My favourite read of 2019 was Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole, so perhaps this won't be a very interesting review as I am tempted to just rave about it. I think everyone who lives in or likes to travel in England should read it and I have very little to critique about it. But I'll try to give you a sense of what it's like to entice you to pick it up.
The premise of the book is simple: it's a detailed breakdown of the major categories of land holders in England, based on some truly amazing sleuthing and data analysis. It reveals how much of England is held by the crown, the church, the aristocracy, Oxbridge colleges, private sector companies and off-shore investors, the military and public sector trusts. (Spoiler alert: it's a lot.) But more than that, Who Owns England? gives the reader the history behind that ownership for context and perspective. In that sense, it's one of those rare and wonderful history books that gives a history not of great men and women, but of ordinary people and the land on which they lived and worked.
It also doesn't shy away from discussing the problems that have arisen from the way land ownership and management has progressed over this long history, despite the taboos and sensitivities preventing honest and critical discussion. To pull out an illustrative example using a clumsy segue:
"Any discussion about how best to use our land is inherently skewed by the grossly unequal pattern of land ownership. Imagine inviting 100 people to a birthday party. Then, when you get to the stageof cutting up the cake, one of the guests steps forward to announce that half the cake is already theirs - and not only are they having their cake, they're eating it too. How different is this, really, from the numerous 'stakeholder meetings' that civil servants hold about how best to use our land, day in, day out? Invariably, the attendees and lobbyists at such events - the CLA, the NFU and so on - represent 'land owning interests'. They have every right to be heard, but they represent a tiny fraction of the population - the 1 per cent who own half the land deciding how to use a common resource that everyone depends on."
Shrubsole doesn't call for a violent upheaval to "redistribute" land and resources, but rather points to pragmatic reforms to ensure that land is managed in the public's interest, that national needs for housing, food, clean water and nature are met sustainably.
Overall, it's full of lefty frustration (that's frustration of lefties, not frustration with lefties) but also ends with some pragmatic policy solutions to the skyrocketing house prices and environmental destruction that are the symptoms of Britain's land use problems. In the UK we tend to see ourselves as a small island with limited space, and the right have used this mindset as a chance to blame immigration as a process and immigrants themselves, rather than blaming the systems that reinforce this inequality. That's not to blame the people who currently own most of the land, but Shrubsole does call for policies that ensure that those who do hold the land act as more responsible stewards, and that the concentration of land in fewer and fewer hands does not continue unchecked.
If land ownership sounds boring to you, I challenge you to try this book. Land management touches on so many political, historical, economic and environmental issues. We can all relate to issues around housing and urban planning. In Cambridge, where I live, the lack of affordable housing in combination with business and institutions using any square meter of land in Cambridge as a land bank and hiking up the prices accordingly means that we have a shamefully large homeless and insecurely housed population for how wealthy a city we are on average. We may be an extreme example, but we're far from unique in the UK, where the division between the haves and have nots has driven the political turmoil of the last decade. And, as a hiker, I can relate to Shrubsole's frustration with enclosure - the ubiquitous walls and fences that keep me pinned to a thin strip of vast landscapes that could just as easily be open to the right to roam. For anyone who cares about the environment, this should be a huge red flag. Behind those walls, land owners effectively have carte blanche to do whatever they want (and, as George Monbiot discussed in Feral, are sometimes actively incentivised to cut back hedgerows and copses). That is a frightening prospect at a time when we need to double tree cover and take drastic action to protect our biodiversity.
We should all care about who owns England, and more importantly, what they're doing with it, and Shrubsole's book is an excellent place to start. If you want a quicker introduction to his work, check out his blog, "Who Owns England?", which takes a more abbreviated look at some of the issues covered in the book.
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 February 2020
Wednesday, 22 January 2020
Book review - Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea, and Human Life
As soon as I heard about rewilding as a concept, I was hooked. I seem to recall first hearing the word at the same time as finding out about the campaign to reintroduce the lynx to Britain, and while I'd heard for years about long-shot campaigns to bring back wolves, my affinity for felines meant my enthusiasm was easily sparked on this occasion and I started diving into it, looking for more examples.
I was surprised to find I already knew about perhaps the most stunning and well-known examples. When I was a kid, my family and I visited Yellowstone shortly after they reintroduced the wolf populations there and I remember feeling so excited to think that I might see one. Of course I didn't, but I think in my heart I always loved the idea of wild places even if I only ever got to see their margins. To me, just being in their habitat was exciting - quite the opposite of a zoo, where animals are in pens so small you can't miss them while you roam free. Instead, we stuck close to our cars and the well marked trails, and may not see anything more exotic than a grey squirrel, but it was more exciting knowing that the animals that were out there somewhere were living their lives the way they always had - the way they are supposed to. There was something right about wolves in the American west, just as there is something right about lynxes in Scotland. Giving predators the space to hunt means protecting huge swathes of land that can't help but become wild. Decades on, wolves have changed Yellowstone for the better, and in so many surprising ways. I can't help feel excited about what might happen to the landscapes of Britain if we let our native predators return and give them the space they need to thrive.
