Agriculture has been the bedrock of human civilisation since 7000BC. There’s not a society on the planet that hasn’t been built around it.

But today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that cutting carbon emissions from transport and energy usage is not enough to tackle climate change.

In order to prevent the earth from heating to dangerous levels – 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – we need to substantially change agriculture and land-usage.

Three problems

So when did agriculture – something we can’t picture life without – become such a problem? There’s three crucial points.

One was when we started to use “cheap” fossil fuels to replace human labour, ingenuity and working with nature. So now, it takes 10 calories of inputs to produce one of food. Once, not so long ago, it was one in to three out.

That was the second change – the introduction of huge volumes of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Hedges that has housed the predators of pests were grubbed up, ponds filled in, “weeds” eliminated to the point of absolute monoculture.

Finally, there was the shift to most “food” coming through supermarkets and multinational companies, which wanted uniform sizes and shapes, and tastes, around the world. So crops were wedged into unsuitable environments, just to feed multinational companies that wanted uniform products around the world.

When I visit the supermarket I am dumbfounded that products which are organic, free-range, palm-oil free or grass-fed are demarcated on stickers.

Environmentally chaotic

Whereas products which wreak havoc on biodiversity, come from land that was recently rainforest, that are intensively farmed and waste tonnes of water, are not stickered. These are the defaults.

We are subtly led to expect agriculture to be intensive, unsustainable, cruel, water-thirsty and environmentally chaotic unless a little sticker (and often a higher price tag) tells us otherwise.

If anything embodies what we’ve been led to believe is the norm, it is intensive animal farming. The IPCC emphasises a truth which has been known for years – yet met with general inertia from global leaders – that a rapid global shift to plant-based diets is necessary for human survival.

What the report makes clear is that farmed food which we could eat is wasted on feeding animals for slaughter. For every 100 calories fed to farm animals, between 15 and 30 calories make it into our stomachs as meat.

But no matter what food we buy – whether it is animal or plant – we are wasting far too much of it. Over a quarter of food that makes it past the farm door doesn’t end up in our stomachs.

Waste

Seventy percent of food is wasted by households – that equates to over 6 tonnes a year. The average household with children is spending £700 a year on food that ends up in the bin.

The land and water used in producing this food? Utterly wasted.  Whether it is by filtering it through animals for meat, or by throwing unused food into landfills – it is clear that we are producing far more food than we need.

In a climate emergency, wasting food, water and land at the rate we are currently going is unthinkable.

And yet food waste and land usage seem don’t seem to be very high on the agendas of world leaders. The IPCC report stresses that we are running out of time.

Whilst we sort our banana peels and egg shells into our composting heap, and carefully store our leftovers to eat later, farms are often forced by the purchasers of their crops to waste enough fruit and veg to feed Birmingham for a year.

Climate emergency 

UK households  binned £13 billion of edible food in 2017. Individual responsibility cannot be ignored, but looking into supermarkets, it is easy to see that responsibility is shared.

BOGOF (buy one get one free) encourages overpurchasing. Fruit and vegetable comes packaged in ways that makes buying just what you need impossible. Rampant confusion still reigns over “use by” and “best by” dates.

And a look at the ready meals, the promotions, the “luxury” ranges, show how much meat is still presented as the centre-piece of meals.

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer writes, “Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else?… If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is?”

It is a question that is hard to answer, but one which all ecologists and environmentalists need to consider. We are in a climate emergency and our relationship with what we eat and how we farm it needs to change. Our window of time to be indifferent is up.

This Author 

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party. 

Agriculture has been the bedrock of human civilisation since 7000BC. There’s not a society on the planet that hasn’t been built around it.

But today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that cutting carbon emissions from transport and energy usage is not enough to tackle climate change.

In order to prevent the earth from heating to dangerous levels – 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – we need to substantially change agriculture and land-usage.

Three problems

So when did agriculture – something we can’t picture life without – become such a problem? There’s three crucial points.

One was when we started to use “cheap” fossil fuels to replace human labour, ingenuity and working with nature. So now, it takes 10 calories of inputs to produce one of food. Once, not so long ago, it was one in to three out.

That was the second change – the introduction of huge volumes of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Hedges that has housed the predators of pests were grubbed up, ponds filled in, “weeds” eliminated to the point of absolute monoculture.

