What Nature Does For Britain
Tony Juniper
Language: English
Pages: 228
ISBN: B017PNZZQS
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From the peat bogs and woodlands that help to secure our water supply, to the bees and soils that produce most of the food we eat, Britain is rich in 'natural capital'. Yet we take supplies of clean water and secure food for granted, rarely considering the free work nature does for Britain. In fact for years we have damaged the systems that sustain us under the illusion that we are keeping prices down, through intensive farming, drainage of bogs, clearing forests and turning rivers into canals. As Tony Juniper's new analysis shows, however, the ways in which we meet our needs often doesn't make economic sense.
Through vivid first hand accounts and inspirational examples of how the damage is being repaired, Juniper takes readers on a journey to a different Britain from the one many assume we inhabit, not a country where nature is worthless or an impediment to progress, but the real Britain, the one where we are supported by nature, wildlife and natural systems at almost every turn.
climate. Wet and cool conditions lead to different soils compared with where it is warmer and drier, even when the rocks beneath are the same. The shape of the ground is important too, with steeper slopes tending to have thinner soils than valley bottoms. Then there is the time the soil has had to form. The longer it has been building up in any one place, the deeper it becomes. The character of the organisms living in it, on it and from it, and the amount of once living, but now dead, material
global temperature increase compared with the time before the industrial revolution. This is widely regarded as a danger level beyond which it is believed our ability to cope with the consequences will be severely strained. Researchers at the Potsdam Institute have calculated that in order to hold the risk of going past this two-degree limit to a 20 per cent chance, then the total emissions of carbon dioxide must be limited to 886 billion tonnes between 2000 and 2050. During the first decade of
has thought about that a lot and reached the conclusion that soil is central to our entire social and economic system. ‘Just like you have a keystone in an arch that holds these enormous structures together with amazing rigidity. Take that one stone away and the whole thing collapses. My contention is that the soil in many respects works within the environment like an architectural keystone. Its presence keeps the system functioning, and when we remove it or make it less well-fitting, things
ultimate economic benefit, however, the whole thing relies on people seeking benefit for their well-being through interactions with wildlife. That’s why they went to spend time in more natural areas – because it made them feel better. This is not a small thing, it is a fundamentally important aspect of our national health and one that it would be sensible to reflect in how we plan the future of our country. A glimpse of what that future could be like is seen not only in those projects where
of information and used it properly. Comparable to the gathering of information to achieve a Triple A credit rating for our economy, we could do a comparable job in aiming for a Triple A rating for our ecology too. No matter how illustrative new measures might be, however, it is important to remember that many of our leaders in politics, business, economics and the media grew up with the message exemplified by that poster on the wall of my primary school classroom. It was a message born of a