The national mining industry in the United Kingdom has been in decline for decades, but this is now rapidly changing as the country shifts its industrial strategy, in part to focus on the its own mineral potential – to make Britain a leader in the global technological revolution known popularly as ‘Industry 4.0’.

New exploration and mining projects focusing on minerals and metals used in renewables, electronics, industrial automation and military technology have garnered strong government support.  Existing projects include extensive gold exploration across Northern Ireland and the Scottish highlands, a proposed lithium extraction project in Cornwall and tin and tungsten mining in Devon and Cornwall.

However, the prospect of increasing mineral and metal mining activity in the UK and Northern Ireland looks set to compound and reproduce the social unrest and ecological damage that dog other extractive projects throughout these isles. This three part series for The Ecologist examines the issue.

Tech metals 

A project to explore for lithium in hot springs in Cornwall has received a £1m investment. This is being used for primary drilling in preparation for sampling and production. Government agency Innovate UK has also awarded a £850,000 grant to a project looking for a lithium ‘fingerprint’ in Cornwall from space.

These strategic investments reflect the skyrocketing global demand for lithium – used in batteries for mobile phones and cars – which is expected to triple in the next decade. Lithium mining across the globe has shown devastating environmental impacts.

Hemerdon in Devon has the fourth biggest reserve of tungsten in the world. However, it has been left untapped for more than sixty years.

In 2011, Australian-based mining company Wolf Minerals was granted planning permission and began work to get the Drakelands mine up and running again. The mine made a £43.5 million loss in its first year despite rising global prices for Tungsten ore.

Tin mining  in Cornwall may also be revived, as Canadian company Strongbow Exploration acquired the rights to the South Crofty tin mine in 2016, and plans to reopen in 2021.

Northern Ireland

Across the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland, where mineral resources are mostly state-owned, large areas are now covered by mineral prospecting licences given to global mining corporations. Communities across the nation are organising themselves to protect ecosystems and homes.

The Curraginhalt Gold Project in County Tyrone, owned by Canadian mineral exploration and development company Dalradian, has been publicly framed as “one of the best gold projects on the planet”, with the area holding a projected £3 billion worth of deposits.

Environmental and community-interest groups from the surrounding communities have been fighting against Dalradian’s application to mine, taking the government to court in a public enquiry and mustering over 10,000 letters rejecting the mine.

Local residents are worried that the 25 year project (which would involve unearthing 1,500 tonnes of rock a day) will rip apart their land and ruin the historic Sperrin Mountains. Dalradian plans to use cyanide solution to extract the gold from the crushed ore at a processing facility just one kilometre from the community of Greencastle.

Local people fear that mine waste could contaminate rivers and harm wildlife like otters, salmon and rare freshwater mussels.

High standards? 

In the context of Brexit, extractive industry players are increasingly pushing a narrative that mining in the UK- whether it be for coal or gold- represents a better option than importing minerals and metals from mines abroad, because of the UK’s high environmental, labour and human rights standards, and the employment the industry will create for UK citizens.

The experiences of communities across the UK resisting new coal and fracking operations tell a different story, however, and reveal how the UK is involved in a ‘double-movement’- promoting and perpetuating the extraction of both new fossil fuels and new minerals and metals used in renewable technologies.

The threat of opencast coal mining across Northeast England continues despite the UK government’s ‘Powering Past Coal’ initiative, which promises to close all coal-fired power stations in the UK by 2025. New open-cast coal projects that will offer little employment are opposed by a united front of local residents, campaigners and mining unions.

In Pont Valley, Northumberland, the Banks Mine Group plan to extract 500,000 tonnes of coal from Bradley opencast mine. Banks is also attempting to open another new coal mine in Druridge Bay, Northumberland. Both projects have faced long-term opposition from local communities and are embroiled in court cases and controversy. 

Meanwhile, fracking protesters across the UK have faced criminalisation while reforms of trespass laws and reversal of local authority decisions banning fracking cast a dark shadow over Government and industry claims to uphold and adhere to highest standards.

New mineral and metal mining operations are facing similar resistance, and that resistance is facing similar repression. A case in point is the Curraginhalt Project in Northern Ireland, where in January 2018 land defender Cormac McAleer of community group Save Our Sperrins was arrested for allegedly blocking a highway, before being swiftly released

Global boom

The common dynamics evolving at current UK extractive projects: local community concern, repression of local democracy, regulatory back-sliding and plans for expansion create a disturbing picture of how a future mining boom in Britain might unfold.

These dynamics are echoed in the expansion and acceleration of exploration and mining projects across Europe over the last five years. In Spain, France, Greece and beyond, plans to mine tech metals and rare earth minerals are being met with huge public opposition.

The growing footprint of mining in the UK reflects the Government’s new industrial strategy, which aims make Britain a leader in the global technological revolution. The new technologies necessary to advance the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, require massive amounts of minerals like lithium, cobalt, copper. This has triggered a staggering rise in the price of tech minerals and metals, and a global race for raw materials in which securing competitiveness through domestic supply has increasingly become a priority.

Another priority is to secure supplies of these critical minerals and metals from other nations through aggressive trade strategy. The extraction of minerals and metals from colonial and former-colonial territories has long provided a source of capital wealth and material development for the United Kingdom. With the UK having to develop extensive new trade agreements post-Brexit, the extent to which mining grows in Britain will likely pale in comparison to the expanding footprint of UK extractive activities and the impacts of UK demand in the Global South.

