Emma Marris: 'It's a bit more complicated than that'

In this taster episode we speak to the award -winning writer Emma Marris who offers a fresh and challenging view on some of the issues around conservation and nature recovery.

We'd really encourage you to check out more of Emma's writing. You can find links to her articles and books at:
https://www.emmamarris.com/

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within this podcast are those of the speakers alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

The work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is made possible thanks to the support of the Leverhulme Trust.

Transcript

stephen thomas: 0:05

Welcome to the nature recovery podcast. We're going to take a closer look at some of the solutions to counter biodiversity decline. And we'll find out more about the people behind these ideas. Hello, and welcome to the nature recovery podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Thomas. This just a short one, but I hope it gives you a taster and Ally she's going to explore more of her work, which is highly recommended. Okay, over to Emma. I'm joined today by Emma Maris Emma merit is an award winning environmental writer. She has written for many publications, including the Atlantic freedom and flourishing in the nonhuman world was published. And I personally loved it. Of all the writing of MS that I've read, it's not only been enjoyable, but it's given me a great education around some of the issues in conservation. And it's also really challenged me, many of the aspects in

Unknown: 2:08

It's a pleasure to be here.

stephen thomas: 2:09

Thank you. Okay. So we are the Leverhulmee Centre for nature recovering. And so whenever anyone comes on the show, we'd like to ask them what nature recovery mean to them. And I think of all the people I've spoken to so far, your book actually wild. So it really made me question

Emma Marris: 2:35

Well, and in fact, since I got here, I've been asking people recover to what the notion of recovery implies that there is a single sort of correct or healthy state for any particular ecosystem to be in. And that's something that I've challenged in both of those books that you actually a valid, deeply value laden human conversation about what we want our landscapes to look like, and what they should have in them and how they should function. So recovery, to me sort of implies that it's the correct state has settled, whereas I maintain that it is up for debate, what the

stephen thomas: 3:59

Absolutely. And like I said, I think I think the stuff that I read by yours really made me think about that, especially when, you know, you have the glorification of the Holocene, and actually when things were found, but who found them in what state? And there's a lot of kind of if I was to get you as you're here. Yeah. And you're not charging the hourly fee. Yeah. Where would you Where would you kind of?

Unknown: 4:46

Yeah, I think I think that what he's about reconnection is actually definitely a useful, potentially more useful framework than this notion that okay, there's there's state x that is correct, and all other states are incorrect, and we must get it back. To state it just, you know, whatever what we're seeing is not ideal. Maybe there's very low biodiversity, maybe there's maybe it's, you know, eroding into the sea, maybe it's a big toxic algal bloom and nobody can swim in it. You know, there's lots of reasons why a system might be not working for us or not working for the organisms temperate rainforest restoration, which is something that's quite trendy and new at the moment. I'm, I'm just as enthused about this myself, but But you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to kind of perfectly imitate exactly what these rainforests would have looked like in your dock. future. You know, I think a lot of the interest in, in restoring landscapes is also in restoring lost relationships between people and other species.

stephen thomas: 7:03

Yeah, I find that fascinating. And we we had a gay structural come to the centre, and obviously, it's really sad. I missed that time. Yeah, it was great. And you know, and that, that kind of that cultural point of someone actually saying, look what we have or had or what we could love for us, but they're kind of this climax vegetation, you know, the apex of where things go to, but when, you know, when you talk to people about scrubland, and like nettles, and we it just doesn't sound as appealing, but for biodiversity they can be they can be

Unknown: 7:53

fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah, I mean, I think what's sort of just interesting to think about it in a place, you know, like the UK is that a given site could have multiple potential valuable future states, you know, you might have someplace that you could either envision as returning to

stephen thomas: 8:34

Yeah. And certainly, when it comes to financing, that's one of the controversies of, you know, biodiversity net gain is it doesn't, it doesn't consider the potential of a site. You know, the, the we kind of the way it's measured in terms of biodiversity is, is very static and habitat studies thrown in, which really challenged the way I thought about conservation. Writing a book is not something that anyone does lightly. So I'm interested really, in what was the inspiration for writing it. And given that your writing definitely changed a number of my preconceptions, and I can