So, when I found Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot, a book about rewilding from a British perspective, I was very excited to give it a read.
It began a bit slowly for me. I found myself skimming over the personal anecdotes, but several did pull me in, and Monbiot is an undeniably talented nature writer. Instead, I chiefly hunted for the broader discussion of case studies, issues and theories around rewilding. I was not disappointed - the book was full of dispatches from the front lines of reforesting projects, species reintroductions and regulatory changes all in the interest of supporting biodiversity in the UK. Each of these examples impressed upon me how little is needed to turn the tide - one species, or two decades, or a few hundred acres can see the return of ecosystems that human activity had previously destroyed.
Just as ranchers near Yellowstone protested the reintroduction of wolves, however, rewilding in the UK is contentious for a variety of reasons. While I'm sympathetic to the fears and anger associated with governments telling working people what to do, taking their land for their own purposes, I believe that there is a compromise - an approach that works for both humans and non-human life. Halting environmental destruction is as beneficial to farmers as to politicians, and to present generations as to future ones.
I did take issue with two chapters that diverted into a somewhat different thesis, that humans long to be wild and thus create legends and folk heroes that represent "wildness" to our psyches. As an example of this longing he presented two figures: the fictional character of Johnny Byron from the play Jerusalem, who Monbiot reports is a drug dealer, a drunk, a fighter and a womaniser; and Raoul Moat, a very real person who murdered his ex-partner and her boyfriend and then evaded the police for almost a week before killing himself in a standoff. I find the casting of these two arguably misogynist figures as epitomes of a suppressed desire for wildness odd to say the least. While they represent a kind of unlawful wildness, I think that is a far cry from what rewilding represents. Wilderness and wildness are two very different things - a lynx kills to feed itself or its young, while Moat killed out of revenge, pride, or some other combination of urges. Nature obeys rules that keep a balance, quite different from drinking and copulating to excess. And to cast wilderness as exclusively - and even violently - male and masculine perpetuates the idea that the outdoors are no place for women and marginalised people. The idea of doing what one wants regardless of consequences is definitively unsustainable. Rewilding is not about roguish rule-breaking but about planting a metaphorical (or literal) seed and stepping back to watch what grows.
That diversion aside, I found this book an excellent and well-written introduction to the issues of rewilding in the context of the UK. Monbiot was very much preaching to the converted in my case, but I was glad to have more recent and geographically relevant examples than my childhood experience in Yellowstone. I find myself fascinated and excited by the concept of rewilding, and how it represents a radical shift from our present relationship to land use. That there is value in wilderness existing - not for humans to conquer, tame or extract from, but for its own sake - is a radical shift and one that is long overdue.
I was surprised to find I already knew about perhaps the most stunning and well-known examples. When I was a kid, my family and I visited Yellowstone shortly after they reintroduced the wolf populations there and I remember feeling so excited to think that I might see one. Of course I didn't, but I think in my heart I always loved the idea of wild places even if I only ever got to see their margins. To me, just being in their habitat was exciting - quite the opposite of a zoo, where animals are in pens so small you can't miss them while you roam free. Instead, we stuck close to our cars and the well marked trails, and may not see anything more exotic than a grey squirrel, but it was more exciting knowing that the animals that were out there somewhere were living their lives the way they always had - the way they are supposed to. There was something right about wolves in the American west, just as there is something right about lynxes in Scotland. Giving predators the space to hunt means protecting huge swathes of land that can't help but become wild. Decades on, wolves have changed Yellowstone for the better, and in so many surprising ways. I can't help feel excited about what might happen to the landscapes of Britain if we let our native predators return and give them the space they need to thrive.
So, when I found Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot, a book about rewilding from a British perspective, I was very excited to give it a read.
It began a bit slowly for me. I found myself skimming over the personal anecdotes, but several did pull me in, and Monbiot is an undeniably talented nature writer. Instead, I chiefly hunted for the broader discussion of case studies, issues and theories around rewilding. I was not disappointed - the book was full of dispatches from the front lines of reforesting projects, species reintroductions and regulatory changes all in the interest of supporting biodiversity in the UK. Each of these examples impressed upon me how little is needed to turn the tide - one species, or two decades, or a few hundred acres can see the return of ecosystems that human activity had previously destroyed.
