Category: Environment

Custodians of wondrous places

Glittering fish amongst the coral. Seagrass meadows the size of Dorset. Rat-hunting giant drones. A fortnight ago at the Chagos Conservation Trust AGM, I was indulged again in views of paradise.

A world full of people has little room for wonder. The shores of the Indian Ocean are teeming with mankind, reshaping everything we touch into an artifice to serve out turn. A view of how nature can mature in the absence of man is a precious insight, and it is beautiful.

The islands are not wholly untouched:  rubbish washes up on these shores from the seas around – the ocean is filling up with the detritus cast off from fishing boats, the packed coastlands of India, Ceylon and Sumatra, the foulness of Thilafushi Island (and discarded Starships). Inevitably it poisons fish, snares turtles and washes up even on what should be the pristine islands of the Chagos Archipelago. The giant drones dropping poison on rats (another legacy of man) have also been carrying off heaving sacks of rubbish from the beaches.

Paradise does not maintain itself. Fishing boat prowl, awaiting a gap in the Royal Navy’s vigilance, to strip the reefs of fish and dump more rubbish overboard; rats and introduced invasive species need to be cleared. Even a thousand miles of ocean are not a wall against the outside world, alas.

Into this role comes the Chagos Conservation Trust. Their surveys and statistics teach us and instruct us. Their work teams strive to restore natural balance. The one clean part of a tortured ocean depends on such work. The preservation of the islands relies on the Marine Conservation Area – if that is removed, or not enforced, the world will fall upon the islands in its foulness, never to be restored.

Guarding paradise

The final destruction of the Indian Ocean is about to begin. Such grim thoughts hovered over the meeting of the Chagos Conservation Trust: people of astounding dedication to the one remaining preserved region of the great, tortured sea.

The depth, and world-level importance, of the work carried out in the Chagos Islands by the Trust and those whom they support, cannot be underestimated. My eyes were wide as I listened to just a snippet, from those who have observed and restored, the islands. An ocean whose coasts are teeming with humanity, stripping and fouling the seas, has one, single haven of pristine expanse where fish may swim free and breed, and living coral reefs and their islands breed life into a dying ocean.

I now know more about giant coconut crabs than I ever thought I would – having previously only seen a specimen in the Rothschild collection in Tring, of a size that would be unbelievable were it not there to see, I have now learnt of its lifecycle, development, tree-climbing ability, predation and much more beside. That though is just the hors d’oeuvre:  the reefs, banks and islands have a feast of wonder, that is preserved only because the islands are defended from the hand of man; or rather by the Royal Marines.

Fishing boats do trespass upon the banks:  they are part of the Chagos–Laccadive Ridge, extending south from the Asian continental shelf and an easy temptation for the fishermen of India, the Maldives and Ceylon. “And this is no more than his own conservation requireth”:  those fishermen have seen their livelihoods shrinking season by season as the ocean is emptied of fish by industrial trawlers.  It is in their best interests to see the Chagos banks thrive, to keep the ocean alive, but the next day’s meal is more important than how their children will live. It is the tragedy of the commons played out at sea. Without the Royal Marines, the banks would be stripped bare in a few years.

The wonders of the islands have been lately dismissed by the Foreign Office, desperate to call them foreign. If they see just the specks on the water on a flat map, and not the paradise above and mostly beneath the waves, how can they understand?

Put the map away and look on the ground. See the ruffles in the white coral sand made by countless baby sea turtles making their way to the water, hear the deafening call of the seabirds, of so many varieties the book of them is a hefty volume (and its author was in the audience); see islets springing tall trees, climbed by crabs; look beneath the two thousand square miles of protected ocean and see the eighty species of shark and ray, telling of a thriving ecosystem; the hundred species of coral, the eight hundred species of fish, and hear the whalesong.

That evening I learnt of the unique, dynamic environment of the Diego Garcia barachois, the insects and tiny creatures, the crabs, and active work: the elimination of invasive rats on the Peros Banhos islands, restoration of habitats, efforts to persuade Indian fishing communities to keep away. I was charmed by the profusion of dolphins and great whales about the islands, mainly unseen but not unheard.

The preservation of this well-spring of life comes from dedicated volunteers and from the guns of the Royal Marines. The threat to destroy it comes from politicians.  Handing these Asian islands over to a distant state a thousand and more miles distant will end them. The sea will be open to fishermen – maybe Mauritian fisherman would not venture so far across the world, but they can licence to waters to Chinese factory trawlers. The azure lagoon waters too will attract dynamite and concrete.

I sat in wonder at this one, last free part of the ocean – this may be the last chance to see it.

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Save the Indian Ocean

In the Indian Ocean is a wonderland of brightly coloured coral reefs and wildlife of a richness barely seen elsewhere. The Indian Ocean is dying, but there is a reserve where life can breathe, and from there feed the rest of the ocean. These are the Chagos Islands. They are in danger.

