I’m Janet Moxley, an environmental scientist based in Biggar in southern Scotland, and I’m responsible for the Biggar Ideas blog. I am particularly interested in climate change, soils, and land use, and am also interested in how we create sustainable communities, particularly in rural areas. Many of the things that lead to us trashing our environment are also trashing our communites, particularly a greed culture and corporate power which has got out of control.
Although I started the blog way back in 2013, it’s been rather neglected recently. However, we are at a interesting time at the the moment, where a number of factors including COVID, Brexit and the growing climate emergency are coming together to galvanise new ideas and give new opportunities, so as we come into 2021, I felt it was a good time to revamp the blog.
As well as looking to the future, over the last year or so, I have been looking back at how we have used land in the past as this should inform our understanding of how we got to the landscape and land uses we have now. One thing that has become very clear while doing this, is that while there is a wealth of material published about land use and landscape history in “Britain”, most of this relates to England, and more specifically south east England. I am therefore keen to turn the focus on Scotland, and the upland areas of northern England which have fundamentally different geological, cultural and land use patterns and are have a different future to areas such as Surrey, East Anglia or Devon.
As well as jotting down my own thoughts, I will try to incorporate some book reviews (not necessarily of new books), and might even invite some guest bloggers to join in.
My intention is that this blog will explore a range of issues connected to land, people, and the environment, mainly in rural Scotland, but possibly also venturing into urban areas and other parts of the UK and beyond.
biggarideas 