Only field sports and farming can forge the creative partnership to ensure that the hare flourishes in our countryside.In days gone by the London Stock Exchange closed early as the results of the Waterloo Cup were received via carrier pigeons. The hare is given a head start of at least 80 yards.The agile hare can turn in its own length and more often than not outwits the hounds, which overshoot and lose ground. Hares have greater stamina than the dogs and as a prey species well adapted to flight will usually escape unharmed. There are strict rules, which favour the hare, and points are awarded for the way in which the dogs turn the hare. The hares are gently and expertly driven to the coursing field by a line of beaters, but it is the task of the "slipper", a skilled official, to ensure that a single hare is fit and running well before slipping the two dogs. and is glad if the hare escapes." The same applies today.Coursing is the test of the merits of two "gazehounds" which chase by sight, not scent. In AD 116 Flavius Arrianus wrote: "The true sportsman does not take out his dogs to destroy the hare, but for the sake of the course ...

On estates such as Altcar, farming practices lean more towards preservation of the hare than profit - and it is modern farming practices that are most responsible for a decline in hare numbers (from former pest proportions) this century. On good coursing estates, the fox population is strictly controlled to give young hares the chance to reach adulthood.Coursing is perhaps the oldest of field sports, and it was thanks to the Romans' love of coursing that the brown hare was introduced to the British Isles. Every year the 158-year-old event comes under fire from anti-field sports campaigners. Every year, the League Against Cruel Sports trots out various attacks on the sport: hares are breeding early, hares are in decline - theapproach it thinks will get the most publicity. All attacks ignore the simple fact that coursing is good for the hare population. The Waterloo Cup is the Derby, Grand National and Cheltenham Gold Cup rolled into one as far as coursing folk are concerned: tens of thousands of spectators flock to Great Altcar near Liverpool for this prime test of coursing greyhounds. The environmental prize will go to the political leader who can sense the full depths of the contemporary cultural tensions embodied within environmentalism and then offer hope, based on such an understanding Mr Blair has made a worthy attempt. But yesterday he only scratched the surface.The writer is director of the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Lancaster University..

This is consistent with the experience of the past two decades - environmental activism emerged as a DIY response to deeply felt limitations in the responsiveness of our conventional political frameworks.Mr Blair's speech, while an important event in itself, will have had little to offer these deeper concerns, latent within the population at large. Other research reveals a similar pervasive mistrust of of politicians who imply that they know what environmental problems really are. Yet these are the looming issues with which environment and a wider social politics will have to deal, as the millennium approaches.A recent study by the think-tank Demos of the 19-34 generation has highlighted not only the fatalism and indifference towards orthodox politics characteristic of many young people today, but also the fact that " the environment" is one of their key new areas of shared concern. Nothing in Mr Blair's speech signified awareness of the likely importance of such developments for the smooth running of a "stakeholder" society under a new Labour government. In brouhahas as different as the Brent Spar, BSE and emerging tensions surrounding the commercial release of genetically modified organisms, "environmental" controversies are signalling a disturbing erosion of public confidence in the formerly stable alliances between government regulators and applied scientists - alliances that have kept environmental policies on the road politically until now. These controversies are sites of new patterns of shared moral and political engagement for many people disillusioned with conventional politics. They are pointers to inadequacies in the thinking of mainstream political parties, a matter on which Mr Blair's speech was silent.They reflect also a further cultural phenomenon: the continuing erosion of the social authority of modern science.

All that is true, and Mr Blair was right to stress yesterday that such issues provoke profound public moral concern.But the significance of environmental issues runs still deeper. The public identification they attract reflects their role as conduits of new and mounting cultural tensions in advanced industrial societies. New patterns of public unease and insecurity towards regulators and politicians are now being channelled through "environmental" controversies such as those on new roads or animal welfare issues. Overwhelmingly, "the environment" is regarded within the political parties (and many non-governmental organisations) as a set of physical issues, ranging from the local to the global. Good intentions, yes - but little scope in the policy domain to set our souls alight.So how else could Mr Blair have made the impact he was seeking? This brings us to the second problem arising from current political approaches towards the environment. Moreover, despite widespread expectations, he had little to say about new patterns of environmental taxation.

Labour's environmentally questionable performance on the VAT- on-fuel row two years ago provides a pointer to the understandable tensions within the party on such matters But nettles of this kind will have to be grasped. But he offered no additional insight into how the difficult trade-offs - between freedom to drive and enhanced public transport, for example - would be achieved. Indeed, puzzling though it may seem to those outside the rarefied world of international environmental policy debate, John Gummer may well have been right to claim in Parliament yesterday that the UK is now a "leader" in sustainable development.Mr Blair's speech claimed Labour's aspiration to marry a high-skill economy with high environmental standards. Mrs Thatcher's 1988 Royal Society speech was a landmark for the crystallisation of a global environmental agenda. Its reverberations continue in Whitehall - reflected in an improved calibre of thinking and commitment among officials toward environmental priorities throughout the Nineties.