Transcript

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(transcribed by AI so there maybe some small errors!)

Marina Robb: What if wild, not domesticated, should be our normal instead of factory farmed lives? What if you could cultivate fulfilling lives and contribute to a healthy natural world? The wild minds podcast is brought to you by me. Marina Robb, an author, social entrepreneur, Forest School and nature-based trainer and consultant and pioneer in developing green programs for the health service in the UK. Join me as I discover new perspectives on what it is to be a human in a more than human world, challenging dominant paradigms, finding ways to be kinder on ourselves and harder on the system. I'm also the founder of the outdoor teacher and creator of practical online for school, outdoor learning and nature-based trainings for people in health, education and business. Tune in for interviews, insights, cutting edge and actionable approaches to help you to improve your relationship with yourself, others and the natural world.

Welcome back to the wild minds podcast and a Happy New Year to you all today in Episode 49 right to roam, right to learn. I am joined by Lewis winks, a researcher, writer and campaigner passionate about cultural and social transformations, environmental advocacy and access to nature. Louis integrates social research with environmental education and works with the grassroots right to roam campaign. His PhD at the University of Exeter focused on Outdoor and Experiential Learning. I want to begin the year by imagining what kind of world we want to live within, to continue to learn more about how other groups and cultures operate different values or ways of knowing, most importantly, ways that respect a systems way of thinking and don't deny the limits of our finite planet. I think we can all agree that the planet and all of life cannot sustain exponential growth and consumption indefinitely. In the final episode of the last season, I briefly discussed the gift economy and how healthy relationships work. They're certainly not characterized only by transactions, but rather are reciprocal, where we can fill ourselves up with awareness of what we receive and give back, because we can. I highly recommend, if you want to learn more about this, then go and read Robb and Kimmerer latest book, The Service Berry. I'll put a link in the show notes.

So, this interview was recorded before Christmas, shortly after the US elections that saw Trump elected as president. The future does feel more uncertain, especially when it comes to whether our leaders can recognize the unsustainability of current neoliberal and capitalist systems. Personally, I'm choosing to focus on our capacity to act individual within our communities or through our work or organizations driven by this simple belief in doing what is right, my gratitude is that we can embrace the complexities of the challenges ahead and not look for simplistic solutions so that we can address the root causes of the multiple crises that we are facing together, we will undoubtedly need to develop our emotional maturity and resilience so that we can feel and process fear, anger, shame, alongside all the moments of joy, love, laughter and awe.

Lewis, in this interview, encourages us to all listen to the voices of young people, communities more than human, and to join the right to roam campaign when we collectively learn about our heritage of enclosures and exclusions. With the current figure of only 1% of England owning 50% of the land, we can come together with those people to advocate for something better, for more people, to increase biodiversity and the greater natural world, so that we can develop a deep sense of belonging to the land. We can push back on the extractive model and rather than always be consumers of the natural world, we can also be part of restoring and helping to create a more reciprocal minded society. Well, I hope you enjoyed this podcast and the next season. So welcome Lewis to the wild minds Podcast. I'm really grateful that you're here. Thank you for joining me.

Lewis Winks: I'm pleased to be here. Thank you.

Marina Robb: So, the first thing I always do is I like to connect with some gratitude, and it helps me to feel present, so I'll start, and if you wouldn't mind following, that would be great. And I was thinking before we started, because I was saying that I've got a little bit of a cold, and I am really grateful that I first of all the timing. So I was thinking, and it's good timing, because I got to go out in the woods in a few days, and I've been able to rest a bit more. So I'm grateful to rest. And the other thing that I felt really grateful about was that I had this little bottle called Winter tonic that a friend had put some herbs, some plants, and I guess rose hip and some things that I know are really good for vitamin C, and I've been kind of knocking that back, and at least feeling that's helping. So I was just really grateful for those things, you know, because I don't think everybody gets to rest and everybody gets to have these winter tonics, you know. So that's my gratitude for this morning. And yeah, do you have anything that you'd like to share?

