Our third workshop took place on the 11th -12th of September at The Forest of Dean. We worked with the Wye Valley AONB and Wildwood Coppice Crafts to think through how a performative and experiential research approach might be extended to working with trees. This is the first in a series of reflections on the workshop from our participants and is written by Phil Jones.
The ‘trees’ workshop was an opportunity for me to go to the Forest of Dean, a place just over an hour’s drive from my home, yet somewhere I’d never visited before. It’s a fascinating place, touristy yet quiet, open yet exclusionary. Before heading down, I’d read Cristopher Stone’s ‘Should trees have standing’ an essay from the early 1970s about law and the environment. I’m going to apologise here for dumbing this down and, indeed, any misinterpretations of Stone’s words. Among some fascinatingly nuanced ideas, my non-legal mind fixed on his argument around giving legal status to abstract entities. An example of this would be a government or a corporation being an actor in law, with rights that need to be protected. Stone argues that there’s a case for giving these same rights to environmental assets – landscapes, watersheds and so on. This wouldn’t be a case of saying that a tree could never be cut down, or that attempts should be made to preserve the landscape in aspic, more that there should be some consideration of the intrinsic value of the landscape in and of itself, rather than just its economic value to a human actor. If a stream is being polluted, this might have a negative effect on someone’s tourism business located in a picturesque spot downstream, hence the owner of that business might sue the polluter for the economic harm caused to his business. Stone suggests that there should be some capacity to consider issues beyond the economic rights of humans or corporations in environmental destruction, to consider the right of the landscape to be a landscape, with intrinsic value beyond the economic.
Of course, the intrinsic value of landscape is somewhat abstract. Stone suggests, however, that we have already given concrete power in law to the abstract value of copyright. Why should a piece of text or music be given the kinds of protection guaranteed in copyright law? – we as humans have decided that these creative outputs should have agency within law. Why then can we not give the same agency to the environment?
Clearly a forest can’t come to court and sue a company that’s polluting a river running through it. So Stone suggested nominating some kind of guardian to speak for the forest, much as a lawyer might go to court to speak for a corporation or a government. This notion really chimed with me reflecting on our discussions at the bee workshop where we spoke to the human guardians of bees (i.e. bee keepers) to start our ‘conversation’ with bees, to help us understand their issues and think about ways of co-constructing research agendas with them.
Our two days among the trees brought these issues to mind for me. Are the Forestry Commission / other officially appointed ‘guardians’ of landscape in a position to speak for the trees or do we need some other kind of engagement? As I lay in the forest with my feet in the bare earth (getting midge bites!), I didn’t find an answer to this, but it was soothing and I emerged from the workshop wondering if the main impact of our conversation with the trees was in grounding/lulling a group of busy academics who otherwise lead hectic, stressful lives...
Of course, the intrinsic value of landscape is somewhat abstract. Stone suggests, however, that we have already given concrete power in law to the abstract value of copyright. Why should a piece of text or music be given the kinds of protection guaranteed in copyright law? – we as humans have decided that these creative outputs should have agency within law. Why then can we not give the same agency to the environment?
Clearly a forest can’t come to court and sue a company that’s polluting a river running through it. So Stone suggested nominating some kind of guardian to speak for the forest, much as a lawyer might go to court to speak for a corporation or a government. This notion really chimed with me reflecting on our discussions at the bee workshop where we spoke to the human guardians of bees (i.e. bee keepers) to start our ‘conversation’ with bees, to help us understand their issues and think about ways of co-constructing research agendas with them.
Our two days among the trees brought these issues to mind for me. Are the Forestry Commission / other officially appointed ‘guardians’ of landscape in a position to speak for the trees or do we need some other kind of engagement? As I lay in the forest with my feet in the bare earth (getting midge bites!), I didn’t find an answer to this, but it was soothing and I emerged from the workshop wondering if the main impact of our conversation with the trees was in grounding/lulling a group of busy academics who otherwise lead hectic, stressful lives...
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