A new generation of data collectors and support scientists are proving vital to the overall health of the rainforest ecosystem – just like paramedics – thanks to projects funded through the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative.

Since 2001, the University of Sussex has led five projects designed to train and build scientific knowledge of nature with local people and received almost one million pounds in backing from the Darwin Initiative, with some UK aid, over this period.

This includes funding for several projects to help villagers in Papua New Guinea become para-ecologists and protect their country’s treasured rainforest.

Green action

These individuals are now providing vital scientific knowledge that is changing minds on the ground and helping people gain new livelihoods, which is contributing to the protection of some of the world’s most important habitats. 

This year’s event coincides with the Government’s Year of Green Action, a drive throughout 2019 to help people to connect with, protect and enhance nature – both in the UK and abroad.

Joseph Kua, a para-ecologist, said: “I am amazed with the current job I have. I can see that I am really contributing to educating local landowners about the importance of forest conservation.

“We carry out biodiversity surveying in the rainforest which is essential to make sure that the area will be protected. If we do not know what is there, then we can’t make sure it will be conserved for future generations.”

Joachim Yalang, also one of the Para-ecologists, said: “Currently, I am involved in a program in my community which tries to restore forest back to its original state.

“I am happy that I have a job which involves research and rainforest conservation because it enables me to give back to my community what I have learnt and make them aware of the importance of rainforest and conservation.”

Protecting biodiversity 

Thérèse Coffey, the environment minister,  said: “This initiative reinforces the UK Government’s commitment to protect the most diverse forests for nature and tackle illegal logging.

“The Darwin Initiative continues to support hundreds of projects that restore and enhance wildlife and nature. It’s another fine example of our support for action at home and abroad to ensure we are the first generation to leave our environment in a better state than we found it.”

The rainforests in Papua New Guinea are home to an estimated 25,000 species of plants, along with 760 bird species that are found nowhere else on Earth including the iconic Birds of Paradise, tree kangaroos and many other creatures such Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly.

The projects in Papua New Guinea have raised awareness of nature and the importance of protecting biodiversity amongst the local indigenous communities and led to increasing concern for the long-term future of the rainforest.

With support from UK aid, the UK is driving new, sustainable approaches in some of the world’s richest natural environments and most beautiful areas, which both protect the environment and provide quality, sustainable jobs to local communities.

Vital research 

The para-ecologist initiative has contributed to the establishment of a model rainforest conservation area, which won a United Nations Development Programme’s Equator Prize award in 2015.

The conservation area is a community-designated area of forest around 10,000 hectares on the northern side of the island that has been protected from logging by nine neighbouring indigenous clans.

Dr Alan Stewart, Darwin project-lead from the University of Sussex, said: “We use the name ‘para-ecologist’ as analogous to paramedic. These dedicated people are helping us to carry out vital research work on species of plants and animals, many only found in Papua New Guinea.

“It is heartening to see that our training programme has impacted local people’s lives to the extent that a large area of rainforest is being protected from destruction – by the very people who live there.

“Darwin Initiative support has been absolutely essential to establishing these projects and helping to change and shape people lives.”     

Sustainable livelihoods 

The Darwin Initiative is a grants scheme that helps to protect biodiversity and the natural environment around the globe.

Many of the applications reflect the UK Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan commitments, to secure the benefits of nature for the poorest communities, and to help prevent the extinction of species.

Projects like these are illustrative of the ‘win-win’ approach encouraging sustainable livelihoods whilst conserving some of the world’s iconic and endangered species and landscapes, which benefits us all.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs. 

Friends of the Earth Cymru are calling for local authorities in Wales to stop investing in an industry that contributes significantly to climate-changing emissions, causes plastic pollution, and leads to over 5,000 deaths in Wales every year.

Eight Local Authority Pension Funds (LAPFs) in Wales are investing over £60 million in tobacco firms such as British American Tobacco according to information gained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. 

Welsh LAPFs are also investing around £1bn directly or indirectly in fossil fuel companies.

Climate change

Bleddyn Lake, a spokesperson from Friends of the Earth Cymru, said: “This news should be a wakeup call to pension fund trustees and fund managers to switch to more ethical investments.”

“Local authorities in Wales need to act now by taking their money out of tobacco firms, fossil fuel companies and other industries fuelling catastrophic climate change.

