Your article highlighting that more than 5,000 English nature sites may be at risk from planning reforms brings into focus the ethical and emotional challenges involved in decisions about land use (Revealed: 5,000 English nature sites at risk under Labour’s planning proposals, 3 June). Our new citizen science project, Last Haven, hosted at the University of Oxford, explores precisely these tensions. What happens when the last known habitat for an endangered species stands in the way of vital human development? We present participants with simplified, hypothetical scenarios, such as a hospital being dismantled to make space for a rare plant sanctuary, or an agricultural initiative threatening the last refuge of a wild species, to examine how people reason through competing priorities.
Our work suggests the value of nature as an important factor in human flourishing and mental health. Yet access to housing and infrastructure is also vital for wellbeing and security. These thought-provoking cases help uncover the values and beliefs that guide people when faced with choices between ecological preservation and human needs.
Our wider hypothesis is that human flourishing and the wellbeing of the non-human world are fundamentally connected. Understanding how people perceive this relationship can help inform more ethically grounded decisions. As the UK considers the future of its planning frameworks, we hope that those making these important decisions, and indeed all of us, will reflect on the values at stake.
Dr Edmond Awad
Senior lecturer, University of Exeter
• Your article makes chilling reading for the future of some of our most important wild places. Some years ago, while engaged in a successful fight to forestall planning consent for an intrusive power line overland from Ullapool to Beauly in the north-west Highlands, my group, Highlands Before Pylons, was accused of nimbyism – a term now widely used to imply a blinkered, backward-looking approach to necessary progress.
I asked a scholarly friend if we should redefine the word nimby. She suggested a tweak in the acronym to nimbie: “Not in my beautiful, irreplaceable environment.” Perhaps the Guardian and its readers could set a new trend.
Sue Hopkinson
Bath
• I note that the five English landscape “jewels” listed in the print edition, 10 in the online version of the article, are almost entirely in the south-east. As a native of the north-west, I don’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed about this. Pleased because none of our northern jewels are under threat but disappointed because, as usual, all the investment is going to the south-east.
Steve Lupton
Prestwich, Greater Manchester
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