It’s not a trick question. I’m inviting you to pause for a moment and think about what the word brings to mind. Chances are your head is full of images of wild landscapes or specific creatures. I’ll wager you didn’t put yourself or another human in the picture.
Well nor does the Oxford English Dictionary. It defines nature as ‘the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.’
Similarly, the Collins Concise Dictionary makes a distinction between humans and the rest of the natural world — a distinction that is not reflected in our growing scientific understanding that we are part of an intricately interconnected web of life.
We rely on healthy ecosystems for water, food, medicine, our general wellbeing and much more, while our activities have a significant impact (often negative) on the world around us. For Lawyers for Nature — the team that helped House of Hackney put nature on the board — the linguistic separation between humans and the natural world has resulted in ‘misconceived superiority over Nature [that] has contributed to the ecological crisis we find ourselves in today’.
Disconnection from nature has been described as possibly ‘the world’s greatest environmental threat’ in that it perpetuates an attitude where natural resources are to be taken, used and then disposed of. Conversely, building a deep-rooted emotional connection with nature offers far greater opportunity to affect broad-scale systems change. Those with the strongest connection to nature adapt how they interact with the world around them to make more efficient use of resources, are more likely to act to protect and boost biodiversity and tend to be healthier and happier — all behaviours we need to encourage to build a more sustainable future.
If language can divide us, it is also a great connector.
In April 2024, Lawyers for Nature began the fight back with a campaign to change the dictionary definition of nature to one that includes humans. But that is just one way that language could reconnect or bring us back together with the natural world.
But even using the phrase ‘nature connection’ is problematic for some — indicating just how much the words we choose to talk about the world around us matter. Nature connection describes our relationship with the natural world. It covers everything from a material reliance on natural resources to a deeper appreciation of the importance of nature and our place in the natural world. Using the word ‘connection’ implies that there are two entities — humans and nature — and that they are linked, though maybe only by the most fragile of bonds. It doesn’t suggest humans and nature are one. However, nature connection is probably the best phrase for describing the different relationships humans have with the world around them — leading to its growing popularity and use as a term.
There are many ways that we could build appreciation for the environment — by foraging for food and cooking it, painting the landscape or going out for a walk. Changing how we think and talk about the world could also make a difference.
Traditionally, we have seen ourselves in the landscape and felt a connection with the landscape within ourselves. It is reflected in the words we chose to describe our surroundings. In English, we refer to the ‘brow’ of the hill or the spine of a ridge. The Welsh describe parts of the natural landscape as a ‘cefn’ (back or ridge), ‘moel’ (bald, indicating a bare or barren hill), ‘pen’ (head or peak), ‘braich’ (arm or ridge), ‘esgair’ (an old Welsh word for leg or ridge) or ‘talcen’ (forehead or front of a hill). Shoulder is used in English, French (épaule) and Welsh (ysgwydd) to refer to a projecting ridge close to the top of a mountain.
All languages contain magic words. Not abracadabra, hocus pocus, or any spell or charm used by Harry Potter. But names. We give names to our children, our pets and our first car. Instantly they stand out from the crowd and become special to us.
One of Simon Barnes’ top tips to Rewild Yourself is to learn the names of different species — whether that is birds, trees, butterflies or any other plant or animal.
The same goes for natural features of the landscape. These days we tend to lump all waterways together as rivers, not making the distinction between a ‘brook’, a ‘beck’, an ‘estuary’, or a ‘stream’. In all probability, the last time you used the word ‘stream’, it was to refer to the latest thing you watched on Netflix, not to describe the landscape.
The Welsh have multiple words for hills and mountains. Iceland famously has 85 words for snow, while Scotland and Ireland excel at the number of different ways to describe rain. These variations were coined by people that have lived in the same place for so long that they notice and appreciate the differences.
Losing our ‘literacy of landscape’ can have profound consequences. Young people in parts of North Alaska no longer recognise the different Iñupiat and Yupik words for ice, making it hard for elders to warn them when they stray on to a dangerous patch of ice rendered unstable by rising temperatures.
We know the power of words. A good book has always been able to transport us to another realm. Perhaps if we pay greater heed to the words we use and what they mean, it could change our relationship to the physical world in which we live. It starts with changing the dictionary definition; who knows where it will lead.
Meet the newest member of the board: Pongo pygmaeus.
Around a year ago, Eco-Business reported a Malaysian palm oil producer had become the world’s first company to appoint a non-human animal to its board of directors in the form of Aman the orangutan. It was an April Fools’ joke that had LinkedIn giggling. But although hosting an orangutan in the boardroom is clearly impractical, is the idea of giving nature a seat at the table really all that laughable?
Giving nature a voice
In fact, someone else had got there first. In 2022, UK-based Faith in Nature was the first company to appoint a Nature Guardian — a non-executive director with the sole responsibility of representing the natural world, non-humans and environmental interests — giving nature a voice and a vote on how the company is run. House of Hackney and the Better Business Network have since followed, while Patagonia has made nature its sole shareholder.
