“Landfill is bad. Do everything you can to get waste out of landfill.” For the best part of twenty years, the message for waste managers has been clear.

Over that time, it has been a pretty decent rule of thumb, if one that has its limits.

However, I suspect that policy makers may soon have to face up to something that those involved at the sharp end of waste operations may already understand. Certainly, landfill is bad – but no access to landfill might, for a while at least, be even worse. 

Adapting to demand

I realise that I might be accused of waste management heresy at this point, but my key claim is simple. Back in 1997-98, when the Landfill Tax (LFT) was introduced, we buried 50m tonnes of standard rate material.

As we start making inroads into the last 10m tonnes of residual waste going to landfill – and those inroads will be pretty rapid – there will be no business as usual. 

The huge advantage that landfill holds for waste managers is its flexibility. Once built, a landfill site can easily scale up and down the amount of waste it receives.

In a previous role, I designed a site that increased its throughput from 50k to 500k tonnes per year. 

By contrast, an incinerator demands a fairly narrow range of tonnage in order to operate and it can’t easily be switched off and on.

Financial issues

No sensible operator would deliberately build more capacity than is required and so as we move away from landfill, in the event of an unexpected increase in waste, we’ll have a greater need to store it – with all the challenges that brings.

It’s a financial as well as a practical issue. The capital cost of a landfill is deployed through a site’s life.

You progressively build cells. You line them, then install leachate and gas collection systems. When a cell is full, you cap it and install gas extraction.

You might spend a few tens of millions overall – but that can be spread across many years, spanning the period before, during and after the cell’s active life.

You can afford to have your cash flow go up and down during that time, in a way that isn’t possible if you’re running a (much more capital-intensive) energy from waste (EfW) facility. 

Until recently, you could divert waste away from landfill however quickly or slowly you wanted without having a fundamental impact on the structure of the market.

Closing time

Year after year, the LFT has made landfill more expensive and less attractive, while other options have become cheaper and easier: waste prevention, recycling, domestic Energy from Waste (EfW), and export have all contributed to diverting waste at a highly unpredictable rate. 

Landfill has coped, but I think we’re now at the tipping point. Throughput is becoming low enough that it may not cover running costs, and there’s little prospect of demand increasing.

The number of sites has fallen dramatically and will continue to do so. Viridor, for example, has decided at a corporate level to eventually close all but three of its 21 UK landfill sites.

After closing four sites in 2016-17 alone, its total number operational sites currently stands at just 11. Once closed, engineering and permitting considerations mean sites can’t cheaply or easily be reopened.

We have to hope that this unexpectedly rapid closure process goes smoothly, although there are reasons to be concerned that there’s trouble in store.

In any case, closing a site earlier than planned can give rise to problems around drainage, landform and landscaping, which can increase the closure costs and add to the aftercare problems encountered.

Shock absorbers

If we do not retain a national network of landfills, it could become far more difficult and expensive to manage a range of foreseeable situations, such as:

– A sudden increase in waste arisings

– A major waste fire, producing thousands of tonnes of soggy waste, unsuitable for thermal treatment

– The breakdown or closure of a major incinerator

– A change in the export market, perhaps because of increased demand for treatment for waste from Eastern Europe.

In the past, almost every part of the country had a landfill site within easy haulage range that would only too gladly rise to the occasion.

Landfill helped to smooth out peaks and troughs in demand. It also provided a control on the price for thermal treatment.

At the moment, there’s a glut of waste in Europe, with export from the UK showing signs of becoming expensive. For now, incinerators can’t put up their merchant prices too high, or waste will head back to landfill.

In a couple of years, that will no longer be the case.

Necessary evil

In the absence of a planned approach to the near demise of landfill, and a strategic approach to making sure we have sufficient capacity to deal with shocks, there will be problems.

In the short term, we’re likely to see hassle and costs for any waste producers trying to find an affordable outlet for non-contracted waste. For a while, at least, there will be waste managers out there ruing the fact that the local landfill closed down.

We all want to see an end to landfill, at least on any meaningful scale.

I’m sure that, eventually, there will be recognition of these issues and that the market will develop systems to store waste safely and broker it so as to match it with treatment capacity.

However, we’re not there yet, and landfill remains a necessary evil until the alternatives are in place. We still need the flexibility that it offers, and a dozen sites across the country simply won’t supply it. 

This Author

Mike Brown is Managing Director of Bristol-based, independent environmental consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting. He has over 30 years’ experience in waste management – 20 of those as an operator – and is a leading expert in the residual waste treatment sector. 

The general election of June 1983 was a landslide for the Tories and landed Thatcher an increased mandate for her free market reign. “Margaret unexpectedly offered me the chancellorship,” Nigel Lawson recalled.

Read the Fakenomics series now!

Lawson’s first appearance at the dispatch box brought with it promises of further tax cuts and an attack on public services—and he also tried to sneak through the sale of £500 million in British Petroleum shares, hoping the British public wouldn’t notice.

On 29 June 1983, he told the House of Commons about “an emergency package of spending cuts—which would bring savings of £1 billion.”

A month later Lawson admitted that he also intended to sell off some of the government’s remaining shares in British Petroleum.

Lawson had only confirmed the sale after a written question. John Biffen, the leader of the house, was “barracked for some twenty minutes” by MPs furious at the apparent abuse of Parliament.

“I am by nature fairly secretive,” Lawson said of the period. “In presentational terms at least, my chancellorship did not get off to a very good start.”

Lawson’s bungling was about to get worse. The Guardian, the country’s then leading left-wing broadsheet, obtained a copy of his budget. “I was deeply depressed, even devastated,” he would recall.

