‘I will die in a quite different geological age’: David Attenborough mourns that ‘innumerable’ connections with the natural world are broken

Sir David Attenborough has warned that nature must not be viewed as an optional extra that’s “nice to have” and instead acknowledged as the “single greatest ally we have in restoring balance to our world”.

An essay by the renowned broadcaster and natural historian was published on Thursday as part of the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Living Planet Report 2020. 

The comprehensive study of biodiversity paints a bleak picture of the damage wrought by humanity. In less than 50 years, populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have collapsed by more than two-thirds. 

Sir David notes that humans have moved beyond the “Holocene” age - the past 10,000 years of climatic stability - which “allowed humans to settle, farm and create civilisations". The relatively benign conditions allowed populations to create the world as we know it today.

“Multinational businesses, international co-operation and the striving for higher ideals are all possible because for millennia, on a global scale, nature has largely been predictable and stable,” the broadcaster writes.

He points to Charles Darwin’s discoveries and how “all species have evolved over time to best exploit the conditions in which they live”.

More than 160 years after On The Origin of Species was published, we are still only beginning to comprehend the interwoven nature of life on earth, Sir David writes, and yet we are decimating those connections at a ferocious pace.

The WWF report found that intensive agriculture, deforestation and conversion of wild spaces into farmland are among the main drivers of biodiversity loss, while overfishing is “wreaking havoc with marine life”.

Species overexploitation is also having a devastating impact on wildlife, according to the report, among them unsustainable hunting, poaching or harvesting. They are driven not only by the need for subsistence but also the legal, and illegal, wildlife trade.

The Independent’s Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade campaign, launched earlier this year, seeks an international effort to clamp down on poaching and the illegal trade of wild animals.

Sir David, 94, writes how he belongs to a “dwindling” group of people who can say they were born in the Holocene.

“I will die in a quite different geological age,” he notes. “The Anthropocene - the age when humans dominated the earth. The age when innumerable natural connections were broken."

Humanity has yet to discover what our new Age will mean, he states, but that it is still within our grasp to create a more stable planet if we are prepared to make “systemic shifts” in food and energy systems, ocean conservation and use of natural resources.

“But above all it will require a change in perspective. A change from viewing nature as something that’s optional or ‘nice to have’ to the single greatest ally we have in restoring balance to our world,” he writes.

The broadcaster suggests that the “best tactic” may be to embrace the point at which we have arrived,  “to recognise that if we have become powerful enough to change the entire planet then we are powerful enough to moderate our impact - to work with nature rather than against it”.

For that, he writes, will require international cooperation, harnessing technology to tackle the climate crisis and beginning to restore the harm we have wreaked on the natural world.

It was also take an approach of “greater equality”.  

“The wealthier nations have taken a lot and the time has now come to give,’ he concludes.

Sir David has spent a lifetime as a writer and broadcaster, capturing the natural world in series such as Life on Earth, The Living Planet, Planet Earth and Our Planet. 

His latest documentary,  A Life on Our Planet, was released earlier this year.

"This film is my witness statement and my vision for the future – the story of how we came to make this our greatest mistake and how if we act now, we can yet put it right,” he said on its release.