Recent studies of ecosystem and climate change (1) reveal that species on land and sea are on the move, redistributed by shifts in the climate system.

These redistributions are unprecedented in their scale and cross-system reach. They are also having profound impacts on human well-being and global geo-politics. Nations are going to war over fishing grounds, the coffee belt is shifting north, as are many diseases and their vectors.

Despite the billions poured into global conservation initiatives every year, we are now experiencing a sixth mass extinction event and the collapse of many species.

Conservation, colonialism

This should give us pause to reflect and ask: how well equipped are these dominant conservation practices to respond to species shifts and the degradation of biological and cultural diversity? To answer this question, we must consider the historical origins of today’s dominant conservation practices.

Founded upon the preservation of natural landscapes and sites considered to be of high value, such as Yellowstone and the Serengeti, our current conservation ethic is a product of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of ‘Western’ lifeways, rooted in farming and settlement, across the temperate regions of our planet (2). 

This classical approach to the conservation of nature has focused on identifying, demarcating and policing iconic examples of ‘original nature’ to keep them intact for posterity.

These conservation actions have had, and continue to have, profound implications for the Maasai, Sámi, Native Americans and many other Indigenous peoples who have, for millennia, conserved their territories through sophisticated knowledge and governance systems. Seen in its full historical context, conservation, as understood from a Western perspective, has been a double-edged sword since its inception.

Despite rapidly accelerating environmental degradation, over the past century societies subscribing to this mainstream conservation ethic have continued to enact and entrench policies and conservation actions that accept the binary axis of ‘saving nature’ or ‘using nature’ (3). This imagined dichotomy has remained the dominant trend in nature discourses in mainstream societies. The recent emergence of ‘Half-Earth’ conservation proposals is a rich example of this.

Lessons from Chernobyl 

In the 21st Century our understandings of what nature is have been enhanced by complex ecological discoveries, ecological disasters and the interlinkages of nature and Indigenous traditional knowledge (4). Combined, these discoveries, disasters and the re-appreciation of indigenous knowledge have demonstrated, for those willing to see and accept them, the weaknesses of the binary ‘use’ vs ‘conservation’ approach.

In Europe, the 1986 Chernobyl accident brought home the transboundary nature of environmental pollution, helping to foster further cooperation amongst European Union countries. And, as in the case of Chernobyl, we are now waking up to seismic, system-wide shifts in nature that require a reformative approach, both to global land uses and conservation methods. 

Svetlana Alexievich, a Nobel prize-winning Belarusian journalist who has written extensively about Chernobyl (5), describes how the shock of the disaster led initially to critical rethinking about industrial progress and nature conservation. Nature, which had been carefully ‘othered’ in the parks and wildernesses of Europe, returned in the form of radioactive rains, ecosystem degradation and new health risks.  The contamination spread across borders. 

Alhough the totality of the Chernobyl disaster’s disordering shock has largely been forgotten, for Alexievich, Chernobyl was a civilizational watermark and a wake-up call to reflect on our understanding of nature from within the current downward spiral.

New realities, urgent reforms

Global shifts in species and whole ecosystems as a result of climate change compel us to re-assess the nature of nature and take urgent steps to reform nature conservation and human land use in a time of new realities (6). 

Old ecological baselines are often meaningless today, as new food webs emerge and novel ecosystems displace age-old systems of biodiversity. Cultural diversity, especially in the context of Indigenous and traditional societies, is also transforming in relation to shifts in species, biodiversity and climate. 

Those societies that express ‘non-global thoughts’ in their multiple, often endangered languages face existential threats, such as land-grabbing, mining and the collapse of ecosystems in their homelands. Global agreements on biodiversity and climate change are slow to tackle these problems and vulnerable to unexpected, violent shifts in policy, as we can see in the U.S.A today.

A reformative approach to land use, conservation and the preservation of both biological and cultural diversity must therefore fulfill multiple, simultaneous goals across scales. 

Dynamic

First, this approach needs to be dynamic. Conservation actions must respond to the potential emergence of novel ecosystems that evolve from shifts in weather conditions and species redistributions.

These responses might take the form of resilience corridors and amorphic territorial shapes that challenge the old in-situ approach to delineating permanent protected areas.

Dynamic conservation areas may also be seasonal. For example, if and when the migration patterns of birds change, certain habitats need to be protected more strictly during the time when flocks of birds need them. 

Endemic

Second, this new approach should respect, guarantee and honor the rights of Indigenous and local-traditional peoples, their endemic governance and land uses.

The emergence and recognition of Indigenous- and community-conserved areas (ICCAs) embodies this approach.

ICCAs have the potential to support and create large territories of protected areas that allow a given Indigenous people or a community the time, scale and space to survive and to conserve their ecosystems in the midst of transformative changes. 

Re-wilded

Thirdly and lastly, we need to address the issue of degraded and ‘lost’ lands, especially in the context of land abandonment and urbanisation. Even at their most ambitious, the emission cuts currently proposed by the world’s governments will not be sufficient to meaningfully avert the climate crisis.

The preservation of existing carbon sinks, especially in the Arctic, where large, relatively-intact territories can still be found, is of global significance. But equally important are those large-scale areas where natural values have been lost. 

These ‘lost lands’ contain tremendous potential for re-wilding. If lands that have lost their natural richness due to human activity are re-wilded and given space to recover, or in the case of Indigenous and local-traditional communities, to be governed and nurtured by their traditional and original owners, they can emerge as new carbon sinks and safe havens for a range of species, especially birds. 

