Fighting for nature recovery and fighting for democracy’s survival are one and the same today

I have found myself required to think long and hard for some months now about the Blue Planet Prize Commemorative Lecture, to be delivered in Tokyo Thursday and Kyoto Friday. A good few friends of Highlands Rewilding have been helping me to zero in on something appropriate for the occasion, and our times, for which I am most grateful. The resulting lecture, in the form of a white paper, will be posted on our website after I deliver it on Thursday, but ahead of that our media team has produced a 3 minute film summarising the core argument. 

The narrative I have come up with links nature protection with other vital things, in the holistic context of the post-truth world we find ourselves in. In particular I weave in the rising threat to democracy, the links between that and inequality, and the evident need that those of us classified in the liberal elite have to communicate differently. The communication point is vital if we are to persuade the many people in wilful denial of a threat to nature that there are reasons to protect it anyway, beyond staving off an environmental crisis they refuse to see. That leads me to the vital need for solutions exemplars, and I pick my favourite among the many available in the world today: the "nature prosperity pump", as I think of it. The film explains further.

The corollary of this argument is that our work trying to turn Highlands Rewilding into a viable and bright beacon of hope is even more important, given the stakes beyond nature recovery.