Balancing conservation and communities - Matt Walpole from Cornwall Wildlife Trust

Wildlife conservationist Matt Walpole discusses the challenge of balancing conservation, economic development and rural livelihoods.

Matt chats about his varied career and why he returned to the South West to join Cornwall Wildlife Trust, which works to conserve and restore nature and wildlife on land and at sea. He also explores how we can all make a difference.

His career highlights include leading a UN programme focusing on biodiversity and the value of the ecosystem being at the heart of decision making. 

Transcript

Mark Greaves:

Today, my guest is Matt Walpole, Chief Executive of Cornwall Wildlife Trust. I'm Mark Greaves from PKF Francis Clark, and I'll be your host. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to get updates and notifications on when our latest episodes are available. Hi, Matt. How are you today?

Matt Walpole:

I'm very well, Mark. It's great to be here.

Mark Greaves:

Good to see you. Could you talk us a little through what Cornwall Wildlife is and does?

Matt Walpole:

Sure. The Cornwall Wildlife Trust is obviously, by its name, a wildlife charity. It's one of 46 local wildlife trusts across the UK. We've been around for just over 60 years. And we work to conserve and restore nature and wildlife both on land and at sea across the whole of Cornwall.

Mark Greaves:

That sounds like quite a big mission at that particular moment. How did you first become involved?

Matt Walpole:

So I've been working in wildlife conservation all my career. And having grown up in Cornwall, but having left after school to pursue a career internationally, there was always that pull to come back to the South West, come back to the part of the world I grew up in, the part of the world I loved the most. And as my career progressed, that pull got stronger. And eventually, I got the great opportunity to come back and lead the trust about 15 months ago.

Mark Greaves:

One thing we've talked about with previous guests on this is there seems to be much more opportunities for doing more exciting stuff within Cornwall than the South West generally nowadays than there once was. Because you mentioned about leaving to go and pursue your career. Do you think there's more opportunities within South West nowadays?

Matt Walpole:

I think so. In fact, in this sector, I'd say in the UK as a whole. When I was growing up, I was watching David Attenborough and being inspired by the large wildlife on the Serengeti, all the fabulous richness in the rainforests. And that was the thing that inspired me and that's the thing that I thought I wanted to do. So I did go off and study and found myself working in some extraordinary places and places that still have a lot of wildlife, a lot of nature. And of course, the UK, in many ways, doesn't comparatively. It's relatively nature depleted. And therefore, it's easy to overlook. But in fact, if you're in a place where nature's been hammered in many ways, the only way is up, and that breeds phenomenal innovation.

So the big, big focus on nature recovery and restoration, ways we can do that in a landscape that's very transformed rather than being very wild means it's quite fascinating. And that's really emerged over the last several years in terms of the UK nature conservation scene. And you're right that in the South West, you've got that extra special bit of magic. It is an area that's strong in innovation, but also an area that is just that little bit wilder as well. So it's got a real draw. And being the place I grew up, it was a no-brainer when the opportunity came.

Mark Greaves:

We might come back to that because we've talked about Cornwall and entrepreneurialism and what specifically generates stuff down here. But come back to your career. You mentioned about watching David Attenborough programs. Was that the thing that really ... because you went off to ... You studied zoology at Cambridge. Was it that that was driving that?

Matt Walpole:

In a way. I think ... Growing up down here, I spent all my time camping in the woods and hiking on the moors and swimming in the sea, spending time on the beach. So the outdoors was a big part of what I was ... Was a big part of me, I guess. And you're right, as a student growing up, it was the sciences that grabbed me, but I found sitting in the lab just wasn't what did it for me. And when I discovered ecology and the opportunities to go out and study and do research and field work in wild places, having been exposed to that spirit of awesome wild nature that David Attenborough brought to us all in his TV shows, just the two married together really nicely.

And of course, being in a place like Cambridge, the opportunities that arose to get together with others and find our way to running a student expedition. In fact, I started out in Borneo in the rainforest there. It was a phenomenal path and very much a formative moment for me being able to go and do that and experience those places and think, "Okay. Wow. This is something I have to do. This is something I could make a career out of."