“Continuing to invest in these companies legitimises their operations. LAPFs who invest in them are basically profiting from climate change.

“Local authorities must stop supporting these companies: ditch the fossil fuels and bin the tobacco.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that we only have 12 years at most to act decisively to prevent dangerous runaway climate change

Environmental impacts

While the health implications of smoking have been well publicised for many years, the environmental damage caused by the tobacco industry is only now coming to the fore.

According to a recent report, annual tobacco production results in almost 84 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions – more than twice the emissions of the whole of Wales.

Tobacco farms take up more than 20,000 square miles of land, use up more than 22 billion tonnes of water, and cause deforestation in Asia and Africa.

Cigarettes are also one of the most pervasive forms of litter in the world. Plastic filters can take up to 12 years to degrade and cigarette butts leak toxins that contaminate water and harm marine life and the environment.

Suzanne Cass, chief executive officer for ASH Wales said: “Across Wales local authorities are investing time and money in implementing tobacco control policies designed to reduce smoking prevalence. 

“It is highly ironic therefore that at the same time they are investing in excess of £60 million in the tobacco industry.”

Health impacts

Cass continued: “From a financial point of view tobacco is quite simply a bad investment. Growing awareness of the harms of smoking mean smokers could become a dying breed, with many turning their backs on tobacco and fewer young people than ever taking up the habit.

“There is no sustainable future for the tobacco industry and we would urge local authorities to put their pension funds to better use.”

Smoking is to blame for 80 percent of lung cancer cases across the UK. In 2017 there were 1,891 deaths from lung cancer in Wales.  

It accounts for one in every four cancer deaths in the country, killing more than bowel and breast cancer combined.

Smoking is also a leading cause of cardiovascular disease and it costs the Welsh NHS an estimated £302 million a year to treat those with smoking related conditions.

Currently 19 percent of Welsh adults smoke with prevalence highest in our most deprived communities, leading to stark health inequalities.

This Author 

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

Plants may expand or shift their range as global temperatures continue to rise, but if they become inaccessible to the people who use them, ancient biocultural connections could be lost, a leading researcher has warned.

Dr Priscilla Wehi from Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, who recently co-authoted new forecast maps in the journal People and Nature, explained that local and indigenous peoples play critical roles in preserving biodiversity and ecosystems.

“People are already having trouble finding the resources they need, because of polluted water and soil, invasive species, and habitat destruction. Climate change adds another layer to this issue,” she said.

Biocultural connections

Wehi added: “Rather than just looking at whether climate change will make species go extinct, we wanted to know how climate change will affect people’s access to plants”.

The researchers focused on two plants that are traditionally used for weaving and as medicine, and that are important to the history and identity of the indigenous Māori people.

Kuta (Eleocharis sphacelata) is a soft, golden sedge found in wetlands across New Zealand and is especially valued in the North Island, where it is weaved into highly priced mats, hats and baskets. Weavers typically return to the same harvesting site each year.

Te Hemo Ata Henare of NorthTec, another author on this study, has been teaching customary Māori weaving for 40 years. She said: “Members of my community travel up to four hours to harvest kuta. Some of the sites are incredibly difficult to reach because of the overgrown land and involve long-distance swimming and deep diving.” 

The team created maps of the plants’ current and future distribution under two climate change scenarios and compared these to known harvesting sites. They found that changes in temperature and rainfall patterns will likely have an impact on soil density in these wetlands. As a result, kuta may become less available in the far north of the country, where many of the weavers who use this plant live, and move to the south instead.

Climate change 

Many of the current harvest sites have been used for generations. Reduced local access to species is typically associated with a loss of biocultural knowledge.

Henare said: “Weavers prefer to gather plants in their own tribal area, so this becomes an issue. There are alternative weaving plants available, but the colour, texture, and quality of kuta are unique.”

The second plant species explored in this study is kūmarahou (Pomaderris kumeraho), an endemic shrub that flourishes on well-drained clay soils in the northern regions of the North Island during the austral winter. Māori people use it to treat respiratory ailments.

Cultural currency is still practiced amongst many tribes. Regional species such as kūmarahou may be ceremonially gifted or exchanged with people from other tribal regions.

The forecast maps revealed that kūmarahou is likely to expand its range to the rest of the country as temperatures tend to become warmer, rather than shift or decrease as described for many other species. This could have an impact on tribal prestige and gifting practices.

