Two hundred years ago, in 1818, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, a novel that showed what might happen if human pride and ambition overreached themselves in a bid to emulate God.

At the time, scientists had just discovered that they could make a dead frog twitch by delivering jolts of electricity to the corpse. There were theories that a divine, life-giving force might have been discovered.

Shelley created a terrifying scenario in which a scientist applied that force and then refused to take responsibility for the creature that was created.

Genes in insects

One hundred and seventy-five years later, in 1993, the film Jurassic Park showed resurrected dinosaurs running amok because scientists had let their enthusiasm and curiosity get the better of them. Once again, the moral of the story was that revolutionary knowledge and godlike powers can cost us dearly.

Moving forward to present day, we are on the threshold of being able to recreate lost creatures, reconstruct wild species, and even create entirely new forms of life that would never have come into being unaided. What do we do with that knowledge? Is it a good idea to resurrect lost animal species?

Because of Jurassic Park, everyone thinks they know how to go about bringing dinosaurs back to life.

In the film, the scientists take a fine piece of amber containing a perfectly preserved mosquito, drill a tiny hole, and extract the blood that formed the bloated mosquito’s last meal. They manage to extract the dinosaur’s genetic material from the dregs of blood and sequence its genome — and then all they have to do is set about producing a dinosaur egg.

Real-life researchers have, in fact, tried to do that very thing, searching for genes in insects that are astonishingly well preserved in amber. The problem is this: scientists can’t find any dinosaur DNA in mosquitoes.

Scientific adviser

Given the DNA molecule’s fragility, the oldest creature from which scientists have extracted fragments of sequenceable genetic material is 700,000 years old. That is quite remarkable, considering how new the technique is. Still, it remains a far cry from the 65 million years that a dinosaur genome would have had to survive to be analysed.

However, that doesn’t mean that the dream of being able to see a dinosaur one day is dead. There really are scientists who are working to achieve just that, though not in the way you might imagine.

Jack Horner found his first dinosaur bones at the age of eight and decided to become a palaeontologist. He dug up his first sizeable dinosaur aged 13 and has continued to make spectacular finds ever since.

His discoveries have played a decisive role in giving scientists the understanding of dinosaurs they have today. For instance, Jack was the first to discover that these creatures built nests to lay their eggs in, nurtured their young, and lived in herds — a far cry from earlier views of dinosaurs as clumsy, primitive dimwits.

Jack was the model for Dr Grant in the Jurassic Park films and acted as a scientific adviser on the series. His link with Hollywood goes even further: producer George Lucas is now funding his dinosaur resurrection project.

Evolutionary process

Jack’s ambition is ‘to build a dinosaur’. Since it’s impossible to investigate the genetic make-up of the dinosaurs because of the lack of DNA, he has had to find another way. His plan is to take a chicken as the starting-point and to try to coax forth its inner saurian.

Biologically speaking, birds are dinosaurs. Not only are they descended from them, they actually constitute a group within the dinosaurs’ family tree, just as lions belong to the feline family and rats to the family of rodents. It’s just that all the other branches of the tree have withered away.

There are four things that distinguish birds from other types of dinosaurs. Chickens have wings rather than arms and hands, and a beak instead of a snout. They are toothless and have a short, compact rump instead of the long tail characteristic of a dinosaur.

Everything else, from their feathers to the wishbone people squabble over after a roast-chicken dinner, are features they share with dinosaurs, Jack tells me. The group of dinosaurs Jack thinks that modern birds share the most characteristics with are therapods, the group from which birds evolved. Therapods included species such as tyrannosaurs, velociraptors, and other two-legged dinosaurs with long, narrow heads and long tails.

‘What we’re trying to do is reverse the evolutionary process and get an embryonic chick to develop into a dinosaur instead.’

Many dinosaurs

It may be possible to transform a chicken into a miniature dinosaur by choosing to remove certain genes and simply replacing them by others.

His team plans to take chicken embryos as a starting point and steer the development of the foetus, controlling the genes that are active while the embryonic chick is developing inside the egg. In this way, they aim to reverse 150 million years of evolution and produce a more archaic creature.

I ask Jack what it would take for him to feel he had completed his project. ‘It would be when we can take a chicken — or any kind of bird, really — and activate genes so they produce teeth, change its mouth, give it a long tail, and alter its arms and hands.

So in practice that would mean hatching a creature with a head like a dinosaur, with teeth in its mouth, arms and hands, and a long tail. It would look just like a miniature modern-day therapod.’

If he managed this, the animal would still be feathered, just like many dinosaurs, and it would be no bigger than a chicken.

Nature’s masters

Jack’s boundless optimism is infectious. It’s clear he’s going to enjoy himself tremendously, no matter whether he succeeds or not. I hope he will, though I have enormous doubts.

There is no way in which a lost species can really be brought back to life. The nearest thing we can manage is a substitute. When I ask my non-scientist friends why they think anyone would want to resurrect dinosaurs, the reply is mostly: ‘Because they can!’

Few of the scientists working in the field draw attention to this aspect, but I think it’s significant. These projects are driven by curiosity, passion, and the desire to achieve the impossible. These are wonderful wellsprings of motivation, but they also hark back to the hubris of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Are we just playing at being God?

When I began writing about humanity’s attempts to revive species, I thought my book would focus on nostalgia and the yearning for a vanished world.

I discovered that it has more to do with the future, with the present, in which we humans have made ourselves nature’s masters — and with scientists’ unbridled desire to discover the new.

This Author

Torill Kornfeldt is a Swedish science journalist and author of The Re-Origin of Species. This extract was translated by Hannah Graham.

The major palm oil company Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) and its primary investor Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) stand accused of environmental and human rights abuses in a new report from Friends of the Earth US, Sustainable Development Institute, and Milieudefensie. 

The report, entitled High Risk in the Rainforest: Golden Agri-Resources and Golden Veroleum’s Palm Oil Project in Liberia, states that ongoing operations identified through recently conducted GPS mapping are in direct violation of both GVL’s and GAR’s sustainability policies.

