Conservation or Regeneration? The changing language around planet protection
As the world becomes increasingly focused on our planet’s future, the language we are using is changing. The planet is no longer experiencing ‘global warming’, it is experiencing ‘global heating’ and this situation is not just creating climate change, it is leading to ‘climate breakdown’ and creating a ‘climate emergency.’
These changes may be subtle, but they reference the immediacy of the issue, with the aim of accelerating the desired response. Major news organisations have embraced the terminology and political figures are deploying sharper language in formal statements, with more consistent use helping to elevate public understanding of the urgency involved.
The same too is happening around the language of conservation.
The recent Ocean with David Attenborough film, which Arksen and 10% for the Ocean co-produced, demonstrated the clear urgency of the challenge ahead, whilst also clarifying that the opportunity for positive change is there; that the ocean can recover beyond what we could conceivably imagine, if it is just left alone to do so.
That concept delivers a crucial point. We have only truly been able to explore beneath the ocean surface for the last sixty to eighty years, since the invention and popularisation of Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (Scuba) gear, which was first developed and used in 1943 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Émile Gagnan.
By the time we could see beneath the ocean, significant damage had already been done to it. Commercial bottom trawler fishing had been in operation for centuries, decimating the gigantic kelp forests and seagrass meadows, while dredging, sewage discharge and sedimentation had already damaged large-scale coral reefs.
As a result, the term conservation seems wholly inaccurate for the mission ahead. An extremely passive and backward-looking phrase, especially in the face of the escalating crises, it implies freezing nature in time; simply seeking to conserve what is left, rather than to seeking to actively improve it.
Protecting the ocean
Arksen and 10% for the Ocean, and charities like it, are not aiming to protect , they are actively trying to improve ocean health. It regulates our climate, produces over half the oxygen we breathe and absorbs much of the CO2 we emit, yet it receives less than 0.05% of global charitable giving. A staggering oversight of the system that keeps us alive.
This chronic underfunding has left the ocean largely unprotected. If we don’t change how we fund ocean recovery, we risk losing the foundation of life itself – and developing the drive and desire within people to achieve this will come from the language charities like Arksen and 10% for the Ocean use to communicate the challenge.
Conservation, for example, is a word stemming from old models, and it is also mostly applied to nature and natural environments – excluding communities of people, who rely on the ocean and are also such an important part of the picture. It has a singular focus, rather than combining humans and the natural environment into a holistic viewpoint.
Conservation traditionally meant preserving nature in its existing or original state – but in many places, especially the ocean, forests and biodiversity hotspots, we have passed the point of needing to ‘keep things as they were’ with entire ecosystems degraded, species vanished and climate tipping points being crossed.
What exactly are we wishing to ‘conserve?’ In fact, where is there a place on Earth that would like to lock in exactly as it is now?
There are many terms that, instead, provide a more forward-looking perspective. For conservation, now read regeneration. The aim not to just ‘protect’ but to ‘restore’ and work towards a ‘nature-positive’ solution where we, as a generation, are leaving nature in a better state to the way we found it. These statements feel more active, inclusive and honest.
The same goes for sustainability. What are we trying to sustain as is? And why would we even want to?
When the term sustainability was first coined, it implied managing resources in a way that meets our needs today, without compromising those of tomorrow. Now, where we are today, it implies sustaining something that is already broken, based on a linear economic model of unlimited resources.
As with the term ‘conservation’ it feels static; a preservation of the status quo, rather than a dynamic process of improvement. For sustainability, now read circularity or regeneration. These emphasise not only reducing and eliminating waste and maintaining resource flows but actively creating systems that sustain themselves.
Circularity reduces the need for new inputs; it is a loop, not a line. In Arksen’s vessels, for example, that refers to the use of recycled materials rather than new resources; the ease of maintenance and repair, to maximise lifetimes; and end-of-life planning, which ensures as much of the resource as possible in the vessels is assigned to a future use.
Regeneration seeks to go beyond this, to heal, enhance and enrich natural systems, reviving biodiversity and restoring relationships between people and nature. When it comes to ocean health, this is the focus; the creation and active management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to create environments teaming with life, that can spill over into the rest of the seas.
The planet as one
As showcased in Ocean with David Attenborough , the richness of environments that can be created by protecting even the smallest of marine areas will deliver a diverse ocean the likes of which we have never seen before. That, in turn, can create a fountain of life that provides abundant food for all, including humans, in fully natural circularity.
The climate crisis, however, is about the entire planet, not just a part of it.
Through recent decades, the focus has been on protecting rainforests as the ‘lungs of the planet’; creating sustainable energy to power our future on reduced emissions; and saving ever-scarce species from extinction. Each has its own challenges and ambitions, but their individual singularities have led to a dislocated approach to global healing.
One element that has been sorely neglected is our ocean. Described by the UN as “the world’s great ally against climate change” it generates 50 percent of the oxygen we need, absorbs 30 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions and captures 90 percent of the excess heat generated by these emissions.
It is, without doubt, the planet’s most vital, and most connected resource – and the terminology around it is also changing to reflect that.
Despite there being five named oceans on the planet – the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, the Southern and the Arctic – when you look at a map, they are all clearly interconnected. Considered purely in their scientifical sense, the world’s five oceans become one, singular ocean, making up more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface.
The division into ‘oceans’ is simply our terrestrial point of view – but the ocean is neither manmade nor separated by borders; it is a single body of water that works as a whole to help make life on Earth possible. This is a critical perspective, as it reinforces the notion of its – and our – complete interconnectedness.
Wherever we are, what happens in one part of the ocean affects another. The health of this one global ocean should be one singular focus – and not about conserving it or sustaining it as is, but about creating a circular future; developing regenerative processes; and turning a breaking industrially-focused planet into one with a nature-positive future.