Finally, there was the shift to most “food” coming through supermarkets and multinational companies, which wanted uniform sizes and shapes, and tastes, around the world. So crops were wedged into unsuitable environments, just to feed multinational companies that wanted uniform products around the world.

When I visit the supermarket I am dumbfounded that products which are organic, free-range, palm-oil free or grass-fed are demarcated on stickers.

Environmentally chaotic

Whereas products which wreak havoc on biodiversity, come from land that was recently rainforest, that are intensively farmed and waste tonnes of water, are not stickered. These are the defaults.

We are subtly led to expect agriculture to be intensive, unsustainable, cruel, water-thirsty and environmentally chaotic unless a little sticker (and often a higher price tag) tells us otherwise.

If anything embodies what we’ve been led to believe is the norm, it is intensive animal farming. The IPCC emphasises a truth which has been known for years – yet met with general inertia from global leaders – that a rapid global shift to plant-based diets is necessary for human survival.

What the report makes clear is that farmed food which we could eat is wasted on feeding animals for slaughter. For every 100 calories fed to farm animals, between 15 and 30 calories make it into our stomachs as meat.

But no matter what food we buy – whether it is animal or plant – we are wasting far too much of it. Over a quarter of food that makes it past the farm door doesn’t end up in our stomachs.

Waste

Seventy percent of food is wasted by households – that equates to over 6 tonnes a year. The average household with children is spending £700 a year on food that ends up in the bin.

The land and water used in producing this food? Utterly wasted.  Whether it is by filtering it through animals for meat, or by throwing unused food into landfills – it is clear that we are producing far more food than we need.

In a climate emergency, wasting food, water and land at the rate we are currently going is unthinkable.

And yet food waste and land usage seem don’t seem to be very high on the agendas of world leaders. The IPCC report stresses that we are running out of time.

Whilst we sort our banana peels and egg shells into our composting heap, and carefully store our leftovers to eat later, farms are often forced by the purchasers of their crops to waste enough fruit and veg to feed Birmingham for a year.

Climate emergency 

UK households  binned £13 billion of edible food in 2017. Individual responsibility cannot be ignored, but looking into supermarkets, it is easy to see that responsibility is shared.

BOGOF (buy one get one free) encourages overpurchasing. Fruit and vegetable comes packaged in ways that makes buying just what you need impossible. Rampant confusion still reigns over “use by” and “best by” dates.

And a look at the ready meals, the promotions, the “luxury” ranges, show how much meat is still presented as the centre-piece of meals.

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer writes, “Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else?… If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is?”

It is a question that is hard to answer, but one which all ecologists and environmentalists need to consider. We are in a climate emergency and our relationship with what we eat and how we farm it needs to change. Our window of time to be indifferent is up.

This Author 

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party. 

Agriculture has been the bedrock of human civilisation since 7000BC. There’s not a society on the planet that hasn’t been built around it.

But today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that cutting carbon emissions from transport and energy usage is not enough to tackle climate change.

In order to prevent the earth from heating to dangerous levels – 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – we need to substantially change agriculture and land-usage.

Three problems

So when did agriculture – something we can’t picture life without – become such a problem? There’s three crucial points.

One was when we started to use “cheap” fossil fuels to replace human labour, ingenuity and working with nature. So now, it takes 10 calories of inputs to produce one of food. Once, not so long ago, it was one in to three out.

That was the second change – the introduction of huge volumes of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Hedges that has housed the predators of pests were grubbed up, ponds filled in, “weeds” eliminated to the point of absolute monoculture.

Finally, there was the shift to most “food” coming through supermarkets and multinational companies, which wanted uniform sizes and shapes, and tastes, around the world. So crops were wedged into unsuitable environments, just to feed multinational companies that wanted uniform products around the world.

When I visit the supermarket I am dumbfounded that products which are organic, free-range, palm-oil free or grass-fed are demarcated on stickers.

Environmentally chaotic

Whereas products which wreak havoc on biodiversity, come from land that was recently rainforest, that are intensively farmed and waste tonnes of water, are not stickered. These are the defaults.

