Plants may expand or shift their range as global temperatures continue to rise, but if they become inaccessible to the people who use them, ancient biocultural connections could be lost, a leading researcher has warned.

Dr Priscilla Wehi from Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, who recently co-authoted new forecast maps in the journal People and Nature, explained that local and indigenous peoples play critical roles in preserving biodiversity and ecosystems.

“People are already having trouble finding the resources they need, because of polluted water and soil, invasive species, and habitat destruction. Climate change adds another layer to this issue,” she said.

Biocultural connections

Wehi added: “Rather than just looking at whether climate change will make species go extinct, we wanted to know how climate change will affect people’s access to plants”.

The researchers focused on two plants that are traditionally used for weaving and as medicine, and that are important to the history and identity of the indigenous Māori people.

Kuta (Eleocharis sphacelata) is a soft, golden sedge found in wetlands across New Zealand and is especially valued in the North Island, where it is weaved into highly priced mats, hats and baskets. Weavers typically return to the same harvesting site each year.

Te Hemo Ata Henare of NorthTec, another author on this study, has been teaching customary Māori weaving for 40 years. She said: “Members of my community travel up to four hours to harvest kuta. Some of the sites are incredibly difficult to reach because of the overgrown land and involve long-distance swimming and deep diving.” 

The team created maps of the plants’ current and future distribution under two climate change scenarios and compared these to known harvesting sites. They found that changes in temperature and rainfall patterns will likely have an impact on soil density in these wetlands. As a result, kuta may become less available in the far north of the country, where many of the weavers who use this plant live, and move to the south instead.

Climate change 

Many of the current harvest sites have been used for generations. Reduced local access to species is typically associated with a loss of biocultural knowledge.

Henare said: “Weavers prefer to gather plants in their own tribal area, so this becomes an issue. There are alternative weaving plants available, but the colour, texture, and quality of kuta are unique.”

The second plant species explored in this study is kūmarahou (Pomaderris kumeraho), an endemic shrub that flourishes on well-drained clay soils in the northern regions of the North Island during the austral winter. Māori people use it to treat respiratory ailments.

Cultural currency is still practiced amongst many tribes. Regional species such as kūmarahou may be ceremonially gifted or exchanged with people from other tribal regions.

The forecast maps revealed that kūmarahou is likely to expand its range to the rest of the country as temperatures tend to become warmer, rather than shift or decrease as described for many other species. This could have an impact on tribal prestige and gifting practices.

Matthew Bond of the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa said: “Our results show that there are still places where the climate will be suitable for these plants to grow in the future.

However, these plants will become less available in places where they are most valued for weaving and medicine. This means that although the species themselves are not threatened by climate change, the human knowledge, history, and use of these plants are.”

Indigenous peoples

Ecological changes like those predicted in this study are a critical issue for indigenous peoples around the world because they transform resource availability and landscapes in ways that affect cultural identity, knowledge, sense of place, and social cohesion.

It may be necessary to transfer important plants to other accessible habitats that have less drastic climate impacts. By doing this, future generations may continue to harvest these plants and maintain their biocultural heritage.

“When it comes to climate change, we should not just think about species extinction, but the relationships between people and nature”, Bond concluded. “Our hope is that other researchers and indigenous peoples can use our work as a model to study the plants that are important to them.”

The study was funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand and National Science Foundation.

Matthew Bond, et al. ‘Effects of climatically shifting species distributions on biocultural relationships’ is published in the journal People and Nature on 27 March 2019 and will be available here.

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the British Ecological Society. 

Image: Pricilla Wehi harvesting kuta. © Michael Bond. 

The founder of organic veg box company Riverford, Guy Singh-Watson, has been presented with a prestigious Award for Responsible Capitalism at a ceremony attended by HRH Princess Anne.

Singh-Watson used his acceptance speech for the award, which is given annually by international publishing group First, to call on leaders to change the capitalist system that is “destroying our collective future”.

Addressing an audience at St James’s Palace of 200 foreign ambassadors, multinational businesses and parliamentarians, as well as Princess Anne, Singh-Watson said: “Capitalism has made it acceptable and normal to benefit from destroying our collective future.”

Mass extinction 

Singh-Watson continued: “We’re approximately 12 years away from when climate change becomes irreversible. We’ve lost 75 per cent of insect biomass in the last 30 years. Our soils are in crisis, and we’re facing the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity. Society is torn apart by inequality. We urgently need to act.

“This award seeks to promote change from within in small steps. And though I respect its intent, I would argue that we need to accelerate the process.”

