Monthly Archives: July 2017

Securing a Future With Water Along Peru’s Rimac River Valley

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Alejandro Cordova stands upon a lush green patch of land on a nameless peak in a region called Cancha Moya – just a few minutes’ drive up a narrow and bumpy dirt road from San Mateo, in Peru’s Rimac River Valley. He holds a handful of a long native grass that looks a bit like rye grass in his hands and rubs it between his fingers.

“These plants are going to save humanity,” he says.

It’s a big claim and a hard one to defend, but actually, he’s right – the grass in Alejandro’s hand and others like it may very well save dozens of communities living along the Rimac River.

Alejandro stands alongside several members of the local farmers’ collective and Aldo Cardenas, who heads The Nature Conservancy’s Lima office and its Peruvian water projects initiative, Aquafondo. Three years ago, the farmers’ collective approached The Nature Conservancy (TNC) with a proposal to develop a plot of land belonging to the community as a water fund site. Here, reforestation techniques would be employed to restore a degraded mountainside and provide a useable water source for cultivation, cattle and human consumption. Three years on, the project’s success is encouraging other water fund projects and providing a template for how stressed water sources can be managed along the Rimac River and beyond.

Increasing Demands on the Rimac

As stressed resources go, the Rimac River easily makes the list. Lima’s roughly 9.5 million residents, as well as the estimated 81,000 people living upstream depend upon it for drinking water, power and sewage services. Commercially, the river’s water is also used for mining, farming, bottled water production and hydroelectricity, which accounted for approximately 48% of Peru’s total energy in 2015.

But the strain placed by mining companies and a decline in seasonal precipitation, have drastically reduced the river’s flow. In fact, the Rimac no longer reaches the ocean during the months of November and December. To maintain a steady flow to Lima’s population, Sedapal, Lima’s water management authority, has developed a series of dams and connected lagoons in the mountains east of Lima and a system of smaller reserve tanks throughout the city.

Sedapal’s mountain reserve system has a capacity of 310 million cubic meters (MCM) – equivalent to 124,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Despite such capacity, estimates place Lima’s annual water usage at 700MCM. Assuming the rains were to fail one year and the reservoirs were full, which is rarely the case, Lima would have less than a six month supply of water.

Compared to other dry cities, such as Santiago, Chile, Lima’s per capita water use is quite high, at around 250 liters. These high usage rates stem from Sedapal’s past success in ensuring water access to residents. As Dr Fiorella Miñan, of Care Peru, points out, Lima’s residents have never felt the effects of a drying climate firsthand. That all changed during the recent extreme weather phenomenon dubbed the Coastal el Niño, which triggered weeks of unprecedented rains in lands that used to be bone dry.

The heavy rains brought on by this weather phenomenon caused widespread flooding and landslides, several of which combined to shut down Lima’s treatment plant for several days with more than 300,000 metric tons of accumulated dirt and rocks. Water services were disrupted throughout the city, including, for the first time, Lima’s wealthier districts. This prompted days of chaos, with bottled water prices soaring in supermarkets, and long queues of residents waiting for municipal water trucks to fill buckets in the heat.

“I’d never seen anything like it,” says Aldo Cardenas, of TNC. “You couldn’t find bottles of water in a single store.”

Progress in San Mateo

While Sedapal grapples with big projects like a desalination plant, aimed at delivering portable water to its millions, smaller projects that can mitigate the occurrence of landslides, like that at San Mateo are no less vital.

Now in its third year, the farmers, with help and financing from TNC, the Backus Foundation and the Fondo de las Americas (FONDAM), have built a small reservoir capable of storing 300m3 of water and installed a series of dykes that slow the downward flow of water. They have planted pine trees throughout the site, both as an added soil stabilizer and to provide the farmers with firewood from the trees’ branches. A lagoon lies on the highest ridge overlooking the site, which the collective and their partners plan to dam soon, thereby providing them with an even greater alternate source of water for agriculture and consumption.

Raúl Zegarra Isla, one of the collective’s members, takes twice-weekly soil samples above and below the dykes to measure their efficacy in retaining water. Although this year’s uncharacteristic rainfall has complicated these measurements, Zegarra says that the San Mateo site retains significantly more water than a neighbouring site called El Testigo, which does not have a dyke system.

The most prominent plants in the area are grasses. Alejandro explains that these grasses are vital to reforestation; they grow better at high altitudes than many other plants and create a complex root system which firms up soil and retains water. They also provide an environment for other needed plants, such as lupines, which fix nitrogen into the soil and they serve as a nutrient and protein-rich feed for cattle.

Too small to sustain enough agriculture to support the entire collective, which consists of some 200 families, the farmers plan to use this plot for multiple ends. They plan to use part of it to experiment with cultivating different grasses, seeing which ones will grow best and can be used to more effectively reforest other mountainsides. Roughly 10 head of cattle will be allowed to graze an enclosed section of the site, whose milk, and meat when needed, will be used by the members of the collective. They may also explore the cultivation of other vegetables. The trees, as stated, will provide firewood to the community.