Unknown: 9:52

Yeah, the reason I wrote this book is because I had questions that I didn't have answers for. And so I thought, well, I will, I will. I will figure this out. I will come to you know, and one of the central questions that I had was how to sort of reconcile conservation ethics, which tend to interested in trying to reconcile these two kind of ethics was that, in my writing about subjects, like invasion biology, and sort of new conservation approaches, I was noticing that a lot of conservation actually has to do with killing animals. Because in many situations, and this is especially true this, and I wasn't as familiar with the sort of animal welfare or animal rights side of this stuff, because I've been an environmental reporter for most of my career. So I was interested in learning more about that. What you know, how do we decide which animals deserve moral worth? You know, is an this idea that the best thing to do is to let nature take its course. And that's how I was taught to basically approach wild animals as they're doing their thing, and you just leave them be. But in a world that we've so radically reshaped that we've heated up that we've changed the these ecosystems, had, and the book was really my journey to try to sort them out and come to some kind of conclusions. I was hoping that I would come to some sort of magical algorithm that you could use to to figure out these some of these moral dilemmas. And I am going to provide spoiler now, which is that it

stephen thomas: 13:20

No, I did. The last the last chapter. So I did I found very helpful because I was kind of going into a tailspin of, of sort of flipping around. But there is some very useful kind of concrete pragmatic guidance, I guess, in there, but it's interesting, just you know, literally them because that's the their invasive species. But having read your book, I was like, Okay, no, you're this is someone that's dealing with an individual animal and that this is a very, very different thing. So I have tried to give her some advice. I don't think there's much that you can do would come and visit okay, and that gave her whatever great hope during a time of stress. Yeah, many other factors going on there. I think she preferred the school to me at some point, but it's but yeah, yeah, those those those individual relationships are sometimes even more powerful than with at the moment, is that grappling that the complexity and Conservation of Nature recovery, and your book definitely educated me on this, but it's probably just made me realise that every page that I turn in with everything, always, you know, the, the answer in science tends to be was like, Well, the savanna rule, you know, Pete in our ecosystems, and suddenly, it's like, okay, maybe just planting trees isn't isn't the answer. And I think an example of your book is, you know, the, the dingo population where Australia's spending vast amounts of money fencing off, and we say, fencing and things would start to be kept in check. Not everyone agrees with that. But it's actually there's no simple way of defining who is right and who is wrong. And what's best without kind of just going well, let's try it and see what happens. At the same time, have this kind of this message of, well, drink a Coke, you'll be fine is. So how do you balance that? Those those sort of complex narratives versus the simple narrative, and also against the fact that, to me, the most powerful thing I feel a lot is, you know, we are running out of time, it's getting worse, we've got to do something. And, against this backdrop of we need to act because time is running out?

Unknown: 17:59

Great question. I sort of feel like it's actually more complicated. And that could, you know, I'm always searching for arguments that you can fit on a t shirt, and like that actually, is the right answer a lot of times, and you can put it on a t shirt, it's actually more complicated than aren't as stupid as we think. Or as people think. People can handle complexity. You know, people are interested in complexity, these these kinds of complex conundrums about we know whether certain animals should be controlled so that other populations can thrive and where should you have trees and

stephen thomas: 19:03

So that was just an excerpt from a lovely conversation I had with Emma. Hopefully we'll hear more from her. Throughout the series. We've got some great guests coming up. Next, we're going to be talking about ash dieback, and we're going to be talking about the social sciences that in the show. All right. Thanks and have a great week. You've been listening to the nature recovery podcast with me Stephen Thomas. Please don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts And if you can please consider leaving us a review, as it will really help other people to find us.