Vaca Muerta is a mega-project of shale fossil fuel exploitation through hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – in the Argentine Patagonia.

The Argentine Government predicts that gas and oil export revenues from this reservoir will surpass those from agricultural production by 2027. Meanwhile, as chair of the G20, the country promotes gas as a “bridge fuel” to other, more sustainable sources.

If government expectations are met, the project will multiply gas emissions, as recently warned by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR).  

Gas exports

In September, Argentina resumed gas exports that had been shut down in 2007 because the country was not self-sufficient.

During a visit to the exploitation zone a few weeks ago, President Mauricio Macri said: “We won’t stop until we export 30,000 million dollars in gas and oil from Vaca Muerta, and to do that we have generated more than half a million jobs throughout the country.” Today, exports are only a distant prospect, and employment is far from the president’s wishes.

At the moment, there are about thirty exploitation projects for the Vaca Muerta formation. In addition, the national companies present in the area are BP (which owns 50 percent of Pan American Energy, the second crude producer), Total (second gas producer), Shell, Wintershall, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Chevron, CNNOC, Dow, Petronas, among many others.

Only three projects have reached the stage of massive exploitation in Vaca Muerta. Two are operated by YPF, the mixed company controlled by the State, the largest producer and the one controlling the largest area.

The third area was awarded to Tecpetrol, a subsidiary of the Techint group, which has become the star of gas production. In September, the firm produced 13 MMm3 daily — 10 percent of the country’s total volume — after a sharp rise that started this year at 5 MMm3. Tecpetrol reached these levels thanks to the massive gas-targeted subsidies guaranteed by the State: USD 3.5 per MMbtu.

Total exploitation

The increase in extraction and the resumption of gas exports are consistent with the principles of the G20 – which is chaired by Argentina this year – and will hold its annual meeting at the end of November. 

The group promotes gas as a “bridge fuel” to sustainable energy sources. This claim is contested by various experts, among other reasons, due to fugitive methane emissions, which are 80 times worse than CO2 for climate change.

Contrary to government expectations, the UN Committee on ESCR warned in October that the implementation of this project would have a negative impact on the climate: “Total exploitation, with hydraulic fracturing, of all the shale gas reserves [at Vaca Muerta] would consume a significant percentage of the world’s carbon budget for reaching the goal of a 1.5 degree Celsius warming.”

The committee recommended that the Argentine state “reconsider” the exploitation of unconventional hydrocarbons.

Estimated at 19.9 billion barrels of crude oil and 583 trillion cubic feet of gas, the resources currently buried in the ground represent around 50 billion tons of CO2 that can only be extracted through hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), a highly controversial technique that has been banned in several countries and subnational states.

In the same document, the UN also warned about the territorial effects, the lack of consultation with the local communities, and the absence of adequate regulation to address the risk entailed by hydraulic fracturing.

Unconstitutional ruling

In recent years, a series of tight gas projects – enabled by the investments made to exploit Vaca Muerta – have begun to be developed in the vicinity of one of the country’s most important water basins, in areas historically involved in fruit and vegetable production, and in urban outskirkts. 

Warned about the risk of fracking, over 60 municipalities have banned the technique. However, the justice system has declared several of these rulings unconstitutional on the grounds that they exceed communal powers.

At the national level, the energy policy is being heavily criticized, mainly due to the steep increases in tariffs for energy supply. The agreement with the IMF requires that Argentina continue on this path in order to reduce the fiscal deficit.

The peso devaluation (190 percent against the US dollar this year), coupled with dollarized tariffs, has caused energy bills to reach amounts impossible to pay for both companies and households. The average increase in gas in the last 24 months has been around 1300 percent.

Opposition to the tariff hikes has added to the general condemnation of the government and managed to unite the entire range of opposition parties around a law that brought the increases back to their November 2017 levels. However, President Macri vetoed it in May and replaced his Minister of Energy a few days later.

This Author

Fernando Cabrera is the coordinator of Observatorio Petrolero Sur (OPSur), an Argentinian civil society energy watchdog. 