Budget leak

“I find it difficult, writing several years later, to express the depth of despair I felt on the night of 29 February 1984, when I was first told by my press secretary, Martin Hall, that the Guardian had got a jumbo budget leak, and then was brought the first edition where I was able to see the full horror of it all.”

The leak only compounded his unpopularity – his cuts came when millions in Britain were suffering.

Unemployment had risen from £1.1 million when they came to power—with Charles Saatchi’s masterstroke political campaign, Labour Isn’t Working—to £2.4 million when Lawson was made energy secretary, and further to £2.8 million by June 1983.

But for the new chancellor, this level of unemployment was acceptable after years of “overmanning”.

The following year, even the Daily Mail was shocked by his callousness when he increased tax on fish and chips. His performance at the ballot box caused uproar on the Labour benches.

“The opposition were bound to claim that this justified their allegations during the campaign that we had a ‘hidden agenda’ of further public spending cuts,” he complained.

Working class

As chancellor, Lawson would, in 1984, side with the energy industry against its own employers. The national strike by the National Union of Mineworkers lasted almost a year, and was the last time in British history that the working class would demonstrate any control over the country’s energy policy.

A decade earlier, the miners had pitted themselves against Edward Heath—and won. Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, had argued that the free market could only operate if the “monopoly” of trade unionism was destroyed.

Nicholas Ridley, a Conservative MP, drafted a detailed secret plan to defeat the unions working in government-run industries. The miners’ strike was the painful reaction to the government’s attack on trade unions.

“Our original aim was to build a successful, profitable coal industry independent of government subsidies; to de-monopolise it and ultimately open it to private enterprise,” Lawson wrote in note to Howe, when the latter was still chancellor.

“Then the events of February 1981 showed beyond any reasonable doubt we will make no progress towards our aim until we deal with the problem of monopoly union power.”

The government began secretly stockpiling coal, converting power stations to oil, and hiring truck drivers in case of a sympathy rail strike.

Then, in March 1984, it announced the closure of 20 mines, at the cost of 20,000 jobs. The NUM, led by the Marxist Arthur Scargill, immediately called strike action.

Checking abuses

The country’s most powerful union, with the ability to cause blackouts and bring the country to a halt, was ready to confront Thatcher and Lawson directly.

Either the government or the union would be destroyed in the coming months. Thatcher introduced laws through parliament that made secondary picketing—where workers would line up outside other factories and offices and ask the staff to strike in support—illegal.

Lawson confirmed the government was less than completely honest about its intentions.

“A reduction in union power was an important aim of Conservative policy, even though it was couched in the language of checking abuses, democratising procedures, and so on.”

The strike ground on for over a year. Thatcher attacked “the enemy within”, evoking fears that Marxists were infiltrating British unions.

Tony Benn, the former Labour energy minister, called the strike a “civil war”.

Allegations were raised in Parliament that Roger Windsor, the chief executive of the NUM during the strike, had been working for or with MI5. He took £80,000 from journalists after making false claims that Scargill misused union funds.

Police in riot gear clashed with 6,500 pickets – and the BBC was caught reversing the footage to make it look like the officers were under attack.

Politically possible

Then, on 5 March 1985, the NUM delegate conference voted to return to work. The closures would go ahead.

There were 160,000 miners in Britain at the beginning of the strike. Today, there are fewer than 6,000. Coal is imported from the US and Poland, while nuclear power derives from France.

The mining industry in Britain was buried. Lawson calculated that the strike had forced the government to borrow an extra £2.75 billion.

“Even in narrow terms,” Lawson had said during a major debate in Parliament in August 1984, breaking the miners’ strike was “a worthwhile investment for the nation”.

Labour, he added, took the remark to be “conclusive evidence that the government had fomented the strike deliberately. This caused uproar in the chamber.”

This is the moment in history where the miners who powered Britain would have any lasting influence in its distribution.

The idea that the working class should have a decisive say in the control of energy, or the factories and offices, would be confined to history, a fading memory, no longer understood to be politically possible. 

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk. 

Protected riverbank habitats within areas of oil palm cultivation can play a key role in reducing the negative impacts on tropical bird numbers. New research from the University of Kent has shown that they need to be increased in size.

Converting rainforests to oil palm plantations has well documented impacts on tropical wildlife, including birds.

But so far there has been little research on the value that natural vegetation in river areas in plantations has for nature. These areas are often preserved for water management as ‘riparian reserves’.

Minimising impact

The Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology in the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent, in partnership with Universiti Malaysia Sabah, have demonstrated that these riparian areas can help lessen the negative impacts of oil palm cultivation on bird communities.

The team counted birds across 28 rivers at a site in Malaysia and were able to examine their findings in relation to the width of the protected forest alongside the rivers.

The study showed that large riparian reserves tend to support more bird species, with the largest ones hosting similar number as nearby forests.

Overall, the researchers found that a single river site might support around a third of all the bird species found in adjacent forests.

Furthermore, the authors were able to show that the best rivers for protecting bird populations in oil palm areas had more than 40m of forest vegetation protected on each bank, which helped provide shelter and resources for the birds.

Protecting birds

However, to ensure all the forest-dependent bird species were represented, the width of this protected riparian area would need to be at least 100m on each bank. 

Lead author Simon Mitchell said the findings underlined the potential to protect some bird species within landscapes affected by palm oil cultivation:

“We show that even small increases to the width could lead to big improvements for birds. This could be really important if we are to find better ways of maintaining biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.”

The researchers hope their findings will lead to oil palm companies increasing the width of riparian reserves protected in new plantations, or restoring more vegetation in old ones.

