Sarah Mukherjee MBE: Podcast Q&A

David recently caught up with Sarah Mukherjee MBE on the latest episode of How to Avoid Moving to Mars.

Best known as a host of Countryfile and the BBC’s Environment Correspondent, where she presented on national and international radio and television for 18 years, Sarah has held various significant positions throughout her impressive career, including the director of Environment at Water UK for seven years. 

Subsequently, Sarah spent three years as the CEO of the Crop Protection Association, now known as Crop Life UK before taking on her current role as the CEO of the Institute for Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), where she has been for the past three years. 

Besides her professional accomplishments, Sarah was honored with an MBE in 2021 for her outstanding work in agriculture and farmer wellbeing, and has an MBA from Warwick Business School.

Could you give us some details on what IEMA is doing in the sustainability sector?

IEMA was established in 1999 to provide a professional structure for sustainability and environmental careers. It was very progressive, as these careers were quite a new profession and to an extent, still are. However, we need to provide skills training and development for anyone in the environmental and sustainability field, and ensure they have that professional body to refer to and rely on. 

We also work to help all jobs to be greener. Wherever you sit in the employment map, you will need to understand what sustainability will mean for your role, whether you are a doctor dealing with diseases that will begin because of climate change or if you’re the first responder dealing with road traffic accidents with electric cars, every single person in the workplace will need to understand what sustainability means to them. 

We're now looking very much at how to underpin our international element because we have over 115 countries represented. This means that we are having conversations with our colleagues in West Africa, India and Pakistan, for example, about how we can support our members globally. 

What actions would you like to see to encourage nature restoration at scale? 

If you want to get change at speed, it has to be about skills and training. This is not about just having nicely curated landscapes for upper middle-class people to enjoy. This is the future of existence, and it's about jobs. 

It's about training people in the sustainable and environmental fields, and ensuring their jobs are well paid with significance. If you can support a workforce that is trained to do good and understands why caring for our environment is so important, this has to be the most powerful way of getting that change as quickly as possible.

Do you see that natural capital is being addressed in the work that your members do? 

All good businesses are looking at sustainability as a fundamental foundation point of their operations, because it's great for having a whole organisation audit. And it's also a good way of saving money. These days, if you're using less of something, you are saving money. That's always been the argument we need. 

If there were one thing that you would like to see happen which would enable this rebuilding of natural capital, what do you think it might be? 

I’d have to go back to skills and training. 

People are motivated to do something because they think it's the right thing to do. How do they know it's the right thing to do? They know because you have given them the skills and training and knowledge to understand that. 

We’re working towards a net zero future, but it won’t happen unless we have all the education minutiae in place. It's getting the right courses in the right place at the right time, so that people can get the training they need to ensure that net zero is achievable and deliverable. 

Sarah, is there one role from your career that really stands out in your mind? 

My time at the BBC gave me a real luxury, in that I could ring up a government department and the cabinet minister would ring me back.

Also, the really interesting part about that job was finding that story that the vast majority of people didn’t know about. For example, it was an immense privilege to talk to soil scientists and those using innovative approaches in climate science, and run unique pieces of information. The power structures for these individuals did not exist in the same way as other sectors, like politics, but that really made a difference to me - being able to share stories that usually aren’t told. 

I also really feel that the Landscapes Review, led by Julian Glover OBE,is the piece of work that I have a lot of pride in, and indirectly, I have you to thank for that David. 

Many years ago, you and I sat down and talked about being on the board of a national park and I applied to The Broads National Park. I was accepted and because of that, I was asked to be on the advisory group for the Landscapes Review. 

This opened up the question about how minority communities, people from BAME backgrounds and white working-class communities can truly benefit from protected landscapes and draw up a report that listens to and includes an abundance of different opinions. 

Do you think nature is seen as a nice-to-have? 

That point about a nice-to-have is really important; it gets to the heart of what we were talking about in the Landscapes Review as well. You can see this theme across lots of different aspects of the environment and sustainability. It feels like a middle-class luxury pursuit, but it should be more accessible to all thanks to its abundant physiological and mental health benefits. 

Democratising open space, green space and national parks is the way we get people to see the importance of natural capital. If people don't experience something, they will not care about it. 

We have a mainly urban population; we have to understand if it's not their job to worry about why biodiversity is so important. It's our job to make the case for it, though, and that moves into some of the work that we're doing at IEMA and particularly around increasing diversity and getting more people to enter the field with different views. We have established the Diverse Sustainability Initiative to achieve this. 

On education, what do you think about Mary Colwell’s ideas for bringing nature back to the national curriculum?

There is some work that The Broads authority did, with children in Lowestoft, living next to the sea. Only a small quantity of children in Lowestoft had actually been out to the beach or to the surrounding area, despite it being free, and on their doorstep. At that point, you need a powerful reason not to look at the beach and the beautiful surrounding countryside, which shows how disconnected a lot of communities are with nature. 

It truly is about educating people to see that there is a real point in nature and that it is something that should be cherished. This will ensure that more people go into environmental careers and make a real difference to nature restoration.

At IEMA, we've launched ‌the Green Careers Hub to give more people access to sustainability education and the type of careers you can have in the field, as well as bringing diversity to the sector. We’re also launching an EPQ qualification with Pearson, to give A-Level students the chance to study and write an extended piece of work on sustainability.

Is there anything else you think is currently missing from our fight against biodiversity depletion?

Alongside training, cooperation is essential. For farmers, cooperation and collaboration gives them strength, but it is truly an asymmetric sector. You have a single farmer negotiating outputs and inputs with multinational, multi-billion pound turnover organisations, which obviously isn’t working. 

Did you see regenerative agriculture coming?

I didn't see it coming as quickly as it did. But it is obvious why so many farmers are now changing their practices to be regenerative. Why spend money on inputs when you don't have to, when you can actually get nature to do that job for you? 

When I spoke with regenerative farmers, they were so thrilled with the results that they were expanding their regenerative practices. Within a season or two, wildlife was back and they could see the benefits of it, with higher resilience of the soil and so on. 

So back to skills, training and knowledge sharing, we need to be educating farmers about regenerative farming to reach the point we need to be at for greater food security and biodiversity. 

It is essential that knowledge is shared, collaboration is prioritised and we work together to create a better future.