Responsible capitalism can only be delivered, said Singh-Watson, when those with money and power find the confidence to measure success not in what they take out, but in what they put in.

Speaking at the ceremony, Princess Anne praised the award winners for leading the way. “On congratulating them as winners, can I thank them for being role models,” she said. “They are worthy recipients and they now join a long and distinguished list of winners of the First Awards for Responsible Capitalism.”

Other winners included the Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, Thabo Makgoba; the chief executive of TBC Bank in Georgia, Vakhtang Butskhrikidze; and Lourdes Maria Mena de Guerra from El Salvador, whose company, Lula Mena, sells handmade Fairtrade craft products made by local artisans.

Alternative future 

Singh-Watson, who turned Riverford over to employee ownership in June 2018, added: “We’re so much better than our slavery to conventional capitalism and remote ownership allows us to demonstrate.

“We need both change from within and challenge from without to stand any chance of passing a habitable planet on to our grandchildren.

“We need approval, encouragement and bravery from our peers; shaming from our children; incentives and leadership from government; and perhaps most of all, we need positive, joyous, well-publicised examples of a plausible alternative future.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Riverford organics.

New research, led by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, measured the presence of 353 wild bee and hoverfly species across the country, from 1980 to 2013. It showed one third of species experienced declines in terms of areas in which they were found, while one tenth increased. For the remainder of species, their distribution was either stable or the trend was inconclusive.

A positive but unexpected finding of the study was the increase in key bee species responsible for pollinating flowering crops, such as oil-seed rape.

This could be in response to the large increases of mass-flowering crops grown during the study period and government-subsidised schemes that encourage farmers to plant more of the wildflowers they feed on.

Habitat loss

The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, also showed that on average, the geographic range of bee and hoverfly species declined by a quarter. This is equivalent to a net loss of 11 species from each 1km square.

Overall losses were more notable for pollinator species found in northern Britain. This may be a result of climate change, with species that prefer cooler temperatures reducing their geographical spread in response to less climatically suitable landscapes.

Dr Gary Powney of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, who led the research, said: “We used cutting-edge statistical methods to analyse a vast number of species observations, revealing widespread differences in distribution change across pollinating insects.

“There is no one single cause for these differences, but habitat loss is a likely key driver of the declines.

“While the increase in key crop pollinators is good news, they are still a relatively small group of species. Therefore, with species having declined overall, it would be risky to rely on this group to support the long-term food security for our country.

“If anything happens to them in the future there will be fewer other species to ‘step up’ and fulfil the essential role of crop pollination.

Robus data 

Powney added: “Non-crop pollinators are also vital for a healthy countryside rich in biodiversity; not only because of their crucial role in pollinating wildflowers, but as a key food resource for other wildlife. 

“Wildflowers and pollinators rely on each other for survival. Losses in either are a major cause for concern when we consider the health and beauty of our natural environment.”

Dr Claire Carvell of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, a co-author of the study, points out there are multiple environmental pressures leading to changing patterns of occurrence in bees and hoverflies across the country.

Carvell said: “There is an urgent need for more robust data on the patterns and causes of pollinator declines. While this analysis sends us a warning, the findings support previous studies suggesting that conservation actions, such as wildlife-friendly farming and gardening, can have a lasting, positive impact on wild pollinators in rural and urban landscapes. However, these need further refining to benefit a wider range of species.

“In addition to recording species sightings, more standardised monitoring of pollinator numbers is required at a national level and a new UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme has been set up to do just this.”

Environmental change 

Over 700,000 records were analysed for this study. Most were collected by expert naturalists in the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society (BWARS) and the UK Hoverfly Recording Scheme, in more than 19,000 1km by 1km squares across Great Britain.

It’s thought to be the first study of its kind, since there have been no previous large-scale, long-term, species-specific estimates of distribution change for pollinating insects in Britain.

Mike Edwards of BWARS said: “All important studies of animal population trends, such as this latest research, rely entirely on the wildlife recorders who go out and record sightings of different species in their area.

“Therefore, we would encourage more people to take part in wildlife recording, so we can increase our understanding of how wildlife is responding to environmental change.”

Members of the public who wish to get involved in recording insect pollinators in their local area can find out more on the UK

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. 

Small venues are just as good as big for educating and enlisting new members, according to Extinction Rebellion (XR).

Ahead of a planned international day of non-violent civil disobedience on 15 April, an email from the direct action group stated: “Our challenge is big, the places we confront it in don’t have to be.”

