 Fel wnaeth y cwmhwylliant yma ar y Llywodraeth Bryddoedd, dwi'n meddwl am ychydig i'ch cymryddiol eraill. Felly, mae'n wedi bod yw'r amgylchedd, ac ymweld â'r ffordd, felly ddim yn ddew i'w meddwl am y Llywodraeth Bryddoedd. Felly, dwi'n meddwl am y ffordd o'r ffordd yw'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r newydd ym Mhwyllgor, Fwyllgor, Ard, Ffynllwr, i'w ffyrdd o'r ffordd o'r rheidio a bod yw'r gful dim wym ni'n gweithio o'i newydd mewn gwreidio'r ffrindol. Fyny'r ffodol o'r eich ffordd, cyd-fodol ein bod yn bod yn rhoi'n ddod eich ffantafol neu mae'n adeiladau, mae'n adeiladau, mae'n adeiladau typhol neu mae'n oeddiwn mae'n adeiladau neu mae'n adeiladau, oeddiwch arall gwaith yw'r ff Scr제� a'r pernwys o'w cyd-deg Lordywyd arhaeddiol o'l ei wneud o rhanol i'r oedd ychydig iddynt o'r iawn hwnnau unrhyw blwyd, Mae'n tynnu'r modd, ychwanegol, oherwydd mae'n modd. Felly mae'r rhaid o hyd yn ymdill o'r rhaid o'r hynod sy'n berdd o baprwythio ffotograffiau o'r hynod o'r llwyddoedd ac i ni'r rhaid o'r penderfynu, oherwydd ni'n bwrdd. Felly mae'n dweud o'r rhaid o'r hynod, mae'n ddwy'r gweithio. Felly ddim ychydig i'r ddechrau, mae'n ddweud o'r bwysig o'r programau i'r gweithio cael eu cyfrithio. Felly, rydyn ni'n meddwl i ni'n meddwl i ni'n meddwl am y dyfodol. Y ddenig yma, mae'r ysgolffaith yn gyrfa. Rydyn ni'n meddwl i gweithio gyrfa o'r panel yma. Felly mae'r ddechrau Creg Benits, y ddoniwn yn ysgolffaith yw'r ysgolffaith. Felly mae'r ddweud Becky. Mae'r ddoniwn yn ysgolffaith yw'r ysgolffaith yw'r bobl. Andrew Tarrie, ddoniwn yn ysgolffaith ar gyfer SNL. We will all be talking with our chair tonight, Jaustain Roellat, an naziad, educated climate, at the BBC. The event is also a little nod to the imminent coronation of His Majesty King Charles III, someone who's made awareness of the importance of nature conservation, one of his most passionate priorities through his whole life. Thank you very much for being here once again and over to Jaustain o'r teim! Thank you! Cheers, John. Thank you! Ychydig yn diogelio'r panl eich hwyl i'r ffordd yn gweithio'r gwaith Yn ymdgol, felly wedi'i gwybod i'ch hyn'r gweithio. Yn ymdw i, mae hynny. Mae ddweud hynny'n gwneud yw hefyd, ac mae'n mynd i chi'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Ond Craig, mae Craig yn ddefnyddio'r gweithio, ddim yn ymddangos yng Nghymru. Andrew, mae'n rydw i'n gweithio'n dweud bod yn stymol wedi cael meddwl ar gyllidol, maen nhw? Er fynol, ni'n rŵt dweud. Maen nhw'n gweithio'n ddweud o ymweld o gyleansgan cryfaniaeth o ymweld y Daryl Warolig. Yn amlwiantau sfysau a i gael i fod yn y plecyd. Yn gweithio a i gael i gael i'n plecyd ymweld. Rydw i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n teimlo. Beci fires been... Beforthat you ran the Woodland Trust and prior to that you were at National Trust. Lots of trusts in your background, lots of trust. But let's start off with the exhibition. Has everybody here seen it? Have you been? I mean I'd like to just... I mean speak up. What did you think of it? What did you see? What exhibits particularly caught your attention? Beci you start. Well I nipped in literally this afternoon and a couple of things struck me. The first was the soundscape. That soundscape is just amazing. If you haven't been, you will love it. And I think the thing that really struck me about it was I'm waking up every morning at the moment because of the dawn chorus and I kind of have to have my window open to hear it, whatever the temperature. I have to hear it because it's that time of year when you really hear it. And just going in and hearing that soundscape and I loved hearing the curlew towards the end was absolutely gorgeous. And the other thing that really struck me was some of those amazing artefacts which I guess are from the collection mainly here. And there was a huge, there's a huge plate from the Odebon book, which is a very famous kind of bird's book and there's a gorgeous plate of I think a barnal and it's just stunning, you know. So just the quality of some of the kind of craftsmanship that's gone into those. This is Leonardo, isn't it? I knew like that could have been, he could have done it yesterday. The quality of the colours are just as vivid as they were when he first did it. I mean, anything else that you'd like to pick up on, any... But you were quite upset by it, weren't you, Graham? Well, yeah, in some ways. I mean, I think it's an amazing exhibition. It's really, really incredible. It's so funny when you work on things day to day and then you see something that provokes you to really stop and think. And the video footage of the thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger, you know, I found that quite upsetting really because it's such a beautiful, beautiful animal. And just so sad to think that it's no longer there. But it's also so obviously distraught, isn't it? Yes. I mean, obviously, we're kind of, you know, anthropomorphising it by imposing our knowledge that it's the last of its kind. But when it does that big yawn or whatever it does, you know, it's such an incredible mouth and it's so sort of similar and yet clearly very different from my Labrador, say. And you just sort of think, how sad that it's not there anymore. So it just provoked me to stop and think. But then at the flip side of it, I found myself, you know, the songs of birds, the records from the 1930s. I found that amazing. Although there is the last cry of that Hawaiian bird, which again is really poignant. I mean, if you haven't seen it, do go because it's really full of amazing stuff. What about you, Andrew? Did you? So, I mean, for me, I love the meeting of art and science. And you see that in many different ways. You see earlier stuff that's more art than science and you see some of the bits that are more science than art. But it's kind of an aspiration to understand, isn't it? Exactly that. And, you know, the Audubon, but I mean, that's the Holy Grail. And for me, I've got a print on the wall at home. But to see an actual Audubon. And the original... I mean, this world of those elephant editions. Yeah, of the elephant. I mean, so you're looking at one of the most valuable and most important ornithological books in the world ever. And it's just a bit of hero worship at that point. There's also an original copy of the first edition of Linnaeus's, you know, Categorisation of the Species, which again is pretty extraordinary, isn't it? And again, I think my wife works here. I should, you know, be honest. And she said, I said, you know, is it from your... And she went, oh, yeah, we got loads of books. You know, we could do exhibitions on anything. Anyway, let's cut to the chase because we're here to talk about biodiversity. We're also here a little bit to talk about the role of the new king in kind of what can he do to help us with this effort to tackle this huge problem we have of biodiversity loss. And I'd first... We're going to start with the depressing stuff first. Andrew. Yes. You're head of conservation at ZSL, Zoological Society of London. One of the things that ZSL does is it has a kind of... Keeps a kind of... Does an estimate of kind of species at risk. So where do we stand at the moment? Well, so, yeah, I mean, we develop a tool called the Living Planet Index, and that's a way of bringing together lots and lots of data on populations of animals that are monitored around the world and looks at changes in those populations over time. And what that tells us is that over the last 50 years, monitored populations have declined by 69%. So if you look back over the last 50 years and think about how economies have developed, how things have developed, how things have grown, it's all come at the cost of the natural world. And this is one indicator amongst a suite of indicators that look at the changing state of nature around us. And as a barometer, it's like a footsie indicator for life, it's showing that it's in really bad state. And wherever we look, we see that that is a global trend. And it's not uniform across the world. So if you look into northern hemisphere context, the US and Europe, that's more historical. We did the damage earlier on, so we're kind of bottoming out. And in some places, we see recovery starting to happen. It's most extreme in Latin America at the moment and then Africa, where it's really declining. And also, when we look into fresh water and marine ecosystems, it's really plummeting. And you think that water is the vital resource of all life and it's the ecosystem that's getting hammered the worst. And it's interesting because people talk about the threat from climate changes. I'm a climate editor, I talk about it all the time. But the biodiversity challenge is actually more immediate and the moment is deeper. Climate change is a future threat and obviously it's getting worse and worse. But the drivers of the destruction of biodiversity are operating right now and are destroying biodiversity on a scale that we haven't really seen. Yeah, so if you look at the signals of what's causing those losses, climate in and of itself is actually quite small at this day because we're kind of looking at what we're dealing with. But we are very aware of what climate change is doing and it is very quickly becoming the dominant driver of change alongside traditional resource extraction, habitat loss, overexploitation, those kind of real drivers of loss in the natural world. Climate is interacting with those to make the situation far worse. So we expect it's becoming the dominant driver of change. And Becky, let's talk about it, because one of the things the RSPB does that you probably do know about is actually the biggest citizen science project in the world, your big garden bird watch. So which is a way, obviously, of taking stock of the species of birds that we see all around us. What does that tell us if, I mean, if you can remember, but what does that tell us about the trajectory of our, I mean, most, obviously it's garden bird watch, so it's garden birds. Yeah, so it's interesting. So, you know, when you're talking about species, you've obviously got, you want to stop species going extinct, right? I think that's pretty obvious. You want to stop species becoming rarer as well, and you want to keep our common species common, so that kind of sense of abundance, so that, you know, when you look out of your window, if you're lucky enough to have sparrows, you see loads of sparrows, you know, and so it's that abundance thing. And I think that's where big garden bird watch really plays in as an exercise, because it looks at some of our most common birds, the ones that people see in their back gardens, in their local park, you know, on their balcony, and it just gets everybody to say, right, you know, how many am I seeing at any one time, a specific time, and kind of, you know, and what does that tell us overall, and what does that tell us over time? So you do get these kind of, you get the kind of, you know, I'm always having to go on radio too, and they do a kind of countdown, but you get to see, you know, which birds are doing really well, which birds are doing less well, but the overall story is often one of decline. So even though this year, I think the sparrow came top yet again, but actually sparrow numbers have declined