Monthly Archives: July 2015

Fighting back for the green economy





Well well well. It seems the Government is on something of an anti-green roll.

The last few weeks have seen them announce an effective ban on onshore wind, privatise the Green Bank, scrap the Zero Carbon Homes plan, shove up taxes for green cars and put a ludicrous carbon tax on renewable energy.

Now the feed-in tariff is under threat. This is the scheme that allows individuals like you and me, as well as thousands of schools, hospitals, libraries and small businesses to install solar panels or small wind turbines.

As I explain elsewhere there are lots of reasons for this, most of them nonsense, but the point is that the Green Economy is under attack.

And it’s being done on the sly

In the weeks to come there will likely be a big uproar as changes to the main domestic feed-in tariff are discussed, but right now something really important and quite insidious is going on.

Two weeks ago the Government announced a consultation to remove ‘pre accreditation’ for projects over 50kW under the feed-in tariff. Like all the most important things it has a boring name, but it matters. This is the scheme that allows people building larger renewables projects to pre-register them to receive the Feed-in Tariff at a fixed price, and then have six months to a year to finish them.

This is important because, as we know, the Government can change the supports for new projects at any time, and they reduce rapidly over time, which means that a school or a farmer could spend months building a project only to find out it is uneconomic by the end.

But this is exactly what the Government is now proposing. Its reasons are simple, and spelled out in the consultation. It wants less rooftop solar under the FiT. Think about that. Despite all the rhetoric against solar farms and wind turbines, and all the Minister’s talk of a solar revolution, the Treasury is insisting that there should be less rooftop solar.

This is particularly ridiculous given that by the government’s own data this is a sector that is already struggling. Indeed, there appears to have been almost no growth at all in medium scale rooftop solar in last few months.

Another consultation snuck out over the holidays

At the same time the government has released a second consultation on closing the remaining Renewable Obligations (RO) for medium sized solar farms.

Combined with the fact that the RO for large solar farms is already closed, the attack on onshore wind, and the emerging likelihood that there will be no more Contract for Difference rounds for these technologies this year (this is the scheme which was supposed to replace the RO, but which is struggling), and it looks like the government is pretty much blocking the two cheapest forms of renewable electricity we have.

What is almost as galling is that this proposal has been snuck out in the hope that no one will notice. Released, along with other changes, on the day after Parliament went on recess and a day after the Secretary of State appeared in front of the Energy and Climate Change Committee.

No doubt this helped her avoid some difficult questions from MPs, but it doesn’t exactly build public confidence. Nor for that matter, does it build confidence in the renewable energy industry, and the investors that have stepped forward to finance its growth.

Released too as many of the schools, public sector bodies and small businesses are heading off on holiday, and unable to respond. The timeframe is short as well. Four weeks for the pre-accreditation consultation. Just half the time given for similar changes in the past.

We think this is wrong. Not just because of the substance, but because of the way it is being done. It is undemocratic and underhand. It shows the general disregard for the renewables industry we are now coming to expect. We believe it violates the Government’s own guidelines.

Indeed, these state that: “timeframes for consultation should be proportionate and realistic to allow stakeholders sufficient time to provide a considered response and where the consultation spans all or part of a holiday period policy makers should consider what if any impact there may be and take appropriate mitigating action”.

Calling Amber Rudd – is anyone at home?

Considered response? Half of the small scale energy groups don’t even seem to realise that anything has happened yet. The deadline is in just a couple of weeks, and I’ve barely got past the stage of writing snarky tweets complaining about it.

As a result Friends of the Earth’s lawyers have written to voice our concerns, to seek more time. Whether or not anyone is listening remains to be seen.

The tragedy is that we know this is just one of many attacks going on against the Green Economy that have not yet had time to sink in. I am still receiving emails from groups and supporters looking to launch community schemes to raise money for renewable energy. I almost don’t have the heart to tell them that time may be running out.

There will be lots of battles to come in the next few weeks and months. Right now we need to start building the movement which will win them.

 


 

Action: please voice your opposition to attacking roof top solar, and help us stand up for the Green Economy and Save Renewable Energy in the UK.

James Dubrey is Communications and Media Officer with Friends of the Earth (UK minus Scotland).

 






Golden rice GMO paper retracted after judge rules for journal





The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is retracting a scientific paper that claimed to show that genetically engineered rice serves as an effective vitamin A supplement after a Massachusetts judge denied the first author’s motion for an injunction against the publisher.

The journal announced plans to retract the paper last year following allegations that the paper contained ethical mis-steps, such as not getting informed consent from the parents of children eating the rice, and faking ethics approval documents.

Last July, first author Guangwen Tang at Tufts University filed a complaint and motion for preliminary injunction against the journal’s publisher, the American Society for Nutrition, to stop the retraction.

Grave concerns: no proof of parental consent

According to the ASN, on July 17, a Massachusetts Superior Court “cleared the way” for the publisher to retract the paper. So they have, as of July 29. Here’s more from the retraction notice:

“The article cited above, which was originally published in the September 2012 issue and prepublished on 1 August 2012, has been retracted by the publisher for the following reasons:

“1. The authors are unable to provide sufficient evidence that the study had been reviewed and approved by a local ethics committee in China in a manner fully consistent with NIH guidelines. Furthermore, the engaged institutions in China did not have US Federal Wide Assurances and had not registered their Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Review Committee).

“2. The authors are unable to substantiate through documentary evidence that all parents or children involved in the study were provided with the full consent form for the study.

“3. Specific eligibility issues were identified in regard to 2 subjects in the study.”

In an unusual move, the publisher issued a press release about the retraction, which presents more information about the case:

“A ruling by the Massachusetts Superior Court, Judge Salinger, on July 17, 2015 has cleared the way for the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) to retract the article ‘β-Carotene in Golden Rice is as good as β-carotene in oil at providing vitamin A to children’ which was published in the September 2012 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Am J Clin Nutr 2012 96:658-66). The article was retracted by the American Society for Nutrition on July 29, 2015.

“In July 2014, Dr. Guangwen Tang filed a complaint and a motion for preliminary injunction against ASN.  A hearing on Dr. Tang’s motion for preliminary injunction was ultimately held on July 17, 2015. After oral argument, the Court denied Dr. Tang’s motion, ruling that the injunction would constitute an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech as well as an unconstitutional order compelling speech. ASN is very pleased that the Massachusetts courts have upheld the organization’s First Amendment rights and have allowed ASN to move forward with the retraction of the article.”

retraction notice was published online ahead of print on July 29, 2015 and will be published in print and online in the September 2015 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

clerk’s notice about the case lists the plaintiff’s motion for a Preliminary Injunction as “DENIED”: “The requested order would be an unconstitutional Prior restraint on speech as well as an unconstitutional order compelling speech.”

A spokesperson for ASN declined to comment further: “We do not have an additional statement at this time. There is still an active lawsuit associated with the retraction and we have been advised by legal counsel not to comment further on this matter.”

Greenpeace: children used as ‘guinea pigs’

According to ScienceInsider, initial objections to the study were raised by Greenpeace, who alleged the children eating the rice were being used as “guinea pigs”.

After a year-long investigation, Tufts concluded that Tang had indeed breached ethical regulations, and banned her from conducting human research for two years. In addition, she would have to be supervised in order to conduct any future research.

Tang declined to comment, saying: “We do not comment on pending litigation.”

Retraction Watch has contacted Tufts, last author Robert Russell, and the journal’s editor for comment. They have also asked the Massachusetts Superior Court for any additional court documents, and will update with any information received.

Further objection – unrealistic diet would boost absorption

A further objection raised to the scientific work is that the children were fed on a diet rich in fat and protein – both of which would artificially raise the absorption of the beta-carotene, which is fat soluble. The meals comprised 20% fat by energy content and included 100g or 110g of pork meat, also eaten with egg, spinach and tomato soup.

Given that Golden rice is promoted as a means to raise the standard of nutrition among poor and malnourished children, a diet so rich in meat, fat, protein and vegetables is unrealistic and thus uninformative as far as the enhanced nutrition of the ‘target group’ is concerned.

Indeed, anyone eating so rich a diet as that given the the child subjects would be at little danger of suffering from vitamin A deficiency in the first place, since spinach, along with other green vegetables, is a good source of the necessary nutrients.

However this question was not taken into account in the AJCN’s decision to retract the paper, which was taken entirely on ethical grounds.

With the paper’s retraction, a major scientific support of the case for Golden rice has now been lost by its proponents.

 


 

This article was originally published by Retraction Watch.

This version includes additional reporting by The Ecologist, namely the entire final section below the heading ‘Further objection – unrealistic diet would boost absorption.’

 






Strange happenings on a small island off Europe





Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a tale of strange happenings on an enchanted isle. It begins with a storm conjured by the magic of Prospero. His sorcery brings his enemies to him, and leaves them powerless. “At this hour”, he tells his spirit-servant Ariel, “Lies at my mercy all mine enemies.”

Something similar, if less magical and more political, is happening right now in the strange little island of Britain. Here ‘green’ measures are being laid waste in the scorched-earth style once popular with England’s Norman Kings.

It’s not a would-be Duke of Milan who is calling the shots but George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister). Osborne is a lifelong political animal, an aristocrat, and would-be next Conservative Prime Minister.

Osborne is also seen by many as the deceiving wizard behind the Conservatives recent election triumph. One critic has called him, a “magician”, and a “genius at politics” who now, is riding “in his pomp”.

Powerless enemies

Osborne’s political enemies really do lie powerless. The Conservatives came to power this May with a slim majority but there is no effective opposition. The Labour Party is leaderless, demoralized and punishing itself with an agonizing internal election which isfurther alienating the public.

The Conservative’s former coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats (the two parties weremassively divided by values), were almost wiped out in the election. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) won 50 British Parliamentary seats, while Labour lost 40 and the LibDems lost 10, leaving them with just one MP each ‘north of of the border’.

