The possibility of everyday life amongst biodiversity
Peter Reynolds, BSc Environment and Development
In a recent article for the Guardian, Kate McCusker reported on residents of a Derbyshire town protesting a council decision to ‘rewild’ parts of their local green space. In the eyes of residents, it was becoming unusable. As maintained lawns were lost to thick vegetation, they complained about fire risk, ticks, lowered house values, hidden dog faeces, and the loss of space for their children and grandchildren to play. In a form of protest true to the nature of the problem, residents brought out lawnmowers and cleared these rewilding efforts themselves.
Image: Peter Reynolds
In a South London train station, similar politics were playing out as I passed through in late summer. Between the platforms stood a small patch of ground, no more than a couple of meters across, in which thick grasses spread beneath withering remnants of summer wildflowers. Above the scene was a sign fixed to a streetlight reading “Wildflower meadow and natural habitat in progress”. Underneath, in slightly smaller print “Please do not mow”. If there is a sign, so the logic goes, someone must have done it.
These two places tell a similar story. Despite their superficial differences, both are symptomatic of a rapid revaluation of biodiversity that has taken place in the UK over the past few years. Driven by the need to articulate national environmental policy post-Brexit and a surge of public interest in nature conservation and green spaces following the pandemic, a small but significant cluster of policies have been passed that suggest a sustained, well-funded and state-led effort for large-scale nature recovery. For example, the introduction of an Environmental Land Management scheme (ELM) ensures farmers could be paid for providing environmental goods such as rewilding parts of their land. To a similar effect, Schedule 14 of the Environment Act 2021 obliges developers to deliver a 10% Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) through the integration of natural habitats into development, or through paying for ‘biodiversity credits’, to offset the impacts of development.
These policies, initially intended as an intervention to change space, inevitably entail broader changes to ways of living. Just as the farmer must live differently when they cease to grow food and leave their land ‘to nature’, so too the urban dweller must alter habits when their local park is changed. In both cases, the regrowth of plants can be a very physical and immediate encroachment of space that can frustrate and anger communities, and a change seemingly directed by outsiders. In this context, is this vigilant mowing just another form of urban protest, like the graffiti artist reclaiming and reimagining the built environment through their work.
I have suggested that social relations and space are inextricably bound. If biodiversity policies are to garner support for their site-specific projects, a focus could be cast elsewhere: rather than directly changing space, interventions can be repurposed to empower communities to drive change that can meet the same ends. Though not identical in form and content, practices that people can support – community gardens, urban nature reserves – tend to produce an inspiring vision of sustainable living and provide opportunities for meaningful engagement through volunteering, growing food or creating thriving places.
The call to reverse damage to the state of nature in the UK is certainly an important one. However, I hope this article has shown that there is a tendency towards conflict when urban space is enrolled in this project by the mobilisation of planning mechanisms rather than people. This conflict has been embodied by ‘vigilante mowing’ as a form of protest. In response, conservationists, developers and city planners ought to carry themselves with an attitude of compromise when carrying out ‘urban rewilding’, and recognise that their decisions are informed by a partial perspective which cannot account for the complexity of the everyday. If they do not take up this demand, they might start to hear the hum of lawnmowers rising from the country’s rewilded parks and gardens, golf courses and roadsides and, it seems, train stations.