A global nature summit, being held in Columbia and attended by almost 200 countries, including the UK, will be drawing to a close at the end of this week. The aim of the event, known as the United Nations Biodiversity COP16, a biennial event, is to work out how we save the planet from ecological collapse, which is a scenario we’re hurtling ever closer to as we continue to destroy natural habitat across the world.

Ecological collapse would ultimately result in mass extinctions (including us)… So, it’s pretty important stuff. 
But did you know COP16 was happening? Let me hazard a guess. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t: it has had little coverage in the news. Human life as we know it couldn’t go on without the myriad of services provided by the natural world, but oddly, it always seems to get taken for granted. 

I may be giving my age away here, but this scenario reminds me of some classic lines from a film I saw in my youth, Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. This comedic tale is set in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, and one scene focuses on a revolutionary speech from John Cleese’s character Reg, the leader of group fighting for his city’s independence. 

He attempts to inspire his fellow men to unite against their country’s occupiers by describing how the Romans have bled them dry, before posing the question, ‘And what have they ever given us in return?’ 
At this point, his listeners reel off a long list of items which have brought positive improvements to their lives, to which he replies, ‘All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?’
I was reminded of this exchange because when I’m travelling around the county championing the benefits of protecting the natural world I’m sometimes met with this kind of response - ‘but what has nature ever done for us?’

The value of the natural world is often overlooked, perhaps because it is not something we have to pay for. It is an invisible service provider that we rely on in practically every aspect of our daily lives. If there were no nature, we wouldn’t be able to grow food crops, which rely on living, fertile soils and in many cases, insect pollination. Healthy wetland habitats supply and purify our water, while plants provide oxygen and filter out pollutants, improving air quality. Put simply, we can’t survive without nature.

At the last Biodiversity COP, COP 15, in 2022, almost 200 countries including the UK pledged to protect 30% of their land for nature by 2030. That’s just six years away. Since then, we’ve actually gone backwards. One in six of our wild species is facing extinction, and just under 3% of England is regarded as effectively protected for nature. In Staffordshire, our best evidence suggests that it is a very bleak 5.2%! 

30% might sound a lot, but we’re not talking about rewilding huge areas or converting productive farmland into nature reserves. We’re talking about a radical new approach to land use that would make sure nature is incorporated across the whole landscape – strips of wildflowers and restored hedgerows alongside nature-friendly food production on farms, nature areas within housing developments and businesses, trees on our streets, pollution-free rivers, bee-friendly blooms in our parks and in school grounds. 

There’s a huge amount of work to be done in six years, but it’s not impossible. If we were hosting the Olympics in 2030, you can bet we’d have a plan; how embarrassing would it be to reach 2030 and have no Olympic stadium in place, no facilities, and no infrastructure? Well, for COP 16, we’re talking here about putting our natural infrastructure back in place. We need to pull out all the stops, ensure there is the political will, find the funding and make nature restoration happen. We all depend on it. It’s time to get to work.