Mark Greaves:

I wonder if David Attenborough takes enough credit sometimes for those programs. We were talking to Surfers Against Sewage, and they noted that the plastic in the oceans thing started as a seven-minute clip in the third episode of one of his series. And it was a really small ... It was kind of a side mention at that stage, but then has really grown. I think recently, the power of television to move people has been proved. But stay with the university. You went on to, and I love this, a doctor of philosophy on nature-based tourism.

Matt Walpole:

It sounds highfalutin, doesn't it?

Mark Greaves:

It does. Could you perhaps translate what that was about? Because the nature-based tourism, I want to actually major on a few times.

Matt Walpole:

So I began to get interested, through some of the travel I did and the studies I was doing, not just in the animal behaviour, the ecology side of things, but in the relationship with people and communities locally because that's where many of the issues arise in terms of how you sustain nature, how you promote and restore nature, how you benefit from nature. And of course, there are a lot of challenges that come with that too. So my initial studies had looked at local communities and shifting cultivation within rainforests, but I started to get interested in tourism as a tool for conservation in a local context because when you start to look at a lot of the places around the world where the really iconic wildlife still persists, the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, the Amazon, you've got a whole range of national parks and you've got opportunities for people to go and visit those.

And again, coming back to David Attenborough, of course, some of his early programs, he did one on Komodo dragons where he was one of the first people to go over there and collect a specimen. So that, I think, drove a whole industry of people wanting to go on safari, wanting to go and travel and see and visit these places. And of course, that brings with it real economic opportunities, but also as we know, of course, in the South West as well, over-visitation can bring real impacts, whether they're environmental, social, or whatever. So I got interested in that and an opportunity came up to join a research group that was looking at nature-based tourism in national parks in Africa and in Asia. And it was very much a cross-disciplinary project looking at the ecological, sociological, and the economic implications of tourism for wildlife, for conservation, for national parks, and for local communities in those areas with that recognition that tourism can be a force for economic good.

So our question was, is tourism in these places nature-based tourism that you maybe automatically think would be a good thing? Is it really? Does it stack up when you start to assess it against the principles of responsible tourism or sustainable tourism or eco-tourism or whatever you want to call it? And that was a government-funded project. We're going back to the mid '90s now. And I joined it as the ecologist. And I ended up doing my PhD case study on Komodo National Park where David Attenborough had gone on the dragons. So my thesis was on dragon tourism and its implications.

Mark Greaves:

That was quite early, the mid '90s. Sustainable tourism wasn't mainstream at all. It was just tourism is good, get the local dollars into the hands, sort of the locals. It wasn't really questioned. So it might have been quite ... Was it quite different, quite difficult to tackle it at that stage?

Matt Walpole:

It was. There weren't many templates for it. You're absolutely right. And that was what was exciting, an opportunity to work on something where you didn't really know where it was going to go. And it wasn't, in many ways, a traditional study because it was quite broad, quite cross-disciplinary. But what was fascinating about it was that it was something that the government was interested in in the context of government aid and overseas development and relationships. So it had an audience. And certainly, if we now look back, so many more of the studies that have taken place, so much more of that industry has moved in that direction. So it was ... So I wouldn't want to say it was trailblazing. It was certainly at an early stage in the whole process. And it was really fun to be involved.

Mark Greaves:

Well, it's certainly grown since then with just major acknowledgement. And Simon Reeve is very good in some of his programs on this type of stuff of trying to balance that. Does the reward actually end up in the locals who are in need of it at that stage, especially around South America and stuff like that? And is it always good at that stage? So the sort of stuff you were seeing around there, are there lessons coming out from that? Because South West lives on tourism, we discovered during the pandemic where Cornwall effectively closed for two years. Are there lessons that the local tourism trade can learn from that environmental, that sustainability point?

