Gardiner V., Matthews H. The changing geography of the United Kingdom

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Conclusion

At the close of the millennium the United Kingdom still has an abundance of high quality

natural and semi-natural landscapes, and an impressive diversity of wildlife. Despite many

centuries of land cover change most of the countryside remains in good condition whilst

continuing to support the nation’s population by providing food, timber, water and other

natural resources. As we have seen, the context within which landscape preservation and

wildlife conservation operate has changed during the 1990s in five important ways. First,

the natural environment enjoys a much higher profile in national politics than it has done

previously, and this is reflected in the institutional changes introduced during the 1990s

designed to produce better integration between different sectors of government decision-

making and policy formulation. Second, efforts are being made to collect, analyse and

make widely available appropriate information on the state of the UK environment and

the quantity and quality of its natural capital (including both landscape and wildlife).

This is evident in the range of government publications (and their on-line versions),

including the annual digests of environmental statistics and the ongoing work on

development of environmental indicators. Third, sustainable development has been

embraced as an important framework within which to make decisions about all aspects of

national resource use, and this has both elevated the status of environmental protection

and raised awareness of the interrelatedness and co-dependency of all environmental

systems. Fourth, and partly arising from this new focus on sustainable development,

national and local interest within nature conservation has been galvanised around the

need to preserve biodiversity, for both national and international benefit. This has

broadened the perspective within nature conservation away from simply seeking to preserve

key and characteristic species, and characteristic or rare habitats, towards a broader

appreciation of the need to preserve as many species and habitats as possible. Fifth, whilst

the government has an obvious responsibility to preserve the country’s natural capital for

our own domestic benefits, during the 1990s this responsibility has taken on an increasingly

international dimension as well through the UK’s commitment to initiatives such as the

Rio Biodiversity Convention and European Union environmental directives. In the final

analysis, decision-makers within and beyond the UK government recognise the need to

preserve an environmental estate that is as natural and diverse as possible, provides as

many benefits to the current population as possible, and can be passed on to future

generations.

References

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Adams, W.M., Hodge, I.D. and Bourn, N.A.D. (1994) ‘Nature conservation and the

management of the wider countryside in eastern England’, Journal of Rural Studies 10(2):

147–57.

Andrews, J. and Carter, S. (1993) Britain’s Birds in 1990–91: the Conservation and

Monitoring Review. Tring: British Trust for Ornithology/Joint Nature Conservation

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Baldock, D. (1994) ‘European environmental policy—trends and issues’, Ecos: a Review of

Conservation 15(1): 11–17.

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Barkham, J. (1994) ‘Wildlife Trusts—or mistrust?’, Ecos: a Review of Conservation 15(2): 23–

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G.B., Hallam, C.J., Hornung, M., Howard, D.C. and Ness, M.J. (1993) Countryside Survey

1990 Main Report, London: Department of Environment.

Bignal, E.M. and McCracken, D.I. (1996) ‘Low-intensity farming systems in the conservation

of the countryside’, Journal of Applied Ecology 33(3): 413–24.

Box, J. (1994) ‘Changing the conservation culture’, Ecos: a Review of Conservation 15(2): 17–

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Box, J., Douse, A. and Kohler, T. (1994) ‘Non-statutory sites of importance for nature

conservation in the West Midlands’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management

37(3): 361–7.

Curtis, L.F. (1991) ‘Conservation and protection’, in R.J.Johnston and V.Gardiner (eds) The

Changing Geography of the United Kingdom (2nd edn), London: Routledge.

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Dornkamp (eds) The Changing Geography of the United Kingdom (1st edn), London:

Methuen.

Elmes, G.W. and Free, A. (1994) Climate Change and Rare Species in Britain, ITE Research

Publication 8, London: HMSO, for Natural Environment Research Council/Institute of

Terrestrial Ecology.

Goldsmith, F.B. and Warren, A. (eds) (1993) Conservation in Progress, London: Wiley.

Hearn, K. (1994) ‘The “natural aspect” of the National Trust’, British Wildlife 5(6): 367–78.

