{"id":3156,"date":"2024-10-10T15:27:19","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T14:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=3156"},"modified":"2024-10-18T10:33:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T09:33:22","slug":"nature-and-culture-7-arent-we-doing-this-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=3156","title":{"rendered":"Nature and Culture – 7 – Aren’t We Doing This Already?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Section 7 – Afterword: Aren\u2019t We Doing This Already?<\/strong><\/p>\n

download as pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

There is no national promotional campaign for nature and no systematic effort to increase Nature Ability, Natural History Knowledge or Ecoliteracy, call it what you will, so no, so we are not doing this already.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that it\u2019s not a new idea to set out to embed nature \u2018in culture\u2019 and even just in the UK, there are many more existing moments or activities established in popular culture, which have nature content, than I have mentioned.\u00a0 Most of those were never started with any intention to roll back a problem of national nature blindness because in the past, it wasn\u2019t seen to be a problem but now they could be built on to help do that.<\/p>\n

But isn\u2019t it also true that almost all the communications or outreach activities of organisations in the \u2018nature movement\u2019, however you define that, may have some<\/em> effect in signalling nature and the work done to try and protect or restore it?\u00a0 Yes that is true but even taken together it is self evidently not tackling the problem of a lack of public nature ability, or sufficiently convincing politicians in government that nature is a real political imperative.<\/p>\n

The main reason that existing activity is not doing the job, is that it hasn\u2019t been designed to do so.<\/p>\n

The Participation Principle<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ultimately the point of this proposal to invest time and effort to embed nature in culture is to show people who are or may become our elected politicians, that nature is an integral part of social life.\u00a0 As behaviours shape opinions and behaviours are tangible and visible, we need the valuing of and engaging with nature to be expressed through events and activities.\u00a0 Both which<\/em> and how many<\/em> people are involved, is \u00a0important.<\/p>\n

For good reasons, most voluntary sector nature conservation effort is either aimed at delivery in terms of species survival and natural ecosystem quality and quantity, and the area of habitats protected or restored, or fundraising, including recruitment and retention of supporters or members.<\/p>\n

The logic of nature delivery investment is to achieve the maximum gain for every pound or hour spent, and that generally applies to government nature agencies too.\u00a0 The logic of fundraising and membership investment is to gain and retain as much support as possible for each pound or hour spent. \u00a0But the objective of investing time and effort, and money in a drive for public nature literacy, and to create or promote popular culture nature events, is to maximise participation.<\/p>\n

Efficient Businsess As Usual leads to Different Outcomes<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, \u2018Business As Usual\u2019 for efficient habitat delivery, and efficient fundraising\/ membership recruitment sets priorities which are different from maximising nature ability and sending signals that nature is popular and important to the public.<\/p>\n

For example, imagine what happens if one woman takes the time and trouble to grow 100 hectares of wildflowers on her land.\u00a0 A good thing but it sends a different signal from 100 women growing one hectare each, and a different one again from if the 100 hectares were made up by 10,000 women growing 1 square metre each. (1 Ha = 10,000 square metres).<\/p>\n

For targeting agri-environment grants or a NGO buying land, a single 100Ha wildflower meadow makes sense but politically the single landowner is one vote, the 100 are 100 votes and the 10,000 votes is larger than the majorities of many Westminster MPs. It\u2019s participation in activities that is important from the politics-signal point of view.<\/p>\n

NGO fundraisers also often pursue a strategy of efficiency, targeting people most likely and able to give the largest donations, which is usually existing long-standing and richer supporters.\u00a0 This is one reason why nearly all NGOs gave up street collections even before the decline of cash but that also had the effect of making themselves and their cause less salient in the world outside their mailing or emailing lists. \u00a0That involved a loss of quality too: the human contact disappeared into direct mail and online giving.<\/p>\n

Fundraisers in NGOs often have bigger communications budgets than the communications or campaigns departments, as the organisation relies upon them to keep it going.\u00a0 Inadvertently, this efficiency also focuses the organisation\u2019s communications and relationships on maintaining and recruiting to it\u2019s funding base. It\u2019s normal for most of what pleople outside a NGO know and think about it, to be down to its marketing and fundraising comms, not it\u2019s a change adovcacy or delivery.<\/p>\n

But if you accept the logic of this paper, which is that to make the nature movement more effective politically, nature needs to be more expressed in public<\/em> culture, targeting the base is not what\u2019s most needed.<\/p>\n

The Curse Of The \u2018New Project\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Business as Usual nature-related projects are often given aims or objectives about \u2018public engagement\u2019 and even \u2018sustained\u2019 support but subsidiary to the main tasks of land management for species, habitats and ecosystem function.\u00a0At the same time, funders may require projects to be \u2018new\u2019 activities.\u00a0 This combination tends to significantly reduce the chances of the projects leading to sustained outcomes of public engagement in terms of nature ability, or nature embedded in popular community culture.<\/p>\n