And back in 2008, an entire country changed its constitution to give nature protected rights, with the people of Ecuador voting overwhelmingly in favour of the move. Recent court cases have tested the country’s Rights of Nature laws, seeing the Constitutional Court ruling in favour of Ecuador’s cloud forests to prevent large-scale mining operations. Other countries have implemented similar mechanisms, including Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico. A constitutional amendment, currently in draft, would add Aruba to the list of countries starting to formally recognise nature’s legal rights.
Some countries have gone a step further by granting “personhood” to specific natural entities, such as the Muteshekau-shipu or Magpie river in Canada and the Whanganui River in New Zealand. More recently, whales were recognised as legal persons in a treatysigned by Indigenous leaders of the Cook Islands, Tahiti and New Zealand.
Is all this really necessary?
From early environmental movements to present day organisations such as ClientEarth, many don’t see the idea of sticking up for nature as radical, but as essential to the long-term wellbeing of people and the planet. The very idea of having to formally represent nature and its rights might seem odd to those communities and cultures for whom it simply makes sense to respect and protect the natural world which provides us with essential resources and services.
Yet it’s the systematic over-exploitation of these resources that has started to make such representation seem necessary. And regardless of whether you believe it’s the right thing to do or a vital response to our global overshooting of planetary boundaries, failure to account for nature is starting to hit the bottom line. Pressure on corporate boards to demonstrate they are capable of understanding and overseeing sustainability issues has come on the heels of increased shareholder activism.
The recent experiences of companies such as Exxon may be a sign of things to come for others. In 2021, shareholders voted to replace three members of the energy company’s board after Hedge fund Engine No.1, which held just 0.02% of Exxon Mobil’s stock, convinced fellow shareholders that the company’s lacklustre climate strategy would leave it financially unprepared for the transition to renewable energy. A similar, more recent move by Ajruna Capital has been less successful.
Lawsuits being brought against companies in relation to sustainability matters such as climate change are also on the rise. With cases being led by human representatives including states, individuals, and third parties, nature is shouting louder to be heard. And perhaps it was always going to need the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss to be felt by a significant enough proportion of the global population for such representation to hit the mainstream.
Coordinated efforts to account for and restore nature are starting to come to fruition through initiatives such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures and Science Based Targets Network, following adoption of a global biodiversity framework and goals at COP15. Legislation is starting to wake up too, with the introduction of the UK Biodiversity Net Gain planning regulations, and relevant reporting requirements through the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. And could longstanding academic efforts to assign economic value to ecosystems services start to find application with “nature pricing” following in carbon’s footprint?
Too little too late?
With increasing worldwide coordination, incoming guidance to support target setting, and pressure from multiple sides for companies to pay attention to their interconnectivity with and dependence on the natural world, the tide is shifting.
Perhaps the need to appoint a board-level representative of nature has been bypassed by external events. Or perhaps such an appointment can play a crucial role in implementation and ongoing accountability once nature-based targets are in place. Either way, this handy guide from Faith in Nature offers some pointers for those wishing to consider it, although worth also contemplating the practical challenges.
Robyn Eckersley concludes in her chapter on representing nature from The Future of Representative Democracy: “Whenever we represent nature, we, unwittingly or otherwise, also represent ourselves and the sort of world we wish to inhabit.” The collective impact and financial return of today’s efforts to represent, protect and restore nature may not be seen or understood for some time. Paying attention to the type of world we want to live in is perhaps our best call to action at this point.
And who knows, maybe it won’t be long before we’re talking about other kinds of board-level representation. Future generations perhaps, or maybe even AI…
Your rainforest plant-based miracle moisturizer feeds your skin but also carries cash to the people who protect the trees that provide active ingredients.
We can thank a thing called the Nagoya Protocol for making our daily moisturizing an ethically soothing experience. Or so we hope.
The Protocol is part of the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the international law designed to prevent environmental pillage and ensure the financial rewards of wonder plants (and other genetic resources) are shared with the people who live where the plants grow.
Cash for nature
But very little of the cash generated from using nature is shared equitably, with the flora and fauna that underpin our very existence facing catastrophic decline. This is bad news for the natural world and terrible for all of us because nature underpins everything we do.
This week, these issues are on the agenda at the much-delayed meeting of world governments who signed the CBD. The gathering, in Montreal, Canada, is called COP15 (not to be confused with the other conference of the parties – COP – which deals with the climate change convention) and will be chaired by China who was scheduled to play host in 2020. Because of Covid and China’s continuing lockdown policy, the meeting was delayed and is now relocated to Canada.
The gathering is important because international law percolates to regional and local laws, affecting all the countries that ratify conventions and related protocols. The USA, which signed the CBD, is the only major nation that has not ratified it because this requires national legislation, impossible in the America’s political climate.
NGOs, some governments and business organisations are pushing hard to make COP15 a success. Work to implement the CBD is essential if we are to protect nature and its life-giving services.
The natural world provides fresh air and clean water (ecosystem services), health benefits of diverse plant and animal life, as well as the commercial opportunities provided by natural ingredients (foods, drugs, cosmetics etc). Nature’s support of our everyday is something urbanized societies find increasingly difficult to grasp.
New targets
Every decade at the biodiversity COP, governments decide on targets to achieve the CBD’s three main goals: conserving biodiversity; using nature sustainably, and sharing nature’s benefits equitably.
