withNature2020 was conceived in the Autumn of 2018, as an international collaborative art event in response to the extinction crisis.  As a mother to two children under 5 at the time, I was dealing with the anxiety I felt for their future. Having experienced profound loss myself at an early age, learning of the extreme losses in biodiversity that had occurred during my own lifetime rang alarm bells for me about what more we would lose during theirs.  I wanted to focus a powerful light on the crisis and get people physically involved in representing critically endangered species in their own region. The event took place in 2021, rather than 2020 as originally planned, due to the pandemic. The project was entirely voluntary, without external funding, relying on the dedication of individuals and organisations, concerned to help nature in whatever way possible. 

The work is the subject of a BBC World Service Radio documentary.  Listen to A Tapestry of Species.

To see highlights of the work as broadcast on YouTube: withNature2020 YouTube channel.

withNature2020 is also on Instagram @withNature2020 and was invited to edit@UNbiodiversityon Instagram in June 2021.  -See the yellow and green highlights folders and scroll down for our posts.

The original idea of withNature2020 was to create multiple giant images of critically endangered species, that would pop up in a ‘Mexican wave’ – a tapestry of species- across the world on the International Day for Biological Diversity, 22 May 2020 – in the runup to the UN biodiversity conference COP15.  The images would be created by assembling large numbers of people, wearing coloured clothing, as living mosaics to be documented from the air.  

The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to reconceive our methods to make the project workable in the era of social distancing.  Physical images did still get made; in many cases, the images were created out of fabric and donated clothing (which was then recycled in turn), and the project developed a more prominent online dimension with a live cast on YouTube on the day.  Unfortunately, in retrospect, I realise that at a time when everyone was online, we lacked the online promotion to go viral in the way I think we deserved. However, we did create 17 images on six continents involving many thousands of people, we reached BBC World Service listeners across the world, and followers of the @UNBiodiversity channel and moreover concluded the project with a series of letters to the heads of delegations to COP15 for all of the countries represented in the project, making them aware of our work and urging them to protect 30% of the world’s land and sea by 2030, a pledge that was subsequently adopted at the COP15 in 2022.

The high-profile supporters of the project were:

Alastair Mackie, artist, Britain; Richard Mabey, writer and naturalist, Britain; Joseba Eskubi, painter, Spain; David Takayoshi Suzuki, geneticist, Canada; Jackie Morris, artist and illustrator, Britain; Lars Agger, artist, Sweden; Richard Long, artist, Britain; George Monbiot, writer, Britain; Dave Goulson, biologist, Britain; Jeremy Deller, artist, Britain; Nicola Davies, zoologist and children’s author, Britain; Alice Hunter Morrison, explorer, Morocco; Sam Lee, singer, Britain; Rasmus Nielsen, artist, founding member of Superflex, Denmark; Rodrigo A.Medellin, ecologist and ‘batman’, Mexico; Janet Laurence, artist, Australia; Kelly Richardson, artist, Canada. 

Additional background:

Humans now dominate the planet to such an extent that we are driving other species to extinction at hundreds of times the naturally occurring rate, inadvertently putting our own survival as a species in peril*. 

The loss of biodiversity is an issue that transcends race, colour, gender, and nationality.  It threatens our ability to continue producing food, and upsets the ecosystems that regulate our air, our water and which can help in mitigating the changes we are starting to experience in our climate.    

@withNature2020 on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or look for the hashtag #withNature2020.

The fabric of nature; of which we are part, on which we depend.

* The WWF Living Planet Report 2018 reported an overall decline of 60% in population sizes of vertebrate species since 1970, with current rates of species extinctions 100 to 1000 times the background rate. In October 2017, German researchers working in protected areas reported a 75% decline in flying insects over 27 years.  In May 2019, the United Nations estimated that humans are now threatening one million species with extinction.