We are subtly led to expect agriculture to be intensive, unsustainable, cruel, water-thirsty and environmentally chaotic unless a little sticker (and often a higher price tag) tells us otherwise.

If anything embodies what we’ve been led to believe is the norm, it is intensive animal farming. The IPCC emphasises a truth which has been known for years – yet met with general inertia from global leaders – that a rapid global shift to plant-based diets is necessary for human survival.

What the report makes clear is that farmed food which we could eat is wasted on feeding animals for slaughter. For every 100 calories fed to farm animals, between 15 and 30 calories make it into our stomachs as meat.

But no matter what food we buy – whether it is animal or plant – we are wasting far too much of it. Over a quarter of food that makes it past the farm door doesn’t end up in our stomachs.

Waste

Seventy percent of food is wasted by households – that equates to over 6 tonnes a year. The average household with children is spending £700 a year on food that ends up in the bin.

The land and water used in producing this food? Utterly wasted.  Whether it is by filtering it through animals for meat, or by throwing unused food into landfills – it is clear that we are producing far more food than we need.

In a climate emergency, wasting food, water and land at the rate we are currently going is unthinkable.

And yet food waste and land usage seem don’t seem to be very high on the agendas of world leaders. The IPCC report stresses that we are running out of time.

Whilst we sort our banana peels and egg shells into our composting heap, and carefully store our leftovers to eat later, farms are often forced by the purchasers of their crops to waste enough fruit and veg to feed Birmingham for a year.

Climate emergency 

UK households  binned £13 billion of edible food in 2017. Individual responsibility cannot be ignored, but looking into supermarkets, it is easy to see that responsibility is shared.

BOGOF (buy one get one free) encourages overpurchasing. Fruit and vegetable comes packaged in ways that makes buying just what you need impossible. Rampant confusion still reigns over “use by” and “best by” dates.

And a look at the ready meals, the promotions, the “luxury” ranges, show how much meat is still presented as the centre-piece of meals.

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer writes, “Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else?… If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is?”

It is a question that is hard to answer, but one which all ecologists and environmentalists need to consider. We are in a climate emergency and our relationship with what we eat and how we farm it needs to change. Our window of time to be indifferent is up.

This Author 

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party. 

Agriculture has been the bedrock of human civilisation since 7000BC. There’s not a society on the planet that hasn’t been built around it.

But today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that cutting carbon emissions from transport and energy usage is not enough to tackle climate change.

In order to prevent the earth from heating to dangerous levels – 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – we need to substantially change agriculture and land-usage.

Three problems

So when did agriculture – something we can’t picture life without – become such a problem? There’s three crucial points.

One was when we started to use “cheap” fossil fuels to replace human labour, ingenuity and working with nature. So now, it takes 10 calories of inputs to produce one of food. Once, not so long ago, it was one in to three out.

That was the second change – the introduction of huge volumes of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Hedges that has housed the predators of pests were grubbed up, ponds filled in, “weeds” eliminated to the point of absolute monoculture.

Finally, there was the shift to most “food” coming through supermarkets and multinational companies, which wanted uniform sizes and shapes, and tastes, around the world. So crops were wedged into unsuitable environments, just to feed multinational companies that wanted uniform products around the world.

When I visit the supermarket I am dumbfounded that products which are organic, free-range, palm-oil free or grass-fed are demarcated on stickers.

Environmentally chaotic

Whereas products which wreak havoc on biodiversity, come from land that was recently rainforest, that are intensively farmed and waste tonnes of water, are not stickered. These are the defaults.

We are subtly led to expect agriculture to be intensive, unsustainable, cruel, water-thirsty and environmentally chaotic unless a little sticker (and often a higher price tag) tells us otherwise.

If anything embodies what we’ve been led to believe is the norm, it is intensive animal farming. The IPCC emphasises a truth which has been known for years – yet met with general inertia from global leaders – that a rapid global shift to plant-based diets is necessary for human survival.

What the report makes clear is that farmed food which we could eat is wasted on feeding animals for slaughter. For every 100 calories fed to farm animals, between 15 and 30 calories make it into our stomachs as meat.

But no matter what food we buy – whether it is animal or plant – we are wasting far too much of it. Over a quarter of food that makes it past the farm door doesn’t end up in our stomachs.