The also breach the “No Deforestation” policies of many of GAR’s largest customers, which include Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and PZ Cussons, according to the report. The report specifically calls on GAR’s shareholders to address the risks inherent in their investments in the palm oil sector.

Forested land

Jeff Conant, senior international forests program manager with Friends of the Earth US, said: “GVL’s forest destruction and its disregard for human rights poses serious material and reputational risks for both investors and commercial palm oil buyers.

“Stakeholders in these rogue companies need to recognize the risks and the wrongdoing and use their leverage to pull the brakes on GVL’s destruction.”

The report cites numerous testimonies from local residents finding that GVL continues to violate communities’ land rights, following a pattern of abuse that has been documented since the company began operations in 2012.

These findings echo a February 2018 decision by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) affirming that GVL has failed to implement adequate free, prior, and informed consent procedures and has sown conflict by destroying sacred sites and using coercion and intimidation to maintain its operations in disputed areas.

The RSPO has ordered GVL to cease operations in multiple locations, but GVL has rejected the RSPO’s findings and continues to clear forested land and build facilities in areas of conflict.

Communities’ rights

“The Liberian experience with palm oil companies like GVL reinforces the need for secure land rights to ensure that investment benefits local communities. Otherwise, companies like GVL will continue destroying the forests Liberians depend on for their livelihoods,” says James Otto, campaigner with the Sustainable Development Institute.

GVL is owned by a private equity firm controlled largely by the Indonesian billionaire Franky Widjaja, CEO of GAR.

While the Widjaja family controls the majority of shares in GAR, minority investors include the U.S. firms BlackRock, Vanguard, Dimensional Fund Advisors, TIAA, and CalPERS and the Dutch firm Robeco. Citibank, Rabobank and several Asian banks also have financial ties to the company.

In 2017, GAR became the first palm oil company listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, despite civil society concerns about the company’s unsustainable practices.

The new revelations about GVL’s ongoing violations come as Liberia’s Legislature is considering passage of a historic Land Rights Act that would recognise communities’ rights to own and manage their lands, following the recent election of President George Weah.

The report is accompanied by photos and testimonies and is available in a full-length version and an abridged version with key findings.

This Author

Patrick Davis is press officer at Friends of the Earth US.

Industry sectors based on fossil fuels significantly outspent environmental groups and renewable energy companies on climate change lobbying, new research has found.

In a study published today in the journal Climatic Change, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle shows that between 2000 and 2016, lobbyists spent more than $2 billion trying to influence climate legislation in the US Congress.

Brulle found that electric utilities spent the largest sums during this timeframe followed by the oil, gas, and coal industries, and transportation sector, respectively by analysing data from lobbying reports made available on the website OpenSecrets.org. 

Climate lobbying

Overall, lobbying by corporate sectors involved in the production or use of fossil fuels overshadowed that of environmental organizations and the renewable energy sector by a ratio of approximately 10 to 1.

Brulle acknowledges that the leading spenders do not take monolithic approaches and at times lobby in support of climate legislation.

“Different corporations typically push for whatever positions are advantageous to their economic well-being,” writes Brulle. He says that further research is required to parse out the effect of such variable lobbying positions on climate legislation.   

Though climate lobbying only accounted for 3.9 percent of the total amount spent on legislative lobbying between 2000 to 2016, its rates fluctuated considerably. Early on, relatively little money — only about $50 million, or 2 percent of all lobbying — was spent trying to sway federal legislators’ opinions during the years leading up to and including 2006.

But in the years that followed, climate lobbying expenditures shot up, reaching a high point of $362 million in 2009, which accounted for 9 percent of all lobbying that year alone. The next year, 2010, saw only a slight drop, before climate lobbying efforts plunged, eventually reaching about 3 percent of total lobbying after 2011.

Inter-industry competition

Of course, 2009 marked the year that the House of Representatives narrowly passed the landmark climate legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill. However, that effort died on the floor of the Senate just over a year later.

To explain these fluctuations, Brulle argues that climate lobbying grows as the potential to enact climate legislation increases. This is especially true when one party, that has campaigned on passing climate legislation, controls government – findings that have troubling implications for American democracy.

“What we have is a group of unelected lobbyists representing special interests negotiating with Congressional Representatives on climate legislation,” Brulle told DeSmog via email. 

“The minimal representation of environmental groups means that arguments for climate action to protect the common interest will be marginal considerations. Instead, special interests dominate the conversation, all working for a particular advantage for their industry. The common good is not represented.”

According to Brulle, that this has important implications for the fate, outcome, and nature of future climate legislation, which is largely determined by intra-sector and inter-industry competition.

Meaningful action

He says that the activities of environmental and nonprofit organizations often constitute one-time, short-term mobilization efforts. This is a clear disadvantage, given the vast expenditures and continuous and established presence of professional lobbyists in DC. 

“Lobbying is conducted away from the public eye. There is no open debate or refutation of viewpoints offered by professional lobbyists meeting in private with government officials,” writes Brulle.

“Control over the nature and flow of information to government decision-makers can be significantly altered by the lobbying process and creates a situation of systematically distorted communication.”

Brulle told DeSmog his findings partially explain the lack of forceful action on the climate crisis in the U.S. “For over 30 years, the science of climate change has been well understood,” he said. “But no meaningful action has been taken by the US Lobbying by special interests has played a role in this outcome.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

Moves by the disputed President of the Democratic Republic of Congo Joseph Kabila to grant oil and logging licences in the world’s second largest rainforest have thrown efforts to protect the area into disarray, potentially weakening the push to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Congo’s environment ministry reestablished three industrial logging concessions in the Congo Basin rainforest to Chinese-owned companies in February and set a process in motion to hand out 14 more.

Later the government signed oil prospecting concessions in two World Heritage Sites, Salonga and Virunga national parks.

Logging moratorium

The news has cast doubt on the future of the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), a multi-million dollar development and conservation project, established by the Norwegian government with international support in 2015.

Funding for the project has been suspended for months. With one CAFI member of staff telling Unearthed the organisation was “very concerned” to hear about the new concessions.