As Labour and the SNP loathe one another, this helps rather than hinders Osborne. If and until there is another referendum (Scotland voted against independence in 2014), all that Scottish SNP support means little in practical terms. Finally, if Scotland splits away, the Conservatives are likely to be even more dominant in the rest of Britain.

Policies into reverse

So Osborne finds himself unopposed and he is systematically putting Britain’s environmental protection policies into reverse.

The Conservative government has lifted a ban on bee-slaying neonicotinoid pesticides,and slashed support for wind, biomass and solar power, killed off its scheme for greening homes, cut incentives to chose cleaner cars, abandoned a plan for all new homes to be ‘zero carbon’, reversed a pledge to keep fracking out of nationally important nature sites, dropped plans for taxing environmental ‘bads’, announced it will start selling off its ‘green bank’, and is apparently casting around for more greenery to put to the axe. It’s also supporting a ‘review‘ of two key European wildlife laws, the Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive.

Why? Mainly because it is pay-back time for the Conservative base, donors and business lobbies. Only a few of these changes were put to the electorate (unlike the economic policies of Osborne’s recent budget) but amongst some British Conservatives, especially activists, there is a visceral dislike of environmental protections. Osborne’s political co-pilot, Prime Minister David Cameron, famously called it the “green crap“.

Former Friends of the Earth Director Tony Juniper recently said: “the last few months mark the worst period for environmental policy that I have seen in my 30 years’ work in this field.” I agree. He attributes it to “an anti-environment ideology based on the view that ecological goals interfere with the market, increase costs and are against the interests of people”.

Again I agree with Tony but only up to a point because in the UK, a lot of the simmering resentment of pro-environmental action is not really ideological in an intellectual sense but social.

Fox hunting

Strange as it may seem to foreigners, in class-ridden Britain one of the social fault lines is between the feudal land-owning classes and those who aspire to support them, and the rest. Even odder, the two symbolic issues that divide these tribes are blood-sports, especially fox-hunting, and bizarrely, wind turbines. (There is also some evidence that they probably also divide over climate scepticism).

Controls on fox hunting were introduced by the Labour government under Tony Blair (who later regretted it). David Cameron has pledged to allow a Parliamentary vote on changing the law back, to the disadvantage of foxes.

Both he and Osborne would be likely to vote to allow more hunting and both move in social circles which are much more pro-fox-hunting than the population at large. The government tried to do this in July but pulled back because, ironically, of opposition from the SNP (the details are complicated) and will probably try again in the autumn.

Not all Conservatives or Conservative MPs support fox-hunting. Within the Conservative Party it comes close to dividing ‘modernisers’ from traditionalists (and retros, neo-traditionalists). Right-wing journalist Matthew D’Ancona recently described it as part of the Conservative’s “gruesome past”.

But by this instinctive emotional logic, renewable energy and even energy efficiency can get bundled with opposition to hunting foxes with hounds: it is about ‘us’ and ‘them’. The nearest parallel that I can imagine for American readers, and it is not a very precise one, is gun control: in some ways the fox hunting lobby is Britain’s NRA (National Rifle Association) but associated with the liberty to enjoy inherited, rural, landed privilege rather than notions of self-made individualism.

To give you an example, a farmer I know of is a tenant of a very large, very aristocratic land-owner of the hunting-and-shooting variety. The tenancy still requires that the landowner has right of access to ride over his farm and use his farmhouse one day a year. And it is exercised: I’m told the landowner and his friends turn up on horseback, unannounced, stick their muddy boots up on the kitchen table and eat and drink as long as they like. It’s ‘a laugh’ but it asserts a very feudal order.

While both Cameron and Osborne were members of the elite hyper-rich Bullingdon Club at Oxford University famous for anti-social behaviour, drink and drugs, Cameron comes from the landed gentry and has a foxhunting background, while Osborne’s background is more ‘metropolitan’.

Osborne is not as ideological as some assume. He is a clever, radical and calculating politician most interested in winning. His bonfire of green measures (and there is little doubt that the Treasury is behind the long-knives) may make little rational sense. Onshore wind and solar are cheap, and efficient and unlike nuclear, quick to deploy. Investment in energy efficiency is most cost-effective of all, and cleaner cars save the NHS money. There is no evidence that the Birds and Habitats Directives are impairing economic growth.

In short, as many economists point out, environmental regulation tends to boost rather than reduce economic performance. The renewables industry and Britain’s many greener companies will be alarmed. Thoughtful greener Conservatives have expressed dismay and puzzlement at his actions.

But Osborne isn’t trying to appeal to the thinkers. He probably judges that a slash and burn of green policies makes short-term political sense on a dog-whistle basis. He is stealing UKIP’s clothes and positioning, and most of all, scoring points with Conservative Party loyalists, back-benchers and loyalists who he will need in future.

He is also probably enjoying the moment. The Conservative Party, if not Osborne himself, are a bit drunk on the power to do what feels good. He must calculate that there is very little political risk: certainly not from opposition political parties, nor also from Britain’s environmental NGOs. And he’s about to go on holiday.

International implications

Most of the time Britain doesn’t matter much on the world stage but it does on climate change because of its finance of carbon, the communications influence of the BBC, and because it has so far stuck to Mrs Thatcher’s legacy of attempting international leadership. There has even been a cross-party agreement on the need to decarbonize the UK. Will that survive?

The Paris climate summit is on the near horizon. Most of the rest of the world seems to be heading towards more effective climate action. To mention but a few, the Pope has issued his powerful Encyclical calling for more action; French MPs have voted to halve energy use by 2050 and increase renewables to 32% by 2030, Barack Obama plans to train75,000 solar workers, Hilary Clinton wants enough renewable energy to power all the homes in the US within a decade, and China says it will “work hard” to peak emissions earlier’ than 2030 target.

We don’t yet know how Osborne’s onslaught will affect Britain’s climate policy commitments but they are likely to increase its carbon emissions. Just some of wind and solar cuts are estimated to add 2.9-7.3mt to UK CO2 pollution each year.

Domestic and European implications: dirty man of Europe?

Is Britain heading back to the dark old days when it was known as the Dirty Man of Europe? It’s more than possible. Germany is tightening controls on neonicotinoid pesticides, while Britain relaxes them. Britain ranks 18th out of 22 European countries for beach cleanliness and is facing two legal actions for sewage spills.

It wasn’t just dire performance on water and air pollution which won Britain that title in the 1980s and 1990s but a state of mind, and Osborne seems to be talking up an anti-environmental mantra.

Writing in the current ENDS Magazine, environmentalist and Peer Bryony Worthington notes:

“When energy secretary Amber Rudd announced in parliament that the government would cut off subsidies for new onshore wind she name-checked Conservative MPs in her speech. They then stood up in turn and called out for more, attacking offshore wind and solar power, with some calling for an end to all forms of renewable energy.”

It isn’t hard to imagine that an anti-environment drumbeat from London could be echoed in other Member States where it seems expedient to do things like continuing to burn coal. That is exactly what the Conservative’s right wing competitors UKIP want to do.

They are pledged to to repeal Britain’s Climate Change Act, scrap the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), end solar subsidies, burn more coal and roll back emissions regulations for power plants. UKIP won just one seat at the General Election but got 13.6% of votes, against the Conservatives 36.9% of the vote and 331 seats.

Here perhaps is some of Osborne’s motivation: to out-UKIP UKIP before the referendum on continued membership of the European Union and minimise the damage from an inevitable Conservative split over Europe.

David Cameron promised to hold the referendum by 2017 but it could be as early as May 2016. Neither Cameron nor Osborne say they want to leave the EU but Osborne recently told the Daily Mail that UK membership should be based on “free trade”. The Mailexplained that further Eurozone integration, which of course excludes Britain, “could provide an opportunity for the UK to start distancing itself from the EU and reset the terms of its membership.”

A common rightwing British view of Europe is of an interfering, socialist leaning superstate imposing rules and regulations. From this point of view, environmental regulation, renewable energy and ‘Europe’ are all rolled into one encumberance we are best shot of.

Ditching environmental protection and policies associated with the EU, could therefore be part of a positioning exercise to ‘shoot UKIP’s fox’ before the referendum. Or in a favourite phrase of the Conservative’s Australian election strategist Lynton Crosby, to get the barnacles off the boat.

Domestic: what should campaigners do?

Faced with the obvious threat to the Birds and Habitats Directive, 100 British NGOs got together earlier this year to ask people to respond to an EU consultation under the banner ‘Defend Nature‘. 520,000 people responded, 100,000 from the UK.

Not bad and three times higher than any other consultation response but it’s unlikely to have much affect on Operation Osborne. The European Commission responded that it “reaffirms support for EU role in protecting nature” – but what if that’s not what the UK Government wants to hear?

Likewise on the day I’m writing this, a study found: The Birds Directive has had a ‘demonstrably positive impact’ on threatened species, according to research by European wildlife NGO BirdLife International and Durham University.” But if the intended Osborne UKIP-sidelining meta-narrative is less-Europe-good, more-Europe-bad, then evidence that Europe works, just like the evidence that renewables or energy efficiency work, is simply not welcome.

Pro-European advocacy is unlikely to change the UK Government’s mind until after it has what it wants from the referendum, unless it is forced into a rethink by some external reality such as the need to negotiate with a political opponent, and that seems unlikely.

Instead campaigns need to build bottom up, and to be realistic. UKIP and his Conservative base aside, what or who do Osborne or Cameron care about? What might have to happen for some of them to begin to doubt that throwing environmental protections and investments overboard, was such a great idea after all?

The first objective probably cannot be to reverse Osborne’s changes but simply to sow doubt. After that might, eventually, come regret, shame, disownment, even disengagement.

What if, for example, the oil seed rape farmers who lobbied to use neonicotinoid pesticides found that they were losing markets for their products in favour of suppliers (from elsewhere in Europe?) who could guarantee that their product had not been sprayed with the bee slaying neonicotinoids?

What if the staff, friends, families, company directors and investors of renewable energy companies in Britain, were to make their feelings felt to Conservative MPs? According to the Renewable Energy Association, there are over 100,000 people employed in the UK renewables sector (against about 150,000 full time farmers).