Waste

Seventy percent of food is wasted by households – that equates to over 6 tonnes a year. The average household with children is spending £700 a year on food that ends up in the bin.

The land and water used in producing this food? Utterly wasted.  Whether it is by filtering it through animals for meat, or by throwing unused food into landfills – it is clear that we are producing far more food than we need.

In a climate emergency, wasting food, water and land at the rate we are currently going is unthinkable.

And yet food waste and land usage seem don’t seem to be very high on the agendas of world leaders. The IPCC report stresses that we are running out of time.

Whilst we sort our banana peels and egg shells into our composting heap, and carefully store our leftovers to eat later, farms are often forced by the purchasers of their crops to waste enough fruit and veg to feed Birmingham for a year.

Climate emergency 

UK households  binned £13 billion of edible food in 2017. Individual responsibility cannot be ignored, but looking into supermarkets, it is easy to see that responsibility is shared.

BOGOF (buy one get one free) encourages overpurchasing. Fruit and vegetable comes packaged in ways that makes buying just what you need impossible. Rampant confusion still reigns over “use by” and “best by” dates.

And a look at the ready meals, the promotions, the “luxury” ranges, show how much meat is still presented as the centre-piece of meals.

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer writes, “Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else?… If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is?”

It is a question that is hard to answer, but one which all ecologists and environmentalists need to consider. We are in a climate emergency and our relationship with what we eat and how we farm it needs to change. Our window of time to be indifferent is up.

This Author 

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party. 

The world must “look after the land” to help tackle climate change, experts warn as rising temperatures put food supplies at risk.

Global warming will increasingly lead to extremes such as drought, heatwaves and wildfires and threaten food security, reducing yields, pushing up food prices and disrupting supply chains, a new UN report said.

But sustainable farming, changing diets to eat less meat, replanting forests and protecting habitats such as peatland and mangroves can cut climate emissions and deliver other benefits such as securing food supplies.

Swift

Land is already under pressure, with around 70 percent of the world’s ice-free land affected by human activity – and climate change is driving more problems such as turning land to desert, and soil and coastal erosion, the study said.

How people use the land is also contributing to global warming – with activities such as growing crops, raising livestock and cutting down forests accounting for almost a quarter of greenhouse gases (23%) between 2006 and 2017.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) comes after a study from the international body last year called for “unprecedented” action to slash carbon emissions to zero by 2050 and limit dangerous global warming.

Experts behind the new report called for swift action to protect land to curb emissions, help nature and ensure food security.

Dr Jo House, from the University of Bristol, said: “We have to look after the land, the land is doing many things for us and we need to support the land for it to continue to do that.”

Lentils

Professor Jim Skea, from Imperial College London, said: “The human race has been rather abusing it and we need to look after it for our own benefit as well.

“Land is already struggling under pressures we put on it at the moment. The issue is climate change is adding to all the other burdens we put on the land system.”

And he said: “There’s a lot of actions that can be taken for the land sector to help with climate change, there are many ways of managing it to reduce the impacts of land and bring benefits like building up soil carbon.”

He added: “In the past we’ve often thought dealing with climate change is about renewable energy and energy efficiency, but this is bringing land much more into the foreground.”

The report said balanced diets with plant-based foods such as grains, beans and lentils, nuts, fruits and vegetables and animal-based food produced in sustainable systems with low greenhouse gas emissions can help curb climate change and benefit health.

Wasted

Dr House said it was not up to scientists to tell people what to do.

But she said red meat had a much higher carbon impact than other types of meat due to the emissions given off during production as well as clearing land to grow animal feed.

The report said around 13% of carbon dioxide between 2007 and 2016 was caused by human uses of land, mostly from cutting down forests.

Land also accounted for 44% of methane emissions, with livestock such as cattle and expansion of rice paddies driving rising levels of the gas, and 82% of nitrous oxide emissions, coming from fertilisers for crops and from livestock.

At the same time, around 25-30 percent of all food produced is lost or wasted, contributing more greenhouse gases, the report by experts from around the world found.

Slashed

Sustainable food production, improved forest management, protecting soils, conserving habitats and restoring land, reducing deforestation and food loss and waste can all tackle climate change, help wildlife and boost livelihoods.