Stricter environmental policies in tropical producer countries could also help improve the protection of riparian reserves.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor at The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from the University of Kent. The study referenced above has been published in the Journal of Applied Ecology under open access entitled Riparian reserves help protect forest bird communities in oil palm dominated landscapes.

A whole-systems understanding of the world acknowledges that a whole is always more than the simple sum of its parts. It pays attention to the diversity of elements, the quality of interactions and relationships, and the dynamic patterns of behaviour that often lead to unpredictable and surprising innovations and adaptations.

As change agents in the transition towards a more sustainable human presence on Earth, many of the interrelated problems we face are rooted in a way of thinking that has not paid enough attention to whole systems and their dynamic interconnectedness, dynamic relationships, and context.

Whole-systems thinking has to be a transdisciplinary activity that maps and integrates relationships, flows and perspectives into a dynamic understanding of the structures and processes that drive how the system behaves.

Placing together

Experts and specialists are important contributors to most sustainability projects, but we also need integrators and generalists who can help to put the contribution of each discipline into systemic relationships, and help to contextualise the contributions made by the specialists.

Too often we employ limited progress indicators or inadequate measures of success based on the dominance of a particular discipline or perspective.

One way to define the word ‘system’ is as a set of interconnected elements that together form a coherent pattern we can refer to as a ‘whole’. 

Such a system exhibits properties of the whole that emerge out of the interactions and relationships of the individual elements. This definition could be applied to a molecule, a cell, a human being, a community or the planet.

In many ways a system is less a ‘thing’ than a pattern of relationships and interactions — a pattern of organisation of constituting elements. The Greek root of the word system is ‘synhistanai’ and literally means ‘to place together’.

Defining boundaries 

Systems thinking and systemic intervention is a possible antidote to the unintended and dangerous side-effects of centuries of focusing only on reductionist and quantitative analysis informed by the narrative of separation.

Yet, it is important to maintain the awareness that the systems view itself is also just another map that – as Alfred Korzybski put it – should not be confused with the territory.

We can reduce the world to a whole just as easily as we can reduce it to a collection of parts. Neither the whole nor parts are primary; they come into being through the dynamic processes that define their identity through relationships and networks of interactions.

One of the most important questions in any systemic approach is to ask ‘what is the system in question’. In doing so we define boundaries that provide us with the necessary ‘enabling constraints’ to make sense of a situation.

Questioning assumptions

Yet, these boundaries are themselves a way of seeing that make a distinction between the system in question and its environment. We should regard the boundaries that delineate one system from another as places of connection and exchange rather than barriers that separate or isolate.

In more general terms, whole-systems thinking invites us to see complex issues from multiple perspectives, to suspend our judgement by questioning our own assumptions, and to honour insights from different disciplines and different ways of knowing.

Thinking in this way helps us to pay attention to the fertile ground of synergistic, whole-systems solutions. It can help us to more clearly see the opportunities in the multiple converging crises around us.

Whole-systems thinking stops us from seeing ecological, economic and social constraints as irreconcilable challenges.

It invites us not to view different stakeholder perspectives in a competitive, win-lose frame of mind, and encourages us to explore win-win-win solutions that improve the overall health and sustainability of the system as a whole

Regenerative economy

Whole-systems thinking is living systems thinking. 

I believe that a systemic understanding of processes by which life continuously regenerates conditions conducive to life offers a pathway to creating regenerative businesses and organisations within a regenerative economy as enabling factors of a regenerative culture. 

Here are six questions to contemplate when dealing with systems:

• What is the system in question and how are we defining what belongs to the system and what does not?
• What is the wider context that the system in question operates in?
• What are the key agents whose interactions and relationships define the system structure and drive the system’s behaviour?
• How is our perspective of the system in question shaped by our worldview and value system?
• What are the key ‘emergent properties’ of the system that could not have been predicted by simply looking at the individual ‘parts’ of the system?
• How does our participation in the system and our way of describing it affect what we are observing?

This Author

Dr Daniel Christian Whal is the author of Designing Regenerative Cultures (2016). This article is based on a piece first published on Medium. 

The wildlife photographer Kyle Obermann and his team of rangers finally came across evidence of the pandas they knew were living deep in the core of the Anzihe Nature Reserve in China.

Kyle was invited into the reserve to photograph their habitat – a habitat which is home to 30 percent of the world’s population of giant pandas but which is also under severe threat from poachers and other human activity.

You were one of the first Western photographers invited to photograph in the Anzihe Nature Reserve. How did that opportunity first come about?

At the time I was working as a contract photographer and consultant for Conservation International’s  (CI) China program. CI supported my application to the local government to enter what they call the “main core” of the nature reserve which is where the whole expedition took place. As far as I know, I was the first western photographer to photograph the core of the reserve.

What are the main challenges facing panda and wider wildlife conservation in China?

Panda and wildlife conservation has come a long way in China, but there is still a long way to go. The wild panda population in China is steadily increasing and they have cracked the code to captive breeding, but habitat fragmentation is one of the greatest threats to pandas today.

Similarly, human disturbance and an expanding footprint is the greatest threat to other species like snow leopards, Tibetan gazelle, etc. In the past, poaching brought some of these species to the edge of extinction, but thankfully has been largely stopped. Still, the expansion of herding, roads, and dams remains a major threat.

You spent the last four days of the expedition deep into terrain in the reserve that you say even rangers who’d spent twenty years there hadn’t explored. How did it feel walking into the unknown? Could you enjoy something like that?

From a journalistic perspective, it was a massive honour to have the opportunity to enter this part of the reserve with them. The first two days when we were still above the tree line were very enjoyable.

Every step was a new one, and it is really a special feeling to know you are documenting places that have actually never been documented before.

