Diversity of Diversities!!

(Warning: this is a bit serious!!!)

Biodiversity

It's good to emphasise the protection of species and organisms. This is important because there are all sorts of pressures on land use; even more so in an advanced commercial and industrial country. But it’s at the level of common observation that this should be registered. The ordinary observer is crucial. Over reference to specialisms I find disturbing. They work against the interests of the balanced conservation cause and lead to an increasingly internal debate among those who share the same language and discipline. At the same time non specialists become uneasy and back out of the dialogue unless they are prepared to risk being talked down to.

There’s more to countryside diversity than BIODIVERSITY. But you wouldn’t think so to listen to those who get their views heard in countryside matters. You can’t have a rational discussion of countryside issues without it being whipped from the bottom of the pack and used to trump any other cards played. Once they bring out their target lists and Biodiversity Action Plans nothing much else can get a look in.

But it’s the same story wherever you go these days: the things that get most coverage and greatest priority are those that can be put in statistical form. The man that wields the clipboard, the database and the latest statistical analysis wins the day.

What about landscape diversity? Aesthetic values – (commonly, but for some embarrassingly, known as beauty) don’t get much of a look in because of a contemporary dread of the subjective. This is misguided. Ultimately what gets the countryside valued is the collective commitment of those who use it. That is subjective and usually aggregates into similar likes and dislikes. What is ‘natural’ and what is ‘artificial’ we usually come down to agreeing on even when we’re partly ‘wrong’ and it’s the former that is mostly preferred. We badly need a vocabulary of aesthetic appreciation for the enjoyment of countryside. I hope if it ever comes along it will not be so formulaic that it turns off those who should be using and responding to it.

But there’s an instinctive recoil within me and many of my generation from the train-spotters of the conservation world. These professionals are busy counting species on their clipboards and databases leading to a compulsion to preserve or even redesign habitats that exceeds their awareness of the visual pleasures that first attracted us to the countryside. To paraphrase Wilde they know the statistics for every species but the value of none of them. A quote from an interesting article by Charles Warren suggests things may be turning just a little our way. I’m not sure they are and I’m not sure the writer altogether approves anyway.

Less tangibly, there is a move from hard science to soft emotions in decision-making. This entails a move away from the former exclusive reliance on scientific and economic
criteria (which sometimes had the effect of alienating people) towards broader, socially constructed, less quantifiable
criteria, including aesthetics, landscape values and spiritual
beliefs. The ‘expertocracy’ is giving way to stakeholders, many of them non-specialists, and participatory decision-making is the order of the day.

I like his word ‘expertocracy’, but the situation is worse than that. The genuine experts can be bad enough but inevitably there are numerous dubious characters who ride on the back of others’ ‘expertise’. They tend to rely heavily on the abstruse terminology and jargon of a new discipline to cow the laity, and it’s only later we discover they know less than the average careful observer.