Why reconnecting with nature is so important for humanity

An article by Clive Blazey, Co-founder of The Diggers Club and The Diggers Foundation

About 20 years ago I remember being quite disappointed that David Attenborough, the man best able to reconnect us to nature, was in denial about humans causing climate change, perhaps because he felt he had to take a neutral position as a presenter.

But Attenborough’s 2020 documentary and book, A Life on Our Planet, vigorously connects man to climate change and explains how collapse in biodiversity is the cause.  His witness statement generates a real sense of urgency about our climate crisis and he advocates a simple and quick solution to our planetary calamity.

All humans must realise that, for us to survive, we must work with nature not against it.

In short, the war against nature virus, pitting man against nature, will always fail.  It’s absolutely clear from the devastating impacts of the recent pandemic that the cause of our planetary crisis is us and, for us to survive, we have to learn to work with nature.

Modern Homo sapiens, with our huge carbon footprint accentuated by deforestation, is destroying biodiversity so rapidly that only 35% of the planet’s wilderness area is left.  Since the last ice age (about 12,000 years ago), our Garden of Eden-like climate, which created such an incredibly biodiverse planet, has all but collapsed in just 83 years. 

Year	Population	CO2 level	% of wilderness
1937 1960 2020	2.3 Billion 3.0 Billion 7.8 Billion	280 ppm 315 ppm 415ppm	66% 62% 35%

 

So what was Attenborough’s turning point?  Visiting Chernobyl 24 years after the nuclear reactor meltdown, when it was safe for humans to enter the town.  City buildings evacuated by the Russians were surrounded by regrowth forests.  Wild animals had returned and occupied the streets and so, despite the impacts of the nuclear explosion that killed humans, nature (without any assistance from Homo sapiens) recovered rapidly.

Nothing needed to be sown in the soil because each plant had produced enough seeds to replace what man had destroyed.  The lesson here is that the universe will survive better without us!  That is the promise of nature’s biodiversity.  In short, plants played the largest part in creating this world, which we arrogantly assume is for us, and we destroy that legacy at our peril.

Biodiversity is nature’s greatest ally.  All we have to do is work with nature to counteract the disastrous impacts of human deforestation.

 

Attenborough’s 5 step solution

There is no hope for Homo sapiens unless we accept the self-evident truth that the biological processes of this planet are way out of equilibrium.  Nature can survive without us but we cannot survive without nature.  We must learn to be part of nature not apart from it.

Step 1 – Energy

Switch to renewable energy to reduce carbon rising into the atmosphere.

Step 2 – Oceans

 Protect at least 33% of our oceans from fishing so habitat and fish stocks can recover and it becomes the world’s primary wildlife reserve.  That’s how our coral reefs might recover too.  It’s the strategy of the United Nations.

Step 3 – Land use

Reduce the area we farm and adopt a plant-based diet.  We must reverse our dependence on monoculture cropping and restore soil fertility.  The Netherlands have demonstrated how quick and easy this change can be, having raised plant yields tenfold with less water, less fertiliser and less pesticides.  Today, with a population of just 17 million, they have become the world’s second largest exporter of food.

Step 4 – Forest 

Halt deforestation.  We must urgently re-wild the planet.  Chernobyl proves that recovery will be rapid.  Costa Rica lost 75% of its forest but, after introducing forest protection laws, it regenerated back to 50% in just 25 years.  How?  Its in-ground biodiversity of seeds and biota re-established itself naturally once protected.

Step 5 – Plant trees 

We have already cut down 3 trillion trees, which is about 50% of global forest area.  Switching our energy sources away from carbon fossil fuels will reduce CO₂ pollution going up into the atmosphere.  But we already have 50 years of CO₂ in the atmosphere that needs tobe brought back to earth and the best way to do this is to plant trees.  After all, it was plants that put it in the ground initially.

Diggers note:  If we plant 1.2 trillion trees over the next 10 years (only 160 trees for every person on the planet), we will return enough carbon back to earth to halt climate warming, thereby enabling our economies
to become completely renewable by 2050.  The cost is estimated to be less than 1% of GDP according to UK estimates, which is less than the amount squandered on gambling.

In summary, Attenborough strongly believes that the increasing incidence of virus outbreaks is directly connected to the massive reduction in wilderness over the last three decades.  Species diversity is declining at such a rapid rate that animals are transferring viruses due to their forced physical proximity to humans.

The Netflix program A Life on Our Planet (2020) outlines five mass extinction events in the process of exploring David Attenborough’s many years as producer and presenter of natural history programs.  He presents his solution in the form of his witness statement.