The Congo Basin rainforest stretches across six countries, from west to central Africa.

At over 500 million acres, more than three times the size of France, the rainforest is home to eight World Heritage Sites and an array of endangered species, including mountain gorillas and forest elephants.

Around 60 percent of the forest is located in DRC and despite having a logging moratorium in place since 2002, the country lost an area of forest ten times the size of Greater London between 2010 and 2014.

Mountain gorillas

Data submitted by the organisation Redd+ to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change shows that the DRC portion of the Congo Basin rainforest lost 1.6 million hectares in that four year period, the most recent available, equivalent to more than 6,177  square miles.

With long-delayed elections scheduled for December 23 and Kabila’s administration busy signing logging and oil licences there are fears that the country and the rainforest is entering a tense moment.

The government’s decision to open up parts of two protected forests to oil exploration has also proved controversial.

One of the concessions allocated to Compagnies Minières Congolaise (Comico) encroaches on the Salonga National Park. The remote nature reserve is home to bonobos and Congo peafowls. Centrale Oil and Gas, the Guernsey-based company, owned by diamond magnate Adonis Pouroulis, has a 40% stake in Comico.

According to a report in The Times in May, exploration licences have been signed for a fifth of Virunga national park, an iconic World Heritage Site, home to mountain gorillas.

Industrial logging

Pouroulis confirmed to Unearthed that Centrale holds a 40 percent stake in Comico.  He said: “CoMiCo is committed to environmental conservation and will not cut down virgin rainforest – whether it be within or without of any National Park or other protected regions.  I can also confirm that CoMiCo will not drill for oil within the boundaries of the Salonga National Park.”

Oil drilling is not permitted in World Heritage Sites, but according to reports from May the DRC government is looking to reclassify portions of the two protected areas to allow for drilling.

British oil company Soco International previously carried out seismic testing in Virunga national park, but let its license lapse in 2015. A company spokesman told Unearthed that the company “no longer has any oil and gas interests in the DRC”.

Just last year, scientists discovered a massive area of carbon-rich soil, or peatlands, in the Cuvette Centrale region of DRC, adding urgency to global efforts to preserve the rainforest. The peatlands cover an area larger than England and could contain the equivalent of three years worth of global carbon emissions.

Two of the three logging concessions awarded in February overlap the peatlands and there is concern that any industrial logging in the area could cause huge volumes of greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere.

Constitutional change

Professor Simon Lewis, who was part of the team that discovered the peatlands, told Unearthed that allowing logging in this part of Congo would be “irresponsible”.

He said: “These peat forests are some of the most carbon-dense ecosystems in the world and should to be left for local people to continue to manage them sustainably. In my view, the way to approach much-needed local development is to work with communities and not give their resources to overseas logging companies.”

DRC’s environment ministry has insisted that the peatlands would not be harmed as they are in an area that is geographically unexploitable”. 

Ben Shepherd, Chatham House fellow on the Africa programme, suggested that there is a risk of Kabila’s government using DRC’s vast natural resources to build a “war chest” to fight elections.

It is unclear whether President Kabila will run in December’s election. Doing so would require a constitutional change. But reports that he is considering taking part in the election have added to political unrest in the country.

In March, the bodies of two UN investigators and 40 decapitated policemen were found in the central province of Kasai, a stronghold of opponents to President Kabila. The violence was part of a new conflict in the region that has reportedly seen over a million people displaced.

Shepherd told Unearthed: “One of the things that people allege is that the government is looking to use Congo’s assets and natural resources to build a war chest to fight elections. Kabila is not popular, but he does have resources and a degree of political organisation across the country. In a place like Congo, as with other countries, money goes a long way in politics. And it’s fairly axiomatic in Congo that money going into the government’s coffers doesn’t all get accounted for.”

Conservation deal

The revelations have severely affected an international effort to protect the Congo Basin.

Berta Pesti, from the UN Development Programme, who works as a senior technical advisor on the UK government backed CAFI project told Unearthed that no one thought working in DRC “was going to be an easy ride”.

She said that CAFI was “very concerned” to hear about the new concessions. A logging moratorium, established in order to prevent a rush for resources at the end of the conflict in DRC, has been in place since 2002. But there have been numerous attempts by the government to grant logging concessions and reports of timber leaving the country illegally.

Pesti is clear that CAFI’s position is that “the moratorium is in place and until the conditions in DRC’s own legal framework are met, no new contracts should be signed.”

The situation in DRC has not played out well in Norway, which is the main funder of CAFI. The country has long funded forest conservation projects in South America, south-east Asia and central Africa. But a recent report by the country’s Office of the Auditor General criticised its International Forests and Climate Initiative, stating: “progress and results are delayed, that current measures have uncertain feasibility and effect, and that the risk of fraud is not well-managed”

Benefit of all

Responding to this report, Norway’s environment minister Ola Elvestuen told Unearthed that the government took the concerns it raised “very seriously”, but added that not engaging in DRC was “not an alternative”. [Full responses here].

Elvestuen said: “This forest is key to the future of humanity. Without protecting the Congo Basin forests, it is hard to see how we can meet the 1.5-2 degrees climate goals.”

Asked what leverage CAFI had to force the DRC government’s hand, Pesti said that the body could look to withhold funding, but admitted that the ‘letter of intent’, signed by all parties at the start of the agreement is not a legal document.

“The letter of intent is not a real contract. No tribunal is going to enforce it. But it’s an agreement. It’s a moral agreement and there are people in the DRC government who take that agreement seriously,” she said.

“We have dialogue, we have policy networks. You’re talking to people and you’re trying to convince them it’s for the benefit of all.”

She insisted that despite recent disappointment, no one working on CAFI is demotivated.

“We cannot just stop. We cannot just give up,” she said. “If it was easy it would have already been solved. We are aware that this is going to be a long process. We are aware that it’s going to be tough. But we are prepared to fight.”

This article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace also covered by Mongabay.

Dear Rainforest Alliance and UTZ,

Congratulations – on January 9 2018, your two organisations officially merged. The merger is one of the biggest shifts in the landscape of certification for a decade and this moment provides an exciting opportunity, as you write a new, combined standard.

