Can it be a fair COP?
This blog premiered last year with a visit to ‘The Moors’, and we make no apology for having re-visited on a roughly quarterly basis. A wetland, urban nature reserve in north east Surrey, the Moors is a marvellous example of what humans and the planet need, to remain healthy and low carbon.
With the recent publication of the latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report one hopes that the whole world is reading and thinking about just that - climate change. One also hopes that the contents of the report will be fed into national government policies around the planet, with lots of trickle down impacts to deliver action right at the roots of local communities. Hope is cheap. Action is not. Riches are unequally distributed.
The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. ‘The objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC reports are also a key input into international climate change negotiations.’ (https://www.ipcc.ch/about/).
The Panel’s latest report, published earlier this month, is entitled ‘Climate Change 2021, The Physical Science Basis’. The title sounds a bit like an advertisement for hair products, but just skimming through makes for a heavy and uncomfortable read, although it is not totally without hope. Below are a few key headlines, although you have probably already heard them via the press and media.
“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.
Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere
have occurred.”
“Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes
in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as
heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their
attribution to human influence, has strengthened.”
“Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for
centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.”
But
“Scenarios with very low or low GHG emissions … lead within years to discernible effects on greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations, and air quality …”
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf
Looking at the Moors, trying to think globally and act locally, it is depressing how very obvious climate extremes have become. In 2020, we had a prolonged spell of very warm and dry weather. The wildflowers bloomed profusely and provided massed stands of vibrant colour.
This year, as noted in Blog 31 (The Darling Buds), spring was late and, apart from a brief dry spell, rain has been exceptionally plentiful. Growth has been lush and massive - huge leaves, oversized trees - and the overwhelming palette of The Moors has been very, very green. Now, in August, as we shiver in our pullovers while drying sodden umbrellas, the greens are still the dominant hue. Spring’s hint of white has been replaced by over-tones of yellow, blue and red, but the contrast with last year is still remarkable.
2020’s vibrant stands of tufted vetch are now battered and tired, the common agrimony and willow herbs are isolated and low key, and the latter (below right) weighed down by a flourishing growth of black bryony.
The ragwort continues to flourish but its normally ubiquitous companion, the cinnebar moth caterpillar, is notable by its absence. By this time last year the teasels had strutted their stuff and where dry and brown. This year they are only just getting to their peak.
Climate change does not necessarily mean plant extinction but may mean plant migration. At somewhere like The Moors, species which have not done well in 2021, may have a chance to return next year. Meanwhile other species, such as buddelia and water mint, have done better in the wet weather, and species which are much more unusual may appear, such as marsh woundwort (in this case, struggling with another vigorous black bryony) and chicory.
The sheer mass of growth has also changed the character of The Moors this year. Where paths are lined by trees, the canopy is thick and has already developed the dark green foliage of late summer. Shading has kept the cycle path remarkably open. Enchanters’ Nightshade has crept to enjoy the shadows and stinging nettles are thriving on the now damp areas of richer soils. Nearer the brook, and on a windy day, the vastly expanded willows do an excellent imitation of a William Morris wall paper. Between the lakes, where no tree has much of a roothold, the path is virtually hidden by the explosion of vegetation. The craft skill of last year’s hedgelaying exercise is now obliterated by substantial new growth.
Summer downpours have proved to be a heady mix at The Moors. The water levels thoughout the wetland are at winter levels, yet the vegetation is responding to summer temperatures and light levels. Although not currently flooded, the wetter areas of the cycle path are as muddy as in winter. All water bodies are full yet the eruption of vegetation growth has hidden the smaller seasonal ponds from view. Woe betide anyone who tries to take a walk through this apparent meadow of purple loosestrife, below right.
The Brook has vanished completely, except for one point where somebody has cleared a narrow track to the bank, as though checking that the stream still exists.
What will COP 26 and climate change 2022 bring?
Moorish Magic
It all begins with an idea.
The Moors - just 6 miles from the M25
Mention ‘post war Surrey’ and phrases such as Arts and Crafts, stockbroker belt, Tudorbethan, London sprawl, privet hedges, green belt, housing estates or commuter land may come to mind. Yet Surrey has a long history of industry and mineral extraction which often lies forgotten. River valleys such as the Tillingbourne and the Wandle were once lined with mills. In the 1600s the Tillingbourne valley was probably the most industrialised in England and its mills continued working into the 20C. Think gunpowder manufacturing, paper-making, tanning, iron-forging, wire-drawing as well as the more rural corn milling. https://www.surreyhills.org/surrey-hills-60/the-mills-of-the-tillingbourne/ The Wandle, a chalk stream rising on the London facing flanks of the North Downs, supported copper working, tobacco milling and textile mills, amongst many others. https://wandlevalleypark.co.uk/projects/wandle-mills/
Site of the Mixing House at Chilworth Gunpowder Works, Tillingbourne Valley Photo: Tillingbourne Tales Project © The Surrey Hills Board.