Members of the group have experimented with holding talks in homes, which “creates more space for the honest, supportive discussions that we need to take action”, it says.

Homeparties

The XR talk – “Heading for Extinction and What to Do About It” – is kick-starting conversations about why to join XR and how. “It’s bringing an enormous amount of people with energy to our movement, but there’s no reason it needs to be limited to big venues,” XR said.

People who want to take part can request a speaker to come to their house, give the talk themselves, or screen a video of the talk, it said.  

XR used the example of Swedish feminist community organiser and co-founders of the Swedish political party Feminist Initiative (F!) Gudrun Schyman, who built her whole campaign around “Homeparties” about feminism, politics and the party.

Schyman spoke at around 1,000 home parties, and a year later in 2014, her party received 3.1 percent of the vote in the country’s general election, according to XR.

Full-scale rebellion

XR says that its event on 15 April will be a “full-scale rebellion to demand decisive action from governments on climate change and ecological collapse”.

“Join us as we engage in acts of non-violent civil disobedience against governments in capital cities around the world. This is not a one-off march – we will keep going for as long as we have to, shutting down cities day after day until our demands are met,” it says.

The rebellion will see independent XR groups, allies and protestors take to the streets, while a small number of conscientious protectors and activists from XR affinity groups will carry out peaceful civil disobedience “to disrupt the business-as-usual which is sending our species on a one-way track to extinction”, the organisation said.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Small venues are just as good as big for educating and enlisting new members, according to Extinction Rebellion (XR).

Ahead of a planned international day of non-violent civil disobedience on 15 April, an email from the direct action group stated: “Our challenge is big, the places we confront it in don’t have to be.”

Members of the group have experimented with holding talks in homes, which “creates more space for the honest, supportive discussions that we need to take action”, it says.

Homeparties

The XR talk – “Heading for Extinction and What to Do About It” – is kick-starting conversations about why to join XR and how. “It’s bringing an enormous amount of people with energy to our movement, but there’s no reason it needs to be limited to big venues,” XR said.

People who want to take part can request a speaker to come to their house, give the talk themselves, or screen a video of the talk, it said.  

XR used the example of Swedish feminist community organiser and co-founders of the Swedish political party Feminist Initiative (F!) Gudrun Schyman, who built her whole campaign around “Homeparties” about feminism, politics and the party.

Schyman spoke at around 1,000 home parties, and a year later in 2014, her party received 3.1 percent of the vote in the country’s general election, according to XR.

Full-scale rebellion

XR says that its event on 15 April will be a “full-scale rebellion to demand decisive action from governments on climate change and ecological collapse”.

“Join us as we engage in acts of non-violent civil disobedience against governments in capital cities around the world. This is not a one-off march – we will keep going for as long as we have to, shutting down cities day after day until our demands are met,” it says.

The rebellion will see independent XR groups, allies and protestors take to the streets, while a small number of conscientious protectors and activists from XR affinity groups will carry out peaceful civil disobedience “to disrupt the business-as-usual which is sending our species on a one-way track to extinction”, the organisation said.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

In the middle of São Paulo’s concrete jungle lies an area that was largely forgotten by its 12 million residents for decades.

Characterised by abandoned buildings and occupied largely by squatters, the Campos Eliseos neighborhood held only remnants of its early days, when it was occupied by wealthy coffee barons. Today, the neighborhood is changing.

A new segment of the green building movement has a vision that green housing must be for all, especially the poor. Within the neighbourhood’s precarious dwellings, the State of São Paulo government, in a public-private partnership with Canopus, has broken ground on the Julio Prestes social housing project, to provide more than 1,200 apartments for low-income families. 

Reducing bills

The project is transformational, not only for the city, but also for its people.

As a project certified with IFC’s EDGE, the complex will provide much-needed homes for low-income residents. Living in resource-efficient units will also significantly reduce energy and water bills among a population that often spends up to 20 percent of their income on utilities. Depending on the type of unit, residents at Julio Prestes will save up to 26 percent in utility costs.

Adriana Paiano, Chief Architect at Canopus, found that certifying Julio Prestes with EDGE greatly improves the quality of life among low-income residents: “We find that by integrating green efficiencies in our design, we are really making a difference, especially for this market segment.”

A few thousand miles away, the small nation of Haiti also understands how homeownership can change a person’s life. Patrick Brun, owner of the Chabuma S.A. construction company, said: “For us in Haiti, it’s almost revolutionary. Owning a home is transformative for people.” 