Matthew Bond of the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa said: “Our results show that there are still places where the climate will be suitable for these plants to grow in the future.

However, these plants will become less available in places where they are most valued for weaving and medicine. This means that although the species themselves are not threatened by climate change, the human knowledge, history, and use of these plants are.”

Indigenous peoples

Ecological changes like those predicted in this study are a critical issue for indigenous peoples around the world because they transform resource availability and landscapes in ways that affect cultural identity, knowledge, sense of place, and social cohesion.

It may be necessary to transfer important plants to other accessible habitats that have less drastic climate impacts. By doing this, future generations may continue to harvest these plants and maintain their biocultural heritage.

“When it comes to climate change, we should not just think about species extinction, but the relationships between people and nature”, Bond concluded. “Our hope is that other researchers and indigenous peoples can use our work as a model to study the plants that are important to them.”

The study was funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand and National Science Foundation.

Matthew Bond, et al. ‘Effects of climatically shifting species distributions on biocultural relationships’ is published in the journal People and Nature on 27 March 2019 and will be available here.

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the British Ecological Society. 

Image: Pricilla Wehi harvesting kuta. © Michael Bond. 

The founder of organic veg box company Riverford, Guy Singh-Watson, has been presented with a prestigious Award for Responsible Capitalism at a ceremony attended by HRH Princess Anne.

Singh-Watson used his acceptance speech for the award, which is given annually by international publishing group First, to call on leaders to change the capitalist system that is “destroying our collective future”.

Addressing an audience at St James’s Palace of 200 foreign ambassadors, multinational businesses and parliamentarians, as well as Princess Anne, Singh-Watson said: “Capitalism has made it acceptable and normal to benefit from destroying our collective future.”

Mass extinction 

Singh-Watson continued: “We’re approximately 12 years away from when climate change becomes irreversible. We’ve lost 75 per cent of insect biomass in the last 30 years. Our soils are in crisis, and we’re facing the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity. Society is torn apart by inequality. We urgently need to act.

“This award seeks to promote change from within in small steps. And though I respect its intent, I would argue that we need to accelerate the process.”

Responsible capitalism can only be delivered, said Singh-Watson, when those with money and power find the confidence to measure success not in what they take out, but in what they put in.

Speaking at the ceremony, Princess Anne praised the award winners for leading the way. “On congratulating them as winners, can I thank them for being role models,” she said. “They are worthy recipients and they now join a long and distinguished list of winners of the First Awards for Responsible Capitalism.”

Other winners included the Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, Thabo Makgoba; the chief executive of TBC Bank in Georgia, Vakhtang Butskhrikidze; and Lourdes Maria Mena de Guerra from El Salvador, whose company, Lula Mena, sells handmade Fairtrade craft products made by local artisans.

Alternative future 

Singh-Watson, who turned Riverford over to employee ownership in June 2018, added: “We’re so much better than our slavery to conventional capitalism and remote ownership allows us to demonstrate.

“We need both change from within and challenge from without to stand any chance of passing a habitable planet on to our grandchildren.

“We need approval, encouragement and bravery from our peers; shaming from our children; incentives and leadership from government; and perhaps most of all, we need positive, joyous, well-publicised examples of a plausible alternative future.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Riverford organics.

New research, led by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, measured the presence of 353 wild bee and hoverfly species across the country, from 1980 to 2013. It showed one third of species experienced declines in terms of areas in which they were found, while one tenth increased. For the remainder of species, their distribution was either stable or the trend was inconclusive.

A positive but unexpected finding of the study was the increase in key bee species responsible for pollinating flowering crops, such as oil-seed rape.

This could be in response to the large increases of mass-flowering crops grown during the study period and government-subsidised schemes that encourage farmers to plant more of the wildflowers they feed on.

Habitat loss

The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, also showed that on average, the geographic range of bee and hoverfly species declined by a quarter. This is equivalent to a net loss of 11 species from each 1km square.

Overall losses were more notable for pollinator species found in northern Britain. This may be a result of climate change, with species that prefer cooler temperatures reducing their geographical spread in response to less climatically suitable landscapes.

Dr Gary Powney of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, who led the research, said: “We used cutting-edge statistical methods to analyse a vast number of species observations, revealing widespread differences in distribution change across pollinating insects.

“There is no one single cause for these differences, but habitat loss is a likely key driver of the declines.