The most important little islands in the world, they have been called. The islands lie at the navel of the world: Diego Garcia provides a deepwater naval base and an air base from which the world can be watched and its disturbers can be struck. It is a guarantor of strength, and of peace. To the west is the coast of Somalia, and from Diego Garcia the Royal Navy and United States Navy can patrol to suppress the pirates that sail from that coast. If the navies were not in the Chagos Islands, the pirates would be, and world trade would be mauled mercilessly from here.

Just as important for the world are the reefs and banks themselves. Clear of populations and fishermen and pollution, the coral can thrive and sea-life can thrive. The variety of corals and fish and all manner of life here defies description.  The immense number and variety of sharks alone tells of how rich the reefs are in fish: some 16 species of shark are found here. Teeming shoals of shimmering fish coat the reefs, and hide in the crannies, fed by and themselves feeding a lively eco-system.

One cannot understand the nature of this place by bland surface maps that show a few tiny islands and no more.  The islands, few and small, are just the tips of vast structures beneath the surface. The Great Chagos Bank, north-east of Diego Garcia is a shallow sea surrounded by a huge ring of coral encompassing some 4,900 square miles of the ocean. The islands are the few places where the reef merges above the surface, but the reef itself is vast, nurturing life across a swathe of ocean.

Such life it is: shallow seas bring life, so while the deeps of the ocean become a desert, here on the shallow banks is a well of thriving sea-life. There are more than 300 hundred types of coral here, and countless fish, both prey and predator, all dependent upon each other and the web of life this unique place provides.

In an ocean which is dying, this protected territory is vital. The fishermen of India, Ceylon and the Maldives are coming home with dwindling catches as industrial fishing boats trawl the life out of the Indian Ocean. Their shorelines are befouled with plastic waste, old nylon nets and anything that man may cast heedless into the sea, and which itself chokes the life out of it. In the British Indian Ocean Territory though, a quarter of a million square miles of ocean has been declared a reserve. The life can return here, the fish that have been denuded from the seas of India can form breeding populations. It may start to restore the whole ocean.

It has to be enforced:  fishing boats from the Maldives and India do enter the islands, and are seized by the Royal Marines.  If the protection is lifted, the islands will be dredged clean, the corals smashed, plastic waste will coat the shore and oil and toxins will kill the life of the reef. The ocean’s best chance of life will be ended. Really, the suffering fishermen of India and the Maldives should demand that the reefs be protected in order to protect their own future, but  they will look only to the next catch, and the Chagos reefs look too tempting.

The lusting eyes of the Mauritian government have been cast on the islands, now in their grasp. They have said that the coral will be smashed in order to place colonists on the islands, whose waste will destroy them. Fishing boats will head here to strip the banks clean.

It may be too late, and we have just a short time to enjoy the blessings this paradise has given to the ocean. I hope it is not.

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Green sermons

The Church of England abandons Christianity for a week or two when adjured to mark ‘Creationtide’. The vicar is often too embarrassed, and hands the church over to laymen to preach. That is a bad sign.

To celebrate God’s unfathomable provision of his wonderful creation is a worthy thing. To preach unbiblical green politics is a shame, but that is common at a modern Creationtide service. The Vicar is displaced by worryingly keen congregants, and worship is out of the window, in favour of fallacies,  idolatries, and facile condemnation of all but that which  should be condemned.

We have been given an amazing world, of infinite variety, of provision for life and death, of succulent fruits and meats, and plants and beasts to serve our needs, or to sicken and kill. The maintenance of all that is wholesome is a service to mankind. It is not a selfless service:  Adam Smith reminds us that ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’, and so with all farming and industry. That is the fault found in these green sermons.

I have heard prayers read that are positively malicious against mankind, and if they mention God at all it is only as an embarrassed hook for the political message.  (There is a word for taking the Lord’s name in vain.)

Do not expect me to pray to impoverish and starve my neighbours. Do not expect me to sing fraudulent hymns saying that the labour of man for the betterment of all is to be condemned for ‘our selfish greed’. Hymnbooks must be purged of this poisonous material. (How it got in there in the first place, I would like to know, as it sheds doubt on the whole validity of the compilation.)

The prayers published by the Church of England are (for the most part) not too shabby. You can tell which are written in love and worship, and which in the dark corners, hiding from the spirit. One published prayer would have us say “we are truly sorry for our consumerism and wastefulness”: no I certainly am not. It is our ‘consumerism’ that has developed the industries and efficiencies which allow more people than even before in history to be  fed and comfortable. Those which condemn “plastics and waste” in a blanket manner ignore that the ingenious invention of endless types of plastic polymers more than anything else prevents waste, by sealing, preserving, making goods lighter, more transportable and more affordable, and being reusable and durable. Condemn littering by all means, but condemning that which prevents rot and disease is the foolish fancy of an age which has forgotten poverty because of the technologies it is now condemning.

