Small is Beautiful

“It’s with no irony that the world’s foremost scientific institutions are now recommending that to save nature, what needs to be done is, well, save nature.”

– Jimmy Thomson in “One key solution to the world’s climate woes? Canada’s natural landscapes” The Narwhal

In a previous posting, I pointed out that The Netherlands was the first country in the world to create a habitat restoration plan. Now, Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford is speaking the dollar-friendly and possibly productively actionable language of “ecosystem services.” According to Andy Corbley, the Welsh planting initiative “is set to turn a large part of Wales back into the kind of magical places described in their beloved history… The forests will also provide habitat for endangered iconic Welsh animals, like the black grouse, Scottish wildcat, red squirrel, and the magnificent capercaillie.” This is good news for The Globe that kept the Forest of Arden alive in poetry.

Now, indigenous peoples accustomed to holding land and life sacred—and who have more than enough to do to hold their own—are coming to the fore and guiding wise policy in Canada. While saps who embody the sports paradigm for the sake of strangely-topped metrics abuse “the other team,” indigenous leaders are guiding thoughtful Canadians to see the harm in terms like “land use” and “land improvements” and to begin restoring the living future by using terms like “relationship” that imply that land is something that cannot be taken for granted and need not be carelessly abused.

For more, see the Narhwal series “Carbon Cache.”