Providing that its current owners are open to growth, investing in a project which already has social \u2018roots\u2019 in the shape of people who are commited to and understand it, is probably more likely to yield sustainable results in terms of embedding and expressing nature in social culture, than investing in a completely \u2018new build\u2019.\u00a0 Each new build is like a prototype, a seed, or at best a seedling.\u00a0 There will be a high failure rate. Existing rooted activities have already gone through a sort of natural selection process and developed some sort of resilience.<\/p>\n

So in terms of priorities, I would suggest taking the time and trouble to locate existing projects or activities which are already all or most of the way to making nature part of the culture, or where it already is, and wherever possible building on them, however modest they might be.<\/p>\n

Back From The Brink<\/em><\/p>\n

Many Business as Usual nature projects start, stop and relatively quickly, leaving little trace. \u00a0One with quite a good account which is still avilable online, is \u2018Back From The Brink\u2019<\/a> a \u00a37m scheme which ran for only four years from 2017 to 2021.\u00a0 This is a short time in which to expect a project to develop much in the way of social roots, especially if they weren\u2019t designed with that in mind.<\/p>\n

Nineteen Back from the Brink projects were adminsitered by Natural England with money from HLF (Heritage Lorry Fund), and run by seven nature charities incliuding RSPB and Plantlife.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In 2015 NE announced that Back From The Brink would aim to \u2018save 20 species from extinction and help another 118 species that are under threat move to a more certain future\u2019.<\/p>\n

With a mix of familiar subjects like ancient trees as well as obscure rare plants like Cornish Moss, and the Narrow Headed Ant\u2019s only remaining colony, the scheme\u2019s aim was \u2018for threatened species to be restored to a steady state\u2019.\u00a0 But as well as improving the immediate prospects for rare bats, butterflies, crickets, birds and flowers, Back From The Brink wanted to ensure that \u2018landowners and communities\u2019 were \u2018working to actively sustain them\u2019.<\/p>\n

The post-programme summary states that Back from the Brink involved 59,000 people, including over 10,000 who \u2018learnt new skill\u2019s and nearly 4,000 who volunteered their time, while people had \u2018185\u00a0million opportunities to\u00a0hear about\u00a0Back from the Brink\u2019 (eg media mentions).<\/p>\n

It aimed<\/strong>\u00a0to deliver a legacy in these terms:<\/p>\n

for threatened species to be restored to a steady state, with landowners and communities working to actively sustain them\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The result was described like this<\/p>\n

A legacy of success:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0the prospects for targeted populations of our threatened species have been improved from\u00a0hundreds of\u00a0practical actions carried out to support them, with more people knowing about and acting for them,\u00a0and\u00a0more effective collaborative working by conservation bodies on species recovery as a result.<\/em><\/p>\n

Which doesn\u2019t say anything about \u2018communities working to actively sustain them\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Back From The Brink map<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The interactive map above takes you to two layers of details on each project.\u00a0 \u00a0I looked at ten of them and none of the \u2018community\u2019 or \u2018legacy\u2019 parts mentioned a specific community or group continuing the work, or taking on responsibility as \u2018stewards\u2019 for the projects.<\/p>\n

Declaring an aim to create sustained community action may reflect over-specifying and inflating aims so the scheme could be announced as \u2018ambitious\u2019, especially when it was primarily a \u2018shot-in-the-arm\u2019 habitat and species \u2018rescue\u2019 operation. More first-aid than a public health programme.\u00a0 In fact it was not large, compared to HLF\u2019s own land, nature and biodiversity programme, and miniscule compared to government support to \u2018farming and environment\u2019 payments (which of course have almost no affect on public nature ability or popular culture as they are generally in the oprofessional farmer-contractor world).<\/p>\n

The overall aim for \u2018community\u2019 was also bit hyperbolic: to \u2018inspire a nation to discover, value and act for threatened species \u00a0\u2013 aim of 1.3 million people so engaged\u2019.<\/p>\n

To set such an engagement aim for a \u00a37m programme of 19 localised and mainly rather specialist projects where much of the effort was necessarily detailed habitat, survey and estate management work needed to directly benefit the wildlife, was over-ambitious but perhaps not intended to be taken seriously.\u00a0 \u00a37m is not much if you are buying and managing land but it\u2019s a lot if you were primarily doing communications work and community engagement.\u00a0 \u00a37m could be spent so as to \u2018inspire the nation\u2019 but not like this.<\/p>\n