The team at Ethical Consumer has researched the shopping habits and festive traditions of the nation – and has sought to find sustainable alternatives to help make this Christmas an enjoyable experience that doesn’t cost the earth.

In this article we list a host of ways to celebrate a more environmentally friendly Christmas.

Reduce the plastic

From wrapped gifts to festive food, Christmas can often come with a whole lot of pointless packaging.

Consider your décor

This can be a bit of a challenge with shops filled with plastic decorations from tinsel to trees without much of it being produced in a sustainable way.
If you haven’t got a Christmas tree already buy a real one. Just make sure it comes in a pot with a root ball so you can replant it and use it again next year. If you already have a plastic tree,  re-use it rather than buying something else.  If you want to add some new decorations this year rather than dusting off the old ones, then edible home made iced-gingerbread make a great alternative to bought ones.

The dreaded wrapping paper

Last year it was reported that we will throwaway 108 million rolls of wrapping paper at Christmas time. This alarming waste statistic should be enough to stop you reaching for that brand new shiny festive roll.

Any wrapping paper that has glitter on it, or has been lined with a super thin coating of plastic can’t be recycled. A quick test to check, courtesy of Recycle Now [https://www.recyclenow.com], is ‘if it scrunches it can be recycled’.

If you haven’t already hoarded away last year’s wrapping paper in preparation, get creative with newspaper, ends of wallpaper or old fabric. However, if you can’t resist that festive print, you can find 100% recycled wrapping paper online.
But why waste materials and money on something that will be thrown away?

Get creative with your gifts

Gifts that are created with love and thought, as well as combating consumerism, are always welcome, particularly if you have a creative streak.  Biscuits, soaps and candles are easy and fun to make and there are thousands of recipes and ideas online. You have complete control over the ingredients, so you can choose Fair Trade, organic and natural products. Make sure you use recycled packaging, such as old jam jars to make your gifts as sustainable as possible.

Buy less stuff

Giving the gift of an experience is a simple way to buy a present for a loved-one without increasing the amount of physical stuff in their lives. Theatre tickets, gallery and museum passes, membership to organisations like the Woodland Trust or digital magazine subscriptions (there’s a really useful one called Ethical Consumer) all make ideal presents.

Green and ethical presents

If you are going to be buying presents this year, plan ahead and choose organic or recycled items, or new gifts that have been made in the most sustainable way. There’s detailed guides online to a whole array of gift ideas, but here are some ideas to start with.

Perfume and aftershave

Perfumers are legally allowed to keep their ingredients list a secret, which means it’s often hard to work out whether a perfume contains animal ingredients or dodgy toxic chemicals. However, our Best Buy brands are vegan, that ensures no animal ingredients and are cruelty-free. Plus they also don’t contain parabens. Our Best Buys for perfume and aftershave are Dolma, Fairypants, Neal’s Yard, and Weleda.

Clothing

Shun ‘fast fashion’ and the novelty Christmas jumper and instead choose something stylish and sustainable from a fashion brand with a conscience. We recommend Know the Origin, Brothers We Stand, and People Tree. There are also plenty more in our dedicated ethical fashion retailers guide. There’s a newly updated guide to underwear to help you find the most ethical pair of socks or undies. We recommend PICO and PACT brands.

Electronics

Electronics are often a big gift at Christmas time, and buying a new phone or laptop is often a bit of an ethical minefield and we therefore recommend that you buy second-hand or refurbished equipment wherever possible.

If you do want to buy new, we recommend: Fairphone from our Mobile Phones Guide; Sony’s PVC and BFR-free models from our Digital Cameras Guide; Apple iPad or Asus Zenpad from our Tablets Guide; and Lenovo Thinkpad from our Laptops Guide.

Books

Books are wonderful gifts for adults and children alike, but instead of buying new why not shop for a good second-hand or even vintage read? Check out Better World Books that sells new and used books online and donates a portion of profits to charity, or Hive.co.uk who donates a portion of its sales to local independent bookstores. Ebooks.com is our best buy for e-books, where you can buy gift vouchers and give recommendations.

