Sustainability and the role of Bushcraft as a sustainability toolkit.
In my previous blog I discussed what ‘Bushcraft’ is to us and dispelled some of the assumptions people may make when they think of Bushcraft.
In this blog post I will focus on the role Bushcraft can play in raising awareness and providing skills and practices related to sustainability.
I found a set of principles for sustainability at The Sustainability Labs, their Five Core Principles of sustainability are The Material Domain, The Economic Domain, The Domain of Life, The Social Domain and The Spiritual Domain. [www.sustainabilitylabs.org]
The principles as described by Sustainability Labs are broad and far reaching, focused on the bigger picture, the biosphere picture if you will. But I like the holistic approach, so will simplify and adapt them to meet a more localised sustainable viewpoint.
“The Material Domain”
‘the flow of materials and energy that underlie existence.’
Within Sustainability we think about the materials we use and the energy that is used in the manufacturing and transportation of these materials. We reduce packaging, we recycle, and we consider transportation miles.
I heard someone give the example that we go to the trouble of extracting oil, transporting oil at huge cost and risk to the environment, refine the oil and process it into plastic, we use energy to form the plastic, we use the item once and throw it away, all because we don’t want to wash up a spoon!
In Bushcraft we can make our own spoons and utensils, again with sustainable harvesting and we don’t just use them whilst we’re out, we use them at home. We give them as gifts and we’re proud of them, they’re our creations so we value them and look them and if they do break, they’re completely biodegradable.
Wild food is part of our Bushcraft skillset, in learning plant identification we are able to open up a world of wild edible plants that are often overlooked. When you go for a walk and collect your own wild food there should be zero packaging, zero miles and zero waste. Harvesting wild food also gets people into a local seasonal mindset that transfers shopping habits when we can’t source the items ourselves in the wild, we still look for and see the value of local, seasonal produce. Foraged foods contains a variety of health benefits, the plants that make up a wild salad contain medicinal properties that our ancestors would have benefitted from, that just aren’t found in our cultivated salads.
“The Economic Domain”
‘Defining, creating and managing wealth’
As part of our teaching we look at the suitability of clothing for Bushcraft activities, generally we promote natural materials like canvas and wool. These materials have a long lifespan and are easily repaired, these materials also offer increased protection from sparks.
Bushcraft opens a world of makers, people who hand make items useful for a range of Bushcraft associated activities. These are local cottage industries and individuals that produce items often with a longer lifespan than equivalent mass-produced items.
Once you have a basic set up of tools, equipment and clothes, there is no real need for additional expense. Part of the skill set is about the maintenance of these items and moving away from the disposable consumer culture. I standby my conviction that sewing is an important part of your Bushcraft skill set.
What can be achieved with a basic setup and Bushcraft skills is huge, Bushcraft facilitates a world of learning about the environment that is almost endless.
Using these skills opens opportunities for a simpler form of economics, you have the skills to harvest and create, weather this is food or items, there are a range of opportunities to trade or support local individuals. Reducing reliance on industries with negative effects on the environment.
“The Domain of Life”
‘respect to other forms of life’
There’s a practice in Bushcraft with ‘sustainable’ in the name, sustainable harvesting, along with a ‘leave no trace’ ethos these values are at the core of our Bushcraft teaching.
Ensuring we are managing the environment and improve it as we use it, sustainably harvesting trees in a way that reduces impact to the woodland, improves plant diversity and habitat, is a hugely important fundamental of our Bushcraft practice. It makes sense, a Bushcrafter wants to continue to use the environment in which they operate and wants that environment to become better for their activities.
Leave no trace is practised by many people who use the outdoors, but it’s not just taking your litter with you it’s understanding how you have impacted the environment. That pile of charcoal from a fire will add nutrients to the soil and encourage unexpected species of plants to grow. Once you start thinking deeply about leave no trace it’s easy to widen this mindset to everyday items, what items in your kitchen leave the biggest ‘trace’ on the environment?
A Bushcrafter is actively learning what species are around them, they are spotting the animals, examining the track and sign. They will be the people who notice when something is missing and in this way become an advocate for the natural world.
“The Social Domain”
‘social interactions’
It is hugely rewarding for us to interact with students and share our knowledge, watching people begin to grasp skills or knowledge that sets them off on a journey of discovery and deeper nature connection. Whether teaching or simply sharing skills and knowledge we and our students can advocate for the natural world.
We also interact on a larger scale, on social media with an aim to share knowledge, encourage participation and raise awareness of best practice with the Bushcraft community, Our largest effort is reaching outside of the Bushcraft community to people who don’t yet know of a skill set that can further their sustainability journey.
The social domain gives us the opportunity to Increase awareness and absorb knowledge that in our modern world is at risk of getting lost, knowledge that will assist us in respecting our environment and think sustainably.
“The Spiritual Domain”
‘necessary attitudinal orientation’
When I discovered these principles, I was pleased to see ‘the spiritual domain’ included, this can mean what you want it to mean. You do not have to be religious or a ‘tree hugger’ to feel the benefit from the natural world and of course there is nothing wrong if you are. Diversity is important the more diverse we are the further our message goes.
By being in nature we are doing what we are supposed to be doing, humanity has spent more time living in the ‘wild’ than we have living in the artificial environment we have created for ourselves.
The more we have distanced ourselves from the natural world the more important it is to get outside and ‘touch base’ with nature. Nature immersion has been proven to have positive effects on our wellbeing and the sooner people realise this the quicker people will have a positive effect on the environment.
It’s easy for this sort of talk to sound cringy, I like to look at the facts, but sometimes we don’t need facts to know there’s a positive effect. I know from experience that stress falls away when I enter a natural environment and I sleep better outside; I wake with the dawn chorus and feel ready to start the day.
At a time when we risk losing much of the natural world, having a group of people that can advocate for nature because they know the benefit it has bought them is hugely important.
Our New Domain
In Summary
Bushcraft, nature and sustainability go hand in hand, Bushcraft gives people a skill set to get out in nature and the knowledge to understand or investigate what they are seeing, I hope I have inspired you to take part in your natural world and become and advocate for the environment.
When I started writing this, we were pre-lockdown and now we are in a period where people who didn’t even realise they were getting a benefit from nature are feeling a withdrawal from it. It is also a period where people are noticing the birdsong and the wildlife around them. The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly an awful shared trauma and something I’ve being trying to avoid writing about, but the world has changed and through strategies such as lockdown people are learning, through nature deprivation, it’s true importance. I’ve read articles that state the virus has come from our encroachment on nature through deforestation. I’ve seen a lot about not going back to ‘normal’ and what a new normal could be. It’s important to recognise everyone’s individual experience with this is different but for all the death and devastation this virus has caused and continues to, my hope is that in the end, we are able to reflect and make sustainability and the natural world the priority it should be in our new normal.