On the last two days it got much worse, however, as we descended below the tree line and had to hack our campsites out of the soaking undergrowth and go through a repetitive process of finding and losing the animals trails we were trying to track.

But that’s all part of the price you pay for going to someplace completely unknown – one moment it’s marvellous; the next all you want to do is go home.

What was it like, trekking with the rangers who had spent so long in the reserve and were so in tune with it?

Our relation to the wild was worlds apart. This was work, not exploration. Chiku nailao – chore, not play. While I was exploring uncharted territory to photograph, it was simply another day at work for the rangers.

The necessary, pressing task of surveying the wildlife and removing the poachers’ traps was essential. It governed every move and drove us on long after tents failed, backpacks broke, clothes soaked, and far beyond where I would have opted for the easier way.

How has your work positively impacted conservation efforts in China?

I’m not a conservation scientist, but I see myself and my photography as PR for conservation efforts and backcountry in China.

Storytelling and photography is an attractive way to draw people’s attention to issues that matter and make conservation more appealing. So, that’s what I do. I try to use my work as a constructive way to support local conservation groups and show people the value of protecting these lands.

Your work frequently highlights the positive impact people can have upon nature. How difficult is that to achieve in this day and age?

Not difficult at all. There are incredible people doing very positive things for nature all around, but media tends to focus on the negative stories – which yes, there are plenty of too.

In an era where there is so much pessimism about China or about global environmental conditions I think we also need stories of hope and positivity to show that, yes there is hope, or, even if you feel like you can’t do anything concrete in your current place, you can support these people who are.

How would you recommend budding travellers go about making a positive impact on the land that they explore, particularly in such a challenging country like China?

This is something I think about constantly. There are things that we should already be doing in order to leave no impact, like Leave No Trace, but to actually make positive impact is much harder.

One thing I would suggest is try to make the narrative less about yourself and really dig deep into the story of the land and the people. A lot of the places we go are areas that could really stand to benefit from our support and have no ability to reach the audience that we can.

So, if nothing else, promote the people who have protected and conserved the land which you are enjoying, share and support their stories alongside your own. This can be true in China and anywhere you visit.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. Click here to read more about Kyle’s expedition to the Anzihe Nature Reserve.

By the afternoon of 22 March 2018, a crowd had gathered in the Gambian fishing village of Gunjur. Police had arrived by truck. Rumours were circulating that arrests would be made. 

After months of frustration and anger, Golden Lead, the Chinese-owned plant that had become the lifeblood the village’s fishing trade, had been given a seven-day ultimatum. Villagers removed a factory pipe that was allegedly pumping waste directly into the ocean. 

Local environmental activist Lamin Jassey said: “The police didn’t stop us. They just said we should remove it peacefully. I think they too felt for us.”

Depleting resources

In 2015 whispers of the factory’s arrival were being shared in the community. Initially, villagers were welcoming.

Badara Bajo, director of the Environment Protection and Development Group of Gunjur, said: “They were going to build a road from the main highway to the village and they said they were going to employ about 600 people. They were not able to build a good road and were unable to employ the number of people they promised.” 

Around 80 people were employed when operation started in 2016. Residents disapprove of the factory’s use of ocean caught bonga shad (Ethmalosa fimbriata), for animal feed export to China. 

Jassey said: “At first we heard the company would process sardines. For us living here every day bonga fish is the cheapest source of protein that everybody can have.”

Bajo explained: “When the company started the fishermen they were catching large numbers, trucks full of fish and a high demand. This made the price [of fish] rise up.” Reared animal meat is too expensive in rural areas where 60 percent of the country’s poor squeeze a living.

International tensions

Gunjur is emblematic of a rising tension in Africa-China relations in The Gambia.

Since President Adama Barrow took office last year, Gambia has continued to seek Chinese investment to kickstart a struggling economy and a youth unemployment rate over 40 percent. 

Compared to a decade ago, China has surpassed Europe and the United States to become Gambia’s biggest trading partner. 

But Chinese firms are frequently accused of disregarding environmental standards in Africa.

Gambians successfully protested the planned use of part of a forest monkey park for a conference center being built by Chinese developers recently.

Legal action

Golden Lead was taken to court by Gambia’s environment agency (NEA) last June. It was forced to take immediate measures to treat its wastewater and pay a fine of $25,000 for flouting environmental regulations in an out-of-court settlement. 

Jassey said: “They decided to remove the top pipe but without us knowing they had a second one there. We realised that the small fish and crabs are dying.”

The factory denies the waste pipe removed by villagers was still in use. Leo Huang, co-manager at Golden Lead, said: “the NEA took us to court and said we should cut the pipe, we made water treatment plans after the case had finished and the pipe was already cut.” 

He added that workers felt threatened over the incident of March 22. Huang said that “people were shouting at us.” 

Isatou Touray, formerly Gambia’s trade minister, and now its minister for health and social welfare, did not respond to efforts for a comment on the incident. 

Development plans

Five of those involved in the pipe removal were later arrested and put on trial, including Jassey.

The events in Gunjur ignited further protests in the neighbouring village of Kartong against Mauritanian owned and Chinese run fishmeal factory JXYG.

A large demonstration took place on 30 June against Nessim fishmeal factory in the coastal village of Sanyang, in Gambia’s western region. Following this, the Gambian government announced the temporary closure of both JXYG and Nessim due to waste pollution. 

The Gambia aims to increase fisheries as a percentage of GDP from 6.4 percent to 15 percent by 2021, as part of development plans. This will require an increase in annual fish catch from 53,719 to 74,000 tonnes. 

Some 200,000 Gambian livelihoods depend on its fishing sector. But most fish in Gambia’s waters are already fully or over exploited, due to decades of free-for-all fishing. Just 4 percent of West Africa’s stocks are fished at sustainable levels. 