Ethical Consumer and The Ecologist hope that you will use the chance to unite your respective strengths. Rainforest Alliance has set a high bar for environmental protections; UTZ in workers’ rights.

You have promised to produce a certification that brings ‘together the best elements of both standards’. We hope to see this promise followed through.

Exceptional circumstances

But we also fear that the merger could compromise some of these standards. We urge you not to water down any of the principles that you have developed as independent organisations. This will mean taking and maintaining the clauses on which each of you has shown the greatest strength.

In terms of workers rights, we urge you to maintain:
    • UTZ’s demands that workers are paid monthly and that any workers’ complaints can be made anonymously.
    • UTZ’s expectation that workers living on site are allowed to express social, religious and cultural identities freely.  
    • UTZ’s clauses on unionisation: ensuring that all workers, including the employees of smallholders – who even when they rely primarily on family labour, often do also employ some workers – have the right to unionise, and that they are allowed to elect representatives in countries where unionisation is outlawed.
    • UTZ’s clause regarding working hours and overtime: not allowing employers to ask for working weeks over 60 hours, even in ‘exceptional circumstances’ (as permitted by RA).
      
These are issues that we believe are not currently addressed adequately by the Rainforest Alliance standards.

Recently deforested

Conversely, there are several key workers’ rights clauses upheld by Rainforest Alliance that do not appear in UTZ’s criteria, and that we also believe should appear in the new standard.

Rainforest Alliance has a clearer definition of ‘forced labour’, specifically prohibiting the use of debt servitude and prison labour. It specifies that workers should be paid 1.5 times their normal wage for overtime, where no law or bargaining agreement states otherwise.

It specifies that working hours rules apply to everyone, rather than adding exceptions for certain jobs. And it states that not more than 30 percent of a workers’ wage should be paid ‘in-kind’ – where UTZ refers only to local law (allowing up to 68 percent in some countries).

In terms of the environment, we ask that Rainforest Alliance’s more stringent requirements are upheld (it tackles many issues not currently addressed in UTZ’s standards).

In particular, Rainforest Alliance specifies that land cannot have been recently deforested, whereas UTZ allows deforestation of secondary forest.

Standards maintained

Rainforest Alliance surpasses UTZ with regards to protecting ecosystem biodiversity, with clauses on the preservation of native plants and the containment of invasive species, and a preference for organic fertilisers.

We also urge you to maintain Rainforest Alliance’s prohibition of environmentally damaging activities and substances, such as hunting and use of GMO crops.

On many topics, though, your approach would be strongest if your criteria were combined – as is true in terms of maternal rights, living wage, water management and housing conditions for workers living on-site.

Finally, Rainforest Alliance has very weak rules on the use of the logo on packaging, which can be used when just 30 percent of one ingredient is certified. These rules need to be strengthened.

Above, we have highlighted only those areas in which a choice must be made based on the differences between UTZ and Rainforest Alliance’s standards as they currently stand. Where your approaches already coincide, we of course expect the standards to be maintained.

Market price

While this letter has focussed on the strengths that already exist in the two standards, the merger is an opportunity to add new features that don’t currently exist in either standard.

We draw your attention to the amount of material that identifies low and volatile prices for commodities such as cocoa and coffee as the underlying cause of many of the problems– such as child labour and deforestation – that certification aims to prevent.

We urge you to consider regulating prices directly as Fairtrade does, and to look, for example, at the “Cocoa Barometer’s” suggestion of a flexible premium that goes up when the market price goes down, in order to guard vulnerable farmers against the worst effects of fluctuating prices.

Yours sincerely,

Ethical Consumer and The Ecologist

Workers’ Rights:

    1. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s more precise definition of bonded labour: which includes prison labour and labour based on debt even where this is legal in the country. UTZ does not explicitly address prison labour or debt-based servitude in its ban on forced labour for certified producers.

    2. Maintain UTZ’s rule that a working week must not exceed 60 hours including overtime: and that workers are provided with safe transport home, if during anti-social hours. Rainforest Alliance currently allows longer working weeks in ‘exceptional circumstances’.

    3. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s blanket working hours rules. UTZ currently includes an exemption for “Watchmen” whose regular working hours are not allowed to exceed 56 hours per week on average per year, rather than the 48 afforded to everyone else.

    4. Maintain UTZ criteria for an anonymous, accessible complaints system for all workers, buyers and suppliers, or anyone else who would wish to make a code of conduct complaint. This must not interfere with other complaint mechanisms, (e.g. judicial or collective agreements). Rainforest Alliance states that management must have complaint mechanisms in place, but does not outline the nature of these or specify any further criteria.

    5. Maintain UTZ’s provisions for illegal freedom of association: accredited businesses must allow workers to elect representatives to discuss working conditions with farm management, in countries where unionisation is illegal. Rainforest Alliance does not address the issue of association in countries where joining a union is illegal.
       
    6. Maintain UTZ’s requirement that all employees should have the right to unionise and bargain collectively. Rainforest Alliance specifically excludes smallholders from this requirement. Whilst it defines smallholders as a farmer that ‘primarily relies on family or household labour, or reciprocal workforce exchange with other members of the community’, smallholders that meet this description do often still employ a small number of, particularly seasonal, workers and therefore should not be exempt from this clause.  
       
    7. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s requirement that no more than 30 percent of wage is paid in-kind. The current UTZ criteria allows payment-in-kind up to the national legal requirement, which in some countries is up to 68 percent.
       
    8. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s requirement that pay for overtime is 1.5 times the usual rate in absence of applicable local law or collective bargaining agreement. UTZ does not specify rate of overtime pay in absence of law or bargaining agreement.
       
    9. Maintain UTZ’s requirements that wages are paid at least monthly: and that these are given with a payslip. Rainforest Alliance does not specify how regularly wages must be paid, nor that a payslip be provided.
       
    10. Maintain UTZ’s requirement that on-site workers are given access to healthcare by year four of certification.  Access to health care for all workers must currently be provided by year 6 of certification under Rainforest Alliance standards.
       