“While the increase in key crop pollinators is good news, they are still a relatively small group of species. Therefore, with species having declined overall, it would be risky to rely on this group to support the long-term food security for our country.

“If anything happens to them in the future there will be fewer other species to ‘step up’ and fulfil the essential role of crop pollination.

Robus data 

Powney added: “Non-crop pollinators are also vital for a healthy countryside rich in biodiversity; not only because of their crucial role in pollinating wildflowers, but as a key food resource for other wildlife. 

“Wildflowers and pollinators rely on each other for survival. Losses in either are a major cause for concern when we consider the health and beauty of our natural environment.”

Dr Claire Carvell of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, a co-author of the study, points out there are multiple environmental pressures leading to changing patterns of occurrence in bees and hoverflies across the country.

Carvell said: “There is an urgent need for more robust data on the patterns and causes of pollinator declines. While this analysis sends us a warning, the findings support previous studies suggesting that conservation actions, such as wildlife-friendly farming and gardening, can have a lasting, positive impact on wild pollinators in rural and urban landscapes. However, these need further refining to benefit a wider range of species.

“In addition to recording species sightings, more standardised monitoring of pollinator numbers is required at a national level and a new UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme has been set up to do just this.”

Environmental change 

Over 700,000 records were analysed for this study. Most were collected by expert naturalists in the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society (BWARS) and the UK Hoverfly Recording Scheme, in more than 19,000 1km by 1km squares across Great Britain.

It’s thought to be the first study of its kind, since there have been no previous large-scale, long-term, species-specific estimates of distribution change for pollinating insects in Britain.

Mike Edwards of BWARS said: “All important studies of animal population trends, such as this latest research, rely entirely on the wildlife recorders who go out and record sightings of different species in their area.

“Therefore, we would encourage more people to take part in wildlife recording, so we can increase our understanding of how wildlife is responding to environmental change.”

Members of the public who wish to get involved in recording insect pollinators in their local area can find out more on the UK

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. 

Small venues are just as good as big for educating and enlisting new members, according to Extinction Rebellion (XR).

Ahead of a planned international day of non-violent civil disobedience on 15 April, an email from the direct action group stated: “Our challenge is big, the places we confront it in don’t have to be.”

Members of the group have experimented with holding talks in homes, which “creates more space for the honest, supportive discussions that we need to take action”, it says.

Homeparties

The XR talk – “Heading for Extinction and What to Do About It” – is kick-starting conversations about why to join XR and how. “It’s bringing an enormous amount of people with energy to our movement, but there’s no reason it needs to be limited to big venues,” XR said.

People who want to take part can request a speaker to come to their house, give the talk themselves, or screen a video of the talk, it said.  

XR used the example of Swedish feminist community organiser and co-founders of the Swedish political party Feminist Initiative (F!) Gudrun Schyman, who built her whole campaign around “Homeparties” about feminism, politics and the party.

Schyman spoke at around 1,000 home parties, and a year later in 2014, her party received 3.1 percent of the vote in the country’s general election, according to XR.

Full-scale rebellion

XR says that its event on 15 April will be a “full-scale rebellion to demand decisive action from governments on climate change and ecological collapse”.

“Join us as we engage in acts of non-violent civil disobedience against governments in capital cities around the world. This is not a one-off march – we will keep going for as long as we have to, shutting down cities day after day until our demands are met,” it says.

The rebellion will see independent XR groups, allies and protestors take to the streets, while a small number of conscientious protectors and activists from XR affinity groups will carry out peaceful civil disobedience “to disrupt the business-as-usual which is sending our species on a one-way track to extinction”, the organisation said.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Small venues are just as good as big for educating and enlisting new members, according to Extinction Rebellion (XR).

Ahead of a planned international day of non-violent civil disobedience on 15 April, an email from the direct action group stated: “Our challenge is big, the places we confront it in don’t have to be.”

Members of the group have experimented with holding talks in homes, which “creates more space for the honest, supportive discussions that we need to take action”, it says.

Homeparties

The XR talk – “Heading for Extinction and What to Do About It” – is kick-starting conversations about why to join XR and how. “It’s bringing an enormous amount of people with energy to our movement, but there’s no reason it needs to be limited to big venues,” XR said.

People who want to take part can request a speaker to come to their house, give the talk themselves, or screen a video of the talk, it said.  