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Conservation 4(8): 929–37.

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development”: the Environment Act 1995’, Journal of Environmental Law 8(2): 283–300.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (1994) Environmental Indicators:

OECD Core Set, Paris: OECD.

Owens, S. (1993) ‘Planning and nature conservation—the role of sustainability’, Ecos: a

Review of Conservation 14 (3–4): 15–22.

Palmer, M.A. (1996) ‘A strategic approach to the conservation of plants in the United

Kingdom’, Journal of Applied Ecology 33(6): 1231–40.

Park, C.C. (1997) The Environment: Principles and Applications, London: Routledge.

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Environmentalist 16(4): 263–8.

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Resources 9(6): 645–54.

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Biological Diversity’, Environment 38(4): 17–20, 37–45.

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context’, Journal of Rural Studies 11(1): 79–88.

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Biodiversity, Cm 3260, London: HMSO.

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land use in the UK’, Journal of Agricultural Economics 47(1): 50–65.

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World Bank (1995) Monitoring Environmental Progress: A Report on Work in Progress,

Washington, DC: World Bank.

Further reading

There is a large and rapidly-growing literature on the theme of biodiversity and conservation,

both in general and with specific reference to the United Kingdom. A broad introduction to

the general field is Richard Huggett, (1998) Fundamentals of Biogeography (London:

Routledge). Other recent overviews include Mike Jeffries (1997) Biodiversity and

Conservation (London: Routledge), Gordon Dickinson and Kevin Murphy (1998)

Ecosystems (London: Routledge), Ian Spellerberg (ed.) (1996) Conservation Biology

(London: Addison Wesley Longman), and Ian Bradbury (1998) The Biosphere (second

edition) (London: Wiley). Sound treatments of particular habitats in the UK include Alan

Fielding and Paul Haworth (1999) Upland Habitats (London: Routledge), and Helen Read

and Mark Frater (1999) Woodland Habitats (London: Routledge). David Evans (1996) A

History of Nature Conservation in Britain (second edition) (London: Routledge), offers a

detailed review of the subject, whilst a longer-term and broader perspective is given in

B.Clapp (1994) An Environmental History of Britain since the Industrial Revolution (London:

Addison Wesley Longman). The place of nature conservation within environmental policy

is outlined in Phillip Lowe and Stephen Ward (eds) (1998) British Environmental Policy

and Europe (London: Routledge), and in Andrew Gilg (1996) Countryside Planning (second

edition) (London: Routledge). The whole realm of ethics and rights within nature is also

very topical, and this is well illustrated in Robert Elliott (1997) Faking Nature: The Ethics

of Environmental Restoration (London: Routledge). An important emerging theme is the

social construction of nature, which is introduced in Bruce Braun and Noel Castree (1998)

Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium (London: Routledge).

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Chapter 21

Growing into the twenty-first

century: social futures

Hugh Matthews

Introduction

Like almost every country in the world (the exceptions being Somalia and the USA)

the UK government ratified in 1991 the United Nations Convention of the Rights of

the Child (UNCRC). This Convention provides a comprehensive framework of human

rights for all people under the age of 18. In essence, children have the right to life,

which is universal and not contingent on any corresponding responsibilities by

themselves (Lansdown 1995). All responsibility rests with adults (either parents or

the state) who should ensure that all children are offered the basic rights of protection,

provision and participation. As such the Convention establishes an international

framework which in many parts challenges the traditional assumptions of the status

of children and the meaning of childhood (James et al. 1998). In the first of two

concluding chapters to this book, I consider what it is like to be a child growing into

the twenty-first century within the UK and whether the position of children has been

in any way changed or transformed in the decade since the UNCRC’s ratification.

This is an immense subject and so in order to provide a focus to this review my

emphasis will be upon aspects of the impact of only one of the fifty-four Articles

outlined in the Convention; that is, Article 12. Under this Article, the government of

the UK is required to:

¿ enable all children to express their views freely about all matters which affect them;

¿ ensure that their views are given due weight, in keeping with their age and maturity;

¿ give children the opportunity to be heard in any administrative or legal proceeding which

affects them.

