Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – with grave impacts on people around the world, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), launched today in Paris.

The report, authored by 455 experts and reviewing over 15,000 scientific studies, assesses the global changes to the world’s biodiversity over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of our relationship with, and impact on, nature.

The IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be seen as the the biodiversity equivalent of the climate change 1.5C report that was launched by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November last year.

Web of life

“The loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come,” says Sir Robert Watson, who chairs IPBES.

Of  the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on the planet, up to a million are threatened with extinction, many within a timespan of just decades, the report finds.

Around 10 percent of insect species are threatened with extinction, more than 30 percent of corals, sharks and marine mammals and more than 40 percent of amphibians. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent since 1900.

The current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds times faster than the average over the last 10 million years. At least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals we rely on for food and agriculture have gone extinct, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world,” says professor Josef Settele, who co-chaired the report. “The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed.”

Human drivers

There are many causes for the increasing loss of the world’s biodiversity, but five stand out in terms of their relative impact on the living world.

These culprits are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution and invasive alien species. All these drivers interact with one another, often affecting species and ecosystems simultaneously.

1. Changes in land and sea use, driven by agricultural expansion and a steep rise in resource use, are the largest drivers of global biodiversity decline.

Three-quarters of the land-based environment has now been significantly altered by human actions, the report finds. A huge chunk of this, more than a third of the world’s land surface, is now devoted to crop or livestock production. Agriculture now also uses nearly 75% of the world’s freshwater resources.

We are also pushing our oceans to the brink. A third of marine fish stocks is being harvested at unsustainable levels; over half is being fished at the maximum allowed rate, and just 7% is harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished.

The industrialisation of agriculture and overexploitation of land has caused land degradation and reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface. This has placed up to £425 billion (US$ 577 billion) in annual global crops at risk of losing the necessary pollinators, threatening global food security.

2. Direct exploitation of organisms, mainly via harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing has also been a large direct driver of the decline in biodiversity. Today, humans extract more from the Earth and produce more waste than ever before. The increasing human population and growth in per capita gross domestic product were identified as driving this pressure, with ever-more distant consumers shifting the environmental burden of consumption and production across regions.

3. Climate change is already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics, with impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, and in some cases surpassing the impact of other drivers of biodiversity loss.

The distributions of almost half of land-based flightless mammals, for example, and almost a quarter of threatened birds, may already have been negatively affected by climate change.

An estimated 5% of species face increased extinction risks in 2°C warmer world, rising to 16% of species at 4.3°C of warming. Even for global warming of 1.5 to 2°C, the geographical ranges in which terrestrial species can thrive will have shrunk profoundly for almost all species.

4. Environmental pollution, in all its forms, is another strong driver of biodiversity loss. Plastic pollution, for example, has increased tenfold since 1980.

An estimated 300 to 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2, a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom.

5. Invasive species, moved across the globe via the air- and seaborne transportation of goods and people, have increasingly outcompeted and replaced native species, thereby upending local ecosystems. In certain countries, the number of invasive alien species has risen by about 70% since 1970.

On a broader scale, the results of this far-reaching biodiversity loss are undermining progress towards achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, having negative effects on the development goals related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land.

Loss of biodiversity is therefore not just an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

Transformative change

However bleak a picture the global biodiversity assessment paints, it also provides a wakeup call to the world’s governments, all of which have formally agreed to the report’s Summary for Policymakers, which was published by IPBES in Paris on May 6th.

In an effort to help decision makers deal with the threat of biodiversity decline, the authors of the report also examined six policy scenarios, very different future options of policy decisions, including a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario and a ‘Global Sustainability’ path, projecting the likely impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of these pathways by 2050.

They concluded that, except in scenarios that include transformative change, the negative trends in nature, ecosystem functions and in many of nature’s contributions to people will continue long beyond 2050.

Examples of this necessary transformative change include adopting a cross-sectoral approach to conservation, one that integrates biodiversity considerations in global decision-making on any sector or challenge; as well as landscape planning; agricultural diversification; and rethinking the global financial and economic systems, away from growth and towards a sustainable economy.