Matt Walpole:

Yeah. I think there are a range of things that really opened my eyes when I was working mainly in Africa and Asia in a range of projects where it was very much about how does wildlife persist in the face of the drive for local economic developments and population increase. We're talking about developing countries, of course. So you're talking about often communities with very traditional livelihoods and often with not a lot of bandwidth and certainly not a lot of wealth. What I learned was, I guess, that ... And something perhaps we've forgotten in this country, is it is perfectly possible for people to coexist with wildlife. That's the first thing. Sure, there are issues and problems, but if people in East Africa can live with elephants and can live with lions and leopards, and they do, not always harmoniously, but there are ways to create a coexistence, then surely here in the UK, we can live with some of the things that we've lost.

We hear a lot of controversy, for instance, about the return of beavers. We've obviously got lots of issues around badgers. But the reality is these things don't have to be incompatible with rural economies, with rural land use. And when you bring tourism into the picture, of course there is a real possibility to make those things of real economic value locally. What we saw in the pandemic, you talked about that, was really fascinating because suddenly, people couldn't go abroad and go on safari and do all those kinds of things. And that was a disaster for that industry in places like East Africa. But what happened was a lot of the operators who were sending people overseas from the UK started to look around on our own back doorstep to say, "Where can we pivot to? Where are there opportunities here?"

And of course, there are, whether it's marine, mammal, watching, boat trips, whether it's red deer in the highlands. And of course, landowners, like the NEPA states in Sussex, started to ... Well, prior to that, started to realize that rewilding and using nature could be a real economic opportunity. And they started to run, in essence, the kind of African safari experience we spend a lot of time and money going to experience in East Africa in the UK with UK native wildlife. So that whole pandemic period, I think, shone a light on the possibility that perhaps we'd overlooked and that I think we've got far, far more to gain from if we think creatively about it.

Mark Greaves:

I think it was a real rollercoaster ride down here in that for about three or four months, Cornwall closed and was forced to close at that stage, but when it reopened, it had never been so busy, as you say. Tourists being redefined. Okay. So I want to come back to that Cornwall side of things. So we've also got a balance within Cornwall, the farming industry, so I want to come and develop that. Sticking with your career, you went on to, and I've got to get this in here at this stage, a program director of biodiversity and human needs at Fauna and Flora International. Now, I've had a Chief Flavorist previously, but I definitely haven't had one of those. What was that all about? What were you doing there?

Matt Walpole:

Oh, we do go in for long-winded titles, don't we? So FFI, Fauna and Flora International, is an international wildlife conservation charity that's registered in the UK, headquartered in Cambridge, but works supporting partner organizations all over the planet. And my role when I first joined FFI the first time was to run a program that was looking at exactly this issue of how do we align wildlife conservation with rural livelihoods, poverty alleviation, and economic development. How do you bring those two things together? Because traditionally, the narrative is the environment and the economy are on two sides. They're incompatible.

And what we were trying to explore in the context of wildlife and national parks was how can we alter that narrative and demonstrate that, in fact, nature and wildlife can be the basis for sustainable livelihoods and the basis for economic growth and the basis for alleviating poverty in those rural areas. So in many ways, I'd gone from being a biologist, wildlife biologist, if you like, when I started out, to being something more like a geographer by this point, so much broader, because the questions that I was exploring, the questions that we were looking at with our projects were really about that coexistence and that interface between nature and society and economy.

Mark Greaves:

Well, you obviously developed on that because you then went on to work for the UN focusing on biodiversity. What were some of the things that you managed to achieve there? Because the UN has a mixed reputation of achieving some wonderful things and sometimes not. So what was you most proud of what you were working on there?

Matt Walpole:

Well, the proudest thing was probably something related to the UK. What I ... The reason I got involved, I guess, was because the UN hosts a number of the large multilateral environmental agreements, the things that came out of the Rio Earth Summit back in '92, like The Climate Convention. There is a biodiversity convention and others. And the question, I suppose, at the heart of this was, okay, governments are coming together and they are making decisions, making commitments on what they're going to do for the environment in those spaces. How did they know whether they're making progress? And how does everybody else hold them to account for that? So the starting point for me in the organisation I worked for, that was a collaborating centre with UN's environment programme, was drawing together global data to answer those kind of questions. What's happening to the state of the planet? And how are the policies and actions of governments changing those trajectories?

