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Episode 17 - Part 1: The Built Environment and opportunities to boost biodiversity
64 Plays2 years ago
In part 1 of episode 2 with Ian Boyd from Arc Consulting, we're discussing the Built Environment and Biodiversity.
Ian Boyd has worked in environmental conservation, ecological management and public engagement roles for over 30 years. He founded the Island 2000 Trust, the conservation charity Gift to Nature and inaugurated the Newport Rivers Group and Island Rivers.
He has worked for national and local charities, public sector and in private practice at locations across England and Wales and has managed coastal and freshwater reserves in Suffolk and Kent, upland rivers in Cumbria and lowland rivers on the Isle of Wight.
Ian is extremely passionate about what he does and has some great insights across the three parts of this episode.
In part 1, looking at Biodiversity in the Built Environment we discuss:
⚖️ Legislation around Biodiversity Net Gain
🪺 Misconceptions around bat and bird nesting
🪶 How Swifts really rely on nesting in the built environment
📝 The standards we need to become conventional in new builds
🏘️ How we can adapt buildings and when these should be planned in
🚧 Why are people hesitating to make changes
👷 What to consider with facilities maintenance with wildlife options incorporated
⭐ The benefits achieved by developers and occupiers of wildlife features
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Survey Booker Sessions. Tune in to hear from people working in a range of industries and roles to provide you ideas that you can take away and use in your own business. I'm your host Matt Nally, the founder and director of Survey Booker, which is the leading CRM and survey management system for surveyors.
Guest Introduction: Ian Boyd and His Work
00:00:15
Speaker
So on this week's episode we have Ian from Art Consulting, so thanks for coming on Ian. It's a pleasure, thank you Matt.
00:00:22
Speaker
Do you want to introduce what you do? Because there's some fascinating stuff you do, but I think you'll do it more justice than I will. Yeah, I'll try. So my name's Ian Boyd, and I work for an organization called Art Biodiversity and Climate.
Importance of Ecological Integration in Public Spaces
00:00:37
Speaker
But within that and around that, there are quite a lot of other things going on. So essentially, it is an ecological
00:00:45
Speaker
Consultancy, at least that was the core of it, really. So we've done compliance ecology for the planning and development construction world for years and years and years. But around that, because we all come from nonprofit backgrounds, because we're all really interested in public realm, in particular public space, we've kind of incorporated in that work ideas around
00:01:07
Speaker
beneficial space for people that actually have an ecological function.
Collaboration and Cultural Enhancement in Neglected Spaces
00:01:10
Speaker
How can you combine those things? How can you use ecological compliance to generate better places for people? And that's led us into all sorts of other interesting territories. One is called Articology, which is an R&D unit department run by Nigel George here at ARC. And that really works with lots of universities, particularly on the South Coast.
00:01:28
Speaker
And it's about what we call intentional habitat. So it's about deliberately constructing objects that are used in the built environment, either as retrofits or integral objects that have a habitat function. So that this is kind of, we do bird boxes and green roofs and green walls collectively as an industry, of course, but this is kind of pushing it on a bit further, especially in the marine environment. And then around all of that is a nonprofit called the Common Space. And because we're a social enterprise, we use the time that we buy through the commercial work to then do lots and lots of free stuff.
00:01:58
Speaker
around developing projects that are predominantly around kind of social, cultural, environmental boosting, amplifying those kind of values in forgotten or neglected public spaces.
Challenges in Integrating Biodiversity in New Developments
00:02:09
Speaker
There's a whole bundle of those kind of things.
00:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, awesome. I think there's sort of three or four topics we'd like to cover today, based on some of the stuff you've talked about before, but buildings and biodiversity, I think we'll come on to first, then buildings in carbon and then buildings in wellbeing. And there's some really interesting stuff you've touched on before, which I'm looking forward to delving into.
00:02:31
Speaker
I suppose around the buildings and diversity bit, what work are you doing at the moment? And I suppose how can new builds better incorporate the wildlife aspects? Because I know one of the things you mentioned in an article I read in a video I listened to is that buildings are becoming more and more difficult for wildlife and animals to nest in, like they might on older buildings, or find places to borrow nooks and crannies.