Solutions

A number of conservation success stories during the past decade, although still few and to a limited scale, also offer hope, showing that with prompt and appropriate actions it is still possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates.

“Policies, efforts and actions – at every level – will only succeed, however, when based on the best knowledge and evidence. This is what the IPBES Global Assessment provides,” says Sir Robert Watson.

“This essential report reminds each of us of the obvious truth: the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity,” concluded Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO.

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. A summary of the IPBES global biodiversity assessment can be accessed here.

Representatives from the world’s governments are gathered in Paris to finalise negotiations over the text of a UN report that will deliver a comprehensive assessment of the state of our global biodiversity, the life support system that we all rely on to survive and thrive.

The report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), is the first of its kind and represents the most current knowledge we have on the health of the planet. The previous report launches that inform this Global Assessment have been attended by Heads of State, first in Malaysia and then in Colombia.

But at the opening of the plenary discussions for this landmark report, we saw muted opening ceremony, with no-one from the hosting French Ministries in attendance, and certainly no Head of State.

Critical moment

What hope do we have when have to take actions if these discussions are not treated with requisite importance?

This would have been a very welcome moment for France to signal its position on these issues to the world, given the increasing public anger over governments’ lack of action on environmental issues, and the anticipated bad news contained within the Assessment on species extinction, forest loss, climate change and impacts to indigenous peoples and the global south in particular.

The IPBES report comes at a critical moment, ahead of the IPCC Land report in August, and off the back of increasing public and media scrutiny in the state of the natural world.

The report will be adopted ahead of an important year for both climate and biodiversity issues, and will inform the discussions on a new framework and targets to reverse nature loss at the UN Biodiversity conference in 2020 in Kunming, China.

It is reasonable that some of the stark warnings and policy tools contained in SR15 will be echoed in the IPBES report, following the IPCC 1.5 Special Report last October, and given the shared drivers behind climate change and biodiversity loss.

Continued inaction

We know the global south will be hit first and worst by continued inaction on biodiversity loss, just as with climate change.

We are not on track to meet the Paris Agreement and the SDGs will be compromised by our collective lack of movement.

The food system – production and consumption – is a key driver of biodiversity loss and also one of the highest emitters of GHGs – it accounts for one third of GHG emissions and big agricultural corporations are responsible for almost as much emissions as the fossil fuel industry and 27 percent of global forest loss can be attributed to deforestation to make way for the growing of commodity crops.

But we have many of the solutions we need to tackle these linked crises and there are a series of no regrets actions we can and should be taking now.

We know that local and indigenous communities are often the best guardians of forests, which are vital in the fight to decarbonise our society. The pathways laid out in the IPCC 1.5 report make it clear that not only do we need to protect existing forests, we also need to actively restore other ecosystems (such as wetlands, mangrove swamps) and consider giving over land to planting new forests. We also know that empowering smallholders is the best way to feed the world fairly, and with the most positive outcome for how we manage stewardship of the land.

Future impacts

We need transformative change of our society and this needs to start now if we are to minimise future impacts.

No government is currently close to doing enough, which brings us back to France and our hopes that we see more intent and action from a country more usually known as a champion for the environment.

It is a busy time for the host nation. As well as the IPBES-7 plenary, France is presiding over the G7 in 2019, with the Environmental Ministers meeting set to take place in Metz, France, on the 5 and 6 of May – overlapping with the IPBES report launch.  

We hope to see more leadership from France over these coming days. We ask the country to show leadership not just at IPBES-7 but also in the G7 environment ministerial, in prioritising biodiversity loss and championing nature.

From the Amazon, we say to the scientists and officials gathered in France once again: there is no more time, the Pachamama is in danger.

Everyone’s opportunity

There have already been enough discussions, reports and forums. The time for talking is over. 

Communities around the world need to see governments starting to attach budgets to their rhetoric. We need to act now, and France must keep its word, and set an example to other countries.

It is time to know the truth, and act in truth of justice. The traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples has the answer to the almost terminal crisis of the planet.