But what might the full ecological, social and climate cost of this industrial shift be? How will Brexit affect the rate of mining resurgence in the UK and beyond? And how does deepening this commitment to extractivism threaten both the speed and just-ness of a transition away from fossil fuels? We will explore these questions further in the second article of the series.

This Author 

Dawn Stevenson is a freelance journalist researching and writing about extractive industries, climate change and the fourth industrial revolution in collaboration with the Yes to Life, No to Mining Network. 

It is increasingly common to decouple the idea of gender from traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. Still, it may be the case that traditional masculinity helps to explain why only 40 percent of the UK’s vegans are men.

However, I think that veganism can in fact help people express their masculinity. It’s time to talk about veganism and men.

We know that these ideas are fraught: Gillette’s latest advert is ample reminder of that. But it’s hard to deny that identifying as a man has long been, and still is, attached to a lot of traditional ideas of masculinity.

Gendered traits

I won’t be arguing that by virtue of being a man, you should be masculine, and therefore vegan. I will instead be arguing that if you feel masculine, then this shouldn’t be a barrier to going vegan. I will be using such terms as “masculine” simply to refer to the traits that society currently sees as masculine, and will not be evaluating whether these traits are exclusively masculine or whether they should be embraced by men.

We have overlooked the many strong links between masculinity and veganism. Here are three.

1. Protecting others from harm

Veganism is arguably an attempt to minimise harm. Vegans are often motivated by the negative environmental impact of animal products, and the suffering animals are put through in now-widespread production methods. Obviously, protecting others from harm is in no way an essentially masculine trait. But from defensive war to stopping one’s son from being bullied at school, men have often seen it as part of their identity to protect others from harm. Veganism allows men to express this.

2. Standing up for a cause

In The Kite Runner, Amir’s father declares that “a boy who can’t stand up for himself turns into a man who can’t stand up for anything”. Whilst again not essentially masculine, historically masculinity has been linked to standing up for yourself, for others, and for the causes which advance their interests. “Speak truth to power” is another phrase which has echoes of masculinity ringing through its syllables.

Veganism is a multifaceted cause, and is championed by all sorts of different people with different concerns: climate change, land use, health, human rights, inequality, animal rights, or animal welfare. Virtually all men care about at least one of these issues. Switching to veganism can help men stand up for what they believe in.

3. Fitness

Veganism has been linked to many health benefits. Fitness is firmly part of the concept of masculinity used in the UK today. The World Health Organization’s classification of many meat products as cancer-causing or probably cancer-causing comes as many male athletes are turning to plant-based diets to offer fresh strength. Boxer David Haye, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, European powerlifting champions and whole football clubs are going vegan, saying that a fresher, plant-based diet is giving them the edge.

Not so fast

My critic – let’s call him Alan – might come back and say “look, there may be some links to masculinity, but what about the overriding masculinity of meat? Meat-eating is natural, strength-inducing, and morally acceptable once we get over our feminine emotions about animals.”

Alan says that “in the past, hunting was the man’s job. Men have hunted animals and eaten meat for millennia. Man’s past dealings with meat make it masculine”.

The first problem with Alan’s idea that meat is natural and therefore masculine is that practically no meat is sourced in a hunter-gatherer fashion. It is typically found, as we all know, in shiny plastic packaging, dissociated from its origin. Or perhaps it is served straight to the customer, dispensing with any risk of having to touch raw meat.

Second, on reflection society actually thinks of masculinity and naturalness as very separate. Society’s alpha male wears a suit. He sports a watch. He drives a car. Suits, watches, and cars are not natural objects. Very little “naturalness” seems required for society to view a man as masculine. If manliness required hunting, basically every symbol of masculinity from the red carpet, silver screen, or gleaming spacecraft is deeply emasculated. But they are not: Brad Pitt and co., whilst entirely divorced from the natural habitat of human beings, are enduring symbols of uber-masculinity.

And thirdly, virtually all men find a natural approach to manliness morally troubling, once they consider what it involves. In nature, things happen which would show a depraved character if performed by people. Men want a masculinity worth its salt in our era, not a form of it that is wedded to some pre-human time. Why think what is natural is always good?

Building strength 

“Alright”, says Alan, “but meat is a bringer of strength. It gives you protein. It is a necessity.”

However, the evidence shows that meat is not necessary for health, sport, strength, or muscle. Actually, if you lift, beans are a better bet than beef. There are diseases and cancers associated with animal protein. 

Sticking to plant-based protein ensures you can have the large amount of protein you want whilst avoiding the cancer risk many animal proteins carry. Beans, chickpeas, lentils, nuts, and peas are coming back, in new and better forms.

Alan still thinks, though, that “the view animals have rights or that their suffering matters gains its traction only from emotion, rather than any form of reasoned argument”.

This claim couldn’t be further from the truth. Veganism is seen as intellectually respectable among those whose job it is to think critically and logically about ethics. It is seen as the conclusion of reasonable argument, rather than something only emotion can produce.

Take a stand

Many people think that animals’ needs present no reason to modify Western diets that rely on factory farms, because pigs and cows don’t matter. At the same time, they think, along with everyone else, that dogs and cats do matter. But there is no logical consistency in the view that dogs must be treated well but pigs may be treated as mere resources.

Of course, veganism might be objectively masculine overall whilst being seen differently. How do we deal with that?

The answer is that such perceptions can be shaken off because they are baseless. They would say more about the insecurities of accuser than the masculinity of the man addressed.

Men can get behind veganism. For those to whom their masculine identities are cherished, masculinity can be expressed through veganism, rather than being hindered by it. Fellow men: take a stand. And if the stand that you decide to take is veganism, that goes hand in hand with the man you are.