So that was really fascinating to go from a very local field base scale to that global cause of power, if you like. And I found myself in a suit and tie and convention centres in cities far more than I expected when I started out on my career. But I'll tell you where it got really interesting. It's one thing to talk about how species are declining or habitats are changing, but it's another to start to ask the question, what does that mean for people? What does it mean for our economies? And the whole field of environmental economics really started to hone in on this off the back of a big assessment done in the mid 2000s called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which kicked off a process of trying to look at what was happening to ecosystems around the world and really started to identify what the benefits of nature are for people across a whole range of categories, which then led onto economists trying to say, "Well, what's the value of those things? And what value are we losing by trashing the environment?"

So what happened was the British government decided that this was interesting. We're going back to round about 2007, 2008, I suppose. And they commissioned a study, a huge study called the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, which was a two-year process to understand and assess and evaluate the values of nature to society in the UK, so England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and to develop a whole bunch of future scenarios on where the future might take those things, and what kind of policy context would lead us to having or experiencing more value from nature or indeed less. And there are about 500 academics across the country. All the government agencies, all the reporting bodies, a whole bunch of interested user groups from councils to the NFU to everybody was involved in it. And I led a team to direct it, to make it happen. And that was really, really fascinating. It was the first time that I got close to DEFRA, the UK government and the UK policy context.

And what was great was that although it was a huge exercise ... I think there were 1,800 pages by the time it got to the final draft. And although, of course, that got distilled into some very simplistic headlines around the value of nature and how it might change, is what it led on to because that then led on to the government establishing a Natural Capital Committee, the government really beginning to think about the values of nature in terms of its environment, white paper in terms of the financial incentives it was putting together for projects around the country, and ultimately into all those set of policies around public money for public goods, which are all bound up in the current 25-year environment plan. So I think that was, in many ways, quite instrumental as a study because it marked a real first moment at which we went from wildlife and wildlife decline being the preserve of the concerned naturalists and into something that seemed to have real policy benefits.

Mark Greaves:

I'd love the look on the economists' face as they started to try and tackle an issue like that, which is beyond any sort of normal theory. Interestingly, you said about 2007, 2008. That was obviously the time of the financial crash followed by a period of austerity in the UK. What are the things that came out of that that are still in existence, still running?

Matt Walpole:

So what was interesting was that the study actually took place over the period when the government changed from the Labour government to the coalition government. And we were quite concerned at the time that the funding would be cut, that it would be seen as having been an initiative of the previous administration. And in fact, the new administration embraced it wholeheartedly and it ran through. And when the report hit parliament, there was quite a lot of positive response to it. And as I say, at the time, it influenced a new government white paper that came out, which included funding for what were called nature improvement areas, which in essence was funding ... A bit like the kind of nature recovery, landscape recovery funding that we're seeing now, was the first attempt to put funding into large landscape recovery where there were going to be measurable benefits for local communities.

And there were a dozen of those around the country. It then recognised that this was not a one-off study, but that really needed to delve further into how this could be built into policy and what it might mean. And they established the Natural Capital Committee, which ran for many, many years, to advise government on state of nature and the value of nature and how that was changing and what government could or should be doing in terms of its policies to uphold that. I think that that very much led into where we are now with the current 25-year environment plan. And with that ... The mantra that was there, which although it's a term that's not used so much now, I think when you look at the funding incentives and where that's going, the idea of public money for public goods is very strongly connected to that idea that we do benefit from nature and we can benefit, and the returns on investment in nature.

When you think of things like flood defenses from wetland creation, they clearly justify many times over the funding that government might put into place. But when you talk about then austerity and the changing face of British economy, it's probably no surprise that the government is now very much promoting the idea of private finance and private investment into nature because perhaps it's an inevitable next step, although it's also bound up in that recognition that the private sector industry economy does have implications in nature. It has impacts as well as dependencies. And that therefore, there is a strong argument for private sector investing in nature.

