SECA member Deborah Smith has contributed this personal review of Guy Shrubsole’s new book The Lie of the Land in order to raise awareness of the land ownership issues it highlights and perhaps stimulate thought and discussion. She’s found it an important read and is keen to engage with others on the topics it raises.
Is there anything much more fundamental than the land we and countless other creatures live on and from? Isn’t it vital that those privileged to own it are legally accountable to society for how they treat it? And yet, aren’t land ownership and land use in England also shrouded in obfuscation and misunderstanding?
These are some of the key questions raised by Guy Shrubsole’s latest myth-busting book, The Lie of the Land, which one reviewer suggested “should be compulsory reading in schools”. Subtitled “Who really cares for the countryside?” it is the full package – a factually rich, well-referenced critique of past practices and the status quo, a policy recommendation manual and a call to intelligent reaction, all wrapped up in Guy’s ability to write sentences that are simultaneously searing and entirely reasonable. Within this book is the truth about the terrain of Britain, especially England. The countryside is not the fair and benign place so many of us believe. It is a place where the environmentalist’s adage that “the polluter pays” is too often turned on its head: we, the public, fund private polluters, often very wealthy ones.
Each chapter offers many revelations – beyond the dangerous maths that 50% of England is owned by 1% of the population, he details centuries of profound and enduring damage by the “custodians of the countryside”, be they corporations and businesspeople, the Duchies and other landed aristocracy, the Church, farmers, the Ministry of Defence, etc. Between them all and over time, no species has been left to natural processes, no ecosystem remains intact. From the enclosures to the draining of the fens, to the burning of moorland, to the “hobby” introductions of invasive species, to the wildlife-killing hobbies of the gratingly not good, it becomes evident that too many landowners are primarily custodians of their own interests. Supporting this conclusion is Guy’s description of the very long history of political rejection of any serious attempt at land-use or land-ownership reform, or of including farming and forestry activities in the planning system (apart from to a limited degree in National Parks).
Whilst paying detailed tribute to brave and principled nature friendly and regenerative farmers, Guy urges us not to be distracted – there aren’t nearly enough of them and those who try can face hostility from regressive, powerful landowners and their advocates, such as the National Farmers’ Union and the Country Land and Business Association. As Guy said in a recent talk to the Royal Geographical Society, “we must pay more attention to those doing harm”.
In effect, he argues, the majority of landowners are enabled to commit ongoing damage to nature, ecosystems and community connections with the natural world, either by accident or design. In the most stable of Holocene times this would be deeply unpleasant but in an era of climate and ecological breakdown it is suicidally unacceptable.
Peppered with killer facts, it is hard to choose which ones to highlight. There is a telling statistic which demonstrates that even areas legislated to be most protective of nature/wildlife – the Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) – are not safe in private hands. “Less than half of English SSSIs are in favourable condition and many others are declining”. Just 16% of SSSIs contained within land owned by water companies are in good condition, although perhaps the negligence of that particular landowning sector is not such a surprise.
Stewarding the Stewards
The heart of Guy’s position is that the self-proclaimed stewards of the land must be transparently accountable in law for what they are doing to it, accompanied by a five-year plan of improvements. He proposes an Ecological Domesday Survey – all those with 1000 acres or more must produce regular reports of their stewardship accompanied by a digitised map, a baseline ecological survey and a plan eg to meet international nature goals such as the highly promoted 30% of land protected for nature by 2030. At present, the UK is only 3% of the way there. A logical conclusion of this obligation could be that if landowners don’t comply, the land can be compulsorily purchased in the national interest.
Complementing this should be a raft of new laws and data collection, with shifts in powers and oversight by institutions. Guy advocates for a national land-use strategy which would also necessitate full transparency about all land ownership. He believes we need to take back control of vital carbon sinks like grouse moors before it’s too late, with legislation to ban moor burning and driven shooting. And why not enact a Community Right to Buy law, just as exists in Scotland, allowing communities first refusal to buy available land, supported by a fund to aid purchase?
National Parks have to work very hard to persuade private landowners (who own the vast majority of their territories) to be more nature-friendly, so why not take more land into public hands via a Public Nature Estate, as so many other countries do, like the USA, Japan and Germany? To make this work he says, a bolstered Natural England must be free from political control by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
‘Twas Ever Thus?
The blocks to all this are obvious and have so far prevailed. Hence a call to action for all of us. If we citizens, nature-lovers, activists, scientists and politicians really want democracy to work in favour of the majority of people, responsible farmers and the rest of nature, we must become more vigilant in raising questions about what we see going on in the fields, forests and rivers around us. This means joining campaigns like Wild Card or Operation Noah and lobbying our political representatives for any of Guy’s suggested policies. It could mean supporting community-based funds for land buyouts.
We would also do well to lose any squeamishness about challenging landowners’ negative practices, and to reject the long- encouraged belief that it isn’t really any of our business. Yes, it really, really is.
Deborah Smith has been a local election campaigner for the Green Party in Arun as well as being involved with various climate and nature related campaigns for the last five years, including Extinction Rebellion, Restore Nature Now and Just Stop Oil. She can be contacted at smithdeborah394@yahoo.com. The views expressed here are those of the author. The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole is published by HarperCollins.