‘Christ Church Bioversity’ involves the
stewardship of nature across our campus network. In
Canterbury if focuses on the
creation of a unique identity and sense of place based on our central location in the
Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS). The site, which
includes our own campus within the former precincts of St Augustine's
Abbey, is recognized as being a centre of learning
for over fourteen hundred years. The WHS also includes
Canterbury Cathedral and St Martin’s Church (the oldest Church
in in the English speaking world still used for worship).
The focus of the
‘Bioversity’ concept is on the enrichment of student and staff
experience through
contact with nature. In
Canterbury we aim to transform our site into an urban
biodiversity hub which reflects its rich cultural and
environmental heritage, but which also focuses on the future
through our concern for social and environmental responsibility.
Biodiversity is a fundamental to all
aspects of life on our planet, without diverse ecological
systems, and the plants, animals and other organisms that live
and inhabit them, we could not survive.
The ‘Christ Church Bioversity’
concept supports our core values and activities - teaching,
learning and research.
The concept focuses on our responsibility
for the environment in which we work and the communities we
serve. The concept is underpinned by the adoption of a
Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) (in preparation) for the
University as part of the Canterbury WHS[1],
with the University at its heart in terms of both the
intellectual capital involved and innovative use of estate. The
transformation will involve developing the wildlife and
biodiversity potential of the site by nurturing current sites,
and innovative restoration and management elsewhere. This would
include planting species and rare varieties that represent the
monastic and other traditions of the site, and the wider Kentish
agricultural and environmental heritage; for example, heritage
varieties of apples and pears. The scheme will look to the
future, not just the past, and engage with such issues as local
food initiatives, protection of biodiversity, and community
health and well-being. The concept will work if CCCU initiated
this development alone, but we are also seeking to engage other
stakeholders in the WHS and the wider community.
How is this central to a unique identity for the
University? The concept focuses specifically on cultural aspects
of biodiversity in relation to the history and heritage of
our sites and will be explicitly linked to the fact that the Christ
Church and St. Augustine’s has been a centre of knowledge,
community and stewardship in the city for over fourteen hundred
years, or the importance of science to the
Salomons family (Salomons Campus near Tunbridge Wells).
In Canterbury stewardship of natural resources
would have been fundamental to the
early monastic community, with their requirements for
self-sufficiency, health and well being. In the seventeenth
century, the naturalist and gardener John Tradescant laid much
of the grounds to elaborate mazes and knot gardens, but also
developed innovative means of growing melons. Prior to the
purchase of the land for the original Christ Church College,
much of the site was commercial orchards. This tradition
continues with our own work in the natural sciences, and
specifically the work of the Ecology Research Group (ERG), Dept.
of Geographical and Life Sciences, in areas such natural pest
control of green houses.
Stewardship of the natural world is a strong ideal with
which all current staff and students can empathise, whatever
their background or view of the ‘sustainability agenda’. It
provides continuity between past, present and future linked to a
strong sense of place. Good stewardship of our estate reflects
our wider concern for the environment (‘Think globally, act
locally’) and helps us to make direct links with other day to
day issues of environmental (e.g. climate change) and social
responsibility (e.g. mental health) which may otherwise be
difficult to capture in a holistic and strategic manner.
The rationale for choosing to focus on biodiversity is explicitly linked to the cultural context of the World Heritage Site and our Church of England foundation but also includes the wider regional heritage of all our sites. A concern for ‘stewardship of the natural world’, whatever a person’s background, theist, deist, agnostic or naturalist, can transcend their different views of ‘creation’. Mobilised through the Bioversity initiative, this concern provides the focus for a unique sense of place and meaning.
The Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) will focus on
species and habitat biodiversity in our current pocket habitats.
Although our Salomons site contains extensive grounds, including
woodland and parkland, these pocket habitats make up a
surprisingly significant part of our estate, and in Canterbury
for example, provides ‘green links’ to the
rest of the UNESCO World Heritage Site and the wider city. The
BAP will focus on cultural biodiversity linked to sense of place
and heritage – parkland, orchards, vineyard, medicinal and culinary
herb gardens and other key elements
of our sites
and provide continuity with communities and
knowledge systems of the abbey and cathedral communities and
knowledge systems of the past (e.g. specimen
the Eleventh Century
Canterbury Herbal, now held in the Bodleian).
The BAP will also create connections with the wider
community, generate innovations in teaching, learning and
research across the arts and sciences, and into health and
wellbeing, education and even business studies. It would be a
motivational focus for our approach to social and environmental
responsibility.
The Bioversity concept provides a clear link to the wider sustainability agenda. While some staff and students are enthusiastic about issues such as waste management, travel plans and energy saving, they can be a turn-off to many others. The focus on stewardship through biodiversity provides a launch-pad for a wider engagement with the sustainability agenda, and also links the local and the global.
[1]
UNESCO
recognises two types of World
Heritage Sites, those with
cultural or natural
significance, so exceptional
that they transcend national
boundaries and are of importance
for present and future
generations. By regarding
heritage as both cultural and
natural, the World Heritage
Convention exemplifies the value
placed on both culture and
nature and the need to preserve
the balance between the two.
