Environmental improvement: safeguarding a valuable natural world

Before reimagining the standard approach to environmental action, society and politics first need to be convinced that environmental approaches should be considered at all. For many in society, the environment remains very estranged from their lives, so they may not be aware of the full range of ways that humans benefit from a healthy environment every day.

As social values evolve, change has already begun and public consciousness of environmental issues is increasing, though there are still polarised perspectives on the extremes. While a vocal minority are not supportive, the overwhelming consensus is the desire for a healthy environment. That desire is not a selfish one: even without complete knowledge of nature’s benefits, many people still care about the environment and want to see it thrive. If policy and evidence empower the quiet majority, the future will likely be shaped by environmental values that inevitably create a better world.

Although many people value the environment, it can be difficult to encourage decision makers to prioritise nature due to a focus on short term economic gains that are more aligned with political timescales. Science and economics have the potential to inform one another, working together to make the case that economic benefit and the value provided by a healthy environment are complementary, rather than contradictory.

Even when businesses and communities accept these visions and set ambitious goals to create a more sustainable world, there is a significant gap between intentions and implementation. Supporting sustainability is not enough on its own to create a better world, so a ‘business-as-usual’ approach which adopts the mitigation hierarchy in name – but not in practice – will leave ecosystems significantly depleted and plagued by many mitigated but still persisting environmental challenges.

For a better future, the mitigation hierarchy must be understood in the context of natural systems: small effects can come together to create immense consequences, so tolerating mitigated environmental harms cannot be society’s default position. The assumption must be that, whenever possible, environmental degradation does not happen in the first place, which requires the adoption of more robust expectations of environmental protection.

Rising environmental crises have increasingly made the ideal of environmental protection a mainstream position, though it still struggles to be prioritised in decisions linked to planning processes and the economy.

The folly of deprioritising environmental protection in favour of short-term economic gain has now been made apparent as environmental crises pose a serious threat to long-term economic stability and growth. It may still be possible to secure both economic and environmental benefits simultaneously, but environmental protection will have to play a fundamental role in shielding the long-term viability of natural assets that are critical for future social and economic prosperity.

As a baseline, environmental protection should be a shield against degradation; it should be a standard assumption that society does not degrade the environment in most circumstances, avoiding harm whenever possible. Upon that robust baseline, a more targeted and holistic use of the whole mitigation hierarchy could avoid projects or environmental interventions falling back towards the easiest option. Mitigation should be ‘the tip of the sword’ – a sharp point in the most extreme cases no other protection measure can reach.

Environmental protection is essential to safeguard the multiple benefits of nature. Mitigation, offsetting, and risk minimisation are useful tools where harm is unavoidable, though they cannot become default approaches. Society would benefit from going even further, not just protecting the environment against future harm, but instilling a positive desire to improve nature whenever humanity interacts with it.

It may be too much to hope for a future where environmental challenges have been fully addressed, but even in a post-crisis world, regenerating the environment is the only way to maximise the benefits that society and nature can achieve. That process of renewal cannot and should not wait. Working towards environmental improvement as soon as possible will create the healthiest environment for the benefit of people now and in the future.

Environmental improvement has already been embraced in principle throughout the environmental sciences, particularly in industry and consultancy where best practice is encouraging professionals to find ways to go beyond minimal approaches. Despite progress, two challenges are blocking widespread progress on environmental improvement.

The first is to spread best practice to secure a future where regulation is informed by evidence and where environmental professionals can access information and guidance through peer-to-peer learning and knowledge communities. The second challenge is to ensure that improvement takes place in practice and not just in name. Critical regulations and tools such as Impact Assessment have often struggled to overcome the perception that they are ‘box ticking’ exercises without real value.

Securing environmental improvement will depend on whether society can reimagine its understanding of value to be more inclusive of the many ways that nature benefits humanity. Environmental values have the potential to create a world which maximises the potential for environmental justice and integrated social, economic, and environmental benefits.