Just as ranchers near Yellowstone protested the reintroduction of wolves, however, rewilding in the UK is contentious for a variety of reasons. While I'm sympathetic to the fears and anger associated with governments telling working people what to do, taking their land for their own purposes, I believe that there is a compromise - an approach that works for both humans and non-human life. Halting environmental destruction is as beneficial to farmers as to politicians, and to present generations as to future ones.
I did take issue with two chapters that diverted into a somewhat different thesis, that humans long to be wild and thus create legends and folk heroes that represent "wildness" to our psyches. As an example of this longing he presented two figures: the fictional character of Johnny Byron from the play Jerusalem, who Monbiot reports is a drug dealer, a drunk, a fighter and a womaniser; and Raoul Moat, a very real person who murdered his ex-partner and her boyfriend and then evaded the police for almost a week before killing himself in a standoff. I find the casting of these two arguably misogynist figures as epitomes of a suppressed desire for wildness odd to say the least. While they represent a kind of unlawful wildness, I think that is a far cry from what rewilding represents. Wilderness and wildness are two very different things - a lynx kills to feed itself or its young, while Moat killed out of revenge, pride, or some other combination of urges. Nature obeys rules that keep a balance, quite different from drinking and copulating to excess. And to cast wilderness as exclusively - and even violently - male and masculine perpetuates the idea that the outdoors are no place for women and marginalised people. The idea of doing what one wants regardless of consequences is definitively unsustainable. Rewilding is not about roguish rule-breaking but about planting a metaphorical (or literal) seed and stepping back to watch what grows.
That diversion aside, I found this book an excellent and well-written introduction to the issues of rewilding in the context of the UK. Monbiot was very much preaching to the converted in my case, but I was glad to have more recent and geographically relevant examples than my childhood experience in Yellowstone. I find myself fascinated and excited by the concept of rewilding, and how it represents a radical shift from our present relationship to land use. That there is value in wilderness existing - not for humans to conquer, tame or extract from, but for its own sake - is a radical shift and one that is long overdue.
Tuesday, 23 July 2019
Book review - Sustainability: A History
One reason for starting this blog is to keep track of reading and activities related to professional development, including article and book recaps/reviews. The first in this series is on:
This is an incredibly important book to the study of sustainability in that it helps unpack the strands of thought, political movements and scientific disciplines that have contributed to it as an idea. The broad thesis is that there is not one singular concept or movement around sustainability, but rather a constellation of related - but often contradictory - philosophies, goals and ideologies. Just as climate change' is not one singular problem but rather a host of tightly linked causes and effects, sustainability and sustainists represent a wide range of answers to these problems. Understanding this complexity is the first step toward progress. By acknowledging where we differ and where we align, we can begin to shape a consensus response to the greatest challenges our species has ever faced.
First, Caradonna traces the history of ideas and practices that might be considered 'sustainable', i.e. taking an interest in the management of the natural environment and resources in such a way that they will endure for future generations. (The actual definition of 'sustainability' is a matter of some debate, and Caradonna discusses this at some length, but as the entire work presents multiple different views of the concept, I won't provide a fixed or detailed definition here.) This history begins with early European forestry practices that sought to ensure the continued availability of woodland resources for future generations, through the philosophical and political dissents to Industrialism, up to the earliest warning signs about carbon emissions.
This history brings us to the current state of affairs, where various theoretical and political strands influence the sustainability movement, from ecological economics to climate justice. Sustainability is a spectrum of ideas, some that embrace Capitalism and economic growth and some that reject them as inherently unsustainable. Some are concerned with non-human ecosystems, while others focus on 'climate justice' and the unequal distribution of the causes and effects of climate change among different populations. Some focus primarily on carbon emissions in the atmosphere, while others are concerned with other systems such as biodiversity, soil and water quality and rare earth resources. Some emphasise conservation, using current biodiversity, carbon and biomass levels as a baseline, while others want to wind the clock back through rewilding and other such mechanisms.
It is important to consider the potential of each of these contrasting mechanisms. What would the results look like? Who would pay for them? What are the impacts on other countries, on people living in poverty, on people with disabilities? How quickly would the results take effect relative to the IPCC estimate that we have ten years in which to prevent climate catastrophe? Caradonna does not provide answers, or privilege one approach over others. The role of this book is not to say who is right but to catalogue the relevant histories and philosophies of sustainability. It is in the interest of those who seek to discredit sustainists to lump them together in one monolithic stereotype, so by presenting the different strands of thought within the sustainability movement, Caradonna challenges the reader to consider their relation to it.