Brun represents only one of the developers receiving assistance from Affordable Housing Institute and the World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) to build green homes under the Haiti Home Ownership and Mortgage Expansion (HOME) project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The project hopes to mobilize a private sector-driven approach to financing affordable homes. HOME provides incentives to developers, like Chabuma, to build residences for low-income families, while also working with financial institutions to expand their mortgage portfolios to be more inclusive. 

Solar power

Olivia Caldwell, lead for HOME from the Affordable Housing Institute and an EDGE Expert, said: “We want the project to be perceived as completely market driven even though it is supported by USAID. 

“The idea is that in two years when the project ends, the banks and developers will continue to engage in these activities without us.” 

The HOME project has made green affordable housing a reality for Haitian developers in a market where it has never existed before. Brun, who developed EDGE-certified projects Villa Flora and Village la Fontaine under HOME, understood the need for the housing to save energy and water.

In Haiti, the government struggles to provide electricity to its citizens, placing a burden on the poor who cannot afford their own generators when the power goes out. With green features like solar panels, residents can reduce reliance on the electricity grid and take advantage of Haiti’s year-round average of nearly 12 hours of sunlight per day.

As Brun said: “Offering affordable homes that aren’t green is just going halfway. You haven’t solved anything.” 

Innovative technologies

Developers in other markets are realizing the potential of resource-efficient affordable homes as well. From the Philippines, where affordable housing developer Imperial Homes Corporation (IHC) saw a 300 percent increase in sales after building green, to South Africa, where International Housing Solutions (IHS) is altering the housing market landscape, the trend is growing.

Each home at the IHC’s Via Verde housing complex in the Philippines has solar panels, allowing residents like Philippine housewife Luzviminda Capin to save a significant amount in her utility bills.

Capin said: “My monthly electricity bill has gone down to only 500 (Philippine Pesos, or about $10). I use the extra savings of 2,000 (Philippine Pesos) to either buy food and groceries, or to pay off the mortgage on the house.”

Similarly, in South Africa, IHS properties have introduced innovative technologies such as smart meters to the sector. IHS functions as a financial services provider and partners with real estate developers in South Africa to provide equity financing for properties and to purchase turn-key developments.

Its funds have added a large amount of home stock to South Africa’s affordable housing market, many of which have been EDGE-certified. These projects include Waterfall Park,The Village (Clubview) and Candlewood Crescent.

Permanent homes

In such nascent green housing markets where building green can be perceived as a luxury instead of a necessity, developers are striving to change the stereotype that green is expensive.

In reality, simple alterations to a home’s design, such as adding external shading to keep a home cool, can greatly improve the affordability of homes and reduce utility bills for residents. 

Green affordable housing has the potential to change the housing market in countries like Haiti, Brazil and beyond. In Port Au Prince, where many live in overcrowded slums, living in a green affordable home instills a sense of pride.

Brun believes that as more of Haiti’s low-income residents move from unsafe shelters to permanent homes, the landscape of the country will begin to change. “Visually, it sheds the perspective that everything in this country is chaotic. It changes the panorama of the country by offering affordable homes.”

More importantly, it changes the country itself. Brun said: “It’s not just the development of affordable housing, it’s the development of the country.” 

This Author

Hayley Samu is the marketing and communications specialist for IFC’s EDGE green buildings certification program, which is available in nearly 140 countries.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust and the Eastern Moors Partnership – a joint initiative between the National Trust and the RSPB – aim to boost populations of the threatened Bilberry bumblebee by planting 1,000 bilberry plants inside specially designed grazing-proof metal cages on Hathersage Moor. 

Bilberry is a vital food source for the declining bumblebee. It flowers in the spring and early summer, before heathers and other moorland plants, and is essential for the bees and their larvae as the nests are established.

Sally Cuckney, Pollinating the Peak Project Manager for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, said: “Grazing animals such as sheep and deer find tender young bilberry plants especially tasty, and their constant browsing stunts the plants’ growth. That’s bad news for the Bilberry bumblebee. If grazing is reduced, bilberry does much better.

Pollinating the Peak

Cuckney added: “This hands-on project is the first attempt to help Bilberry bumblebees and bilberry plants survive and thrive together like this.”

This month, bilberry has been planted across 60 acres of Hathersage Moor, then protected by cages built by Bumblebee Conservation Trust and Eastern Moors volunteers and youth rangers. 

