Assigning a Value to the People-Nature Connection

We Can No Longer Ignore Our Connection to Nature

In my opening post welcoming and thanking you for popping in for a visit I gave a little insight into the types of things I may write and talk about. One of the things I spoke about was the magical dance and unique vibration of the people-nature connection in Zambesia and a few other places around the globe like the Amazon for example. I don’t plan to write exclusively about my passion for conservation and this subject, but I must confess that it may play quite a big role because it is the link between my other passions for safaris and media.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to make the argument that nature has no importance in our lives. In fact I would suggest that the young generations will embrace this fact better and where it was previously considered ‘geekish’ or ‘soft’ to ‘like or talk about ‘the wild’ it will be replaced as being an act that is ‘trendy’ and even ‘cool’. That’s already happening. As long as this newfound ‘nature-hip-lifestyle’ embraces the total picture then there is great hope for the future. By that I mean we must take care of ‘the whole’ and not focus on just ‘the few’. Conservation messaging, particularly in the west, has been centred around saving a few species – what we call ‘charismatic’ species e.g lions, tigers and elephants. Disney’s Lion King has helped this thinking. It is not wrong, but the message is too small on its own. Whilst that is a good start the true and lasting solutions come with the collective preservation of biodiversity and habitat, for it is the whole that gives rise to all species and ultimately makes up the connected and healthy ecosystem that is needed to preserve all species including ours. This is the basis of the good stuff that creates the people-nature vibration – that allows the magical dance to take place!

Click the photo below to see how our young kids are learning and loving being involved with nature!

United for Wildlife (UfW) Global Summit

Last week I was invited, as a co-founder of the Zambesia Conservation Alliance (ZCA), to London by the Royal Foundation to attend the United for Wildlife Global Summit. I joined my brother Robin (ZCA co-founder) and Sally-Anne Follett-Smith (ZCA Director Development) for the summit. As expected it was a real eye opener into the powerful support being galvanised against the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT). We were among 300 attendees and we met politicians, leaders of major law enforcement agencies like Interpol, multiple heads of banking and transport companies, as well as fellow conservationists from IWT source countries from across the world. HRH Prince William, the president of the Royal Foundation, attended and spoke to us with great passion about how the world’s 4th largest crime (worth over US$20 Billion and close on the heels of Terrorism, Drugs and Human Trafficking), IWT, needs to be stopped in its tracks. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity granted to us at ZCA to be a part of this global fight for good on our planet. Our role in all this is to leverage our ability as ZCA to facilitate connectivity and communication between our alliance of Outreach Partners and Strategic Partners and link that to the law enforcement and collaborative work of the UfW task forces. In March 2022 Robin, Sally-Anne and Nick Holme (ZCA Director Operations) arranged an IWT conference in Kasane, Botswana in partnership with the Royal Foundation, UfW and the Botswana British High Commission, an example of the role that ZCA plays as a connector and facilitator for key efforts being made by stakeholders .

The People-Nature Connection

Whether we choose to admit it or not we, as humans, are inextricably bound to natural world around us. We cannot be separated from the nature, as much as we might try to convince ourselves otherwise. Even if or when we succeed in having the first humans living on Mars (that seems to have become a priority for some) our dependency on nature will not abate. In fact, maybe only then will we realise the true value of the people-nature connection and let’s hope in the process we won’t be leaving behind one destroyed planet behind only to try and figure out how to revive a new and extremely hostile planet. Let’s just say that if we destroy this planet before we know even a micro-fraction of what gave it value then I think we are in for a rather rough time on Mars.

So Where’s the Value?

I shall look to discuss this People-Nature Connection in Zambesia and beyond in my posts to follow, but let me assure you that my statement about people and nature is not based on some kind of airy-fairy, superficial appreciation for fluffy cute animals. The facts and the signs to support what I am saying are there for all to see, should one choose to take a look. They are not new nor are they unfounded, people have reflected on this since we first gained consciousness, whenever that was…

What is quite hard to do is putting a finger on how to quantify the value of nature. We know that nature is around us (some have it around them more than others) and I think most, if not many of us feel good during and after we immerse ourselves in it. Let’s take a look at Nick Holme, our ZCA director for Operations. He has just completed a mammoth 895km walk around Lake Kariba, a #Walk4Life to support the increasingly undisputed link between nature and mental well being. Nick lost 15kg on his walk, but aside from that he can testify to what he continues to promote, which is that fresh air, rich habitats and sustainable community living alongside nature is not something to be ignored.

We have assigned no meaningful value to our connection to biodiversity and natural habitat, which poses a challenge. We are only now starting to think about how we might quantify this. We created money and so it would seem that the only way the majority of us can appreciate something is by giving it a price. That might seem crazy in this instance, but some are starting to have had a stab at it. Figures around US$30 trillion or more are being attributed to the current value of biodiversity and its benefit to humans. Check out this article from the Guardian about how land may be of more value if it is kept in its natural form, instead of farming it. I believe it is time we went further with our quantifying skills and at ZCA we intend to pursue this line. We have recently formed an MOU with Craig Beech from Regenerative Space to firstly start calculating the health of biodiversity in the Zambesia region and from there we can play role in hopefully starting to assign a meaningful value to it.

I take heart from the fact that some of us are waking up to our selfishness, we can start to see the feint outline of a picture that involves people-nature driven solutions. We are still trying to understand the detail of the human-biodiversity relationship and this is what is taking time. Are we clever enough to work it out before it’s too late for us? We are a complicated species, forever trying to understand ourselves – we are besotted by our own importance and nature is often perceived as being ‘just this other passenger’ that is on the ride with us. We forget our relevant insignificance. We only arrived on the scene at a few seconds to midnight. We are still not seeing ourselves truly as part of nature. Nature was always there and is rather likely to endure well beyond our existence – the cycles of species extinction would seem to suggest that. Nature is complicated and our self-appointed role as its custodians has shown itself to be fraught with many challenges. Probably chief among those is that our so called custodianship has brought pretty poor results. Even with our best intentions and just when we think we might be on a forward track we then discover that nature takes its own path. Admitting that we have made and continue to make errors is a start, but is it enough? We should not stop there, we must dig beyond the realisation and look for more solid actions we can take. Phew…. ok so this is all getting rather philosophical so let me leave it there for now! We can pick up on this more in future posts and discusions.

Thank you for reading this far. Do feel free to comment and be involved if this is a discussion that interests and fascinates you. I am far from being any kind of expert in this and I would love to get your views.