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Listen for geese. In the absence of airplanes they command the sky, announcing their business to streets devoid of hustle.
“In Dublin at this time of year you see the brent geese flying over most evenings,” says Mark O’Callaghan, a guide at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland, “and that’s something people can access just by looking up”. After enjoying our relatively mild winter, they return to the Arctic tundra in spring.
The author Aldo Leopold describes such a skein of geese as “a wild poem dropped from the murky skies”. If poetry is emotion finding thought, then these birds are keeping pace with a verse of budding hope for our association with the natural world.
Throughout the pandemic, stories have emerged around the globe of wildlife reclaiming human spaces; of birdsong amplified against a respite in traffic; and wildflowers thriving on unkempt roadsides. Mountain goats parading through a Welsh village; lions napping on roads in South Africa; and monkeys foraging the streets of New Delhi.
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In Ireland, staff at our national parks have caught regular sight of red squirrels, badgers and foxes, and a viral social media post claimed with optimism that “nature just hit the reset button”. There is a keen impression of planetary healing in our absence.
The fact of these stories is that it is too early to tell whether our stay-at-home lifestyles are having any significant benefits for wildlife. According to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, global CO2 emissions dropped by 17 per cent in the initial months of lockdown.
Manufacturing has probably decreased along with commercial exploitation of natural resources. But far from an emerging utopia, many of these effects are likely to be transient. At best, nature is catching a few short breaths after decades of environmental destruction.
What may endure, however, is a deeper human engagement with the natural world experienced by many during lockdown. Rather than debate the factual accuracy of environmental healing, we might do better to explore the apparent desire for reparation that the stories express.
“It’s too early to say that the pandemic has had a positive effect on biodiversity”, says Dr Aoibheann Gaughran, a researcher at Trinity College Dublin’s school of natural sciences, “but it’s definitely opened people’s eyes to what’s out there on their doorstep and helped them appreciate that more… yes, you may have seen foxes around where you wouldn’t necessarily see them before, or you just may not have been there to see them before because you were in your office or on a train or in a car”.
O’Callaghan agrees such changes are largely a matter of perception. “People’s worlds have shrunk and they are spending more time in their locality. They are having to look at things a bit closer.”
An emotional dilemma
What is significant here is the mindset that has facilitated our captivation by the stories, rather than any physical triumph for re-wilding. Being in the midst of the global adversity of coronavirus may predispose us to clutch stories of hope, a point raised by eco-engagement strategist Renée Lertzman.
Lertzman, who is based in California, is a researcher and educator who uses psychological insights to understand our approach to the environmental crisis. She suggests that relentless news of environmental destruction has led us to an arrested state of shock or melancholia.
Like the allegorical rabbit in the headlights, we are overwhelmed by the scale of crisis. It feels out of our hands and any instinct to reconnect with the discussion on issues of climate change or biodiversity loss is suppressed. In Lertzman’s own words, we are left “psychologically unable to translate [our] deep environmental concern into positive action”.
Rich and meaningful engagement with the natural world can create more hopeful conditions for us to consider environmental issues, says Lertzman. The pandemic might have facilitated interactions with nature that are reawakening a sense of care for it.
“Having an appreciation of the biodiversity around us is particularly important if we think about tackling the biodiversity crisis and climate change, because those things are two sides of the same coin,” Gaughran notes. “If you can start to appreciate and care for what’s around you then you’re more likely to take action to protect those things because they become more tangible.”
When we recognise that the substance of nature is within our touch then protecting it becomes a matter of empathy rather than a fear response to statistics and projections. A commotion of starlings or the glint of moisture on a spider’s rain-sodden web strike softer and deeper than the indefinable reckoning of two degrees of global warming or net zero carbon goals. As important as these figures are, they do not achieve the same emotive response.
Green Recovery
In 2019 climate change was rarely out of the spotlight as millions of people mobilised in demand of climate justice and schoolchildren were rallied in strikes and protests. While gaining some public recognition, the scale of urgency appeared not to be reflected by governments and industries.
Criticism has been rife around so-called “green-washing” through hollow declarations of a climate emergency paired with policy tokenisms. If, however, a renewed vitality has taken root during the pandemic, then it comes at a time when humankind has been forced to marshal response to universal crisis.
In a matter of months, planes have been grounded and consumption has slowed. The strongest efforts to overcome the pandemic have been based on scientific evidence, which is also a pillar of environmental recovery. The spheres in which we live our lives have shrunk as we become embedded in smaller local communities.
Pandemics typically spill from the perfect storm of industrial agriculture and environmental destruction, with Covid-19 originating at an animal market. It is a symptom of an eco crisis that is likely to raise its head with greater ferocity in the future. We are demonstrating that global scale changes in human behaviour can beat it down, but we’ve also learned that the cost isn’t being borne equally.
Any effort to “re-green” our cities, lands and economies would need to support equitable access to nature, among other crucial services. The pandemic has highlighted inequalities that extend to socio-economic barriers preventing access to wild spaces.
During lockdown, not everyone has enjoyed the benefits of a garden or local park. This is particularly true for people living on the margins of society, the elderly, and those with mobility issues. Opportunities to experience nature have fundamental benefits for human wellbeing, and these should be open to the breadth of our communities.
Many world leaders, particularly in the European Union, have acknowledged the possibility of a “green recovery” from the pandemic. “Biodiversity and the climate crisis are more front of mind for businesses and politicians,” agrees Gaughran, adding “they’re thinking of ways of working with nature to continue running the economy in a sustainable manner”. The benefits from such enterprise need to be shared equitably if they are to be genuinely successful.
Wild inspiration
Over the winter, stories of environmental healing have lost pace, but our thoughts on their legacy need not. While there is plenty for governments and businesses to ponder, perhaps we should seize our present solitude as a chance to review our individual place in the meshwork of change. If it transpires that a post-pandemic society has an increased desire for ecological reparation, then now might be the time to map its course.
"It's partly about just getting out there yourself and taking in nature," says O'Callaghan. Gaughran suggests looking to our own gardens and local spaces, planting native species and getting involved in citizen science. Biodiversity Ireland runs a number of public projects and Bird Watch Ireland has just launched its winter bird survey.
For anyone heading out at this time of year there is still an abundance of wild inspiration. “It’s just less obvious,” O’Callaghan says. Wading birds congregate on our shores and it is the season for planting native trees. In a few short months, the verges will abound with wildflowers and a chorus of finches might be interpreted as a rally to action. And the geese will fly north, returning in anticipation, perhaps, of our next crucial steps.