over time. So that's what it tells you. And it kind of tells, and it's been quite useful as well in sort of pointing out some of the early problems. So I think it was the big garden bird watch exercise that kind of said, you know what, we've got a problem with song thrushes. People are seeing far fewer song thrushes in their gardens, and it kind of pointed out that sort of problem early. But it's a really interesting exercise, because it's not kind of absolute kind of perfect evidence, in that sense, but when you combine it with lots of other evidence, you get the whole picture, and that's what's important. Can we do a little kind of slight corner turn, because we, you know, this is advertised as being about the king as well. So I'm going to turn to you, Craig, who runs the Wildlife Trust. But, you know, over the course of your career, you've had quite a lot of dealings. In fact, you ran one of then-Prince Charles's charitable organisations. Tell us a bit about your involvement with the now king, and then let's talk a bit about his role in kind of raising awareness of some of the issues that we've talked about. Yeah, so I worked closely with him when I was director of what was then called Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change. This was about 10, 15 years ago and was run out of the University of Cambridge, the Institute for Sustainability Leadership. And also, in my current job as Chief Executive of the Wildlife Trust, he's also been our patron one way or another since the early 1970s. And I think that's the thing to really emphasise here is that you've got to bear in mind his first environmental speech was in the late 1960s. So way before it was trendy to do so. And I mean, almost like whatever you think about the monarchy and anything like that, the fact is he has authentically cared passionately about these issues for the whole of his life. And in the face of ridicule, on the case? In the face of ridicule for most of his life. Yes, true. And probably with quite a lot pushed back from institutions around him as well. So it's absolutely authentic with him. And also what's been authentic with him is what you might call what we would now call perhaps out his system level understanding. So looking at it as all kind of interconnected. And actually he's been enormously successful at kind of pre-empting what future concerns will be. So, you know, whether it's deeply concerned about plastics long before the rest of the world was talking about plastics or... River pollution is first speech, is spit that speech. Air pollution, yeah. Well, river pollution back in the 1960s. He was talking about the impacts of air pollution on health. I mean, I did an immediate interview around the time of the Queen's funeral about this. And I look back and his first ever environmental speech talked about, yes, you like river pollution. And that week everyone was talking about river pollution. And also air pollution, but specifically the impact of air pollution on people's health. And it was that week, just before the Queen's funeral, that a new study had come out absolutely nailing once and for all that the impacts of air pollution on people's health. So he's really quite prescient in a lot of the stuff he's done on this. But his real role in this has been convening. It's just been to bring the right groups of people together to have the right conversations, often the right places, to try and break through and make change happen. So it is, the big thing is just no one can take away how authentic it's been for him. But it's quite interesting that you talk about convening, because one of the things that was very clear when he became King was he said, this is a different role. And he certainly looked to people like me who were watching to see how strong he'd be on this issue, that he was saying, listen, I can't play the role that I used to play. Obviously I can't be as outspoken as a monarch. I'm kind of impartial and stand above or side or wherever he'd want to place himself. But that convening role is quite interesting, because that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to kind of stay a strong opinion. Can you see him convening? Is he convening now? Is he still doing that, bringing people together and trying to effect change? I'm sure he will do. I think probably in this first year he's been a bit cautious. But what I would say is we have a certain image that a narrative has developed about saying that the monarchy doesn't get involved in some of these issues and so on. But it has, it always has done. I mean, the Queen, for example, we forget now perhaps even a year later, a year or so later, the Queen sent a video message to COP26 saying the time for talking is over, bash her heads together and sort something out. She didn't quite use those words, but something like that. So the monarchy has done that over time. And I thought it was kind of quite interesting actually Princess Royal's message this morning to Canadian media about the long term. And again, irrespective of whatever you think about the monarchy, I think what's interesting is they do think their, to an extent, their role is to think about the issues that actually don't work very well in short term electoral cycles. And so I think for quite a long time, actually, the Prince of Wales, now the King and his office have felt fairly comfortable on this as an issue that isn't always served brilliantly by short term electoral cycles and is actually all about, you know, why about the long term. If there's one role for a monarchy, if you have it, it's to think about that. There was one moment where we saw the King actually quite deliberately as King doing a kind of environmental event. And do you remember Liz Truss said to him, he wasn't allowed to go to COP27, the Egyptian climate conference, probably wasn't quite expressed as clearly as I'm putting it. And then he convened a meeting of kind of leaders and business leaders, lots of the people who were involved with his activities already at Buckingham Palace in the week before, as everybody was travelling to Egypt, John Kerry and people turned up, you know, the climate envoy for President Biden. So he was kind of saying, look, I may not be going, but I'm still kind of active in this. I thought I was quite telling that he just chose to do it. But our other panellists also have close links with the monarchy. I don't know how I'm like, well, you're a royal society. We are. So I think we were discussing which monarch. I think you've got the older charter, though. We're George IV. George IV, and they're George V, but obviously we had like almost 100 years between those two Georges. But I mean, does the monarch play a role in what the RSPB does or is it just a title? You're the boss. The Queen was our patron. And we're kind of at that stage now where we're waiting to see kind of what will happen in terms of royal patronage and many charities are doing... Mike, can you step away? We don't know. We don't know what's... And how useful is it having a monarch when you're trying to do the kind of things that you do? I think it can be incredibly useful. So I think in terms of kind of, you know, we were founded in 1889. So it kind of goes with that sort of sense of a history of action and activity. And over time, again, it's that kind of longevity issue. It really brings that. It can also be controversial as well. You know, some people really don't like the fact that we are a royal society. So, you know, it can absolutely cut both ways. But I think my experience of it, I mean, we used to meet with then Prince Charles as the Queen's sort of representative. And it was always a really engaging conversation. You know, he absolutely knew his stuff. And it was a really, really engaging conversation. I used to really enjoy it. So, you know, I think it can cut both ways. But I think it's brought more benefit than disbenefit for us. And what about ZSL? I mean, do you feel that he's an act? I mean, did you presume the Queen was your... Yes, so the monarch, the reigning monarch has always been our patron since we were founded. And there's always been that relationship there. And it's also his broader family. I mean, his sons were ardent conservationists and were very... He and they were very influential in initiatives like United for Wildlife to really tackle the illegal wildlife trade globally. So, they were really trying to influence the situation. But going way back, I mean, Prince Philip was our president and was instrumental in the founding of our Institute of Zoology. So, they were very closely involved in how the society was run and some of the things it went on to do. Now, I'm sure some of you will have views on the role of the monarch and all this kind of stuff. And we're hoping that you'll all ask questions. Prepare your questions now. If you've got... It'd be quite interesting to hear if you kind of object, you think it's not necessarily helpful to have a head of state who's a monarch and, you know, talk about the role in this kind of thing. And people watching at home were very keen to get your questions too. So, please do, you know, get in touch and use the... I don't know how they do it. Do they email us? I don't know how you do it. But it's probably evident from whatever you're using to watch this. Please send us some messages. So, we've kind of mapped out the kind of sense of the scale of the problem. We've also talked a bit about the role of the monarch. But let's move on to talking about how we can begin to tackle the challenge of biodiversity loss, which obviously is a huge subject. And let's start in the UK and we'll start with you, Craig. It was a really good story, a really interesting story, which I don't know how many people here noticed, but there was a quite big gift of money grant, an award of an grant by Aviva, the insurance company, specifically for what and why is this so important? And how could it help? Yes, well, we were very pleased to announce in January that the Wildlife Trust were receiving 38 million pounds from the pension fund and insurance company, Aviva, for restoring temperate rainforest up the western half of the UK. So, just what is a temperate rainforest? A temperate rainforest, so a beautiful, beautiful habitat that once you would have found across the western half of the UK, it's basically, we often, historically, ecologists have sort of called it ancient wet woodland or ancient oak wet woodland. And you can tell when you're in a temperate rainforest because there's lots and lots of mosses and lichens growing on top of each other. And I have a colleague that described it as if you see plants growing on top of plants, on top of plants, then the chances are it's a temperate rainforest, which is a great way of describing it. These incredibly important habitats, and they're found actually, you know, historically, would have been found, say, on the west coast of North America, British Columbia has temperate rainforests here in western part of Europe, even in small bits in, say, Georgia, to the, and different parts around the world. But incredibly important habitats for us, we've lost nearly all of them. There's less than 1% of our temperate rainforest remaining. And where it is left, it's in the little gullies or valleys