Mark Greaves:

Well, you can take a direct example of that. You mentioned about flooding in there. With businesses in the wrong location just not being able to get insurance. And also, the development of that side where the flood defenses that were meant to last for the next 50 to 100 years are now looking like they might last for the next five to 10. But the answer is not necessarily to build larger flood defenses. It's actually to take a much more environmental approach and look upstream and look what you can do at sources of rivers.

Matt Walpole:

Absolutely.

Mark Greaves:

Is that the sort of thing that you are seeing more investment in?

Matt Walpole:

Very much so. There's a real recognition of the fact that what you're doing upstream has real implications for what's happening downstream, whether that is the way that those areas are being farmed, whether those areas are being built on, whether they're being deforested. So at Cornwall Wildlife Trust, we've been working on that for quite some time, along with various others, through projects that are working in catchments above reservoirs and rivers where the water companies are extracting for public consumption. So in those projects, a big part of it is about how do you ensure good water quality through the way that you manage those landscapes and you avoid the runoff of soils and you avoid the overabundance of chemical inputs and those kinds of things, and how you do that in a way that balances with farm businesses and livelihoods. And of course, there are ways to do that.

We know that, as you mentioned earlier, regenerative farming is possible and it can be economically viable. So we've been working very much in those kinds of contexts. And now looking also at how you can use natural solutions not only to enhance and improve water quality but also to attenuate water flow. And beavers are a great example of that. I know beavers often, particularly with farmers, and understandably in some context, get a bit of a bad rep. And there's a lot of worry because they're a bit of an unknown quantity, having been lost for 400 odd years. But the examples we've seen where beavers have been brought back into catchments upstream, what they have done in terms of creating those sponges, systems that really hold water in, not only is it great for nature, the wildlife, the bugs, everything that comes back, it's preventing all of that water heading downstream in a flash flood to the villages below.

So there are ... And here's one example. Planting trees, the right trees in the right places can make a difference. Ensuring that peatlands are well looked after and not trashed so that they ... They hold carbon, we all know that, but they hold water extremely well. Can help extremely well in some of these things. And what we've got to do is prove it and we've got to show the examples. We've got to demonstrate how risk to downstream households and industries has been reduced as a result of this. And I think then we'll see far more acceptance of those kinds of ideas.

Mark Greaves:

Well, if I can expand out on that, certainly for the west country, so you're talking about there a balance between the wildlife side of things, but then tourism, one of the major businesses down here, and then farming, which itself has been through a revolution, certainly through the pandemic when supply chains, that were phenomenally fragile but very efficient, were then really exposed as perhaps not being as robust as they could have been, shall we say. So there's a big balance to say between all of those different interested parties with businesses and local entrepreneurial businesses right in the heart of that. How do you actually balance that as part of your role at Cornwall Wildlife Trust?

Matt Walpole:

Well, ultimately, and if you look to Cornwall and South Wales as a whole, three quarters of our land area is under farming of some form or other, so it's a huge industry, but it's also a huge opportunity for nature recovery. In Cornwall, we have 58, 59 nature reserves, about five and half thousand acres. And we do our best to look after them. They're obviously oases of nature. They're great examples. They're inspiration for everybody. But we're not going to save the world by growing and acquiring more and more nature reserves. We've got to build nature recovery and nature persistence into what everybody else is doing, whether it's larger states, whether it's small tenant farms, whatever it might be.

So farming and farm landscapes are a huge part of what we're now currently focusing on in terms of nature recovery because if we can see those areas managed in such a way that you can create corridors, you can create space, you can reduce the pressure, and that's going to help farming, whether it's insects, pollinators, whatever it might be, then we're going to be onto a much better trajectory than we are if we simply ignore that or if we treat the farming community as the enemy, because they certainly aren't. They're the custodians of these landscapes, custodians of nature. But what we've learned, I guess, over time is that you can't simply go in and preach about nature because what you've got to do, and it's the same with whoever you're trying to influence, is you've got to understand the perspectives of your audience, the perspectives and the concerns and the issues and the barriers that people are faced with.