00:02:59
Speaker
So what's the work you're doing around that to help new builds sort of be a bit more friendly and environmental in that space? I mean there's a lot of advocacy going on and of course there are statutory drivers emerging very shortly. What's called BNG, biodiversity net gain, will be an obligation on pretty much all development. Small schemes will be exempt for a little while and that will require that
00:03:26
Speaker
development demonstrates through a metric published by Defra, that they provide some kind of uplift to the biodiversity component of the place that they're working in. And if they can't manage it, they have to buy offsets. And that is delivered elsewhere, off-site, somewhere else. And if they can't negotiate with a partner to do that, they have to buy statutory credit from the government and so on and so on. So that kind of machinery is emerging. And that is very influential and it is,
00:03:54
Speaker
should be encouraging new bill to consider integrating habitats for wildlife as a matter of course rather than as a matter of exception. But it's kind of not really happening. So we are still stuck in in terms of let's say residential and industrial developments particularly well I'd say both actually equally to be honest. The appetite from the
00:04:24
Speaker
development community by which I mean the agents, maybe the owner and the investor, just to extend the construction team to actually nail things to the surface of their perfect buildings or to complicate the design as they see it by incorporating new structures, new objects that are colonizable between it in a conventional built setting is still very low. And so we still have, we work with agents who still think that
00:04:54
Speaker
It's insane to encourage bats to inhabit people's houses because they'll fill their kitchens with, you know, with bats and that no one really wants a bird
Standardizing Ecological Features in Construction
00:05:05
Speaker
nesting on their house. And of course, to some extent, they're true. But frankly, we've just got to get over ourselves. It's not good enough anymore. There's not enough time to mess about like this. Bird boxes have been around for thousands of years and we haven't moved on. We're still putting bird boxes up and that's good and we should, but they should just be, you know,
00:05:22
Speaker
entirely normal. Every, every single building should incorporate habitat. I mean, it's, it's really that simple. And we're nowhere near that, you know, BNG will push that a bit faster. Enlightened developers may do a little bit more in that regard. But essentially it's, we're still stuck, you know, where we've been for a very long time, which is
00:05:48
Speaker
trying to persuade a developer to put some swift boxes up, a critically threatened bird that depends in the UK anyway. Well, in England, perhaps there's a few cave masters in Scotland entirely on human habitation. That's the only place it can nest.
00:06:02
Speaker
And yeah, somehow we've got a battle development to get a swift box put in. It's just feeble. Uh, you know, to be brutal about it, it's not good enough. Um, we spend a lot, much too much time celebrating really quite trivial interventions, sometimes quite infantile interventions in the built environment. You can get an award for putting a beehive on your roof or something else. And it's just, it's just not really good enough. So I think we need to, we really need to escalate very quickly away from
00:06:32
Speaker
kind of perhaps rather performative interventions for wildlife in the built environment into absolutely solid conventional way of doing things, which is that every built environment, every new built unit will incorporate a habitat for birds, a habitat for bats, a habitat for invertebrates, will incorporate, will integrate the landscaping choices that it makes around those such that they integrate, they provide sufficient food, forage, other kind of
00:07:01
Speaker
so that you have a functioning ecosystem built around these new developments. And that's kind of, that's where we want to get to. And you know, we're still not there, but that's what we need.
00:07:13
Speaker
What does that e-tope look like in practical terms? So I know I've seen posts about like B bricks and stuff like that. And you mentioned the swift boxes that get built into the wall and stuff like that. But I suppose as an ideal world, right now we're building a new build. What are the sort of options that would be good to build into that property in terms of really supporting wildlife? All of those. They're very small, very cheap. Yeah.
00:07:40
Speaker
in terms of the cost of a building, they are insignificantly tiny. Now, it doesn't mean that every building is appropriate, for example, for a swift box. If it's a bungalow, forget it, there's no point. But you can put a house mart in box up and they'll probably use it. You can put one of the integral bat tubes, I think they're actually called, where you sink it in. You can render over it, and it just has a little slot showing that the bats can actually roost into, and pips and brownies.
00:08:07
Speaker
Brown long ears will use those kind of habitats, you know, in small numbers. We may get a breeding roost in it. Of course, what we should be doing is constructing sort of loft spaces that provide that. But that's probably asking a bit much of them in it, unless it's a requirement in law, because many of these are protected species. All of them are protected in one way or another. But just as
00:08:27
Speaker
without needing to be driven by law, the threat of prosecution, or an instrumental financial system that is calculating BNG. We should just be, as a matter of course, saying, well, I'm building a building. It's big enough for me to put a swift brick in. It's big enough for me to put two house martin nest boxes up, or a swallow nesting platform, which is literally a plank.