that are left. So basically, they've been too steep or rocky to farm or plough or anything like that, which is why we've still got the seed banks in them. But what we want to do as a wildlife trust now is restore as many temperate rainforests as we can across that range up the western part of the British Isles and actually to get them out the gullies and out into the wider landscape again. How do you do that? Well, essentially, it's like the three things for me about how we put nature in recovery. Number one, you have to, whatever we're talking about, you have to make more space for nature. So what we're going to be doing here with the help of the money from Aviva is buying up lots of bits of land in the right zones to make more space for this rainforest to spread. Secondly, it's restoring the abundance of nature. I mean, Becky was talking about it before, but abundance is so important, you know. As a conservation sector, we've talked a lot about species diversity and species extinctions over the last 100 or so years. And rightly so, that's important. But I think we've overall neglected talking about abundance, which is just so important if, for the third thing, you're going to get nature working again because actually species abundance, the abundance of species is absolutely crucial to just ecosystem function. In other words, getting nature to do the things, the functions it needs to do. So if we can make more space for these temperate rainforests, if we can restore the abundance of key species, which, for example, we're due through a mix of natural regeneration for some of the trees and also some planting as well, and helping along the way in some cases with lichens and mosses in some smaller interventions and then actually get the ecosystem processes working again over the next 100 years. And it is a long-term project. We actually hope to have temperate rainforests coming back to the UK. And do you think that's achievable? I think it's absolutely achievable. I mean, there's things to watch in all this, not least climate change. I mean, climate change threatens all of our approaches on conservation in this country. We all have to be thinking now about, actually, how do we do this for a climate that is 1.5, 2 degrees, 2.5, perhaps 3 degrees warmer than now? And so we have to be actually helping nature adapt to the climate change yet to come. We feel pretty confident about the temperate rainforest because, actually, for the western half of the UK, yes, temperatures will rise a bit, a fair bit, but actually what they really need is the water, the rainfall, and that is pretty, we're pretty confident that will be there under most climate projections for the western half of the UK. Not the eastern half of the UK. We expect real severe droughts in the eastern half of the UK, but the western half of the British Isles should be OK for rainfall, even in a much warmer world. Let's come on to the RSPB and Becky because you also have quite big land holdings, don't you, which I'm not sure everybody is aware of how much land you own and curate. I mean, what are the key issues in terms of using your estate to kind of help restore or support bird life in the UK? Yeah, so we have about 160,000 hectares of land in the UK, and that's split up into about 200 odd nature reserves. And some of those are very specifically about looking after particular species and trying to almost, I suppose, hang on to some of them in a kind of an arc so that in theory, once we get the rest of the UK sorted out, we've still got that species kind of in existence. So if you think about some of the news recently about kind of booming bitons making a bit of a comeback, a lot of that has been about really good nature reserve management by ourselves and partners to kind of create the exact right habitat that that booming bitons kind of population hangs on. And that's rebed in that case specifically. But then we've also got some much bigger areas where we're taking a much more kind of, you know, what's called a rewilding approach where we're working with natural processes to restore them. So if you think about places like horsewater on the edge of the Lake District, for example, it's a big area about to become much bigger thanks to some extra funding that's come through. And that is all about kind of rewiggling rivers and kind of getting the whole kind of ecosystem working better again, rather than focusing on specific species and kind of seeing what comes out of that, what comes out of that in terms of species benefit. And then around the world, we do quite a lot of work along flyways, you know, these amazing kind of migratory routes. Actually, I was on... I have to tell you this story, it was so exciting. I was on Lundy just a couple of weeks ago, which is that island that sits between kind of Devon and Wales. And it's right on the migration path, you know. And so I was literally, I was sat on this cliff top and there were like house martins and swallows just kind of flying around me as they kind of made their way north, north, north, you know, on that migratory route in. And so we do a lot of work on flyways, working a lot with BirdLife International, which is the kind of global forum for bird conservation organisations, which we helped found about 100 years ago. And that's kind of really important work and has led us to kind of look after specific places around the world as well. And in fact, one of the things that the King really helped us with, by just... And it was a point I didn't make actually, which is really important, his profile, particularly internationally. So there's a place in Indonesia that we're involved in called Harapan, which is one of the last existing bits. If you look at what's happened to, you know, forest in Indonesia, I've got a sequence of kind of photos that I hardly dare look at. They're all run together and you just see it go down to these tiny bits that are left. And Harapan is one of those. And certainly when he was then Prince of Wales, the current King was enormously important in raising the profile of what we wanted to do there and creating these new concessions, conservation concessions that have now been rolled out over other parts of Indonesia and have made a real difference in terms of conservation there. So we work internationally as well. Yeah, there's another really good RSPB story about you in Italy, going after the kind of, you know, they shoot songbirds and eat them as a delicacy. And you were running an investigation to try and work out how that was being organised and stuff. Yeah, and trying to kind of kind of stop, for example, there's now a moratorium on turtle dove hunting going up through kind of the Western Europe, which has been really important in trying to hang on to the turtle dove population, doing lots of work here as well on that. So it's the bird that's declined fastest, but 98% of our turtle doves here in the UK. 98%. So really kind of, you know, like hand-to-hand combat to try and get that sorted out. And we've heard just from this conversation that there are some positive stories here in the UK. There was a very positive outcome from the conference in Montreal, wasn't there? The UN Conservation Conference, where there was a commitment to try and commit 30% of land and sea nature by, I mean, 20, 30% incredibly optimistic. It would be like round numbers. But it was actually well supported internationally, wasn't it? Yeah, it is. You look slightly sceptical. Well, I mean, in part, look, as a global community, we came together, what, 15 years ago and made a similar set of commitments and missed them all. Yeah, there were 20 targets. Yeah, the IUC targets, and they were all, you know, resolutely missed. So what we have to say is, what is different? This isn't, you know, it has to be, this is not kind of everyone clubbing together and going, right, well, that didn't work. So, you know, let's just come up with some new ones. We have to look at what is different. So yes, there's a new global biodiversity framework. It went down to the wire, sort of, you know, real bartering at four o'clock in the morning sort of job. But it's potentially really, really important. So, yes, we have a strong commitment around terrestrial, sort of, and marine commitments to 30% of earth's surfaces. That's borderline enough in reality, but it's going to be a huge push to get to that and really starting to dive into the detail of what does that actually mean in practice and how do we bring that to life and how do we bring that to life equitably for the people who live there? That's something, at ZSL, we spend a lot of our time through our global programmes, working with communities to look at how do you manage and how do you protect nature sustainably but equitably as well for the people who rely on it? Cos this is something we were discussing. I mean, the problem is that the land is almost always owned by somebody and often it's being kind of actively used, it's being farmed. So there's a, you know, if you want to extend rainforest, I talked about, last year I went to Bawindi, which is a rainforest in Uganda where the last mountain gorillas are, or one of the last populations of mountain gorillas, one of the last two. And it's a brilliant pocket of really kind of, you know, emerald forest, really amazing forest and really biodiverse, but it's, you know, literally you come to the edge of it and there's a wall of trees and then there's a, you know, there's a field. And I mean, actually rainforest stars regenerate surprisingly effectively. We've got a big body of rainforest, so you could move the farmers out in theory and then you could allow the rainforest to grow back. And in 20 or even 30, you know, it's actually, you know, 20 years, you'd probably see the beginning of quite a good rainforest ecosystem. But it does depend on moving people out. And people are very worried about that whole issue. And rightly so, and rightly so. And equity in this space is really important. I mean, there's a few things to say to that. One, you take your foot off the pressure of nature, you will see it come back at a rapid rate. So we always say, remove the pressures first, protect what's there. But the pressures are almost always people. The pressures are almost always people driven. And you say, don't go there, but I'm going to go there because we were talking about this earlier. Well, you want to go. One of the issues in Bwyndi was there was an indigenous people in the forest who were moved out forcibly by the Ugandan government in the 90s when it was designated a national park. And they're called now the Batwa. They used to be known as pygmies. But they've now been moved and live in, frankly, quite bad conditions. And they were given land, but not particularly good land. And they live in these communities. But the population has grown a great deal. And had they stayed in the forest, it's hard to see how the forest could have kept being as pristine as it is now. I did a similar story when I was a correspondent in India. We did something in Assam where there's a... Beautiful part of the country. Yeah, where there's a huge, really successful rhino park, Kezaranga, and a really successful park with a huge population of rhinos in it. It's actually kind of full, as is Bwyndi, has kind of