This Author 

William Gildea is a campaigns and policy offer at The Vegan Society, whose environmental policy team tweets at @GrowGreenTeam.

Indonesia, the largest archipelago in the world, holds some stunning coastal and deep-water resources. With more than 17,500 islands straddling two oceans, the sea is not only a way of life, but also a source of it. 

Fisheries account for a significant part of Indonesia’s trillion-dollar economy – the largest in Southeast Asia. More than 30 percent of global maritime trade finds its way through the Strait of Malacca, which is among the busiest of international shipping lanes. Tourist havens are seemingly everywhere, from the palm-fringed beaches of Bali, to the abundant shallow-water reefs of the Coral Triangle. 

Managing marine ecosystems is therefore an unsurprising priority for the vast number of actors that have a stake in Indonesia’s coastal economy. At once unexplored and overexploited, the oceans represent neoliberal development’s final frontier. The twin processes of ocean acidification and global warming, and related international political responses further complicate matters. 

Blue economy 

New analysis was recently published in the journal Science, indicating that oceans are heating up 40 percent faster than a United Nation panel of experts predicted in a study carried out five years ago. 

The study further concluded that in 2018, seawater temperatures reached an all time high and were expected to escalate further in the coming years. Theses studies mirror those on land, where combined data from NASA and NOAA show that the five hottest years ever have occurred in the 2010s.  

For many, marine ecosystem management, fisheries management, and climate change mitigation strategy are embodied in a redoubled commitment to the blue economy – the idea that the financialisation of oceans can reap economic profit and save the environment at once. 

But what kind of development does the blue economy seek, and for whom? In Indonesia, small-scale fishers and their communities are holding fast to various manifestations of traditional knowledge that they see as key to ensuring the survival of the seas and of future generations.

Whose Oceans?

The Indonesian islands have long been at the forefront of oceanic policy and development circles, in large part because of their sheer numbers and strategic location. 

One such high-level process held recently was the Our Ocean conference, which took place in late October in Bali. The meeting brought together a large number of powerful actors to debate some of the most pressing oceanic issues: climate change, fisheries, the blue economy, pollution, maritime security, and marine protected areas. 

As is the case in many top decision-making spaces, representatives of governments, corporations, and intergovernmental institutions were given a seat at the table. Notably absent, however, were those closest to the sea – fishers. 

Marthin Hadiwinata, Chief Executive of the Indonesia Traditional Fisherfolk’s Union (KNTI), said: “Policies on marine issues cannot be addressed in the absence of fishing communities who have direct linkages to the ocean”. 

Hadiwinata explained that the issue of marine pollution, for instance, most deeply affects people living around the coastal areas and small islands: “Rather than inviting fishers to share their solutions,” he added, “companies who are involved in mining and other forms of extractive industry that dump their waste into the sea are regarded as corporate partners in cleaning up dirty waters”. 

Blue carbon 

Likewise, climate change mitigation and adaptation projects often turn to the problems that caused the environmental crisis in the first place as a way of responding to it. Take for example Blue Carbon, where, as with other carbon sequestration programs such as REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), polluters are allowed to continue their practices so long as they purchase ‘offsets’ in ecosystems elsewhere. 

Most often, the burden falls on the shoulders of peasant and indigenous rural working communities, converting their crops and gathering spaces into monocultures such as industrial tree plantations.

Blue Carbon applies this logic to mangrove, coral, and seagrass ecosystems, while small-scale fishers who work in these areas are treated as nuisances and prohibited from future access to their fishing grounds. 

Blue Carbon has been championed in high-level policy spaces such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes, as well as through ‘big green’ organisations like the Nature Conservancy. It is currently being pioneered in Indonesia.

People’s movements 

Indonesian social movements and grassroots organisations have long been in the business of carefully protecting the islands’ cornucopia of natural resources. In the rapidly evolving marine sector, fishers are forced to be quick on their feet when putting their solutions on the national agenda. 

KNTI, the small-scale fisher’s movement that is present in nearly all of Indonesia’s 34 provinces, is playing a leadership role in turning the tide of both discourse and policy towards justice and sovereignty for fishers. This task is done at scale, targeting national and transnational political dynamics. 

When word of the Our Ocean conference and its lack of grassroots representation reached KNTI’s members, they were quick to clap back by organising their own participatory meeting: the Ocean’s People Conference. Unlike its ‘official’ counterpart, the parallel meeting reflected the diversity of Indonesia’s small-scale fisheries sector.  

The gathering strategically took place in Jakarta – not just to make it more accessible, but also to shed light on marine mega-projects encroaching on the busy capital. The most notorious of these has been a land reclamation projectsupported by Indonesia’s former colonisers, the Dutch. 

This project has been centred on protecting Jakarta from floods by installing a network of fake islands and a giant seawall in Jakarta Bay. While the Governor of Jakarta finally revoked some of the permits necessary to complete the project – thanks, in large part, to a strategic battle fought at the hands of social movements like KNTI – much of the damage has been done.

Local activists 

Ipah Saripah, a fishworker from North Jakarta, explained that the reclamation issue has profoundly impacted her family’s livelihood: “Even though the reclamation stopped, they’ve already constructed four islands,” she said, “and that development is right in the middle of our fishing areas. 

“We have been bribed, intimidated, displaced, and even tortured to make way for this reclamation,” she added.  

Saripah and other activists from the fishing communities feel that big reclamation projects like the one stalled in Jakarta Bay serve as a blueprint for coastal development in Indonesia. Similar mega projects are being rolled out in other parts of the country, and they are woven together with the common thread of replacing traditional fishing practices with profit-seeking industries backed by big Asian and European capital. 