Mineral extraction is also no stranger to Surrey. The parallel belts of chalk, clays and greensand have supported a great number of local industries. Mineral winning cannot, to use a planning term, be a ‘footloose’ affair and before Surrey developed good road transport links, mineral based industries remained local to their source material, hence the Surrey lime kilns, or the brickworks which made wonderful, local clay bricks and tiles, which literally supported the vernacular architecture of many Surrey villages and towns.
Which brings me to sand extraction, and my own neighourhood terroir - The Moors – which provided so many of us with our local lockdown breathing space. ‘Moor’ is not a typical component of Surrey place names. Dry, acid Heaths are very Surrey, but Moors, often associated with damp, and upland acid places, are rare in the locality. I suspect damp is the key here, and a strategically placed information board gives us the following: ‘Moor is old Saxon for marsh, and surviving Saxon documents describe the area as ‘marshy with black peaty pools’’.
The Moors isn’t (aren’t?) a typical component of urban fringe open space, either. This long, irregular sliver of land is sandwiched between a landfill site, based on former Fuller’s Earth extraction (thanks to the clay) and a railway line known as, yes, the Quarry Line, (thanks to The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway), and the Moors themselves is/are largely based on restored sand workings. Am I losing you now? Please stay and experience this glorious if quirky piece of open space.
Designated as a nature reserve earlier this century, as an adjunct to, yes, substantial residential development on the sand quarry workings, The Moors was designed as an area of seasonal wetlands and links to further flooded sand pits, before the whole shebang butts its head against the chalk ridge of the North Downs. The local Brook flows gently through, an apparently bucolic and lowland affair, but which is intimately (if benignly) linked to land fill drainage, and which can suddenly flex its muscles when winter downpours swell its load and water surges dramatically over the banks to turn adjacent wetlands into substantial lakes.
The valley footpath has changed from a muddy, puddle jumping, childhood enhancing experience to National Cycle Route 21 (Greenwich to Eastbourne) which has greatly extended usage and accessibility to quality green space. Part of me, however, still misses the slow, tranquil, low key ‘walk to the stream’, although fitness levels have universally increased, as pedestrians may now need to leap smartly to one side to allow the faster runners and cyclists through: the inevitable compromises of urban living.
So, yes, we get the quirky; but where’s the glory? Despite, or maybe because of, the total lack of maintenance during lockdown, this year’s summer wildflowers were a stress buster in themselves. Colour, vibrancy, mass, movement and tranquillity were there in spades. A smaller wetland was dry, revealing a massive horizontal poplar trunk and the largest burdock plant I’ve ever seen: the very best of natural play.
The bigger wetlands were, well, pretty wet, and busy with swans, egrets, ducks such as teal and mallard, cormorants and great crested grebe. Sure, the paths run close to the land fill site and the railway embankment, but glance over to the other view: rushes moving in the breeze, mass swathes of natural colour, poplars swaying gently, veteran oaks of enormous stature marking a former field boundary, butterflies and bees in thrall to nectar, and those stunning views of the North Downs.
To be honest, the landfill’s methane guzzling generators are noisy and sometimes smelly, but most of us forgive them as they seem to represent a positive outcome from our dreadful habit of throwing our rubbish into holes in the ground. But then there is the ‘hedge on legs’ which is what you get when you don’t trim hedge plants on a regular basis or remove stakes and shelters. It provides an excellent green screen between cycle path and nature reserve, but it needs a fence to keep the cattle (sorry, conservation grazers) in and the dogs out. It’s not what I call a hedgerow.
But despite the urban quirks, the ‘promise’ of a landscape, in terms of space and time, is perfectly encapsulated in The Moors. This space is connected: cyclists – if you keep going, Paris is a just a designated cycle path away; pedestrians - home is a short stroll along the valley; for the more energetic, those North Downs are easily accessible by footpath and bridleway; bird watchers and butterfly spotters, this is for you; shoppers, Sainsbury’s is only a 20 minute walk and, according to Google Maps, ‘mostly flat’. In time terms too, the offer is good. ‘Seasonal wetlands’ means seasonal change. Different birds (snipe in winter), different berries, different colours, and always water – more water, less water and sometimes, when the footpath floods, just a little bit too much water. https://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/nature-reserves/nutfield-marshes-inc-moors-spynes-mere-holmethorpe-lagoons
