Episode 17 – Part 1: Biodiversity in the Built Environment. The benefits and what we need to be doing with Ian Boyd, Arc Consulting

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

Matt Nally 

On this week’s episode, we have Ian from Arc Consulting, so thanks for coming on in.

Ian Boyd  00:33

It’s a pleasure. Thank you, Matt.

Matt Nally  00:35

Do you want to introduce what you do, because there’s some fascinating stuff you do, I think you’ll do it more justice than I will.

Ian Boyd  00:40

Yeah, I’ll try. So my name is Ian Boyd. And I work for an organisation organisation called Arc biodiversity and climate. But within that, and around that, there are quite a lot of other things going on. So essentially, it is an ecological consultancy. At least that was the core of it, really. So we’ve done compliance ecology for the planning and development construction well 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 beneficial space for people that actually have high ecological function. How can you combine those things? How can you use ecological implies to generate better places for people, and that’s led us into all sorts of other interesting territory. One is called Art ecology, 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. And it’s about what we call intentional habitat. So it’s about deliberately constructing objects that are used in the 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 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 around developing projects that are predominantly around kind of social, cultural, environmental, boosting, amplifying those kinds of values in forgotten or neglected public spaces. There’s a whole bundle of those kinds of things.

Matt Nally  02:25

Yeah, awesome. I think there’s sort of three, three or four topics with that to cover today. But based on some of the stuff you’ve talked about before, but buildings and biodiversity within community first, then buildings and carbon and then building the well being and there’s some really interesting stuff you’ve touched on before it’s I’m looking forward to delving into, I suppose around the buildings and diversity, but what what were you doing at the moment? And I suppose How can you build better incorporate, you know, the wildlife aspects, because I know one of the things you mentioned in an article I read a video I listen to is that buildings are becoming more and more difficult for wildlife and animals to nest in, that they might run on older buildings, or, you know, find places to Harrow and borrow nooks and crannies. So what are the what’s the work you’re doing around that to help new builds sort of be a bit more friendly and environmentally.

Ian Boyd  03:21

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 developers small schemes will be exempt for a little while. And that will require that development demonstrate through a metric published by Defra that they provide some kind of uplift to biodiversity of the biodiversity component of the 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, 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 when I’d say both actually equally to be honest. The appetite from the development community by which I mean the agents may be the owner and the investor, to a lesser extent 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, but a coloniser will between the inner Conventional bid built setting is still very low. And we’re still we still have we work with agents who still think that it’s insane to encourage bats to inhabit people’s houses because they’ll fill their kitchens with, with bats, and that no one really wants a bird 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. Yeah, we’ve been around for 1000s 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 entirely normal. Every every single building should incorporate habitat. I mean, it’s, it’s really that simple. And no, any of 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 trying to persuade the developer to put some swift boxes up a critically threatened bird that depends in the UK Anyway, well, in England, perhaps as a few cave masters in Scotland, entirely on human habitation as the only place it can nest. And yet, somehow we’ve got to battle development to get a swift box put in, it’s just feeble, you know, to be brutal about it, it’s not good enough. 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 just not really good enough. So I think we need to, we really need to escalate very quickly away from 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 about 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 kinds of 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 and you know, we’re still not there. But that’s what we need. Yeah.

Matt Nally  07:26

To have inches, and what does that Utopia look like in practical terms? So I know, I’ve seen posts about, like, the bricks and stuff like that. And you mentioned the Swift boxes that get built into the wall and stuff like that. But what I suppose is a in an ideal world, right, right now we’re building a new build, what what, what are the sort of options that would be good to build into that property in terms of really supporting