This is the opportunity for our indigenous peoples and peasant communities to save the planet with our knowledge. Because our opportunity is everyone’s opportunity.

This Author

Gregorio Mirabel is president of COICA (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin).

Climate activists Extinction Rebellion need to think global, act local to meet its ambitious aim of reducing the country’s carbon emissions to zero by 2025 through direct action. This means taking on capitalism and big business by building support in local communities.

This is the advice from more than 50 subscribers to The Ecologist newsletter who responded to the question ‘what should XR do next?’ on Friday, and ahead of today’s announcement that Michael Gove, the environment minister, will meet representatives from the group.

The question was posed after a poll showed that 90 percent of newsletter subscribers fully supported XR following its shutdown of central London, and its direct actions across towns and cities in the UK and the rest of Europe.

Big business

“Call out the real beast which is the economic system of neoliberal capitalism,” proposed John Otvos, 71, a retired loudspeaker manufacturer from Woodville, Nova Scotia, Canada. He was among 15 respondents (or 29 percent) who wanted capitalism or big business to be the target of XR actions.

Martin Davies, 59, retired from Milton Keynes was among those arrested during the actions in London. He said XR should “widen and scale up civil disobedience as much as possible including a general strike.”

Gerður Pálmadottir, a lifelong entrepreneur from Hafnarfjordur, Iceland, wants the group to “demand a return to the origin and purpose of economics, which was to make a system enabling all members of society to thrive together on the gifts of earth and the returns of hard work.

He added: “The soft measure to reach that is to demand a Unconditional Basic Income on earth. It will free a lot of people from useless work and steer them into purpose fulfillment, such as re-greening the earth. Teaming up with Earth in order to avoid our own extinction is a purpose worth striving for.”

Felicity Radford, 71, a retired librarian from Bristol, was arrested at the XR protests and was also among the respondents who wanted to target big business. “They should target ecocidal companies to warn them that their time is up unless they change their policies,” she said, adding: “Then, after a pause to see how the government responds, do another massive occupation of London if necessary.”

Ecocides

Margarette Green, 69, from Devizes, wants to “lobby the banks to divest fossils and regenerate forests” while Jill Bruce, 68, the Women’s Institute Climate Ambassador, wants to “avoid disrupting public transport” and instead “target businesses that are adding to the climate change problem”.

Lesley Grahame, 59, a nurse from Norwich, spoke for many when he said XR should “build capacity, target guilty corporations – fossil fuels, finance, big armaments.” Liz Jensen, a writer from Copenhagen, told The Ecologist: XR could invite the corporations causing the worst damage to imagine featuring in future school exam questions about Eco Criminals of History.”

Jim, a land manager from Co Clare in Ireland, said: “Focus on retail, polluting industries and intensive agricultural activities. The highlighting of the high nutrient and energy use by these sectors feeds into the wasteful consumption model of capitalism.

“The retail and online retailers should also be disrupted by protest. The high consumption model of wasteful resource use facilitated by and encouraged by advertising and branding of goods often created in states with poor labour and environmental safeguards, cannot often be highlighted in the countries of manufacture, they can however be highlighted at point of retail.”

Conor Mcdonald, 46, a property owner and manager from Liverpool, concluded: “Let’s start hitting companies and businesses that are committing ecocide. Name and shame. Hit their pockets. If we educate people and they in turn stop using these services, companies will have to change.”

Local action

There was also strong support for XR lobbying politicians to bring about change. The second key demand of the group is that the government should declare a climate emergency and introduce the radical target of reducing carbon emissions down to zero by 2025. They have secured meetings with Gove, while Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has ensured there will be a vote in the House of Commons.

Marion Winslow, 64, a psychotherapist from Reading, said: “Ask for a commitment from governments to do everything humanly possible to get a worldwide commitment to act in concert in directly reducing and then eliminating fossil fuel extraction as Mike Berners-Lee argues in his book There is No Planet B.

“Probably through effective use of carbon pricing combined with the ‘human technology’ of effective communication/Nonviolent Communication and the existing experts in global governance and its challenges. The proposals in the book could also be introduced into citizenship education in schools on a rapid timescale.”