Successes are already emerging around the planet. In the European North, the boreal forest can make a relatively-fast recovery if spared industrial logging and other land use pressures. As seen in Eastern Finland, marshmires that have been drained can be rewetted to create prime habitats for wading birds and duck species, as natural ecosystem succession converts them back to carbon sinks.

And, as demonstrated by the the Elwha catchment area‘s revival in the Pacific Northwest of the USA (8), the removal of hydro-power stations from salmon rivers can re-establish the nutrient flows between the coastal rainforest and the ocean, bringing interconnected eco-systems back to life.

These Authors

Dr Tero Mustonen – a passionate defender of traditional worldview and cosmology of his people, is a Finn and head of the village of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland. Professionally, he works for the Snowchange Cooperative, a non-profit organization based in Finland with members across the Arctic, including the communities of Eastern Sámi, Chukchi, Yukaghir and many more. Mustonen is well-known scholar of Arctic biodiversity, climate change and indigenous issues.

Professor Ari Lehtinen – is Professor of Geography at the University of Eastern Finland where his research and teaching focus is on the politics of forests in the age of globalisation, urban renewal and environmental change. In his work Ari examines the ongoing multiscalar internationalisation of the forest industry by analysing and comparing the profiles of major companies.

References

1. G. T. Pecl et al., Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being, Science 355, 6332 (2017).

2.A. W. Crosby, Ecological imperialism. The Ecological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986).

4.G. Raygorodetsky, Vivir al límite, National Geographic 41, 5 (2017)

5.Alexievich, Svetlana. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (Macmillan, London 2006)

6.T. Bonebrake et al., Managing consequences of climate-driven species redistribution requires integration of ecology, conservation and social science, Biological Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12344(2017)

7.Tonra, C. et al., The rapid return of marine-derived nutrients to a freshwater food web following dam removal, Biological Conservation 192 (2015) 130–134

The UK Foreign Office spent funds from the Official Development Aid budget to promote shale gas drilling in China, as well as to support expansion of oil and gas industries in Brazil, Mexico, India, and Myanmar – a report released this week by energy watchdog Platform has revealed. 

Analysis by Platform – released in collaboration with Christian Aid and Friends of the Earth – is based on official Foreign Office data and shows the Prosperity Fund financed sixteen projects of strategic support to oil and gas industries.

The Prosperity Fund disburses Official Development Aid funds with the aim of “[removing] barriers to economic growth in order to reduce poverty”. 

Intense criticism

The report follows revelations last week that energy minister Claire Perry had privately met the shale gas industry regarding a plan to “create a ‘UK model’ for shale gas extraction which can be exported around the world”.

Two Prosperity Fund projects aim to export UK expertise in shale gas regulation to China. 

At the same time the UK’s own regulatory controls on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) are under intense criticism, including legal action, from communities exposed to the impacts of fracking and councils concerned about government policy to overrule local objections.

Research author Anna Markova, from Platform, said: “The Foreign Office is spending aid money to make economies more dependent on oil and gas, including promoting fracking.

“We need to be urgently doing precisely the opposite. Funds like these should be spent to support a managed and just transition away from fossil fuels.”

Inadequate regulation

The UK is a signatory to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including “urgent action on climate change” (SDG13). The UK is also committed to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies as a member of the G20 and as part of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.

Barbara Richardson, a spokesperson from Frack Free Lancashire, commented: “It is quite unbelievable that the UK should have the hubris to suggest that it can export a regulatory system that is clearly not fit for purpose.

“Our regulation of fracking is full of holes. Of ten recommendations made in 2012 by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering to ensure fracking could be considered safe, only one has been fully implemented.

“It is hard to understand how any country could believe that our rag bag of so-called expertise in this area could be fit for purpose. Fracking is an industry that has failed at every level in the UK.

“How can we set ourselves up as being some form of leading light?”

Climate chaos 

Rose Dickinson, Friends of the Earth campaigner, said: “Our government’s claim to be climate leaders cannot be taken seriously while it continues to push fracking at home and abroad.

“We need to be moving away from fossil fuels, not showing other countries the best way to dig up more. Public money should not be used to fund further climate chaos.”

Christian Aid’s Global Lead – Climate Change, Dr Kat Kramer added: “Rather than funding prosperity, the Prosperity Fund is subsidizing poverty.

“It is a perversity beyond measure to be subsidizing fossil fuel companies to cause climate change impacts, which affect the poorest and most vulnerable the most.

“There is no such thing as a “clean” fossil fuel, and since real clean alternatives exist – including energy demand reduction and efficiency measures, and renewable sources of energy – there is no excuse to be funding these sources of dangerous climate change.”

Cutting emissions

Kramer continued: “The UK is looking to cut its own emissions to net zero, and this level of reduction is needed global by 2050.

“The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clear that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions radically and very rapidly, and that the world needs to end its fossil fuel addiction.

“Subsidies to fossil producers is the antithesis of sustainable development support – which is the raison d’être of the Prosperity Fund.”

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a commissioning editor at The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Platform London.

A levy on packaging which would be refunded to companies that could prove they were using recycled materials has been proposed as the best measure to tackle the world’s rubbish crisis.

Policy measures to deliver increased use of post-consumer recycled materials (PCR) in the UK economy have been outlined in a new report commissioned by WWF-UK and the Resource Association.

