Grass Roots Conservation for the 21st Century
One of the biggest challenges facing mankind is how we balance all of our needs. When I say ‘we’ I really do mean WE because it has to be a joint effort with all parties working towards a common goal. In reality, this is often extremely difficult as humans can be extremely selfish as both individuals and in groups.
Firstly, establishing what we consider a ‘need’ is entirely relative and creates additional difficulties. A list of needs coming from a developed nation will be entirely different from a developing nation. Do we really need air conditioning? Do we really need meat? I’ve met many people who would say we do but who does the pollution related to both affect the most?
Secondly, we can no longer rely on ‘top down’ approaches, waiting for policy to come from government telling us how to behave. Initiatives must come from local groups, businesses, schools, colleges and charities that have the passion and resources to lead a revolution in the way we balance our needs.
Thirdly, how do we account for our reliance on nature for many of our ‘needs’? And how do we reconcile the contradiction that we often destroy our natural environment in pursuit of our ‘needs’?
The Wilderness Foundation UK together with Strutt & Parker Farms are two organisations leading the way into investigating how best to balance the needs of farming, nature and communities. Their joint initiative ‘The Chatham Green Project’ draws on expert knowledge from stakeholders such as farmers, conservationists, ecologists, nature therapists, environmental educators and local residents to build a vision of how the 400 acre project area should look and function.
Balancing the needs of these stakeholders is a complicated task and one of the mechanisms used by The Wilderness Foundation UK is the MARISCO workshop process. The primary purpose of the MARISCO process is to identify what elements of a particular area are important to conserve (e.g. woodlands, rivers, tranquillity, clean air), the threats to those components (e.g. over fishing) and the contributing factors (e.g. lack of enforcement). The next stage then looks at strategies to manage the threats and contributing factors.
This process is a rapid, inclusive, interactive and a systematic way of recording stakeholder’s expertise and creating ‘results chains’ between conservation strategies and outcomes. The process can also be taken one step further by investigating the human well-being benefits of these results chains.
An added benefit to the process is that stakeholders begin to see alternative points of view, form stronger bonds to the study area, create coalitions and partnerships and feel empowered to make the grass-roots changes that are so critical.
One of the main outcomes from this process was the need for an education programme to better educate young people, locals residents, farmers and businesses about nature, sustainability, economics and rural cultures.
The Wilderness Foundation UK is now planning a full education programme aimed at schools, colleges and land based workers set to start in March 2013.
The education programme will operate from the 400 acre working arable farm which will feature a new 12,000 tree ‘Diamond Status’ jubilee woodland, a large scale clean energy solar array, wildflower meadow restoration as well as many other environmental improvements. Learners can benefit from a day in a living classroom immersed in nature whilst confronting real life example of sustainability in action.