Unsustainable practices

Fisheries expert Dyhia Belhabib explained: “The very presence of fishmeal factories often means that local fish processors can no longer afford to have access to that fish because the factories give out really competitive prices.”

She added: “the consumer can no longer afford to buy the fish [caught] within their own waters.”

Sainey Darboe, who edits Gunjur News Online, explained the fears being heard amongst many villagers: “They are engaging in unsustainable practices.

“My mother used to sell fish and would carry buckets of fish from the boat to the beach. It was what paid for my education.”

In contrast to the factories cash buys for fish from local fishermen, women who dominate the fish trade in Gambia buy on credit, paying fishermen back once they make a profit. 39-year-old fish smoker Adi Jobe explained: “Now the fishermen don’t want to do credit because they say they will just go to the Chinese and get cash.’

Waste dumping

In the town of Kitty Tambana, 20 kilometres away from Gunjur, local resident Besenty Gomez patrols his community everyday: “I take photos, I take videos for people to see. I send them to the Ministry of Health and to the NEA.”

On 23 January 2018, Gomez’s images prompted health authorities to visit the dumpsite. The subsequent report from Gambia’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare confirmed the waste was from a nearby hospital and from JXYG, the fishmeal plant in Kartong. 

While the environment agency took steps to temporarily shut down JXYG, the report advised that the area be fenced off to prevent further dumping. This has not been done.

The Ministry of Health declined to comment on its own report and why recommendations were not implemented. Dr Samba Ceesay, deputy director of health at the Ministry of Health & Social Welfare, responded: “since this issue is a sensitive one, I have decided to refer you to the permanent secretary to give you the ministry’s position on the matter.” 

Permanent Secretary Cherno Omar Barry said: “I admit it is a major concern and it is not our wish to see an outbreak of any disease but the dumping of waste in unspecified places causing environmental pollution is more under [the] Environment [agency].”

Severe dangers

Seedy Touray, a local hotel manager, said that villagers fear a return to the old days of politics under former president Yahya Jammeh, who ruled for 22 years. 

Before signing the affidavit to sue Golden Lead, Touray says his mother telephoned to warn him against it.

When Touray’s brother criticised the ex-regime on local radio, soldiers in a pick–up truck came looking for him. He fled to neighbouring Senegal and returned when Barrow became president. 

Touray said: “I might end up losing my life … But at the same time, this is my livelihood.” 

The smell from the factory has affected tourism, he explained. “My business is forcing me to step out and to speak out for my rights.”

Industrial imposition

There are local fishermen who like the presence of the factories.

Kebba Jobe, a 24-year old fisherman, said: “You have more of a chance to sell your fish.”

But ongoing protests compounded by the repeated encroachment of foreign industrial vessels has diminished approval. Jobe said: “At night sometimes there are more than 10 or 12 industrial boats in our artisanal zones. They fish and go. We get less fish.”

Darboe explained: “We have a very different president to Yahya Jammeh which is a good thing. 

“But the voice of the young is not really taken seriously. What people aren’t seeing is the long term effects of overfishing and damage to the environment. They are more interested in the immediate gains.”

This Author

Nosmot Gbadamosi is a freelance journalist reporting from West Africa. She can be reached on Twitter @nosmotg. This article was written with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Internews’ Earth Journalism Network. 

Sarayaku is an indigenous Kichwa community from a remote part of Ecuador’s southern Amazon. A delegation has travelled to the capital city of Quito to present a bold and visionary proposal that aims not only to protect their own 135,000 hectares of pristine rainforest, but to protect indigenous territories worldwide. 

The proposal, the Kawsak Sacha Declaration, also seeks to promote the indigenous worldview, which sees nature as a living entity, to be respected and coexisted with.

The Sarayaku believe that a shift towards this perspective could be the key to mitigating the unfolding global environmental crisis.

Living forest

The concept for the proposal came from the kawsak sacha, or living forest, itself and was transmitted to the community via their shamans (yachaks in the Kichwa language), who act as intermediaries between the rainforest and those who protect it. 

The Kawsak Sacha Living Forest Declaration (LFD) is a counterproposal to the prevailing extractivist model that has already wrought untold damage in Ecuador’s northern Amazon and around the world.

Instead of seeing Sarayaku territory as an inert space to exploit for resources, the Declaration describes the rainforest as a living entity with consciousness, constituted by all the beings within it, including those from the animal, vegetable, mineral, spiritual and cosmic worlds.

The Declaration asserts that the territory is subject to legal rights and demands that these rights be upheld. It also declares that the area be free of any type of extractive activity such as oil exploitation, mining, logging and biopiracy. 

Though it was born from the indigenous cosmovision, the Declaration is a concrete proposal based on existing national and international law.

Legal ratification 

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to award legal rights to nature in its constitution, which also states that any person, community or nationality can demand the State to uphold these rights.

Furthermore, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their spiritual relationship with their territories, and to conserve and protect these territories.

From deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Kawsak Sacha Declaration was borne by canoe to Quito, where the Sarayaku delegation delivered it to representatives of the Ecuadorian State at a launch event on July 26.

The next step is to demand the legal ratification of the document via the National Assembly or the Constitutional Court. If the State refuses to recognise the Declaration, it will be defying its own constitution and international law.

The Sarayaku have called for international organisations and indigenous peoples to adopt the proposal and are planning to present it to the UN.

Global audience

It won’t be the first time the Declaration has been given a global audience.

After being adopted by the Assembly General of the Original People of Sarayaku in 2012, it was presented in Paris at the global climate change conference, COP21, and to the President of France, François Hollande, in 2015.

Earlier this month, it was well received at the international Fostering Community Conservation Conferencein Montreal.