Past grazing pressure on the moor has led to a lack of mature bilberry bushes favoured by the bee. The project will build on changes over recent years in how the moor is managed, which have seen bilberry beginning to make a comeback.

The grazing cages will allow Bilberry bumblebees to enter to feed and nest while protecting the growing plants during their early years, by keeping livestock out. They are designed to blend into the landscape and will be left in place, maintained by Eastern Moors volunteers, until the plants are established. 

This joint venture is part of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s Pollinating the Peak project, made possible thanks to National Lottery players following a £720,000 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant.

Citizen science 

The initiative will also allow researchers to gather vital new data about the bees, and the plants’ growth. There has only been a handful of Bilberry bumblebee studies, and no research in the Peak District for decades.

A general lack of bumblebee records in Derbyshire means the species could be declining faster than has been thought. Tackling this data gap means conservation action can be taken before it’s too late.

This summer, volunteers will begin monitoring bumblebees on Hathersage Moor through the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s national BeeWalk recording scheme – a citizen science survey that provides early warning of bee declines.

The volunteers will identify and count bumblebees they see while walking the same fixed route each month between March and October. Eastern Moors volunteers will continue the monitoring in future years.

Bilberry bumblebees have suffered a dramatic decline in recent years. They were once found widely across north and west Britain, but the Peak District is now one of their last strongholds. Even here, this cold-loving upland species is expected to decline further because of climate change.

Dynamic partnerships 

Also known as the Blaeberry or Mountain bumblebee, the rare bee is found almost exclusively on bilberry-rich moorlands. It has helped keep the bilberry plant alive for centuries through pollination.

The Eastern Moors Partnership, which manages Hathersage Moor on behalf of Sheffield City Council, has now identified the Bilberry bumblebee as a key species indicator – a species that is rapidly affected by environmental changes and so can give early warnings that a habitat is suffering.

Pollinating the Peak is also creating flower-rich habitats, monitoring bumblebees and raising awareness about them across the Peak and Derbyshire.

This project is run with partners Chatsworth, Chesterfield Borough Council, Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, Little Green Space, Moors for the Future Partnership, National Trust, and Peak District National Park. 

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. 

Environmentalists disagree. Especially about food sustainability. Why? This situation is often confusing and hinders us on our path towards a greener agricultural future.

Uncovering some mistakes in climate logic, I hope, will help us on that path. The food sustainability debate needs sound science, but also robust reasoning to accompany it.

Mistake 1: Only a small percentage

Our overreliance on livestock has come under pressure as the scientific literature documents livestock’s large contributions to climate change. The United Nations has concluded that livestock accounts for at least 14.5 percent of total global green house emissions.

In response, many people think, “well, livestock’s contribution is still a relatively small percentage of our total greenhouse gas emissions, so does it really matter that much?” One instance of this reasoning is a recent piece by the Sustainable Food Trust.

We cannot reason that because a given source of emissions is far from the majority of total emissions, we can be lax about it.

We must make emissions cuts wherever we possibly can. That is the only way to reach the spectacular emissions reductions outlined by the United Nations. These targets include achieving net zero emissions in around thirty-one years. The UN says we need “deep emissions reductions” in each and every sector, including agriculture.

Mistake 2: China is worse

Some people say that since China is a bigger polluter, we in the UK shouldn’t be too concerned to cut its emissions by much. As such, they think, our industries have a get out of jail free card. And they think that we shouldn’t be concerned about our own meat consumption, when global meat consumption trends are on the rise because of patterns of eating in China, India, and elsewhere.

The underlying principle of this approach is: the countries that pollute the most should take the first move, and if they don’t, nor should we.

This is a great way of moving the planet closer to the precipice. Even if bigger polluters should get greener and aren’t, their wrong does not justify others in acting similarly. We tend to apply a similar principle elsewhere: if others avoid tax, we do not think we can then fiddle our books in order to get a slice of the tax-avoidance fun.

Mistake 3: Food waste is what we put in the bin

One third of food is destined to nestle against a bin liner or rot on the ground. This is well worth taking about, and I commend the food waste campaigners who are working to change this.

But such campaigners make a mistake in their unjustifiably narrow definition of food waste. They define food waste as food thrown in a bin. That might seem fair enough, but let us consider why we think food waste is bad.

If food is wasted, the emissions that were created in producing it were needless. Alternatively, the food could have helped those in need (usually indirectly). Food waste is bad, then, because it represents a missed opportunity which would have seen resources put to better use to help others.

