Agriculture and the environment are at a turning point, with the costs of historic practices and paradigms no longer being seen as efficacious to deal with our changing and more unpredictable world. The practices of enclosure that started in the 17th Century has led to an environment that has very little resilience to deal with the issues and problems that face our modern world, such as flooding, water insecurities and habitat disjointedness. Enclosure has led to the homogenisation and reduction of landscape diversity leaving little redundancy to deal with change.
My proposal is to reverse these policies that started with the enclosure act via the act of “Disenclosure”. This entails removing barriers from the landscape by connecting and creating habitats that interface with each other. Creating a myriad of niches for nature to occupy, traverse and thrive whilst providing the required redundancies and diversity to cope with change.
This will entail the adoption and adaptation of agricultural policies to work harmoniously with the landscape via agroforestry and other forestry practices, whilst reducing the reliance on pastoral industries that have denuded the landscape.
It will also involve the implementation of strategies to reduce flow rates of watercourses and bioremediation services to treat and manage water systems, with the construction of wetlands and permeable barriers to further slow and enhance flow rates.
Finally, a rewilding policy will create and rejuvenate ecosystems that were once present within the landscape. This will introduce wild woods that have become fragmented and restart natural renewal processes.
These policies will demonstrate how this experimental landscape could evolve and be implemented to allow the landscape to adapt to the changes we now face with a more unpredictable and hostile world.
