December 2024
What an amazing honour it is to be joining the fantastic team at Earthwatch Europe! I’ve spent most of my professional life trying to find ways to bring nature into recovery, and helping people to get actively involved in doing this. So it’s incredibly exciting to be joining an organisation that has this goal at its very heart.
This is a deeply challenging time for the natural world. There’s huge political uncertainty and instability with wars raging in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. We’re seeing a pushback against environmental progress from governments around the globe as well as some of the fossil fuel giants, in spite of the harrowing pictures of floods in Spain and the UK, and wildfires raging in California. And financial pressures are tempting many organisations and funders to focus on other priorities. Our own government’s plans to slash support for green farming is a worrying case in point.
I believe the most effective way to counter this depressing trend is to build support for greening the world at the grass roots. And there’s no more effective way to do this than engaging communities actively in projects on the ground. Good quality greenspace is vital for our health and wellbeing, yet a third of us can’t access it. Earthwatch’s Nature in Cities programme is helping to tackle these inequalities head-on by transforming school grounds, helping people create Tiny Forests amongst the concrete and tarmac, and inspiring the next generation to take action for our planet.
But it’s not just our cities that need transforming. In Europe, most of the land is farmed. Intensive agriculture, and the food system that drives it, has led to vast swathes of the landscape becoming a near ecological desert. But land can be productive, efficiently managed and positive for nature. Earthwatch’s Farming with Nature programme and citizen science toolkits are helping farmers across the continent to monitor and improve their soils, water and the wildlife on their farms and their supply chains.
Healthy soils support rich vegetation, clouds of insects and flocks of birds. But they’re also critical for Earthwatch’s third focus area - freshwater. Water stress is a growing problem across the World. In the UK only 14% of our rivers, streams and lakes are in good ecological condition and none of them meet chemical standards. There are lots of reasons for this, including sewage, which has been grabbing most of the headlines. But it’s the way we manage land that has the greatest impact of all. Earthwatch’s freshwater programme is supporting over a hundred communities across Europe and Africa to monitor 1,400 water bodies and help improve them. This isn’t just critical for wildlife – in many counties it’s crucial for human survival.
Earthwatch’s work isn’t just about taking practical steps on the ground such as planting trees, vital though this is. It’s about involving local communities in collecting and assessing the scientific evidence. This citizen science is at the heart of all of Earthwatch’s programmes. In June and September we ran a Great UK WaterBlitz, where we encouraged as many people as possible to gather data about the state of their local waterway over a weekend. The results were alarming, but they’re part of a growing weight of evidence that is forcing decision makers to think again. In the coming year we’ll be running two more WaterBlitz events, and I’d encourage everyone who cares about our rivers to get involved.
Science has been challenged, mocked and ignored by some in politics. But we can’t hope to reverse the destructive tide sweeping the planet unless we have the evidence to show what the problems are and how best to solve them. That evidence is most powerful if it’s owned and understood by local people rather than sitting in university libraries or behind paywalls. And it’s that sense of ownership that empowers communities to act. If we can engage enough people with citizen science, as well as in practical projects restoring nature, then I feel there is genuine hope for the future, in 2025, and beyond.
Harry Barton is CEO at Earthwatch Europe. Follow @Earthwatch_Eur
The opinions expressed in this blog are the authors' and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.
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