Micheal Shea, 63, retired and living in Sydney, Australia, said that XR should “become more involved in the political process and in more political decision making, politics is responsible for the state the world is in [today].”

There was also a clear call for XR to focus on local action, and for its members and supporters to build vibrant, inclusive and creative groups in their own communities. Schools were also seen as an important space for winning hearts and minds.

Escalate

Rita Bouchard, 54, from Los Angeles, works in education and said: “Since most educators in some way, shape, or form know and care about climate change, the next thing XR should move on is creating discussion starters.

“The discussion / dialogue starters could be used to gauge student feelings about the climate and set into place inquiry projects where kids can think of solutions. The younger the kids the better, because most kids love the earth and all the organisms that share it. And they have not been so stifled [that they cannot] have creative solutions.

If climate change [action has a] sense of urgency for them, they won’t stop talking about the ideas they have. Teachers willing to implement a participatory curriculum will allow those ideas (however crazy) to be heard and give voice to those kids. This will set into action a praxis leading to self-generating self-motivating community that feels power to change “what is”…Who doesn’t love a youngster who wants to affect change!”

Jacquie Mercer, 59, a technical writer from Cambridge, said: “Could XR block the traffic in a different city each week, going around the country? Could XR be active with the school children who miss school on Fridays? Could campaigners offer to go into schools – on Fridays – to take part in lessons or hold meetings in breaks?”

Mark Keir, 59, a gardener from West Drayton, took part in the London actions and was among those who were arrested suggested that XR activists “take a breather from national actions to regenerate and to consider successes and failings, what to do better and how to escalate.

Marvellous

“Autumn might seem a good time for the next national action though we live in very fluid times. In the meantime, local actions should serve to keep us in the news and public awareness. Personally, I would like to see a revival of the Earth Marches but with direct interaction with communities on the way – such as the Extinction Speech, or engagement with local environmental and social care campaigns.”

The style and ethics of XR was also important to those who responded. There was a call for XR to “keep upping the ante in creative ways, stay loving, demonstrate a better way of being with others,” and also to “become more radical – in a good way.” Other respondents said the actions should be “peaceful” and “cause no harm”

More than 50 readers of The Ecologist gave their views to participate in this article. A total of 23 described themselves as members of XR, while 16 took place in the London direct actions. Three were arrested (and made clear they were happy to have this reported).

Carl Blumanthal, 58, a vet from South Africa, who took part in the London protests, captured the mood when he said XR must “not let up! I think what has been achieved is marvellous. It represents the beginning of the Great Turning. I hear the first creakings of the machine and feel hope… I feel the same glimmers of hope as when the end of Apartheid was nigh.”  

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

Three protesters have glued themselves to City Hall in London to raise awareness of climate change ahead of the EU elections.

Andrew Medhurst, an ex-banker, Larch Maxey, a teacher, and Roger Hallam, a PhD student, are all running as independent candidates in the EU elections as part of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Independents group.

Mothiur Rahman, a lawyer who is standing for the group, said outside of City Hall: “Not enough is being done. We are taking the practice … of non-violent civil disobedience into the European elections, because the status quo isn’t working.

Inspired

“Would you put your child on a bus if there were a 50/50 chance of it crashing? We need to act now, it’s an emergency.

“We’ve chosen City Hall because (Mayor) Sadiq Khan has made some steps – the London Assembly has declared a Climate Emergency – that’s just a declaration, it’s just words.

“It’s not enough – we can’t let this be a greenwashing. The dangers are quite clear.”

The group, which is fielding nine candidates in the European elections, said it has been inspired by youth climate protesters.

Citizens

Its manifesto involves three aims, similar to that of the protest group Extinction Rebellion:

– The Council of Ministers and the European Parliament must tell the truth and take action to declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency.

– The Declaration on a Climate and Ecological Emergency must demand a zero carbon Europe by a date no later than 2030.

– National Citizen Assemblies on Climate & Ecological Justice must be instituted and have a leading role in shaping a zero carbon Europe

This Author

Mason Boycott-Owen is a reporter with the Press Association.