Don’t stress – hit the high street if you’re stuck

There’s always a forgotten present to buy which means you might not have the time to spend researching the most sustainable options available. In anticipation of this happening, Ethical Consumer has selected the most ethical high street stores where you could pick up any last minute gifts.

Lush – This company refuses to test on animals and tries to use only natural ingredients. They are Fair Tax Mark certified and an accredited Living Wage employer.
 
The Co-op Group – The Co-op sells everything from food to electricals. They now have food stores in most town centres and are a leader in ethics. They recently released a new “Co-operative Way” action plan that sets out their commitment to a tackling a number of issues including climate change and waste. They are a Fair Tax Mark certified organisation.
 
Marks and Spencer – Marks and Spencer is a cornerstone of the British high street. In the Ethical Consumer recent guide to supermarkets it came second to the Co-op Group. It also came second in the supply chain ranking and score table in the Ethical Consumer clothes shops guide.
 
WH Smith – WH Smith is the only large bookseller to score a best rating in the Ethical Consumer ‘Alternatives to Amazon’ bookshops guide for both their environmental reporting and supply chain management.

John Lewis – The John Lewis’ Partnership is an employee-owned business with the workers sharing in company profits and having a say in how the business is run.

And finally, chocolate – without the palm oil

It’s everywhere, from tree decorations to advent calendars and selection boxes infact its estimated that over 50% of products in our supermarkets contain palm oil, with everything from shampoos and soaps to biscuits and pies listing the ingredient.

Unfortunately the variety there’s a really high  chance that palm oil is going to be an ingredient in your chocolate or selection box . Fillings and flavourings that are involved in creating chocolate bars and boxes of chocolates often contain the ingredient making it hard to avoid. also means that.

Until consumers can be reassured that sustainable sources of palm oil really stand up to scrutiny, more and more ethical shoppers are opting for palm oil free chocolate products.

Our Palm Oil Free list has been hugely popular. With the big brands like Cadbury, Green & Blacks and Nestle still using palm oil, our research has found that many of the smaller, independent companies that are committed to Fairtrade ingredients and a concern for workers rights, are also those that are creating chocolates without the use of palm oil.

A great chocolate brand to try this Christmas is Divine, an Ethical Consumer best buy. It’s co-owned by the 85,000 farmer members of Kuapa Kokoo, the cooperative in Ghana that supplies the cocoa. Their Fairtrade advent calendars, chocolate coins and chocolate hampers can be bought direct via their online shop, and from a range of high street stores including the Co-op, Waitrose and Oxfam. Also ranking highly in the Ethiscore table is Booja Booja who offers organic, dairy, gluten and soya free, chocolate truffles in beautiful boxes.

Wishing you all the best for a happy, healthy and sustainable Christmas!

This Author

Tim Hunt is a director at Ethical Consumer magazine.

Polish leaders delivered a clear message on Monday: climate change must be tackled, but not at the expense of the coal workers who built the industrial city that is hosting this year’s Cop24 summit. 

By holding this year’s UN climate negotiations in Katowice, a city in the coal mining region of Upper Silesia, the Polish government put the spotlight on its call for a “just transition” for industrial workers who risk losing their jobs with the shift to cleaner energy and operations.

“‘Solidarity’ and ‘just transition’ – the language is key to making acceptable [climate policy],” Polish president Andrzej Duda said in a speech to the plenary on Monday.

Intensive negotiations

“One of the challenges we have to face and continue to face is how to reconcile economic growth with taking care of the environment,” he added later. “The choice we are making is not between jobs and the natural environment but whether we are going to keep both or none of them.”

The Polish government also launched a European Union-backed declaration on Monday calling to support regions and cities like Katowice that will be affected by the shift away from fossil fuels. International union groups welcomed the message.

The new summit presidency’s comments stood in sharp contrast to speeches from the small island countries, whose leaders stressed that their people are already suffering – not from climate action, but inaction.

“We should not only have a just transition for those workers, regions and economies affected by the move from dirty energy to clean energy, we must have a just transition for all – and especially the most climate vulnerable,” said Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama, who presided over last year’s Cop23 summit in Bonn, Germany.