reached the limit of how many gorillas it can sustain. And again, part of that was that the Indian government had a really ruthless, which was our story, policy of making sure that nobody went into the designated park. So there's a really tough balance here. But we have to be realistic that people are a pressure on these wild spaces. We have to find a way of softening those barriers, right? Because that's where the conflict comes. And if one of our goals is really, how do we end the extinction crisis? I mean, I appreciate it. It's good to have a lofty goal sort of thing. But we aim at really what are the tools we're going to end this crisis. But if we want to see populations flourish coming back to the theme of abundance, which is so important, we're going to encounter more and more situations of conflict with wildlife. That's what we're seeing. So the positive stories coming out of India around the recovery of tigers and the pawl, we're incredibly proud of the recovery of tigers and the pawl and things like that. But you are seeing more and more conflict with wildlife. And so you're having to develop and work with local communities and governments at what those strategies are going to be for a future where climate is moving things around, it's moving wildlife, it's moving people, it's moving ecosystems. And you're having to look at complex lairings of dynamics as to how to mitigate conflict situations because otherwise we know what's going to happen. So that is where a lot of the future of conservation is going to be. But surely there's an argument that may, that you could buy the farmers out and off the land somewhere else and then expand the park. Otherwise, how are you going to expand the parks? So you don't think of it as terms of parks with fences around them and the animals are in there and new lot are over there. But if you go to a place like, I mean virtually any rainforest, these are apart from the really big ones, the only good rainforest left is one that is protected somehow. I mean, there are no wild spaces left. But there are many different ways of protecting that. And I think one thing we'll be very careful on and we don't need to kind of over-labour this one, sorry, is to think about there's only one type of protection and that's sticking a fence around it. Because actually there's lots of evidence that shows that communities are very, very strong advocates. And most of that is outside of formal protected areas. Yeah, that's certainly true in Uganda. They are really proud of the gorillas and the way that they, as a nation, have rallied round and protected gorillas. You were nodding vigorously there. Well, I was just going to say that obviously we've got to protect as much of the pristine nature as we've got left. But even if we did that, if that's all we did, we're screwed, you know? We've got to get much better at protecting more to the point, restoring nature, putting nature in recovery in all the land and actually even the cities that we live and work in our agriculture. You know, there's a phrase, I'm really exercised at the moment about the phrase that's always said out. Everyone always says things have got to be in balance. So in this country we talk about food production and nature recovery, we've got to find a balance. Actually I've come to slide that's rubbish, you know? Because the phrase balance actually immediately suggests these are opposing forces. And that's entirely wrong. There's no such thing as food security of nature's in decline. So a better word is we've got to integrate. We've got to integrate our food production and our nature recovery and make sure they work together. And right across this country you now have networks of nature-friendly farmers that are showing how you can produce really good, healthy food through regenerative agriculture in the long term and in a way that's good for nature's recovery. And we've just got completely stuck as a society in thinking it's one or the other. Or at one bit of land you either have agriculture in this bit over here. But your temperate rainforest could only, they need land. They can't be farming alongside your rainforest. Well actually, they can actually because where I was last week in the Isle of Man Manks Wildlife Trust, the bit of land that it's just bought for restoring temperate rainforest, it will do that. But once that, those trees are a certain height, it wants to put in some herbivores in there. So it wants to put some cattle in there roaming around occasionally because that's actually going to be used as a conservation tool. And you know, it's not going to be intensive agriculture but it's still a form of agriculture. So we've kind of got to get this right. We've ended up in this completely bizarre paradigm that suggests over here you do nature, over here you do agriculture or over here we do cities. I mean again, actually a lot of our wildlife species not least our invertebrates and our bee species in particular are in a better state in our cities than in the wider countryside. And that tells you everything about our current farming policy in this country. So you know, actually our only hope is to integrate these much better, integrate our cities, integrate our agriculture, integrate our productive seas. I mean the same thing is true in the marine environment as well. Yes, we need our core reservoirs, those sites, those really protected areas for nature as arcs that we can spread out from. But we've got to focus on protecting and restoring nature much better in the wider countryside whether here or around the world. So I want to come to you guys at a moment and you at home to see what questions you've got for the panel. We've talked of lots of things but before we do that I want to go to you Becky and ask you if you can discern a like tipping point. Do you think the public now are recognising that nature needs help and are willing to make an effort, put money in, donate resources. You've talked about these generous gifts that you've received and you're expanding parks and, dare I say parks, but the land that you manage. So that's a positive story. But do you think maybe in developed countries like Britain we've recognised that nature is in crisis and are beginning to make the changes we need to make? Is there an optimistic story here? I have to believe there is an optimistic story. That's a no. No, I have to believe there is an optimistic story and I think I see signs of that definitely. It's interesting because I think you talked about it in a developed country and we're actually very disconnected from nature almost as a result of that. If you go somewhere like the Amazon the population that lives in the Amazon is really connected to the Amazon and is doing amazing work to try and protect that forest and keep it there because it gives them a sustainable livelihood as much as being important. Some people. But here I think people are on the whole pretty disconnected from nature. I think what's interesting is, we've been involved in co-producing Wild Isles, this BBC series that went out about UK wildlife and that's had amazing viewing figures, an amazing reaction from the public. But I think for a lot of people it was literally eye-opening in terms of the nature that we have here in the UK and then the state of it, the problems there are with it. I think in terms of mass awareness of what's going on I think it's just beginning to start. It's very easy to get stuck in our bubble and kind of we're faced with these kind of dreadful stats every day and to think everybody must know this. Actually people just don't. So I think that's the kind of almost the first step. And then I think people are, we were talking about people desperately keen to kind of you were talking about where you've been and people desperately keen to kind of avoid an area where a newer bird was nesting. And people absolutely get passionate about that. I think what they can sometimes struggle with more is some of the stuff that we've been talking about which is the kind of systemic change that needs to happen, things like our food system globally which is driving so much of nature's loss now. And I think people struggle to get their heads around that and struggle to kind of make the links between kind of what they're buying in the supermarket and a kind of a food system destroying the thing that they've decided they love. So I think that's one of the jobs that we have and that I think governments have is to kind of make those links for people and help join the dots so that we can kind of achieve the change we need to achieve because that's the state we're in now where we've got to approach things on that sort of scale. I'm just going to quickly go to Andrew because we were talking about this as well, weren't we? At USAG in Poles people often list environment among the top four priorities for them. But when you actually look at their behaviour, they behave a little, they don't kind of honour that commitment they've expressed. I think the issue, you know, people, we all face severe challenges in our lives and we're facing them more now than ever before. And I think there can be a strong sense of disempowerment that comes along with that. So people can think about some concrete things they can do, put up a bird box and things like that, but then they're thinking, oh my gosh, how do I deal with this global collapse? And there's always a concern about disempowerment that people just step back. But I think one of the really important things for us to always emphasise is we have so much power. And as citizens, as individuals, we have more power than we've ever had in terms of the choices we make when we buy things, what we watch on the internet because that's being watched, who we follow, what we read, the voices we, the opinions we share, those are being paid attention to more and more than ever before. And we have real agency in this debate. Ironically, we come into a highly consumerist society where we're all consuming and that's the fundamental issue, but that then becomes a bit of a lever of power in how where that consumerism is going, how it's being exerted, what are we telling major corporations. And you are seeing it. You are seeing supermarkets change what is on the shelf. These things are coming because they respond. Big corporations respond very, very quickly if they want to. And so we have some levers to enact change and we need to make sure people know that. We'll pick up on that later. Is there any questions here? Any questions online? We've got an online question, but it might be nice. Yeah, you at the back there, go on. Hannah, we need to get the microphone so that people watching at home can hear what you have to say. I haven't quite formulated this, but in a way, thinking has to be a bit like an ecosystem in a way that I think we get this sort of sound bite way of dealing with things, a kind of superficial and we need to really not kind of weave the things together in the way governments work in the way maybe in the BBC. I don't know, but it's not simple, but it's correct. I don't quite, I don't know if you understand what I'm saying. Do you think that process is happening? Do you think we're... I mean, for the way that, what I'm hearing tonight, it's wonderful, yes. And I think the king