Lewis Winks: Yeah, thank you. I think we're probably vibing on a similar level, because maybe the shift in the seasons, and I'm very pleased to be sat here with the sun streaming through the window almost directly into my eyes, but it feels like the first Sun I've felt on my face for a very long time. And I think about a week ago today, we were waiting on the results of the US election, and we were literally under a cloud, a very dense low cloud in the UK, we had this anti cyclonic low pressure system over us, and God, it really affected my mood, you know. And so I'm feeling very, very grateful for the return of a bit of light, a bit of sunshine, and this sort of easing into autumn with and a colder day as well. I think that's helped to perhaps revive some of my nervous system and get me going into this new season.

Marina Robb: Yeah, thank you. I'm aware that we'll be putting this out in the new year, but that's still really interesting, that feeling of how we can change from feeling kind of that oppression to feeling something different. And in a way, maybe that is going to be a theme of the conversation. You know, that's the theme, isn't it? Feeling that sense of heaviness, both maybe emotionally, but also all kinds of ways, and then how that can shift. And so I'm really excited to speak to you, because I know that we have a shared interest in education, and more specifically, environmental education and perhaps rewilding education. We were talking a little bit about the different words that we might use for that, and I suppose it's why have you got this interest? I mean, what has made this so central to your life and your work? Do you think, why is it important?

Lewis Winks: Well, I ended up as an environmental educator, almost by accident. I think I was my way in. Really was an interest in the environment, in being outdoors. And in fact, the thing that really did it for me was working at the Center for alternative technology in mid Wales a long time ago, when I was in my late teens and early 20s and I ended up working in environmental education there, just because I had this, this sort of passion to learn and then to share that with other people, and also to learn through that sharing as well. And then that led me into working, uh. More in outdoor education and environmental education, which took me down to Devon for a job that I took with the field studies Council. But I think the passion for that comes from knowing that there needs to be more of that in the world, and perhaps benefiting myself as a younger person from that. And you know, since then, I've taken that more into research and into various other avenues, including campaigning with right to roam. And I think all of that is driven by this idea that we, you know, we have to be advocates for what we care about. And I took a huge amount from an upbringing, and then later in life, ability to have that connection, and that deep, really restorative, purposeful connection with the natural world, where I was learning, and then able to give back. And part of that giving back, I think, is bringing other people on that journey.

Marina Robb: So let's get to the heart of the matter for me, and also in being able to talk to you, is a lot of your research focuses on behavior change, and that seems to me so important, you know, like I remember as a young person as well asking, Well, how am I gonna in the 1990s early 1990s you know, how are we going to get people to change? So you've spent, I suppose, a good number of years thinking about behavior change, and then how that gets translated into, I'm assuming, mainstream education, that is an assumption. So would you give us a little bit of flavor of some of the ideas within that behavior change and then and how that translates into, you know, day to day education.

Lewis Winks: Yeah, sure. I mean, this is always a quite an uncomfortable thing for me, because I actually really don't like the term behavior change, and I suspect quite a few of your listeners also flinch when they hear that, because it's, I mean, first of all, I think it seems quite formulaic. And maybe some people have the sense that that behavior change is driven by a top down kind of desire to see a shift. And for me, that's not particularly where I approach this. From the field of social science that I've been working in is sometimes terms behavior change, and I think what it speaks to, and certainly for me, it speaks to this idea of an interaction between where individual behaviors meet those kind of more systemic top down mandates from society.

So you know, choices to stop smoking, for example, are met by restrictions in public places. So we start to talk about those things as social practices. What are the practices that people live by and make choices by in society? And so for me, it's a complex picture, but one that hasn't had a huge amount of attention put to it, and particularly not within environmental education or the transformative education worlds that you and I work in. It has really within mainstream education. I mean, there are obviously behavioral models within schools and education. And those people that have been to teacher training are probably familiar with the word behavior is used a lot, but often, I think, as environmental educators, we take our practice and we it's driven by a belief, by a sense, as I've described earlier. Of well, I benefited from this, so other people should benefit. But actually, how do we ensure that what we're doing is as impactful is able to give people the best opportunity to take from it what they need in their own lives to adopt sustainable behaviors, get the best possible opportunity to for wellbeing and benefits for wellbeing and connectedness to the natural world. And that will be different for everybody dependent on their life experiences, on their kind of social and cultural backgrounds. And I think that's what's really interesting is it's not about a one size fits all approach.

