Why we need a Natural Health Service for conservation and the environment

We pay for our NHS, but what about funding a Natural Health Service? After all, healthy ecosystems are ultimately essential for our survival.

The reality is that amid an ecological crisis, Britain depends upon thousands of volunteers to deliver vital conservation work. And after Covid-19, this practice looks set to become more entrenched in a global recession. The future of Britain’s greatly diminished wildlife is at stake if eco-literacy and other conservation work collapses even further.  

I have given my professional ecological expertise for free over two decades on all sorts of projects. Whilst it has enriched my life and that of many others in important ways, I am uncomfortable with the impacts that unpaid work has on many people.

The Conservatives introduced the concept of a Big Society: cutting public services and trying to fill the hole with free labour. But when it comes to the impoverished environmental sector, working unpaid has replaced quality and equality. Zero pay has become designed and budgeted into the system, and it is unsustainable.

The privilege and inequality within volunteering is a dark side to the spirit of generosity and goodwill that stops the conservation sector collapsing. For over a decade, public sector funding has been continuously stripped away, leaving an unspoken assumption that unpaid people will step in to fill any dire gaps. And although kindness is free, and we are an incredibly big-hearted nation, it is not fair.  

Volunteering does serve a purpose, but it should not replace paying for desperately needed professional workers. We are about to witness many charities slashing their budgets by huge amounts in response to pandemic impacts. Some conservation projects will collapse and the unpaid workforce will grow, and with it, more inequality.

Cuts will mean that less-privileged children are excluded from access to nature-rich experiences. I have seen that private-school students enjoy more field trips and more external educators, and that more middle-class school areas tend to find more free helpers. This system also discriminates against less-privileged working adults, the single parents who’d like a conservation career but have no fairy grandparents to do free childcare, as well as working families and black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) communities, who tend to be on lower incomes.  

Several charities, NGOs, the public sector, museums and even universities routinely rely on the commitment of free labour. Even government departments expect it. I’ve seen adverts from Natural England asking for volunteers to do important conservation monitoring work, for example. It takes years of training and experience to gain good ecological competency, and Britain’s nature is in serious decline, so why is this work considered worthless?

When I challenged one university on its practice of seeking students for unpaid conservation work, I received an abusive email from a senior lecturer for daring to question it. I have also challenged adverts from Natural England, the RSPB and others requiring full-time, unpaid, skilled work from people. These are proper jobs with uniforms and line managers and job descriptions and defined hours and responsibilities towards children and other people, but no pay. The volunteer recruiters say they have no choice.  

But society does have a choice. This heavy reliance upon volunteering is here by design, and it is undermining conservation in the long term. It is happening because of societal and government-level attitudes and because of a legal loophole that exempts the charity sector from minimum wage laws and, in doing so, laughs at the Equality Act.  

We need diverse and inclusive environmental education more than ever, amid a biodiversity crisis and poor eco-literacy, so we should be investing in it. The consequences of not doing so will be reduced environmental education and a brain drain from the environmental sector of highly skilled people. I have witnessed a lot of this. Many environmental workers who do get paid are frequently on zero-hours contracts, appalling pay rates or short-term contracts with no job security or employee benefits. No wonder they might quit the sector, or move abroad.

There is plenty of money in Britain. We are one of the richest nations on the planet, a country populated by tax-dodging millionaires and billionaires who squirrel their wealth away offshore or use it to destroy the planet with their high-flying, yacht-loving, high-consumption lifestyles.  

I refuse to be hoodwinked by post-Covid recession hogwash when I see the profits of banks, lenders and big industry and the size of the government bailouts offered to fossil-fuel-polluting giants, and the hundreds of millions it has squandered on dodgy PPE contracts to its mates, and the vast sums of tax avoided by giant corporations.  

In contrast, within conservation I continuously witness amazing people who earn the least and who give the most.

Britain can definitely afford to invest in a Natural Health Service to address the environmental crisis we face. That is, if those with the pearly purse strings wish to prioritise these vital issues.