    11. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s specific criteria with regards to space and the safety of toilet facilities for workers living on-site. Rainforest Alliance outlines specific room sizes per number of inhabitants and the safety of toilet facilities for women and children as continuous improvement criteria. UTZ currently outlines basic, mandatory outlines for living conditions (as does RA) but provides no further, more specific guidance for continuous improvement.

    12. Combine your respective strengths with regards to maternal rights: this means maintaining Rainforest’s requirement for 6 weeks full-paid maternity leave as a continuous improvement criteria; and UTZ’s requirements for on-site access to childcare; and no discrimination post-maternity leave, including security of pay and position.

    13. Combine your respective strengths with regards to living wage: combine UTZ’s emphasis on progress from day one, with Rainforest Alliance’s explicit criteria for payment of living wage in order to cut the time within which this goal will be achieved by certified farms. Currently, UTZ requires progress towards living wage as a minimum criteria for certification but does not give a hard deadline for its payment. Rainforest Alliance requires a plan towards living wage only after year 3. It lists payment of living wage as a Level A criteria. However, only 50 percent of Level A criteria must ever be met.      

Ethical Consumer and The Ecologist would like to see a) progress towards living wage as a mandatory criteria from the first year of certification; b) payment of a living wage as a compulsory ‘Continuous Improvement’ criteria; and c) payment of a living wage required earlier than the sixth year of certification.

Environment:

    1. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s much stricter policies on the prior destruction of forest or High Conservation Value areas: RA specifies that there must have been no destruction of forest or other natural ecosystems in the prior 5 years and no destruction of any High Conservation Value areas since November 2005. UTZ only specifies that primary forest must not have been destroyed since 2008 and specifically allows some exceptions for secondary forest destruction.
       
    2. Maintain UTZ’s demand that there is no production within 2km of protected conservation areas. Rainforest Alliance has no such requirement for a buffer zone around protected areas.
       
    3. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s clear policy against GMOs. UTZ does not currently prohibit the use of GMOs, but requires that it is recorded.

    4. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s preference for organic fertilizers: demonstration of which is required by the third year of certification. UTZ encourages the use of organic fertilizer, but does not require it at any stage for ongoing certification.

    5. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s requirement for a management plan on energy efficiency. This would represent the next step for UTZ’s current requirement for consideration of energy efficiency.

    6. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s prohibition of hunting apart from smallholders and of pests. UTZ only prohibits hunting of endangered or threatened species.

    7. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s requirement that efforts must be made to contain and reduce invasive species in order to ensure biodiversity. UTZ does not currently address invasive species.

    8. Maintain Rainforest Alliance’s provisions on preserving native plant species: that farms with shade-tolerant crops have at least 15% native vegetation coverage.

    9. Combine your water management criteria: Rainforest Alliance demands a clear policy against sewage being released into water systems, which addresses erosion. It states that irrigation systems should be maintained and new systems to improve productivity must be designed to minimize water waste, erosion. This should be combined with UTZ’s requirement for a water efficiency plan by the fourth year of certification.

Implementation

    1. Maintain UTZ’s stricter rules on the use of the logo. UTZ’s rules on the use of the logo depend on the product, but are substantially stricter than Rainforest Alliance. In the case of products based on coffee, cocoa or hazelnuts, at least 60 percent of the total product must be coffee, cocoa or hazelnuts, and at least 90 percent of that must be certified. We hope that the new standard keeps the stricter rules, as weak rules undermine the logo’s reputation. Rainforest Alliance has weak rules regarding the use of its logo on packaging. It can be used if only 30 percent of the one ingredient is certified, and that ingredient does not even need to make up a large amount of the product.

Sources

UTZ criteria based on Core Code of Conduct for individual and multi-site certification, 2015, Version 1.1 and Core Code of Conduct for group and multi-group certification, 2015, Version 1.1; and Rainforest Alliance criteria based on Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard for farms and producer groups involved in crop and cattle production, July 2017, Version 1.2 unless otherwise specified.

Antonie Fountain and Friedel Huetz-Adams, the Cocoa Barometer 2018

UTZ, Labeling and Trademark Policy For claims and logo use, October 2015

Rainforest Alliance, Requirements and Guidelines for Use of the Rainforest Alliance Trademarks, 2016

Biodiversity is key to the survival of life. Its loss deprives future generations of irreplaceable genetic information, potential livelihood opportunities, and compromises sustainability.

We are guardians of our environment and we have a social and moral obligation to do what we can to improve what we leave for future generations.

The UK Government recently introduced a 25 Year Environmental Plan that highlighted the social and moral obligations on society to take affirmative action in order to prevent environmental decline, and to go a stage further to create more abundant biodiversity.

Guiding principles

At NextEnergy Capital we believe that the energy industry can support the Government’s Environmental Plan and be an exemplary neighbour to the communities in which we operate, and that solar farms present a unique opportunity to enhance biodiversity.

Once established, solar farms are relatively undisturbed. With the right habitat enhancement and management they can harbour an abundance of flora and fauna that improves aesthetic value, and contributes to improving air quality, water quality, soil erosion, pest and disease regulation, while also providing an opportunity for community engagement and education. 

All of this is beneficial to our industry and to society. The Solar Trade Association is also beginning to bring biodiversity into the spotlight: a recent study ‘shows that solar farms can significantly improve local biodiversity, with benefits to wildlife and potentially even surrounding crops’.

NextEnergy notes that these opportunities to protect and enhance our natural surroundings have been largely overlooked by the industry. 

We believe the solar industry can benefit the environment even further. Achieving these aims will undoubtedly be a massive challenge that requires affirmative action in-line with a strong set of guiding principles. Governments will play an important role but can’t deliver this strategy alone, nor can we ignore the problem and assume it is someone else’s to solve.

Native species

Given that the chosen location for solar farms is generally either low-grade land or taken from a relatively intensive farming cycle, it is often left to grass and grazed over a 25-30 year horizon.

These plots are generally fenced off, with little crossing traffic or disturbance, and combined with a cessation (or dramatic reduction) in the use of fertilizers and pesticides: they allow the potential for significant sustainable habitat development.

