Why Biodiversity?

Biodiversity has become a handy, all-purpose eco-tag. It might be swapped as if synonymous with ‘wildlife’ or ‘the natural world’ or used even more generously to denote the environment at large. And none of that is so much wrong as less practically useful than it might be.

Biodiversity is fundamentally about variety, the richness of flora and fauna that exists and interacts in a place and at a time. This isn’t a very different definition to the more general applications, but it does focus attention on the ideas of species richness and habitat complexity, tools to build more sustainable spaces for people and wildlife alike. Managing for biodiversity is managing for sustainability and yet there are few examples of corporate strategy that treat the subject in this way.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, and the fact that it sounds idyllic is a testament to the amazing job society has done of convincing itself that we are not actually a part of biodiversity, that we are not in fact biological organisms at all, and that we exist above and beyond any sort of functioning, or misfunctioning, ecosystem.

A reappraisal of biodiversity in sustainability practice plugs us usefully back into the ecosystems we share with the organic and inorganic world. We can build better habitats for humans and shape places that are better for people when they are also better for wildlife (because people are wildlife). The UK’s 25-year Environment Plan is already bending policy in this direction and there are good reasons to be ahead of its commitment to change.

The more interesting, diverse and complex an urban design for biodiversity, the richer the suite of animals and plants that results, and the more immediate and lasting the effects on the social, economic and environmental performance of buildings and the urban volume between. Ecological design and management gather up and combine the central threads of the sustainability agenda, in the management of wind, water and heat, in adaptations to climate change, in the capture and cycling of nutrients and pollutants, the reuse of materials for biologically favourable outcomes, and ultimately in the mental and physical wellbeing of tenants, residents, businesses and communities in the places we inhabit. By using ecological leverage and demonstrating gains for biodiversity, we can be growing human resilience and create a more sustainable living and working environment.

So the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all rely on the existence of a healthy diversity of wildlife. These so-called ecosystem services are crucial to the survival of all living things. Talking specifically about the current crisis in biodiversity loss, the recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report states ‘Pressures on biodiversity are occurring independent of climate change. The most significant processes are habitat loss and fragmentation.’

In response to the biodiversity crisis, Artecology is creating solutions designed to boost the natural world and bring wildlife to our built environments. Our team of experts started out as a science and art collaboration between ecological consultants Arc Consulting and arts collective Eccleston George. We formed Artecology in 2014 with the mission to bring biodiversity to engineered sea defences through a project we called ‘Shelving the Coast’. After the success of Shelving the Coast and the Vertipool system, it gave rise to, we have set ourselves the task of designing, building and testing products and methods capable of amplifying biodiversity so that they can be adopted and deployed in any village, town or city anywhere in the world. Today our collaborative approach to problem-solving means we have expanded our cross-discipline R&D work to include architects, engineers, scientists and even school children!

Artecology has won UK Big Biodiversity Challenge Awards in 2016, 2018 and 2021; as well as numerous awards for our clients.

Below - An illustrated talk by Arc & Artecology CEO Ian Boyd. Ian speaks frankly about the disaster that is volume house building and the prescribed antidote we call ‘Beyond Net Gain’ at the 2022 FutureBuild Conference in London.