Public views on the challenges facing policy and decision makers to manage the natural environment have been laid bare in a major national project.
The School’s most recent appointment, Dr Robert Fish, led the project whilst at the University of Exeter . The project report reveals that people value their natural environment for a range of cultural and health benefits and its contribution to human livelihoods and prosperity.
As well as being important for economic activity, the natural environment is viewed as a place to enhance relationships with family and friends; encourage physical exercise; enable inner peace and mental calm; reconnect with the past; and find meaning in life.
A key finding of the report is that people support the need for making a strong economic case for the environment, yet it emphasises that we should be careful not to think about the natural environment as a ‘bottomless pit’, but as something that helps us to function: therefore, we need to cherish and look after it.
The ‘Naturally Speaking…’ public dialogue process was run in partnership with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) , the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Sciencewise , the UK’s national centre for public dialogue in policy-making involving science and technology issues.
(Picture by Luke Warm.)