Conserving peatlands, wetlands, grasslands, mangroves and forests can have an immediate impact.

Other measures could include replanting forests and using more trees as part of farms in “agroforestry”, for example for shading livestock or as crops such as apples which could be planted through the middle of fields of other crops.

But the experts warned that planting monocultures of trees or crops for bioenergy on a large scale in an unsustainable way will have negative impacts, and sufficient land must be available to grow food.

They also warn that tackling emissions from land is not on its own enough to curb climate change, and greenhouse gases must be slashed from all sectors to keep global warming to well below 2C or 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Climate change could cause an increase in toxic mercury in seafood such as cod and tuna as warmer waters force them to eat more to keep going, scientists have warned.

Around four-fifths of the mercury put into the atmosphere from natural and human causes, such as burning coal, ends up in the ocean where some is converted by tiny organisms to a particularly dangerous form known as methylmercury.

This methylmercury, which can affect brain function, works its way up the food chain and accumulates in top predators such as cod and tuna in high concentrations.

Cod

As the seas warm, these fish are using more energy to swim which requires more calories – so they are eating more and storing up more of the toxin.

This means that while regulation to curb emissions of mercury are leading to decreases in the concentrations of the toxin in fish, rising ocean temperatures due to climate change are predicted to push it up again, the researchers from Harvard warn.

Changes in the diet of species including cod and spiny dogfish as a result of overfishing of their food sources such as herring can also affect how much methylmercury they are consuming and storing in their bodies.

The researchers from Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health modelled the impacts of reductions in mercury emissions.

They also looked at the impacts of overfishing which changes what top predators eat, such as reducing how many large herring cod are eating.

Warming

Their study, based on three decades of data from fish and seawater from the Gulf of Maine and published in the journal Nature, also looked at what temperature increases would do.

Concentrations of the toxin in cod increased by up to 23% between the 1970s and 2000s as a result of dietary shifts initiated by overfishing and then a recovery of herring populations, they suggested.

The researchers’ computer modelling predicts an increase of 1C in seawater temperatures compared to how warm it was in 2000 would lead to a 32 percent increase in methylmercury levels in cod and a 70% increase in spiny dogfish.

Even with a 20 percent decrease in methylmercury in sea water as a consequence of reductions in emissions, a 1C temperature rise would lead to increases of 10% in cod and 20% in spiny dogfish, the researchers said.

They also analysed the effects of recent ocean warming from a low in 1969 on concentrations of the mercury in Atlantic bluefin tuna and found it could contribute to an estimated 56 percent increase in levels in the species.

Exposure

Elsie Sunderland, a senior author of the paper, said: “We have shown that the benefits of reducing mercury emissions holds, irrespective of what else is happening in the ecosystem.

“But if we want to continue the trend of reducing methylmercury exposure in the future, we need a two-pronged approach.

“Climate change is going to exacerbate human exposure to methylmercury through seafood, so to protect ecosystems and human health we need to regulate both mercury emissions and greenhouse gases.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

The highly controversial practice of allowing investors to sue national governments before investment tribunals risks a chilling effect on meaningful action on climate change, environmental law experts have warned.

Legal experts from ClientEarth are calling governments around the world to address the risk that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms could halt climate measures, such as phasing out fossil fuels or introducing carbon taxes.

Investment arbitration mechanisms like ISDS are included in around 3000 investment and trade agreements worldwide, like the trade agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA). They enable big corporations to side-line domestic courts and sue governments – whose environmental or social policies may affect their investment – in massive compensation claims.

Rapid exit

In a brief submitted to the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), where discussions to reform the ISDS system are ongoing, legal experts have warned governments participating in the reform process that foreign investors may want to use ISDS to challenge and delay emission reduction policies needed to implement the Paris Agreement.

Co-author of the briefing, ClientEarth Trade and Environment lawyer Amandine Van den Berghe said: “The ISDS system has given rise to an alarming number of claims against environmental measures, which are already the fastest growing trigger for dispute. This poses a specific and concerning threat to the global fight against climate change.

“We are running out of time to take meaningful action to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“Amid this climate emergency, we call on governments to respect their international commitments, and push for a deep and systemic reform of ISDS, so that these mechanisms are not able to undermine efforts to save the planet.”

