On the 23rd of December 2022, George Outhwaite, a painter from Staffordshire, shared a video he had made, via his Twitter account. The video shows the landscape change in a small area of England over the past 90 years. It does so via a series of changing aerial images, moving from old to new. It shows the fields change from small to large, and the associated eradication of hedgerows, ponds, scrub and rough patches of habitat. What it shows is nothing new, it is well known what has happened to the British countryside in recent times. But it shows it in a visually powerful way, that is striking to watch. At the time of writing this article the video has been watched almost 900,000 times.
One of the things that I find most interesting about this video is peoples responses to it. Many people have felt the need to blame someone for what has taken place in the video. Here are some examples:
A lawyer blamed everyone, stating that 'we are all in this together'.
One farmer blamed the 'needs of the public' driving the changes.
An environmental campaigner claimed that landowners do have 'agency over their land' and that they cannot be absolved of all the blame.
Another farmer felt that population increase should 'shoulder much of the blame here'.
Another farmer sought to focus the attention on 'development' being more of a threat to the countryside than the farming intensification/homogenisation shown in the film.
A director of a farming company blamed 'cheap food'.
An environmentalist blamed the 'increased mechanisation of farming'.
A farmer network member blamed '100 years of government policy'.
Who is to blame for the changes in our countryside? I don't have the answer. But it is likely to be all of the factors mentioned in the list above, and many more. The countryside is a complicated place, that responds to many pressures and drivers of change.
It is a shame (but not surprising - this is Twitter after all!) to see things like this descend into bickering and blaming. I don't think this was the response that George, the creator of the film, wanted. I think it was made to show what has happened, to reflect the real observations that George himself has witnessed in his part of England. As George himself says so eloquently: "I think the point is that we all live in this land, but we can never have any say what happens to it because it’s all property, you can never get attached to any part of it without the risk of it being torn up the next day, this is all I can do."
To be fair, many have reacted in the way that I think George wanted, with a sense of sadness at the loss shown in the film. I think for many, including myself, it brought to mind their own experiences exploring England. We all know of places where wildlife-rich habitat has been destroyed. It still takes place today, it is not just a thing of the past.
Understanding the reasons why something has happened (and is happening) is important, as it helps us to work out how to solve the problem. But casting blame, in an effort to deflect or preserve your industry/societal sector, doesn't help the situation. We won't fix our broken countryside with a blame mindset. We have to all acknowledge what has happened, and why, and our parts in it. Crucially we have to turn our energy away from blame to action. To focus on the actions that we can all do, at all scales, to start building nature back into the landscape.
If we can do that, then perhaps 90 years from now, someone will share an altogether different film.
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