New investment zones, such as the one anticipated in Plymouth, will have relaxed planning laws, meaning there will be little if anything local authorities or communities can do to stop development, whatever the implications for green space.  Under the Retained EU Law Bill, laws that have protected threatened species and habitats for a generation are facing the guillotine.  And the new farming subsidy regime, which would have provided incentives to restore damaged soils, curb river pollution and bring back some of our lost wildlife, looks set to be drastically weakened or scrapped entirely.

Throughout all these announcements is a language of derision for the natural world, with frequent reference to “environmental burdens”.  This is a philosophy that sees a simplistic choice between economic growth or environmental protection, with one having to be sacrificed to make way for the other.

When it comes to nature, our political leaders have simply lost their way.  We have an ecological and climate crisis on our hands, and our government’s response – let’s just pour fuel on the fire!

There’s no shortage of reasons why this myopia is fundamentally flawed.  There’s the value our stunning landscapes and wild spaces bring to the economy - £2.5 billion in Devon alone.  There’s the growing body of scientific evidence highlighting the extraordinary range of services nature provides – cleaner water, flood control, carbon storage and a natural health service.  And there is the simple, undeniable truth that we simply can’t survive without biodiversity.  Healthy soils, a stable climate, abundant pollinators, the list goes on.  To wave a dismissive hand at all this is not just short sighted - it defies logic, a sense of perspective, a moral compass. 

At times when everything feels so chaotic and divided, it is helpful to remind ourselves of what unites us.  Grief is one of them, as we’ve recently experienced following the death of our longest serving monarch.  Another is our love of place, the beauty of our green island that feels part of our national psyche, and which has quietly powered the longest running and best developed green movement of any country, from the nature writers of the 18^th century to the broad coalition of NGOs, farmers, politicians and scientists of today.  This is not a movement rooted in philosophy or scientific argument, important though these are.  It is forged in our love of those fields, woods, hedges, seascapes and wild places that have personal meaning to us. 

Britain has never been a country of natural extremes – we don’t have the vast areas of wilderness such as the Amazon, the tundra or the steppe.  Our relationship with the natural world is much more intimate.  It can be seen in the private gardens and public spaces of Exeter as much as in the brooding hills of Dartmoor.  Our wild spaces feel as if they belong to us – we have shaped them, nurtured them, felt at home within them.  And that is why every change to our beautiful but crowded landscape, with the many competing demands on it, has to be thoughtful, considered and balanced.

The government’s cold-eyed obsession with economic growth cuts across all of this.  It has no room for beauty, complexity, stillness or natural rhythms.  Stimulating growth is a seductively simple message that sounds appealing, like “taking back control” or “making our country great again”.  But will it feel so great when green spaces on Plymouth seafront get sold off for hotels development?  When the hedges get ripped up and those patches of wild space near where we live go under the bulldozer?  Or when slurry and human excrement fill our rivers ever more often?

Economic growth divorced from people and planet is a heartless, abstract concept.   A huge wheel of commerce spinning ever faster.  But to what end?  Until every green space is built upon? Until every square metre of soil is degraded?  Until we all work ourselves into the ground as we strive to be more productive?  Growth alone will achieve little other than exhaustion and destruction. It has to be part of a narrative that improves our quality of life, and this is exactly why it must be planned carefully and with our natural environment at the centre.

It's the deep-rooted connection so many of us have with the natural world that gives me hope.  Over the last 12 years or so there have been various attempts by as many administrations to violate basic environmental protections.  These have largely been seen off by a public that knows in its heart that they are ill conceived.    

This latest attack is more serious and wide-ranging and is being led by a government that is perhaps more dogged and uncompromising.  But we will not let this happen either.  It’s up to all of us to show our government that – polite and reasonable though we may be most of the time, there are limits beyond which we will not be pushed.  The economic system is there to support us, not the other way around.

Here in the South West we like straight talking.  We vote for different political parties, we have different views on subjects like rewilding, species reintroduction and wind farms.  But one thing that unites most of us is our love of the region, its natural beauty and its sense of place, unrivalled anywhere else in the UK.  We must not let this government, or any other one, treat it as expendable.

Join our call to #DefendNature here