The Need for More Small Projects

Projects like that at San Mateo reduce demand on the Rimac’s waters, provide small communities with greater autonomous water security and reduce the risk of yet more devastating landslides. The Callahuanca hydroelectric plant, a short drive downriver from San Mateo, demonstrates the effects of one such landslide. During the Coastal el Niño, the denuded mountainsides above the plant gave way under heavy rains, washing out houses and rendering the plant inoperable for over a month.  Liz, a resident of neighbouring Puranhuasy , who declined to give her last name, claimed to have never seen mudslides like that in her 36 years of living there. “Power was gone for a week,” she said, “and we suffered a plague of insects at night [from the leftover standing water].”

Not far from San Mateo, TNC is also helping the town of San Pedro de Castas to restore and expand a canal system first built by the Inca that will provide more people in that sparsely populated region with clean water. Alejandro Cordova, of the San Mateo farmers collective, plans to use the results of the grass planting experiments to seed more hillsides with grass to stem or even reverse the effects of erosion. With enough projects like this in place, one can imagine a sustainable and secure future for water use in this region.

Challenges to Come

But that future faces challenges. One of the largest and longest running disputes involving the Rimac’s water is how to curtail and clean mining-related pollution. A recent study found high doses of sulfides and metals such as arsenic, cadmium, copper, zinc and manganese contaminating the Rimac and Aruri rivers. Although this poses a clear health threat to those using the waters of these rivers, little is being done to remedy it, due to ongoing litigation. While Lima and some towns along the river have treatment plants that can cope with at least some of the mines’ pollution, water used for agriculture is rarely treated before use, leading to downstream contamination of produce, livestock and ultimately, people.

Significant changes will have to be made if the water needs of the population dependent upon the Rimac watershed are to be met. Water for everything from agriculture to individual households will need to be used more efficiently. For Lima, this may mean learning to use less water throughout the day. Mining-related pollution must be reined in. Investment in other cities that could stem the flow of migration into Lima would reduce the Rimac’s single biggest draw. But these are ambitious proposals that require massive buy-in from citizens, corporations and politicians.

On a smaller but more achievable scale, reforestation and water storage projects like that at San Mateo stand to reduce the demand on the Rimac while empowering local communities and diminishing the chances of future devastating landslides. San Mateo’s success is showing a viable way forward that can be copied throughout many other communities along the Rimac River.

Alejandro’s dream of saving humanity with his grasses is a pretty big one, but it sounds less naïve looking across the valley that separates San Mateo’s water fund from the Coricancha mine. San Mateo’s side of the valley is lush and green from the valley floor to its peaks. Trees and bushes stand tall, having benefitted from several years of uninterrupted growth. Across the valley, wide brown landslides scar a mountainside devoid of trees and all but a few hardy quishuar bushes. The view itself is a proof-of-principle for how fitting it is to respond to natural disasters like the Coastal el Niño with natural solutions like San Mateo’s promising and easily replicable reforestation project.

This Author

Forest Ray explores social security issues throughout Latin America through the lenses of tourism and ecological health. He is currently based in Cuzco, Peru

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Leeds women block fracking site over climate and water fears

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Five women campaigners blocked the entrance to Cuadrilla’s fracking site on Preston New Road in Lancashire this morning to protest the impact of climate change.

The activists are locked on to each other using home made devices and lay across the front entrance of the site to disrupt work for the day. They called for an end to fossil fuel extraction and for development in renewables.

Skye Golding, one of the women, said: “We’re here today to stand with the local community, but also to think about the bigger picture. 

“Across the world there are 300,000 lives lost a year as a direct impact of climate change and this will only increase with the development of a new fossil fuel industry. 

“Those least responsible for global warming are the most affected. They did not ask for these impacts, just as the community of Lancashire did not ask for fracking.”

Coralie Datta added: “In countries where fracking is already happened there are repeat cases of water contamination, both in the ground and during the treatment process. 

“The process of treating post-fracking water in the UK is unknown but Leeds’ Knostrop treatement works is one of the few sites in the UK that has been designated to take fracked water and that is a huge concern to me”.

Concerns around fracking waste water have existed since Cuadrilla discharged two million gallons into the Manchester Ship Canal after being processed at the Davyhulme treatment works in Trafford in 2014.

Today’s protest forms part of  the ‘Rolling Resistance’ month of action by national direct action group Reclaim the Power.