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Article 12 therefore provides ‘a powerful assertion of children’s right to be actors in their

own lives and not merely passive recipients of adult decision-making’ (Lansdown 1995:2).

From a geographical perspective the implications of Article 12 are far-reaching. In effect,

this Article establishes the fundamental right for under-18s to be involved in decisions about

provision and protection of all kinds, and ratification is seen to be a commitment to the

principle of participation. Yet, despite the clamour and fanfare which followed the UK

government’s signing of the Convention, a culture of non-participation by young people is

endemic in the UK, and no more so than in the context of decisions surrounding young

people’s social, economic and environmental futures. For the most part, young people are

seemingly invisible in ‘political’ decision-making and seldom given opportunities to express

their preferences (Matthews 1995; Matthews and Limb 1998). For example, routinely and

regularly local councils, health and education authorities and government departments make

proposals for development and planning. These cover a broad range of issues from transport,

housing and wastes management to leisure, environmental design and landscape conservation.

Planning decisions of this sort affect everyone, including children. However, as many

commentators point out—for a review see Adams and Ingham (1998) —young people do

not feature prominently on these agenda and the way in which they are included in the

practices of consultation varies considerably.

The case of structure planning further illustrates young people’s general lack of

involvement in local and community affairs. Each county, metropolitan and unitary authority

is required to produce a structure plan in order to address wider strategic and local policy

issues. During the 1990s every borough in London began to prepare a unitary development

plan (UDP) along these lines. Plans of this kind provide a framework for development,

provision, amenity and access. They are intended to be comprehensive and to be responsive

to the disparate needs of local populations. In 1994 a comprehensive review of the policies

contained in the UDPs of each of the thirty-three London Boroughs was carried out (Planning

Aid for London 1994), with a view to determining whether young people had been consulted

or involved in this process and the extent to which local policies were targeted at their

needs. The report concluded that few UDPs considered young people’s issues seriously and

that there was little practice of consultation. There is little evidence to suggest that London

differs from elsewhere in the UK with regard to the participation of young people in local

planning. For these sorts of reasons the Children’s Rights Office (Lansdown 1995) declares

that children in the UK—that is, those aged under 18—constitute a disenfranchised group

of 13 million citizens with no public voice. In this chapter I review young people’s current

involvement in participatory processes, consider discourses about young people’s competence

as social actors, examine the development of a variety of forms of local participation

especially the role of youth councils, and consider what the future may hold for young

people with respect to their chances for taking part in society.

Taking part and the right to say

On face value it would seem that the lack of participation by young people in many aspects

of UK society is an outcome of their own actions. For example, when young people’s

participation rates in the general political processes are considered there is considerable

evidence for low levels of interest and involvement (Bynner and Ashford 1994; Park 1995;

Furlong and Cartmel 1997). People under 25 are more likely than any other group not to be

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registered to vote, with only 43 per cent voting in the 1992 General Election. Explanations

for political apathy of this kind hinge on two competing interpretations (Park 1995). On the

one hand, there is a view that non-involvement is something which has always been a universal

characteristic of young people and that with age and growing responsibilities political interest

will develop. For example, a recent survey in the UK (Bynner and Ashford 1994) has shown

that the majority of 15- to 16-year-olds (72 per cent) are not at all interested in politics, an

attitude confirmed in parts of Europe, USA, Canada and Australia (Wilkinson and Mulgan

1995), and one which is in stark contrast to overall turn-out rates in national elections. On

the other hand, another explanation is that disillusionment and apathy is a recent phenomenon

and symptomatic of a trend that will become more apparent as the present ‘new’ electorate

grows older. Evidence in support of this view includes the declining figures of party

membership by young people across the whole political spectrum (Cole 1997). The

plummeting of Young Conservative membership from 50,000 in 1970 to 10,000 by the

early 1990s is typical of this trend. Also, in a report produced by the Industrial Society

(1997) prior to the General Election of 1997, only 5 per cent of 12- to 25-year-olds claimed

interest in national politics of any sort, and a substantial majority, 80 per cent, of 16- to 25-

year-olds felt they were not part of any political party. Possible reasons for this growing

sense of ‘political disconnection’ are that young people are now too ‘busy’, given the

developing range of leisure opportunities, or are more ‘satisfied’ due to increased material

affluence compared to their parents and grandparents. Another suggestion is that political

disaffection is strongly associated with a growing cynicism about politics, grounded in

accusations of sleaze and corruption which do nothing to inspire the interest of young people

(Bynner and Ashford 1994).