That’s what the Ocean’s People Conference and related gatherings of people’s movements are attempting to shut down. Ibu Rofi’ah, a representative of a peasant organization in East Nusa Tengarra, Indonesia’s southernmost province, said: “We are not looking for money, but for means to spread our knowledge.”

Ibu Rofi’ah travelled to Jakarta to explain how she played a leadership role when her community put an end to an iron-mining operation. Today she is working with fisheries cooperatives that find themselves in standoffs with corporations in the mining and tourism sectors. 

Movement building

Members of KNTI recognise that their struggles reflect those of fishing communities elsewhere. To this end, the movement is an active member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), a transnational social justice movement dedicated to serving the unique needs of fishers and fishworkers. 

Since the issues affecting fishers have become increasingly entangled – for instance, when climate change adaptation policies meet big capital – WFFP has doubled down on its attack strategies to protect the communities it represents. 

A key part of that is actively promoting the Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines, which is the only comprehensive global governance instrument intended to protect fishers and traditional fisheries. KNTI has been doing this work across Indonesia, and making its demands global through social movement gatherings and even United Nations processes. 

Marthin Hadiwinata said: “Here in Indonesia, we are pushing the government to immediately recognise and protect fishers’ rights. And at the same time, we are building the global movement to resist financialisation and privatisation of the world’s oceans.” 

This Author 

Salena Tramel is a journalist and PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, where her work is centered on the intersections of resource grabs, climate change mitigation, and the intertwining of (trans)national agrarian/social justice movements.

Our edible forest garden experiment in Budapest is part of a doctoral research project on urban agroforestry. It was constructed in partnership with Budapest’s 14th District Council and the social Degrowth cooperative Cargonomia.  

The garden opened with its first tree planting event last November. The event the result of a year’s of work in networking, cooperating with different partners and actors. 

Our goal is to bring together planners, decision makers and experts in agroforestry and permaculture to rethink the use of public spaces in the city and democratise urban agriculture through citizens initiatives and involvement.

Dynamic network 

We met with several researchers in agroforestry, and exchanged ideas with local NGOs whose work focuses on environment and permaculture in Budapest and with local farmers. We also connected our project with a dynamic network of community gardens in Budapest.

In October 2017 we presented the project to local authorities and decision makers and found support for implementing agroforestry in the city of Budapest. 

Agroforestry is an ancestral practice that is being re-introduced in the European rural areas. The practice is based on the ecological interactions between woody perennials and annual plants and breaks with monocultural practice.

The benefits of this practice go beyond performance and yields. The plot is structured to create a resilient and autonomous ecosystem. By valuing biodiversity, the risk of epidemics is lower, diversity of seeds is preserved, water management is more economical and ecological, and the use of pesticides is unnecessary and avoided.

Agroforestry respects the seasons, the cycles of plants and the soil. Food production is then better integrated within the rural landscape and the existing ecosystems. The benefits are also social because this reconversion of land has potential to create new job opportunities and a new era of experimentation.

Overcoming skepticism 

The public forest garden project in Budapest was inspired by several Tropical countries that have maintained a strong agroforestry practice in urban areas and forest garden practices in their homegardens.

In temperate countries, the concept of forest garden was introduced by the English botanist Robert Hart in the 1960s. Inspired by this model, we created a plantation plan with a diversity of endemic plant strata: wide canopy trees, fruit trees, berries, shrubs and vines.

The project was built in consultation with the partners, in particular the municipality. The use of visuals helped in understanding the purposes of agroforestry and presenting a vision. It was useful to overcome skepticism around growing edibles in an open public space: it felt necessary to explain the choice in species, their function in the land, the reasons behind the choice of agroecology principles, the benefits for the users and the prevalent support of the people mobilized behind the project.

The project is also about enhancing the local culture and adapting to the context by including a convivial dimension.

The land allocated by the district was a dried-out wetland in a residential area. It was mainly used by residents to walk their dogs and as an illegal parking lot. Thanks to an in-depth study of the terrain and the context, we chose plants adapted to the micro-environment, which are resilient to urban pollution and to drought, in order to limit the pressure on the ecosystems.

Public space

The garden will host a large variety of species, with free plantation areas for the people. Based on the principles of permaculture, other plants will be chosen according to their benefits for pollinators, their repellent characteristic, and their contribution to airing the soil, the nutrient supply and the retention of water. The project will evolve throughout a number of years.

Another challenge is to renew the ecosystem by planting edibles directly into the ground, without the need for materials, bins or planters, which can be very expensive.

The project was established on a low budget and relies on the networks of know-how and mutual aid, in lines with the philosophy of Cargonomia and based on the principles of degrowth. Accordingly, we did not apply for a grant. Instead, the tools and basic materials are shared between our partners and the neighbors.

With a long-term contract, the project leads to a new appropriation of the public space and another form of governance by the commons.

Ecological transition 

Frequent visitors to the garden felt the space gradually change. We began the plantation with four fruit trees. The mayor and members of his team along with neighbors and local media participated in this first day.

The management of the edible forest is based on spontaneous initiatives and self-management. On the first day the neighborhood participants showed interest in the practice and attachment to the new trees. They brought water to the trees, and a volunteer gave out leaflets that we had prepared about the project.

The next day, one of the neighbors prepared and installed stakes by himself with pride. 