 

Ecologist Special Report: Animal Protection’s Surprising Role in Climate Change

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The Animal Law Symposium’s focus on wildlife this year was especially exciting for me.  As the executive director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, I spent 10 years in Alaska working to protect wildlife and wilderness. I saw firsthand how rapidly wildlife was losing the competition for space to human need and human greed. Now, as the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s executive director, I routinely write and speak about factory farming of animals – the cause of the most and worst animal suffering. But when we look at what human activities have the most negative impacts on wildlife, there’s one endeavor that also stands out from the rest – animal agriculture.

That’s because of all the land on earth devoted to agriculture – which represents about 50% of the land mass on the planet – 80% is devoted to raising animals for food. No matter the specifics of how those animals are raised, we know from basic science that raising animals for food including growing plant foods to feed them is more resource intensive than plant-based foods on all fronts – land use, water consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Within the scientific community the consensus is clear – climate change is occurring and represents one of the greatest threats, not just to wildlife but to all life on earth. Less well-known is that of all human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change, animal agriculture is the most significant.

Animal agriculture wastes energy and resources

In a groundbreaking study of climate change, “Livestock’s Long Shadow“, produced in 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization noted that animal agriculture contributed more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. It further noted that, “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems”.

In 2011 a follow-up study by the Worldwatch Institute went even further, concluding that 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities were associated with animal agriculture. Nevertheless, climate change mitigation plans continue to largely ignore animal agriculture. Even environmental advocacy groups have been slow to change their message and focus.

I always come back to one fundamental equation – transfer of energy through the food chain. At the start of it all is sunlight, which plants use to grow. When herbivores eat those plants, only 10 percent of the plant’s energy is available to them, and only 10 percent of the herbivore’s energy is available to the carnivore. It follows that it simply takes more organisms on a lower level of the chain to sustain fewer organisms on the next level up. There’s no way around the fact that eating lower on the food chain is simply a more efficient use of energy, land and water.

All of these impacts are becoming magnified as the human population continues to grow and the demands on the planet to feed our growing numbers also rise. Between now and mid-century, we will have added the equivalent of two entire nations of India to our population. This alone makes eating more efficiently a critical issue.

Using the law to expose our food system’s calamitous impact on the earth

Challenging the impacts of animal agriculture on farmed animals – as well as wildlife and the environment – is a focus for the Animal Legal Defense Fund. California, where the Animal Legal Defense Fund is based, recently experienced a record-breaking five-year drought. Despite a recent lifting of the drought state of emergency for much of the state, the United States Geological Survey notes that, “the hydrologic effects of the drought will take years to recover from” and its long-term effects remain unknown. During the drought the state’s official approach to water management included unprecedented cuts in residential water usage, but completely ignored animal agriculture, despite it consuming, by far, the majority of the state’s surface and subterranean water.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund successfully fought to expose water use records in Livingston, California, revealing that even in times of drought, Foster Farms-a chicken slaughter and processing plant-consumed two thirds of the city’s water. The situation in Livingston illustrates animal agriculture’s egregious misuse of resources. The Animal Legal Defense Fund also filed a petition with the California Air Resources Board (ARB) demanding regulation of methane emissions – a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – from animal agriculture. Despite being the largest methane emitting industry in the state, it was entirely ignored in the state’s methane regulatory plans. The ARB subsequently committed to regulating the dairy industry’s emissions, with implementation scheduled for roughly 2024. The Animal Legal Defense Fund will continue pursuing cases and campaigns that that hold the animal agriculture industry accountable.

I’m confident that everyone at the Animal Law Symposium walked away with a renewed commitment to protecting and minimizing their own impacts on wildlife. One way we can all contribute is through our personal choices, not just in terms of what we drive but in terms of what we eat. It’s the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s mission to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. In combatting the horrors of factory farming, we’re fighting to protect all animals, human and non-human, from a worrisome future.

This Author

Stephen Wells is the Executive Director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund which he joined in 1999 and immediately began laying groundwork for the organization’s growth into the nation’s preeminent legal advocacy organization for animals. He considers it his job to create an environment where egos are out the door and everyone works together toward one end -ending the exploitation and suffering of animals. And that is just what he has done. Steve lives in the western woodlands of Sonoma County, California with his dog Eve and cat Ocho.

 

 

 

 

Ecologist Special Report: Animal Protection’s Surprising Role in Climate Change

Leave a reply

The Animal Law Symposium’s focus on wildlife this year was especially exciting for me.  As the executive director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, I spent 10 years in Alaska working to protect wildlife and wilderness. I saw firsthand how rapidly wildlife was losing the competition for space to human need and human greed. Now, as the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s executive director, I routinely write and speak about factory farming of animals – the cause of the most and worst animal suffering. But when we look at what human activities have the most negative impacts on wildlife, there’s one endeavor that also stands out from the rest – animal agriculture.