00:08:55
Speaker
And I'll sink a couple of tubes into one of the, you know, one of the elevations. It will cost me, I think 200 quid, that lot, probably less. So it's just, it's so simple. It's so simple. Now, of course, it doesn't mean if the building is made of plastic and glass, that's going to be harder. And it may be that you don't need a retrofit option. And then people get worried about the design and the aesthetic. And fair enough, you know, an architect works hard on a building and
00:09:21
Speaker
you then kind of nail a load of things all over it. Understood, absolutely. But right at the beginning of the design process, we need to be thinking, well, I am going to incorporate these things. It's just what I'm going to do. Because of course, why would I not do that at a time of biodiversity collapse? So there are off-the-shelf, ready-made things, Matt, that you can just say, yeah, I'll have two of those. Thanks very much. And they'll be there the next day. And off you go. It really is
Retrofitting Ecological Features into Existing Buildings
00:09:47
Speaker
that simple. And then you spread into the landscape and around it.
00:09:50
Speaker
As I say, you can do many other more imaginative things, but at least we'd be off to a good start with the basics. Yeah, I suppose there's a couple of interesting points from that then. So the retrofit aspect, are they quite easy to install on older properties? And are there risks of if you install one of those products that it causes issues with, I don't know, damp or cold spots? Because I don't know how much people know about how they work or what the impacts might be. Yeah.
00:10:19
Speaker
I mean, they're such small, small objects, and you can get very robust ones made in wood creeds, so they're sort of thermically very stable, for example. And I think in some senses, it's over to the development world to say, well, yeah, I understand the material it's made of. I understand my building back to front because I designed it. I can find a place for this. That's not a problem. And again, I think there's too much bumping this back to the conservation and biodiversity world saying, well,
00:10:48
Speaker
prove to us that this isn't going to cause a problem. And there needs to be much more negotiated partnership between the development and construction world. And let's call it the biodiversity industry. It is an industry. Absolutely is an industry. So that we're kind of finding shared solutions rather than just constant kind of bartering and negotiating. Well, can you put up three bat boxes now? Can you put up one? Well, maybe.
00:11:10
Speaker
And get it round and round. Do you know what I mean? And it's kind of infuriating because, you know, it's at a time when we need to be taking positive action together as a community of people involved in building things. And so I don't see that that is an issue, I think, given the specs on these objects and they are available, the development partnership, the architect can say, yeah, it's absolutely fine. It's not going to go there. That's never going to work, but it will go there.
00:11:37
Speaker
And if none of that works, there are freestanding options now. I appreciate that a private garden is probably not the place for a swift tower, but an industrial commercial development absolutely is. So there are, there are, there is always a solution for wildlife in the built environment. Always, without exception, always. What we need to do is to be, accept that we are going to do something. We are not going to do nothing. We're going to do something and then find the correct balance in
00:12:05
Speaker
But always in the end, recognising that we are going to do something. This is not negotiable. And I mean, it is negotiable, but we kind of need to have a mindset in the development and construction world, and I've been in it for 30 years, where it's just not even an issue. We're going to do this. Of course, we're going to.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's certainly a sense, I think, at times where there's a narrative of we need to do things, but provided it doesn't affect my day to day. Why are people hesitant to incorporate these things? What is the barrier to putting in a bird box? Because as you say, on the face, the barrier is very simple. So what's the hesitance? I think because it's seen as an intrusion, the development world runs on very, very conventional lines.
00:12:50
Speaker
So you can have a spectacularly innovative or unusual design or development brief. But in the end, the development process, the way the contracts work, the way the programming of a development works is incredibly conventional. The way the manco is set up, all of these things are still stuck in the way that they were 10 years, 20 years, 30 years ago.
00:13:15
Speaker
So one of the problems is you can have perhaps a planning authority or a private client or a commercial client saying, yeah, I really want to be ambitious. But by the time it gets farmed through that very tight, very tightly financially regulated, you know, the nightmare of programming on any development anywhere, everyone stressed, that the idea of introducing even the smallest thing that looks or feels different is just
00:13:41
Speaker
I can't be dealing with this now. We'll come back to that. And so very often you'll see things that are conditioned for much later intervention. Very often there's no enforcement. They never happen anyway. So it is a transformation that needs to take place. But we are a sophisticated species. We build sophisticated buildings. We use modern materials. We're going to talk about carbon and things shortly.