It's about being responsive to what's happening and how you're kind of working with people in an educational setting, and particularly, I think I'm interested in that as a and with the colleagues that I've worked with Exeter and beyond Exeter is how that translates into empowerment, into giving people those that the ability to make those choices and then to really crucially, become those agents of change in their own communities. And we see that from working with the people on arts projects, environmental arts projects, all the way through to campaigning for land justice that it's quite often about giving people the tools to make changes in their own communities, rather than there being this sort of heavy, top down mandate. 

Marina Robb: Oh, my God, there's so much in that I'm like, I don't want to miss what some of those tools of change are. So if I go off on some tangent, please bring me back, because I'm sitting with the simple, is it analogy that you gave of a smoker, which I was many years ago, and then, yeah, the band came in, and that affected my habits. And this kind of connection between me individually making a choice and the choices I might make and how I can be affected or persuaded or slightly maneuvered into not doing it because of system change. I'm really interested in that, because this is the dynamic between individual and system and then you said things like empowerment, and I'm also very interested in empowerment. So before I go into more of that, I'm often struck by how a lot of the kind of arena of sustainability and the big issues that we face are kind of focused sometimes on the individual right, you know, what we can do, and yet, I'm increasingly feeling that it's the big systems of which we're part of that are, Are can really well, can make a huge change that an individual can't do. So what do you think about that? What power does an individual have, you know, compared to the system, and you've already mentioned, you know, right to roam in access, and we will get there. But you know, what's the what's the relationship? I guess, can you explore a bit of that with us? For sure?

Lewis Winks: Yeah. And I think there is, you know, there is a connection there between what we're talking about here and with right to roam, perhaps. But yeah, and we can get onto that. But I think it's no surprise really, that, you know, we're in this Neo liberal society where the kind of ambitions and the drive really is put onto the individual for to succeed, and that, you know, if that's the lens through which we see society, that we're kind of boiling it down into individuals, and that those are the that's where the agency is within the individual, then It's no surprise really, that most of our behavioral models for changing, transforming society, for example, towards sustainability, are also focused on the individual. So a good example of that would be the Cameron government. And then since has been adopted by successive governments have adopted a nudge model of behavior change, where it's all to do with how the consumer responds to different social and psychological nudges that are put forward. So whether that's healthy eating or smoking or whatever else it might be that, or whether you're going to take out life insurance, or what kind of how you pay your tax, it's all to do with, well, we're going to put the best choice first and let the individual decide within a marketplace of ideas and the problem with that, of course, we're not individuals. We're deeply and broadly connected in into the world around us and within our communities and within society. And so I think there were better models which give us a better way of seeing behavioral shifts, which also help to knit those threads within stitch, those threads rather getting my metaphors mixed up.

Marina Robb: I always do that.

Lewis Winks: And, you know, and I think that this is, you know, This is really exciting, because there are, you know, we've been working, it's almost like we've been only working with parts of the puzzle, and that suddenly there are all of these other opportunities available. If we can see the shifts that need to happen, to happen beyond the individual, beyond, beyond the scale of the individual and instead in as a societal shift.

Marina Robb: So, I definitely want to hear more about that. If we're not doing the nudge model on the individual, what? What are we doing?

Lewis Winks: Yeah, well, I mean, this is where it gets, I think really interesting, because it's this is where it's about. And some of the work we've been doing, for example, with on an arts project up in por lock, with young people, where we've been working with an amazing organization called stacked wonky, who are a dance and arts organization that work particularly with young people and the model of change there. Is very much about leadership, and bringing the leadership into the realm of young people from their starting point. So instead of thinking, Well, here's the end point and how do we get there, it's thinking, Well, where are you starting from, and what do you want to change about your situation and your community here and poor log and that particular part of West Somerset, as beautiful and amazing as that area is, has the lowest level of social mobility for the whole of England. And so these young people are already starting from a point where they're, you know, their particular challenges in their communities, and what they chose to work on was on plastic pollution.

