14 April 2025.
Dean Spears.
Aftur (again): thinking about nature, power and value.

Welcome to our fifth Sussex Bay blog.  I’m writing this blog in Landsbókasafn Íslands – Háskólabókasafn, Reykjavík, after taking a few days out from Sussex Bay to spend time with the family amongst powerful nature. As a Geographer, I’ve been keeping my eye on river, volcano and glacier movements here since my undergrad days back in the later 1990s and very early 2000s, inspired by my University of Birmingham tutor back then, Dr. John Gerrard who introduced me to changing landforms and their connections to people and nature all those years ago. It’s humbling to climb (carefully) amongst the ice, feeling that sense of stillness and cold treating nature with respect. I’ve now worked out that I’m in the National Library of Iceland, after stumbling upon it as a place of shelter from biting winds as the family spend time in Thingvellier National Park and the Silfra Fissure. I wrote my first blog back in December 2024 in Madrid, and I now realise that taking a few days out, away from emails in a new environment helps to catch up with reflections and Sussex Bay thoughts, especially as so much has happened since then. So here we go, aftur….

What would nature do?
I find myself asking this question frequently when either presented with or creating new ideas, research, funding opportunities or requests for investment and ideas about new ways of working. I’m watching carefully the Nature on the Company Board movement for example. I recall standing on one of the southern tips of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier 48 hours ago, with an expert guide starting the trip by showing us just how far the glacier had (sadly) reduced in size over the past 20 years at an alarming pace and that over the next decade, glaciers in large parts of Europe could become so inaccessible, it could require a helicopter to access, as climbers do in parts of New Zealand. The sad carbon impact irony isn’t lost on me. Sussex Bay is a project of hope across a region, finding ways to plug massive funding gaps in marine and nature led recovery and restoration projects via being home to the UKs first ever Blue Natural Capital Lab, whilst acknowledging the wrongs of the past and avoiding the temptation to dumb-down the complex solutions where they exist, and questions without answers we’re working on. It’s a tricky balance, to avoid where we can adding to eco-anxiety whilst finding hopeful steps we can all take together.

I’m inspired by local change makers, including Sam Zindel who talked recently at Tedx about the small changes we could all take to give nature a chance; Henri Brocklebank, Chair of Sussex Kelp Recovery Project who introduced proceedings at the UK's first national conference on kelp ecology in Brighton; surgeon Professor Mahmood Bhutta, who is doing exemplary work to reduce the environmental impact of surgical care in Sussex and beyond, and many more who we’ll feature over the coming months in our blogs. I’ve found myself in meetings contributing about how Sussex Bay adheres to the ‘Generation Restoration Movement’: a new generation of people and ecopreneurs putting the planet's health first. The movement shows the power of an environmentally savvy generation to bring about real, concrete change towards a healthy planet: an example of radical collaboration we refer across Sussex Bay.