The report – Demand Recycled: Policy Options for Increasing the Demand for Post-Consumer Recycled Materials – analyses a range of policy options and sets out fresh thinking on the likely effectiveness of various policy interventions. 

‘Freebate’ system

It responds to the growing need for detail on potential policy options in the implementation phase of the forthcoming Resources and Waste Strategy for England.

The report reviews the approaches used to date to increase recycling, investigates the causes of market failure and considers a wide range of potential policy measures to enhance the market for recycled material. 

It then investigates in detail a shortlist of four types of policy measures to increase demand: materials taxation; a fee-rebate (or ‘feebate’) system; tradable credits and the establishment of a single Producer Responsibility organisation.

It recommends further consideration of a ‘feebate’ system as the most attractive policy option.  It rejects materials taxation based on the complexity of delivery. 

The report suggests that a single compliance scheme and single organisation for producer responsibility would be complementary to any policy option used to increase demand for PCR.

Fresh thinking

The feebate scheme would comprise a levy on all packaging which is refunded to organisations demonstrating their use of PCR through the number of certified credits they hold. The system is favoured due to its versatility in design, the reduced administrative complexity relative to the tax-based measure, and the stability of the incentive it gives.

Ray Georgeson, Chief Executive of the Resource Association said: “All parts of the resources supply chain for too long have talked in general terms about the need to boost demand for recycled material and use demand-pull measures to develop the markets to assist in reaching higher recycling targets. 

“This report now adds a real level of detail to this discussion with some much-needed fresh thinking.  The Resource Association was delighted to collaborate with WWF-UK in commissioning this work from Eunomia as a contribution to the wider, detailed debate that is now needed.”

Dr Lyndsey Dodd, Head of Marine Policy at WWF-UK, said: “Our oceans are choking on plastic, 90 percent of the world’s sea birds have fragments of plastic in their stomach.

“Despite the public outcry, more products are being made with virgin, or new, plastic than with recycled plastic.

“A new system is needed – where a levy on all packaging is used to reward those using the most recycled material – to incentivise the use of recycled material and support the target announced in the budget for a minimum of 30 percent recycled plastic in products.”

Productive co-operation

Dodd concluded: “Nature is on life support, and we must act now to save it. “

Dr Dominic Hogg, chairman of Eunomia Research and Consulting, the primary author of the report, concluded: “New challenges on resource use require new thinking and new collaborations. 

“I was delighted to be commissioned by WWF-UK and the Resource Association to conduct this analysis and it is good to see productive NGO and industry co-operation on shared concerns. 

“As the Treasury considers its proposal for a tax on plastics, with consideration of exemptions for materials with high recycled content, we believe this type of mechanism should be a strong candidate for consideration as it combines a few with an incentive to use PCR.”

The report was launched at the Resource Association’s Parliamentary Reception yesterday, sponsored by DS Smith Recycling.  The event was hosted by Alex Sobel, Member of Parliament for Leeds North West, who addressed the meeting alongside Jochen Behr, Head of Recycling at DS Smith.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Eunomia. 

Everyone is talking about Brexit. Leave or Remain? Deal or No Deal? Amidst all this political turmoil, school cooks and caterers up and down the country are working hard serving children with healthy and high-quality hot school lunches. But they are facing ever greater challenges.

I was a school dinner lady in the 1990s and early 2000s. School meals were chronically underfunded. Caterers and cooks were working hard, but against tremendous odds. The food often wasn’t up to the quality of today.

We’ve come a long way since then. In 2003 I teamed up with the Soil Association to launch the Food for Life campaign. Jamie Oliver then joined the battle for better school meals, mandatory nutrition standards were agreed, and Universal Infant Free School Meals were introduced. Today, more children than ever before are enjoying a good school lunch. But all that is under threat.

Quality alternative

Food for Life is launching a ‘State of the Nation’ report on children’s food this week. The report includes interviews with cooks, caterers and other stakeholders that reveal a cocktail of pressures and challenges that threaten school meals, with a disorderly ‘No Deal’ Brexit threatening to be the final straw.

Caterers have faced sharp rises in ingredient costs this year. The costs of some fresh fruits and vegetables have risen by up to 20 percent. Staples such as pasta, cheese and yoghurt have also risen steeply. One caterer reported that eggs are up 14 percent.

On top of this, caterers have had to handle the introduction of the Living Wage, the Apprenticeship Levy, and rising pension contributions. One local authority caterer is facing an increase in staff costs of £330,000 this year due to the introduction of the Living Wage.

All the caterers that I’ve spoken with are working hard to maintain the quality of school meals, tweaking menus and buying in more cost-efficient ways. But for many, the numbers don’t add up. 

Cold ‘pick and mix’ lunchbox options are being introduced instead of hot meals. “This year will be the tipping point for school meals,” one caterer told me. “Pressure is mounting on expenditure and cold meals will be the result.” 

Healthier items such as fresh fruit are being reduced on menus and replaced with cheaper alternatives. Salmon is also being reduced and replaced on menus. Caterers are being forced to source lower quality ingredients. One caterer said that tens of thousands of pounds will be saved by switching from a locally sourced cheese to a lower quality alternative from abroad.

Political priority

Caterers raised a question mark over the spend of school meal budgets, including the £2.30 allocated to each meal served under Universal Infant Free School Meals. Some caterers were concerned that local authorities might be ‘siphoning’ off funds for school meals to plug black holes in their budgets elsewhere. Local authorities have faced challenging cuts in recent years and the budget for school meals isn’t ringfenced. 

