers polluted and we’re heading for a biodiversity great extinction event.

Do we really care about the next generation?

We need to focus on the needs of the next generation and the inheritance we are leaving them. The Welsh Government has recognised the needs of future generations in their ‘Wellbeing of Future Generations Act’ and have appointed a Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. This is forward thinking indeed! I don’t have children, but if you do, you need to care more! What will the world be like when a 10 year old in 2024 is 80 or 90 years old? What will the global temperature be like then? How much biodiversity will be left? Will there be social unrest? How much plastic will be in waterways and oceans? I think we can all take a guess!

Put simply, we all need to stop living beyond our means and downsize our expectations for travel and our commercial aspirations. We need to focus more on quality of life and appreciate that nature can improve our health and wellbeing if we let it. We need to change our diets, focussing less on meat (beef farming is one of the greatest carbon emitters) and eat a much more varied plant based diet to enhance our gut biomes, as well as get a lot more exercise.

How is the ocean relevant?

It controls everything, from the air we breathe to the planetary climate systems upon which we depend for our food and water. But the ocean is a new commercial frontier. Are we going to exploit it and trash it, as we have trashed terrestrial habitats and species? Much of the ocean is still unexplored. I don’t just mean the deep oceans rarely, if ever, visited by people – I mean just offshore. Most sub tidal habitats and species have never been researched. I have lived here for 30+ years and I don’t know what lives in the sea in our local bay…no-one does, as it has never been seen by most of us, let alone been mapped or comprehensively surveyed. Once we do know what is where, we need to protect more of it and holistically (with a site based rathter than species based approach). Protection must follow mobile species wherever the go rather than be site based.

Coastal activity has grown rapidly over the last few decades from industrial fisheries and transport, right through to recreational activity. Now we have seabed mining, a huge range of renewable energy developments, aquaculture, carbon capture schemes and geoengineering projects. We want to do more with the oceans, but without knowing what is already there, how can we assess the services it provides and likely impacts?

What have we learned?

A few things come to mind – we need to:

• Have relevant experts in lead roles governing the country
• A longer term view than a governing cycle of 5 years
• Provide more funding for statutory agencies and improve their reputations through action
• Put nature first – front and centre of everything we do
• Take a big picture view for the greater good
• Bust the myth that thriving economies and thriving nature are at opposite ends of a spectrum, instead they are intrinsically intertwined The environment is not a blocker to economic success but a building block of it
• Be brave, act faster and act selflessly, based on what the next generation needs to survive
• Include communities in decision making processes from the start
• Appreciate that taxes are a good thing, provided they are efficiently spent
• Put societal benefit above private profits
• Include youngsters in planning and policy decision making.

Statutory agencies can’t do it all. They are underfunded, have limited resources, rapidly changing staff turnover meaning expertise is quickly lost. Their systems are inconsistent and some lack transparency. This needs sorting out. Partnerships and networks need to be greatly enhanced with the community voluntary sector to build capacity and capability for the longer term.

Communities are usually the last to know what is happening near them, so all they can do is protest, but they have the greatest local knowledge. Community co-designed projects means less wasted resource from poorly planned programmes that were never fit for purpose.

We need a huge effort to find out what is already in our oceans in terms of water, biota and abiota before any development can be effectively planned for. This is not a time waster, it means we can prioritse the best places for development for the benefit of nature and us. Cornwall FLOW has been a great example of how this can be done holistically, cheaper, reliably and more effectively.

There is hope!

There have been developments in the right direction. Here are just a few examples:

• A focus on emissions reductions and net zero is underway
• Defra’s 5 Environmental Principles and the concept of net gain, but these all need to be applied with greater urgency, aspiration and ambition
• Technology enables remote access to environments, knowledge, experts, networks and skills. But we do need to learn how to use it more collaboratively and interactively
• More people have become greener, flight free, plant based with spaces for nature in their homes and gardens.

We all need to act at all levels of our lives at work, home and play and work smarter together in collaborative networks to benefit nature and ourselves, but mostly to secure a future for the children who are alive today.

Ultimately, we are insignificant as individuals, but together the possibilities are endless. What shadow will you leave behind? Am I chasing a rainbow? I hope not!

Check out the Manifesto for Seals we have created which informs our ask to decision makers.

Got any comments? We’d love to hear from you to make this a better call to action and map to get there? Please email [email protected] or go to our social media and comment there. We need to learn fast about this from each other.

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