The core concept of solar power and clean energy is based on the fundamental belief that there is a better way to generate electricity than the traditional carbon-based approach.

This mindset lends itself well to examining how each generating station can be an exemplary neighbor to the surrounding area, and how the industry can provide the additional benefits previously mentioned.

Once planning permission has been granted, developers are usually required to consider measures that support the native species that could be affected by the development.

Special measures

Actions specified can vary greatly from asset to asset, but are usually those intended to mitigate impact as opposed to enhance biodiversity.

We would consider these merely baseline measures. Yet, it could be said that these considerations are often overlooked, or dismissed over more pressing concerns, even post-construction and into operation. As an industry we have a moral obligation to do better than this.

Alongside its biodiversity partner Wychwood Biodiversity, NextEnergy has invested significant time in auditing its existing portfolio to ensure that the baseline measures have been delivered.

Over two years ago, NextEnergy began to implement baseline compliance across its fleet.  This work continues as new assets are acquired, and has enabled us to introduce improved land management methodologies, alongside planning compliance and the best practice guidance suggested by Wychwood.

NextEnergy and Wychwood have gone a stage further by establishing a number of exemplary sites  in which special measures are being implemented against strictly monitored baselines to pilot their impact.

Commercial logic

A biodiversity management plan has been tailored to the unique conditions of each exemplary site. Engagement with our landowners, operation and management contractors, and the community has proved vital, as these stakeholders have the closest relationships with the asset and its surrounding environment.

As the first annual survey results from our sites are being compiled, we are seeing a notable increase in the abundance of pollinating insects against the year zero baseline.

Looking at the industry as a whole, the short term focus should be on maturing the our approach to land management.

This will require wholesale adoption best practice guidelines, and require operation & management and asset management teams to upskill their operatives and subcontractors.

Correct operational planning can show some operational expenditure improvements too, adding a degree of commercial logic to actioning rapid change.

Mutually beneficial

Initial measures should include strip grass cutting (cutting only beneath the panels and leaving the rest of the site long), seasonal sheep grazing, spot weed treatment, alternative side hedge maintenance (every 3 years), alongside the creation of simple habitat improvements such as hibernacula, bird/bat boxes and solitary bee and bug hotels.

The exemplary sites are the initial steps in a long process, and provide a test bed for creative measures. Some of the broader objectives we are pursuing include the introduction of bee hives onto our land, alongside native wild flowers.

We are working on creating small and managed ponds to create homes for dragonflies and amphibians. We are also working on local cropping, and are currently piloting the growth of crops that can be harvested without impact on solar asset operations.

This is designed to support the surrounding community and its various cottage industries, be it by donating what is grown or in engaging community members in the crop and therefore the solar asset.

The future ambition is two-fold. Firstly, further engagement with surrounding landowners, whose wealth of localised knowledge should be brought forward to create mutually beneficial measures.

Hollow words

Secondly, we should create partnerships with key stakeholders and the education system to deliver creativity and monitoring.

It is clear that as a society we have some way to go before fulfilling the aims set out in the Government’s 25 Year Environmental Plan, but our industry can and should be a forerunner in supporting the ambition of leaving a better environment for the next generation and creating a symbiotic relationship between power generation and biodiversity.

However, we need affirmative action and not just hollow words. As a responsible business it is our ambition to deliver on this plan.

This Author

Ross Grier is managing director of NextEnergy Capital, a leading international investor and asset manager focusing on the solar sector.

Extraordinary new footage of the last surviving member of an uncontacted tribe has been released by FUNAI, the governmental protection agency for tribal peoples in Brazil.

The man, known as the Last of his Tribe, has made it clear he wishes to avoid contact with mainstream society. His avoidance of interaction means that no one knows his story, but it is likely his tribe were annihilated by gunmen hired by colonists and ranchers who invaded the land from the 1970s onwards.

From his abandoned campsites, we know he plants corn, manioc, papaya & bananas.  He hunts too, and digs holes about 2 metres deep with sharp staves in the bottom to catch animals to eat. He makes houses of straw and thatch, and digs a hole inside, presumably to protect himself if attacked.

Quickly and violently

The ‘Last of his Tribe’s’ house and garden where he grows manioc and other vegetables. Very little is known about this uncontacted Indian. He lives on his own in a patch of forest, surrounded by cattle ranches and soya plantations in the Brazilian state of Rondônia.

FUNAI became aware of his existence around 1990 after they found evidence of destroyed houses; the type of huts the man builds. Despite a targeted attack by gunmen in 2009, he has survived thanks to FUNAI’s enforcement of the legal order protecting his territory. This is now under threat.

The man digs deep holes to trap animals and to hide in. He is believed to be the only survivor of a tribe massacred by ranchers in the 1970s and 1980s.

This region is one of the most violent in Brazil, an issue likely to increase in the run up to presidential elections in Brazil this October, and FUNAI’s budget has been severely slashed. Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples, has lobbied the government for years to protect his territory in the face of repeated attempts by surrounding ranchers to invade.

Footage like this is vital in the ongoing struggle to protect uncontacted peoples, who are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. FUNAI must prove he is still alive to retain the restriction order protecting his land, otherwise the ranchers who surround the territory will move quickly and violently to grab the land.

Powerful agribusiness

Altair Algayer, head of the FUNAI (government) team monitoring the man’s territory, says: “This man, who none of us know, and who’s lost almost everything, including the rest of his people, proves it’s possible to survive, and resist contact. I think he’s better off as he is than if he’d made contact.”

Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International says: “Uncontacted tribes aren’t primitive relics of a remote past. They live in the here and now.

“They are our contemporaries and a vital part of humankind’s diversity, but face catastrophe unless their land is protected.

“The terrible crimes that have been committed against this man and his people must never be repeated, but countless other uncontacted tribes face the real prospect of the same fate unless their lands are protected.

“Only a major groundswell of public opinion can even the odds in favour of their survival, against the powerful agribusiness interests who want nothing more than to steal uncontacted tribes’ land, at the expense of their lives.”