That’s because of all the land on earth devoted to agriculture – which represents about 50% of the land mass on the planet – 80% is devoted to raising animals for food. No matter the specifics of how those animals are raised, we know from basic science that raising animals for food including growing plant foods to feed them is more resource intensive than plant-based foods on all fronts – land use, water consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Within the scientific community the consensus is clear – climate change is occurring and represents one of the greatest threats, not just to wildlife but to all life on earth. Less well-known is that of all human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change, animal agriculture is the most significant.

Animal agriculture wastes energy and resources

In a groundbreaking study of climate change, “Livestock’s Long Shadow“, produced in 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization noted that animal agriculture contributed more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. It further noted that, “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems”.

In 2011 a follow-up study by the Worldwatch Institute went even further, concluding that 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities were associated with animal agriculture. Nevertheless, climate change mitigation plans continue to largely ignore animal agriculture. Even environmental advocacy groups have been slow to change their message and focus.

I always come back to one fundamental equation – transfer of energy through the food chain. At the start of it all is sunlight, which plants use to grow. When herbivores eat those plants, only 10 percent of the plant’s energy is available to them, and only 10 percent of the herbivore’s energy is available to the carnivore. It follows that it simply takes more organisms on a lower level of the chain to sustain fewer organisms on the next level up. There’s no way around the fact that eating lower on the food chain is simply a more efficient use of energy, land and water.

All of these impacts are becoming magnified as the human population continues to grow and the demands on the planet to feed our growing numbers also rise. Between now and mid-century, we will have added the equivalent of two entire nations of India to our population. This alone makes eating more efficiently a critical issue.

Using the law to expose our food system’s calamitous impact on the earth

Challenging the impacts of animal agriculture on farmed animals – as well as wildlife and the environment – is a focus for the Animal Legal Defense Fund. California, where the Animal Legal Defense Fund is based, recently experienced a record-breaking five-year drought. Despite a recent lifting of the drought state of emergency for much of the state, the United States Geological Survey notes that, “the hydrologic effects of the drought will take years to recover from” and its long-term effects remain unknown. During the drought the state’s official approach to water management included unprecedented cuts in residential water usage, but completely ignored animal agriculture, despite it consuming, by far, the majority of the state’s surface and subterranean water.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund successfully fought to expose water use records in Livingston, California, revealing that even in times of drought, Foster Farms-a chicken slaughter and processing plant-consumed two thirds of the city’s water. The situation in Livingston illustrates animal agriculture’s egregious misuse of resources. The Animal Legal Defense Fund also filed a petition with the California Air Resources Board (ARB) demanding regulation of methane emissions – a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – from animal agriculture. Despite being the largest methane emitting industry in the state, it was entirely ignored in the state’s methane regulatory plans. The ARB subsequently committed to regulating the dairy industry’s emissions, with implementation scheduled for roughly 2024. The Animal Legal Defense Fund will continue pursuing cases and campaigns that that hold the animal agriculture industry accountable.

I’m confident that everyone at the Animal Law Symposium walked away with a renewed commitment to protecting and minimizing their own impacts on wildlife. One way we can all contribute is through our personal choices, not just in terms of what we drive but in terms of what we eat. It’s the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s mission to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. In combatting the horrors of factory farming, we’re fighting to protect all animals, human and non-human, from a worrisome future.

This Author

Stephen Wells is the Executive Director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund which he joined in 1999 and immediately began laying groundwork for the organization’s growth into the nation’s preeminent legal advocacy organization for animals. He considers it his job to create an environment where egos are out the door and everyone works together toward one end -ending the exploitation and suffering of animals. And that is just what he has done. Steve lives in the western woodlands of Sonoma County, California with his dog Eve and cat Ocho.

 

 

 

 

Wildlife charity backs EU court case against Poland for failing to protect forest

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The wildlife charity WWF today applauded a decision by the European Commission to take Poland to the European Court of Justice because of the increased logging in Bialowieza Forest in breach of EU law. 

 

The EU Commission has also decided on interim measures that will stop the wood extraction until the court’s judgement, preventing further destruction of Bialowieza’s natural resources.

 

This decision comes more than one year after an official complaint submitted by WWF and seven Polish and international NGOs to the European Commission warning that the Polish plan to triple logging in the protected old-growth forest was in breach of the EU Birds and Habitats Directives.

 

The ancient Bialowieza Forest is protected by EU law and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Despite reiterated warnings by the European Commission and the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, the extensive logging is taking place, including old-growth forest stands. 

 

Dariusz Gatkowski, biodiversity policy specialist at WWF Poland said: “The Commission needs now to quickly implement today’s positive decision and take Poland to court, fulfilling its role as guardian of Europe’s natural heritage and the laws that protect it. 

 

“It is shocking that, despite the unique natural value of the Bialowieza Forest and the several levels of  EU and UNESCO protections, the Polish Ministry of the Environment decided to allow increased logging in the area. 

 

“We urge the government to respect its legal obligation and immediately stop any damaging activity in the forest, and to ensure its future protection.” 