Man can harm nature and his own habitat: felling forests can turn a fertile land into desert, as it did in Ethiopia, or a flood, as in Bengal, and can change the local climate. That is no reason to condemn all we do. Man, seeking to eat, bred grass into wheat and oats, bred wild aurochs into oxen, the crashing boar into pigs, wolves into endless breeds of dog for work. We cleared the thorn-forests and planted crops; drove out the predators for flocks and herds. Man as a pro-creator, with the ingenuity the Lord gave us, ensured that we can see the world as a wondrous place and not a dark, threatening one.

The truth to be grasped is that grasping ambition is what has fed the world. The platitude that people in the world are starving because of human greed is a ludicrous theme preached by the untaught preachers of the green, sitting in comfortable homes wrought by the industry and ingenuity and profit-seeking they condemn. I would not be so cruel as to teach a real lesson, to take such preachers out of their comfortable, heated and watered suburban homes and drop them unsheltered in an untamed forest or desert such as Adam met when driven from Eden: they will soon find how the life of man therein is nasty, brutish and short.  It is only by the work of centuries, shaping and exploiting the landscape give to us, of intense farming, heavy industry, and all the combined efforts of mankind to make a profit that any pampered western commentator can enjoy what they take for granted.

I long for the Vicar to be back in his pulpit, preaching the Prophets and the Gospel, not foolishness of an unthinking generation.

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Beauty was reclaimed

Given up to ugly, concrete as the inevitable future of modernity, suddenly beauty was reclaimed in 1984. There is a genuine concept of beauty, which Roger Scruton explained and which the King gave back to us when Prince of Wales.

Today, building is a mixed bag, but there is a real understanding of beauty, and new buildings often uplift the soul: that was impossible before 1984.

In judging people we are taught to look beyond the outward appearance: as Samuel was told ‘Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.‘, but that is of fellow men and women: architecture has only its appearance, which is the outpouring of human mind and skill.

The natural instinct is to see a connection between beauty and moral goodness, as Hobbes observed:

The Latine Tongue has two words, whose significations approach to those of Good and Evill; but are not precisely the same; And those are Pulchrum and Turpe. Whereof the former signifies that, which by some apparent signes promiseth Good; and the later, that, which promiseth evill. But in our Tongue we have not so generall names to expresse them by. But for Pulchrum, we say in some things, Fayre; in other Beautifull, or Handsome, or Gallant, or Honourable, or Comely, or Amiable; and for Turpe, Foule, Deformed, Ugly, Base, Nauseous, and the like, as the subject shall require; All which words, in their proper places signifie nothing els, but the Mine, or Countenance, that promiseth Good and evill. So that of Good there be three kinds; Good in the Promise, that is Pulchrum; Good in Effect, as the end desired, which is called Jucundum, Delightfull; and Good as the Means, which is called Utile, Profitable; and as many of evill: For evill, in Promise, is that they call Turpe; evill in Effect, and End, is Molestum, Unpleasant, Troublesome; and evill in the Means, Inutile, Unprofitable, Hurtfull.

That does not tell us how to define beauty. Others have examined that in detail: chiefest in our time being Roger Scruton. For all his vast width of scholarship, the problem of beauty was a particular fascination, all in a time when the fashion amongst those who though of themselves as thinking men dismissed it. Beauty though is real, and the idea that received opinion may deny it can only be understood in the context that today outspoken opinion denies other plain obvious and scientific facts.

Modernity had its preachers, or you might say its false prophets, whose disciples filled the dominant schools or architecture, excluding all heretics, with Mies van der Rohe almost deified. Concrete was their miracle: with concrete, shapes could be devised defying all that went before, which was fit only for demolition before the new revelation.

One man understood beauty, in  nature and in building, and was in a position to do something about it, for he was a Prince of the Realm, and controlled vast estates that needed a form for their own development: he was Charles Prince of Wales. When he spoke in 1984, his words raised two storms: one from the architectural establishment, outraged that their religion had been challenged by a heretic, and against it a rebellion from architects who begged to break the modernism monopoly and to create beauty, stemming the tide of hideousness. The Prince was mocked as being old-fashioned and out of touch – in reality he was ahead of the game, and very much in touch with what the nation yearned for, which we thought was unachievable.

Had it been one speech, the debate would have rumbled and then stopped, because words are less solid than unyielding concrete.

However a prince can establish his own, rival foundations, and he did. As Luther was defended by a prince, so were the reformers of architecture, and the change soon became visible. Ultimately, an architect only works when he has a paying client, and developers knew that a beautiful building is worth more than a slum.

Form, proportion and symmetry in brick, arches, gables and decorative corbels all started appearing, and began to dominate the better parts of towns – not all of course – the backend, practical area just wanted cheap and functional buildings, but even they shed the bare concrete brutalism. We may take the new, post-modern and neo-Gothic styles for granted, that new buildings are meant to be pretty, but it is only since the late 1980s: before then, harsh, grey concrete was all that we could expect – the architecture of decline.

It is the King whom we have to thank for this revolution.

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