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Here at CWA we’ve been a big fan of the "S" word - so much we use it twice in our strapline "sustainable forests for sustainable communities". That’s because we believe that within the community woodland movement the word retains some of its original power and resonance, stemming from the critical insight that society’s current practices are unsustainable and need radical change.

Over the years, however, the word has been co-opted, glossed, and gradually drained of its meaning by a succession of governments and agencies. First we had Forestry Commission Scotland appropriating the term and rebranding Forest Enterprise practice as "sustainable forest management", sitka spruce, lodgepole pine, timber transport and all… which was a bit hard to bear, but then you’d have to be very churlish to deny that FES has at least made some significant steps towards sustainability over the last 20 years.

Things got decidedly stickier when the new Scottish Government decreed that its purpose was increasing sustainable economic growth. As the standard measure of economic growth is Gross Domestic Product, which effectively quantifies how rapidly we are trashing the planet, this seemed rather an oxymoron. When last year the Deer Commission started talking about "sustainable deer management" we surely should have realised that the word had tipped over into parody. Surely all that was left was for the soulless guardians of the bottomless MOD procurement pit to start touting the Trident replacement as essential to the delivery of "sustainable nuclear devastation".

So it was a pleasant surprise to hear Hilary Benn’s words* at the Oxford Farming Conference earlier this week:

"... we also know that the consequences of the way we produce and consume much of our food are unsustainable. To our planet and to ourselves. Ours is a world where a billion people go to bed hungry each night because they are too poor to have enough to eat, while the same number of people in rich countries are overweight or obese because they eat too much. A world where 3 billion people live on less than £1.30 a day while British households throw out nearly £33 million worth of food a day. A world where a lot of food production depends on oil and water to such an extent that we will be very vulnerable when they become either too expensive or too scarce. Is all this sustainable? No, it isn’t. Is it just? Of course it isn’t. Is it going to be helped by governments abdicating responsibility or by leaving it just to the market to sort out? Clearly not. We know some things have to change."

Now conference speeches are a long way from policy implementation, but after a 2009 characterised by the abject failure of our leaders to seize or even identify the opportunity for change, it was refreshing to hear some acknowledgement from the top of the need to address the fundamental unsustainability of our current position. Whether this translates into action, we shall have to wait and see, and whether there is any echo from Holyrood, where the policy to date has been agricultural appeasement, is moot, of course, but we live in hope! And perhaps we’ll keep fighting for the "S" word for a little while yet…   

Jon

* You can read the full text from the DEFRA website

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