Written by Deborah Long
If Nature could speak, what would she say? On the eve of the Just Transistion summit 2025 and two days before the debate in Scottish Parliament about the Natural Environment Bill, I imagined what nature would want to say to us.
Biodiversity is declining across the world, and also in Scotland. IPBES’ global assessment of biodiversity and ecocystem services shows how fast key ecosystem services that support life on earth are declining and how much biodiversity is being lost. At home, 1 in 9 species in Scotland are at threat of extinction and Scotland languishes in the bottom 15% of countries for our biodiversity intactness index, which measures how resilient our ecosystems are to change (State of Nature Scotland 2023).
We need to transform how we live. The IPBES 2024 report, looking at the causes of biodiversity loss and the transformative changes required, reflects the systemic, persistent and pervasive challenges we face and underlines the need to act quickly given that delay is costly compared to the benefits of acting now.
In Scotland, the Natural Environment Bill is an opportunity to put nature, our life support system, at the centre of policy making. Nature targets help focus action and investment; Nature Networks and functioning protected areas build resilient ecosystems able to withstand climate change. Alongside existing policies on public subsidies for farming and forestry that deliver for nature, building biodiversity enhancement into the planning system and measuring our impact on the environment as part of Scotland’s well being, this bill is a key step forwards and one Nature would welcome.
A Just Transistion to a better future for everyone is possible if we need to act now, ensuring sectors that contribute most to biodiversity loss and climate change adopt more sustainable approaches and transforming today’s dominant economic and financial systems so that they prioritise nature and social justice over private interests. Our most powerful strategy for transformative change is to recognise that nature is our life support system and that our connections to nature both inspire and sustain us. Nature knows this, but we have forgotten.
This is what I think Nature would say to us if she could speak.
Dear Humanity
I’ve had enough. It’s all take, take, take with you. I’ve given you clean water, clean air. I provide you with food crops, timber and fibre but what thanks do I get? You take me for granted and assume that just because I’ve always given all this, I can just keep on doing that.
Well, I can’t for much longer. You’re making it too hard. I need space to manage rainfall, coming now in torrents, thanks to your insatiable thirst for fossil fuels, and prevent it flooding your homes and businesses. I need wet peats and peaty soils to stop wildfires spreading. I need scrub and hedgerows to deflect and defuse the wind to prevent it uprooting trees and blowing off roofs. I need kelp forests to break huge waves and storm surges. I need flowers to sustain my armies of pollinators and pest control units.
We need to reset our one sided relationship. If I keep giving to you, you need to start giving back. Otherwise we’re done. It makes no difference to me really: I’ll survive in one form or another. But I’ll give up on you. And you won’t survive without me.
Mend your ways. Let my uplands and river banks regenerate with trees. Stop insisting my grasslands and heathlands must be home to single species – let the edges and spaces between grow frilly with flowers. Let the trees grow in Scotland’s ‘Deer forests’ where today there are a straggly few. Release your obsession with single tree species forests – find better ways to incorporate different trees and let woodlands become shaggy with lichens and filled with bird songs and animal snuffles. Stop filling my rivers with litter, chemicals and sewage.
Let me breathe.
Yours sincerely
Nature