We must adapt and understand the changes of ecosystems, limit loss in biodiversity and prepare for extreme periods in order to balance our climate. Decision makers, planners and landscape architects have the power to allocate public lands as common property. Reducing the consumption of urban spaces to open green and edible spaces reduces our vulnerability to climate change.

Botanists, ecologists, biologists, landscape architects and gardeners have a role to play in ecological transition and environmental education.

City planning 

Through educational programs and consultations with horticultural experts it is possible to plan the city on the basis of natural ecosystems and to support individuals in developing their resources and depending less on market products.

We must rethink cities with a variety of vegetation and public green spaces, and enhance exchanges between the cities and the countryside to reduce the pressures on organic farms and rural agriculture.

Food industrialization should only be used in times of crisis because it consumes more energy and damages biodiversity. This raises the question of the conversion and conviviality of public spaces otherwise used to house parked cars. 

Creating a public edible space enables social emancipation. Gardening creates a spontaneous relationship between individuals: people gather together and meet; the gardens create a space to initiate communication and exchange ideas.

This initiative encourages a new way of appropriating public space. We use simple tools which are better for the soil and the environment but also for the intellect. Manual work stimulates reflection and gives us time to feel and observe, just as hand-drawing allows the artist to discover and create.

We can imagine the public space differently and create another form of occupation; encourage change in land use for an ecological city and social well-being. 

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By supporting the re-appropriation and self-management of spaces, we can open or reconvert spaces and allow users to rebuild their environment, bring services closer and reduce expenses.

We must diversify the functions of public green spaces and vegetation and connect them with greenways and corridors. The connection between these places allows the exchange of resources and services. This pilot project is an experiment that aims to influence city policy. 

The latest and most alarming IPCC report called for an end to deforestation. We think that this also concerns the city, or how to rethink a fertile, organic, autonomous and friendly city. This is vital as we face the collapse of our thermo-industrial civilization, but also we develop new means for living together peacefully, empowering democracy, and supporting relationships between people and the commons.

These Authors

Paloma de Linares is coordinator of the agroforestry project. Vincent Liegey is co-author of “Degrowth Project” (Utopia, 2013) and a Cargonomia coordinator.

The Conservative-controlled Scarborough council has formally declared a climate emergency. It’s the eleventh council in England to do so and joins an international movement that began with the Australian council of Darebin in suburban Melbourne. Bradford recently became the biggest council in England to yet follow suit, just as nearby Kirklees did the same.

At the same time as Tory councillors – following the lead of two Greens – were backing the motion in Scarborough, locals outside a little village called Mission, near Doncaster, were joined by people from across the North and Midlands to show their opposition to a fracking operation that started right beside a Site of Special Scientific interest. 

A little to the east, the people of another tiny community – Biscathorpe, in Lincolnshire – were being arrested. I’m told one of the protestors was a local man in his 70s who’s just had a pacemaker fitted – he had been opposing the proposed extreme oil drilling beside another natural wonder, a rare pristine chalk stream. 

Local government

This week I joined protest groups as Cheshire West and Chester Council and a local campaign group fought to defend a decision, made partly on climate change grounds, to reject iGas’s plan to test a gas well at Ellesmere Port.

Together, these events highlighted the way in which Britain is following the pattern of the US, Australia and Brazil, where local authorities are joining the global push for climate action, while their national government fiddles as the planet burns.

At the climate talks in Katowice last month, Sydney and Melbourne joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance (as did Scottish Power), despite having a national government seeking to push ahead with a scheme for expansion that could wreck the Great Barrier Reef. At the Oxford Real Farming Conference, I heard about how the Welsh government scheme for One Planet Developments is starting to be put into effect.

The demonstrators in Mission Springs, Biscathorpe, and at many other sites around England, demonstrate a key difference between the UK and other parts of the world where local governments have real power and resources. Even the actions of the Welsh (and Scottish) governments can have only limited effects.

In Britain, the powers of local government and devolved national governments are limited, even in the case of the London Assembly, where Green member Caroline Russell led the successful push to declare a climate emergency (the Tories abstained). 

Taking back control 

In Scarborough, the council agreed to aim to be carbon-neutral by 2030, and to bid for £80,000 to fund a sustainability officer work towards that ambition, but that’s about the total of action the council could agree.

Most councils now are so severely stretched by austerity that their ability to take any action beyond their basic statutory responsibilities (decided in Westminster) are severely limited.

The Welsh government was backing the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project, but Westminster effectively blocked it. As the slogan goes, “Lancashire Said No” (to fracking), but distant Westminster casually overrode it. 

That’s a contrast to the US and many parts of continental Europe, where local, regional and other sub-sovereign governments have real power of decision and resources to act on those decisions.*

The powerlessness of local government is one of the reasons why people are right to want to “take back control” in our non-democracy. 

Wider reform

Local communities are clearly committed to action on climate change and just need to be allowed (or to take) the power and resources to act.

That’s also an argument for wider reform. It is noticeable that two of the world’s most climate-destructive national governments – in Washington and Canberra – are two of the countries in the world with the most archaic, non-proportional electoral systems (much like the UK’s) 

Countries with fairer (proportional) voting systems – where the views of parliament reflect those of the people and everyone’s vote counts – are, not coincidentally, those with significantly lower carbon emissions than majoritarian systems.

So if you’re campaigning with Extinction Rebellion, or on the gate at Biscathorpe or Mission Springs, it is worth sparing a little time and effort to back Make Votes Matter.

With a government in Westminster that reflects our views, and truly devolved power in local communities, we can stop having to do battle with faraway MPs, and work together to tackle our environmental, social, economic and educational emergencies together, democratically, cooperatively.