Environmental protesters have targeted the cycling team sponsored by energy giant Ineos.

The cyclists formerly known as Team Sky are taking part in the Tour de Yorkshire and demonstrators gathered at the team bus at the start of the event in Doncaster.

The protest comes after Friends of the Earth issued an open letter to team principal Sir Dave Brailsford, accusing chemical multinational Ineos of using sport to “greenwash” its name given its interests in fracking and its status as a large-scale producer of plastic.

Villages

Questions about fracking and plastics dominated the Team Ineos launch press conference, which was held this week at a remote pub in North Yorkshire.

The British-registered squad are known as Team Ineos as of this week, after the team was sold to the UK’s richest man Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is the Ineos chairman.

Anti-fracking groups were among the several dozen protesters who waved placards outside the team bus where the opening stage of the race to Selby was due to start on Thursday. One protester shouted “sell out” as riders emerged from the bus.

Another protester, Deborah Gibson, told the Press Association: “We’re here to raise the issue of Team Ineos basically being here to ‘green-sheen’ their brand. There is nothing green about what Ineos do.”

Ms Gibson, from Harthill in South Yorkshire, said several villages in her area are due to be fracked in the near future.

Renewable

Elizabeth Clifton, from Misson, near Doncaster, said she had been protesting for several months over planned projects in her area, and described the Tour de Yorkshire as a “gift” for protesters.

“This is brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” she said. “Our group is up at the start and there’s a lot of people from different groups. I don’t think there’ll be anything physical. There may be some shouting.”

Critics say the amount of water needed for fracking is bad for the environment and claim it releases dangerous chemicals. They also say governments should focus on renewable energy.

Breakthroughts

Fracking restarted in the UK last autumn in Lancashire after it was suspended in 2011 following two earthquakes in the Blackpool area.

After energy firm Cuadrilla began fracking at Preston New Road in October, work had to be halted on several occasions because tremors above regulated limits were detected.

Cuadrilla and Ineos have called for the regulations on tremors to be relaxed to allow them to exploit shale gas reserves.

Ineos chairman Sir Jim has dismissed many of the concerns around fracking, calling many protest groups “ignorant”, criticising the government for listening to a “noisy minuscule minority”, and insisting his company had made significant breakthroughs on expanding the recycling of plastic.

This Author

This story is from the Press Association. Photograph: DrillOrDrop. 

Environmental protesters have targeted the cycling team sponsored by energy giant Ineos.

The cyclists formerly known as Team Sky are taking part in the Tour de Yorkshire and demonstrators gathered at the team bus at the start of the event in Doncaster.

The protest comes after Friends of the Earth issued an open letter to team principal Sir Dave Brailsford, accusing chemical multinational Ineos of using sport to “greenwash” its name given its interests in fracking and its status as a large-scale producer of plastic.

Villages

Questions about fracking and plastics dominated the Team Ineos launch press conference, which was held this week at a remote pub in North Yorkshire.

The British-registered squad are known as Team Ineos as of this week, after the team was sold to the UK’s richest man Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is the Ineos chairman.

Anti-fracking groups were among the several dozen protesters who waved placards outside the team bus where the opening stage of the race to Selby was due to start on Thursday. One protester shouted “sell out” as riders emerged from the bus.

Another protester, Deborah Gibson, told the Press Association: “We’re here to raise the issue of Team Ineos basically being here to ‘green-sheen’ their brand. There is nothing green about what Ineos do.”

Ms Gibson, from Harthill in South Yorkshire, said several villages in her area are due to be fracked in the near future.

Renewable

Elizabeth Clifton, from Misson, near Doncaster, said she had been protesting for several months over planned projects in her area, and described the Tour de Yorkshire as a “gift” for protesters.

“This is brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” she said. “Our group is up at the start and there’s a lot of people from different groups. I don’t think there’ll be anything physical. There may be some shouting.”

Critics say the amount of water needed for fracking is bad for the environment and claim it releases dangerous chemicals. They also say governments should focus on renewable energy.