What if some of those 100,000 who took part in the EU Habitats and Birds Directives were also members of the Conservative Party or voted Conservative? If they now had reason to invite their MP to see what protection means on the ground, it might help reframe the question as about our land and our nature rather than ‘Europe’.

What if George Osborne was to hear from the City that the smoke signals from his green bonfire were sending unhelpful messages about inward investment to the UK?

What if the UK found itself dealing with a series of embarrassing court actions that spoke to the title ‘Dirty Man of Europe’? Or if tourists and Londonders started seriously worrying about the quality of the capital’s air?

What if home-owners or businesses found themselves affected by changing weather and climate, and started to demand political action at a local level to keep us safe? Fracking so far comes closest to this since it impinges on houses and potentially on property values but sea level rise and inland flooding also pose a threat which has yet to crystallise as a real political issue.

Are we ready for the fight

In the end all politics is local, geographically or personally, or both. ‘Issues’ do not make campaigns, only topics that are debated. Campaigns need to start with a group, however small, of people with an unshakeable conviction that their case needs to be heard. They need to put something at stake, to make a difference that matters to someone.

This will mean campaigns that resonate with people that George Osborne cares about, for example his MPs, and that in turn depends on involving those who they care about – their voters not their critics. The failed attempt to sell-off some of England’s state-owned forests back in 2011 led to a ‘shires revolt’ which showed that a Conservative government can be vulnerable on an environmental issue.

In recent decades UK environmentalists have got used to operating in a relatively benign environment. Many UK NGOs are herbivorous beasts, browsers not bruisers, posing little or no political threat to any interest, political or corporate. Some have grown used to ‘satisficing’, looking after visitors to their sites and tending to their supporters. Rarely do they really need to convince anyone outside their own ‘base’.

European funding for agri-environment schemes, the Landfill Tax, Lottery Funding, policies set through the EU on energy and climate, public-funded agencies working to monitor and enforce regulations, and the corporate-consumer-regulatory ratchet of sustainability have all reduced the requirement for NGOs to prove a need, or to demonstrate and mobilise a real-life constuituency.

I hope I am wrong but this rather peaceful situation may be changing for the worse. Are Britain’s NGOs really ready for a fight?

 


 

Chris Rose lives in North Norfolk and is a campaigns and communications consultant and former campaigner for WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

This article was originally published on Chris’s Campaign Strategy website.

 

 






Whatever our emotions tell us, not all whaling is the same





In the mid-20th century pilot whaling still took place in many north Atlantic nations such as the US and Canada.

Now, only the Faraoese have a dedicated pilot whale hunt, the grindadráp. Many of us don’t like the idea of this.

I am a scientist. I do not profit from the pilot whale hunt nor do I have anything to gain by writing this article. Indeed, I risk retaliation from those that feel what I say departs from the accepted mantra.

I study and work with dolphins and whales and for a while I spent more time around dolphins than people. For no logical reason, these animals are special to me, and that they are hunted upsets me. But these are personal opinions which have no place in this debate – a debate that is too easily ruled by emotions.

No conservation threat

The Faroese catch around 900 pilot whales, actually a type of dolphin, every year. This catch level does not threaten the conservation status of this population estimated to have more than 750,000 whales.

Often forgotten or ignored is that an estimated several hundred pilot whales from the same populations are drowned every year in the nets of our fishing fleets.

The scale of the Faroese pilot whale hunt is very different to the industrial whaling led by the UK and Norway during the 19th and 20th centuries which, in only 50 to 70 years, over-exploited whales in the Antarctic Ocean and drove them almost to extinction.

Nor is it comparable to the commercial pilot whaling in Newfoundland from the 1950s and 1960s which over-exploited the stock. In comparison, the Faroese pilot whale hunt has continued for close to 1,000 years without over-exploitation, with records going back to 1584.

Since pilot whales are top predators in the north Atlantic, they accumulate levels of heavy metals and other pollutants that make their meat hazardous to eat. Yet the hunt is part of the social fabric of the islands, and the meat is eaten nevertheless.

No good way of killing

The Faroese pilot whale hunt is a dramatic sight. The animals are driven close to the shore in shallow bays and slaughtered with knives and lances. It results in a lot of blood in the water, clearly visible from the shore where many often gather to watch.

The need for animals that we eat to be killed quickly and humanely is well understood and agreed. The pilot whale killing method was chosen to ensure that the whales die as quickly as possible, considering all the factors in the hunt.

Killing an animal is not a pleasant business, be it a whale, a deer, or a chicken. However, all welfare issues considered, I do not see how the pilot whale hunt is different from non-stalking hunts for animals on land, many of which take place in countries where opponents to the whale hunt live.

Time-to-death is kept as short as possible, even if sometimes it’s longer than we would like. One thing is certain: it’s much shorter than the time it takes a pilot whale to drown in a fishing net that we use to catch our daily fish.

The hunt itself is a different story. We have very recently stopped hunting foxes with dogs in the UK on welfare grounds. Driving pilot whales into bays to kill them takes time and is not unlike the process of hunting with dogs, and I think it raises welfare questions that need to be discussed.

I personally have difficulties weighing these welfare questions against those raised by the industrial farming which generates most of the meat we consume in anti-whaling nations.

Anyone that signs a petition to stop this hunt only to go home and roast a chicken that never saw daylight or moved much when it was reared is a hypocrite. Would it be more ethical of the Faroese to replace the wild-caught meat they have available to them with imported, industrially produced meat?

Not all whaling is the same

Many of the arguments against the Faroese subsistence whaling should equally apply to the subsistence whaling that goes on in other countries, such as among the Inuit and Eskimo of the US and Canada and the Siberian peoples in Russia.

One argument against subsistence hunting is that as the world develops, access to other food sources increases. But alternative food sources are as prevalent in these other countries as they are in the Faroe Islands. Yet the Intuit and Eskimo for example are not subject to the same criticism, and are even lauded for protecting their cultural traditions – are Faroese traditions somehow less worthy of protection?

We need an unemotional public debate about all forms of whaling, and a commonly agreed definition of subsistence whaling, dietary or cultural, that is more tightly defined and less open to interpretation.

The debate is too driven by emotions, with too many groups that stand to gain while whaling remains a Punch and Judy show. As Gandhi said: “Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.”

We must never again allow whaling on an industrial scale. But I enjoy my venison and I have no problem with deer hunts. I am one of the millions of hypocrites that eat meat but cannot bear the idea of killing an animal myself.

I eat tuna despite its health risks – if I was born in the Faroe Islands, wouldn’t I equally enjoy my pilot whale?

 


 

David Lusseau is Reader at University of Aberdeen.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 






GMO propaganda over facts? BBC Panorama and Bt brinjal





BBC Panorama’s programme, ‘GM Food: Cultivating Fear’, has come under attack from a Bangladeshi journalist for falsely portraying Bt brinjal (eggplant / aubergine) cultivation in Bangladesh as a success.

The programme, which aired on 8 June, featured pro-GMO campaigner Mark Lynas visiting a Bt insecticidal brinjal field and enthusing about the performance of the crop, which was claimed to reduce insecticide sprays and help farmers avoid the effects of pesticide poisoning.

Faisal Rahman, staff correspondent for the United News of Bangladesh (UNB), contacted GMWatch after watching the programme, which he felt “denied the reality of losses the farmers of Bangladesh incurred by cultivating Bt brinjal.”

Out of concern for the farmers, Rahman wanted to set the record straight. His evidence, together with subsequent investigations by GMWatch, casts serious doubt on the credibility of the BBC Panorama programme.

Faisal Rahman is the author of a report for UNB on the second year of Bt brinjal cultivation in Bangladesh, titled ‘Bt brinjal turns out to be ‘upset case’ for famers‘. The report, published in March this year, was based on field visits and telephone interviews with farmers growing Bt brinjal. The report concluded,

“The cultivation of genetically engineered Bt brinjal in the country’s several districts has cost the farmers their fortunes again this year as the plants have either died out prematurely or fruited very insignificantly compared to the locally available varieties.”

Faisal Rahman’s findings

As part of his research for the story, Faisal Rahman interviewed 40 farmers out of a total of 108 growing Bt brinjal this year. He obtained the list of farmers growing Bt brinjal from the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), which is supervising the Bt brinjal project, and had no prior information about the farmers’ experiences with the crop. He visited 12 fields himself and talked to the other farmers over the phone.

According to his research, 32 out of the 40 farmers found serious problems with Bt brinjal. For example, farmers Mohammad Haminur Rahman and Mohammad Mobarak Hossain of Sherpur Sadar upazila (sub-district) said they harvested 8-10 maunds (1 maund is around 80 lb) of Bt brinjal three months after the planting, less than half the amount that could be harvested from a local brinjal field of the same size in the same time scale. Ramzan Ali of Jhikargachha upazila in Jessore said most of the Bt brinjal plants in his field had died.

Faisal Rahman says he did not publish the 32 out of 40 figure because he suspected that the real number of farmers facing loss could have been far higher. Some of the farmers told Rahman that BARI had strictly forbidden them to talk to journalists. In one case he felt that this influenced the story he was told.

“I called a farmer in Jessore. He was in town but one of his brothers was looking after the Bt brinjal field. He said some plants in their field had died but his brother could tell me more. He gave me his brother’s number and I called him instantly. His brother said the Bt brinjal was performing well.”

Call from BBC Panorama

On 16 April, a few weeks after his UNB report was published, Faisal Rahman was called by the BBC Panorama producer and researcher Joseph McAuley. McAuley introduced himself as a BBC journalist interested in investigating the debate on Bt brinjal’s performance at farmer level.

According to Rahman, McAuley asked for his help in visiting some of the Bt brinjal fields mentioned in the UNB report. “I welcomed him, but with caution”, says Rahman. He hoped that a BBC investigation would cross-check and verify the claims he had made in his own reports, lending them the added credibility of a BBC investigation. Rahman was confident that a truly independent investigation would do just that.

