AFON
Justice for Nature – by Sam Manning
Welcome to our series of blog posts in the run up to the general election (7th May 2015). Over this month AFON members will share their own Visions for Nature: what they want the natural world to look like by 2050 and how they want to get there. We have created a hashtag on Twitter so why not join the conversation? What’s your #VisionforNature?
Last year, prior to their astonishing ascendance into political relevance the Green Party of England and Wales sounded a call for a ‘Peoples Constitutional Convention’,inviting debate on what matters most to people in this country, and what should be included if such a doctrine were ever to be written.
The UK remains one of the very few nations on earth without a single written constitution, however it may be the case that this spark of debate has galvanized an inevitable surge of public support towards one, and if so, what values will constitute its foundation? Which major issues of our time will be given the greatest weight by its signatories?
If the rhetoric of the UKs political parties in this years general election is anything to go by, we can safely assume what the concerns given most precedence in a constitution would include, in a poll taken asking voters to choose which three areas of political concern they valued the most, 50% chose Health, 47% said Immigration, 55% selected the Economy, and at the very bottom of the agenda? The environment,with only 9% of those polled putting it at the top of their concerns (YouGov).
I find it astonishing that the great, approaching threats to continuing human prosperity and development such as climate change, environmental degradation and the decline of global biodiversity, are reflected so marginally in the political discourse of the day.
My greatest concern is the environment, I lose more sleep over the idea that every second, species are being wiped out all over the world that are literally irreplaceable, than I do over the size of my next paycheck. Rare habitats like ancient woodland that have taken billions of years to co-evolve and could never be recreated are being lost year on year in the wake of public support for job-creating, economy-boosting development projects like HS2.
The environment needs to be higher up the agenda.
My vision for nature is a democratic constitution, in which societies’ values reflect the gravity of the challenges we must overcome, that recognizes the moral responsibility we all must bear on our shoulders to save the natural world from the destruction it is enduring every single day.
I want justice for nature, a doctrine of supreme law that enshrines the rights of the natural environment, demonstrating an understand that without nature, there is no prosperity, no jobs, no economy, no social well-being – no justice. I want to live in a society that vilifies and punishes the destruction of nature and the human-driven extinction of species with the same clout as the loss of human life.
By 2050 I would like to see protection of the natural world prioritized by law, and to see that level of protection integrated co-dominantly into our society and operating side by side with the other pillars that would make up a democratic constitution of our values, facilitated by progressive ideas such as renewable energy, a circular and low carbon economy, organic, ethical and responsible food production, animal rights, species equality and cities designed to function at the benefit, not the cost of our earth’s ecosystems.