Among the caterers who expressed concern was one who said that they already paid ‘central charges’ to the local authority, covering payroll and procurement, of over £1 million per year, but this was increasing by £200,000 this year alone. In parallel, spend on ingredients was being cut, even as ingredient costs were rising. The only way they could make ends meet was to source lower quality produce. 

This is a difficult situation, but Brexit could make it far worse. Earlier this year, the House of Lords European Union Committee warned that if an agreement cannot be negotiated, a disorderly ‘No Deal’ Brexit is likely to result in an average tariff on food imports of 22 percent. While this would not equate to a 22 percent increase in food prices, it would exacerbate existing price rises as 30 percent of the UK’s food comes from the EU. 

A sudden and significant increase in ingredient costs, hitting caterers overnight, would be impossible for many to handle. Over the years working with Food for Life, I’ve visited schools across the country and I have seen more and more children who are hungry and for whom a hot school meal is their only hot meal of the day. Now those hot meals could be replaced by cold options.

We might not know how Brexit is going to turn out, but the Government can still take action to protect school meals. To begin with, they should ringfence the budget for school meals and provide greater oversight on their spend. Funding for school meals should be spent on school meals – is that so much to ask? They must place greater political priority on school meals, and the Healthy Rating Scheme for primary schools promised in 2016 should be introduced.

This Author

Jeanette Orrey a children’s food campaigner and former school ‘dinner lady’ who in 2012 received the MBE for her services to food in schools.

Thirty Greenpeace UK volunteers and a lifelike animatronic orangutan recreated a rainforest at the main entrance to the corporate headquarters of Mondelez, makers of Oreo cookies near Uxbridge.

Five climbers scaled the outside of the building to hang a banner that reads ‘Oreo, drop dirty palm oil’, and volunteers are decorating the building with giant Oreo-shaped stickers.

They are also handing out information to staff about the impacts of Oreo’s links to palm oil producers that destroy rainforest.

Dirtiest trader

As staff arrived, they heard sounds of the rainforest along with recorded messages expressing customers’ disappointment at the company’s link to forest destroyers.

Greenpeace is calling on the makers Oreo to drop Wilmar International, the biggest and dirtiest palm oil trader in the world.

Mondelez, which also makes Cadbury chocolate and Ritz crackers, is one of the biggest palm oil buyers worldwide. It promised to stop buying palm oil from forest destroyers in 2010 but has yet to keep that promise.

A Greenpeace International investigation shows palm oil suppliers to Mondelez have destroyed 70,000 hectares of rainforest in the last two years.

Oreos, which contain palm oil, are Mondelez’s top selling product. Every year more than 40 billion Oreos are produced in 18 countries. If stacked together they would circle the earth five times.

Broken promise

Fiona Nicholls, a Greenpeace UK campaigner, said: “Oreo promised to stop buying palm oil from forest destroyers years ago but nothing’s changed and now, orangutans are literally dying for a biscuit.

“We’ve seen just how many people care about deforestation for palm oil this week and we’ve brought messages from hundreds of Oreo’s customers here today. It’s time Oreo listened.

“Palm oil can be grown without destroying rainforests and Oreo can help change the palm oil industry for good by dropping the dirtiest palm oil trader of all – Wilmar.”

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Greenpeace UK.

Guerilla projectionists have targeted Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, with a series of messages and demands shone on to the Earls Court Masterplan where the iconic Earls Court Exhibition Centre once stood.

The evocative images called on the mayor to listen to the community and to intervene in the future of the faltering joint venture between Transport for London and Capital & Counties Properties Plc (Capco).

Capco has recently disclosed that they are in talks with the Hong Kong billionaire owner of CK Asset Holdings about a deal to sell on the Earls Court Masterplan with no community input as to its future. 

Iconic venie

Their main refrain was: “Bring back the beating heart of Earl’s Court for a green and transparent future”.

The projectionists demanded that “the world’s greenest venue” and “homes for all” be built on the site of the former iconic exhibition centre.

They also demanded action on air quality – “This is a wasteland, pollution is killing us” – provision of green space for children, and redress for the broken promises of the non- existent Earl’s Court “Olympic Legacy.”

S.O.S messages and black and white film clips featuring Earl’s Court’s former existence as a double Olympic venue flickered through the pouring rain. Campaigners have called the action an alternative “Sound and Light Show” in a swipe at the loss of the global music venue – with only the noise of traffic, rain and tube trains to accompany them. 

Bella Hardwick said: “We want a future here that can be enjoyed by the Earl’s Court and wider community regardless of income.”

Sustainable future 

Save Earl’s Court Supporters Club has called on Mayor Khan to intervene in the Earls Court Masterplan so homes and employment can be generated on this complex site. 

They are demanding a green, multi-purpose exhibition centre to help promote London in a post-Brexit world.

“Mayor Khan must listen”, the campaigners said. “He has an opportunity to ditch the current Earl’s Court Masterplan and create a green and sustainable future for all of us.”

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a commissioning editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Save Earls Court Supporters Club. 

We are on a journey: a journey from separation to relationship and from dualism to unity.

One of the domin­ant dualisms of our time has been the idea of disconnection between science and spirituality. Since the age of pure reason, our educational system has been working hard to establish the conviction that science has to be free of spirituality, and that spirituality should have nothing to do with science.