Breakthroughts

Fracking restarted in the UK last autumn in Lancashire after it was suspended in 2011 following two earthquakes in the Blackpool area.

After energy firm Cuadrilla began fracking at Preston New Road in October, work had to be halted on several occasions because tremors above regulated limits were detected.

Cuadrilla and Ineos have called for the regulations on tremors to be relaxed to allow them to exploit shale gas reserves.

Ineos chairman Sir Jim has dismissed many of the concerns around fracking, calling many protest groups “ignorant”, criticising the government for listening to a “noisy minuscule minority”, and insisting his company had made significant breakthroughs on expanding the recycling of plastic.

This Author

This story is from the Press Association. Photograph: DrillOrDrop. 

There exists a moment every year, around late April at about 10.45pm, where I find myself wrapped in overcoat and scarf, huddled in with 30 or so people somewhere in a woodland, waiting for folk song to be sung.

We will be in complete darkness, sitting on crisp, winter-worn leaves, when a familiar thought crosses my mind. We are gathered deep in a thicket somewhere in Sussex, or perhaps Kent, having met only hours earlier, to listen as many other audiences will be listening that very moment in concert halls around the country.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

But ours is a very special kind of concert. This musical collaboration is completely different from any other happening that night probably anywhere in the world. 

Sensuous mastersinger

I and one other ‘trained’ human musician sit silently, listening reverentially, and then, when the spirit calls, join in interpretive improvisation with a male nightingale perched maybe only 10 feet away as he sings his night song.

His ear-throbbingly loud cascade of over 200 phrases and sounds is a declarative, primal and utterly decorative pronouncement of his urge to connect to other nightingales and this landscape we are immersed in, and in doing so hopefully to find a mate.

But a returning thought teases my mind as we crouch entranced by the fluid and staccato notes of this sensuous mastersinger weaving decorations around the night’s silence. It’s impossible not to think upon the scarcity of this bird and the privilege of our respectful proximity and the acres of land that are sadly no longer bathed in ‘nightingaleness’ or any other red-list species’ springtime song as they once would have been.

The music bit of my brain also imagines the many ancient songs of Britain, Europe and the Near East that revere this bird’s exquisite vocal prowess and liquid-like lamentation.

But more than anything I wonder: why do we not experience music like this more often? Naked to the elements, free of physical boundaries, of hierarchies, of stages, of platforms, of red rope or red tape.

Nest collective

Music experienced intimately, in circles, knees overlapping one another, each person responsible for maintaining the silence, and architects of both concert hall and concerto, each a contributor to this experience.

Putting the environmental challenges aside – the cold, the possible wet, the lack of cushions – what we reap from taking this risk, of daring to experience music outside in Nature, is an exhilaration of all our senses simultaneously being fired off at once.

We realise that the context in which we have grown accustomed to hearing music nowadays denies us so much sensation that for millennia has been the forge in which our music, our language and our stories have evolved. 

This has become the philosophy and daring practice of Singing With Nightingales and many of the public events, campfire concerts, pilgrimages and musical experiences that we have developed at The Nest Collective, an organisation specialising in extraordinary music in unexpected places, in London and beyond.

The most pronounced of these are the Nightingale concerts, but also our Sussex Turtle Dove and Scottish Salmon pilgrimages – each one taking the songs born of the land back to the land.

Song repatriation

These radical ‘open to anyone’ experiences are all permission-granting interventions of communal song repatriation and Nature adoration.

Embedded in what we do in these events is the ‘broadcasting’ of sonic heirloom seeds in an attempt to restore and reinvigorate that ancient and intuitive coexistence with which our known (and long since forgotten) folk songs and the patterns of Nature have evolved. 

The reason is simple. We are Nature. And we need Nature as much as it needs us. Our collective repertoire of traditional Indigenous song has been inherited via a lineage of deeply connected ancestors whose attunement to the way of Nature is held within these songs.