XR used the example of Swedish feminist community organiser and co-founders of the Swedish political party Feminist Initiative (F!) Gudrun Schyman, who built her whole campaign around “Homeparties” about feminism, politics and the party.

Schyman spoke at around 1,000 home parties, and a year later in 2014, her party received 3.1 percent of the vote in the country’s general election, according to XR.

Full-scale rebellion

XR says that its event on 15 April will be a “full-scale rebellion to demand decisive action from governments on climate change and ecological collapse”.

“Join us as we engage in acts of non-violent civil disobedience against governments in capital cities around the world. This is not a one-off march – we will keep going for as long as we have to, shutting down cities day after day until our demands are met,” it says.

The rebellion will see independent XR groups, allies and protestors take to the streets, while a small number of conscientious protectors and activists from XR affinity groups will carry out peaceful civil disobedience “to disrupt the business-as-usual which is sending our species on a one-way track to extinction”, the organisation said.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

In the middle of São Paulo’s concrete jungle lies an area that was largely forgotten by its 12 million residents for decades.

Characterised by abandoned buildings and occupied largely by squatters, the Campos Eliseos neighborhood held only remnants of its early days, when it was occupied by wealthy coffee barons. Today, the neighborhood is changing.

A new segment of the green building movement has a vision that green housing must be for all, especially the poor. Within the neighbourhood’s precarious dwellings, the State of São Paulo government, in a public-private partnership with Canopus, has broken ground on the Julio Prestes social housing project, to provide more than 1,200 apartments for low-income families. 

Reducing bills

The project is transformational, not only for the city, but also for its people.

As a project certified with IFC’s EDGE, the complex will provide much-needed homes for low-income residents. Living in resource-efficient units will also significantly reduce energy and water bills among a population that often spends up to 20 percent of their income on utilities. Depending on the type of unit, residents at Julio Prestes will save up to 26 percent in utility costs.

Adriana Paiano, Chief Architect at Canopus, found that certifying Julio Prestes with EDGE greatly improves the quality of life among low-income residents: “We find that by integrating green efficiencies in our design, we are really making a difference, especially for this market segment.”

A few thousand miles away, the small nation of Haiti also understands how homeownership can change a person’s life. Patrick Brun, owner of the Chabuma S.A. construction company, said: “For us in Haiti, it’s almost revolutionary. Owning a home is transformative for people.” 

Brun represents only one of the developers receiving assistance from Affordable Housing Institute and the World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) to build green homes under the Haiti Home Ownership and Mortgage Expansion (HOME) project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The project hopes to mobilize a private sector-driven approach to financing affordable homes. HOME provides incentives to developers, like Chabuma, to build residences for low-income families, while also working with financial institutions to expand their mortgage portfolios to be more inclusive. 

Solar power

Olivia Caldwell, lead for HOME from the Affordable Housing Institute and an EDGE Expert, said: “We want the project to be perceived as completely market driven even though it is supported by USAID. 

“The idea is that in two years when the project ends, the banks and developers will continue to engage in these activities without us.” 

The HOME project has made green affordable housing a reality for Haitian developers in a market where it has never existed before. Brun, who developed EDGE-certified projects Villa Flora and Village la Fontaine under HOME, understood the need for the housing to save energy and water.

In Haiti, the government struggles to provide electricity to its citizens, placing a burden on the poor who cannot afford their own generators when the power goes out. With green features like solar panels, residents can reduce reliance on the electricity grid and take advantage of Haiti’s year-round average of nearly 12 hours of sunlight per day.

As Brun said: “Offering affordable homes that aren’t green is just going halfway. You haven’t solved anything.” 

Innovative technologies

Developers in other markets are realizing the potential of resource-efficient affordable homes as well. From the Philippines, where affordable housing developer Imperial Homes Corporation (IHC) saw a 300 percent increase in sales after building green, to South Africa, where International Housing Solutions (IHS) is altering the housing market landscape, the trend is growing.

Each home at the IHC’s Via Verde housing complex in the Philippines has solar panels, allowing residents like Philippine housewife Luzviminda Capin to save a significant amount in her utility bills.

Capin said: “My monthly electricity bill has gone down to only 500 (Philippine Pesos, or about $10). I use the extra savings of 2,000 (Philippine Pesos) to either buy food and groceries, or to pay off the mortgage on the house.”

