“We need to up our nature game” – New survey explores attitudes to nature loss

Who should be doing more to protect nature?

When asked what their biggest barriers to taking action are, however, 40% said they don’t feel they have influence in their local area or globally, 35% of people say they don’t know where to start or what to do, over one quarter (27%) said time is a barrier to taking action to protect nature, and 26% said it is generally more expensive to do so.

While many people feel they personally should be doing more, the results show that they don’t think the onus is just on the individual. Of survey respondents, 79% said they think the government should be doing more to protect the natural environment, while 81% said that global businesses should be doing more and over half (55%) said their local community should be doing more.

In addition, 72% of respondents said UK businesses should be doing more to protect the natural environment, while 55% said local businesses should be doing more.

Across all age groups, social demographics and political party allegiances, a majority of people agreed that more should be done to help prevent animals and plants going extinct – implying that a love for nature truly is a galvanising topic.

Protecting the extraordinary

These findings come as we launch our new campaign, Extraordinary Everything, which stresses the importance of nature protection, and highlights the extraordinary role of all species in the planet’s survival.

Explore the extraordinary

The inherent value of nature, the financial cost

The survey also looked at attitudes to turning things around for nature. When asked how interested they’d be in learning how to do more to protect nature, 70% of people said they would be. Meanwhile, over 90% of respondents (93%) said that they think it is important for children and young people to be taught how they can help to protect nature in schools and by their parents.

The survey also explored perceptions of why it’s important to protect our natural environment. While top responses included ‘Plants and animals have the right to be protected’ (59%) and ‘For future generations to also enjoy it’ (56%), 12% of people cited ‘Our economy and businesses rely on it’ as a top reason to protect nature, and nearly half of respondents (47%) said ‘our personal health relies on it’.

Kristian Teleki, CEO of Fauna & Flora comments: “From getting involved in citizen science and local conservation initiatives, to adjusting how we manage our gardens, there’s plenty of small but meaningful actions people in the UK and globally can take in their daily lives to make a real difference to nature.

“The responsibility to protect our natural environment, however, cannot just fall to the individual. At a time when government spending is getting increasingly stringent, leaders cannot continue to sleep on nature protection. The World Economic Forum has put biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as the second highest threat facing us in the next 10 years, so what is being done to prevent this? For the UK Government to meet its commitments on protecting nature around the world, it has been estimated that it needs to double spending – yet the budgets for that work have recently been reduced for future years.

“The same message applies to leaders in the corporate world. If you don’t take action to assess your business’ impact on nature, and in turn nature’s risks to your business, it will impact your bottom line. Data that shows half of the world’s total GDP – or about $44trn of economic value – depends on the natural world in some way. We simply cannot afford to destroy it.”