This Author 

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Just nine percent of the 92.8 billion tonnes of minerals, fossil fuels, metals and biomass that enter the economy are re-used annually, according to the latest Circularity Gap Report.

As much as 62 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – excluding those from land use and forestry – is released during the extraction, processing and manufacturing of goods.

Despite the fact that we already live on a planet that is 1°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, global use of materials is still accelerating.

Unprecedented changes

We live in a linear, Take-Make-Waste economy. Materials extraction has more than tripled since 1970 and could double again by 2050 without action, according to the UN International Resource Panel.

This is a bad place to be – but the remedies are easy to grasp. We can see the climate risk in ‘business-as-usual’. The ingrained habits of unchecked consumption are not sustainable.

Cutting waste is part of the answer to tackling climate change. The circular economy is potentially the missing piece of the jigsaw.

If we are to bridge the Emissions Gap and get back on track towards a target limit of 1.5°C, then closing the Circularity Gap is not merely desirable. A 1.5° world can only be a circular world.

That transition to a circular economy is the paradigm shift that can help us achieve “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”, as called for in the Paris Climate Agreement.

Resources for governments

For a low-carbon future, we need a circular economy; there is no other way. Our world must become more than 9 percent circular. 

To date, most governments have focused their green agenda on renewable energy, energy efficiency and avoiding deforestation.

Policy-makers have overlooked the vast potential of the circular economy to achieve the Paris goals. Re-use, re-manufacturing and recycling, greater resource efficiency and circular business models offer huge scope not only reduce emissions, but also to boost growth through efficiency gains.

The Report calls on governments to take action to move from a linear economy to a circular model that maximises the use of existing assets, while reducing dependence on new raw materials and minimising waste.

Innovation to extend the lifespan of existing resources will not only curb emissions but also reduce social inequality and foster low-carbon growth.

Practical examples 

The Netherlands has set itself a target of becoming 50 percent circular by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050.

Governments control the levers to drive change through direct fiscal tax-and-spend measures. They should start by abolishing incentives which encourage overuse of scarce natural resources, such as subsidies for fossil fuels.

It makes sense to raise taxes on emissions, extraction and waste;at the same time, lower taxes on labour, knowledge and innovation would help cleaner industry and investment.

In our report, we highlight three key circular strategies and give practical examples. First, we must optimise the utility of products by maximising their use and extending their lifetime. Ridesharing and carsharing already make it less important to own a car.

Autonomous driving will accelerate this trend, potentially increasing the usage of each vehicle by a factor of eight. At the same time electric powertrains, intelligent maintenance programmes and software integration can extend lifetimes of cars.

Secondly, we must enhance recycling by using waste as a resource. By 2050 there will be an estimated 78 million tonnes of decommissioned solar panels.

Modular design would enable products to be disassembled, components to be re-used and valuable materials to be recovered to extend their economic value and reduce waste.

Finally, we could reduce material consumption, use lower-carbon alternatives and incorporate circular design methods. Bamboo, wood and other natural materials have the potential to reduce dependence on carbon-intensive alternatives such as cement and metals in construction.

Instead of emitting carbon, these materials store it and will last for decades. They can be burnt to generate energy at the end of their life.

New metrics

The Report introduces new metrics and data analysis to identify the best prospects for impactful change. We found that circular strategies to reduce waste are particularly important in the built environment, which accounts for a fifth of all global emissions. 

Our calculations show that nearly half of all new materials going into the world economy – 42.4 billion tonnes a year – are for the construction and maintenance of houses, offices, roads and infrastructure.

Another example is Capital Equipment. This broad spectrum of products, from cars to medical scanners and solar panels, consumes half of all metals. Advances in digital technologies and innovations in smart design, however, are already creating new circular business models.

The opportunities for investment in these new markets is real. The opportunity is greater, where shared understanding of circularity metrics brings more transparency to decision-making.

Global development

Moving society away from the Take-Make-Waste pattern of consumption, ingrained in our linear economy, requires a paradigm shift. The circular model serves to separate things we do want from our economic system, from those we do not want.

For example, we want fairer distribution of prosperity and a bright future for the next generations. We do not want to squander scarce natural resources, nor to suffer adverse effects on our environment and society.

Ultimately, a circular economy is a practical strategy to decouple economic growth from unsustainable resource extraction and emissions. It aims to bring prosperity, whilst intelligently managing resources within the boundaries of our planet.

Circular thinking is compatible – in fact, dependent – on policies that foster social equity and mitigate climate breakdown.  A 1.5-degree world can only be circular: the time to close the Circularity Gap is now.

This Author 

Harald Friedl is chief executive of Circle Economy. Before joining Circle Economy in 2017, Harald spent five years in Myanmar, during which he co-founded Impact Hub Myanmar; led national market development of electro-mechanical hydropower projects in the country; and co-founded Myanmar’s first pre-incubation programme for social enterprises. 

You are offered a position to work in a forest oversight authority – let’s call it OSINFOR. Your job involves going to the field to document whether logging operations are being conducted according to the law.

You discover extensive cases of illegal logging and take to meticulously documenting them. You publish your findings. Within hours, you get an angry call. The next day, you get your first threat. Soon after, you’re fired.

Why? Because the truth is, if you work for OSINFOR, doing a good job can land you in serious trouble.

Fierce backlash

Over the last decade, OSINFOR has taken the lead in inspecting timber harvest areas in the Amazon. Some of the inspections they’ve made are truly heroic and have shed much-needed light on the way loggers get away with logging illegally.