If we are concerned by food thrown in the bin, we should also be concerned by a hidden form of waste: food fed to livestock. We feed a huge amount of edible grains, soya, oats, and peas to farm animals, in order to get food from those animals (though not all livestock are fed crops).

The problem is that evidence suggests only 12 in every 100 calories fed to livestock are converted into meat, eggs, or dairy, on average. The other 88 percent is used by the animal’s body for other purposes, e.g. movement. That 88 percent usually represents waste, then, because we lose this food in feeding it to livestock. We could eat the crops directly and recover those calories. This problem is significant. Greenpeace reports that a staggering 63 percent of EU cropland is used to grow crops to feed farm animals.

Yet I don’t see food waste campaigns doing much to encourage us towards plant-based foods. These foods bypass livestock, cutting waste at the farm level.

Mistake 4: White meat is sustainable

Because of the sky-high greenhouse gas emission associated with red meat, many environmentalists conclude that eating white meat is environmentally a good thing.

The underlying principle assumed here is: if it considerably better for the climate than the worst option, it is good.

This is false. White meat tends to be far worse than alternatives such as beans and other legumes, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions but also food security, deforestation, and other forms of pollution. This is because poultry production is completely reliant on feeding animals (often imported) crops; chickens can’t eat grass.

That white meat is less bad in greenhouse gas terms than the worst food does not serve to render it sustainable, especially given the scale of the problems we face.

A journey

The world needs a greener food system. We are all on a journey together towards this. I hope people of different persuasions can coalesce around a way forward. And that careful thinking might bring us together.

This Author 

William Gildea is a campaigns and policy officer at The Vegan Society. Readers of The Ecologist are offered 10 percent off tickets for the Grow Green Conference, at the British Library on 11th April, where researchers, farmers, and policymakers will debate sustainable agriculture. Simply use the code GROW10.

The tendency towards decay (known as entropy) destroys order and reduces everything to randomness. But a system can create order, if there’s a flow running through it. This happens with the Earth: solar energy enters in, and the Earth sheds (‘dissipates’) waste heat into space.

Individual animals and plants do this too; and, taking the Earth system as a whole, the waste excreted by one component is absorbed into another, with the result that the flows are ‘tucked in’. As James Lovelock says, the pollution of one is the meat of another.

The latest issue of Resurgence & Ecologist is out now!

When we build or manufacture things that don’t exist in Nature, the bad tendency has been to neglect the tucked-in loops, so there’s simply a lot of energy and scarce matter flowing into each process, and a degraded form of these is pumped out in the form of garbage, pollution and greenhouse gases.

But we can address this problem by introducing a circular-systems approach. A good example is industrial ecology (or industrial symbiosis), where many productive processes are networked, the waste of one becoming “the meat of another”.

Growing food

My own work is to do with food systems, and in fact there’s always a food-growing component in industrial ecology, because urban farms can absorb a lot of by-products: grey water, surplus heat (which could warm greenhouses), and compostable waste (such as hops from breweries). This is one reason why urban farming is potentially more productive than rural farming, and contributes to an ‘urban metabolism’, characterised (like the body’s metabolism) by flows and circulation.

I participated in a project as part of University College London, setting up an anaerobic digester: a bicycle-driven box collects waste from local restaurants, and the composting process reduces it to digestate and methane gas. Food is then grown using the digestate as fertiliser and cooked using the gas, and we serve it in the project’s café – so the loop is closed.

These experiments are really interesting, but we should also think critically about what we are trying to achieve, and how. Thus, in industrial ecology, we shouldn’t let the food sector be treated merely as a sink for whatever industry wants to get rid of; at the very least, let’s insist on defining its role in terms of what farming actually needs from the urban metabolism, rather than simply what it can absorb.

Also, in a broader sense, it’s a lazy solution to merely give crops a lot of inputs, because this inhibits plants’ abilities to strengthen themselves. In some amazing experiments, French peasant Pascal Poot deliberately lets his crops fend for themselves in the harshest conditions, and they develop a heritable capacity to cope.

The scientific explan­ation has to do with which genes are ‘expressed’ (switched on): if the plant doesn’t need them, they stay dormant! Also, applying fertiliser high in nitrogen – as tends to be the case with digestate from anaerobic composting – may accentuate a major form of pollution, which in turn triggers CO2 emission.

Wider ecosystems

The food issue prompts a further interesting question: if we speak of closed-loop systems, how far is it really desirable to be closed?

It’s an exciting challenge to be self-reliant. I’ve found it’s not too difficult to produce all our family’s vegetables on our own plot, while still leaving time to do other jobs.