As contour lines of OS maps can restore to a keen hiker’s memory a much-loved valley’s undulation, so too can folk songs. They suggest to those who carried and carry them an intergenerationally accumulated knowing of the significance of that particular bird or flower, that oak tree or meadow, that landscape and story, and how it’s hitched to every other tree, bird, field and indeed ‘pretty fair maid’ those old singers would have ever loved.

These songs of the land and about the land are declarations of our dependency on this Earth. 

Echosystem

Our own British tradition, though deeply secular, bears all the hallmarks of an atavistic and devotional practice that holds the land sacred.

Separate the song from both ‘echosystem’ and ecosystem, and the flame long tended within will turn to dull ash – ceasing to radiate that benevolent vitality held in the collective consciousness of its songful alumni.

Alas, many a folk song today can be seen curling like the dorsal fin of a captive orca destined for a life of mere entertainment. But, like the Nature-rewilding programmes The Nest Collective works with and emulates, another way is possible.

Take the example of Knepp Castle Estate, with its blossoming population of turtle doves (nationally in a freefall 95 percent rate of decline). Our annual pilgrimage charts the 20 miles to the estate from Rusper village, the original site of the ancient folk song ‘The Turtle Dove’, collected there in 1905 by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

As we peregrinate through Sussex, we declaim this wild hymn to wells, churchyards, river sources, ancient boundary oaks and unsuspecting village shoppers, declaring its vitalness in playful irreverent worship.

Reclaim meaning

The same too with our river Dee blessing pilgrimage, rewilding the Scottish Highland ballads to the rapidly disappearing Cairngorm salmon and their vital symbiotic partner, the freshwater pearl mussel.

By taking song back to its source, an indescribable act of restoration occurs, both inward and outward. The songs reclaim meaning and help heal and enhance our often complicated relationship with the land.

The payoff is an enhanced sense of duty to care harder and deeper. Folk song, like Nature, is in the participation – we do it through our feet, our voices and our hearts.

Join us on our journeys, or better still make your own ones up, but do it fast, before the land and the songs fall forever silent. 

This Author 

Sam Lee and Nest Collective curate outdoor concerts between nightingales and selected musical artists. Performances of Singing With Nightingales continue until 26 May 2019. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Image: Kev Chapman, Flickr. 

Music history looks set to be made this week as the first ever release of pure birdsong soars into the UK charts.

Let Nature Sing by the RSPB features 25 of the UK’s most beloved and endangered birds, and is currently at number 11 in the midweek charts.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is calling on the public to download, stream and share the single so that birdsong is flying high in the charts on “Dawn Chorus Day” this Sunday 5 May – spreading the word that nature is in crisis and that people across the UK are passionate about its recovery.

Outpouring of support

Music and nature lovers across the UK have been buying and streaming the 2 ½ minute track in their 1000’s, with fans celebrating the calming and inspiring sounds of birdsong.

Whilst only half way through the chart week, the huge public outpouring of support for nature that this track has unleashed looks set to propel birdsong to the top of the official charts this Friday.

Over 40 million birds have vanished from UK skies in just 50 years, while 56 percent of species in the UK are in decline.

One in ten of our wildlife are critically endangered. Nature is in crisis, and new research from the RSPB has demonstrated that the UK is dangerously unaware of the impending danger.

Martin Harper, the RSPB’s director of conservation said: “Over the last few days, thousands of people have bought and streamed our track to hear nature’s finest singers and show that they love bird song. This has started a national conversation as millions will have heard, seen and read the facts showing that, shockingly, nature is in crisis in the UK.

Powerful message

Harper continued: “The response to Let Nature Sing sends a powerful message that yes, nature is amazing but it is also in trouble.  

“The good news is that it is not too late, we know what needs to be done and together we can take action to restore it for us and for future generations.”

Adrian Thomas, RSPB birdsong expert said: “The response to Let Nature Sing has been fantastic. We started with the simple idea of getting more people talking about how birds are vanishing from our skies and how nature is falling silent, and now beautiful birdsongs are sharing the charts with major international recording artists.

“If we all continue to listen, share and talk about what nature’s chorus means to each of us, that message becomes harder to ignore, so let’s climb the charts even further.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the RSPB.