An alternative explanation, however, is that young people’s lack of participation and

interest in politics is a product of their strong sense of marginalisation, an outcome of the

ways in which they are treated by adults prior to the voting age. For the most part, despite a

governmental commitment to the UNCRC, young people, especially those under 18, are

provided with few opportunities to engage in discussions about their economic, social and

environmental futures and seldom given chances to express their preferences outside of

adult-dominated institutions (Hart 1997; Matthews 1992, 1995; Matthews and Limb 1998).

It would seem that despite some changes in recent years, which have begun to shift the

relationship between those who hold power and those on the receiving end of that exercise

of power, the practice of consultation with young people is not well established. In essence,

participation within the UK is conceived to be an adult activity (Oakley 1994). A mid-

decade review carried out by the Article 12 Network, an organisation launched in 1996 and

run by young people with the aim to ensure that all under-18s know they have a right to

express their opinion, draws attention to what is and what is not happening within UK law,

planning, policy and practice about the involvement of young people (Table 21.1).

There is ample evidence to suggest, however, that if young people are given more

responsibilities and more chances to participate in the running of society, then they will be

more willing to engage in the processes of democracy (Hodgkin and Newell 1996). For

example, in single issue organisations where young people are encouraged to take part,

membership statistics confirm a growing participation rate. Amnesty International’s youth

section increased from 1,300 in 1988 to 15,000 in 1995; Greenpeace’s youth membership

rose from 80,000 in 1987 to 420,000 in 1995; and Friends of the Earth report a growth of

125,000 new young members over the same period (British Youth Council 1996).

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TABLE 21.1 The right to say: young people’s involvement in policy and practice

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Source: Based on Article 12 Network (1996) and Lansdown (1995).

TABLE 21.1 continued

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A culture of non-participation

Three factors appear central to this culture of non-participation within the UK. First, there

remain discourses within society which question the appropriateness of children’s political

involvement. Second, there are those who doubt the capability of children to participate.

Third, even amongst those who believe in the principle of children’s right to say, there are

uncertainties about the form that participation should take and the outcomes which might

result (Matthews et al. 1999).

In spite of a growing lobby in favour of children’s rights to participate, particularly

fuelled by Article 12, there remains an intransigence in some quarters about whether such

involvement is appropriate. Lansdown (1995:20) identifies three reasons why some adults

are reluctant for children to take part in decision-making that will impact on their own life

and the lives of others. First, giving children the right to say threatens the basis of family life

by calling into question parents’ ‘natural’ authority to decide what is in the best interests of

a child. Yet, as Qyortrup et al. (1994) suggest, to sustain such an argument, it must be

beyond reasonable doubt that adults behave with children’s best interests in mind. In practice,

this is not always the case. Second, imposing responsibilities on children detracts from their

right to childhood, a period in life which is supposed to be characterised by freedom from

concern. Such a perspective ignores the fact that many children’s lives are full of legitimate

concerns which are products of the same social and economic forces that affect adults. A

third strand to the argument is that children cannot have rights until they are capable of

taking responsibility. This view is based on an idealised view of childhood, yet few children

live without responsibilities. Alanen (1994) points out that children’s labour and duties

within the home are underestimated, whilst the reality of school work and its associated

responsibilities are rendered invisible by the label ‘education’.