The latest edition of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now!

For the past hundred years, graduates in their millions have been coming out of universities brainwashed with the belief that either spirituality is a matter of personal and private life, or it is pure ‘mumbo jumbo’. This mainstream view has ignored the scientists of the past and the present who see no dichotomy between science and spirituality.

Holistic science

The outstanding German poet and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe worked with a profound scientific spirit. In his books The Metamorphosis of Plants and Theory of Colours, he challenged the narrow and linear view of science.

With his phenomenological understanding of Nature, he expounded a more interrelated, cyclical and holistic science. But Goethe’s ideal­istic and spiritual science was neglected by students of science in most universities. He was appreciated as a great poet, but not as a scientist!

The same is true of Leonardo da Vinci. Everyone thinks of him as a great artist, but hardly anyone recognises him as a scientist.

However, our contemporary science of complexity and systems thinking finds its roots in the work of Leonardo because he was concerned with living forms and therefore embraced the science of quality as well as quantity. The moment we think of a science of quality, the word ‘spirituality’ comes to mind.

Albert Einstein was also a spiritual scientist. He said: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe […] one in the face of which we, humans, with our modest powers must feel humble.”

Unmanifest intuition

Einstein respected the religious dimension of human experience. He said: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Einstein was not talking about institutionalised and organised religious establishments – he was talking about religious experience, which is beyond measurement.

Bringing spirituality and science together will help to bring meaning and measurement together. These two should not be fragmented or separated.

A sense of unmanifested wonder and curiosity, and a sense of intuition and inspiration exist before there is empir­ical knowledge through experiments, evidence and proof to create a scientific hypothesis and a theory.

Dismissing that unmanifest intuition or inspiration, as some materialist scientists do, is a grave folly.

The word ‘spirit’ simply means ‘breath’ or ‘wind’. We cannot see the wind, we cannot touch it, or measure it, but we can feel it. As trees are moved by wind, humans are moved by spirit. Breath or wind is the invisible and subtle force that makes life possible. The visible is sustained by the invisible.

Spiritual guidance 

The outer and material reality is held together through the power of the inner and spiritual reality. Acknowledging one and denying the other is like wanting a bird to fly with only one wing.

The reality of wholeness is composed of two interrelated aspects. The Chinese called it the harmony of yin and yang. The Indians called it the balance of Shiva and Shakti: positive and negative, dark and light, silence and speech, emptiness and fullness, spirit and matter, unmanifest and manifest are part of one single whole.

Uniting science and spirituality has a very practical purpose. Science without spirituality can easily lose the ethical, moral and values-based perspective.

Scientists without the guidance of spirituality can engage in the invention of nuclear bombs and other weapons of war, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, factory farming where animals are reared in cruel conditions, and technologies that create waste, pollution and the destruction of Nature.

Science without the guidance of spiritual values has created many of the problems the world faces today. Science by itself is not benign, value-free or neutral. Therefore, science needs the helping hand of spiritual wisdom in order to maintain its integrity and modify its power. Without spiritual wisdom, science can be dangerous. Spirituality gives meaning, value and purpose to science.

Religious exclusivity 

As science needs spirituality, spirituality needs science. Without science, spirituality can easily and quickly turn into blind faith, dogmatism, sectarianism, and fundamentalism.

Unscientifically minded people may claim: “My god is the only true god and I have the truth. Everybody must be converted to my truth.”

Such narrow religious exclusivity has led to wars, conflicts, terrorism and divisions. Science helps to keep our minds open so we can seek truth and act for the benefit of the whole of humanity and for the good of all living beings, human, and other-than-human.

Do we want to live in a fragmented way, either as materialists discarding the subjective dimension of spiritual wisdom or as spiritual seekers denigrating the objective world of scientific discovery?

The choice is ours. I choose to embrace spirituality with a scientific mind. For me, science and spirituality are complementary parts of the whole.

This Author

Satish Kumar is editor emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. He was interviewed by Richard Dawkins on the subject of science and spirituality. The interview is available to watch here. The latest edition of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now!

The UK and European Union have struck their Brexit deal. The agreement puts the UK into a transition agreement from March 2019 for two years, during which time most EU laws would still apply. After that, either we extend or things change dramatically as we adopt a backstop without time limit.

At first glance, that backstop still appears to offer important environmental protections alongside a shared customs area – including a demand the UK create a robust environmental regulator.

But at a close reading, there are major differences between the proposed deal and staying within a EU customs union, which may leave the door open to the UK loosening rules on highly controversial products, such as chlorinated chicken, and backsliding on environmental protections. 

Sanitary and phytosanitary

In fact, in some ways, this is a much looser agreement than that suggested in the PM’s Chequers plan. And it has implications both for environmental protection and cross-border trade. 

Of course, this is just a draft. The agreement faces a rocky passage through parliament and then needs to be agreed by the other 27 nations – who may have views on any freedom granted to the UK to substantially weaken its agri-food standards.

So how does this work out? Under the deal, Northern Ireland stays firmly within the EU customs union and adopts large parts of the EU’s single market rules – defined for pages and pages in Annex 5 of the agreement.

This includes rules on the use of genetically modified organisms and “sanitary and phytosanitary” rules, which currently ban things like chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-fed beef – which are common in US food production – from being sold in EU shops.

