CEnv at 20 blog | An agent of environmental wisdom

A blog by Dr Peter Matthews HonFSE CEnv – Past Chair of the Society for the Environment – to mark 20 years of the Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) professional registration.

Those were the words we used when we briefed Margaret Beckett, then the Secretary of State for the Environment, Rural Affairs and Agriculture, in 2001. We wanted her support in the Privy Council for our Petition for a Royal Charter, and we got it!

The issues to address

The need to address environmental issues in a more holistic manner grew in the late 20th century as public and political awareness became more informed and focussed in the late 20th Century. Here are a few issues that I remember:

• Whilst the gross pollution in smogs had been resolved, there were the growing concerns about the effects of car exhausts. There were also concerns and action on the issues of other pollutants such a depletion of the ozone layer by fluorinated hydrocarbons and the increase of carbon emissions with the consequent increasing risk of climate change as manifested. There were worries about incinerators and coal fired power stations and the growth of renewable energy sources with consequences for landscapes.
• The focus on the quality of rivers and coastal waters, particularly bathing waters continued even though the discharge of screened sewage from long sea outfalls and the marine dispersal of sewage sludge.
• A growing understanding of climate change risks, as manifested by increased flooding due to changes in rainfall patterns whilst also having increased risks of droughts. Therefore, water resources and the provision of new reservoirs were prominent. With a little bit of licence, I include the issue of coastal erosion and flooding with this.
• There are almost too many issues to list on food production to mention in a single paragraph, but included concerns about:
  • • agrochemicals (pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilisers
    • impoverishment of soil quality
    • cultivation of marginal land with erosion
    • impact on biodiversity
    • mono crop farming
    • genetically modified crops, and;
    • the impact of recycling animal manures and biosolids.
• Waste management with the increasing need for a circular economy, less fly tipping, and better labelling.
• And allied to the above was a focus on landscape driven by farming practices, forestry, energy distribution and so on.
• AND, with a combination of all these factors; leading to losses of biodiversity.

In response, the Conservative Government decided to integrate environmental regulation and created the Environment Agency (EA) in England and Wales in 1996. The EA reported to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR). But the succeeding Labour Government decided to create the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) from the environment part of DETR and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) in 2001. So national policy and regulation were moving in the direction of an integrated approach.

Professional bodies join forces

Why, we asked within the professional bodies, are we not doing the same? Why aren’t we working together. And so, the initiative by a handful of professional bodies, which led to SocEnv, started in 2000. I was privileged to play a role on that road to integration. The newly created SocEnv history road map sets out the various threads which led to bodies working together.

The first rather guarded discussions focussed on creating a new super body as an integration of “environmental bodies”. But there was too much “home turf” to be guarded. Plus, it was thought that there ought to be space for bodies with a primary focus on other sectors too, but with strong environmental interests. A clear example was the engineering institutions. After much debate, it was agreed that something like the Engineering Council model with the potential for chartered status would be the right way forward.

Chartered Tree Huggers

One of the concerns at the time was that anyone could call themselves a professional environmentalist, without any common benchmark of approbation. The idea of being Chartered opened the door to the concept of a Chartered Environmentalist. Many people thought that the concept of “Chartered Tree Huggers” would never get off the ground. But they were wrong. The motivation for being a professional environmentalist coupled with the gravitas of being Chartered was very powerful and we gained traction very quickly. So, we needed a Royal Charter pretty damn quick.

And it was Dame Barbara Young – then Chief Executive of the EA (I was on the Board of the EA at the time) – who suggested a chat with Margaret Beckett (then Secretary of State for the Environment, Rural Affairs and Agriculture), because any changes would require legal support from Defra. And Margaret gave it enthusiastically. It was then that the image of an environmental symphony was used.

Since the receipt of the Royal Charter, the number of Chartered Environmentalists has risen to very nearly 8,000, with 15% of those located outside of the United Kingdom. Plus, the Society now has 27 Member Bodies – some 19 more than when the Society started.

An agent of environmental wisdom

I have to say, with I hope some humility, that I am proud of what we achieved as a team. The original notions were that:

• it would create common standards of personal excellence in individuals as members of a wide variety of professional bodies.
• it would allow the Constituent Bodies (now Member Bodies) to speak with one voice on technical political and political relevance such as green skills – yet retain individual personae on these matters.

We have been successful in the above.

However, being British means beating ourselves up through a perception of a lack of progress! I am aware that the list of issues at the start of this article are still with us. But whatever the dismay we might have over the impact of politics and austerity on environmental conservation, our role as professional body members, and CEnvs in particular, is more highly prized, for all that we stand for, than was the case in the late 20 century. Being proud is not being complacent but it does give energy for the future.

Over the years I have been involved in organisational management, as well as environmental management. And learned about ’knowledge management’, in which data are collated as information and converted into knowledge; and that comes as explicit codified knowledge based on rigorous evidence and implicit knowledge arising from experience. That knowledge must be applied beneficially and wisely. That is the basis of the modern management concept of wisdom management.

I like to think of SocEnv as an agent of environmental wisdom. At the 20th birthday celebrations, I rather light-heartedly described SocEnv as providing “knit-working” opportunities in which the wisdom of members with different wisdom can be knitted together through networking to create new paradigms to tackle the continuing list of environmental problems. So, the ‘environment choir’ must keep on singing whilst knit-working at the same time!

Good fortune for the future.