The Environment Cannot be Taken for Granted

I have been a lapsed blogger for too many months. The downside of being busy and doing lots of interesting things is not finding the time to share the experiences and (occasional) thoughts.

To get things going again, here is a piece that is featured in the current Lantra Connect magazine, available here.

The environment can not be taken for granted

warns Dr Gordon McGlone OBE, Chairman of Lantra

Having worked as an ecologist/conservationist for over 30 years, I sometimes feel as if I am part of the PR team for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Messages describing the increasing pressures and strains placed on our environment are not welcome, especially when there might be a perception that farming is part of the problem. But it underlines why this is such a priority sector for us all.

Today, the dark riders of population growth, urbanisation, increasing energy demand and climate change are reflected in daily media stories and represent a huge challenge to the health and well-being of our society and environment. This means there is a much greater awareness that the environment is not to be taken for granted.

In all good tales, there is always a talisman of hope and here the good news is skills. Lantra, as one of the most effective of the Sector Skills Councils, is working increasingly closely with the UK’s environmental and land-based industries to support the development of skills and business practice that will be essential for them to adapt to and benefit from future change.

Global population has now reached seven billion, an increase of three billion in the last 50 years and by 2050 there will be another three billion consumers. Most of us now live in towns and cities, and urban consumers expect a more protein-rich diet than subsistence rural communities. The result is an increasing demand for crop production that is growing even faster than the number of people.

The UK’s farmers are being asked to contribute to the nation’s food and fuel security by aiming to double their productivity in future – a difficult task requiring great skill to boost production without increasing pressure on fragile and fragmented land, freshwater and marine wildlife communities. Lantra is uniquely placed to maintain a UK overview of the many integrated industries that are responsible for managing our crops, biofuels, forestry, game and biodiversity.

Potentially the darkest of today’s horsemen is climate change. Despite our recent winter weather the underlying global climate continues to warm inexorably. Worryingly, the lack of progress at the Copenhagen summit means that the UK may have a temperature rise of 3ºc by 2050. This is perilously close to the point at which Southern Europe begins to see its agriculture and horticulture decline significantly, making food security an even greater need.

These four negative forces mean that Lantra has a critically important role in this changing nation. We must all learn to develop and deploy new skills to enable our environment and land-based industries to adapt, and Lantra is uniquely placed to ensure that the right skills are developed in the right way. The prize for future investment in skills and business practice is to maintain our fertile islands and their inshore marine ecosystems as the world class assets we sometimes take for granted.