Similarly, in South Africa, IHS properties have introduced innovative technologies such as smart meters to the sector. IHS functions as a financial services provider and partners with real estate developers in South Africa to provide equity financing for properties and to purchase turn-key developments.

Its funds have added a large amount of home stock to South Africa’s affordable housing market, many of which have been EDGE-certified. These projects include Waterfall Park,The Village (Clubview) and Candlewood Crescent.

Permanent homes

In such nascent green housing markets where building green can be perceived as a luxury instead of a necessity, developers are striving to change the stereotype that green is expensive.

In reality, simple alterations to a home’s design, such as adding external shading to keep a home cool, can greatly improve the affordability of homes and reduce utility bills for residents. 

Green affordable housing has the potential to change the housing market in countries like Haiti, Brazil and beyond. In Port Au Prince, where many live in overcrowded slums, living in a green affordable home instills a sense of pride.

Brun believes that as more of Haiti’s low-income residents move from unsafe shelters to permanent homes, the landscape of the country will begin to change. “Visually, it sheds the perspective that everything in this country is chaotic. It changes the panorama of the country by offering affordable homes.”

More importantly, it changes the country itself. Brun said: “It’s not just the development of affordable housing, it’s the development of the country.” 

This Author

Hayley Samu is the marketing and communications specialist for IFC’s EDGE green buildings certification program, which is available in nearly 140 countries.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust and the Eastern Moors Partnership – a joint initiative between the National Trust and the RSPB – aim to boost populations of the threatened Bilberry bumblebee by planting 1,000 bilberry plants inside specially designed grazing-proof metal cages on Hathersage Moor. 

Bilberry is a vital food source for the declining bumblebee. It flowers in the spring and early summer, before heathers and other moorland plants, and is essential for the bees and their larvae as the nests are established.

Sally Cuckney, Pollinating the Peak Project Manager for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, said: “Grazing animals such as sheep and deer find tender young bilberry plants especially tasty, and their constant browsing stunts the plants’ growth. That’s bad news for the Bilberry bumblebee. If grazing is reduced, bilberry does much better.

Pollinating the Peak

Cuckney added: “This hands-on project is the first attempt to help Bilberry bumblebees and bilberry plants survive and thrive together like this.”

This month, bilberry has been planted across 60 acres of Hathersage Moor, then protected by cages built by Bumblebee Conservation Trust and Eastern Moors volunteers and youth rangers. 

Past grazing pressure on the moor has led to a lack of mature bilberry bushes favoured by the bee. The project will build on changes over recent years in how the moor is managed, which have seen bilberry beginning to make a comeback.

The grazing cages will allow Bilberry bumblebees to enter to feed and nest while protecting the growing plants during their early years, by keeping livestock out. They are designed to blend into the landscape and will be left in place, maintained by Eastern Moors volunteers, until the plants are established. 

This joint venture is part of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s Pollinating the Peak project, made possible thanks to National Lottery players following a £720,000 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant.

Citizen science 

The initiative will also allow researchers to gather vital new data about the bees, and the plants’ growth. There has only been a handful of Bilberry bumblebee studies, and no research in the Peak District for decades.

A general lack of bumblebee records in Derbyshire means the species could be declining faster than has been thought. Tackling this data gap means conservation action can be taken before it’s too late.

This summer, volunteers will begin monitoring bumblebees on Hathersage Moor through the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s national BeeWalk recording scheme – a citizen science survey that provides early warning of bee declines.

The volunteers will identify and count bumblebees they see while walking the same fixed route each month between March and October. Eastern Moors volunteers will continue the monitoring in future years.

Bilberry bumblebees have suffered a dramatic decline in recent years. They were once found widely across north and west Britain, but the Peak District is now one of their last strongholds. Even here, this cold-loving upland species is expected to decline further because of climate change.

Dynamic partnerships 

Also known as the Blaeberry or Mountain bumblebee, the rare bee is found almost exclusively on bilberry-rich moorlands. It has helped keep the bilberry plant alive for centuries through pollination.

The Eastern Moors Partnership, which manages Hathersage Moor on behalf of Sheffield City Council, has now identified the Bilberry bumblebee as a key species indicator – a species that is rapidly affected by environmental changes and so can give early warnings that a habitat is suffering.

Pollinating the Peak is also creating flower-rich habitats, monitoring bumblebees and raising awareness about them across the Peak and Derbyshire.

