Poverty And Nature

Food Poverty and Access to Nature in the UK

Yesterday I set up my stall at the city library as part of their Big Green Week.  I made a  loss.  Nobody bought anything at all.

For the first few hours it felt rather disingenuous to be there at all: most people were visiting the library because it's a place to find resources for free, and many of them are, frankly, skint.  So asking them to buy a £100 brooch seemed dismissive: "Well I'm truly sorry your kids will be eating sugar sarnies for their tea again Missus - but what about the hedgehogs?!"'

Having grown up pretty hard up, I know first-hand the difficulties my mum faced trying to feed us adequately.  I don't recall seeing her eat at weekday mealtimes - something I never took any notice of as a kid, but which now suggests quite strongly that she was skipping meals herself to feed us.  Luckily for us, (and especially for mum) it was not a long term thing.  And back then in the 1980s of course, we still had other joys: hearing a cuckoo through our bedroom windows, a garden to play in,  fields and meadows butting up to our little housing estate.  We still had nature.

Skip forward to today and things look very different since my comparatively blissful childhood. An estimated 3000-4000 hectares of green belt are lost every year to new housing estates in England alone.  The Government's Children, People and Nature Study in 2025 found some worrying developments too:  60% of the children surveyed had access to outdoor spaces only in their own or a friend's garden.  Sounds fairly good until you realise this means a whopping 40% did not have this access.  Plus no mention was made as to whether or not those outdoor spaces were actually in any way nature friendly.

As for beaches, woodlands, moorlands and mountains, fewer than 25% of children surveyed had accessed any of these spaces.

Once in our green and blue spaces, the fall in biodiversity since my birth year is equally depressing - the WWF's Living Planet Report suggested that globally we have lost 73% of all known species of wildlife since 1975.  73%! This means only 27% of the nature that roamed the earth when I was born still exists.  It is insupportable.

In 2023, the Wildlife Trusts' Landmark Review estimated that here in the UK, one in six species was at risk of extinction, with some groups suffering disproportionately higher losses - amphibians and reptiles (31%), lichen and fungi (28%) and birds (43%).

Why Our Food System is Suffering

The key drivers for this loss are the industrialised use of nicotinoids and other pesticides, designed to wipe out 'pest' invertebrates; agricultural waste and pollution; marine pressures - overfishing, shipping, and bottom trawling - and climate breakdown.  (You can visit each product in my collection to read how they've been individually affected).

Most of these blows came about through well documented changes in industry and farming following the Second World War - intensive production was needed to bring the nation back to health - and who can argue with that?  But ironically, these very methods of farming have done huge damage, not only to animal welfare and our own health - but crucially also to the health of the soil we use to grow our food.  It means crops fail more often, are becoming increasingly limited in type, and are more difficult to grow than ever before.  It has led to a paucity of crops we can provide our nation to eat and made all food harvests increasingly expensive. The move from small scale farms to massive agribusiness has also shifted focus from local interest to heavily funded corporate lobbies - reducing the moral investment in protecting nature.

Economies of scale are useful when you want to feed a nation - a cheaply reared chicken or tin of beans can be a financial leveler in the short-term - but when worldwide growing conditions become increasingly difficult, and the global population continues to rise, the true effects of long-term intensive farming become all too clear. Reducing the capabilities of our soil and seas to feed us - or as Cambridge Economist, Sir Partha Dasgupta put it, undervaluing our "natural capital," will have one inevitable consequence: food poverty.

The House of Commons estimates 7.5million people (11%) in the UK currently face food poverty - in huge part due to biodiversity loss.  18% of children live in households with food insecurity.  Our exit from the EU has additionally increased the cost of importing foods from overseas pushing some items further out of reach for many UK families.

What does this mean exactly?  Well firstly it means a huge chunk of our population has no physical access to affordable food at all - the Trussell Trust reports ever increasing demand at its food banks, including for working households. 

Secondly it means a huge dip in the consumption of nutritional food groups such as fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

Thirdly, where every inch of acreage counts, it's creating immense political pressure to weaken conditions or even roll back measures such as Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)  Pillar 2, which was put in place to protect wildlife spaces in farming, as farmers desperately try to claw a living out of their depleting land.  The result, inevitably, is further biodiversity loss.  More 'conditional easing' on CAPs is expected in 2027 - and if certain political parties gain power, these will gain traction going forward, removing years of effort to maintain a healthy balance between food production, health - and wildlife.

It reads like a Greek tragedy and affords no pleasure to write about. But there is also an element of guilt: this has happened on my watch.  In my 50s now, I was lucky enough to experience a rather more abundant wild Britain.  And although I know what it means to go to bed with a grumbling belly, it is not something I expected to still be happening in 2026 - not least for it to have become more prevalent, with a side order of biodiversity collapse. 

I cannot help wondering - is my generation just sleepwalking through it? 

Solutions

So how do we convince people that saving our wildlife is ultimately going to help them escape food poverty, when their daily concerns feel far more pressing?  Well - we talk about it.  We talk about it everywhere we can, and we raise awareness.  And we offer potential ideas to start making small changes.  Because if we all make a small change, the domino effect might help.

"That's lovely, Fi" I hear you say, "but what does this have to do with jewellery?"

Putting it simply, jewellery is a statement.  Which makes it the perfect wearable activism.  It is a transportable message that opens up discussion. It enables the wearer to talk about issues that impact the wildlife species in question - and others - with their friends, family, colleagues, customers - and service users.

Truthfully? I went to the library yesterday with no expectation of making any sales whatsoever - what I really wanted (apart from to support this wonderful space) was to talk to the public about our disappearing wildlife, and why it's important to save it. 

In that respect, I'm happy to report, the event was a roaring success.

One lady I spoke to had no idea Atlantic Cod were critically endangered and was so horrified she vowed never to eat it again.   Another was planning on sowing some wildflowers now her old roses had died.  One chap had never grown anything in his life, nor did he intend to - but he did want to become a youth worker and get kids interested in helping their communities - and he now had this extra information to share with them. It all felt like a step in the right direction.  Armed with information people can make more informed choices. 

And making conscious choices about where we source our food from, how we use our green spaces at home - and how we can make our own impact on biodiversity a positive one - will not only help us to save those species at most risk, but might even ultimately help to save our own.