However, Rahman’s note of caution arose from his concerns that McAuley’s independence might already be in jeopardy.

“He said he visited some fields in two districts, Tangail and Kushtia. I asked him whether he visited the fields independently or whether there was someone else with him. He said he visited the fields with BARI officials. I asked him whether he thought the presence of BARI officials could produce an independent outlook on the reality.

“I asked this because I had Mark Lynas at the back of my mind, as he posed as independent journalist in 2013. He later produced an absurd piece on Youtube where he was shown interviewing farmers in presence of BARI officials.”

Video: Mark Lynas’s ‘absurd’ film about Bt brinjal, in which obviously nervous and uncomfortable farmers were interviewed in the presence of BARI officials.

Rahman says the presence of officials during the interviews and filming could influence how the farmers behave: “The colonial legacy here means that officials enjoy a lot of fearful respect from the farmers.”

According to Rahman, McAuley admitted that he had no other contacts to reach the Bt brinjal fields and that was the reason he had visited them with BARI officials. Rahman agreed to send him the phone contacts of some Bt brinjal farmers he had mentioned in his UNB report. He also advised McAuley to visit the farmers on his own, without officials being present.

After Rahman had put the phone down, a thought hit him. “I sent McAuley a text message saying, ‘Can I ask you whether or not your current work on Bt brinjal cultivation is an initiative solely taken by BBC? Is there any other party involved?’

Rahman says, “I felt McAuley’s pride as a BBC journalist was affected by this question as he called me at once and asked me, ‘Do you want me to answer that?’ I said yes, I wanted to know that.

“I explained that I was cautious even about helping someone from the BBC, because I had read a shoddy report on Bt brinjal in The Guardian last year. Besides raising false claims, The Guardian report quoted Lynas at length and made allegations against the professionalism of Bangladeshi journalists over their visits to Bt brinjal fields in the first season of cultivation, without giving them a chance to reply.”

Rahman asked McAuley whether he knew Lynas: “He remained silent. After some discussion, he said he wanted my help ‘as a journalist to a journalist’. I assured him again I would give him the phone numbers of Bt brinjal farmers.

“After some time, he called me again and said something that I could not understand, maybe because he was travelling. After some failed attempts, his assistant, a fluent Bangla speaker, called me and told me what McAuley wanted to say was that I should not mention or publish anything of the conversation between me and him anywhere. I said did not feel bound to abide by that request as farmers in Bangladesh are in great danger, particularly from people from outside the country. Pardon me if I sound a bit xenophobic.”

Rahman gave McAuley the addresses of 11 farmers in three districts – Narsingdi, Comilla, and Manikganj – who cultivated Bt brinjal this season, as well as the phone numbers of some of the farmers. In addition, Rahman gave him the phone numbers of two farmers who cultivated the Bt brinjal last season.

When Rahman watched the Panorama episode, he was surprised to find that did not feature any of these farmers. Instead it featured Hafizur Rahman, a farmer from Tangail Sadar upazila, enthusing about the success of Bt brinjal and saying he didn’t have to spray insecticides to kill the fruit and shoot borer pest (though he still had to spray for other pests).

Rahman says, “I felt deceived.” It was then that he decided to make public the details of his email and telephone conversations with McAuley “for the greater common good – to know whether McAuley visited the farmers or had any conversations over the phone, and what he found. And second, the way Panorama featured Lynas raised doubts in my mind about McAuley’s intentions.”

GMWatch challenges McAuley

GMWatch emailed McAuley and asked him whether he had contacted any of the farmers whose contact details Rahman had give him. We said we were concerned that the breadth of Bangladeshi farmers’ experiences with the crop were not accurately reflected by the programme and that the available testimony about the problems farmers had experienced may have been ignored.

McAuley replied: “We spoke to a wide range of people to understand more about Bt brinjal; Mr Rahman and the farmers he suggested were a few of the many people we contacted.

“We did meet some of the farmers. They had complaints about the Bt brinjal crops, but those did not concern the effectiveness of the crops in resisting fruit and shoot borers. One farmer said his crops had been affected by bacterial wilt, something which we have been told has affected a small number of farms.

“Other farmers we met said that locals around their town had a long-standing preference for brinjal varieties with particular colours and textures, and this meant they were finding it harder to convince local wholesalers to give them a high price. One of those farmers also felt the recent hot weather had impacted on later yields of his crop, which had initially been strong.

“One farmer did not wish to speak to us, and two of the farmers Mr Rahman suggested were not growing Bt brinjal this season … The programme contained interviewees in the UK and Bangladesh who were opposed to Bt brinjal, and other contributors who were opposed to GMOs more generally. We are confident that we reflected facts and a range of opinions about Bt brinjal with due fairness and accuracy, and that we made the programme in accordance with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.”

McAuley clearly received complaints from the farmers about the Bt brinjal’s performance but these were not reflected in the BBC Panorama programme.

What’s more, McAuley’s response is suggestive of the blinkered mindset that has grown up in some parts of the media regarding GM crops. According to this view, as long as the deliberately inserted GM trait (in this case, a Bt toxin that kills the fruit and shoot borer pest) performs as intended, all other aspects of the crop’s performance and marketability can be ignored.

In the strange parallel universe of GMO hype, a crop can fall victim to bacterial infections and fail in the marketplace but still be hailed as a ‘success’.

We showed McAuley’s response to Faisal Rahman, who replied: “Bacterial wilt was endemic to Bt plants in most of the fields. Even according to BARI, bacterial wilt was the reason for the death of 15-100% of the plants in some of the fields I visited. So the problem of bacterial wilt with Bt brinjals should not be taken lightly.

“In most of the fields, Bt brinjal appeared to be more vulnerable to whitefly, another common pest of brinjal. Almost all the farmers used pesticide for whitefly. However, whitefly has not yet appeared as a major threat to non-GM brinjal in Bangladesh.

“Whatever the reason – in almost all cases the official reason is bacterial wilt – Bt brinjal plants started dying from as early as one month to as late as 4 months after planting. In many fields, some plants were alive but the fruits they bore were rotten.

“Even though some farmers – of those I talked to over the phone, it was no more than one-third – claim to have an average or satisfactory yield, most said that the Bt brinjal fruits were not selling well because of the colour and size, and in some cases the fruit being harder than the local varieties.

“The people of Bangladesh are great connoisseurs of brinjals and it sounds a little unnatural to me when someone says a particular brinjal is not sold in a particular area because it is unconventional. People like to pinch the fruit to feel its flesh and they are attracted by the brightness of the brinjal before buying it.

“I think buyers might have been put off the Bt brinjal fruits by the first touch or sight – the unnaturally hard fruits, the extra weight compared to size, the faded colour compared with the local non-GM varieties. Some of the Bt brinjal farmers agreed with me.”

BARI defends GM technology

In judging Bt brinjal solely on the performance of the Bt trait and ignoring other problems with the crop, McAuley seems to have taken his lead directly from BARI. After Rahman’s UNB article on the failure of Bt brinjal was published, Dr Rafiqul Islam Mondal, the director general of BARI, sent him a rejoinder in which he attacked the article as “totally partial and worthless”.

Mondal said BARI had developed the Bt brinjal “only as a resistant [sic.] to shoot and fruit borer” and “the technology was successfully demonstrated among 108 farmers plot. Bt technology is not responsible at all for dieing [sic.] of plants due to bacterial wilt and other insects and pests.”

Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman, a plant pathologist trained in molecular biology and director of sustainable agriculture at the Center for Food Safety, commented on Mondal’s statement:

“Dr Mondal’s assertion that susceptibility to bacterial wilt has nothing to do with the Bt gene or its expression is not supported by any cited research or science. It may or may not be true, but can only be determined by appropriate research or data. His statement does not recognize that genes generally affect the function (expression) of other genes, and most often in unpredictable and unintended ways.

“When a gene affects the function of other genes, geneticists call this pleiotropy. There are many examples for genes that have been engineered into plants. That does not mean that possible pleiotropic effects of the Bt gene or its expression will necessarily affect the plant’s defence against disease. But the possibility can’t be ruled out without doing the experiments.

“In fact several GM traits have been associated with possible negative pleiotropy with known plant disease defence genes, or in at least one case, increased susceptibility to a plant disease (none of these engineered genes were Bt genes, but they support the concept).[1]

“A well-known incidence of unexpected pleiotropy involving conventional breeding occurred in 1970, when a trait for male sterility in corn, which facilitates the making of hybrids, unexpectedly also conferred susceptibility to a previously minor plant disease called Southern Corn Leaf Blight. The result was the loss of a substantial part of the US corn crop.

“So dismissal of the possibility of pleiotropy in the case of Bt brinjal and disease resistance without providing any data to support it is not scientifically sound.

“Alternatively, the brinjal variety that the Bt gene was inserted into may be more susceptible to bacterial wilt, and may have other problems too. Defenders of GM might say that this is not the fault of GM. But it may be related to the GM process.

“For example, it is often easier to transform some varieties of crops than others, and these varieties may be more susceptible to some diseases, or have other undesirable properties. It would take considerable time to transfer the Bt gene to the many Bt brinjal varieties grown by local farmers that may already have resistance to the wilt disease, as well as other desirable properties. And farmers may not want these genes placed into those varieties.

“Either way, connections with GM should not be dismissed offhand. Technologies always have a social context. It is as real as any gene. We need to understand how that context is a weakness or strength of GM, not dismiss it. The common refrain that society should consider only narrowly-based risk assessments ignores the reality of the inevitable social contexts of technologies.”

BARI rejoinder confirms the UNB report

In spite of Mondal’s indignant response to the UNB report and attempt to defend GM technology, the BARI rejoinder does not contradict and in fact confirms the main allegations raised by the UNB report against the performance of Bt brinjal.

For example, the UNB report said, “Harun Mirza, Dilip Kumar Das and Mohammad Ali of Burichong upazila in Comilla planted BARI Bt brinjal 1 (Bt-Uttara) and BARI Bt brinjal 4 (Bt-ISD 006) on about 18-20 decimal plots. All the three claimed that around 150-200 of the 500-700 saplings that were provided to them died earlier within one month’s of the planting. The fresh plants that replaced the dead plants also could not survive, while the most of the rest are also dying out, they added.”