is, it's not superficial and it's not politic, politicians just sort of saying, okay, we'll do this and that's, you know, that's, we're dealing with it. I don't know. Apologies if it's not very clear. Andrew. One thing I was going to say to that, which you talked about having to really think about the way in which these things mesh together. I mean, everything, yes, the three of us are kind of, we're sort of talking at a very superficial level, but the... Or a high level or whatever, you know. I didn't mean that as a... But the... Whenever conservation strategies are enacted, they are the level of depth and local engagement that goes into thinking about how those strategies are made locally relevant to communities, to species, to context at that point in time and how much care goes into that is absolutely enormous. So, yes, we try and drag everything up to like a very top level, but I, you know, in each case, you're always dealing with a very local, very specific series of actors and stakeholders involved and kind of, there's a lot of negotiation and discussion that goes into developing that and that's the only way things are ever successful. What are those things to... Yes. No, we like kind of easy... I mean, the example I was thinking of when you were talking, actually, is the current issue about rivers, you know, that's going on at the moment. So, you know, I think the kind of... The really successful campaign in pushing kind of, you know, the quality of our rivers up the agenda has been amazing. But we've ended up in a space where I think a lot of the media, actually, sorry, just a little bit of the media. Obviously. And politicians have ended up saying, you know, actually, what's the kind of... What's the kind of political salient target? It's the water companies. And so, you know, water companies kind of get it in the neck for sewage releases. And that's absolutely right. But of course, the problem is much more complicated than that. You know, we've got all the issues around kind of agricultural run-off, which is causing huge problems, big, big problem. You know, and that's driven a lot by kind of our demand for kind of, you know, well, around the Y valley. It's cheap chicken and cheap eggs. You know, and then you've got abstraction. That's a real problem. That's again driven by our use of water, by agriculture use of water, by industrial use of water. So it's a much more complex web. And I think, you know... Of which we're a part. Of which we're a part. So the same thing happens in climate change where everybody criticises oil companies. Now, I'm not going to defend oil companies. But oil companies are in a kind of three-way partnership with governments and consumers. And we all buy their products and use them. And then we go, bloody oil companies, you're so wicked. And don't see that we're complicit in the whole thing and we're just complicit in the water companies' activities in a sense as well. And as customers, you know, as Andrew says, we can express our displeasure. I will come to you in a moment. Well, that was one of the challenges with the process in Montreal because we all agreed on it 30 by 30 in these targets. But actually, when we come to debate subsidies and things like that, that was somewhat quietly glossed over. Save in climate. Yeah, exactly. And taking that on and solving that particular problem would be transformation. Give us your figure for... I'm sorry, I will come to you, Craig. You had a figure for how much money? Oh, the funding gap. So, you know, the bill for solving the problem is about 750 billion, I think, is the sort of... I suspect that's probably quite modest. So where is that money going to come from, Craig? Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right. Well, it's behind your question. One of the biggest challenges we have is how, as society, to make sense of things, we compartmentalise those issues. And yet they're all inextricably linked and you can't really hope to address any of them unless you have that system-level understanding. My goodness, we even do it in the environmental community. I mean, it's driven me mad from my career that often we talk about the biodiversity and ecological crisis as a separate thing from the climate crisis. And the two are inextricably linked. We have no hope of solving the climate crisis unless we address the biodiversity crisis. We have no hope of solving the biodiversity crisis unless we address the climate crisis. In fact, it's obvious right in front of us by the words we use. We know that to solve the climate crisis we're going to stop burning fossil fuels. How often do people stop and think that fossil fuels are actually dead biodiversity? It's biodiversity that millions of years ago sucked carbon out of the air, then died and then they were squished down and now we put it in our cars. And we often forget that. Right in front of us is that link between the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis. And yet, very often, probably in all our organisations in NGOs and the environmental community, you have a bunch of people over there specialising in climate and a bunch of people over here specialising in biodiversity. Oh, even journalists as well, Justin. I'm actually an environment editor. It's because she's very good. They do, but they want to silo you. I said climate is a subdivision of environment. You should make the environment editor. And they wanted me to be a climate editor because the BBC wanted to show its commitment to the issue, which obviously is laudable and a good thing, but I did feel that it kind of, you know, neglects kind of... But your point, we've got to join the team of environment correspondence. So you had a question, and I will come to you. I know you've put one as well. Oh, sorry. Thank you. Craig's actually answered this question for me on a podcast a few weeks ago, but... See if he says the same thing. A similar question. Do we think there is enough being done in our cities that are expanding at the moment? I mean, you come from a lot of wonderful charities that focus on ecosystems that we maybe did have and declined or that aren't doing quite so well, but our cities are growing and that's where most of our population is and will be that maybe there's sort of a gap where we need to be thinking or have some new charities about city trusts where we can get wildlife where there isn't wildlife. I'm not going to let Craig. Let's find out what Craig's answered to this question. Let's go to Becky, because a lot of the work that you do, a lot of your members are urban dwellers, aren't they? I think it's a really good question and I think it's really kind of salient for now as well. I think... I mean, certainly when I was at the Woodland Trust, trees in cities were becoming a massive issue and I was kind of there at the time of the kind of Sheffield Street trees battle and we've got similar things playing out in other cities still. We didn't have to learn that lesson, Plymouth, yeah, exactly. So that is kind of one obvious example of where the way in which we design our cities and the way in which we kind of are able to use them as people could be so much better than it is now. I mean, our cities could be much, much better places to live, I think, than they are now if we were able to incorporate kind of wildlife and the right kind of habitats in our cities as part of how we live. And I think it's so interesting when you look at kind of how people... I'm lucky I live in the middle of a city. I live in the middle of Nottingham. But the area where I live has got street trees. It has got really, really good wildlife. There are some protected allotments kind of just over the hill. So it's not unusual for me to see kind of buzzards in the air above my garden, you know. So I think it can really, really work. But it needs the value of what those spaces bring to be brought into the kind of evaluation that councils in particular are doing about what is of value. And if it's only about kind of a financial return, then you never incorporate the full value of the kind of services, I suppose, that that can bring to us, as well as the huge wildlife benefits as well. Yeah, I've noticed something in Camden where there's been a lot of redevelopment of estates. I know this is very parochial, but it's relevant. And they've taken their sort of 60s and 70s estates and rebuilt them because the build quality was very poor. But you notice the footprint of the new buildings seems to be much more extensive than the old ones. So the areas of open land that they used to have vanish. And I wonder, that seems to be a pattern of new developments that are much more densely populated. And things like surface flooding, cooling. These are all issues that our cities are dealing with now as a result of climate change. And just having more nature in our cities could really help us deal with those. You can bring down temperatures quite differently with more trees. But let me bring up a positive point about cities. So urbanisation is a huge international trend with the concentration of people in cities. There's huge benefits actually for communities living in cities. They tend to be more productive and more innovative and all sorts of other things. I mean, that potentially is good news for wildlife, isn't it? I mean, you could see, for example, in places like Spain which have potentially had a later agrarian revolution, you've seen great in France, you've seen lots of people leave the countryside. I mean, I've got a friend who's really keen on a Spanish friend who's, there's wolf populations in southern Spain that have used to be there, you know, a thousand years ago. They've come back to deserted villages. Is there a positive story in urbanisation taking people out, you know, taking the pressure off the wild spaces by moving people to cities where perhaps they're better off? So, yeah, this is a really complex sort of topic to discuss. So certainly that's a trend you see across Europe. You see staggering wildlife come back, populations of bison, bear, wolf, lynx, the lot, all recovering across Europe, which is on one level really important. Is that a positive trend? Yeah, because it's linked to land abandonment, which has been a long-standing issue at a European level. That's natural rewilding, isn't it? Well, that's what they've been doing, yeah. They've been rewilding themselves. Well, that's good news. That's what I'm trying to get at. It is good news. No, but I think it's not... I don't think the answer is therefore get everyone out of the countryside, which seems to be an underlying narrative that you might be saying there. It's living better with wildlife. You have an equal risk that people become increasingly detached from nature in urban contexts and start to lose an understanding of what it was to live with that wildlife and therefore value it, because you can value things even though you come into conflict with them. I think we have a simplistic notion of people who just love wildlife forever. I mean, you have an ever-changing relationship with it, but with that comes deep respect and understanding. That's often where indigenous communities are. They don't just love it. They're having to live with tooth and jowl, or whatever, tooth and claw, so the good and the bad. We lose that instinctive respect and understanding if we're completely detached from it. Coming back to the question around the importance of urban diversity, we have to do more. We have to show urban spaces can be wilder, more diverse, more abundant with wildlife, and we have to fight the battle that says that we don't like scruffy, and we need tidy urban spaces. We need to stop having just flat green parks. That is happening as well. This is the point. It is happening. You see it in parks across the country that they leave the grass for longer. We need to think about all of our green spaces, all of our canal and road verges, all of our graveyards and cemeteries everywhere. Think about them as connected landscapes within an urban context and that's going to allow wildlife in and to move through those places. Now we can hear. Is he going to give the same answer? I'm going to give the same answer. I think we're more attuned to this now than we've ever been. When you say weed, you mean the British population? A lot of people around the world. I'll tell you why. I want to jump in there. That shows a connection to nature that you can be an urbanised society and have a sense of longing and valuing of nature. I'm talking specifically as a result of the lockdowns that happened during COVID. There was very clear evidence in 2020 here and around the world for people living in big towns and cities. Suddenly, they were yearning for their daily dose of nature. We saw at the wildlife trust more nature reserves than McDonald's has got restaurants in this country. In fact, 1,000 more. 60% of the... Becky has told me a million times. Sorry, Becky. 