By leaves we live: climate-nature in a chaotic world

A sustainability seminar by Clive Mitchell, NatureScot
View of Strete Estate

  • Sustainability Hub, 91porn

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Current patterns of land use reflect the post-war consensus on maximising productivity and yield, from grouse moors to barley and everything in between. It is even reflected in urban planning and design in areas zoned for specific uses.
‘Nature’ is one of these compartments, vying for its ‘fair’ share and competing with the main purpose. People are viewed as mainly apart from, and dominant over, nature. This policy and practice, developed over the last 70 years, assumes a mainly stable and predictable climate. The current compartmentalised use of land, mainly for single benefits or purpose is vulnerable to an array of climate risks and is a net source of greenhouse gas emissions. Now that climate is both warming and becoming more chaotic, both within and across years, we must review policy and practice so that it is fit for the present and future – designed mainly for resilience and working with nature for multiple benefits.
Climate action for net zero is mainly viewed through the national greenhouse gas inventory. For land use, this comprises agriculture, forestry, grassland, cropland, wetland, and settlements, with little or no mixing between them. This both reflects and reinforces the post-war settlement on what land is for, and constrains the multiple benefits needed from land at fine scales to manage multiple and cascading risks in a more volatile climate.
Today, this lens limits our imagination, vision and ambition for what land use is for, and the distribution of public and private goods and associated benefits, burdens and risk that come with those choices.
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Nature is a key component of the Earth system. It regulates climate and has done especially over the 400 million years through healthy soils, wetlands and water in both the short- and long-term. It is not going to stop doing that anytime soon. People are apart of nature. Situating our activities, including farming, forestry and other land uses in nature, not in competition with it, is key to building insurance against climate risks, with sustainable production allowing for losses due to climate risks over a full rotation or more.
Sustainable production must be aligned with sustainable consumption including demand management in a circular economy that includes the biological activity in which the rural economy is rooted. For all the talk of the 'transformational' change needed, Clive will examine why change is often incremental and why the status quo has such a persistent pull, including vested interests and power relations.
Clive concludes the seminar with a plea that policy and practice for uses of the land and sea should better reflect what we have learned about the role of life in Earth systems over the last 20–30 years, and that risk/resilience is a powerful, and necessary, lens through which to evaluate the merits of the choices we make.

AGENDA

17:45–18:00 | Arrival and networking
18:00–19:00 | Seminar and Q&A
19:00–19:45 | Refreshments and networking
This seminar is open to all.

Email events@plymouth.ac.uk for any queries.

About the speaker

Clive Mitchell is Head of Terrestrial Science at NatureScot and leads their approach on climate-nature. In NatureScot Clive has worked as a geologist, delivering marine and terrestrial conservation in Orkney, on climate, energy, sustainable development, corporate strategy and resource management. In the 2000s he was seconded to the UK Sustainable Development Commission as team leader for climate, energy, transport and buildings policy. He is an Associate Lecturer for the Open University teaching final year courses on Earth Systems and the environment, including climate, nature and food systems. He sits on the steering group of the Sustainable Scotland Network, advisory group for WWF Scotland and is a climate advisor for the Convention on Migratory Species.
 

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