00:14:05
Speaker
The idea that we can't incorporate a box in a wall is insane. Of course we can. And so we just need to be a little bit braver. It's not even bravery, is it really? Just need to make that decision that we're gonna do it. But that needs to happen at every level. It's no good handing down a whole load of perhaps poorly thought through prescriptions down to the team on the ground who then say, what is this? What am I supposed to do
00:14:34
Speaker
It's got to be thought through properly. It can't just be performative. It can't just be superficial. Fucking stuff about getting an award and too much of that as well, I'm afraid. It needs to be properly built into the way that a project is designed and the way it's going to be built with the team involved. So we're going to be building it. So they are partners in this process. They don't just get a bit of paper with a thing they don't understand written on it.
00:14:57
Speaker
really important to work with the on-site construction team, the Manko, the maintenance crews that are going to come in afterwards, because they're the folks who actually know how a place operates, really. And involving them as early as possible, saying, look, we really want to do this. What do you think? How do you think we've made this better? It's part of what we need to do much better than we do at the moment. Around the ongoing maintenance of buildings with these types of products built in, are there different
00:15:24
Speaker
things people need to consider around the facilities management aspect if you've got bats in place or swifts or that type of stuff? Or is it business as normal? Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, choose a site where it's not going to be an issue. Don't put a house mart in this box over your shiny new commercial entrance because
00:15:44
Speaker
Although it's very dry, house martin droppings are full of dead mats. You probably don't want that raining down on your customers. So just think about where you want to put it. You know, think about a place where you're going to put it. They're incredibly discreet. The number of houses we have been, the number of development projects, redevelopment projects we've been to, where you say, well, we're going to need to do a bat survey.
00:16:05
Speaker
you know, as part of normal work. Oh, really? Well, I can tell you now, I've lived here 30 years or a no batch. We've got no batch. Well, nonetheless, we have to do this. It's kind of a requirement of planning law that you submit this. And lo and behold, there's a pippa straw roost in there that's been there for 30 years, and they did not. And this happens all the time. It's this idea that people will be aware, will notice the presence of wildlife is wrong. They won't. But
00:16:33
Speaker
Nonetheless, wildlife will be present and therefore this leads to really important stuff about engaging people with their local environment. So by bringing wildlife closer to the places where we live and work, the opportunity to engage with the natural world becomes much simpler, much stronger. There are enormous numbers of, there's 30 years of research on the wellbeing and public health benefits, human health benefits of a closer encounter with the natural world. No matter whether you believe that or not, it's just true. It doesn't matter that you don't have to identify the stuff. This isn't a task.
00:17:02
Speaker
just being in proximity to functioning ecosystems is good for us because we are for all living things and we forget that we are part of that ecosystem. So there is an important dynamic to this that you don't have to put things in a very painted red and stick it on the front door. No, it can go in a discreet place that works and you will not notice it, but you will notice it once you start looking for it. And that is a positive thing that we need to be moving to. So I honestly don't think there are any
00:17:31
Speaker
real issues, Matt, with installing habitats for wildlife into the built environment. There are hundreds of superficial barriers we have erected in our minds that mean that we kind of constantly find reasons not to do it. We need to sweep all them away. BNG will help with that, but it's not enough. We just need as an industry to say, no, we're going to change because we can.
Community and Business Benefits of Wildlife Integration
00:17:54
Speaker
Who else has got the opportunity to design and build new habitats for wildlife?
00:17:58
Speaker
There's not really many other folks. I can tell you, I've worked for Wildlife Trust, RSPB, and others. They're not in a position to do that very often. They may be managing habitats that already exist to optimize them, but to design and build completely new features for wildlife that are also pleasing for humans. What a gift, but we're not using.
00:18:22
Speaker
Right, there's a big opportunity there and I think I agree that many of us are very disconnected from nature, wildlife and the environment and what's going on and it can very easily be seen as a narrative on the news. It has been raining here for quite a lot of summer but meanwhile there's massive wildfires going on in Europe but it's a narrative in that respect. It can be hard to
00:18:47
Speaker
feel that connection and understand it I think sometimes. I think I'm looking forward to coming on to the wellbeing aspect of buildings in a second. Before we do that, my last question I think around the biodiversity aspect is, I believe you worked on a project, a new house building project on the Isle of Wight from an article I read.
