Can we give nature a voice in decision making?

It’s amazing to think that there is one critical infrastructure system that is not considered in decision making, yet we are utterly dependent on it for our survival. And, worse still, this is an infrastructure utility that is in crisis. No, I’m not talking about human-engineered systems such as water and sewage. I’m talking about an even more precious entity – the whole ecosystem.

The ecosystem provides us with breathable air, pollinates our food, purifies our water, and even regulates our climate. But is taken for granted, it has no economic value and it is in rapid decline. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and our demand for land and resources is only exacerbating the decline.

But is it even possible or practical to consider nature in decision-making? Our economic system completely ignores the ecosystem and the services it provides. These irreplaceable services are counted as ‘externalities’ and do not have any economic value.

We have started to consider the climate crisis in decision-making with some companies assessing carbon alongside cost, but there is little or no assessment of the biodiversity crisis and the impact that each decision has on our life-support system.

One way to start to consider natural systems in decisions is to give it a seat at the table. I know the idea of something non-human being given some sort of status sounds pretty crazy, but there is precedent for this and even legal mechanisms. We already recognise companies as having a separate legal personality to the people in them, even though a corporation is really just a concept with a brand and a reputation.

There is some movement in this direction with changes to policy and even some changes within the design community.

The UK Government is planning to appoint a special envoy for nature for the first time and The Welsh Government has been giving nature a voice through its pioneering legislation, the Well-being of Future Generation Act. The latter has already genuinely influenced decision-making. A plan to build a 13-mile stretch of motorway across environmentally-sensitive wetlands was overturned as the Act required politicians to consider the impacts on the ecosystems and the local community. This decision has influenced Wales’s transport strategy and has helped to promote more sustainable modes of travel.

Policy-makers in the town of Curridabat in Costa Rica have found an innovative way to give nature a voice. They recognise pollinators as well as plants and trees as citizens, with roles to play and rights to be upheld. Instead of the usual antagonistic relationship between development and nature, the town puts bees, rivers and trees at the centre of urban design, aligning infrastructure and landscaping with biodiversity. It asks questions such as, ‘How does a raindrop move around the city?’ and ‘How can we accommodate infrastructure so that rivers can actually serve their natural purpose?’

In the construction industry, architectural practices, are now giving nature a formal role in their decision-making, with one even considering appointing a trustee who will represent nature – some examples of these pioneering organisations are provided in the brilliant Regenerative Design Index .

There are some examples of projects that have considered natural systems in their design and some have even recreated the ecosystem services that would have been provided if the site was left to be in its original, pristine state. My new book - Regenerative by Design - includes several case studies such as the innovative Bay View Google HQ in San Francisco bay that recreates wetland habitats on its campus, and holds water within the site for reuse and to protect the neighbouring saltmarsh. Lee Parks ' team in AECOM Shanghai has been instrumental in applying the concept of ‘sponge cities’ in China where the flood-prone cities are made more permeable by absorbing stormwater using natural processes instead of managing it through hard infrastructure.

One step on the path to giving nature a voice is to start to recognise and quantify the value of ecosystems and the services that they provide, both for all the other species on the planet and ourselves. Our Natural Capital team has been helping designers of infrastructure to consider natural systems in decision-making by quantifying ecosystem services, but these approaches are rarely applied to building design. Working across disciplines and sectors will be crucial to making this happen.

These examples show that it is possible to use existing mechanisms to consider natural systems as part of our decision-making. Now we need to take the radical step to take into account the impact that every building project has on the ecosystem and to aim to create designs that help to restore and regenerate these systems.

Unless we want to be hand-pollinating every fruit tree, building factories to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and using geo-engineering to recreate the natural processes that manage the earth's climate, we will have to find ways to give the billions of other species on the planet their own voice.