The briefing’s other co-author Dr Kyla Tienhaara from Queen’s University said: “A rapid exit from the system is by far the preferable option. The window for action to avoid catastrophic climate change is closing and we must quickly remove any obstacles that could prevent or delay the adoption of emission reduction policies.”

Environmental standards

As part of the last phase of the UNCITRAL ISDS reform process, ClientEarth urges parties involved to address the regulatory chill effect of ISDS on climate change policy.

The Vattenfall case is the most striking example of government watering down their environmental standards because of an ISDS dispute.

In their brief to governments, legal experts put forward a series of proposals – the first calls on UNCITRAL working parties to develop a mechanism that allows countries to move away from traditional investment treaties and ISDS.

Alternatively, for states that are not ready to withdraw consent or terminate their treaties, legal experts recommend a series of five measures, which when combined should ensure that only responsible investors who respect international climate commitments can utilise ISDS:

• Exempt all measures taken in pursuit of international obligations under the Paris agreement on climate change from challenge under ISDS;
• Require exhaustion of local remedies before recourse to ISDS;
• Allow counterclaims and ensure full participation for affected third parties;
• Ban third party funding of cases;
• Include climate change considerations in the calculation method for compensation.

This Author 

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

Image: Stop ISDS. 

More than 20,000 people have signed a petition calling for a ban on the sale of toxic personal hygiene products such as tampons and baby nappies.

The online petition launched in June and is currently attracting an average rate of 2,000 signatures a week.

The petition is demanding that supermarkets stop selling personal hygiene products that have been bleached with chlorine dioxide, as they may contain chemicals that are harmful to human health. These products include well-known tampon and diaper brands, as well as incontinence pads and other tissue products such as napkins.

Dangerous chemicals

The chlorine dioxide bleaching process used to make these products releases dioxins – a group of compounds that have been linked to cancer and infertility as well as other health disorders.

The World Health Organisation has classified dioxin as one of the world’s most dangerous chemicals. Recent studies have revealed alarming levels of dioxin in these products, fuelling concern that these products represent a public health risk.

Shockingly, there is no legal requirement for dioxin and other chemical ‘ingredients’ to be listed on the packaging of these products. This lack of disclosure makes it impossible for consumers to avoid any potential toxins when purchasing such items.

The #MyClosestEnemy campaign is looking to raise public awareness on what it calls a ‘hidden issue’ by demanding supermarkets and manufacturers take action.

Stronger controls

Rune Leithe, founder of the #MyClosestEnemy campaign, says supermarkets need to understand the dangers associated with stocking such products on their shelves, and start specifying that their suppliers – the manufacturers of these products – offer safer, totally chlorine-free alternatives and free of other toxic compounds.

“We are calling on Europe’s biggest retail chains – Tesco, Carrefour, Aldi, Lidl, ICA, Axfood and others –  to stop selling these products. The manufacturers of these products can offer non-toxic alternatives by switching to a safer, totally chlorine-free bleaching process, but the vast majority of them have chosen not to – this has to change,” Leithe says.

France is already calling for new laws to make disposable diaper products safer following  a two-year investigation by the Agency for Food, Environment & Occupational Health & Safety (Anses), which found unsafe levels of dioxins and other toxic compounds in various nappy brands being sold across the EU4.

As a result of these findings, French authorities have asked diaper manufacturers to review their production processes and impose stronger controls on the raw materials used to make their products.

Leithe said: “I urge other governments to follow the recommendation of French authorities to eliminate these toxic substances in disposable diapers – but also to go one step further and include other personal hygiene products such as tampons.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from MyClosestEnemy. 

Image: Marco Verch, Flickr. 

Human predators are a threat to sharks’ wellbeing, research suggests.

Scientists have discovered that the supposedly fearsome creatures cannot thrive near large human populations and fish markets.

Researchers also found the average body size of sharks and other marine predators fell dramatically in these areas, where sharks are caught and killed intensively for their meat and fins.

Over-exploitation

The study indicates the average body size and number of sharks and other marine predators fell significantly in proximity to cities with more than 10,000 people and associated fishing fleets.

Lead author Dr Tom Letessier, of the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology, said: “Human activity is now the biggest influence on sharks’ distribution, overtaking every other ecological factor.