A second, though related, argument against children’s participation is based on a

conviction that children are incapable of reasonable and rational decision-making, an

incompetence confounded by their lack of experience and a likelihood that they will make

mistakes. Furthermore, if children are left to the freedom of their own inabilities the results

are likely to be harmful (Scarre 1989). Franklin and Franklin (1996) draw attention to a

range of libertarian criticisms of these two viewpoints. As a starting point, children are

constantly making rational decisions affecting many parts of their daily lives (some trivial,

some less so) without which their lives would have little meaning, order or purpose. In

addition, adults are often not good decision-makers and history bears this out. Indeed, this

observation provides an incentive to allow children to make decisions so that they may

learn from their mistakes and so develop good decision-making skills. More radically, it has

been argued that the probability of making mistakes should not debar involvement, as such

an assumption ‘confuses the right to do something with doing the right thing’ (Franklin and

Franklin 1996: 101). Critics also draw attention to the existing allocation of rights according

to age, which is flawed by arbitrariness and inconsistency. For example, within the UK; a

young person is deemed criminally responsible at the age of 10, sexually competent at the

age of 16, but not politically responsible until the age of 18, when suddenly, without training

or rehearsal, young people enjoy the right to suffrage. Last, denying rights of participation

to everyone under the age of 18 assumes a homogeneity of emotional and intellectual needs,

skills and competences. Both of these positions are imbued with an adultist assumption that

children are not social actors in their own right, but are adults-in-waiting or human becomings.

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Denigrating children in this way not only fails to acknowledge that children are the citizens

of today (not tomorrow), but also undervalues their true potential within society and

obfuscates many issues which challenge and threaten children in their ‘here and now’

(Matthews and Limb 1999).

Third, the debate about children’s right to participate is compounded by a divergence

of views on the nature, purpose and form that participation should take. For some (Hart

1992, 1997; Lansdown 1995), democratic responsibility is something which does not

suddenly arise in adulthood but is a condition which has to be nurtured and experienced at

different stages along a transition and so should be a feature of all democratic education. ‘It

is unrealistic to expect them [children] to become responsible, participating adults at the

age of 16, 18 or 21 without prior exposure to the skills and responsibilities involved’ (Hart

1992: 5). In addition, there is ample evidence to suggest that the involvement of children in

local decision-making acts as a catalyst for participation amongst the community as a whole

(Hart 1997). Others (Council of Europe 1993; Storrie 1997) argue, however, that education

of this kind is disempowering in that it is designed primarily to integrate young people into

existing social and institutional structures on which they are unable to exert any real influence.

Instead, if participation is to be truly effective it should be carried out in such a way that the

material influence of young people becomes progressively enlarged. Participation here is

more broadly conceived to be the right to influence, in a democratic manner, processes

bearing upon one’s own life and the development of local youth policy. This debate relates

closely to notions of education versus empowerment and training versus emancipation (de

Winter 1997).

Local places and community involvement

From the work of geographers, there is considerable empirical support for the view that

young people are competent social (environmental) actors, with the capability and adeptness

to take part in decision-making which affects their everyday lives (Matthews and Limb

1999). For example, both Matthews (1992, 1995) and Hart (1997) have shown that children,

from the age of 6 years, have the capacity, ingenuity and motivation to become keenly

involved in determining the development and management of local places. Initially, children’s

horizons are set within a domestic context of care (e.g. care of animals and plants, gardening

at home). As they become older so their interests and involvement can be broadened and

diversified from taking part in local environmental management schemes (e.g. recycling,

weather surveys, wildlife surveys, waste audits) through to a growing range of community-

based projects (e.g. school councils, youth club committees, young people’s forums). As a

result of their involvement children will be drawn into increasingly complex social and

political milieux and gain a sense of moral responsibility. Furthermore, participation of this

kind engenders feelings of belongingness and rootedness, which are important dimensions

of citizenship (Matthews et al. 1999).

A number of national organisations have taken a lead in attempting to integrate young

people into community planning of this kind. The Council for Environmental Education

(CEE), an umbrella body for a broad range of environmental and educational organisations,

secured funding in 1996 from the Department for Education and Employment to establish

the National Young People’s Environment Network (NYPEN). Targeted at 13- to 19-year-

olds, and organised into six regional groups, NYPEN aims to raise awareness of