 

This month the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Krakow reiterated their concern about the running commercial logging damaging the Bialowieza Forest and urged Poland to immediately halt wood extraction in the old-growth forests.

 

Białowieża Forest is the best preserved forest ecosystem and the best preserved old-growth lowland forest in Europe. It is home to Europe’s largest bison population.

 

This Author

 

Brendan Montague is the contributing editor to The Ecologist and can be found on twitter at @EcoMontague. 

 

 

 

Your chance to whale-watch in Scotland!

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Every year, scientists at the Sea Watch Foundation lead the National Whale and Dolphin Watch – a campaign to get members of the public contributing to science to protect whales and dolphins. They are calling on people across Scotland to get involved with this year’s event, which runs from 29 July-6 August 2017.

“Many people don’t realise the wealth of whales and dolphins we have around our coasts. You don’t need to go abroad to go whale watching or to have a dolphin experience,” says Kathy James, Sightings Officer for Sea Watch Foundation.

“For a few months now, killer whales have been spotted from the Moray Firth round the north of Scotland to the west coast. Large whales, possibly fin whales – second only in size to blue whales – have been spotted out in the Hebrides and reports of bottlenose dolphins have been coming in from the Moray Firth as well as south towards the border.”

Since National Whale and Dolphin Watch began in 2002, around 4,500 sightings have been made in locations from the Channel Islands and the Scillies to the Shetland Isles – encompassing places as varied as Brighton, Plymouth, Anglesey, Aberdeen, Whitby and Hull.

During the nine-day 2016 National Whale and Dolphin Watch, 11 different whales and dolphins were recorded in UK waters, as well as the tiny harbour porpoise, which measures just a metre and a half when fully grown. Some 1424 sightings were logged and 7,622 individual animals included. 

People are being urged to register to run watches of their own during National Whale and Dolphin Watch 2017, so that they can contribute valuable data for the protection of these magnificent species.

 To find out more about the event, please visit the Sea Watch Foundation website where you can also join a registered event. Please note that new events are being added all the time.

 

 

Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life

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Our nihilistic culture tells us that the material world is all that exists, allowing us to plunder and desecrate the Earth with indifference. But through engaging and connecting deeply with the physical world we can, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, discover the non-physical worlds that lie beyond – the world of spirit and soul, the sacred, unknowable depths from which all ‘matter’ mysteriously springs forth. Indeed the root of the very word material is originally derived from the Latin ‘mater’, meaning origin, source, mother. Spiritual ecology reunites matter with spirit, with the sacred, and brings this into relationship with the needs of our times. The most immediate way we can practice this is in the physicality of daily life.

‘Spiritual ecology arises out of the need for a spiritual response to our present ecological crisis,’ Vaughan-Lee writes. ‘Without including a spiritual dimension to our response to the ‘cry of the Earth’ we are in danger of reconstellating the same materialistic paradigm that has created our present consumer-driven ecocide.’

The materialism of the current paradigm may not necessarily be the problem though – perhaps it is more the nature of the materialist relationship. Our relationship with the material world is deeply nihilistic; it has been hijacked by consumerism, warped into an insatiable appetite for acquisition, driven by ego and self interest causing dissatisfaction, inequality and the ecocide Vaughan-Lee speaks of. Rather than reject the world of material ‘stuff’ however (though that’s not what the authors suggest), can we instead learn to love and find meaning in the material world, by cultivating a relationship of care and maintenance?

This ‘New Materialism’[1] (or perhaps it is very old) could be a key component to regenerating meaningful human existence within ecological limits.Spiritual Ecology: ten practices… offers a wealth of practical ways to cultivate such a relationship of care and maintenance, to ‘awaken to the sacred of creation’, through engaging with activities we encounter in our daily lives that we can then take out into the world. The authors bring many valuable insights to how we might approach daily life to come into a new relationship with the world around us that can nourish our work of change-making, and nourish our souls at the same time. 

Vaughan-Lee and Hart present 10 simple practices, which could perhaps also be described as attitudes or approaches to life. Some are focused on everyday tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, walking, breathing and gardening, while others are more overtly spiritual practices such as prayer and reflections upon death. All 10 however offer a doorway to a spiritual connection with the material world around us, and a wonderfully rich way of engaging with daily life in a meaningful way.

As someone who finds the mechanics of daily life – such as cooking and cleaning – a tedious distraction from what I can perceive to be more important tasks, like challenging gross social and ecological injustice, this small book challenged me to find new ways of looking at the world around me. A welcome reminder that small things matter too, and that each action and thought creates habits of relating to all other things in life. It also reminded me of  the power and great value of simplicity when engaging with so much complexity.

It’s important to emphasise however the need for these practices to be coupled with tangible social action (and vice versa), the link perhaps not being immediately obvious to all. But once we see that everything is part of one living whole, that nothing is separate, we can understand that everything needs care and attention, and everything matters.  