“Just 13 percent of the world’s oceans can be considered ‘wilderness’ but sharks and other predators are much more common and significantly larger at distances greater than 1,250 kilometres from people.

“This suggests that large marine predators are generally unable to thrive near to people and is another clear example of the impact of human over-exploitation on our seas.”

Published in the journal PLOS Biology, the research suggests the minimum distance from people and fishing which had no measurable effect was 1,250 kilometres.

Tropical

This is much further than previous studies have suggested and probably reflects the increased distances fishing boats can now travel.

As a result, sharks were only observed at 12% of sites monitored, scientists say.

According to the research, sea surface temperature also had a strong influence on predators’ average body size, with a marked decrease at more than 28C.

While this is consistent with what is already known about many smaller species living in tropical waters, it could become a problem as global temperatures continue to rise.

To collect their data, the team analysed video footage taken at 1,041 sites across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Remote

Sites varied in proximity to fish markets and human populations, with some close to cities and others up to 1,500 kilometres away.

Sharks, and other free-swimming predators, were studied using cameras attached to canisters filled with bait.

The team recorded a total of 23,200 animals representing 109 species, including 841 individual sharks from 19 different species.

Dr Letessier added: “Our study also found that shallower water habitats, of depths less than 500 metres, were vital for marine predator diversity.

“We therefore need to identify sites that are both shallow and remote and prioritise them for conservation.

Prey

“Existing large, no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) need to be better enforced and extended to focus on the last refuges where these extraordinary animals remain abundant.

“Large marine predators and sharks in particular play a unique and irreplaceable role in the ocean ecosystem.

“They control populations of prey species, keep those populations healthy by removing sick or injured animals, and transport nutrients between loosely connected habitats over vast distances.”

This Author

Nina Massey is the PA science correspondent.

A major conference in Stirling this September will examine how Scotland can reverse its widespread depletion of nature and become a world leader in restoring its land and seas to good health, so wildlife and communities can flourish.

The Big Picture Conference will explore the potential for rewilding large parts of Scotland’s forests, peatlands, rivers, moorlands and seas, and the benefits this could bring for declining wildlife such as red squirrel, wildcat and capercaillie, as well as for people’s health, wellbeing and employment.

Hosted by communications group SCOTLAND: The Big Picture at the University of Stirling’s Macrobert Arts Centre on 21 September, the event will examine why rewilding – the repair and restoration of nature – matters. 

Restoring ecosystems

The conference – the only event of its kind in Scotland – will focus on solutions rather than reinforcing problems of global biodiversity crashes and climate breakdown.

There will be inspirational presentations and examples from around the world, delivered by leading rewilding practitioners, policy makers and storytellers.

Peter Cairns, Director of SCOTLAND: The Big Picture, said: “Scotland is blessed with awe-inspiring landscapes, but huge areas have become ecologically depleted. Woodlands, wetlands and peatlands across the country are all shadows of what they could be.

“But with different thinking, Scotland could become a world-leader in restoring its ecosystems to good health, for both wildlife and people.

“We’re aiming for a great day of inspiring presentations and thought-provoking discussions.”

Cairngorms Connect

Scotland’s biggest habitat restoration project – Cairngorms Connect, a land manager partnership that is enhancing habitats across a vast area of Cairngorms National Park – will feature at the event, as will Lynbreck Croft, whose owners are farming with nature.

The keynote presentation will be from the inspiring American Prairie Reserve, where three million acres of public and private lands across Montana, USA are being reconnected to benefit nature and people.

SCOTLAND: The Big Picture says rewilding could provide employment, especially in the Highlands and Islands, where otters, deer, puffins and sea eagles already support a growing nature tourism economy. Nature’s benefits also include beavers reducing flooding, trees providing food, and peatlands soaking up carbon. Increasingly, studies show how nature boosts people’s health, and is good for children.

The organisers hope to encourage debate and discussion, and also cooperation between different groups. They say rewilding can co-exist well with farming, forestry and recreational activities.

This Author 

Mariane Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from SCOTLAND: The Big Picture. 

Anyone can attend the conference, which is sponsored by The Woodland Trust and Ecosulis. Tickets can be purchased here.