Ian Boyd  07:50

all of those, they’re very small, very cheap, in terms of the cost of a building, they are in significantly tiny. Now, it doesn’t mean that every building is appropriate. For example, for a swift box, if it’s a bungalow, forget it. It’s not, there’s no point but you can put a house Martin box up and they’ll probably use it, you can put a 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 pips and brand new brand long as we’ll use those kinds of habitats. You know, in small numbers, we make a breeding routine. And, of course, what we should be doing is constructing sort of loft spaces that provide that, but that that’s probably asking a bit much at the minute, unless it’s a requirement in law, or some of many of these are protected species, all of them are protected in one way or another. But just as, without needing to be driven by law, the threat of prosecution, or a financial and instrumental financial system that is calculating bng, we should just be as a matter of course, saying, Well, I’m building a building. And I, 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. And I’ll sink a couple of back tubes into one of the one of the elevations, it’ll cost me I think, 200 quid for that lot, probably less. So it’s just it’s so simple. It’s so now, of course, doesn’t mean if the building is made of plastic and glass, that’s going to be harder, and it may be that it has, you don’t need a retrofit option. And then people get worried about the design and the setting. And fair enough, you know, an architect works hard on a building and you then kind of nail a load of things all over it. Understood, absolutely. But why 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 why would I not do that at a time of biodiversity collapse? So if you know there are off the shelf ready made things map that you can just say yeah, love to have those. Thanks very much. And there’ll be there the next day and and off you go, you know, real Use that that simple and any spread into the landscaping around it. And as I say you can do other, many other more imaginative things, but at least we’d be off to a good start with the basics.

Matt Nally  10:11

Yes, but there’s a couple of interesting points from that, then. So the the retrofit aspects, are they quite easy to instal on older properties? And are there risks of if you instal one of those products that it causes issues with, I don’t know, damp or cold spots, or because I don’t know how much people know about how they work or what the impacts might be.

Ian Boyd  10:32

I mean, there’s such small, small objects, and you can get very robust Juan’s made him would create. So they’re sort of thermally 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 up, I understand my building back to front, because I designed it, I can find a place for this. That’s not problem. And again, I think we there’s too much bumping this back to the conservation of biodiversity world saying, well prove to us that this isn’t going to cause a problem. And we need to be much more negotiated partnership between the development construction world, and let’s call it the biodiversity industry is an industry absolutely is an industry so that we’re kind of finding shared solutions, rather than this constant kind of bartering and negotiating. Well, can you put up three bat boxes now? Can you put up one? Well, maybe, and get it round around? You know what I mean? 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 but 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, that’s absolutely fine. It’s not going to go there. That’s that’s never gonna work. But it will go there. And if none of that works, there are freestanding options. Now, I appreciate that. private garden is probably not the place for a swift tower. But an industrial commercial development absolutely is. So there are there aren’t, there is always a solution for wildlife in the built environment, always, without exception, always what we need to do is to be except 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 there. But always in the end, recognising that we are going to do something this is not negotiable. I mean, it is negotiable. But we kind of need to have a mindset in our 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 can do.

Matt Nally  12:33

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 why we know my day to day, why are people hesitant to incorporate these things? Like what what is what is the barrier to getting in a box or because he says it on the face value is very simple. So what was the hesitant?

Ian Boyd  12:55

I think, because it’s seen as an intrusion, that the development world runs on very, very conventional lines. 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 land, the man CO is set up the way, all of these things are, are still stuck in the way that they were 10 years, 20 years, 30 years ago. So one of the problems is you can have perhaps a planning authority, or a private client or commercial clients and yeah, 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’s stressed, that the idea of introducing even the smallest thing that looks or feels different is just, you know, I don’t I can’t be dealing with this. Now. We’ll come back to that. And so very often you’ll see things that are condition for much later intervention, very often there’s no enforcement they never happened anyway. So we it is 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 surely. The idea that we can’t incorporate a box in a war is insane. Of course we have or you know, 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 going to do it and 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 and then say, what is this What am I supposed to do with this? It’s got to be thought through properly. It can’t just be performative. It can’t just be superficial looking stuff about getting an award and much of that as well. I’m afraid. It needs to be properly built into the way that our project is Designed and the way it’s going to be built with the team involved, that 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 it and on it. And we’re really important to work with the on site construction team, the Mancow, the maintenance crews that are going to come in afterwards, because they’re the folks who actually know how a place operates. Really. Yeah, involving them as early as possible, saying that they should we really want to do this. What do you think? How do you think we’ve made this better? Is part of what we need to do? Much better than we do at the moment?

Matt Nally  15:32

Around the ongoing maintenance and of buildings with these types of products built in? Is there different things people need to consider around the sort of facilities management aspects if you’ve got bats in place, or swifts or that type of stuff? Or is it sort of business as normal?