This project is run with partners Chatsworth, Chesterfield Borough Council, Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, Little Green Space, Moors for the Future Partnership, National Trust, and Peak District National Park. 

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. 

Environmentalists disagree. Especially about food sustainability. Why? This situation is often confusing and hinders us on our path towards a greener agricultural future.

Uncovering some mistakes in climate logic, I hope, will help us on that path. The food sustainability debate needs sound science, but also robust reasoning to accompany it.

Mistake 1: Only a small percentage

Our overreliance on livestock has come under pressure as the scientific literature documents livestock’s large contributions to climate change. The United Nations has concluded that livestock accounts for at least 14.5 percent of total global green house emissions.

In response, many people think, “well, livestock’s contribution is still a relatively small percentage of our total greenhouse gas emissions, so does it really matter that much?” One instance of this reasoning is a recent piece by the Sustainable Food Trust.

We cannot reason that because a given source of emissions is far from the majority of total emissions, we can be lax about it.

We must make emissions cuts wherever we possibly can. That is the only way to reach the spectacular emissions reductions outlined by the United Nations. These targets include achieving net zero emissions in around thirty-one years. The UN says we need “deep emissions reductions” in each and every sector, including agriculture.

Mistake 2: China is worse

Some people say that since China is a bigger polluter, we in the UK shouldn’t be too concerned to cut its emissions by much. As such, they think, our industries have a get out of jail free card. And they think that we shouldn’t be concerned about our own meat consumption, when global meat consumption trends are on the rise because of patterns of eating in China, India, and elsewhere.

The underlying principle of this approach is: the countries that pollute the most should take the first move, and if they don’t, nor should we.

This is a great way of moving the planet closer to the precipice. Even if bigger polluters should get greener and aren’t, their wrong does not justify others in acting similarly. We tend to apply a similar principle elsewhere: if others avoid tax, we do not think we can then fiddle our books in order to get a slice of the tax-avoidance fun.

Mistake 3: Food waste is what we put in the bin

One third of food is destined to nestle against a bin liner or rot on the ground. This is well worth taking about, and I commend the food waste campaigners who are working to change this.

But such campaigners make a mistake in their unjustifiably narrow definition of food waste. They define food waste as food thrown in a bin. That might seem fair enough, but let us consider why we think food waste is bad.

If food is wasted, the emissions that were created in producing it were needless. Alternatively, the food could have helped those in need (usually indirectly). Food waste is bad, then, because it represents a missed opportunity which would have seen resources put to better use to help others.

If we are concerned by food thrown in the bin, we should also be concerned by a hidden form of waste: food fed to livestock. We feed a huge amount of edible grains, soya, oats, and peas to farm animals, in order to get food from those animals (though not all livestock are fed crops).

The problem is that evidence suggests only 12 in every 100 calories fed to livestock are converted into meat, eggs, or dairy, on average. The other 88 percent is used by the animal’s body for other purposes, e.g. movement. That 88 percent usually represents waste, then, because we lose this food in feeding it to livestock. We could eat the crops directly and recover those calories. This problem is significant. Greenpeace reports that a staggering 63 percent of EU cropland is used to grow crops to feed farm animals.

Yet I don’t see food waste campaigns doing much to encourage us towards plant-based foods. These foods bypass livestock, cutting waste at the farm level.

Mistake 4: White meat is sustainable

Because of the sky-high greenhouse gas emission associated with red meat, many environmentalists conclude that eating white meat is environmentally a good thing.

The underlying principle assumed here is: if it considerably better for the climate than the worst option, it is good.

This is false. White meat tends to be far worse than alternatives such as beans and other legumes, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions but also food security, deforestation, and other forms of pollution. This is because poultry production is completely reliant on feeding animals (often imported) crops; chickens can’t eat grass.

That white meat is less bad in greenhouse gas terms than the worst food does not serve to render it sustainable, especially given the scale of the problems we face.

A journey

The world needs a greener food system. We are all on a journey together towards this. I hope people of different persuasions can coalesce around a way forward. And that careful thinking might bring us together.

This Author 

William Gildea is a campaigns and policy officer at The Vegan Society. Readers of The Ecologist are offered 10 percent off tickets for the Grow Green Conference, at the British Library on 11th April, where researchers, farmers, and policymakers will debate sustainable agriculture. Simply use the code GROW10.