60% of the British population live within three miles of one of our reserves. For us, local nature is really important. What people realise during lockdowns is not just how important nature was but how important local nature was. Nature on their doorstep. We saw a 2,000% increase in April 2020 of the people looking at the webcams from our nature reserves. Maybe they had more time in their hands, but also people striving for that connection to nature. Even our wildlife trust members would suddenly discover that they didn't previously know was there as people did that. I think a lot of that has stayed to a greater or lesser extent. It's absolutely extraordinary how people feel that need for nature on their doorstep now. Why is that? I think what we're starting to realise is just how incredibly important nature is for our physical and mental wellbeing. I'm sure a lot of you have these studies that are really well proven over the last 40, 50 years that people recovering from an operation in hospital recover faster if they've got a view of nature from the hospital window than if they don't. So it's deeply ingrained within us. Ultimately, making sure that we have good, thriving, high quality nature in and around our towns and cities is really important for humanity as well as for nature. Yes, we've got to put nature in recovery over the decades ahead. That's absolutely crucial to tackle the ecological crisis, but we've also got to put the relationship between people and nature into recovery. Otherwise, humanities in a mess. Excellent. Was that the same answer? I know we've got a couple of questions here, but I've also known there's an audience online and we've got to give them the opportunity right at the back there in the shadows. There's a couple of questions from online. One has come from Leeds from Zulfi asking what is the most creative way you have encountered of generating public engagement with biodiversity? Can I just ask two? I'll come back to you for the second one. It's so confusing. You have to remember two questions. Zoological Society of London, what do you think? I think it's, again, we come right back to the introduction and maybe in the British Library it's combining art and the science of nature recovery. I've seen wonderful pieces of visual art, sculptural art, performance art, where people can bring a completely different perspective, a completely different audience with them to talk about really heavy issues and engender a sense of hope. Actually, when you work internationally you see that happening at a community level. When you're standing in a community singing with people around the importance of those habitats, it's an incredibly moving experience and I think those combinations of not appealing to the head, not going after the science facts that you got me to say at the beginning that it's all buggered by 69%, but actually going to the heart and that's where we will see change so I think that's the one. Do you want to pick up on that? I think, because I actually interpreted the questions slightly differently, thinking more imaginative approaches could be either. I think sometimes Have you got any really imaginative I think sometimes actually the simplest things are almost the best in terms of really allowing people to get that emotional engagement. One of the things I did really early on when I went to work for the RSPB was people took me to Walsham, which is kind of on the boundaries of the wash and if you go there at dawn when the pink footed geese are all out on the wash and they all as dawn breaks they all kind of rise up off the wash and they kind of wash over your head as they kind of go in land to graze and it's the most amazing kind of encounter with kind of really very emotional people cry and you see the pink footed geese you really have an emotional response to it and I think it's ways of engendding that emotional response I think are often the best kind of creative initiatives but the other thing I would say is that I think there is a bit of a creative upwelling the kind of stuff you were talking about it's almost like we're in a kind of eulogy situation where people suddenly are realising what is at stake and what we are starting to lose and you get this sort of upwelling of kind of writing there's lots and lots of nature writing now there's kind of lots of music being composed it's really interesting that that is the way we respond is through kind of really imaginative and creative responses into the loss that we're starting to kind of sense around us but I do think the simple things really engage people's emotions Yeah well to build on that I think the thing that came to mind when you asked a question Justin is that a woman in Leeds Absolutely of course someone in Leeds when I was a friend of the earth as director of policy and campaigns there about 11 years ago and we launched our campaign on bees actually we launched it by inviting people to get free wildflower seeds packs of wildflower seeds that we'd send in the post and of course the thinking behind it was not that somehow this was going to leave so much creation of habitat that bees would be saved but it was to give people a sense of agency and much as when we're talking about the need for big system level changes actually it starts by giving people a sense of agency and we knew that if the one the first things we did was ask people to write to the MP or something actually you'd get the Keeney Greenies doing it maybe 10,000 people or something but we needed to reach out into the mainstream Britain as it were and try and mobilize many more people and give people a stake in this campaign and I think I seem to remember rightly it was like we sent out some like 150,000 packs of wildflower seeds to people and goodness knows what happened probably some of them are still in draw some of them are prior to whatever but when people got those and they planted them with their family they aligned themselves to the cause of the campaign and then they were much more likey to take the actions that we asked after people write letters to the MPs on it and it really worked and it just is we've got to kind of realize that people have to be given that sense of agency that sense of being able to bring about change you've got to build up to it slowly but then it can be enormously powerful when you do it because you had a question didn't you? So let's go to you and then we'll go back to that and then we're going to come to you That's all right I want to make a distinction between responses as a consumer versus as a citizen because I feel like they're quite distinct and so we've talked a lot about the feeling of the momentum of being connected to nature and feeling as though people are starting to realize what's at stake yet there still does seem to be quite a big gap between our capacity to respond or that action and the ability to have a form of action as a consumer versus as a citizen yet there still seems to be quite a big gap between a consumer versus as a citizen and sometimes we've even seen statistics where if we're putting a bit more money towards something as a consumer we're tapping our card for a few more P towards a certain cause we're less likely to actually make other tangible actions that are also environmentally conscious so what I would love to explore is your thoughts on some tangible actions actually as consumers and as citizens that you've seen think about ways that we can engage people because again, as citizens it's usually political response and as you just said before actually a lot of people don't really feel they're engaged writing to the MP or feeling like they can even though that potentially has some significant leverage in a way that buying bamboo something rather isn't so I'd love just to get your thoughts on your role in the trajectory of wildlife conservation where you see the most effective points of action from a citizen perspective and a consumer perspective anyone you want to pick up on that I mean your seeds were quite a good example of that yeah, I mean what I would say is for the whole of my career I've had people asking me oh but what can I do and you know we used to say oh well it's this petition that we call it's that petition that we call whatever and I've come to decide actually that's the kind of wrong answer because actually it's not for me to tell you what the best thing is to do for each individual the answer will be different and so you know if you're a teacher the question is what's the most effective difference you can make and if you're a teacher or if you're a farmer or if you're a politician or if you're the boss of an oil company those will be different answers so it's for each of us to kind of figure out what's the truly remarkable what's my way that I can make the biggest difference in my world with my agency and my connections and the ability that I have or it might be in your local community and building a community group that then can be part of something bigger and so I think you know sometimes you ask what's the most impressive things that I've seen it's always the ones that have been organised by individuals and communities actually very often without the help of big NGOs funny enough it's that the really exciting thing is action at the grassroots that can surprise and bring about real impact and politicians find it actually very hard to ignore activity that is authentically done by grassroots communities I would completely concur with that Christiana Robregat who talks a lot about climate always says step into your agency so find your agency and step into it and I think that's really absolutely