The chapter on simplicity is the most powerful, and in a sense all of the other practices are applications of this. The authors encourage us to de-clutter not only our homes and lives but also our inner world and how we engage with the world around us – a radical act in today’s culture of accumulation: ‘Beyond the clutter of thoughts and things, we also have to watch that we are not caught in constant activity, our culture’s emphasis on endless doing rather than being… continual attention is needed so that the currents of accumulation do not fill the empty space we have created.’ Walking, for example, has spiritual, political, and personal significance. Particularly when we have no destination in mind, walking is non-productive and non-teleological and therefore a subversion of post-modern culture in itself.

The other practices build on this foundation of radical simplicity, offering practical ways in which we can maintain space and clarity and free up time and energy to turn to the task of changemaking from a place of sacred depth. This is essential if we are to make strategic decisions about how and where to act for the greatest impact, to use our privilege for the greater good, and to avoid replicating the problems we are seeking to address.

It’s as easy for activist and spiritual communities as any other to fall into such replicative patterns, such as nihilism or valuing the most productive people the most – even if productivism is a key part of what the group exists to oppose or offer alternatives to. The practices of walking, breathing, gardening, cooking and cleaning, when done with an awareness of interdependence and the sacred nature of all things, can be a much needed antidote.

This radical simplicity is an excellent grounding for sustaining social and political action. In my experience, when there’s continually a huge and urgent task to be firefighting – and a perpetual lack of resources, time and energy – the simple, small things of daily life that nourish and sustain us can become forgotten in the whirlwind of activity. Practising simplicity can be a healing balm, a nourishing elixir to the complex, difficult and often painful bigger picture. It can also be a practice to remind us of our privilege. What a privilege to be free to walk, breathe and cook in peace, to have access to land to grow food on when those on the frontlines do not enjoy such luxuries. Remembering this can also be a spur to action. 

As Vaughan-Lee says: ‘We need first to return to, and reconnect with, the sacred nature of creation. Only from the foundation of this lived relationship can we attempt to bring the world back into balance, to heal and redeem what our present culture has with its greed and soulless materialism destroyed and desecrated. Our outer actions need to be based upon this inner connection.’

 The practices in this book offer a practical way of connecting with this place within us, practices for a new materialism, practices for a new world.

[1] The New Materialism: How our relationship with the material world can change for the better. Andrew Simms & Ruth Potts 2012. ISBN 978-0-9552263-3-5.

Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday LifeLlewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart

Golden Sufi Centre Publishing, May 2017

ISBN: 978-1941394182

Order this book here Blackwells Publishers

This Author

Kara Moses is a facilitator of Nature connection, Social change and Outdoor education and a regular contributor to the Ecologist.

More on her work here: www.RewildEverything.org

For details of the new and upcoming Rewilding course she is running at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales see here: http://bit.ly/2uhwD3f

 

 

The global top ten young climate activists ready to take on Donald Trump

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DYANNA Jaye, USA, 25 years old: Dyanna grew up in Coastal Virginia, where the damaging sea-level rise in her hometown prompted her to fight for climate action. She co-founded the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition, a statewide network advocating for 100% renewable energy in Virginia.

 

In 2015, Dyanna lead a US youth delegation to the UN Climate Negotiations where the Paris Agreement was adopted. Her latest work has been co-founding Sunrise Movement, an organization to create jobs in the renewables sector.

 

“I fight climate change because I believe that we will win. I believe that we will have clean water to drink, food for everyone, and a stable climate for generations to come. I feel that I was born into an epic battle where everything is on the line for the sake of denial and profits for a wealthy few,” she says.

 

YUGRATNA Srivastava, India, 21 years old: Yugratna started to consult for the UNEP when she was only 13. “The fact that communities are losing their homes and life every moment makes me question the basic principles of justice and drives me to give everything I can,” Yugratna tells The Ecologist.

 

Yugratna works on a global scale. Leading up to the historic UN climate conference in Paris she mobilised more than 30,000 people and coordinated actions in more than 70 countries on the first day of the conference.

 

She currently works as the programme coordinator of Plant for the Planet, preparing the organisation’s “Trillion Tree Campaign”. Her team plan to plant enough trees to absorb up to half of man-made carbon emissions.

 

ZAIDON Falah, Iraq, 28 years old: There are not many climate activists in Iraq. Zaidon is one of them. He recently compared the threat of climate change to the threat of ISIS.

 

He has cooperated with the Iraqi Environment Department and conducts seminars and lectures to highlight the impacts of climate change and pollution. Burning fossils fuels is nothing else than “vandalism,” he argues.

 

ARTHUR Wyns, Belgium, 24 years old: A tropical biologist by profession, Arthur is driven to fight climate change to make sure his “subject of study doesn’t disappear”.