And they looked and they it's coastal communities, so thinking about plastics a big issue here. It's particularly a big issue because we're on the coast and we see the impacts. And they just, you know, they went and they embarked on this amazing project, which involved them going out into the community, talking to the community, and ended up with them with this amazing installation where they were encouraging people to come in and make pledges for behavioral shifts towards a sort of lower plastic use community in in poor lock. And it happened over last Christmas, and it's very effective and has had repercussions. And it's, you know, but I think that model is interesting, because that's about, you know, as the adults kind of working with them. It's not about us having the answers. This is about, well, how do we, you know, what kind of world do we want to build together, and how can we imagine that and make that happen? And this is also really about developing in those young people, a propensity to become more active, to become environmental activists, really on issues that they care about. And I think that's what we need so much more of we need people to feel that they can make a difference, particularly when the choice, the choice is put to us. They're either that you're an individual, do your recycling or don't worry, a big techno fix is going to come along, and here's the Government Solutions, and those seem to be that's the dichotomy, that's the choice that's put towards us, not that you can organize in your communities and you can become kind of real forces for grassroots change,

Marina Robb: Yeah, that's such in enticing and a good example of, I suppose, for me, that participation and that agency and as that word empowerment that You spoke to, and I'm left curious about anything change in the Goku council did anything change in policy. So here I am jumping to that other end again, a little bit which, which are, I wish I wasn't doing but I feel to ask that like, you know, the energy's there, and I love the sound of that, but were you able to identify, you know, the people that have perhaps more systemic power, where were their changes there, if at all? And that's not to say that that wouldn't be a success anyway, but I'm interested, I am interested in that as well.

Lewis Winks: Yeah, so on that project that definitely happened, and that inroads were made into local parish council and District Council. But I think I'd like slightly challenge that in a way, because I think that there was a culture or and, you know, this is where it obviously would be important to speak to those young people about this. But, you know, often in communities, there's a culture of distancing from young people and their potential. And I think that you know these kind of projects, whilst you might think well, dealing with plastic pollution might just seem like a tiny part of the bigger puzzle, and it is. But yet, what was, I think being done there was changing the attitude towards the role of young people within that particular community, and I think that's where, for me as a social researcher and campaigner, you know, that's where I see the massive win is that We're not just changing behaviors, we're changing attitudes.

Marina Robb: And attitudes, of the local community upon those young people. But it also sounds like internal self belief that I know from other research that I've read and people I've spoken to, is really important. We know there's a rise in Eco anxiety. We know that if people feel that they can be agents of change that really changes that kind of anxiety, you know. So that, you know, there's a whole raft of benefits that you we can draw out of that for sure, right?

Lewis Winks: Yeah, and I mean, anxiety is huge, isn't it? You can anxiety and climate. Anxiety. And it said, you know, that's a complex field, in a way, but it definitely points to the role of agency and the fact that actually it's a form of caring. You know, there's a way of looking at that anxiety and problematizing it and thinking, Well, you know, we need to deal with the anxiety. But of course, the anxiety is a symptom of looking directly at a problem. And I think it's also interesting. You know, the research around eco anxiety, more and more, is suggesting that it's those people who already have that kind of the understanding of the challenges that are kind of more likely to be anxious around them, but also those who are kind of on the front line of dealing with them. So I think we need to build that much more into our response within education about how we don't just deal with eco anxiety, but also use it as a way to platform and to support people to make changes in their own community, because it's it points to, I think, to a hunger to make a difference. And you know, some of these big, wicked problems as they're termed, are not going away, and they require lots and lots of different people, different approaches from different directions. And so bringing the communities, the communities into that, and individuals into that, young people into that, feels ethically like the right thing to do.

Marina Robb: So you've been involved in a project that was funded, as I understand it, by the Economic and Social Research Council, and it was called education at a time of emergency, and drawing on some of the things you've already spoken about, what are some of the ingredients, then, of a curriculum? I guess, because that's the languaging we use in schools, that could be brought into schools that, let's say, support young people to be more empowered, or agents of change, or however you would like to frame that? What are some of those tools that you would, you would like to share or help the listener understand, because it's so critical, isn't it?