The BARI rejoinder confirmed, “At Comilla, Bt brinjal plots of [Mohammad] Ali and Dilip Kumar was [sic.] affected and all the seedlings died due to heavy shower during November.”

BARI also provides more detailed figures for the failed Bt brinjal crops of some of the farmers quoted in the UNB report. For example, one farmer is quoted in the UNB report as saying, “Most of the saplings (of Bt brinjal) have died. The plants are prone to diseases.” BARI confirmed the experience of this farmer and gave a figure of 45% crop failure due to bacterial wilt.

On issues of fact, BARI’s rejoinder disagrees with the UNB report in one respect. BARI claimed, “No shoot and fruit borer is seen in the BARI Bt brinjal varieties.” In contrast, the UNB report claimed fruit and shoot borer infestation in at least one Bt brinjal field. Faisal Rahman says, “UNB has strong evidence in support of the claim.” (See photographs of the affected farmer, Mohammad Ali, of Nimsar, Comilla.)

Missing data for 90% success claim

In the BBC Panorama programme, the narrator and frontman Tom Heap said, “After a false start last year, this season more than 90% of the GM trial plots have been successful.”

This remarkable claim is at odds with the finding of Faisal Rahman that 32 out of 40 farmers interviewed by the end of March this year complained of Bt brinjal crop failure. That’s 80% of the sample interviewed and 30% of the total of 108 farmers growing Bt brinjal. As Rahman points out, the real figure could be much higher, as he did not interview the remaining 68 farmers.

So where did Panorama’s 90% success claim come from? The source was briefly flashed up on the screen as “Cornell University”. Cornell and the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) are ‘partner’ organisations of the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II (ABSPII), which is promoting the Bt brinjal project in Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia.

Cornell University is home to the controversial Cornell Alliance for Science, which is publicizing the Bangladesh Bt brinjal project. The Alliance was launched last year with a $5.6 million grant from the Gates Foundation to “depolarize the charged debate around agricultural biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).”

Its partners include the GMO industry group ISAAA, which is funded by Monsanto, CropLife, and Bayer. Cornell gave Mark Lynas a Visiting Fellowship and a platform to voice his pro-GMO views. Lynas now promotes GMOs “to the exclusion of almost everything else”. Cornell paid his travel expenses to the Philippines to write a pro-GMO article.

GMWatch wrote to Cornell’s Alliance for Science, asking them to provide the study or documentation that was the source of the 90% claim. The Alliance’s Sarah Evanega replied but failed to provide any documentation. Instead she told us, “The original source was BARI – the national Institute leading the project”.

We replied: “When we cite data at GMWatch, we ensure we have the study or documentation that is the source of the data. So I am sure you have the document on which this claim is based, even if it comes originally from BARI? Please can you send it to me?”

Evanega replied, “Please get in touch with BARI. As I did not produce the [Panorama] piece, nor write it, I do not have the source. Best you get it straight from the source.”

GMWatch put the same question to Cornell’s International Programs of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences but thus far has not received a response (we will update this article if we do receive one).

GMWatch also put the question to BARI and to Joseph McAuley, the producer and researcher for the BBC Panorama programme. BARI did not initially respond. McAuley did respond, but avoided answering the question and failed to provide any data. He wrote:

“As I mentioned in my email of 28th June, if you have any further comments to make or concerns about the programme, the BBC has an official complaints process. The website is www.bbc.co.uk/complaints. That is the best way to ensure your concerns are dealt with properly and formally. I am happy, however, that the programme was accurate with the information we were given.”

After receiving no reply from BARI for 10 days, we wrote again. This time we received a reply from Dr Rafiqul Islam Mondal, the director general of BARI. He wrote:

“Performance of Bt brinjal during 2015 at 108 farmers fields of 17 districts are quite good and satisfactory. Farmers got a good yield and also a handsome profit by selling their product. Some slides in this regard are attached herewith for your kind information. We have a short video on the performance of Bt brinjal, but it could not be attached due to its large size. We are also planning to arrange a press conference on the performance of Bt brinjal in the last week of this month.”

This statement provided no evidence for the 90% success claim. The powerpoint presentation attached by Dr Mondal also provided no evidence, and mostly consisted of pictures of brinjals in the field.

One possible source for the 90% claim is the BARI rejoinder to UNB. This claimed that only 12 farmers out of 108 were affected by bacterial wilt and insect pests and that the remaining 96 (90%) had “success” with Bt brinjal. But this is just an assertion. No documentation was provided in support.

Doug Gurian-Sherman explained: “Meaningful data would ideally include side-by-side comparisons of Bt and non-Bt brinjals, grown with the same inputs and managed appropriately by unbiased researchers. Additional comparisons with brinjals typically grown in the areas where the trials were conducted, again with the same inputs and management, would also be valuable.

“The trials in Bangladesh were apparently farmer trials, not experimental field trials. But that is no excuse for not having some reasonable comparative data.”

The unavoidable conclusion is that BBC Panorama claimed a 90% success rate for Bt brinjal with no sound evidence to back it up. It is especially ironic, then, that the programme allowed the former EU chief scientific advisor and biotech entrepreneur Anne Glover to claim, without challenge, that anti-GMO campaigners just “make things up”.

After Panorama left, farmer’s showcase Bt brinjal crop failed

On 20 June Faisal Rahman visited some Bt brinjal fields in Tangail with fellow journalist Delowar Jahan, staff correspondent of the daily newspaper Sokaler Khobor. BBC Panorama’s visit to Tangail had made them curious about the performance of Bt brinjal there. They called in on Hafizur Rahman, the farmer who was featured in the Panorama programme to show Bt brinjal was a success.

Tellingly, Hafizur Rahman said he had “stopped taking care of his Bt brinjal field about one and a half to two months ago” because the plants had been slowly dying out, from just three months after planting.

His brother Alhaj had also cultivated Bt brinjal on another plot nearby, and the condition of his crop was worse. The two journalists found a significant number of the plants dead in both the fields. Many plants were bearing fruits that were unnaturally hard and some of the fruits had rotted before being fully ripe.

In two other fields in the neighbouring sub-district of Elenga upazila, the condition of the crop was far worse. Abul Hossain, the farmer the journalists interviewed there, had to sell his Bt brinjals at an extremely low price – Tk 5 a kg (the normal price was Tk 15 and above).

His uncle was the owner of another Bt brinjal plot and had the same experience. Both fields were mostly planted with the BARI variety Bt Begun 2 (Nayantara), which rotted prematurely. The other variety, BARI Bt Begun 3 (Kajla), bore excessively hard fruits and the colour was faded.

Hafizur Rahman told the journalists that the BBC team had visited his field along with others from BTV, the national Bangladeshi TV channel which is strictly controlled by the government, Channel i, a private TV channel that supported Bt brinjal from the beginning, and BARI.

The fact that BBC Panorama claimed this new GM crop as a success without following the farmers for at least one complete growing season is an extraordinary lapse of journalistic standards. In effect, they treated an experimental trial as a proven agricultural success – without even waiting to see how the experiment ended.

BBC Panorama following Lynas’s lead?

BBC Panorama was not the first to feature the supposed success story of the farmer Hafizur Rahman. Mark Lynas got there first. In April 2015, Lynas had published an article in the New York Times about Bt brinjal in Bangladesh self-interestedly titled, ‘How I got converted to GMO food’, which also featured Hafizur Rahman.

Lynas claimed that the Bt brinjal had “nearly doubled” productivity and that Hafizur Rahman had been able to sell the crop labelled “insecticide free”. Lynas concluded, “Now, with increased profits, he looked forward to being able to lift his family further out of poverty.”

But Farida Akhter, from a Bangladeshi NGO that has been monitoring the Bt brinjal field trials, tracked down Hafizur Rahman and said almost every element of the Lynas narrative was misleading or false.

According to Akhter, far from being a poor farmer that the GM crop is helping to lift out of poverty, as Lynas claimed, Hafizur Rahman is actually “a Polytechnic graduate” and “well off commercial vegetable farmer”.

And the story about the GM crop enabling him to dispense with agrochemicals was also, it seems, far from the truth – multiple chemicals, including pesticides, were used on the crop. The farmer also complained that the Bt brinjal had a “rough surface and gets soft very quickly”, unlike the traditional variety which is “shiny and remains fresh for a longer time”.

None of this appeared in Lynas’s account, though the BBC did at least admit that some pesticides were used on the crop.

Did McAuley of BBC Panorama merely follow Lynas and the GMO promoters at BARI and Cornell in choosing to put Hafizur Rahman at the centre of its report? It seems likely. This approach is an odd choice for a journalist who was offered the opportunity to take an independent approach by following up the stories of farmers whose experience differed so radically from Lynas’s version. It only makes sense if the aim of the programme from the start was to make a GMO promotional.

Who’s behind Bt brinjal in Bangladesh?

Faisal Rahman finds it hard to believe that Lynas’s version of what happened with Bt brinjal in Bangladesh is preferred by much of the world’s media over the version presented in reports from independent journalists based in Bangladesh. He said:

“I welcome any other independent journalist or researcher to investigate the debate, but the way the Western world is bending its head to listen to what Lynas has to say about Bt brinjal is surprising to me.”

Perhaps the only way to explain it is by looking at the power structures that are promoting Bt brinjal in Bangladesh an issue that was skated over in the BBC Panorama programme.

The presenter Tom Heap paid it lip service by asking Matia Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s agriculture minister: “Are you truly free and independent of the big agritech companies or are you in the pocket of Monsanto?” She replied that the Bt brinjal gene was given by Cornell University, “not an agritech company”. Monsanto told the programme it does not receive any benefit from the Bt brinjal project in Bangladesh.

Heap took these claims at face value, allowing the impression to stand that the Bt brinjal project is a humanitarian public initiative. But the reality, as is generally the case with ‘humanitarian’ GMO projects, is more complicated.

