LEAF springs into life as an umbrella

Never has a more appropriately named organisation considered publishing a Leaf-let (for the upcoming week-long Festival of the Sea).

Lorn Environmental Action Forum is a coming together of Argyll groups, interests and individuals from all perspectives on issues of sustainability.

At Leaf’s first working meeting this word almost became an issue which could have sidelined the entire session. There are several ‘official’ definitions for ‘sustainabnility’ but everyone with an interest in it has their own take on what it means.

So there were fishermen to whom sustainability means the sustaining of a working life from harvesting the seas – including a concern to sustain the fish stocks on which such lives and communities depend. There were experts in aspects of marine biology and alternative energy. There were marine environmentalists, natural history specialists horticulturalists and both conservation and tourism interests in wildlife. There were people interested in creating sustainable communities in remote places through their having a stake in local windfarms and using the revenue to insulate and power their homes, making it affordable and energy secure to continue to live there.

And there were interested observers who couldn’t help but contribute – like The Oban Times and ourselves. The creation of Leaf, on the promise of those who came to this establishing session, is so potentially exciting you can’t help but abandon objectivity and get stuck in.

Why is it exciting?

• It already has a wide range of expertise at a high level of competence and experience and this spectrum extends with those who couldn’t make this particular meeting but who are involved with it.
• It is hard to think of another organisation which has attracted interests often thought to be alien to each other – like marine environmentalists and fishermen.

The debates should be good because there is a middle ground to be sought and found and only groups like this, where all interests are under the same umbrella, are likely to make this happen.

Unrestricted and incessant harvesting of natural resources can only head in the same direction as the Easter Islanders who, eventually, felled their last tree and lost their means of transport and survival.

An over protected environment is one capable of supporting only a limited number of jobs and a limited type of job. Places need the vitality of supporting the variety of working lives which alone sustain living communities.

The compromises that allow a middle ground bringing these extremes into balance are the stuff of life and Leaf is wonderfully well placed to hack away the undergrowth to find it (and yes, we know that this is an environmentally incorrect metaphor).

As we said, the internal debates will be worth hearing. One fisherman with a rascally wit, had a piece of ammunition up his sleeve. It involved the conumdrum of a marine environmentalist he respects but who operates the most powerful boat in the area, with all of its polluting capacity – because he needs it to earn his living in wildlife tourism.

Funny as the intent to launch the ammo was (should a defensive situation have arisen – which it didn’t), there is a point to be accepted, buried in the mischief. It is that almost all of us make our individual compromises as best and as honourably as we can. The challenge is to explore and understand other people’s compromises and to be honest about our own.

From the evidence of Wednesday night’s meeting, there are a lot of open and lively minds in Leaf – in every sense of that expression.

It may well be that the most enlightened approach to the use of the word ‘sustainability’, as the concept around which these interests come together, is one that leaves it open and flexible, capable of encompassing all of what can be invested in the word.

The business of the meeting was the election of office bearers and committee members and the agreeing of a constitution and a mission statement.

When the wording is finalised, it will account for the aim of creating an Argyll voice representing those who support management of the natural environment in ways which favour long-term sustainability on land and sea. And it will be a lobby group.

Office bearers appointed by the meeting are:

• Chair: Richard Wesley
• Vice Chair: David Ainsley
• Secretary: to be appointed
• Treasurer: Jean Ainsley
• Committee (which will expand shortly to a minimum of six): Norman Bissell; Mark Carter; David Fraser; Clive Fox.

Meetings will be monthly, initially on the second Wednesday of each month and initally at the Fire Station in Oban at 7.30pm.

The next meeting is on 10th February and there will be a special daytime meeting on a date to be arranged, possibly on a Saturday, with guest Speaker David Woodhouse from Mull, talking on his proposal for a specific kind of National Park.

As the meeting teased its way through the detail of the Forum’s coming constitution, it was impossible for the irredeemably light-minded (hands up) not to become obsessively interested in the possibilities of misconduct and expulsion.

For more information on Leaf and on becoming a member – as an individual or a representative of a group, email its Chair, Richard Wesley: richardwesley@btinternet.com