right about this as well I mean the other thing I was going to share was this we've just been involved in something called the people's plan for nature which was an exercise around taking 100 kind of representative people and actually getting them to kind of hear the evidence around what's going on in terms of nature loss and come up with a plan for what should happen and that plan is really it's magnificent if you haven't had a chance to look at it look at it online it's just great and I was lucky enough to talk to some of the people who've been in that assembly and many of them had started from a point of kind of well I think we were paying them a 100 quid to take part of something I thought well four weekends 100 quid yeah I'll do it and actually they've come out of the other end of it feeling very impassioned about what needs to happen and the role they can play in it and I think that role for many of them has been just about really wrapping their heads around it all and kind of taking that evidence on board and becoming a bit more citizen consumer and kind of shifting the dial for them towards the citizen end of that kind of continuum and wanting to kind of step up and they're really keen to kind of take it forward as well and that's been a really interesting kind of journey to kind of be with them on and they completely own that plan that's their plan and I think it's going to have a powerful kind of part to play as we kind of move forward towards things like a general election over the next 18 months or so so I think it's just about finding your agency but it's also about kind of having the opportunity to kind of wrap your head around some of the complexity that we were talking about and kind of find your way through it as a citizen as much as a consumer Do you want to...don't feel any obligation No no just a couple of things I mean I think one the line between citizen consumer is really blurred and I think increasingly so so you are exerting a political influence depending on some of your choices and as a citizen likewise I think don't let the topic ever slip into the parochial or the sense of you know oh we're going to talk about the environment okay that's a nice thing but we've got some serious stuff over here to talk about the economy and growth and always ask the question why do we not have a sustainable growth if you want growth what does that mean in a new economic and climate context don't ever let it be marginalised as a nice thing as a thing that is not a serious political issue and I think keeping the discussion front and centre wherever you engage however you engage is vital because otherwise it will always sit in the slightly nice to have capacity and that's where we need it not to be I see an opportunity for a little link to our monarchy theme that we have which is one of Prince Charles's now King Charles's initiatives was to bring businessman on board and have them as part of the discussion recognising the kind of power and potential they have which I thought was quite inventive we've got another I know we've got another online question up there yes it's from John and Kilburn what one big change in farming in the UK would do most for the most species they're always difficult to use what one big change in farming would do the most who wants to take that massively reducing pesticide use isn't that happening and we have a target that came out of the COP15 the global biodiversity summit in Montreal in December to halve harm from pesticide use by 2030 at the moment the UK hasn't got the first clue how to do that it's done really very little thinking the UK government about halve harm of pesticide use by 2030 yet that would make a huge huge difference I'd agree with that the other thing I would say is I think there is we were talking about nature friendly farming and the interest in regenerative farming which is looking after your soils really making sure that your soils are in the best possible health for your food production as well as having been good for nature and I think there is a real interest in that area and every time I go to grounds well I think it's called something else now but it's a kind of a meeting that happens in the summer every year to really kind of you know look at that whole area it grows, there are more and more farmers there every year who are getting really interested in this because as much as anything there are costs kind of gains because you're not having to apply really expensive fertiliser which is really shot up in price there are all sorts of reasons why that interest in regenerative farming is encouraged I think by the government, by farming organisations and I think if we could really put rocket boosters under that through the subsidy schemes that we have and so on that would make a huge difference because the benefits for both having sustainable food production and for nature are great and the other thing I would say it's actually not a farming change but it's a food system change which is looking at what we eat so it's the elephant in the room because it's kind of behaviour change and it's diet and it's all that sort of stuff but if we really did something about what we were eating that would have a huge impact on the food system as a whole and it would have a huge impact on farming and therefore on nature as well so that's the other thing So I'm going to ask you Andrew, the really difficult question how do you begin to make that kind of change happen in the food system? Yeah how do you begin it's really interesting food is clearly a really key part of tackling biodiversity loss but also climate change and governments are really really reluctant and actually I hesitate to criticise them but the climate change committee which is good on all sorts of issues is really reluctant to be honest about how big the changes in food consumption should be if we're going to really get on top of the climate issue Well and the biodiversity issue and this is why they're all parsley to the same solutions and I think let's chuck health in there as well in terms of our sort of food consumption patterns and things like that and that's a global issue so much of our food is being sourced globally and we are kept very separate from the impacts that those choices we make as consumers in our supermarkets about what we want to eat here and now are having around the world and what we are seeing and this is where policy and governments have a strong signal as well is we're seeing much stronger influence coming in through policy to say that we need to see deforestation free supply chains we need to get deforestation out of the production of the food stuffs and products that we consume and eat and now you're going to see a raft of legislation at a European level and at a UK level that really is looking at traceability and companies and others that are going to have to respond seriously so again we're back to what choices are you making as a consumer in the foods that you eat how are you maybe balancing the foods you choose to have and when you choose to have them and how are governments starting to apply the stick approach as well and you need both of those happening together Justin a real tangible example of that is Becky was talking earlier about pollution in the River Why so the River Why was our beautiful river in England just two decades ago now we all know that it's just been appallingly polluted with agricultural runoff that agricultural runoff is associated with intensive poultry units so that's bad enough that's tragic enough in its own right that we've lost this beautiful pristine river Why in this country and that it's calling a poorly impact here but the next bit of story is even more tragic is that those chickens in those intensive poultry units are being fed on soil being grown in the form of Amazon and so for all for a £3 chicken we end up not only trashing the river Why but trashing the Amazon as well we've got to do something about that and again government is being pretty silent about it to be honest there's two of you there you had a question as well I know I'll keep promising someone who reached retirement age this year and has been involved in the hospitality industry for 35 years where my brother and myself ran our own business including a delicatessen in Leicester which we try to focus very much on ethically soiled source products since 87 we've been through four recessions and we've seen the ups and downs I know we should all talk about how we source and what choices we make but you do notice when a recession hits that your production base which is not going to be the cheapest has a real impact in terms of our business and someone who kind of has grown up my father worked all over the world and for example in the 60s when we were living in Lagos, Nigeria it was only 440,000 it's 20 million and counting now in that city as my father worked in Bangladesh and he was very instrumental in helping a leper colony that the state they had just been through a war and didn't have many resources but he helped a French Catholic priest to develop a leper colony where they were kind of producing frogs basically to be flown to France to be used in high end French restaurants where does that go from and I find that in my retirement I kind of oscillate between being incredibly optimistic to being incredibly pessimistic and you know we have a family house in Doniana which we've done everything actually in San Luca de Barameta the southern end of Doniana national park which is I guess probably Europe's largest wetlands and an entrepot for birds to be flying north south etc and yet you know now UNESCO is threatening to take away its status because they're extracting even more water for strawberry growing so that we can have them cheap in our supermarkets in the UK so I the point I'm trying to make is that I do find it very difficult to I mean I oscillate literally from one end of the spectrum to the other then I can read something very optimistic and I feel good about it then I can you know read a book by Darren Daughty Roy about the destruction of a historical Aboriginal group in India where they're only interested in the mining corporations and I find that really difficult to keep all of those ideas in my head so that's very briefly optimism or pessimism where do you stand I mean you've already said that you you have to be optimistic I mean how do you feel I mean you deal with conservation the whole time Andrew that sort of oscillation between oh my god okay we can do this you have to maintain a sense of kind of optimism but not mindless optimism you become a realistic optimist or whatever you call it in terms of what needs what can be achieved and what steps you can take and the changes we're going to have to fight through though as well as a human society it's not going to be easy Craig do you want to Well I think it's entirely natural that you oscillate between those states because both are true that's the point and we have to it's not a binary answer and actually that makes sense because if you look at the history of big social changes that have happened things like the abolition of slavery or gaining LGBT rights or anything like that guess what we like to imagine change happens in a nice linear way it doesn't you get a