This is achievable because a no-dig (no-till) system minimises inputs of work: by not working the soil, you encourage nat­ural balances to self-engineer, so that fertility is maintained through the free energy of self-organisation. Residues are composted back, and the deep roots of plants like Russian comfrey can replenish minerals from the rocky layer beneath the soil.

But, taken to extremes, self-reliance could lead to a survivalist model where you’re scared of everything collapsing in the world outside. NASA has expressed interest in a swimming pool turned aquaponic farm, in the US.

In a realistic context, however, we are of course entirely dependent on the wider ecosystem within which our farm is inserted, so the ‘closedness’ is merely illusory. And the danger of a survivalist version of closed loop is that we become introspective and cut ourselves off from our place in society.

The point is that a farming model of the future must be able to feed the wider population in a sustainable way – which requires a large surplus over and above the consumption of the cultivators themselves.

The Guardians

At the same time, we must hold on to what is correct about self-reliance: instead of obsessing about how to absorb waste, let’s rather think about making our systems so efficient in themselves that they hardly produce any waste; and then the real meaning of ‘efficiency’ becomes ‘maximising the capacity for self-organisation’. Perhaps the slogan we’re looking for is ‘Output lots of food, not lots of entropy’!

Thus, taking as an example a project in France, La Ferme du Bec Hellouin, it’s possible using the methods of agro-ecology to produce a sizeable surplus that can contribute to the wider society – both by marketing the produce and by spreading ecological consciousness.

We don’t yet have all the answers for a sustainable food system, but what is encouraging about today’s debates is that we are raising meaningful questions. For example, the curvy or concentric beds encouraged by agro-ecology or permaculture are intuitively much closer to Nature’s contours; but do they place an upper limit on productivity? This is an interesting question: do we still need to safeguard some mechanisation, and if so, what would it look like?

The recently released film The Guardians, directed by Xavier Beauvois, is set in rural France during the first world war, and offers an extremely interesting exploration of human relations against a background of wider socio-economic shifts.

In the early part, labour is very manual and harsh, but also necessarily cooperative, because everyone needs to collaborate. As things develop, farming is organised more as a business; fam­ilies invest in machinery, productivity is improved, but the solidarity is lost and human relations are sacrificed. So what’s the solution? Of course, the mainstream approach to mechanisation is not sustainable anyway, but is there a different way?

Sharing economy 

Perhaps part of the answer can be glimpsed in a cooperative designing farm machinery, L’Atelier Paysan. Its principles of organisation are intrinsically commons-based, peer-to-peer and open-source.

In this way, it is tapping into a sharing economy, and a more broadly sharing society, where creativity constantly circulates, as part of an iterative process of co-learning. The result is a set of constantly evolving blueprints for a new type of machinery wholly dedicated to serving agro-ecology.

The lesson is that we need a circular system, not just in material flows, but also in flows of innovation and ideas; and this in turn can help galvanise social regeneration.

This Author 

Robert Biel teaches Political Ecology at University College London (UCL), and is a practising urban farmer. He is a member of UCL’s Circular Economy Lab, and author of the open-access book Sustainable Food Systems: The Role of the City. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Image: Dennis McClung, founder and CEO of Garden Pool. © Justin Bastien.

Hundreds of thousands of badgers have been killed in Great Britain since the 1970s, accused of spreading bovine tuberculosis (bTB) to cattle. More than 30,000 were killed in 2018 alone. 

Confronted with an injustice that defies reason, one can protest and investigate. The systematic slaughter of a ‘protected’ species demands a strong foundation in science, and an awareness of the ecological consequences, as well as an emotional response. 

Any government which institutes such a campaign must answer serious questions, such as: is it legal? Is there a consensus of expert opinion? Is the thinking joined-up? What are the costs and benefits, checks and balances? Who will physically carry out the policy? And, what is public opinion?  

Failed experiments

Not one of these has been answered satisfactorily. Albert Einstein reputedly said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result”. No scientist can waste time repeating failed experiments. Likewise, George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. And here we are. 

Conventionally, to test a theory, one tries to disprove it: fail, and it is deemed ‘acceptable’, at least until disproved.

In the eighties, I spent five years testing my hypothesis that Cornwall could support the return of its national bird, the Red-billed chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax. When the species did return and, more critically, stayed to increase its numbers, the hypothesis was accepted. 

At that time, the poor circumstantial evidence behind the eradication of our largest surviving terrestrial carnivore appalled me, as it did many other naturalists. The more I looked into it, the more alarmed I became.  In fact, it made me a scientist. 

