Repercussions of COVID-19 and Our Relationship with Nature
Dr. Tony Whitbread, President Sussex Wildlife Trust
The talk was held on Zoom with 32 people logging on. Tony (formerly CEO of Sussex Wildlife Trust, now President) accompanied his talk with beautiful wildlife photographs from the Trust.
During the three national lock-downs nature seemed to be recovering and people noticed more wildlife. All around the word skies were clearer of pollution, air quality improved and there was questioning of our relationship with nature.
There needs to be a move from exploiting nature to regenerating ways to work with nature. We need to treat nature as assets. Tony believes there cannot be an economy without nature and we can act by lobbying local councillors and national influential people.
Two areas where there have been improvements in the environment: an increase in provision of landfill sites in the UK; a soon-to-be implemented by-law to protect the kelp forest off the Sussex coast to enable the marine environment to recover.
Tony recommended the following references and links relating to his talk:
First is a link to his “Your Better Nature” webinars, where they are recorded – this is the first in the series of 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srWwSyivivg&t=1s
The books he referred to were:
“Doughnut economics” by Kate Raworth
“Dead zone” by Philip Lymbery
“The economics of biodiversity” by Prof P Dasgupta, and here’s the link – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review (he suggests you just look at the “headline messages”!)