Adopting the EU’s sanitary and phytosanitary rules means goods from Northern Ireland will not only avoid EU tariffs or quotas, they will also be automatically eligible for sale in the rest of the EU – so preserving an open border with the Republic of Ireland.

Two different systems

The rest of the UK, on the other hand, stays in a looser customs area (not a union). There would be no tariffs, quotas or checks on rules of origin for goods coming from England, Scotland and Wales to the EU or Northern Ireland, but there would be other “compliance” checks, because the UK would not be imposing EU product standards.

As the IPPR’s trade expert Marley Morris argues, this is still a hard Brexit.

Goods from Great Britain – which comprises England, Scotland and Wales but not Northern Ireland – would not automatically be eligible for sale to the EU either. Exporters would have to prove they comply with the EU customs code and be subject to so-called sanitary and phytosanitary checks, as well as checks on product safety requirements.

All of which means the UK doesn’t have to follow the letter of EU law. Instead, and in exchange for reducing tariffs, the UK has signed up to various broad-brush agreements, including a non-regression clause on the environment.

Non-regression

Under the non-regression clause, the UK commits to “ensure that the level of environmental protection provided by law, regulations and practices is not reduced below the level provided by the common standards applicable within the Union and the United Kingdom at the end of the transition period”.

This echoes promises made by Theresa May and Michael Gove that there would be no weakening of environmental standards after Brexit.

It goes on to list the areas covered. It states:

“With the aim of ensuring the proper functioning of the single customs territory, the Union and the United Kingdom shall ensure that the level of environmental protection provided by law, regulations and practices is not reduced below the level provided by the common standards applicable within the Union and the United Kingdom at the end of the transition period in relation to: access to environmental information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters; environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment; industrial emissions; air emissions and air quality targets and ceilings; nature and biodiversity conservation; waste management; the protection and preservation of the aquatic environment; the protection and preservation of the marine environment; the prevention, reduction and elimination of risks to human health or the environment arising from the production, use, release and disposal of chemical substances; and climate change.”

It is an impressive-sounding list, but there are three problems. First,  there seem to be some things missing.

Chlorinated chicken

The most glaring omission is any reference to food standards, sanitary or phytosanitary rules, beyond a general commitment to retain the precautionary principle. The problem with that is that the precautionary principle is pretty subjective. One minister’s precautionary banning of chlorine-washed chicken may be another’s nanny-state.

This is convenient for the UK, as it would allow international trade secretary Liam Fox room to negotiate a trade deal with the US, which has explicitly said it wants the UK to lower its standards on these areas.

I’ve asked Defra about this and I’m waiting to hear back – we’ll update here when we hear more. But many hard Brexiteers may be very pleased. This is – of course – a big departure from Chequers and its promises of environmental harmonisation and frictionless trade.

There are other gaps too. The list mentions air quality targets but not limit values on the amount of pollution in a given period, which are more legally enforceable. It talks about pesticides, but not soil and – of course – anything the EU does after the UK has left the transition agreement wouldn’t be covered by a non-regression clause, allowing the two economies to gradually diverge on environmental protection.

The second issue is that the UK does not have to follow EU environmental rules, it can define it’s own so long as it can argue that the objective is the same. As Morris argues on Twitter: “[I]n the environment this is especially complex, as UK could argue the legislation is ‘equivalent’ because it has same targets but different means of getting there – see this analysis.”

Over time EU rules will diverge from the UK’s and the non-regression clause doesn’t insist on any form of dynamic alignment (even though it does on state aid).

The third – and most fundamental – problem concerns enforcement. The agreement explicitly excludes most of the environmental clauses from most parts of a complex international arbitrational system the two sides have agreed to use to resolve other areas such as state aid (see clause 7, p358).

Independent regulator

Instead, it proposes that the UK establish a new independent regulator with the power to take the UK government to court over environmental failures. It’s a powerful and constitutionally quite radical proposal, creating an environmental check on the UK’s all-powerful executive. The document even suggests it may be monitored by Brussels in some as-yet unspecified way.

However, it is not entirely clear how all this would happen, and even less clear what would happen if the regulator doesn’t do its job. Who funds the regulator, for example, and how can that funding be independent?

“The Union will be able to adopt unilateral measures either under the Agreement or on the basis of Union law, and in line with international commitments. These measures may include the possibility to temporarily suspend obligations in the case of non-compliance with an arbitration ruling, safeguards or rebalancing measures (in the case of serious economic difficulties that are liable to persist), the listing of uncooperative jurisdiction for tax purposes, or action for health and environmental protection in line with international commitments (GATT).”

Without an arbitration ruling to base their action, upon this essentially means the EU will have extremely limited ways to enforce the environmental measures.

Hidden in the detail there is a mechanism through which the non-regression clause itself can be taken to arbitration – for example, if the UK has not implemented any regulator at all. But this relies on it being a political priority and on the EU winning an argument without being able to fall back on clear rules, case law, or any role for the commission or European Court.

This matters, because even right now – where the EU has the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to rule over the UK – it is still in non-compliance with EU rules on air pollution.

And of course, the protocol itself can be changed. It exists largely to avoid a border in the Irish Sea but should a future UK government decide to go for a simple trading arrangement with the EU (and after all, this isn’t actually that far off), non-regression clauses on the environment, which do not exist in the EU’s deal with Canada, may be even harder to enforce.