Bt brinjal is promoted in Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia by the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II (ABSPII), which lists the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) and Cornell University among its partners.

As we’ve seen above (‘Missing data for 90% success claim’), Cornell has given Mark Lynas a position from which to promote GMOs.

As for ABSPII, it is funded by USAID and counts Monsanto as a partner. USAID has long been known as a tool that the US government uses to actively promote GM seeds and agriculture. A report by GRAIN stated:

“USAID programmes are part of a multi-pronged strategy to advance US interests with GM crops. Increasingly the US government uses multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements and high-level diplomatic pressure to push countries towards the adoption of many key bits of corporate-friendly regulations related to GM crops. And this external pressure has been effectively complimented by lobbying and funding from national and regional USAID biotech networks.”

Finally, in presenting the Bt brinjal project as a public initiative, agriculture minister Matia Chowdhury failed to mention that the private seed company East West Seed Ltd, now renamed Lal Teer, is a partner in the project. According to an agreement between the company and Monsanto subsidiary Mahyco, Lal Teer (East West Seed) is a sub-licensee for some other Bt brinjal varieties.

Environmental campaigners in Bangladesh have accused USAID’s ABSPII project of encouraging Mahyco to provide open-pollinated Bt brinjal seed varieties to BARI free from royalty and the hybrid varieties to Lal Teer against payment of royalties to pursue its “ultimate goal” of the commercialisation of patented GM crops in Bangladesh. Lal Teer chairman Abdul Awal Mintoo admitted that Monsanto and Mahyco owned the GM technology in the Lal Teer Bt brinjals.

Ecology and biodiversity conservation researcher Pavel Partha commented that Bt brinjal cultivation would rob the farmers of their right to produce their own seeds.

Integrated Pest Management a more effective approach than GM

Bangladesh is the home of highly successful Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programmes to manage pests, including the fruit and shoot borer, in brinjal crops. A report by Dr David Andow found that brinjal IPM in India and Bangladesh has been about three times more profitable than Bt brinjal is projected to be, and has directly improved the profitability of small-scale resource-poor farmers.

The estimated economic surplus for brinjal IPM is significantly larger than for hybrid Bt brinjal. Farmers are expected to receive 63% of the surplus from brinjal IPM but only 10% of the surplus from hybrid Bt brinjal. The report concluded:

“Increased public investment, greater promotion, and strengthened public policy for brinjal IPM relative to those for hybrid Bt brinjal will result in greater social benefits in India and a major increase in profitability for small-scale resource-poor farmers.”

Conclusion: How BBC Panorama misled the public

BBC Panorama’s claim of a 90% success rate for Bt brinjal this year in Bangladesh is contradicted by the findings of the independent journalist Faisal Rahman, who conducted extensive interviews with farmers and found that 80% of the farmers he interviewed, 30% of the total growing Bt brinjal this year, had problems with the crop.

Joseph McAuley, the producer and researcher of the BBC Panorama programme, failed to provide evidence for the 90% claim when asked and said the source was Cornell University.

Cornell also failed to provide evidence and referred GMWatch to the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), which is supervising the Bt brinjal project. Dr Rafiqul Islam Mondal, the director general of BARI, also failed to provide evidence. We conclude that there is no evidence for the 90% success rate claimed by BBC Panorama.

The main problem affecting the GM Bt brinjal was bacterial wilt. This was admitted by McAuley and Mondal. However, both McAuley and Mondal implied that because the intended trait of the GM Bt brinjal – resistance to the fruit and shoot borer – appeared to work, this justified presenting the crop as a success.

Dr Mondol said “Bt technology is not responsible” for bacterial wilt. But Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman, a plant pathologist and director of sustainable agriculture at the Center for Food Safety, said there is no evidence to support this claim. The wilt problem could be related to the Bt trait, but no one has done the experiments to find out.

BARI issued a ‘rejoinder’, which aimed to rebut Faisal Rahman’s report for United News of Bangladesh (UNB) detailing the widespread failure of Bt brinjal in its second year of cultivation. However, the BARI rejoinder confirmed the UNB report in the major points of fact.

It differed in one point: BARI claimed 100% success for the Bt brinjal crop in resisting the fruit and shoot borer pest, while the UNB report claimed fruit and shoot borer infestation in at least one Bt brinjal field, a claim for which Faisal Rahman says there is strong evidence.

Even the showcase Bt brinjal crop featured by BBC Panorama failed soon after the cameras left, according to Faisal Rahman and fellow journalist Delowar Jahan, who conducted a followup interview with the farmer concerned.

BBC Panorama also failed to investigate the many commercial links with the Bt brinjal project and the implications for Bangladeshi farmers of losing control over their own brinjal seeds.

Finally, BBC Panorama ignored research showing that existing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) non-GM brinjal programmes are three times more profitable than Bt brinjal is projected to be and have directly improved the profitability of small-scale resource-poor farmers.

In conclusion, for its programme, ‘GM Food: Cultivating Fear’, BBC Panorama appears to have abandoned facts for propaganda.

 


 

Claire Robinson is an editor at GMWatch and co-author with two genetic engineers of the report, ‘GMO Myths and Truths‘, available for free download.

This article was originally published by GMWatch.

Also on The Ecologist:Investigation or advocacy? The BBC reveals its pro-GMO bias‘ by Lawrence Woodward & Pat Thomas.

Notes & information

1. See Doug Gurian Sherman’s reports for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Failure to Yield, High and Dry, and No Sure Fix (available from http://www.ucsusa.org/); also Zeller SL et al (2010) Transgene × Environment Interactions in Genetically Modified Wheat. PLoS ONE 5(7): e11405. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011405

Powerpoint presentation on performance of Bt brinjal in 2015, sent to GMWatch by Dr Rafiqul Islam Mondal, Director General, BARI, in response to our request for evidence for the 90% success rate claim for the crop.

Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) rejoinder to the United News of Bangladesh report on Bt brinjal’s performance.

 






The blood of the whales is on Danish hands





Last week 142 pilot whales were slaughtered on the beach at Torshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands. 1,100 people and more than a hundred boats participated, backed up by two Danish Navy warships, the Triton and the Knut Rasmussen.

Earlier in the day, more than a hundred pilot whales were also slain in an orgy of slaughter on the island of Vagur.

Four Sea Shepherd crew members were arrested at Vagur, two on the beach by the Faroese police and two arrested at sea by the Danish Navy. Last night another volunteer was arrested at Torshavn and a second had his camera taken and the video deleted.

These people are volunteers driven to action in the face of abject cruelty. They are opposing this atrocity with only two ‘weapons’, their cameras and their bodies. They have been abused, their human rights slapped aside, and five of them have been locked up in a Faroese jail on charges of willful compassion. In the Faroes, empathy is a crime and kindness is ridiculed.

The Faroese have been celebrating their lethal victory over the whales. With between 200 and 300 corpses lying on the beaches, their bellies ripped open, their guts spilling onto the sand and the waters stained with blood, the Faroese appear to be gloriously happy, almost drunk with the thrill of slaughter.

What has changed? The Royal Danish Navy

In 2011 not a single whale was slaughtered while Sea Shepherd patrolled the waters of the Faroes. In 2013, when Sea Shepherd was not present, more than 1,300 whales were slain. Last year in 2014, when Sea Shepherd returned, the kill was 33.

Why is it different this year? Why are so many whales dying this summer? The answer is the Royal Danish Navy. There was no Danish intervention in the years prior to 2014. They did not send their warships in the past. They are doing so now. Despite the fact that killing whales is illegal under European Union law, the government of Denmark has thrown their weight behind the killers.

Sea Shepherd, as a non-governmental organization that practices non-violent intervention, is at a complete disadvantage against two Danish warships, their helicopters and their small flotilla of commandos in fast small boats plus the boats and officers belonging to the Faroese police. In addition, the Faroese have passed discriminatory new laws that target any opposition to the killing of whales.

It is a contest between compassion and courage on our side and power and cowardice on their side. The utilization of tens of millions of Euros in military assets is astoundingly shocking.

Denmark has chosen to exercise a policy of overkill to protect the savage interests of their vassal group of vicious islands where a population of some 50,000 people demand the right to spill the blood of defenseless and innocent sentient beings.

Why would the Danes be so eager to be accomplices with the killers of the Faroes? Why are they so eager to jump into this toxic pool of blood to frolic alongside the savage killers of these gentle creatures? The answer may well be oil. With oil exploration promising possible profits in the future, Denmark seems quite willing to ignore their own laws protecting the welfare of animals and the EU regulations that outlaw the killing of whales.

The killers will never be convinced. But Denmark can be

The Faroese are bragging about their ‘victory’. What I saw was a mob of blood-thirsty killers descending on pods of stressed pilot whales with knives and spears.

This ‘tradition’ utilizes such traditional tools as motorized boats, hydraulic winches, radios, sonar and warships. It is a perversion of a culture in which whales were once killed for necessity by people in need and are now slaughtered for amusement and sport by a people who today enjoy the highest per capita income in Europe, thanks to the welfare payments given to them by the European Union.

Convincing the killers of the Faroes to stop whaling may not be possible. It is like trying to reform serial killers. Psychopaths have no remorse, no conscience and no recognition of right from wrong.

We need to focus on those who enable this perversion and that means we have to focus on the nation that provides the warships, the subsidies and the political support for these atrocities.

Denmark and the Danish people have sanctioned this cruelty and this despicable slaughter, and no matter how much they claim this is out of their hands, that it is a Faroese responsibility, the fact remains that between those who attempt to save the lives of the pilot whales and dolphins, and the blood being spilled on the beach, sit the Knut Rasmussen and the frigate Triton, both symbols of Danish power, Danish complicity and Danish involvement.

Now the outrage is global!

Over the last few days, the story of the slaughter of the pilot whales has been carried throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North and South America. There is increasing global awareness and we have no intention of allowing the world to forget the horror of the Grind.