The Declaration was inaugurated in Ecuador with a four-day exhibition and conference from 25 to 29 July that showcased Sarayaku’s way of life, culture, and vision, including exhibitions and demonstrations of ancestral medicines, ceramics, handicrafts, gastronomy, face painting, singing and dancing.

A Kichwa house was built in El Arbolito Park and will remain there, a gift to the city of Quito.

Violated rights

A series of panels were held to discuss extractivism and defence of the rainforest.

The events were attended by international NGOs Amazon Watch, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network (WECAN), as well as the Presidents of national indigenous organisations CONAIE and CONFENAIE.

The launch of the Declaration coincided with the 6th anniversary of the historic ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which found that the Ecuadorian Government violated the rights of the Sarayaku people by allowing an oil company to prospect in their territory without consultation.

In 1996 the Argentinian oil company CGC, accompanied by soldiers, carried out detonations, felled trees, dug more than 400 wells and buried more than 1.4 tons of high grade explosives in Sarayaku territory.

The community was unaware that their land had been concessioned to an oil company until armed men arrived in helicopters.

Key players

In 2018, Sarayaku is once again threatened by oil exploitation. The Ecuadorian Government are planning to auction 3 million hectares of largely virgin rainforest in the XI Oil Round, or Ronda Sur.

Three of the oil blocks cover nearly all the Sarayaku territory, the borders of which are being planted with flowering trees to symbolise the community’s peaceful resistance and defence of their territory via the Kawsak Sacha Declaration. 

The Sarayaku people’s hopes for the Declaration go beyond the protection of the 135,000 hectares that lie within their borders.

The proposal was presented to the State on behalf of all indigenous peoples with the hopes that other nationalities will use it to uphold the legal rights of nature in their territories.

With indigenous peoples acting as stewards of 95 percent of the planet’s most threatened biodiverse regions and key players in the fight against climate change, the Declaration could have a global impact.

Leading resistance

It’s a bold vision for a village of 1400 people living deep in the Amazon, but, looking at their past achievements, it’s impossible not to take the Sarayaku proposal seriously.

Beyond their legal victory against the Ecuadorian State, this is a community that has launched a professional football team; sailed a canoe down the Seine; and created a documentary, Children of the Jaguar, which won Best Documentary at the National Geographic Film Festival. 

The Sarayaku call themselves the People of the Zenith, referring to an ancient prophecy of their ancestors claiming that they would be a pillar of resistance after other communities had surrendered, a beacon of light as strong as the sun at noon. 

When asked what drives his community to keep fighting to defend the Amazon, Sarayaku leader and former President José Gualinga referred to this prophecy: “The Sarayaku resistance is based upon our deep connection with the rainforest, which even our young people still maintain, and our unity.

“The Sarayaku community functions as a single organism, like a human body. We resist in fulfilment of the ancient prophecy of our ancestors. We have seen what has happened to our brothers in the northern Amazon region, who have not only experienced the destruction of their territories by oil exploitation, but have suffered a spiritual impoverishment.

“They have been dominated, silenced, humiliated. They are alive but not alive. We, the people of Sarayaku, cannot allow that to happen to us.”

This Author 

Bethany Pitts has been working with indigenous communities in Ecuador since 2013, especially those defending their territories from extractivism. She is currently writing the Moon Guide to Ecuador & The Galapagos Islands (2019), which will be the first international guide book on Ecuador with a focus on eco- and community tourism.

The age of the internet has made the spread of information much faster and more reliable. People are learning about everything that starts trending on Twitter or ends up as a news segment. For the most part, that information has to do with current events, and some of that leans toward the environmental side of things.

Because people can learn more about what their carbon footprint is and how it impacts the earth, everyone wants to go green. People switch out plastic bottles for reusable ones and turn off their sprinklers earlier than they used to.

But going green is more than getting an eco-friendly car. Like most things, it starts in the home. If you’re considering getting a new home or building one from scratch, read on so that you can learn about which method is more earth-friendly and if it’s right for you.

Budget-friendly

When someone in your life is building their dream home, it’s all they can talk about. You’ll hear about how they’re having problems deciding between paint swatches and building materials, even down to cabinet handles. It’s not a secret that building a home requires a lot of time and energy, and people wanting to go green have an even bigger challenge.

Organisations that can make a difference have formed, including the UK Green Building Council. They aim to help people improve the sustainability of the environment through the construction process. From planning to maintaining, they have resources for anyone building.

What building is going to cost you will be different depending on how you want your home built. There’s no denying that upfront costs will be more expensive if you’re going to include solar hot water panels or energy-efficient insulation. At the same time, green products will save you money in the long run. If there’s a chance you could move out of your home in the near future, you might be better off buying.

Since more people want to go green in their homes, the odds of finding a green home are better than ever before. Still, the UK is struggling to reduce their overall levels of greenhouse emissions. There are over a million homes in the UK with poor energy insulation, and even though the government is providing incentives for homeowners to go green before selling, it’s been a slow change.

If your home isn’t green enough for you, you don’t need to tear it down or sell it to improve the efficiency of your lifestyle. Green renovations happen all the time and could be more budget-friendly than you might think.

Carbon footprint

Ever wanted to redo your hardwood floors? Get that dream accomplished and stay green while you do it by sticking with reclaimed wood. Reclaimed wood takes 11 to 13 times less energy to produce than new wood because there aren’t any trees to transport and process.

You can also triple-glaze your windows to keep warm air trapped in the winter. If you look for a glaze that has a lower U-value, you’ll find that it’s less expensive than other glazes. It will have a slightly lower thermal performance but still save you money and energy.