Lewis Winks: Yeah, I think it is critical. And I think you know that particular project was we worked with a range of educators, not just those in schools, but also educators, for example, from the wildlife trusts, from Eden Project, from local councils. We worked with independent outdoor education centers, so people who were working in large part with mainstream education, but often through some kind of alternative provision, which always seems absurd to me to be that's the way that it's seen that, you know, often people who are trying to make those changes are working on the fringes, and then, you know, trying to affect a change within the mainstream. That's different conversation. I mean, this particular project we were working we brought these educators together because we saw and we heard from these organizations that there was a desire to share practice and to learn from one another.

So the focus of the project was to bring people together in different locations, some of our partner locations, and to share resources. And then we would bring some of our work that we'd been doing within the social sciences, we had different people come and speak to these educators. So we had one person from rewilding education, Rachel Musson, came along and spoke, amongst other things, about eco anxiety. But we had other people as well trying to kind of inspire and enthuse. But of course, these educators also were nodes of amazing experience and knowledge and insight. And so throughout that project, we were able to collect together these kind of case studies, for want of a better word of practice, and what we ended up producing and which you can you can download from our website, from the last story website, which I'm sure you'll be able to provide a link to, is, was a handbook with some of these, these examples of practice in there, but also talking people through Some of the social science tools that we were using through the project.

And so one of the things that we were looking at was values, for example, so how values operate and shift, and how you can understand values through different frameworks. We looked at the role of imagination, storytelling. So we Devon county council with their waste and recycling team on storytelling as a form of both working with groups, but also how to evaluate, because often, I think education is has a very shallow approach to evaluation. So thinking about how we can use storytelling and bring the voices of young people and adults into that. And we were looking at other things as well about diversity and organization, and how to bring in voices of young people, but also other voices of other organizations to input into how we how we work together, how to frame challenges, yeah, and all the other themes that we've already spoken about. And so, you know, it may be useful for people to have a look at that, what we, I think, what we didn't do, and which is where I think it's because of, it's where the group, who we're working with and where we were our experience sort of ended, was really how that operates within a school, for example.

Because whilst we, a lot of us, work with schools, often it's kind of outside of the of those places. But that's not to say that's that wouldn't have be of interest, I think, to teachers, because it's it points, I think, to a lot of what many of us care about and want more of, whether that's outdoor education, more discussion about the challenges in the world, through a lens of hope and care and or just simply thinking about how you, you know, bring more diversity into your networks. And I think that's, you know, all of those things come together, really. So you can take a look at it.

Marina Robb: Yeah, I'll definitely link to that. I guess what that brings up for me is a wider sense of what would this curriculum look like, you know, because, in a way, I'm if I'm right, the themes you've just talked about are all important in understanding our relationship to the environment, you know, like I'm Curious about, for example, diversity or students, voice or understanding the land and access to the land. These seem to me very important if we're going to look at a curriculum that we could call a climate curriculum, but it's a environmental I don't know climate justice curriculum, and I'd like to discuss a little bit with you about that, because I often feel that in mainstream schools that we're taught to deliver about fossil fuels and the result of carbon increase, but we're not really looking at the systemic The drivers, if you like, that? Are that are part of that? And, yeah, I just wonder about your thoughts around those ingredients, if you like, we can't just take one about carbon. We have to look at the whole thing in a way and educate children. What do you think about that?

Lewis Winks: Yeah, it's interesting. My daughter, who's six, she talks about climate change and, you know, cars and fossil fuels. And, you know, it's quite amazing, really, that already there's this, this sort of understanding and I think, you know, part of that has come to her schooling. And I kind of contrast that to where I was at with the age of six, and, you know, maybe had some awareness of broad environmental issues, particularly, I think pollution, but less so was that was present as climate change. And I think that brings a bit of hope, but also I just think how sad it is that's the reality that our young people are facing. But of course, it is. But in terms of a curriculum, I mean, you know, I live down in Devon, close to the river Dart, and I quite often think, well, you know, you could have an entire school curriculum just focused on the river Dart. You could learn every single subject and teach every subject through that river you know, how beautiful that would be. And, you know, yeah, sure, my daughter's been to the river and been up to Dartmoor and but why not have a thematic approach to it's less common now in schools to take a thematic approach. It's much more subject focused. But yet, the thematic approach lends itself to this, this sort of deepening us our sense of the locale and understanding local geography and ecologies, but also place and how. You know, I'm a geographer, so I, you know, I think about things through these lenses, but, you know,

