Our environment
- sarahburgess5
- Sep 18
- 5 min read
Well that crept up on me! The autumn equinox - or the start of astronomical autumn - is on Monday 22nd September. It certainly seems much more autumnal now than it did three weeks ago at the start of meteorological autumn. I'm writing this looking out over golden leaves floating gently to the ground on the breeze. I'm not sure how you've found this year's conker season but for me it has been patchy. I think Storm Floris did away with quite a lot of them before they were ripe and the squirrels have done a good job of munching the rest. I've had a good haul of hazelnuts though and acorns also seem quite abundant. Morning walks see a fresh crop of mushrooms every day and the mist hangs over the park (also the chains on the swings are already very chilly to the touch but I refuse to wear gloves in September). In the last 24 hours I've had a couple of people mention how they don't like going for a walk in the rain, which has made me wonder how on earth they have managed to go out at all lately. Not that the rain has been persistent, not at all, rather that it has seemed all but impossible to judge the right time not to get drowned.
A park acquaintance commented on my ever expanding collection of raincoats the other morning, but equally on an extremely wet walking meeting the other day as we stood dripping in reception post-walk one of the other participants commented on how their waterproof jacket had been breached. I stand by the importance of having a collection. After a summer wondering about the lack of water, the showers have been coming thick and fast, but often short. Go out at the wrong time and you're destined to spend the rest of your day damp - or with your first set of clothes hanging in the shower, if you're working from home! Is this climate change? It really feels like it.
Last Wednesday I attended Climate Action Lanarkshire's conference where the focus was the draft Scottish Government Environment Strategy, specifically looking at five of the key themes from the document:
Building nature rich areas to live
Shifting towards sustainable, healthy diets and cutting food waste
Shifting from car use towards active travel and public transport, transition to electric vehicles
Shifting to energy efficient and clean heating systems
Encouraging sustainable consumer behaviours, guided by the circular economy ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ hierarchy
In groups we discussed various local ways that we can work towards these goals. The discussion I enjoyed most focused on not just improving local greenspaces, but how to make them more accessible to more people, as well as thinking of ways to encourage more nature connection opportunities when people are in them. You can be a person who spends a lot of time outside without being someone who is connected to nature. Nature connection measures our closeness to nature. It goes beyond simple contact with nature – not just time spent in nature, more the emotional bond we have with nature. How we think, feel and interact with nature and whether we feel PART of nature. Only 10% of the UK population consider themselves to be part of nature and this is without a doubt part of the problem.
I had the opportunity to input on the theme of nature and health - something the strategy focuses on quite heavily, with 150 mentions of health - both human and planetary. It also addresses the fact that so few of us feel part of nature and acknowledges that this needs to change:
Repairing our relationship with nature will mean shifting social norms and values towards recognising that we are part of nature, not separate from it.
The strategy suggests helping people connect with nature in their everyday lives - why creating more nature-rich places to live is so important. It suggests supporting nature-based education; to create the volume of change that is needed we have to start with changing the way children relate to nature. They are no longer getting that input from their parents, as in many cases their parents themselves are no longer very nature connected. It's worth noting that the newest publication from the University of Derby is a booklet called Nature Connection for Schools. The strategy also talks about nature based health with mentions of the four Green Health Partnerships, of which Get Outdoors Lanarkshire was the first. Being active outdoors by joining a health walk, doing some conservation volunteering or community gardening or through following along with a nature prescription all works.
In my presentation I shared the shocking biodiversity stripes - a very striking representation of how much global biodiversity has shrunk since 1970. The biodiversity stripes were invented by Miles Richardson of the University of Derby, to mirror the well known climate warming stripes, but to acknowledge that although climate change gets up to eight times more coverage than biodiversity loss, we need to tackle both together in order to make real change for future generations. The real change this strategy focuses on however, is behaviour change. Behaviour change is hard. I hope there are plans for supporting all the great organisations delivering on nature based play, nature based healthcare and all round nature connection - because there will have to be more capacity created to deliver these aspirations.
Whilst doing research for my talk, I discovered startling facts like, the use of nature words in books has dropped by 60% in the last 200 years which almost exactly mirrors our declining nature connection. The UK is both one of the world's most nature depleted countries and bottom of the European league for nature connectedness - coincidence? I think not! I don't think there is any doubt that if more of us were connected to nature then we'd be happier and healthier - and moreover then we'd be much more likely to take pro-environmental and pro-conservation action. For a deeper dive in nature connection and the benefits for both humans and the planet check out the Nature Connectedness Network website or perhaps even sign up.
I wasn't letting anyone away from the conference without the opportunity to try some nature connection for themselves; our old favourite is the three good things in nature exercise and we were able to create an autumn tree with what people had noticed recently in nature. I really enjoyed chatting to everyone who had taken the time to consider what they had spotted recently - from nuthatches to the sound of bats from a nearby roost to the colour of autumn leaves. Check out our autumn tree in the picture above!
If you weren't there to take part, never fear, we have some more nature connection opportunities coming up. Get Outdoors Lanarkshire and VASLan will be down at CCI on Wednesday 24th September for their Wellbeing Festival. To acknowledge that one of the easiest ways to feel connected to nature almost everywhere is to keep an eye out for a dandelion, we're going to be making dandelion clocks from recycled yarn, ready for you to make a wish! You can also join Get Walking Lanarkshire for a gentle stroll with some prompts to encourage sensory engagement with nature on Monday 6th October at 1.00pm at the David Livingstone Birthplace. Book here. It just takes an hour to chill out and connect with nature - an ideal way to spend your lunch hour.
And finally - a quick shout out to the caterers at the Climate Conference, GoKrsna, a new social enterprise from South Lanarkshire. It was such a treat to get a variety of vegetarian, locally sourced (where possible) climate friendly food. They come heartily recommended for any events you might be having!