 

He has worked as an environmental researcher across three continents. he also founded his own NGO in Belgium, focusing on community projects and education and wrote a book on the recent refugee crisis on the side. And all that before he got into climate journalism at the age of 24. Today he is a campaign manager at Climate Tracker.

 

JULIUS Schlumberger, Germany, 22 years old: The initial spark for Julius’s engagement was a UN simulation during which he realised that just understanding politics is not enough: “We should move things forward and push for having a say in the decisions that form the world we will live in,” Julius tells The Ecologist.

 

He connects young people and enables them to influence decisions themselves. In his summer holidays he conducts a summer school on international climate politics for highly talented pupils from all over Germany.

 

He also organises scholarships for 10 young people from the Global South to attend the UN climate summit in Germany in 2017. When 196 countries come together for this years UN climate conference in Germany- the COP, Julius coordinates the conference of the Youth (COY).The big international youth climate conference connects young climate activists from all over the world.

 

ANAM Zeb, Pakistan, 28 years old: Anam is identifying tactics to get climate change in the media around the world: “Outside of the major global media hubs, there is hardly any action-based research informing civil society about how to get climate change on the front pages of local newspapers.”

 

She has lead media research projects on climate reporting in over 20 countries on 3 continents in countless languages – in 2017 alone. She identifies training and communication needs as well as obstacles to climate reporting and strategies how to get the media and public interested in climate change.

 

RABYIA Jaffery, United Arabic Emirates, 22 years old: Rabyia is a media activist: she initiates “viewing parties” in cafes and universities together with environmental videographers.

 

To increase climate awareness and encourage community engagement, she organises and mobilises social media influencers. “I am driven by fear, a sense of responsibility, and hope,” Rabyia tells The Ecologist.

 

NOEKA Naidoo, South Africa, 25 years old: “I always wanted somebody do something about the issues that plague our society – then I realised I was ‘somebody’.”

 

Neoka remembers the moment when she decided get involved in climate activism. She started studying environmental science in Durban. When the UN climate conference took place in her city in 2011, she took part in direct action and civil disobedience.

 

At the same time she started a research career at project 90 by 2030 and started coordinating the South African climate civil society in the lead up to  the Paris Agreement. Today she bridges international and local politics  as an international policy and energy expert working with communities.

 

ANDREA Gracia, Peru, 26 years old: “Spending time in the Peruvian Amazon with people who work in conservation of the tropical rain forests, made me realise how everybody can join the climate action. I learned to appreciate the resources we are given by nature which inspired me to pursue a more sustainable lifestyle,” Andrea tells The Ecologist. Andrea has worked on various youth campaigns and organised regional climate summits all over Latin America.

 

LINA Yassen, Sudan, 19 years old: Lina is a Sudanese environmental activist and a chemical engineering student. When she went to the UN climate summit in Marrakesh last year, she was the only journalist from her country and published in the three biggest newspapers of the country.

 

“In Sudan we have a war that started due to climate change and whenever I think about the amount of people who has suffered from this, I tell myself that I need to continue raising awareness,” she says. “Trump is clearly ignoring the fact that climate change kills and affects more people worldwide than terrorism,” Lina tells The Ecologist.

 

About This Author

 

Andreas Sieber is a media researcher, data-lover and passionate climber. He has organised some of the biggest youth campaigns in Germany, worked for several NGOs and coordinated the press analysis in the Saxon State chancellery. He manages partnerships and campaigns for Climate Tracker.

 

First legal action under Ireland’s new climate legislation

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The current proposals for Dublin Airport’s new runway had set a finish date of 2021 and initial construction is already underway, including the clearing of large areas of hedgerows.

However, it now appears that the conditions under which the airport was first granted permission for the runway in 2007 have changed significantly: by the requirements established in the 2015 climate agreement.

Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) is taking legal action aimed at Fingal County Council, the authority which administers the Dublin region host to the airport.

Tony Lowes, the director of FIE, said: “The record shows that the chief executive of Fingal County Council was fully aware that the extra runway would result in increased greenhouse gas emissions, in contravention of the objectives of the 2015 Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act.

“He also failed to provide satisfactory explanatory reasons for granting the extension to the original decision to allow a new runway at Dublin Airport.”

‘Unconstrained aviation growth’

The aviation sector is increasingly coming under the spotlight as concerned citizens and environmentalists raise their voice in rejection of new airports and runways across the globe.

As part of its legal action FIE has drawn attention to the recent decision by the Austrian Federal Administrative Court to refuse permission for a third runway at Vienna Airport, on the basis of the negative impact it will have on the environment and climate change as a result of increased air traffic. 

According to FIE’s website: “The planned third runway is based on the scenario of unconstrained aviation growth and travel demand, which is incompatible with the Paris Agreement. It reflects an implicit assumption by Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), Fingal County Council, and the Irish Government that no steps will be taken to limit the growth in aviation.”

