Issue 160 | June 2025

Hello and welcome to this new edition of the Voice for Arran! In one way or another, it’s been a fairly momentous few months for Arran since our last issue, in March. We have seen (as elsewhere) the driest spring since records began, a wildfire burn through Glen Rosa, and the designation of Arran as a UNESCO global geopark. Then came a sustained cyberattack on the island’s Co-op supermarkets; the empty shelves revealing just how reliant we are on a fragile global food system. And coming up in a few days, is the screening of David Attenborough’s Ocean, a film which features the story of Arran’s COAST and the far-reaching impact the work a dedicated community group can have.

This comes at a time however when the wider predicament of global marine protection is struggling. In just over a week, the UN Ocean Conference will begin in France and campaigners have been working to get the Ocean Treaty ratified. This treaty commits nations to protect 30% of the high seas (waters outside national boundaries) by 2030 but so far only 28 nations have ratified the UN accord. (At this point, the UK is not one of them!) This is far below the 60 needed for it to pass into law and while a group of EU countries have put their support behind it, with little time to go before the conference, far more countries still need to follow.

Back in Scotland, the climate news presents a mixed bag. The Climate Change Committee has issued an urgent call to the Scottish government to deliver immediate action after ditching its climate targets last year. Meanwhile Friends of the Earth report on ten major climate policies that have disappeared under the jurisdiction of First Minister John Swinney. Yet emerging out of this less than positive picture, is a light in the form of the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill. The premise of the Bill is based on Stop Ecocide International’s vision of providing an enforceable framework to deter destructive practices and safeguard the natural world for the future. While there would need to be a range of reforms and institutions set up to support the law, it “signals a profound shift in how environmental justice is imagined and enforced.”

June kicked off with Arran Pride this weekend, a much-loved celebration of diversity, and joining with the themes of this Voice issue, has brought me a deep sense that diversity underpins the health, security and fulfilment of all life. But as Philip Loring writes in ‘The consequences of oppressing diversity,’ in both the natural world, and in our communities and cultures, diversity is under attack by powerful ruling forces and minorities. For Loring, "to fight diversity is to fight the very processes that allow life to flourish" and so becomes the existential basis of the times we are in, living amidst a sixth mass extinction. To stand up for diversity, and embrace the myriad forms that life takes then, is not a "matter to be relegated to identity politics, but the central contention of this existential moment."

We can look to Arran once again, as increasing biodiversity and environmental protection come to the fore in local initiatives that make failing global systems seem almost redundant. From the recovery work of planting new trees in Glen Rosa, to the community growing of the Arran Pioneer Project, we witness first-hand the resilience of ecosystems being revived, and food practices diversified. The Pioneer Project began as a response to pandemic related food security concerns. Five years down the line, its work and the volunteers who make the community gardens, are more relevant than ever. Who knows where we'll be in another five years and perhaps how self-sufficient Arran might be then.... We hope you enjoy the issue and wish you a wonderful summer to come... Elsa