We need to keep the pressure on. More Sea Shepherd volunteers may be arrested, more boats may be seized, but what is at stake here are the lives of intelligent, self-aware, beautiful, socially complex, living, feeling, and sentient beings. They deserve the risks we must take and the sacrifices we must endure to stop this carnage.

The Faroese try to cast themselves as the victims, constantly saying they kill the whales for meat, and thus implying that they depend upon this slaughter for survival when nothing could be further from the truth.

The Faroese enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. They have one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. They have an industrialized fishing fleet, salmon farms and sheep, and they trade these commodities for all the benefits of a materialistic society. They want for absolutely nothing, except for their insatiable lust for blood.

They kill whales because they like to kill whales, and they want the support of Danish subsidies and the Danish Navy to back up something that is illegal under the laws of Denmark – and the Danes are doing exactly that. And that is the reason that Sea Shepherd has decided to focus on Denmark.

Denmark must break its silence

For the Danes to say this has nothing to do with Denmark is untrue. Danish warships are defending the hunt with two warships including a frigate, helicopters, small boats and hundreds of sailors, at an enormous cost to Danish and European taxpayers. The Danish Prime Minister has a Faroese wife. The Royal Family says nothing. And not one word of criticism from a single Danish Member of Parliament. These facts speak for themselves.

The Grind is just as much a Danish issue as it is a Faroese issue. And this translation from a Faroese newspaper last week demonstrates that the Faroese and the Danes are concerned about Sea Shepherd’s focus on Denmark.

“Sea Shepherd moves the grindadráp to Denmark. According to parliament member Sjúrdur Skaale (he is one of the two Faroese seats in the Danish parliament), Sea Shepherd has put great pressure on parliament members to stand up against the Faroese. Sea Shepherd has been very visible during all the pilot whale kills, which have recently occurred in the Faroe Islands, whilst Sea Shepherd has been there this year.

“But it’s not just on land, that Sea Shepherd are visible. Their plan to stop the grindadráp is so big, that they go up against Danish politicians, because these days all the Danish members of parliament are receiving hundreds of emails from Sea Shepherd supporters, asking the parliament members to stop the grindadráp.

“According to parliament member Sjúrdur Skaale of Javnadarflokkinum, Sea Shepherd is attempting to put the Faroese and the Danish up against each other. Before Sea Shepherd turned against the Faroese. But now they have changed their tactics, and are also leading their attention towards Denmark.

“‘It is Denmark who is evil. Denmark should be boycotted. The logic is: Denmark has responsibility over the Faroese. It is Danish police. It is Danish authorities. The police are financed by Danish tax money. Because of this it’s the Danish, who should stop what’s happening’, says Sjúrdur Skaale about the message from Sea Shepherd.’ …

“Sjúrdur Skaale says, that neither him, nor the parliament members he has spoken to, has ever experienced such aggressive storms of emails ever before.”

We need to keep the pressure on Denmark, and the message must be that the civilized world will not tolerate this horrifically cruel and ecologically destructive slaughter. When the beaches of the Faroes run red with blood, the world must respond with the red-hot passionate anger of outrage and disgust.

With this obscene abomination they call the Grindadráp (the murder of whales), the Faroese whalers disgrace not only Denmark, but all of humanity.

 


 

Captain Paul Watson is founder of Sea Shepherd.

This article combines two commentaries by Paul Watson on the Sea Shepherd website.

Petition:End the Faroe Islands’ Whale Slaughter!

 






FoE acts to revoke ‘unlawful’ bee-killer pesticide permit





The decision last week by environment secretary Liz Truss to allow bee-toxic ‘neonic’ pesticides to be used on oilseed rape crops appears to be “unlawful” according to Friends of the Earth.

The allegation comes in a pre-action letter to Truss, sent by the environment campaign group, which names her as prospective defendant in a judicial review action that could see the controversial permit anulled in the High Court.

Lawyers for FoE took the step after Truss’s department, Defra, and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) failed to supply Friends of the Earth with information on the criteria and process used to permit a ‘derogation’ from the EU’s 2013 partial ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, despite being asked many times for this information.

“The huge public interest in bee decline and pesticide use contrasts with the Government’s excessive secrecy and handling of this decision to let bee-harming pesticides back into our fields this autumn”, said Paul De Zylva, Friends of the Earth’s nature campaigner.

“Ministers pledged their decisions would be based on science but it has been hard obtaining information, including about the scientific basis, despite repeat requests.”

The derogations were issued on 22nd July after applications by the National Farmers Union (NFU) that claimed widespread crop losses of oilseed rape crops due to infestation by cabbage stem flea beetles.

UK Government has not applied the rules

According to FoE’s pre-action letter, “On the basis of the limited information so far disclosed, Friends of the Earth has serious concerns about the lawfulness of the grant of the authorisation and its compliance with Regulation EC 1107/2009 … and in particular Article 53 of that regulation, concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market …

“No information or evidence has been provided to us (or made public more generally) in relation to whether or how the Regulation (and in particular Article 53, which governs such emergency authorisations) has been considered or applied.

“Importantly, the Authorisations appear to contain no conditions through which the Secretary of State has addressed the concerns relating to high acute risks to bees set out in Implementing Regulation 485/2013, which have led to the prohibition of the uses in question.

“We have no information on whether these concerns were considered in the course of approving the application … The decision on its face is therefore unlawful.”

Article 53 of the Regulation that banned certain uses of neonicotinoid pesticides allows EU member states to ‘derogate’ from the ban for up to 120 days, and permit the pesticides “for limited and controlled use, where such a measure appears necessary because of a danger which cannot be contained by any other reasonable means.”

But FoE contends that the permit issued by Defra does not appear to conform to these criteria. It is difficult to see how the Authorisations meet the requirements of “limited and controlled”, they say, since the chemicals may be used across the whole of England, while “the use of 950 litres per substance has been authorised without any indication of specific limitations in terms of volume or area.”

Moreover, the Authorisations “require distribution to areas of highest risk but the identification of these appears to be left to the applicant, without any involvement on the part of DEFRA, despite this having been a concern expressed specifically by the ECP (Expert Committee on Pesticides).”

Forcing the release of information

The immediate effect of the action will be to put pressure on Defra to release the information it has so far kept secret, as the letter points out, “in accordance with the Secretary of State’s duty of candour in judicial review proceedings.”

Release is requested no later than Monday next week, to include all information about the Government’s basis for this decision and details of what controls are in place regarding the use of pesticides, as well as other documents yet to be released into the public domain:

  • the NFU’s applications to use the neonic pesticides;
  • documents placed before the ECP at its meeting on 7 July, and the record of its discussions and ultimate decision;
  • any document recording the reasons behind the approval decisions, including details of how the requirements of Article 53 or other requirements of EU law were fulfilled;
  • any relevant briefing or submissions provided to ministers before the final approval decisions were taken;
  • the correspondence with the NFU regarding the approval decisions and compliance with the conditions set out in the decisions.

Once FoE lawyers have been able to review the documents, they will take a view on whether or not the government did, in fact, comply with the Regulation and other EU laws, and whether or not to proceed with the judicial review.

The letter also suggests that the government could avoid judicial review by releasing all the documents, revoking the Authorisations and considering the NFU’s applications afresh.

Scientific evidence

Scientific research has proven that the ‘neonics’ are highly toxic to bees even at very low concentrations, and most especially to wild species including bumblebees.

In January 2013 the European Food Safety Authority announced that neonicotinoids pose “an unacceptable risk” to bees, and in April the EU approved a two-year moratorium on the most damaging uses of three of the chemicals, clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, to take effect in December.

Earlier this year the European Academies Science Advisory Council concluded that these banned pesticides don’t just kill bees, they wreak “havoc” with other insects and plants in the wider countryside too.

This followed earlier work published in July 2014 showing that the impact of neonics reverberated through the entire food chain, even hitting bird populations.

 



Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 






Norway’s ‘green battery’ hydro plan for Europe





Norway is hoping to become the ‘green battery of Europe‘ by using its hydropower plants to provide instant extra electricity when demand is strongest, or when generation from wind and solar power sources in other countries fades.

Without building any new dams or power stations, Norwegian engineers believe they could use the existing network to instantly boost European supplies and avoid other countries having to switch on fossil fuel plants to make up shortfalls.

Norway has 937 hydropower plants, which provide 96% of its electricity, making it the sixth largest hydropower producer in the world – despite having a population of only 5 million.

Europe already has 400 million people in 24 countries connected to a single grid, with power surpluses from one country being exported to neighbours or imported as national needs change.

Denmark is already ‘dumping’ surplus wind power into Norwegian and German hydropower dams when its electricity is in surplus, as it was earlier this month on 9th July when wind turbines were at one point producing 140% of the country’s power demand.

“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy”, said Oliver Joy, a spokesman for the European Wind Energy Association.

The problem: variable supply, variable demand

As more and more renewables are installed across the continent, the problem of balancing supply and demand gets more difficult.

Because supply from wind and sun sources fluctuates, the grid needs back-up plants to keep the power constant. At present, this means that many countries have to keep gas and coal plants on standby to make up any shortage.

However, the Hydraulic Laboratory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim believes it can engineer the country’s vast power plants so that they can themselves be a giant standby battery that can be turned on and off.

When there is surplus wind or solar power in Europe, the electricity it generates can be imported to pump water uphill to keep re-filling the Norwegian reservoirs. This is, in effect, electricity that is stored, because when energy is needed again the generators can be turned back on to produce hydropower.

The problem at the moment is that even hydropower is not instant. This is because water takes time to flow through the vast network of pipes and the turbines to reach the correct speed to provide stable power to the grid at the correct frequency of alternating current.

‘Norwegian mountain are full of tunnels. It’s like an anthill’

Norway currently has more kilometres of pipes carrying water to its hydroelectricity plants than it has miles of road, so controlling the flow is the key.

But Kaspar Vereide, a doctoral student in the department of hydraulic and environmental engineering at NTNU, has designed a model solution, with funding from the Centre for Environmental Design of Renewable Energy.