For me, this book was an ideal place to start delving deeper into sustainability, social responsibility and environmental justice. I had somewhat taken for granted that sustainability meant roughly the same thing to everyone. I'm sure I'll be returning to this book as a reference in the future. For the purposes of this blog, I think it's useful to take Caradonna as a prompt to position myself in relation to the various sustainability movements. I believe that we should be working to set the clock back to pre-Industrial levels, with the eventual goal of minimum long-term management of the environment by humans (e.g. through rewilding), while bringing quality of life up for those in poverty around the world. I am sceptical about the ability of Capitalist systems to be sustainable, but I believe that to take effect in the time required the solutions need to operate within Capitalism. I also have many blind spots, for example I don't know exactly how land use theories say that the world can support both rewilding and food production at current and projected population levels. I don't know how digitalisation can be harnessed to make the situation better rather than worse. Sustainability: A History raised many more questions than it answered.
The next step on my journey is to explore more solutions to the host of problems that I will for shorthand refer to as the climate emergency, including global warming, soil quality, biodiversity loss, coral bleaching, plastic pollution, extractive industries and climate injustice. I want to know what can be done quickly, what can be done over the long term, and how the labour of climate action breaks down between industries, policymakers and ordinary people.
I'll let you know what I find out! Bye for now, and stay curious!
Sustainability: A History by Jeremy L. Caradonna
This is an incredibly important book to the study of sustainability in that it helps unpack the strands of thought, political movements and scientific disciplines that have contributed to it as an idea. The broad thesis is that there is not one singular concept or movement around sustainability, but rather a constellation of related - but often contradictory - philosophies, goals and ideologies. Just as climate change' is not one singular problem but rather a host of tightly linked causes and effects, sustainability and sustainists represent a wide range of answers to these problems. Understanding this complexity is the first step toward progress. By acknowledging where we differ and where we align, we can begin to shape a consensus response to the greatest challenges our species has ever faced.
First, Caradonna traces the history of ideas and practices that might be considered 'sustainable', i.e. taking an interest in the management of the natural environment and resources in such a way that they will endure for future generations. (The actual definition of 'sustainability' is a matter of some debate, and Caradonna discusses this at some length, but as the entire work presents multiple different views of the concept, I won't provide a fixed or detailed definition here.) This history begins with early European forestry practices that sought to ensure the continued availability of woodland resources for future generations, through the philosophical and political dissents to Industrialism, up to the earliest warning signs about carbon emissions.
This history brings us to the current state of affairs, where various theoretical and political strands influence the sustainability movement, from ecological economics to climate justice. Sustainability is a spectrum of ideas, some that embrace Capitalism and economic growth and some that reject them as inherently unsustainable. Some are concerned with non-human ecosystems, while others focus on 'climate justice' and the unequal distribution of the causes and effects of climate change among different populations. Some focus primarily on carbon emissions in the atmosphere, while others are concerned with other systems such as biodiversity, soil and water quality and rare earth resources. Some emphasise conservation, using current biodiversity, carbon and biomass levels as a baseline, while others want to wind the clock back through rewilding and other such mechanisms.
It is important to consider the potential of each of these contrasting mechanisms. What would the results look like? Who would pay for them? What are the impacts on other countries, on people living in poverty, on people with disabilities? How quickly would the results take effect relative to the IPCC estimate that we have ten years in which to prevent climate catastrophe? Caradonna does not provide answers, or privilege one approach over others. The role of this book is not to say who is right but to catalogue the relevant histories and philosophies of sustainability. It is in the interest of those who seek to discredit sustainists to lump them together in one monolithic stereotype, so by presenting the different strands of thought within the sustainability movement, Caradonna challenges the reader to consider their relation to it.
For me, this book was an ideal place to start delving deeper into sustainability, social responsibility and environmental justice. I had somewhat taken for granted that sustainability meant roughly the same thing to everyone. I'm sure I'll be returning to this book as a reference in the future. For the purposes of this blog, I think it's useful to take Caradonna as a prompt to position myself in relation to the various sustainability movements. I believe that we should be working to set the clock back to pre-Industrial levels, with the eventual goal of minimum long-term management of the environment by humans (e.g. through rewilding), while bringing quality of life up for those in poverty around the world. I am sceptical about the ability of Capitalist systems to be sustainable, but I believe that to take effect in the time required the solutions need to operate within Capitalism. I also have many blind spots, for example I don't know exactly how land use theories say that the world can support both rewilding and food production at current and projected population levels. I don't know how digitalisation can be harnessed to make the situation better rather than worse. Sustainability: A History raised many more questions than it answered.
The next step on my journey is to explore more solutions to the host of problems that I will for shorthand refer to as the climate emergency, including global warming, soil quality, biodiversity loss, coral bleaching, plastic pollution, extractive industries and climate injustice. I want to know what can be done quickly, what can be done over the long term, and how the labour of climate action breaks down between industries, policymakers and ordinary people.
I'll let you know what I find out! Bye for now, and stay curious!
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