Survival International Research and Advocacy Director Fiona Watson visited this territory during a government monitoring expedition.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This story is a press release from Survival International.

Droughts in Southern Africa, wildfires which killed over a hundred people in Portugal in 2017: we repeatedly see the growing havoc of climate change.

We have only a few years to cut emissions enough to keep temperature rise below 2°C, as former UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres and leading scientists have warned.

As Professor Chris Rapley said in the Ecologist recently, progress is “absolutely not at the scale, or pace that is necessary.”

There are vigorous campaigns against new fossil fuel developments, for instance the inspiring resistance to the proposed Kinder Morgan tar sands oil pipeline  in Canada. However efforts to cut emissions overall are far too slow.

Not very likely

Faced with huge dilemmas, like how to tackle climate change, people’s default position is to follow the excessively risk-averse approach Kahneman describes in Thinking Fast and Slow, in which potential setbacks are given disproportionate weight in decision making.

As a result, goals which lack the necessary ambition are chosen. If we proceeded in this way, we would probably regret it in a few years when, despite any apparent victories on our modest campaigns, feedbacks due to temperature rise had led to accelerated climate change.

Instead, as Friends of the Earth Director Craig Bennett said, our campaigns must “really scale up the ambition of the transformational change we need.”

We need goals which sufficient people will consider both achievable, and large enough to make a significant difference. We will not stimulate people to rise to the challenge unless we communicate “a credible strategy that is to scale with the climate crisis”.

A large poll in eighteen European countries found that high proportions of people consider it either not at all likely, or not very likely “that enough governments will take action on climate change”.

Susceptible businesses

Two-thirds of Germans, and over half in both France and the UK have this belief. Governments’ plans submitted at Paris, even if implemented, would lead to temperature rise of at least 3°C.

The May round of UN climate negotiations was suspended in disarray. While some countries and regions have started to price carbon, the price is far too low to cut emissions and drive investment in renewables sufficiently.

This all underlines the importance of pushing business, as well as governments, to cut emissions. The eminent researcher, Ed Maibach, stated: “people who are concerned about climate change are much more likely to express their concern through their purchases as a consumer … [than] to engage politically as citizens.”

Therefore we urgently need a new campaign targeting selected susceptible businesses which could be pushed into making large emissions cuts soon.

Many large companies could follow the example of Lego and others and save substantial sums by investing more in energy efficiency or contracting to use renewable energy.

Dirty energy

The proposed campaign would flood the companies with demands from thousands of citizens, and create publicity imaginatively, to pressure and embarrass them to reduce, or cease funding, specific polluting activities.

Targeted companies, which consider their “brand strength” “critical”, would have a huge incentive to improve before their reputation and profits were seriously hit.

A relatively small cut in profits can reduce a company’s share price significantly and seriously hit executives’ income. As the leading management consultancy PWC said, companies take great care to “anticipate possible risks and opportunities before they materialize”.

We can show them that the risk of high carbon operation is too great, and that energy efficiency and using renewables would boost their reputation and profits.

Certain banks which invest the most in dirty energy could be among the targets. Current account switching has been made much less hassle than previously.

Coal mining

There are over 40 banks and building societies listed by the Current Account Switching Service.  Ethical Consumer ranks them in terms of their overall ethics.

Every year about fourteen million people invest in savings accounts, about three per cent of bank customers switch accounts, and millions of young people open their first account.

All this constitutes substantial consumer power we could influence. On and in the weeks around Bank Transfer Day in the USA in 2011, 650,000 customers shifted $4.5 billion out of major banks.

Target companies could include HSBC, which in response to activist pressure including the Climate Serious petition has introduced a somewhat improved energy policy.

However, it is continuing to finance substantial coal mining in three countries, leading the campaign group BankTrack to point out that HSBC is Happy Still Being in Coal.

Irresponsible companies

The Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2018 shows that HSBC are the 7th worst bank in the world for financing the dirtiest, most climate-harmful fossil fuels.  They have failed to follow the example of thirteen European banks which have stopped direct funding of coal power plants.

It would also be very helpful to enlist high-profile and respected supporters, provided they are well-chosen to stick to the campaign’s line. They can have a strong impact, as Bob Geldof did for Live Aid, and Mark Ruffalo for renewable energy.

One strength of the campaign would be that it would offer supporters a range of actions, from signing a petition to the target companies, joining other activists to collect petition signatures outside target companies’ premises, embarrassing the companies at their AGMs, or by visiting their premises to highlight their failures, using music and drama.

Posing a major threat to various high-emitting companies, and therefore potentially also to many others before long, could create the well-known radical flank effect, making business and governments more receptive than previously to the demands of less radical environmental groups.

The campaign would show all large companies that citizens will not tolerate them wrecking our climate, and that they could be targeted next. Once the initial target companies had made adequate commitments, the campaign would target other irresponsible companies. You can contact me to help make this campaign a reality, telling all businesses: go green, or go bust!

This Author

Tim Root is co-ordinator of Muswell Hill & Hornsey Friends of the Earth. Tim’s work on climate campaigns has previously been published in a few magazines, including at https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/tim-root/prospects-for-paris

The government’s environment bill must have clear and binding targets, and be backed up by strong enforcement, campaigners have said.

Prime minister Teresa May announced the government’s intention to draw up the first environment bill in the UK since 1995 on Wednesday. She did not provide many details, except to say that it would include action on air pollution, and “some of the opportunities that we think will be available to us after we leave the European Union.”

She added it would not just be an issue for the environment department (DEFRA). “It encompasses a number of departments, both in the action needed and in the positive impact that it will have. The Department of Health, for example, will benefit, as individuals benefit from cleaner air.”

Nature’s recovery

The government has been repeatedly criticised and taken to court for failing to reduce air pollution, levels of which are above those allowed by EU law.

The legislation meets calls by NGOs to enshrine the government’s 25-year environment plan, published earlier this year, into law. The plan promised action on waste, the natural environment, air pollution and improving health through access to nature.