00:19:06
Speaker
But from being involved in that, what benefits did you see come out of that? I think whether it's from what customers said once they moved in or whatever in terms of the changes in that development versus a bog standard, development with no aspects built into it around biodiversity. So I mean, we've worked on hundreds, so I'm not sure. It may be that that's maybe the freshwater project there was a
00:19:36
Speaker
I can give you, I can give you. I mean, so we've seen developments come and go for the past 30 years on the island and tried always to intervene and incorporate the sort of things we're talking about more and more and more. The opportunities to do that are certainly increasing, but very slowly. Where we've been able to do these things, and sometimes that's been through particular client groups. So for example, housing associations.
00:20:05
Speaker
The housing associations are really, really interesting because they own, well, let's pick a project where they do own everything. So they own every brick, they own every blade of grass. And therefore all of that, every bit of that estate is relevant to their business model. And their business model is people who are happy and healthy and there are no voids. Everyone's able to pay their bills, manage the process of paying those bills.
00:20:36
Speaker
So they are increasingly the more progressive ones looking at every brick and every blade of grass and saying, well, why aren't we using that to make a place that's happier and healthier than it was before? Because that is supporting our business model. Very, very interesting because it's very much the same as the investment community and the ESG world. It's kind of shifting around that kind of axis as well. The housing associations have been in that mindset for a long time. So housing associations may say, well, we can
00:21:05
Speaker
we own everything, we've got big communal blocks, we've got communal buildings, lots of developments do, public buildings therefore also very interesting. We're going to put a whole bunch of swift and swallow and house martin boxes and in one development with a housing association did exactly that, was put swift bricks in every property, every single property. And it became a talking point so that people would say now
00:21:29
Speaker
I don't think Swifts have yet moved in. One of the problems with Swifts is they are very sight faithful. Once they go from a sight, getting them back is really hard. So we did a project on the mainland where we actually went with an amazing man called Will Nash, built a freestanding swift nesting tower. But you have to play a lure when Swifts are passing through to draw their attention. And even then it may take one, two, three years. It's a long job, which is why it's so urgent to put these things in now. It may take 30 years.
00:21:58
Speaker
two or three, or more used to actually find these things. But other stuff will use it in the meantime. And that may be a problem in the future, it may not be a problem. That's why I need to put lots and lots of these things. There was a blue tit in one, there was a pied ragtail in another. There's clearly visible wildlife activity. People taking photos of a blue tit chick sticking its head out the hole. And of course, everyone loves that kind of stuff. And it became something, and still is, to talk about the idea of perhaps a little bit of competition. Well, I've got blue tits nesting in mine.
00:22:27
Speaker
Why haven't you, you know, are you putting food out for them in the winter or whatever it might be? There are better ways than just feeding them in that way, provide the landscaping that will feed them. That's the answer to that one. So yes, we have absolutely seen evidence where a client who is determined to maximize the value of these kinds of interventions for their own business model, which in this case requires people to be happier and healthier than they might otherwise be, will enthusiastically adopt these techniques. They're very simple, very basic, very cheap.
00:22:56
Speaker
and then continue to work with that to encourage debate and encourage discussion discourse around this project that's happened in the vicinity. So it's not just built forgotten as it's done its job of getting through planning commission. It becomes a live thing and it becomes something that people can adapt and can change and can improve.
Ensuring Success Through Proper Maintenance Contracts
00:23:14
Speaker
So it adds a common conversation that everyone can take part in because everyone in the end likes wildlife. There are very few people, I don't think I've met. Okay, I've met very few, I have met some.
00:23:24
Speaker
who just hate wildlife. And it may be for a very particular reason, which might be business or psychological in some cases. Most people, the great majority, love wildlife. So of course, bringing wildlife into a place is an entirely positive thing. If we talk about it in that way and encourage engagement so that people feel they have agency around this too, what can I do to make it even better than it is? Well, here's some ideas. So it works. It works.
00:23:54
Speaker
It works for people and it works for wildlife, but it needs to be moving faster, moving harder. We need to think in an integrated way about the buildings and the surrounding landscape and their management and maintenance. Absolutely crucial. You can put all this stuff in and then have
00:24:09
Speaker
a terrible maintenance contract that just brings it right down to the lowest possible level of ecological effect. And you might as well not bother. But man needs to change as well. That's a whole other discussion probably, but that is super critical. It needs to be brought through. So there's a lot to do, but the tools achieve easy and immediately available. So it's not that hard.