At Global Witness, we wanted to get a better sense of just how effective OSINFOR’s work has been. So we made official requests for huge amounts of data that they have been producing over the last decade.

We recently published our findings. They turn out to be pretty sobering: between 2008 and 2018, of all the harvest areas OSINFOR inspected in the three main timber producing regions in Peru, over 60 percent came from areas where widespread illegalities had been reported, including the laundering of a massive 2.5 million cubic meters of timber. 

But far from being praised for uncovering such illegalities, OSINFOR has faced a fierce backlash from the private sector and some government officials – our short video gives a good sense of this.

OSINFOR has been subject to protests and attacks on its offices in major Amazon cities. Some inspectors have been barred from entering harvest areas.

In 2016, the then director was sacked and forced to flee Peru in fear for his life. He had played a key role in exposing the biggest timber export scandal in Peruvian history, which has also been the subject of a Global Witness investigation.

Ministerial control 

Just last month, OSINFOR’s independence was seriously weakened by being placed under the Ministry of the Environment, where it is more vulnerable to political meddling and conflicts of interest. This caused its director to hand in his notice, in protest at the move.

Rather than clipping the wings of such an effective institution by weakening its independence, the government of Peru should ensure that OSINFOR can continue to operate independently and give it appropriate resources to do so.

The US government has also expressed concern about the recent weakening, as it has signed a Trade Promotion Agreement with Peru that requires OSINFOR to be “independent and separate”.  

The United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said about the situation: “Since its creation in 2008, OSINFOR has played a critical role in Peru detecting and combatting illegal logging, and we are gravely concerned that its independence is threatened. I urge Peru to abide by its obligations and restore OSINFOR’s separateness and independence, as called for in the PTPA.”

Prior to the agreement, OSINFOR had been under ministerial control, and was ineffective and starved of resources. It had no control over its own budget and was responsible for only one type of harvest area. Inspections were rarely undertaken, if at all, staff was poorly trained and corruption was said to be rife.

Illegal timber 

Only after OSINFOR’s reincarnation as an independent agency free of control by any one ministry did its oversight operations dramatically improve. Placing OSINFOR under ministerial control once again risks taking the Peruvian logging sector back to the past.

There is a strong case to be made for OSINFOR’s mandate to be expanded: our analysis also reveals how some of Peru’s biggest sawmills consistently process high quantities of illegal timber without asking any questions as to the origin of the timber. Yet sawmills are areas where OSINFOR cannot make inspections.

Plantations and land cleared for agriculture are also beyond OSINFOR’s remit, so it is perhaps not a coincidence that these areas have recently begun to be used as laundering vehicles to make illegal timber appear as legal.

No one should be reprimanded, threatened or fired for doing a good job. And, in Peru, no one has played a more important role than OSINFOR in exposing what really goes on in Peru’s timber sector.

Given the scale of the plunder revealed in our investigation, Peru should make sure that it does not in any way undermine its forests’ eyes and ears. 

This Author 

Laura Furones, head of the Peru campaign at Global Witness.

Weeks after the Indian government unveiled the country’s first ever air pollution reduction targets, new data has revealed the number of cities violating the country’s air quality standards is more than twice as high as previously thought.

The National Clean Air Programme, published earlier this month after months of waiting and years of campaigning by Indian civil society, set a target of reducing levels of toxic particle pollution by 20 to 30% by 2024, from 2017 levels.

The plan includes a list of 102 cities violating the country’s air quality standards that are required to prepare city-level action plans and expected to achieve the reduction targets.

Quality standards

But a new map of regional air pollution levels, produced and analysed by Greenpeace India, shows that the number of cities where air quality standards are being violated is more than twice as high as the cities that are required to take action as a part of the national plan.

Out of the 313 cities for which there is data, 241 had PM10 levels exceeding the standards, with data for nearly 400 other cities still missing.

In recent years India’s air quality has deteriorated to the point where it has become the most consistently smoggy country in the world, with pollution levels even exceeding those in neighbouring China.

Not only do the new numbers show the need for urgency in reducing particle pollution levels across the country, they also highlight that even a 30% reduction would just be the beginning.

Even if a 30% reduction was achieved across the country, more than 150 cities would still violate India’s national air quality standards, and these standards themselves are four times as lenient for PM2.5 as those recommended by the World Health Organization (40 micrograms per cubic meter in India vs. WHO guideline of 10).

Rising trend

Not a single city among the 313 cities with data met the WHO guideline.

India’s clean air programme includes a long list of recommended measures, but leaves implementation largely in the hands of each of the 102 cities that are supposed to come up with their own action plans.

The programme, however, currently lacks a legal status, specific city-level targets and an implementation budget commensurate to the challenge, which leaves a lot of work to be done before the recommendations and targets are made into reality.

The government has come a long way from first promising a national-level action plan a year ago to setting at least tentative, measurable targets for which it can be held accountable.

China’s National Air Pollution Prevention Action plan, released in 2013, turned around a rising trend and achieved record reductions over the four-year period to 2017.

India’s air pollution levels continued to climb over the period, with the average Indian being exposed to more particle pollution than the average resident of China, for the first time on record, in 2015.

Greenpeace India compiled the data from government websites and through numerous right-to-information requests to state and city Pollution Control Boards which monitor air pollution levels but have been sluggish in publishing the data.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

Martin Kaiser from Greenpeace was a member of a 24-person commission convened by the German government which advised last week that the country abandon coal entirely by 2038.

He spoked to Unearthed, the environment charity’s investigative journalism platform, about the commission’s proposal – and whether it will help avert catastrophic climate change.