We formed BROCK (Badger Rights of Cornwall – Kernow) to scrutinise ministry activities. Surely only through science could this be challenged. I worked for WWF liaising between farming and conservation interests, and served on the Government’s Consultative Panel for three years while writing The Fate of the Badger, published by Batsford in 1986.

Unchecked pride

Today, the badger is still being killed officially in huge numbers: encouraging rural thugs to flout the law, claiming, “If men in suits can kill it, why can’t we?”.

So, how has this happened? A ministry scientist told me: “In my department, the top priority is to protect the Minister from any possible embarrassment”.  

He also told me that No.10 Downing Street took the decision to kill badgers. By then Mrs Thatcher had infamously claimed: “The lady’s not for turning”. Once a leader makes a decision, he or she feels compelled to defend it, even in the face of contrary evidence.

Humans dislike being corrected, admitting failure, or asking for help; we resist advice and prefer revenge to forgiveness.  All these traits are based on pride – a weakness associated with denial; at an overweening level it causes mistakes, setback and failure. The maxim, ‘Pride goes before a fall’ has its origin in the Bible: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs).  In 1813 Jane Austen wrote a novel in which the chief protagonists had to overcome pride and prejudice in order to find happiness. 

Writing at the end of Word War II, Bertrand Russell stated in his History of Western Philosophy: “The Renaissance restored human pride, but carried it to the point where it led to anarchy and disaster”.  He also observed: “When the check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road to madness – the intoxication of power [my italics] … to which modern men .., are prone”. He concluded: “this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and [increases] the danger of vast social disaster”.

Regaining hope

Now, in the twenty-first century, wildlife has its own war.  But, as the brilliant Greta Thunberg has told us, it never tops the News agenda. There is no single villain to blame or confront; no national / party politics; and it only indirectly concerns economics.

To attack it, is to attack ourselves. As Robert Frost, the American poet wrote in 1914: “And nothing to look backward to with pride / And nothing to look forward to with hope” – which are rather my sentiments now.

Badger cull politics have become self-evident: wildlife genocide dressed up as a cull to give the impression of rational science removing unwanted animals.

The tactics were and remain shameful. Since the early 1970s, successive governments have tried gassing, snares, poison, clean-ring exclusion zones, and cage trapping.  

Strange measures to deal with a mycobacterium. So, what do humans do when faced with a difficult animal?  They reach for a gun. 

Origins of error

All these policies rested on a false premise. This self-serving political decision was based on wishful thinking. Desperate farmers and vets grabbed the idea as if it were a £50 note in the gutter. One infected badger found in Gloucestershire in 1971 ‘cast the die’.  

Perversely, much had been gained before badgers were forced centre stage. The disease had been reduced post-war to less than 0.05 percent. However, after 1971, attention became fixed on the badger, reinforced in 1980 by Lord Zuckerman’s grossly opinionated report.

Following that political decision, all was lost. One calamitous error diverted the tried and tested strategy of strict whole herd testing, and a mycobacterium seized its chance. The national incidence of bTB rose to 10 percent. 

What error? To confuse ‘infected’ with ‘infectious’ is foolish, as any medical student knows. Given how and where they feed, the route of transmission from cow to badger is obvious, but transmission the other way has never been demonstrated; it defies natural science.  But no leadership can ever admit such an expensive catastrophe.  

After so long, costs are way beyond retrieval but must run into billions. The Randomised Badger Culling Trial (1998-2017) alone cost £50m. A decade later, in one year, bTB cost £100m. Every badger killed costs us about £7,000. Compensation to farmers is colossal.

Expensive myth

These economics disregard ecological costs, notwithstanding the cruel persecution of an iconic and harmless wild species that we should be protecting and cherishing. 

Scientists know the right course to take but pride and prejudice have blinded governments – urged on by farmers – into believing a myth implanted in their minds for two generations.  

The Government still desperately paddles a lifeboat riddled with holes, going nowhere. An inability to learn from history is why, after 30 years, we were in the utterly bizarre position of being able to republish Fate, with additions, but without needing to change a single word of the first 1986 edition. 

All we seem to have learned is that it is easier to deceive people than convince them they have been deceived.

This Author

Dr Richard Meyer is a naturalist, writer and artist with a long career in wildlife conservation. He authored many books as Richard Mark Martin before The Fate of the Badger. Richard tweets @DrRichardMeyer.

Image: Steve Clark.