FIE itself was set up in 1997 by a group of environmental activists and town planners. “We felt that EU law, and particularly the Habitats Directive which came into force in Ireland that year, was not understood by local authorities, appeals boards, and the Irish courts themselves, who clung to their own supremacy,” explains Lowes.

The group’s efforts have not gone unheard. Lowes points out that FIE “currently has multiple cases continuing against the industry in the planning system and the Irish High Court.”

But what do Dublin Airport representatives say about the third runway? According to DAA spokesperson Siobhán O’Donnell “the development of the new runway will further enhance Dublin Airport’s economic impact, which currently supports or facilitates a total of 97,400 jobs in the Irish economy. 

“The overall impact includes almost 16,000 people employed directly at the airport campus by DAA, airlines and other companies, the multiplier effects that flow from that employment, and the other sectors of the Irish economy that are facilitated by Dublin Airport.”

This is a perspective we can anticipate from airport spokespersons the world over. But is it really wise to consider these points alone?

Tony Lowes doesn’t think so. “An economic model which relies on continued growth in the aviation sector does not factor in the cost to society of the impact of their activities in increasing the greenhouse gas burden,” he says.

“The agreed three pillars of sustainability as highlighted by the UN are are economic, social, and environmental., as set out in its Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN 2015.

“Social sustainability requires inclusion, but the environmental impacts of aviation exclude the most affected by climate change – those in poorer nations – from the benefits of the aviation economic model itself.”

‘Absolutely committed to engaging with our local communities’ 

DAA highlights the fact that it is available to discuss issues related to the third runway with concerned individuals and communities. O’Donnell says that “we are absolutely committed to engaging with our local communities as the project progresses, and we are happy to meet community groups or on a one-to-one basis”.

But any public consultation won’t take place unless members of the public come together and actively participate. This might involve contacting the airport or local authorities directly.

Whether concerns relate to noise pollution from aircraft, the direct destruction of lands and the ecosystems they host, or the existential crisis of climate change itself citizens have a right to their voice, and to question forced changes to the environments in which they live.

As for FIE’s next move, Lowes is determined to make some real change. “The next step is to force the Irish State to require an Environmental Impact Assessment for the extension of time for the runway, 10 years after it was first granted and without any public consultation. If the Courts of Ireland do not require such an assessment, the EU Court will.”

*Dublin Airport Authority’s website states that it is happy to hear your feedback concerning the new runway. The DAA and can be contacted by email: northrunway@daa.ie or telephone: 1800-804422 (from the Republic of Ireland).

This Author

Conor Purcell is a Science & Nature Writer with a PhD in Earth Science. He can be found on twitter @ConorPPurcell and some of his other articles at cppurcell.tumblr.com.

 

 

Introduction to Rewilding

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A new short course at the Centre for Alternative Technology – Introduction to Rewilding – is possibly the first of its kind to offer such a practical introduction to rewilding.

The course aims to inform people about the basic principles and practices of rewilding and ecological restoration, and enable people to understand how they might apply them in their own situation – whether that’s on land they own themselves or in their local area.

Though mostly aimed at people with access to land such as small-scale landowners, people working in the conservation sector who want to influence their organisation on how they manage their land or talk about conservation; and people who want to make rewilding happen in their local area (e.g. by campaigning for common land to be rewilded, or by starting a community-led project), would also benefit from this new course.

Over three days in August (4th-6th) the course will cover:

What is rewilding, and why is it necessary?

Key concepts and issues such as ecological drivers (vegetation, herbivores, carnivores etc), restoration, connectivity, scale, policy, regulations and governance

Basic land management – livestock and grazing, fencing, regulations, common challenges

Case studies, with local site visits – what’s worked/not worked on the ground

Broader social aspects – community engagement, conflict, rural employment, humankind’s disconnected relationship with nature

Practical exercises – opportunity mapping, reconnecting with nature, action planning.

Tutors include Mick Green and Steve Carver, highly knowledgeable rewilding ecologists from Rewilding Britain and the Wildland Research Institute, with video contributions from bestselling author of Feral, George Monbiot, and owner of the Knepp Wildland Project Charlie Burrell.

The weekend will be hosted by writer and rewilder of people Kara Moses who runs courses and organises rewilding events at CAT and elsewhere.

The landscapes around CAT are being restored in many ways, from pine marten and beaver reintroductions to osprey recovery projects and ambitious landscape-scale restoration projects, offering many opportunities to see what’s happening on the ground.

It’s sure to be an extremely interesting weekend, and if we’re really lucky, August in mid Wales may even see some sunshine…

Introduction to Rewilding runs from 4th-6th August at the Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales. More information can be found here. Interested people are encouraged to book by 21st July.  Expressions of interest for later dates can be sent to kara.moses@cat.org.uk.