\u2018Engaged\u2019 can mean many things and \u2018community\u2019 is often sprayed around in priject specs and promotion like a rhetorical garnish.\u00a0 In this case community engagement was essentially a side effect in the projects I looked at, not a detectable objective.\u00a0 These were not<\/em> bad projects \u2013 they were great conservation projects.\u00a0 They did involve people and in all cases they probably raised nature ability, and in a few cases by a lot, judging by descriptions of numbers and training in Natural History.<\/p>\n

But they were conventional Business as Usual projects, \u00a0more run by NGOs, more professional than volunteer organised, more parchuted in than embedded in society and unlikely to last as something that people would get involved with on an ongoing basis, becoming part of popular culture.<\/p>\n

Some of the projects involved activities and events with artists, poets or musicians but these are injecting \u2018Culture\u2019 into nature projects rather than the nature projects becoming part of community culture.<\/p>\n

Pick Up The Threads?<\/p>\n

It could make sense for NE and HLF to go back to these projects, and pick up the threads of\u00a0 the \u2018collaborative NGO working\u2019 and the glancing through-to-deep engagement with many people no doubt had with them, in a new tranche of projects. These could explore connection to local communities, and see if the nature could become central to events, business or social activities which are or become an ongoing part of community culture. Then communities might be \u2018actively working to sustain them\u2019. But as this was a project launched under a Conservative Government the new Labour Government would probably not want to do that.<\/p>\n

The Green Recovery Challenge Fund<\/p>\n

What several groups running Back To The Brink projects did mention under \u2018legacy\u2019, was continuing NGO posts and project work by seeking funding from the the Green Recovery Challenge Fund<\/a> (GRCF), the next temporary pot of money to hove into view.<\/p>\n

GRCF was a small \u00a380m part of government COVID largesse and was also distributed by HLF, in 2021 and 2022.\u00a0 It initially aimed to create 3,000 jobs in England to \u2018restore nature and tackle climate change\u2019, the latter through \u2018nature solutions\u2019.<\/p>\n

The subsequent evaluation<\/a> recorded that over three years, 1.7m trees got planted, conservation activities took place on 1,500 square km of land, 25,000 \u2018enagement events\u2019 were held involving 400,000 people, and 1,500 jobs were supported.<\/p>\n

It involved 159 projects<\/a> and linked to NE\u2019s Access to Nature programme.\u00a0 Activities included<\/a> nature walks, training in identifying species, citizen science, wildlife watching, habitat restoration, school curricula related or forest school type (ie outdoors) activities, gardening, mindfulness, and social media engagement.<\/p>\n

An example which involved local distinctiveness was working to restore abundance of the rare but once common flower Sulphur Clover in verges of the Norfolk \u2018Claylands\u2019, an often overlooked area. \u00a0A great project<\/a> but it ended in 2023.<\/p>\n

Although this funding was put together in a hurry, and ended after three years, it is probably closer in scale and management to the sort of programme that would be needed to make a dent in the problem of the national deficit in nature ability, and developing and running projects to embed nature in social culture.\u00a0 As well as money, the HLF and its partners have a lot of relevant experience and skills, particularly with social activities and culture. \u00a0Such a scheme would have a greater chance of success if it was preceded or accompanied by a national promotional campaign for nature ability.<\/p>\n

Conclusion <\/strong><\/p>\n

To UK practitioners struggling to do what they can to make a difference to the nature crisis within the system as it stands, my arguments may seem annoyingly unrealistic but that is partly as their movement has become used to subsisting on a dwindling supply of scraps.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d suggest taking inspiration from the establishment of the The Lottery back in 1994, by then Prime Minister John Major. Experience of working in the Treasury, convinced him that the Treasury would never give \u2018more than scraps<\/a>\u2019 of funding to the arts, and he wanted to ensure \u2018a rebirth of cultural and sporting life in Britain\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Heritage Lottery Fund could now be part of the answer to the nature ability deficit, and a political realisation that nature is important to voters is a pre-requisite to restoring nature in the UK.<\/p>\n

All sections<\/p>\n

1 \u2013 Introduction And Nature Ability<\/p>\n

2 \u2013 Missing The Garden Opportunity<\/p>\n

3 \u2013 Signalling and Marking Moments<\/p>\n

4 \u2013 Nature Events in Popular Culture<\/p>\n

5 \u2013 Why Conservation Should Embrace Natural History<\/p>\n

6 \u2013 Organising Strategy and Ways And Means<\/p>\n

7 \u2013 Afterword: Aren\u2019t We Doing This Already?<\/p>\n

Contact: chris@campaignstrategy.co.uk\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Section 7 – Afterword: Aren\u2019t We Doing This Already? download as pdf There is no national promotional campaign for nature and no systematic effort to increase Nature Ability, Natural History Knowledge or Ecoliteracy, call it what you will, so no, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3156"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3440,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3156\/revisions\/3440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}