Restore Nature Now: London 22 June

A call for major reforms to protect Nature

Planned long before the UK’s General Election was called, Extinction Rebellion’s call for ‘thousands of us’ to march in London on 22 June under the Restore Nature Now banner is timely and welcome. It’s a great opportunity to remind parliamentary candidates that the current government has completely failed wildlife and the environment (we explained here why we want Sunak and the current government gone) - and that if they want us pro-wildlife folk to vote for them they need to listen to us.

Described as a “legal, peaceful and inclusive public march and rally organised by environmental groups and individuals who are united in a common goal”, the Restore Nature Now march will be calling on all political parties to make this General Election a turning point for nature. As the organisers write on their website:

“Our rivers and sea are being poisoned by horrifying amounts of pollution, wildlife numbers continue to spiral with 1 in 6 British species at risk of extinction, and floods and droughts are becoming more extreme as we see the escalating effects of the climate emergency.

Yet the UK Government’s own advisers say we are not on track to meet legal targets to restore nature and reduce climate emissions.”

However you look at it, that’s not good enough!

Aims of the march

It could be (and no doubt has been) argued that after the huge crowds drawn to the city to protest the killing of Palestinian citizens, London is probably '‘march fatigued’ right now. That’s possibly true, but all of us have the right to gather and to protest and while we do need to be aware of the impact on a relatively small but very important part of the capital, we shouldn’t let previous protests stop this one. Of course, the demands of this march are very different too.

Organisers (who include representatives from the RSPB, The Wildlife Trusts, WWF-UK, Friends of the Earth, WWT, Woodland Trust, National Trust, Wildlife and Countryside Link, Plantlife, Extinction Rebellion and Chris Packham) are making a number of key asks which Protect the Wild very much agrees with:

Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash

• Make polluters pay. “Big businesses; from water, to retail, to energy, all further environmental decline. We want new rules to make them contribute to nature and climate recovery, and an end to new fossil fuels.” Absolutely. It is ridiculous that companies from plastics manufacturers to Water Utilities to fossil fuel companies create the problems overwhelming the environment (and biodiversity) but expect the consumer and billpayer to pay to clean them up - all while offering their chief executives huge bonuses: in 2023, after record amounts of sewage was dumped into the nation’s rivers, ten water bosses shared bonuses totalling £2.5 million; ExxonMobil - the vast majority of whose operations remain focused on fossil fuels - paid out $14.9 billion in dividends in 2023. The ‘polluter pays’ principle was adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1974 - fifty years ago! Companies that pollute are making vast profits, it’s way past time to take some of that money and put it to good use cleaning up the planet.

Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

• More space for nature. “Just 3% of English land and 8% of waters are properly protected for nature and wildlife. To meet UK nature and climate commitments we need to expand and improve protected areas, and ensure public land and National Parks contribute more to recovery.” Protect the Wild has long argued that many of our ‘protected spaces’ are nothing of the sort. 41% of UK species are in decline, with 15% facing extinction, yet two-thirds of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in England - sites designated specifically to protect features of special interest including mammals, birds, plants et al - haven’t been assessed in more than a decade. One SSSI in the Peak District was last assessed in 2009. Our existing so-called ‘national parks’ are in a terrible state too: in their recent ‘Health Check’ report the Campaign for National Parks found that “only 6% of the total land area of National Park [ie across all the national parks] is currently managed effectively for nature”. Many national parks like the Peak District and the Cairngorms are dominated by grouse shooting estates and are notorious hot spots for raptor persecution. There is actually a greater acreage of gardens than nature reserves in England. If the claims of any incoming government to protect wildlife and the environment are to be taken seriously, they will have to put much more land aside for nature, manage it for wildlife not for so-called ‘fieldsports’, and be far more honest about what state that land is really in.

Photo by Charlie Moores

• A right to a healthy environment. “Limited access to nature, and pollution in the air and water, affects everyone’s health. We’re calling for an Environmental Rights Bill which would drive better decisions for nature, improve public health and access to nature.” Fully explained on a Wildlife & Countryside Link page, a proposed Environmental Rights Bill has been drafted by David Wolfe KC and Kate Cook of Matrix Chambers. The Bill would establish a human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for everyone if adopted into election manifestos and progressed in the next Parliament. It will do that by “creating a new duty on relevant public authorities to act compatibly with the right to a healthy environment” and it would “give people stronger powers to challenge decisions which harm their environment and health”. Ambitious, but given that for example 48,625 adults die prematurely each year in the UK due to particulate matter pollution, microplastics have now been discovered in semen, human blood, placentas and breast milk, and science has established that both our mental and physical health is determined by the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe, it is entirely justified.

  

  Photo by Nathan Fertig on Unsplash

  Fair and effective climate action. “We cannot save nature without solving the climate crisis. We want investment in warm homes and lower bills by increasing home energy efficiency, supporting active travel and public transport, and replacing polluting fossil fuels with affordable renewables to ensure we at least halve UK emissions by 2030.” It has been one of the great scandals of the last fourteen years that solar panels are not everywhere (and subsidised on new builds), that a culture war has been fostered by vested interests around ‘net zero’ and ULEZ traffic zones, and that very little has been done to make walking and cycling far safer. The world could have already largely switched to renewable sources of energy, but off the back of fierce lobbying and corrupt politics in 2022 alone global fossil-fuel subsidies surged to a record £5.5 trillion. The climate crisis is here now - not in some distant future - and future generations will look back at the first quarter of the 21st Century and rightly ask, “What the hell were you people thinking?”

Protect the Wild will be there

Assembly for the march begins in Park Lane, London, at noon and will set off at 13:00. The route follows Piccadilly before turning towards Trafalgar Square and heading down Whitehall to Parliament Square. The main rally is scheduled to begin in Parliament Square at 14:15, where there will be a main stage with speakers and music.

As a listed ‘supporting organisation’ we are of course going to be there. We are not taking leaflets but we will have a very small number of placards if Protect the Wild supporters would like to come and join us.

We’re planning to be at meeting point F along with other organisations categorised under ‘land’ (opposite the Mini shop on Park Lane) if you’d like to say hello and pick up a placard from us :)

• Opportunities to shape how a government treats wildlife don't come around often. The 'groaning postbag' may be an outdated term now, but the digital equivalent is very real and just as potent. So let's march, let’s email as many candidates as we can, telephone them, go to hustings and put questions to them, talk to them in the street. Make hunting, shooting, and the badger cull live issues alongside the need to restore Nature. Something candidates take note of, report back to their strategists about, and feel they daren't ignore. If even for just the next month or so, all of us need to become lobbyists too - lobbyists for wildlife.