In short this deal is not a “soft Brexit”, it does not force the UK – beyond the transition period – to align indefinitely with EU environmental rules, and it provides little by way of enforcement for the clauses it does have. It is more rigorous than most international trade agreements, but leaves the government free to deregulate in a variety of areas as it goes hunting for new trading partners.

One of those areas could be chlorine-washed chicken.

Note: This story was updated, and the conclusion changed on 16 November 2018. The version at Unearthed will continue to be updated as details of the agreement become clearer.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

The UK has signed a document seeking to block efforts to make the world’s top shipping regulator more transparent, after a leading NGO called for “urgent reform” within the organisation.

An official document signed by the UK, the Cook Islands, the Marshall Islands, Panama, United Arab Emirates and the United States and submitted to the International Maritime Organisation’s working group on reform in October this year noted concerns from some members that  “further expansion of access to information” about the organisation “could lead to outside influence”. As a result the document suggested the motion be abandoned.

Next week, the IMO will hold a debate on reform at its headquarters in London. Australia is among the countries calling for greater openness at the organisation, with measures to open up meetings to the public and give more powers to journalists covering the body.

Arguing against

The IMO is the UN body is supposed to ensure the shipping industry curbs greenhouse gas emissions and limits plastic waste. In April, the organisation signed an historic agreement to dramatically reduce carbon emissions from the sector. The agreement commits shipping companies to halve their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, compared to 2008 levels.

But the London-based organisation has been dogged by allegations that it is too close to industry.

Transparency International – which published research earlier this year warning that the influences at the IMO could undermine efforts to combat climate change – said it was “concerned” by the document and warned that the UK’s position “could hamper reform” at the organisation.

Transparency International found that journalists said they were unable to report freely on the organisation, while non-profits could face expulsion from the IMO if they criticised it. Shipping giants were found to have “undue influence over the policymaking process”. While five small states – Panama, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Malta and the Bahamas – many known as tax havens for ships, had an outsize influence at the body, contributing 43.5% of funding for the organisation from member states.

In 2017, delegates at the IMO expressed concern at the value of gifts given out at the organisation. Climate Home reported that presents left on countries tables were so heavy that they damaged 137 headphones and five microphones.The Transparency International report prompted a move by the IMO to open up more to the public, with the body announcing this summer that its governing council would consider reforms. But according to the document seen by Unearthed, the UK has backed countries arguing against these efforts.

Heavy presents

A section of the document published on October 19th 2018 reads:

“During the 120th session of Council, the Secretariat submitted document C 120/4/3 wherein they provided a synopsis of IMO’s current policies on releasing information to the public. During the subsequent discussion, the Council agreed to make some changes to increase the level of transparency that is afforded to the public. It was clear from the interventions made that a number of countries had reservations regarding further expansion of access to information, some attributing this to a concern that it could lead to outside influence. Based on this, the co-sponsors recommend that this topic/issue not be included in the terms of reference of the Working Group.”

Unearthed asked the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the government department that deals with IMO, for a comment on this story. An agency spokesperson told Unearthed the UK has “always actively supported transparency in the IMO and will continue to do so.” A spokesperson added that the document signed by the UK was designed to refer to “the outcome of the last session, not the view of the co-sponsors” – including the UK.

Shipping currently contributes two percent of the world’s carbon emissions, the same as some industrialised countries. A 2015 report by the European Parliament suggested that could rise to 17 percent by 2050, if emissions are not checked.

Rueben Lifuka, vice-chair of Transparency International, said: “Unfortunately the International Maritime Organization is far too susceptible to disproportionate influence from private interests and certain Member States, meaning that there could be obstacles to meeting the targets for emissions reduction set earlier this year.”

The IMO declined to comment on this story.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

The seriousness of our environmental plight comes more clearly into view with each passing news cycle. The Canadian glaciers are melting faster than we forecast. Humanity has wiped out 60 percent of animal populations since 1970.

Only 12 years remain to act if we are to keep global temperatures below 1.5C as required – yet global action on climate change consistently falls far short of what is needed. The ecological rifts opening up are legion.

From climate change to biodiversity loss, nitrogen cycle depletion to ocean acidification, the realisation that we are at – or will soon be reaching – points of no return has dominated headlines in recent months.

New movement

Cause for alarm is clearly justified. Given the increasingly dire warnings regarding the state of our planet, hope is often hard to come by.

While the headlines have grown increasingly negative about the course of the past decade, a positive new force in climate politics has been quietly emerging. Its increasing strength holds much promise in the fight against climate change.

This is the growing involvement of workers’ movements in environmental action and campaigning. But it has not always been this way.

So many times in the past we have seen people, desperate for work, fighting to protect the dangerous, dirty industries on which their communities depend. With equal intensity, we have seen environmentalists, in the name of planetary protection, fight tooth-and-nail against those very same enterprises.

However, the ever-closer union of these movements – workers and environmentalists – brings together two of most powerful social forces we have in the fight against capitalist, profit-first development and the ecological devastation it wreaks.

Employment crisis

This coming together of workers’ and environmental movements in the UK is due in large part to the One Million Climate Jobs campaign. This campaign aims to create hope in a time of crisis.

The campaign is backed by eight major unions and sets out an approach that aims to tackle the economic, environmental and employment crises.

It proposes the creation of one million new climate jobs across the UK through the development of a National Climate Service. A climate job is defined as a new job that directly reduces emissions.

It is important to note that these are state-employed jobs and that the implementation of this programme would indirectly create a further 500,000 jobs in the supply chain.

