Marian Boswall at London Climate Action Week 2026: Nature, Farming and the Future of a Resilient Britain

Chalk to Coast founding partner Marian Boswall recently joined a high-profile panel discussion for London Climate Action Week, recorded at Sustainable Ventures' workspace at County Hall and broadcast through We Don't Have Time, the global climate conversation platform.

Marian was joined on the panel by Hugh Bullock, Trustee of the William Robinson Gravetye Charity, and Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England — a conversation that ranged across some of the most pressing questions facing British landscapes right now.

The full session is also available to watch on We Don't Have Time. If you're short on time, skip ahead to 1 hour 24 minutes to catch Marian's contributions.

Climate proofing Britain through nature

The session opened with a stark framing: Great Britain is already living with the consequences of climate change. More frequent heatwaves, increased flooding and growing water shortages are no longer projections — they're the current reality. The panel explored what nature restoration and ecosystem recovery can realistically contribute to making Britain more resilient.

For Marian, the answer lies in working at scale — and that means working with farmers.

Restoring nature at a landscape scale unlocks opportunities that individual gardens or isolated reserves simply cannot achieve. Marian spoke about the growing importance of water management in particular: not only the flooding risk that has become familiar in recent winters, but the longer-term pressure of sea level rise encroaching on low-lying agricultural land, and the less visible but equally critical question of chalk aquifer recharge. For communities and ecosystems across the chalk-to-coast corridor in Kent, that aquifer is foundational — to drinking water, to chalk stream ecosystems, and to the viability of farming itself.

Soil health, hedgerow planting, trees and field margins all featured in the discussion as practical, proven interventions that farmers can implement now — measures that simultaneously store carbon, slow water runoff, support biodiversity and build long-term farm resilience.

Rethinking livestock — a more nuanced picture

One of the more thought-provoking moments in the discussion was a challenge to the assumption that livestock farming is simply bad for the climate. The panel made the case for mixed farming as a return to older, less industrial practice: smaller herds of cattle grazing cover crops, kept outdoors more of the year, with their manure fertilising fields naturally and supporting soil health rather than being replaced by synthetic inputs.

This is a meaningfully different proposition from intensive livestock production. The point isn't to defend industrial farming — it's to recognise that a farm integrating animals, arable crops, hedgerows and margins functions as a far more complex and resilient ecosystem than a monoculture field or a single-species herd in a shed. Animal welfare improves. Soil biology recovers. The carbon story becomes more complicated — and more interesting.

What individuals can do

The conversation didn't stay at the landscape scale. Marian also spoke about the contribution that individuals can make through wildlife gardening — a reminder that nature recovery isn't only a policy or a farming question. Gardens, taken together, form a significant habitat network, and the choices made in them matter.

Why this conversation matters for Chalk to Coast

The themes Marian raised — water, soil, scale, mixed farming, community action — sit at the heart of what Chalk to Coast is trying to do across the chalk-to-coast corridor in Kent. We're working with landholders, farmers and partners to make nature recovery viable and connected at a landscape level, because that's the scale at which it actually works.

If you want to get involved — as a landholder, a business, or simply someone who cares about this landscape — we'd love to hear from you.

Watch the full We Don't Have Time session, or skip to 1:24 to hear Marian's contributions directly.