Marina Robb: it's a good idea. Yeah,

Lewis Winks: Even in geography, we break it up into human and physical geography, and it's just, I don't think it's helpful to see things always through subjects. I think it's really helpful to see stuff through landscape, through our connection to plays, but always ensuring that we're making that connection to other places, other people, other times, yes, which is all possible, and it's particularly, I think it's particularly possible through a river, yeah, you know, yeah. So for me, you know, and I know you're speaking to someone that's not there's worked a lot with schools, but never within a school, and I think that, and I realized that there are barriers to this, but I think that we could go a lot further in the wrong direction if we didn't take an approach like this. You know, I think the further fragmenting education, I think, is part of the massive challenge that we face.

Marina Robb: I love that you've got my creative imagination going in the sense that, I mean, I was a primary school teacher, and I could easily see how you could bring in, not only the felt sense of the river, because I know you're very involved in nature connection, the actual visceral connection, somatic connection, which is so important. But also, you know, you could think about, well, where are the drains going into the river? You could think about, you know, who are the people that are actually operating those systems? You could think, you know, you could look at all those influences, from our parish council, who sits on the parish council, to Yeah, maths and being able to put bar charts of the different kinds of soils on the river or whatever, right? I can really see that. And that's actually quite inspiring. And I actually might go in and think about a little curriculum around a river, but I want to turn a bit more now to the land, and I know you've been heavily involved. Maybe it's not heavily maybe it's joyfully involved with the right to roam campaign. And before you talk about that, could you make it obvious, if you can, to the listener, why access to nature has anything to do with the kind of themes that we're talking about, whether that's empowerment, whether that's having a kind of more, I'm going to say, wholesome relationship to the natural world. All these subjects, complex subjects, why is access to nature important? And then let's look at our state of access.

Lewis Winks: Well, I think land obviously runs through almost every single topic, every single concern. It's hard to tease out land from, particularly land justice, from many aspects of conversation. But in England, we have this heritage of enclosure and of exclusion dating back to before the Norman Conquest. But particularly, you know this kind of segmenting, parceling up of land, the results of which we're living with today. You know, the ownership of land in England is incredibly skewed towards a tiny minority of people. So 1% of England own 50% of land, and which is a figure from Guy shrub souls book, who owns England? If you've not read it, really recommend it, but also our access to land. It's not just about land ownership, it's about access as well. So in England, 92% of England is beyond public access.

So in the last Labor government, we were very fortunate that they had the foresight to legislate for access, but even that, the countryside and rights of way act in the year 2000 only gave us access to a tiny sliver to that 8% that to that remaining bit of England and Within that that also masks or holds rather, so many tiny examples which go undocumented, of people's inability to get out into their nearby countryside. And I campaign with right to Rome. And as part of that role I have the joy of going through our inbox and daily we are we are sensed these accounts of what we have now termed micro enclosures, these accounts of a favorite swimming spot on a river fenced off somebody's favorite footpath around a field edge, suddenly barred with. Barbed wire, or with fencing, or even completely remove from existence. And more recently, of course, and more high profile, we've had the case of Dartmoor, where a wealthy landowner, Alexander Darwin is taking Dartmouth National Park Authority to court in an attempt to have wild camping removed.

The right to wild camp in England, the last remaining right in England removed. And so whilst that particular case is very high profile, the point is, I suppose that there are very many cases of people's access to places that they love being erased, being removed. And so I should also say that 8% of England that we do have access to is mostly in the uplands, in Mountain, more Heath and downland, is how they classed it. So mostly in the north of England. We're very fortunate here in Dartmoor. We have a lot in Dartmoor, but if you live in Kent, for example, you will have access. Only about 3% of Kent is accessible. South Downs National Park is only slightly more than that. As a national park hardly accessible at all. And so we've got this problem, which is that we know that nature connection, that time spent in the natural world is really important. We also know that people's ability to go out freely into their nearby countryside without the need to get into a car and drive to a national trust property or a national park is also really important. But yet, in a survey undertaken about four years ago. Now, Britain ranks lowest in nature connectedness across all countries surveyed. And

Marina Robb: That shocked me so much. I couldn't believe that, but it's true. Even the Italians, and I'm half Italian, were higher than the English. I couldn't believe that.