The short answer is yes, building a new home can be environmentally friendly, but that’s not your only option to go green. Building with the environment in mind means you’ll be paying much more upfront, and you might not want to go that far into debt or have to spend time saving that much before starting your project.

Instead, weigh the pros and cons of renovating vs. selling your home. The effects of doing any of these options can still help minimise your carbon footprint without costing you more than you’re willing to spend.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

“My career as a cabinet minister began with quite a bang,” Lord Lawson recalled in his autobiography. And his first act was to sell of the oil-producing BNOC run by the state-owned British Gas. He installed Martin Jacomb, his trusted friend and merchant banker, as a non-executive of the government’s Gas Corporation Board.

“These three eminent businessmen could not be pushed around by anyone. They also kept me better informed than my officials were usually able to do,” Lawson would explain. Jacomb will reappear in our story thirty years later when he would be appointed a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

The privatisation of Britain’s oil industry did not have public support. “The usual lack of enthusiasm for abandoning State ownership was reinforced in the public mind by the feeling that North Sea oil was a unique national asset which should remain strictly under national political control,” Lawson observed drily.

“It was difficult to find a way of privatising BNOC without succumbing to the charge that the government was relinquishing ownership of a priceless national treasure to speculators, foreigners or multinationals.”

In fact, the public seemed very keen on keeping the energy sector in public ownership. “The Labour Party could win four out of five general elections between 1964 and 1974 on a programme of more and more sweeping nationalisation,” Lawson himself observed years earlier.

Black gold

But since when did the views of the British public amount to much? They were not Oxford educated economists. How could they possibly know what was good for them?

The public might also have wanted to raise billions in taxes for the new discoveries of oil in the North Sea to help fund the National Health Service, the new comprehensive schools, and broader welfare state.

But Lawson knew better. North Sea oil was discovered in 1969 and would, it has since transpired, be the last significant find anywhere in the world.

The “black gold” began to pour in 1976 and by 1982 Britain had, for the first time in its history, become an oil exporter—and the government took £8 billion in revenues—accounting for £8.50 out of every £100 collected by the taxman.

The Labour government, then proudly socialist, presented the radical suggestion that the country should invest in the new, unearned riches for the benefit of future generations. 

But Lawson knew better. “The idea was sensibly rejected by the Treasury,” he recalled in his memoirs.

“It seemed to me rather more sensible to use North Sea tax revenues to reduce government borrowing, to cut taxes where this could be done on a sustainable basis, and generally to improve the climate for enterprise.”

Billions in taxes

The decision to let the oil industry reap more of the benefits from the oil bounty was in part a result of lobbying from within the industry itself. “When the Conservatives came into power in 1979, they inherited a tax regime which was stifling development,” Clive Wright, then director of corporate affairs at Esso, told me.

“We had a series of consultation with the Conservatives. The Conservatives listened, and they loosened up the tax regime which unleashed a lot more investment in the North Sea so that fuels which were marginal became attractive to develop.”

Lawson and Howe abolished one tax which alone effectively handed £2.4 billion back to the oil industry. Lawson cut other taxes to the benefit of oil.

The reforms “went considerably further than my officials thought the Treasury would be prepared to contemplate,” Lawson would boast.

It is an abject and total tragedy that this great, good fortune was not instead use to finance a new age of clean energy.

Perhaps the gush of oil could have been used to help heat the homes of Britain’s poorest families? Apparently not. Lawson in fact raised the cost of heating homes and cooking for every family in the country at the same time as cutting billions from the taxes of Big Oil.

Gas prices

Today, Lawson has become the great champion of low gas prices. The Global Warming Policy Foundation – his climate denying charity –  launched a campaign against new levies on gas bills to pay for climate change mitigation. It was based on dubious statistics.

But back then it was a very different time. Taxes on major corporations were being used to support families by subsidising household gas bills.

And Lawson would, as energy minister, put a stop to that. He continued the hike in gas prices started by his predecessor, Lord Howell, that very nearly doubled domestic gas bills over just three years.

The price rise also left businesses burned.  This was at the time “a highly unpopular policy”, but Lord Lawson “succeeded in carrying it through in full, and no political disaster ensued”.

Lawson was even able to turn public fury into a political advantage. “I sought to make a virtue of necessity by inserting in my political speeches the assertion that this was a government that would always do what was right, regardless of short-term popularity,” he smiled to himself. “It usually went down pretty well.”

The price rise would, of course, fatten the British Gas turkey in time for the great Christmas giveaway. It would be a private company and its shareholders who would grow rich from charging the poor more for their bills.

History records that the very first privatisation resulted in the government assets being sold off on the cheap. Lawson blamed his advisors for underpricing the sale.

Political storm

“This led to an enormous political storm, with Labour accusing the government of ripping off the taxpayer, and deliberately selling state assets on the cheap to its friend in the City.”

Lawson claims he was “deeply humiliated” at the time, but concluded that his giveaway “may have been no bad thing”.

He then sold off British Gas showrooms, despite huge public anger. “The government’s opponents were remarkably successful in portraying the privatisation of this state-owned chain of shops… as an ideologically inspired attack on the British way of life.”

The sale was based on Hayek’s idea that the state should not have a direct hand in the economy. Unless, of course, the state takes the form of the armed forces and the intervention involves putting down unions.

Documents published for the first time following a Freedom of Information Act request by the author show that in his first month in office [October 1981], Lawson drew up secret plans to mobilise the British Army to break a strike among oil tanker drivers.

Lawson did his very best as energy secretary to befriend Saudi oil ministers, but his blundering efforts made this a task fraught with difficulty and intrigue.

A fortnight after being appointed energy secretary, Nigel Lawson invited Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the Saudi oil minister and “de facto leader” of the world’s first oil cartel, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to London for an official luncheon [Lawson, 1992: 191].