And to make sure that the transition to a low-carbon society is fair, the campaign also proposes that every worker currently employed in high-carbon industries will be guaranteed a secure, unionized climate job where they can use their skills.

Shaping policy

The One Million Climate Jobs pamphlet sets out exactly where the jobs will be created – sectors such as insulation, renewable energy, agriculture, transport, industry, education and waste – and calculates the costs of doing so.

The pamphlet itself is useful a tool for policy makers and campaigners, but behind it is where the real strength lies – the workers’ movement campaigning for its implementation. Although the programme is ambitious, as required by current climate science, it is also realistic, ready to implement and relevant today more than ever.

The One Million Climate Jobs campaign was developed over a decade ago by a group of trade unionist activists who believed that campaigning for jobs and planet were not mutually exclusive.

It was further inspired by the struggle of workers at the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight, who occupied their factory when it was threatened with closure in 2009.

That same year, the first edition of the climate jobs report was published by Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union group (CACCTU). It called for government investment to create one million jobs in clean energy, energy efficiency and public transport. Union members, academics, activists and environmental specialists have worked together to create two further editions since. 

The campaign has gone from strength to strength, forging further links between the workers’ and environmental movements through its publications on fracking, trade union activity on climate change and by creating ‘toolkits’ aimed at boosting union affiliation to the campaign.

Historic motion 

CACCTU has also toured the UK with a campaign bus and organised huge national climate demonstrations that have brought together thousands of workers demanding action on climate change.

However, within the union movement, the transition to a zero-carbon future is still a controversial and hotly-debated issue. In 2017, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) passed a historic motion calling for climate action and energy democracy.

The motion omitted some areas of contention, and the GMB union more recently put forward a motion arguing that the voices of existing energy workers (predominantly those involved with heavily polluting, fossil-fuel based industries), should be paramount in this process.

The Campaign Against Climate Change is concerned that the GMB proposal does not reflect the urgency of the issue of climate change, and carries the risk of moving backwards.

The Campaign is currently calling for the TUC to “reflect the voices of all its members in forming energy and climate policies. Future jobs in solar, wind and energy efficiency are crucial to our economy and these sectors have been badly affected by government cuts. The TUC must be a voice for them too, and call for urgent investment in climate jobs.”

Rank and file

There is now significant momentum on the issue of climate change within unions, driven by rank and file members.

For example, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has called for stronger climate action and greater funding for their workers who risk their lives dealing with climate impacts, particularly from flooding.

Unison recently passed a motion supporting divestment from fossil fuels and published a new policy on investing local government pensions to address climate change. The PCS union campaign tirelessly on climate jobs and the need for a rapid transition on the scale of the Lucas Plan.

While the GMB supports fracking, they also work to highlight the ways that climate change disproportionately affects poor and working-class people; they are also pushing for a just transition to a low-carbon future.

And the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) are extremely active in anti-fracking campaigns.

Social protections

At the TUC Congress in 2018, in a historic vote, the trade union movement called for a moratorium on fracking in England.  Many unions support a full ban.

Union members have often been on the front line of the anti-fracking struggle. When Cuadrilla’s fracking operations in Lancashire were given the green light in October 2018 following a 7-year pause, the news was met by strong opposition from the trade union movement.

When three anti-fracking activists were imprisoned for non-violent protests at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site, trade union members stood in solidarity to condemn the ‘dangerous precedent’ set by their arrest.

Over 200 members from a huge range of unions signed an open letterc ondemning the judgement and its threat to: “The right to protest and take non-violent direct action against threats to the climate and the environment.”

The letter went on: “We need investment in a publicly owned and democratically controlled energy system, which can oversee the transition to renewable energy.  A transition that is just by providing social protections for workers and creates unionised sustainable jobs across all sectors as we develop a new zero carbon economy.”

Growing movement

Increasing alarm over the urgency of the multiple ecological crises we face has in recent years energised the environmental movement. 

The growing demand for climate jobs has added a new and important dimension to these campaigns. And these demands are gaining traction.

The leaders of the Labour Party and the Green Party have publicly backed the One Million Climate Jobs campaign. Jeremy Corbyn recently announced that, should Labour get elected, they would create 400,000 skilled jobs to reduce the UK’s emissions.

In Sheffield, a report has been released that demonstrates how shifting the city to zero carbon could bring about a net gain of 40,000 jobs. Crucially, it is a growing demand from workers themselves – within workplaces there is an incrementally increasing view that the future of the planet is a trade union issue.

Across the world, the climate jobs movement is growing and becoming ever more confident. In countries from South Africa to Norway, from Canada to the UK, workers are increasingly demanding the right to build the low-carbon infrastructure of tomorrow.

Mass demonstration 

Yet given the enormity of the challenge and the little time left to act, we need to intensify the fight for climate jobs now. 

At the start of December 2018, world leaders will meet at the COP24 climate summit in Poland. They will discuss the enforcement mechanisms required to ensure that participating nations make emission reductions as pledged at the Paris COP21 conference in 2015.

On 1 December in London, just days before negotiations begin, a mass climate demonstration will take place to pressure those leaders to go further.

Adding to the scale of that crowd will be workers demanding positive, socially-useful work constructing the infrastructure we so clearly need for our future.

The skilled hands of those who could create this future will hold banners as they march, demanding a chance to build it. Join them.

These Authors

Hazel Graham and Stephen Graham are supporters of the One Million Climate Jobs Campaign.