Lewis Winks: It's astonishing. And I think that the you know, whilst you know, I've thrown around lots of stats and figures. Actually, what this does to us is to culturally disable our knowledge of what it means to be able to access the countryside. So this isn't just about, oh, well, you know, we have so many people coming back to us and saying, Wait, there's a good footpath network, but you've got this park nearby, but this isn't just about the acreage of green space that we have, which is tiny. It's been and is being diminished. It is about our understanding that we're welcome in the countryside and that we feel a sense of belonging there. And for me, as a cultural social geographer, this is where I have a real interest, which is, you know, what is it that underpins the cultural deep knowing that we have a right to belong in the land in which we call our home? So we were talking about the river Dart earlier, and the river Dart, we're quite lucky in that we from tot Ness. Where I live, I can walk in two directions.

There are two bigger states in one, in each direction, and we can walk on the river, but yet, if I look at a map, we have no right of access. There's no right of access. So the Dartington estate, for example, in one direction, where I walk frequently, there's nothing to stop that landowner from closing off access there. And so we always have this sort of sense that we're not welcome, that we don't have a right to belong in the land. And we can contrast that with, for example, Scandinavian many of the Scandinavian countries where there's this sort of deep and historic right to belong, Elman Stratton, for example, or Every Man's Right, you know, to be in the country.

And we can look to Scotland as well, where we see from since the land reform act in 2003 people have had the right to access a presumption of rights of access to nature, which you can contrast to England, which, where we have a presumption of exclusion, and it's incredibly topsy turvy, but it has its roots back in the historic ownership of land and the way in which power operates here. But yeah, I think, you know, just from the final thing to make clear, I think, is that right in, right to roam, our focus, although we're obviously critical of those ownership structures, our focus is on, well, actually, it doesn't really matter who owns the land. This is about bringing back into balance that dance between rights and responsibilities and how if you own the land, you have a right of ownership, but those rights come with them a responsibility to provide access to the public. We're not talking about gardens. We're not talking about people's kind of private areas around their house. We're talking about these kind of vast estates, these acreages of land that are that stretch off into the countryside. But yet the public also have with those rights come responsibilities to be. Responsible agents in the countryside as well. So this is about really bringing in a different, a different set of mood music for what it means to live in England.

Marina Robb: Well, I think that's a little soft mood music for me. I mean, well, because I'm trying to, as I try to do with these podcasts, pull threads together, which can be quite hard because my brain darts around. But I'm thinking about the nudge model from the beginning, the idea that we're a culture that nudges. I'm thinking about spiritual relationship to the land. And I don't mean that in a religious sense. I mean that in a sense of this wonderful feeling that can come of feeling that you belong to a place, and that place nurtures you, this kind of two way relationship that is often beyond words, if you have ever had that I'm thinking about that, and I'm thinking about again, going right back almost to the beginning of thinking the individual and their access to nature, and then the systemic and, you know, we're talking also about all these really important issues, you know, state of emergency, time of emergency, of, you know, climate crisis, But even the way our food is produced, for example, and how they're all part of a puzzle that I would like to just kind of explore a little bit. So would you be, you said, mood music, but yet, what are the ways do you think that this we could change the behavior, let's say, and I don't know that you're going to have an answer, but I still want to discuss it a little bit.

What are the ways we can change our system to be more sustainable, which includes this responsibility that you spoke clearly about. You know, with rights come responsibilities. How can we shift the dial with access to land and these landowners? What do you think are some of the things that would move it? Because I want to name as well. You know this serious number of 2030, you know that we have to become net zero. I would hope to become net positive as a society. This is serious stuff. Don't want to scare our children, but we do want to participate. Feel we've got agency. So please speak if you can a little bit about where you think some of these changes could make. I mean, what do we need to be focusing on? Do you think, or at least within your lens, your expertise, what would you be saying?