The government has also recently pledged to create a watchdog, to replace the oversight of the European Commission after Brexit. It has been heavily criticised for falling short of the EU’s legal systems, as it would only be able to issue legal proceedings against the government, not other public bodies.

NGOs want the new bill to deliver this watchdog, and also enshrine and strengthen EU protections in law, and set measurable short and long-term targets for nature’s recovery and a healthy environment.

Bills covering agriculture and fisheries have already been announced by the government. NGOs want these to include binding targets backed up with funding.

Nature depleted

Tony Juniper, executive director at WWF, said: “Our country is increasingly bereft of wildlife, our rivers polluted, there is more and more plastic in the sea and an ever-increasing area of green space covered with concrete. This new law must set clear targets for the recovery of the natural world that we all depend upon. There is no time to waste.”

Martin Harper, director of conservation at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, pointed to the organisation’s State of Nature report from 2016, which ranked the UK as the 28th most nature-depleted country out of 218 countries it assessed.

He said: “As the UK seeks to leave the European Union, we urgently need all our governments to not only maintain the current levels of nature protection but to raise the bar and allow our wildlife to recover.”

Marian Spain, chief executive of Plantlife, said: “Brexit gives the government a major chance to hit the reset button on policies that have been damaging nature in the UK for years. The time for action is now. We have seen floral diversity crash in our magnificent but vanishing meadows, a staggering 97% of which have been lost since the 1930s.”

Doubts voiced

However, Tom Burke, chairman of environmental think tank E3G, who has advised both government ministers and big business on environmental issues, tweeted: “Why would anyone trust a government that has crippled the planning system, destroyed the independence of environmental regulators, cut investment in energy efficiency and delayed the deployment of renewables with an environment bill?”

Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth was also cautious. He told the BBC: “This could be an act that really moves forward protection of nature. But we don’t know what the bill will include, what will be its foundations and when it will be delivered.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The government of Thailand has pledged to start sending plastic scrap back where it came from as part of a crackdown on illegal waste imports.

The news poses another problem for the UK’s beleaguered recycling sector and follows reports of recycling facilities in Thailand becoming overwhelmed by a surge in trash shipments since China’s ban on low-quality waste came into force.

An Unearthed analysis of customs data revealed that UK waste exports to Thailand shot up in the first four months of this year: from just 123 tonnes in January to April 2017 to 6,810 tonnes.

Plastic pollution

According to reports in Thai media, the government has announced new measures to restrict plastic imports, with the country struggling to cope with increased imports of plastic waste since China shut its doors to “foreign trash” in January.

The Thai government will introduce [story in Thai] inspections of all plastics and electronic waste imports into the country and will send waste back where it came from if it’s imported without proper description.

Since China stopped accepting plastic waste imports in January, western countries, including the UK have been scrambling for alternative export markets.

Last week, shipping giant APL announced a temporary ban of plastic scrap shipments to three ports (Laem Chabang, Bangkok and Songhkla) in Thailand, in response to “the escalating number of idle shipping containers” at the ports.

Thailand has long grappled with plastic pollution and the death of a pilot whale earlier this month, found in a canal in the southern province of Songkhla with 80 plastic bags in its stomach, drew international attention to the issue.

Place a strain

Erik Solheim, head of the UN environment programme, told Unearthed the news from Thailand was a sign of “the slow motion collapse of a completely absurd and unsustainable business model. We’re creating so much rubbish that we don’t know where to put it.

The solution here is blindingly obvious. We need a dramatic cut in the waste we’re generating. It’s not just plastics, but also e-waste, construction materials, chemicals and more.

“China, Thailand and many other rapidly developing countries have their own growing waste problems, so the old option for rich nations to ship their waste halfway across the planet is disappearing. Our planet is only so big, but we’re running out of landfill and the world’s recycling facilities can’t keep up.”

The move by the Thai government could place added pressure on the UK recycling sector.

Simon Ellin, the head of the UK Recycling Association told Unearthed, the Thai move “will place a strain on the British recycling sector due to the restrictions imposed by yet another export market and the huge costs of repatriation if a shipment goes wrong”.

Fundamentally constrained

A spokesman for the waste firm Suez said that the China ban had created “backlogs” in Thailand and other countries around the world and that while the UK government is working on a solution to the plastic waste crisis, the Thai move added urgency to the issue.

“Although Suez does not export to Thailand and is therefore not directly affected by this development, it does have the potential to constrain yet another market for the global flow of secondary materials.

“In Thailand, in particular, it would seem that in addition to a prohibition on electronic and plastic waste products, the market is fundamentally constrained by port capacity, which has caused backlogs as material has flowed to smaller ports from China.

“These new barriers to another secondary material market place further urgency on the need to… grow domestic markets, if we are to collectively avoid wasting these commodities in future.”

As well as Thailand, other countries have moved to restrict imports since the China ban came into force.

Shutting their doors

Vietnam introduced a temporary ban on plastic scrap shipments earlier this month, as ports in the country became congested due to the number of idle shipping containers.

The Polish government has moved to make it tougher to import waste into the country. While APL wrote to its customers on April 19 to announce a “temporary ban of plastic scrap shipments” from the US and Canada to Malaysia.

Ellin said that his body has warned the government that seeking export markets for waste could not be a long-term solution and that the UK’s recycling infrastructure needed investment.

“The restrictions now being implemented in Vietnam and Thailand is demonstrating to the UK that we have not yet seen the full implications of China’s restrictions. 

“Countries like Vietnam and Thailand simply do not have the port or processing infrastructure to support these huge increases in volumes arriving from across the globe.”

After Unearthed broke the story about China banning plastic waste imports, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said in December that Britain had to “stop offshoring our dirt”.

Asked to comment on this story, a Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ spokeswoman said the government’s long term vision was to recycle more waste in the UK and that Defra was “working with the waste industry, Environment Agency and local authorities to ensure exported waste is managed to safeguard the environment.”      

A spokesman for the waste firm Suez said that the China ban had created “backlogs” in Thailand and other countries around the world and that while the UK government is working on a solution to the plastic waste crisis, the Thai move added urgency to the issue.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.