And so we have a team of farm advisors who have built very, very strong and close relationships with farmers and farming communities over many years. And that's another really important key. And for them, it's been about how do we support these small businesses? How do we support livelihoods through what we're doing? So as much as we may be encouraging farmers to manage hedgerows in a slightly different way or leave a little bit set aside or to develop new areas for nature or to take a bit of pressure off in terms of their pesticide use, the flip side of it is always around how can we help farmers to access the funding and the income that allows them to do that because otherwise, we're going to get nowhere.

Farming is, as it is for many people, a really marginal pursuit economically. And you risk tipping people over the edge if you come in with barriers. And that's ... So for us, we are very, very clear. Our role is to try and work with farmers and to support them to find ways to farm in ways that is more compatible with the recovery of nature.

Mark Greaves:

We had a recent guest from Riviera Produce producing brassicas on very large scale, working on margins of one or 2% overall. Very hard for him to adapt to, well, basically anything without just destroying that commercial return that they actually need. Part of that is perhaps educating the public as well a little in that the price we pay might have to actually go up to actually support some of this stuff. But I don't know where you start with a conversation like that.

Matt Walpole:

It's tricky, isn't it? I think it has to run right through the supply chain. And I think a lot of farmers are challenged by the large supermarkets, as we know, and the pricing strategies and policies there. But I think you are right. Nobody wants to pay more for food in the same way that nobody wants to pay more for water or any of the things that we take as a sort of given. But that said, we've got to be clear that if things are not sustainable, then we're going to be paying a lot, lot more for our food down the line. And now is the time to set things up in such a way that we're going to have that food security over the longer term price points that are going to be achievable for people. Because household budgets are also under a lot of pressure.

Mark Greaves:

That's one of the things at the moment. You've got the last two years of inflation, which, to a certain extent, proves that you can pay slightly more for stuff, but it's all in the wrong direction at that stage. It's all going in the wrong direction. So actually, trying to get that message against that background is even harder, but it's just essential for the long term. We spoke to farmers upcountry about some of their projects, which are self-funding, which can actually improve returns, but they take upfront investment, they take a time to come through, and that needs some breathing room, some space for them not to live quite so hand to mouth. Okay. Coming to the end of our slot here, perhaps I could ask, and I know it's a fairly tough question at this stage, perhaps I could end with what's the simplest change we could all make to actually contribute towards that sustainability? Or perhaps even more than sustainable, actually regenerative, which is the kind of phrase of the last couple of years. What's the simple step we could all help with?

Matt Walpole:

That is such a good question, Mark. Our whole strategy going forward now towards 2030, which is kind of the next big pivot point in terms of will we achieve where we need to get to as a society with nature, our whole focus is on encouraging, inspiring, supporting, mobilising people to take action for nature, more people in whatever sphere of life to take action for nature. And so what we say to everybody, do what you can. Do what works within your life and within your sphere. So it may be choosing to look more closely at the things you buy and making choices that are less damaging because they're plastic-free or because they are less carbon intensive, or whatever it might be. We're all used to labeling around some of these things. And there are perhaps choices there that will drive the suppliers and the industry to want to deliver more of what's better for the environment and for us. That may be one. May be changing diets.

So in my own life, I've chosen, over the last few years, to eat less red meat, and I've done that for various reasons, but there's no doubt that eating less but better quality red meat is good for one's health and is very good for the environment because the huge demand for red meat leads to, both in this country and globally, the industrialisation of that industry, which is bad on so many levels, whereas there is good quality meat being produced in our region, and that's great. It might be signing up and joining a charity. It might be making donations. Of course, I have to get that plug in here, but I won't major on that.

Mark Greaves:

I like that eat less but better quality meat. Apart from the cost issue, to a certain extent, there's always some sort of balance within there, but that's ideal. Thank you very much for your time today, Matt. Thank you for sharing your story with the listeners. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have at that moment. And I think there's a couple of things I would pull out in terms of that, trying to find that natural balance between the farming industry, the tourism industry, and wildlife and stuff like that. And I think we can all agree David Attenborough is a hero. I think that just underpins everything at that moment. So thank you for your time. And thank you to our audience for listening to our latest episode of Business Noodles. We hope you've enjoyed our conversation. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to get updates and notifications on when the latest episodes are available.