Ian Boyd  15:47

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously chooser a saw a site where it’s not going to be an issue, don’t put a house Martin s box over your shiny new commercial entrance, because, you know, 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 can put it they’re incredibly discreet the number of houses, we have been dealing with development projects, redevelopment projects we’ve been to where you say, well, we’re going to need to do about survey. You know, as part of the normal work, I really well I can tell you now I’ve lived here 30 years are no bad, we’ve got no back. So 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 pipistrelle roosting that has been there for 30 years, and they didn’t. And this happens all the time. It’s this idea that, that people are will be aware will notice the presence of wildlife is wrong, they won’t. But 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 becomes much simpler, much stronger. There are enormous numbers of there are 30 years of research on the well being 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’d have to identify the stuff, this isn’t a task, just being in proximity to functioning ecosystems is good for us. Because we are for all living things, you know, 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 paint it red and stick it on the front door. No, it can go in a discrete 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 towards. So I honestly don’t think there are any 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 sway pull 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 and who else has got the opportunity to design and build new habitats for wildlife. There’s not really many other folks, I can tell you I’ve worked for Wildlife Trust RSPB and others. There’s, they’re not in a position to do that very often. They may be managing habitats that already exist to optimise them, but to design and build completely new features for wildlife that are also pleasing for humans. You know, what a gift but we’re not using

Matt Nally  18:35

your I think opportunity there. I think I agree that we’re many, many of us are very disconnected from nature, wildlife and the environment and what’s going on. And it’s, it can very easily be seen as a narrative on the news. You know, like it’s raining, it has been raining here for quite a lot of summer. What meanwhile, there’s massive wildfires going on in Europe. This narrative in that respect, is it can be hard to feel that connection and understand that I think sometimes I think I’ve been looking forward to coming on to the well being aspect of buildings in a second. Before we do that, that my last question, I think around the biodiversity aspect is I believe you worked on a project has new house building projects on the Isle of Wight from an article I read from from being involved in that what What benefits did you see come out of that? I think, you know, whether it’s from what customers said once they moved in or whatever, in terms of the, you know, the terrain changes in that development versus, you know, a bog standard, you know, development with no aspects built into it around biodiversity.

Ian Boyd  19:39

So, I mean, we’ve worked on hundreds, so I’m not sure what it may be that that’s maybe the freshwater project. There was a I can give you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’ve seen developments come and go for the past 30 years on the island and tried always to 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, 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, or manage the process of paying those bills. 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 in the ESG. world, it’s kind of shifting around that kind of access as well. The housing associations have been in that mindset for a long time. So housing associations may say, well, well, we can, because we own everything, we’ve got big communal blocks, we’ve got communal buildings, lots of elements do public buildings, therefore also very interesting, we’re gonna put a whole bunch of Swift and swallow and house Martin boxes and one development without with a housing association did exactly that was put swift bricks in, in every province, every single property. And it became a talking point, so that people would say, Now, I don’t think swift have yet moved in Swift to one of the problems with Swift is they are very site faithful, once they go from a site, get in the back is really hard. So we did a project on the mainland, where we actually work with an amazing man called will Nash built a freestanding swift nesting tower. But you have to play a lawyer, when Swift has been through to draw their attention. And even then it may take one to three years, it’s a long job, which is why it’s so urgent to put these things in now, that may take two or three or more years 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, it’s we need to put lots and lots of these things. Now there was a Bluetooth and one, there’s a pipeline telling another that there’s clearly visible wildlife activity, people taking photos and a bluetooth chip sticking his head out the hole. And of course, it’s awful. Everyone loves that kind of stuff. And it became something and still is to talk about and the idea of perhaps a little bit of competition, but I’ve got Bluetooth nesting in mind what you know, 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 that one so yes, we have absolutely seen evidence where a client who is determined to maximise 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, the very simple, very basic, very cheap, and then continue to work with that to encourage debate and encourage discussion, discourse around this project has happened in the vicinity. So it’s not just built and forgotten. Because it’s done its job of getting through planning permission, it becomes a live thing. And it becomes something that people can adapt and can change and can improve. 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 who just hate wildlife. And it may be for a very particular reason, which might be business or psychological. In some cases, most, or the great majority love wildlife. So, of course, bringing wildlife into into a place is a entirely positive thing. If we talk about it in that way, and encourage engagement so that people feel they have agency around the two, what can I do to make it even better than it is, or here’s some ideas, though it works. It, it worked. 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 then management and maintenance absolutely crucial. You can put all this stuff in and then have a terrible maintenance contract that just brings it right down to the lowest possible level of ecological function. And you might as well not bother. But man need to change as well. That’s a whole other discussion, probably. But that is super critical needs to be thought through at the beginning. So it’s a lot to do that the tools are cheap, easy and immediately available, you know, so it’s not that hard.