Lewis Winks: Well, so I think there are two main things for me that come out of this, which it highlights. I think the situation with our access to land is, of course, hand in hand with our biodiversity and climate emergencies. I mean, it's also no surprise that in that same study, our biodiversity also fared very badly in England, in Britain, rather, and so, you know, reversing those trends, I think get also go together. I think it doesn't help us to think well, people's connection with nature. We know from lots of amazing research, particularly coming out of Derby university, that nature connectedness can, with the right kind of precursors, be enable people to take action for nature and to take these conservation and Pro Environmental behavior behaviors forward.

And so for right to roam, and for the that kind of broader work that goes beyond the right to Rome campaign, which is about bringing people back into connection, giving people opportunities to take notice of nature, to become more ecologically literate, you know, to feel those, those sort of, that sense of belonging that I was speaking about earlier. I think part of that, first of all, it's about pushing back against what I see is a very extractive model of how, you know, we call it recreation. We go outside for our recreation, for an experience, which quite often we pay quite a lot for, whether it's for through outdoor kit or through experiences or holidays, quite often in our leisure time. And we can we become almost consumers of the natural world. And I think that relationship is at the heart, really not a great one. And although it gives people, obviously an outlet for experiences which are in themselves, probably very restorative. But actually, you know what? What does that mean to that most of those people?

It probably means. Are more than just consuming those experiences, but yet they're sort of pitched to us in society in that way. So how can that be something which is much more reciprocal, where we're going out into nature and we're benefiting, but we're also part of the giving back, part of the of the restoring, part of the of the of the helping and then that leads on to this other, I think, slight dead ends that we've gone down, which is to start to see people as inherently bad. And this, I think, is a sort of toxic myth of our times, which is this misanthropic sense. And unfortunately this is particularly and historically been within, within conservation and environmental work, and not for, not always, for ILL founded reasons. But I think that we've got ourselves into a situation where people are seen as the problem, and as a result of that, in right to roam, we're quite often in debates. Find ourselves in debates with those on which we should really be on the same side, and I think we are on the same side, but we've got to make the case for people and nature being in this together, because a sense of exclusion from nature is also gives, gives kind of ammunition to those that might say, well, people are part of the problem. People have caused the problems. People will continue to be part of the problem. The only way for nature to recover, the only way for us to get to 30% by 2030 is for us to create kind of exclusion zones. And in some cases, that might be true, and is true. There are certainly some cases where we need to create kind of sanctuary zones for particularly sensitive wildlife. But in a lot of cases, people are excluded, still to the detriment of both people and the environment.

Marina Robb: Yeah, there feels to be something so important that comes from our history as well of sort of the nature or the other being an enemy rather than this friend that we are, yeah, we're part of it all, you know, this kind of kinship that people talk about. Well, Lewis, thank you very much. It's been really, really interesting, and I really look forward to thinking more about what you've said and also reading some of the links that you've suggested. You know, thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

Lewis Winks: That's an absolute pleasure. And I would just say, If anyone wants to get involved with right to roam, we have a really healthy group of local groups who are really active on these issues as well. So if people do feel that kind of cool to be more involved with that campaign, then you can get in touch with us, and we can put you in touch with your local group.

Marina Robb: That's fantastic. I'll definitely make sure that we link to that both in the introduction and the outro of the podcast and also on the show notes. So thanks again for everything you're doing. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to this conversation. Join me next week as I explore our entanglement with the living world. Among other reflections, I'll revisit the groundbreaking Gaia theory, developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, which suggests that Earth's biosphere functions as a self regulating organism. See you next week.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Wild Minds Podcast. If you enjoyed it and want to help support this podcast, please subscribe, share and leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. Your review will help others find the show. To stay updated with the wild mines podcast and get all the behind the scenes content. You can visit theoutdoorteacher.com or follow me on Facebook at the outdoor teacher UK and LinkedIn. Marina Robb,

The music was written and performed by Geoff Robb.

See you next week. Same time, same place