OPEC was at the time deeply unhappy that Britain was selling North Sea oil cheap into the international markets, believing this would devalue their own supply.

Congenial companion

“I found the highly intelligent, soft-spoken, Western-educated Yamani a most congenial companion,” Lawson remembers.

The following Spring, Yamani began lobbying the British energy secretary hard to raise the oil price. Lawson, a free market advocate, publicly stated the government would not control prices, instead but initiated a secret ploy to carry favour.

“It would not have helped Anglo-Saudi relations to have sent Yamani away completely empty handed,” he later explained to the public he had deceived.

“I therefore undertook to persuade the British National Oil Corporation to be as discrete as possible in lowering the reference price for North Sea oil”.

At the Saudi oil minister’s request, he also issued a press release saying that Britain would not increase its production of oil. This, however, backfired, because oil production did in fact increase in 1983—for which Lawson would pay later.

Lawson was warmly received by Yamani when he travelled to Saudi Arabia in April 1983. “Yamani gave a luncheon in his own home in my honour,” he recalled.

“He invited a number of his cabinet colleagues and their wives—something our then ambassador, James Craig, told me was a most unusual gesture of friendship.”

Lest I be corrupted

The Saudi oil minister presented Lawson with a gift, a long spouted Arab silver coffee-pot. Lawson complained later: “I had to hand them over to the department, lest I be corrupted”.

Lawson was responsible for the sale of the British oil in November that year. The night before the state asset was sold on the market, Lawson’s friend Yamani gave an interview to a relatively unknown newspaper in Kuwait expressing his “gloom” about oil prices.

The interview, Lawson believes, sabotaged the sale, and the privatisation was, once again, a disaster. The energy minister had been outsmarted.

Lawson’s final act as energy minister was to break up the state monopoly on the supply of power.

In May 1983, he brought in the Energy Act. The legislation allowed private electricity generators to sell energy to customers directly for the first time.

Hayek’s free market ideal was becoming a reality. He would also look back fondly on his tenure when writing his 1992 autobiography “In many ways my short stay at Energy gave me more pleasure than any other job I have had before or since”.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk. 

A classic origin story: when I was 16 I wrote a song called ‘Planet Earth’ over a grime instrumental for a reflective alternative worship service that my brother and his friend were running at church one Sunday evening. 

Despite including such powerful sentiments as “If this is Mother Earth, When did she give birth?”, and a chorus that begun with “What wood you do about Deforestation” and ended with “Does it (referring to my powerful environmental message) make you stop, like a station”, it wasn’t quite enough to inspire the world to change its ways.

Ten years later I’ve teamed up with Chris to try again, this time with more comedy, and fewer ‘ation’ rhymes.

New habits

I’ve always tried to be conscious about the world that we live in, whether through overly earnest teenage raps or even last year attempting to go vegetarian for lent because of the impact of the meat industry. This was in turn met by Chris writing a song about feeling betrayed that we could no longer eat meat together, but as we explore in this new song even he is considering a meat-free Monday every once in a while.

I got married in January and my wife Grace constantly inspires me to be better and calls me out on stuff when I forget.

For our wedding we saved money by making it BYOB and instead put that towards providing keep-cups for our guests as wedding favours to save on having to use plastic cups on the day, but also we’ve loved getting pictures of them using them since and hoping that’s trickled out into fewer single-use cups being used.

We’ve since moved to the seaside in Margate so as well as upgrading my diet to be vegetarian-apart-from-locally-caught-fish-and-chips-on-special-occasions, it’s a lot more shocking to see the amount of waste people leave on the beach and the impact it has in the sea.

Being on the road a lot, it’s easy to get into a habit of buying lots of food and drink in packaging, but my reusable water bottle and keep-cup have been lifesavers – especially on the occasional overnight megabus! Recently Chris has got good at shouting ‘No!’ before anyone puts a straw in our drinks. 

Zero-waste song

In this year’s show we’ve tried to tackle more serious issues, such as the end of the world and the power that fear does or doesn’t have over us – especially regarding newspapers and immigration. 

We’ve loved pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone and seeing where it’s led.

To this end Chris had the idea for a ‘Zero-Waste Song’. It’s honestly one of my favorites from the show. There’s also a beyoncé/teletubbies mashup that is arguably a less serious issue but still important. 

In our songs as well as in our lives, we figured there’s no point just having a go at people and trying to make them feel rubbish about themselves when it comes to the environment. People tend to switch off and disengage, so we’re very much trying to meet people where they are and encourage gradual change.  

Comedy is also brilliant way to change the way we look at things. The first verse of the song involves us trying to explain certain things to someone looking back from the future. What’s a sachet? It’s a tiny saucy stash-et. It feels like that sort of thing will stick with people maybe more than a powerpoint presentation. 

Spreading hope

We’re excited to see if it does make more of a difference than my teenage efforts. 

We’ve also expanded our merch for this year! We have organic bamboo t-shirts made in a factory powered by solar and wind energy (don’t even worry about it). 

We’re also getting 150 reusable cups made that say ‘The Way Things Are Is Not The Way They Have To Be’ – the chorus of the song – that hopefully people can take out and spread the love with.

Although we do realise that if nobody buys them then all we’ve done is manufactured another 150 cups – so we really hope some people come along to see us at the Fringe or on tour and buy them.

This Author

Harry Baker  is one half of the comedy/rap/jazz duo Harry and Chris. They perform ‘Harry & Chris Save The World’ at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at Just The Tonic, The Mash House to 25 August 2018 at 2:25pm, ahead of a nationwide tour from 2 October. More info and tickets are available here.