By creating a sealed surge chamber in rock close to the turbines, engineers can feed electricity, at the right frequency, into the grid immediately. The empty chamber contains air that is compressed as the space is filled with water. So, when the valves are open, the water can instantly turn turbines at the correct speed.

Vereide says: “Norwegian mountains are full of water tunnels. It’s like an anthill.” The length of the waterway, he says, can be many kilometres, though this will require the engineers to accelerate the water to reach the turbines.

His solution involves blowing out a cavern inside the water tunnel near the turbine where the electricity is to be generated, creating a surge chamber where water at the correct velocity can reach the turbines immediately.

Fluctuations in power will force major design upgrade

He admits that his design is still at the early stages of development. The surge chambers have to be designed to avoid fluctuations in power needs, which can cause uncontrolled blowouts of air into the power plants, risking damage.

“We have to be able to control these load fluctuations that occur”, he says. “Among other things, it’s important to determine how big surge chambers need to be to function best. My task is to figure out the optimal design for the chambers.”

Vereide says that plants have traditionally been run very smoothly and quietly, with few stops and starts to create these fluctuations. But to become the green battery of Europe, the power plants would need to be started and stopped much more often – and then the problem of load fluctuations would increase significantly.

“We’ll benefit a lot from developing these new technologies, both in order to keep electrical frequency stable and to run power plants more aggressively to serve a large market”, he says.

There is just one further problem, however – upgrading Europe’s power grid to enable the necessary volumes of power to be transmitted to Norway, and back again, points out Oliver Joy:

“If we want to see this happening on a European scale, it is essential that we upgrade the continent’s ageing grid infrastructure, ensure that countries open up borders, increase interconnection and trade electricity on a single market.”

 


 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Additional reporting by The Ecologist.

 






FoE acts to revoke ‘unlawful’ bee-killer pesticide permit





The decision last week by environment secretary Liz Truss to allow bee-toxic ‘neonic’ pesticides to be used on oilseed rape crops appears to be “unlawful” according to Friends of the Earth.

The allegation comes in a pre-action letter to Truss, sent by the environment campaign group, which names her as prospective defendant in a judicial review action that could see the controversial permit anulled in the High Court.

Lawyers for FoE took the step after Truss’s department, Defra, and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) failed to supply Friends of the Earth with information on the criteria and process used to permit a ‘derogation’ from the EU’s 2013 partial ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, despite being asked many times for this information.

“The huge public interest in bee decline and pesticide use contrasts with the Government’s excessive secrecy and handling of this decision to let bee-harming pesticides back into our fields this autumn”, said Paul De Zylva, Friends of the Earth’s nature campaigner.

“Ministers pledged their decisions would be based on science but it has been hard obtaining information, including about the scientific basis, despite repeat requests.”

The derogations were issued on 22nd July after applications by the National Farmers Union (NFU) that claimed widespread crop losses of oilseed rape crops due to infestation by cabbage stem flea beetles.

UK Government has not applied the rules

According to FoE’s pre-action letter, “On the basis of the limited information so far disclosed, Friends of the Earth has serious concerns about the lawfulness of the grant of the authorisation and its compliance with Regulation EC 1107/2009 … and in particular Article 53 of that regulation, concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market …

“No information or evidence has been provided to us (or made public more generally) in relation to whether or how the Regulation (and in particular Article 53, which governs such emergency authorisations) has been considered or applied.

“Importantly, the Authorisations appear to contain no conditions through which the Secretary of State has addressed the concerns relating to high acute risks to bees set out in Implementing Regulation 485/2013, which have led to the prohibition of the uses in question.

“We have no information on whether these concerns were considered in the course of approving the application … The decision on its face is therefore unlawful.”

Article 53 of the Regulation that banned certain uses of neonicotinoid pesticides allows EU member states to ‘derogate’ from the ban for up to 120 days, and permit the pesticides “for limited and controlled use, where such a measure appears necessary because of a danger which cannot be contained by any other reasonable means.”

But FoE contends that the permit issued by Defra does not appear to conform to these criteria. It is difficult to see how the Authorisations meet the requirements of “limited and controlled”, they say, since the chemicals may be used across the whole of England, while “the use of 950 litres per substance has been authorised without any indication of specific limitations in terms of volume or area.”

Moreover, the Authorisations “require distribution to areas of highest risk but the identification of these appears to be left to the applicant, without any involvement on the part of DEFRA, despite this having been a concern expressed specifically by the ECP (Expert Committee on Pesticides).”

Forcing the release of information

The immediate effect of the action will be to put pressure on Defra to release the information it has so far kept secret, as the letter points out, “in accordance with the Secretary of State’s duty of candour in judicial review proceedings.”

Release is requested no later than Monday next week, to include all information about the Government’s basis for this decision and details of what controls are in place regarding the use of pesticides, as well as other documents yet to be released into the public domain:

  • the NFU’s applications to use the neonic pesticides;
  • documents placed before the ECP at its meeting on 7 July, and the record of its discussions and ultimate decision;
  • any document recording the reasons behind the approval decisions, including details of how the requirements of Article 53 or other requirements of EU law were fulfilled;
  • any relevant briefing or submissions provided to ministers before the final approval decisions were taken;
  • the correspondence with the NFU regarding the approval decisions and compliance with the conditions set out in the decisions.

Once FoE lawyers have been able to review the documents, they will take a view on whether or not the government did, in fact, comply with the Regulation and other EU laws, and whether or not to proceed with the judicial review.

The letter also suggests that the government could avoid judicial review by releasing all the documents, revoking the Authorisations and considering the NFU’s applications afresh.

Scientific evidence

Scientific research has proven that the ‘neonics’ are highly toxic to bees even at very low concentrations, and most especially to wild species including bumblebees.

In January 2013 the European Food Safety Authority announced that neonicotinoids pose “an unacceptable risk” to bees, and in April the EU approved a two-year moratorium on the most damaging uses of three of the chemicals, clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, to take effect in December.

Earlier this year the European Academies Science Advisory Council concluded that these banned pesticides don’t just kill bees, they wreak “havoc” with other insects and plants in the wider countryside too.

This followed earlier work published in July 2014 showing that the impact of neonics reverberated through the entire food chain, even hitting bird populations.

 



Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 






Norway’s ‘green battery’ hydro plan for Europe





Norway is hoping to become the ‘green battery of Europe‘ by using its hydropower plants to provide instant extra electricity when demand is strongest, or when generation from wind and solar power sources in other countries fades.

Without building any new dams or power stations, Norwegian engineers believe they could use the existing network to instantly boost European supplies and avoid other countries having to switch on fossil fuel plants to make up shortfalls.

Norway has 937 hydropower plants, which provide 96% of its electricity, making it the sixth largest hydropower producer in the world – despite having a population of only 5 million.

Europe already has 400 million people in 24 countries connected to a single grid, with power surpluses from one country being exported to neighbours or imported as national needs change.

Denmark is already ‘dumping’ surplus wind power into Norwegian and German hydropower dams when its electricity is in surplus, as it was earlier this month on 9th July when wind turbines were at one point producing 140% of the country’s power demand.

“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy”, said Oliver Joy, a spokesman for the European Wind Energy Association.

The problem: variable supply, variable demand

As more and more renewables are installed across the continent, the problem of balancing supply and demand gets more difficult.

Because supply from wind and sun sources fluctuates, the grid needs back-up plants to keep the power constant. At present, this means that many countries have to keep gas and coal plants on standby to make up any shortage.

However, the Hydraulic Laboratory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim believes it can engineer the country’s vast power plants so that they can themselves be a giant standby battery that can be turned on and off.

When there is surplus wind or solar power in Europe, the electricity it generates can be imported to pump water uphill to keep re-filling the Norwegian reservoirs. This is, in effect, electricity that is stored, because when energy is needed again the generators can be turned back on to produce hydropower.

The problem at the moment is that even hydropower is not instant. This is because water takes time to flow through the vast network of pipes and the turbines to reach the correct speed to provide stable power to the grid at the correct frequency of alternating current.

‘Norwegian mountain are full of tunnels. It’s like an anthill’

Norway currently has more kilometres of pipes carrying water to its hydroelectricity plants than it has miles of road, so controlling the flow is the key.

But Kaspar Vereide, a doctoral student in the department of hydraulic and environmental engineering at NTNU, has designed a model solution, with funding from the Centre for Environmental Design of Renewable Energy.

By creating a sealed surge chamber in rock close to the turbines, engineers can feed electricity, at the right frequency, into the grid immediately. The empty chamber contains air that is compressed as the space is filled with water. So, when the valves are open, the water can instantly turn turbines at the correct speed.

Vereide says: “Norwegian mountains are full of water tunnels. It’s like an anthill.” The length of the waterway, he says, can be many kilometres, though this will require the engineers to accelerate the water to reach the turbines.

His solution involves blowing out a cavern inside the water tunnel near the turbine where the electricity is to be generated, creating a surge chamber where water at the correct velocity can reach the turbines immediately.

Fluctuations in power will force major design upgrade

He admits that his design is still at the early stages of development. The surge chambers have to be designed to avoid fluctuations in power needs, which can cause uncontrolled blowouts of air into the power plants, risking damage.

“We have to be able to control these load fluctuations that occur”, he says. “Among other things, it’s important to determine how big surge chambers need to be to function best. My task is to figure out the optimal design for the chambers.”

Vereide says that plants have traditionally been run very smoothly and quietly, with few stops and starts to create these fluctuations. But to become the green battery of Europe, the power plants would need to be started and stopped much more often – and then the problem of load fluctuations would increase significantly.

“We’ll benefit a lot from developing these new technologies, both in order to keep electrical frequency stable and to run power plants more aggressively to serve a large market”, he says.

There is just one further problem, however – upgrading Europe’s power grid to enable the necessary volumes of power to be transmitted to Norway, and back again, points out Oliver Joy:

“If we want to see this happening on a European scale, it is essential that we upgrade the continent’s ageing grid infrastructure, ensure that countries open up borders, increase interconnection and trade electricity on a single market.”

 


 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Additional reporting by The Ecologist.