So what has Germany’s coal commission decided?

First of all, the commission can’t decide anything. It was set up to work out a proposal for how Germany can quit coal in a socially responsible way whilst also making sure the country can meet its 2030 climate target and close the gap to its 2020 goal as quickly as possible.

That said, after the enormous efforts of the commission over the past seven months to find an agreement between parties as diverse as unions, industry reps, energy utilities, mining regions and environmentalists, it’s hard to imagine that the government won’t adopt its recommendations.

The most important part of the proposal – and the commission’s very existence – is that Germany, home of the Energiewende, but also world-champion in lignite burning, has finally decided to get off coal for good.

The deadline for that phase-out is 2038, with several opportunities to review the plan and see if it can be accelerated.

The phase out will start immediately: Over the next three years (until 2022) coal capacity of more than 12GW (5 of lignite, 7.7 of hard coal) will be removed from the grid. That’s about a third of Germany’s entire fleet.

Now obviously – since the commission needed everyone on board – there are some pretty significant problems with the proposal’s goals.

The 2038 phase-out date fails to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target and was voted against by the environmental groups on the commission (including Greenpeace).

And the speed of the phase out between 2022 and 2030 is far too slow, which again the three NGOs within the commission voted against.

Finally, although Hambacher forest can finally be spared from RWE’s mining plans due to the planned lignite reductions, there was a glaring absence of any statement about how all threatened villages must be saved.

How is Germany planning to close these plants?

The proposal does not speak about individual plants, it only mentions capacity reductions.

It’s now up to the government to figure out which plants will deliver the needed GW-reductions. There will be compensations for the utilities, but again the details will be determined by the government.

Why is this announcement significant?

Germany hasn’t been making any progress in reducing its carbon emissions for close to a decade, but with the coal phase-out in place this is almost certain to change. It will add the much-needed second leg to the energy transition.

The country’s stalling emissions showed that it’s not enough to boost renewables if you leave an aging brown coal fleet untouched. These plants are cheap, old(some are more than 50 yrs old) and hard to compete with economically, but also very dirty (a brown coal plant emits about three times more CO2 compared to a modern gas power plant.) Now the renewables boom can start to become a success for the climate.

Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy, is moving into a decarbonized future without relying on nukes and that’s obviously a big deal.

With the coal phase out in place the path is cleared to eventually focus on other key areas of decarbonisation such as transport.

But the commission’s proposal is not in line with the Paris Agreement…

The commission’s proposal ensures that the energy sector reaches its 2030 target which was modeled on a 2° trajectory. So it is not in line with 1.5 and that is a big problem.

Ending coal only in 2038 is unacceptable and sets a bad example to other countries – which is why environmental NGOs voted against it.

Is there anything people can do to try to accelerate the phase out?

As much as this proposal leaves to be desired, the important progress it does make could only have been achieved with the tens of thousands of demonstrators marching for Hambacher Forest, asking for more climate action, and the pupils and students who have gone on strike on Fridays. Similarly I believe that a loud voice of civil society is crucial to accelerating the phaseout.

This voice should first be heard during the legislative process ahead when the proposal will be put into law by the government. Here, the climate movement needs to ensure that there must not be any weakening of the proposal and contrary to emphasise the urgency to move ahead faster.

The proposal includes a number of assessments (in 2023, 2026, 2029 and 2032) to look at things like electricity prices and the necessary structural changes in the mining regions as well as progress in climate protections and I’m certain that the Paris Agreement goals and the need for a faster decline in emissions can and must be taken into account here.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

A UK wide student strike has been called on Friday 15 February 2019 to protest against climate inaction, with a global strike following on Friday 15 March.

There have been escalating young people’s school strikes across the globe, with tens of thousands coming onto the streets to demand action to stop global warming and environmental destruction.

All have been inspired by Greta Thunberg, who began a solo climate protest by striking from school in Sweden in August 2018. Since then, thousands of school students around the world have joined her.

Climate action

The school strikes have spread to at least 270 towns and cities in countries across the world, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, the US, Canada and Japan.

The picture above shows young people in Belgium taking part in a strike organised by an independent youth movement, not affiliated to any parties or organisations. 

In November 2018, thousands of Australian children struck school in defiance of the prime minister to protest for greater action on climate change.

Organisers estimated around 15,000 left their classrooms in 30 locations across the country, including Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, carrying signs reading “procrastinating is our job not yours” and “I’ve seen smarter Cabinets at Ikea”. There were similar protests in Canberra and Hobart also.

Youth

On 10 January, 3000 young people took to the streets of Brussels, calling for climate action outside the the European Parliament.

A week later on 17 January, 12,500 came out (part of the crowd shown in pictures below). On 24 January, over 32,000 took part, with another 5000 coming out in other Belgian cities.

The following day, there were climate strikes in Switzerland, where more than 20,000 students from schools and colleges in 15 cities took part, and in Germany, where similar numbers joined events in at least 56 towns and cities.

For the February 15th youth strike in the UK, events have so far been set up in cities including London, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol and Brighton.

New phase

We are now in a new phase of climate action in the UK. More and more of us are deciding to make our voices heard over climate change.

Young people are not waiting for adults to do something for them – instead, they are leading the way in taking action for themselves. 

The UK Students’ Climate Network said on their Facebook page: “Exciting stuff is happening here!! Let’s keep 2019 going the way it has started: full of determination to do everything we can to make our voices heard and save the planet from mass extinction before it is too late.”

This Article 

This article was first published on the Campaign Against Climate Change blog.