surge of support for something in progress and then you get a pushback and another surge of support for progress and then a pushback and with this incredibly complicated social change that is basically working out how 8-9 billion people live on the planet fairly within environmental limits it's going to take a bit of time to kind of get there and our job as say for me I consider myself a campaigner any of us trying to bring about this change it can't be to think that that change will happen in a nice linear way because it never has in human history it's to recognise that our job is to make sure that when a wave of change is coming up the beach that supports our agenda we push it as high as we possibly can and when a wave is going out again against our agenda we resist and stop it going back to where it was before we can't stop the fact that change happens through waves that's exactly how change happens because that's how society learns about the need for this kind of change or each time a wave comes in it goes higher up the beach than before and each time it goes out it doesn't go so far until we reach the high watermark of learning to live fairly within environmental limits and that's important because to my mind that's the next step of human progress Do you want to add because I've got a couple more questions so I wouldn't mind Yeah let's go to you and then Thank you very much My name is Anthony Lane I'm a journalist at the Dow Jones news bar Given how dependent economies businesses are on ecosystem health and and biodiversity is there a case for compelling businesses especially big businesses to invest in nature projects in biodiversity restoration rather than just say through a voluntary biodiversity credit market which is being set up as we speak because ultimately if you have like a $700 billion funding gap and you're funding it up how can you close that gap without significant chunks of private sector money? It's a good question compelling businesses what do you think? Well I think funnily enough on the back of the Wild Isles programme that I was talking about we've got some specific films for businesses which we launched just about a week ago two weeks ago and they're aimed at specific sectors really to kind of set out what we think the issues are and what we think businesses can be doing and it's interesting I think businesses have very much kind of taken to heart the kind of net zero agenda the climate agenda and of course they have been compelled around some of that and I think my instinct is that the kind of what we call the nature positive side of that which is the biodiversity side of that is coming actually forward thinking businesses and investors are starting to get into that space it's a more complicated space for them because there isn't a single kind of metric or target like there is for climate so it's a more complicated space for them to be in but they certainly they certainly get it and they understand that healthy biodiversity underpins their economic success and they can see the risks all around them as business risks which are coming down the tracks for them and I think my instinct is that the same thing that has happened around climate will happen around that kind of nature positive agenda for business whether it will happen soon enough is another question and I think in terms of kind of the money coming in from the private sector to this agenda that is absolutely starting to happen I think you had the example of a beaver but there's definitely and I think the voluntary carbon market is a bit full of cowboys at the moment you know everyone everywhere kind of you know selling everything but there is but there are standards coming through around that market and I think they will settle I think the thing that we really absolutely need from government is much stronger kind of regulation to get that kind of that market sorted to get us a kind of a level playing field around it and I think that will make a real difference in how that market develops and whether it develops fast enough it's a bit like your kind of I would not say pessimism and optimism I would say outrage and optimism you know we need to be kind of outraged by what's going on but optimistic that I think this is starting to happen so I mean on that I think one of the lessons we took from Montreal in the global biodiversity framework was companies are moving far faster than governments so you are seeing companies flood into this space and at the moment they are saying that it is a more complex topic they are kind of going right we get it don't quite understand it we know we have got to do something not sure what that is but we are going to do it and we are kind of that where we are right now but we are seeing companies move far faster than governments are and so it is all about helping companies see how they can influence things and the other thing to say is actually there is an awful lot of money looking for a home to land in conservation but it is stuck and it is not landing and the connect between what is happening on the ground versus what is floating around looking for a place to land that connection is not happening at the moment why not, why there are all sorts of cultural differences between how lots of whether it is communities or NGOs think and on timescales and how governments sorry how corporations need to think there is issues of scale so certain investors are going to want to put hundreds of millions of dollars into projects and projects just don't know what to do with that and can't respond on the timescale that corporations need so there is a lot of translation that needs to happen between the two but if you talk to companies and investors it is not the lack of money it is how do you get it to projects on the ground well that is really positive isn't it Craig it is and I so I think that is absolutely right and what frustrates me in this debate is the lack of willingness of governments to regulate really because they often assume that business is anti-regulation but that has not been my experience at all on this we have seen it on the climate debate is that in the end it took companies coming out about 10-15 years ago almost to set the long-term policy frameworks in place to enable them to scale up their investments in low carbon technologies because they need the confidence to be able to do that they need to know which way we are going then we will get on and deal with it and I think it is similar kind of place now where increasingly a lot of the leading players in the corporate sector are saying for example that the offsets for business it is a wild west and we can't make sense of it but actually if governments would blim and regulate and set the policy frameworks then those hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of dollars will follow so we need to see those train rails being set by a government and then business will know what to do but unfortunately all too often businesses and governments are scared to regulate because for ideological reasons we have almost come to the end but if you had a question you are not going to chuck it in now alright I will yeah I got it so I just want to say first as a scientist and somebody involved with both ZSL and the library I think it is fantastic that the libraries have this exhibition on science and animals and content I think it is brilliant and I think everyone should go to it the second thing is a real question which is we have heard about the ways in which everything is connected with everything else so biodiversity, climate change human activities human beings interacting with nature coexisting interdigitating I think was a word we heard it is immensely complicated and I am wondering whether you are comfortable with the kind of models that must be being used to predict the outcomes of any changes whether it is on a micro scale or on a macro scale and is there more space in this area for modellers for actually people like who are working here in the Alan Turing Institute to help out to decide what it is we should do first what is most urgent because what I am hearing is we can do this, we can do this, we can do this but you have to prioritise Got to keep this quite short Does anybody want to pick up immediately from that? Yeah absolutely this is a space for interdisciplinary collaboration and this is where we are going to see some really exciting collaborations push science and prioritisation forward a lot of that is actually also happening so there is a real science of decision making and prioritisation out there in terms of what is the best bang for buck Becky and Craig do you feel you know what the priorities are do you feel you know what you need to do? Just on the modelling I think modelling played a huge role and continues to play a huge role in getting the climate agenda taken seriously prioritised etc But again it is a simpler model So my instinct is that modelling is doing and could have a huge role to play in getting the nature crisis tackled successfully I think we always talk a lot about theories of change and how you look at theories of change and I think the thing that has really changed in how we look at that over the last couple of decades has been that systemic approach that really wasn't around in conservation for a long long time and so that has really changed I think where the modelling can help is looking at that systemic approach and saying which bits of the system would make most difference if we tackled them in priority order and I think that's where it can really play a huge role and it's starting to I'd say undoubtedly there's a role for lots of modelling to help guide the way here because we don't want to wait to get the perfect answer before we start doing this stuff because actually it doesn't matter how good the model will be it will only be an estimation and actually the best thing we can do is learn by doing and so what is important is that as we try different approaches we're really good and systematic at gathering evidence as we do those to really be able to understand what works and what doesn't and feed that back into the models and ever improve them so we do have to end, we've run out of time I hope like me you agree this has been surprisingly optimistic we started on a really down note there mapping out the scale of the crisis which we have to do, you have to define your subject and then hopefully you agree that we've actually come you talked about the switching between optimism and pessimism quite optimistic and I thought one of the really key things that idea of finding your own agency and where you can be most effective looking at what you're interested in partly and doing the things that you care about that being a really good way to tackle this problem which I get also all the time what can you do and that's a really good answer to that question so I think it's been really helpful, I hope you've all enjoyed it here we've got a small but wonderful audience here at the British Library and for everybody watching at home I hope you've enjoyed it and this stays online so you can go back and refer to it I don't know how long but quite a long time John how long so a long time and thank you very much indeed for being here can you please thank our three panellists