Governments have failed to meet CBD targets set in 2010 and its unlikely they will meet revised goals expected at Montreal.
It is easy to be gloomy about the effectiveness of the UN process. But conventions and all the rigmarole that accompanies them do bring change. For example, the Nagoya Protocol has a significant impact on law-abiding companies that depend heavily on natural products (agriculture traders, pharmaceutical companies and cosmetics firms among them). The protocol limits access to essential resources, demands monitoring of supply chains and greater sharing of financial rewards from the end product.
Business engages
After a slow start, big business is now engaged with the CBD process. A coalition of business organisations has joined with leading nature NGOs, such as WWF, to form Business for Nature. The coalition has called for mandatory requirements for all large businesses and financial institutions to assess and disclose their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity by 2030.
The call marks a big shift from business’ preference for self-regulation and is an admission that a level international playing field is needed for change to happen. Whether the change will ever be fast enough to outrun the rapid extinction of species and the rampant destruction of our natural world is, at best, open to question.
But even with this gloomy outlook, the conventions and their protocols provide the only hope to protect nature. While regular, ethical moisturizing won’t save the world, it is a gentle start.
UPDATE: agreement reached at COP15, as nations agree to protect 30% of nature by 2030
Mandatory reporting on how much businesses rely on natural systems, championed from France at COP15, was removed from the final document. Instead, it was agreed that countries should makes sure companies are transparent with the public, regulators and investors about their reliance and impacts on nature.
This was part of a landmark deal to protect and restore at least 30% of the Earth’s land and water by 2030, struck by 195 nations after two weeks of negotiating in Montreal, Canada.
Countries agreed to:
The sustainable use of biodiversity to ensure ecosystems services are maintained.
Ensure the benefits of resources from nature, such as medicines from plants, are shared fairly and equally while protecting the rights of indigenous peoples.
Maintain, enhance and restore ecosystems. This includes preventing species extinction and maintaining genetic diversity
Fund the preservation of biodiversity. As with the earlier climate change negotiations in Egypt, funding proved to be the most difficult obstacle with developing nations demanding more from developed countries. Rich nations finally pledged to provide $30 billion a year by 2030 for conservation projects.
Exploring the economics of biodiversity: Last chance to save nature and ourselves?
When the UK government’s finance arm (known as the Treasury) produced a report on the economic implications of climate change in 2006 the subject slowly began to get noticed by people in the financial community who have the clout to make a difference.
This week the Treasury published The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. This is about the perilous state of nature and the dire economic consequences of its over-exploitation. Or what is sometimes referred to as the Next Great Dying.
Very kindly, the Treasury has distilled the mammoth report into 10 pages and 10 headlines.
It makes a good checklist on the economics of biodiversity for when you’re next challenged on the value of the rhino, starling or common greenshield lichen.
Our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature.
We have collectively failed to engage with Nature sustainably, to the extent that our demands far exceed its capacity to supply us with the goods and services we all rely on.
Our unsustainable engagement with Nature is endangering the prosperity of current and future generations.
At the heart of the problem lies deep-rooted, widespread institutional failure.
The solution starts with understanding and accepting a simple truth: our economies are embedded within Nature, not external to it.
We need to change how we think, act and measure success.
Ensure that our demands on Nature do not exceed its supply, and that we increase Nature’s supply relative to its current level.
Change our measures of economic success to guide us on a more sustainable path.
Transform our institutions and systems – in particular our finance and education systems – to enable these changes and sustain them for future generations.
Transformative change is possible – we and our descendants deserve nothing less.
Enlightened business gets together with environmental NGOs to lobby the international community to protect nature from relentless destruction. The effort, expected to peak at a big UN nature summit in China, is derailed by a virus that has hopped from beast to humans largely because of our relentless exploitation of animals.
Ironic, or just plain tragic?
The UN summit, the 15th meeting of the Conference of the
Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), has been postponed
from October 2020 to sometime hence. Business, organised by the World
Business Council for Sustainable Development and supported by organisations
such as the WWF, was hoping to provide a unified call for the urgent, greater protection
of nature.
This makes a lot of sense, given that nature provides the
support systems (air, water, fibre, food…) that keep people and businesses
healthy. Business has been slow to make
the connection between its success and the bounties of the natural world,
mainly because nature has kept on giving.
But now it seems that nature has struck back with Covid-19. Although it has given fair warning of its power with, among others, avian flu, Sars and Ebola – viruses suspected to have come from animals and originated in places where people conflict with creatures as they expand into nature.
Animals carry many viruses, most of which sit safely behind the
species barrier. But scientists are concerned that as humans continue to expand
into ever-shrinking animal habitats they will be exposed to more novel viruses
of the Covid-19 complexity. Our Covid-19 horror could merely be the harbinger
of more to come.
Maybe this truth, long ignored by the bulk of the business community, will be recognised because of the shock of Covid-19. If so, a loud and unified business-for-nature voice should be heard when the UN finally meets to discuss how the world can ensure the future of nature.
Here’s hoping those left in the C-suite will listen,
understand and act.
