Sir David Attenborough’s legacy transcends generation, age, and audience. His documentarian skills are once-in-a-lifetime; and that’s what David’s all about, making the most of the one life you have, the ones that came before you, and ensuring the future of the ones that will come after you.
That ethos can be traced back to his childhood, growing up in Leicester, fishing newts out of ponds to donate to his fathers lab team when he worked as the Principle at the University College of Leicester. Collecting fossils, stones and natural specimens, his interests were only further encouraged when Jacquetta Hawkes, the first ever woman to study the Archaeology and Anthropology degree at the University of Cambridge, expressed her admiration for his collection of fossils and egg shells.
Today, however, the way children encounter the natural world has fundamentally changed. Increasingly, it is mediated through screens, rather than experienced first hand. In this day and age, do children turn to our world to seek wonder and joy? It’s a contentious issue many parents are dealing with. How do we introduce young people to a world that is simultaneously wondrous and under threat?
Emma Hughes, now Head of Organising and Campaigns at Just Treatment, confronts that question daily, as both a campaigner and parent, commenting:
“I’ve got a seven year old, talking about climate change to a seven year old is really difficult.
“I don’t want to terrify Fenn. David Attenborough and his programmes, connecting him to the natural world, gives way to begin those conversations in a way that begins with what an incredible world we live in.
“Lets protect it, rather than [scare children with] this huge terrifying thing coming along” – referring to climate change.
Many wonder, why talk to children about climate change at all? If it’s so terrifying, isn’t that doing more harm than good? However, many don’t realise the true effects of climate change and how it effects us all. While shielding children may seem protective, it risks leaving them unprepared for the realities ahead. As Hughes emphasises, the impacts of climate change are neither abstract, not distant.
She points to a growing pattern of global disruption, with one shared cause: “the prevalence of bushfires in Australia, the prevalence of extreme weather events, like the flooding in Devon, more hurricanes in places like the Caribbean Islands, the droughts in Southern Europe, rising sea levels.
Extreme weather events are costing peoples lives.”
Even in the UK, the effects are increasingly evident: “David Attenborough has recently been doing this series of programmes on gardens where he’s talking about less and less swallows coming back to the UK, there’s less insects for animals to eat”, and even a decline in hedgehogs. “It basically effects our entire ecosystem in a myriad of ways. [Some] we’re aware of and [some] we’re less aware of.”
Adding onto this, she acknowledges: “we have to be careful about how we communicate this, because you don’t want to give a sense of hopelessness”. When asked what made her hopeful for the future, she replied “your generation”.
That optimism is not unfounded. In 2016, more young people were tuning in to Sir David Attenborough’s BBC One programme Planet Earth II than X-Factor, signalling a cultural shift in what captures young people’s attention. Surveys have consistently shown that teenagers hold particularly strong admiration for him, suggesting that his influence and the draw to learn about natures is not fading, but evolving.
Institutions have also bean to recognise his impact. In celebration of David Attenborough, the University of Cambridge have set up the David Attenborough building at their Museum of Zoology. It celebrates the world, its wonders, David’s life and achievements, and has an especially heavy draw to families with young children. It stands as both tribute and as an educational space to engage children beyond a screen.
Sir David Attenborough refers to young people as ‘the great hope’, praising a generation that has “woken up” to the realities of climate change. That sentiment is echoed by those working directly in education.
Speaking to Elliot McDowell at Climate Ed, an educational organisation delivering climate workshops to primary school children, he emphasised the importance of early engagement.
Essential experiences, like visiting museums such as Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology, in an age where so much wildlife content is digital, creates important ground work for children understanding our world: “Going to a physical space and seeing it, making that memory by touching something, or seeing something, or talking to someone, is absolutely vital”.
He also highlighted a significant gap in the education system:
“It’s not currently a statutory requirement in schools” to educate children on climate change.
“The way that we learn about [climate change] in the media is often through articles that are presented as quite complex and bad news, which isn’t very accessible for young children.” He detailed how they therefore deliver their workshops as “simple and quite positively framed”.
For McDowell, Attenborough’s enduring appeal lies not only in his work, but in his presence. “He’s been a very consistent presence. People think of him in the same way they thought of the queen. This stable presence of someone who obviously cares about the environment, about animals, about wildlife.
“His consistency of presence is really important, young children know about him, and then people in their 80’s know about him as well.
“His longevity, coupled with the fact that he is nice. I think that makes a big difference.”
In a world defined by uncertainty, that consistency may be Attenborough’s greatest contribution. He does not simply document the natural world, he anchors it in public consciousness, for both young and old. For younger generations, growing up amid environmental crisis, that may prove to be the most important legacy of all.