The leaders’ speeches kicked off two weeks of intensive negotiations over rules to make sure countries meet their pledges under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The strength of the rules will largely determine how the political goals set in Paris are actually implemented – making Katowice the perfect setting to highlight the challenge of maintaining economic growth while shifting away from old, polluting industries.

Take stock

Katowice was home to as many as 14 coal mines in the 1980s, and two now. The Cop24 conference centre sits next door to one of the shuttered mines, which has been converted into a museum.

But Katowice is also “one of the greenest cities in Poland”, with forests covering more than 40% of its area, Duda said. The modernisation of plants is leading to “environmental improvements”, without disrupting energy security.

The city’s remaining coal workers “need reassurance they are along for the transition”, said Michał Kurtyka, Poland’s Cop24 president. “They need rules – transparent, implementable – and a system of support for the role they are asked to take.”

While the rulebook will be crucial to monitoring progress towards the Paris goals, some countries want the Cop24 to also set the scene for all parties to raise their commitments by 2020. Current pledges would only limit global warming by 3-4C by 2100; the Paris accord calls for well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C.

Duda made little mention of the discussions due to be held in Katowice, although Polish environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk said the summit will “take stock of all the wealth of views, expectations and proposals for action”.

But it was the small island countries that put the strongest emphasis on increasing efforts.

“It is essential that the contributions presented in 2020 significantly raise the bar of ambition,” said Baron Divavesi Waqa, president of Nauru, in Micronesia. “After a quarter century of negotiations we are further away from our goal of stabilising greenhouse gas emissions than we have ever been. I will resist the temptation to brand our efforts a dramatic failure.”

This Article

This Article first appeared on Climate Home News.

Indonesian and Malaysian officials tried to push the UK government to lean on the supermarket Iceland after it announced it would cut palm oil from its own-brand products earlier this year.

The retailer made the move on 10 April, citing concerns about rainforest destruction and environmental damage.

Six days after the announcement, British diplomats wrote to colleagues stationed in both countries: “the Indonesians and Malaysians need to recognise that these developments are being driven by (legitimate) concerns about the environmental impact of palm oil production, which they have not adequately addressed. It is not for us to argue the case for palm oil.”

Private company

The comments are included in emails released to Unearthed under the Freedom of Information act.

The email was sent at a time when both countries – which produce about 90% of the world’s palm oil – were engaged in an intense lobbying effort in both the UK and Brussels, as EU decision-makers considered a proposal to phase out palm oil from biofuels.

Emails between officials at the Foreign Office, Department for International Trade (DIT) and the Department for International Development (Dfid) from this spring suggest that diplomats had been urged by the Malaysian and Indonesian governments to intervene with Iceland over its opposition to palm oil.

“[The Malaysians and Indonesians] need to recognise that Iceland is a private company; HMG [UK government] has not encouraged them to take this decision, but neither would it be appropriate for us to attempt to dissuade or criticise them,” wrote one Foreign Office official.

The Foreign Office declined to comment on the record for this article.

Unearthed reported in May that British officials wrote in emails the palm oil issue “has the potential to impact on bilateral trade, particularly defence sales” with Malaysia. Both governments threatened to retaliate against EU member states if the EU palm oil phase-out went ahead.

In June, EU negotiators agreed a deal to phase out palm oil from transport fuels by 2030, nine years later than initially proposed.

‘Nasty advertisements’

In public, officials in Indonesia and Malaysia have reacted angrily to Iceland’s campaigning on palm oil.

Last month, the supermarket attracted international attention after its Christmas advertising campaign, Rang-tan, which was produced by Greenpeace, was banned from UK television for being too political.

Teresa Kok, Malaysia’s primary industries minister, took the unusual step last week of celebrating the decision by UK regulator Clearcast to ban the advert.

“We will not be cowed or stand by idly, when nasty advertisements by Iceland mislead people in markets that are crucial to us. We will fight back with facts from scientifically researched data,” she said.

As of last month, Rang-tan had been watched over 30 million times on social media.

The Times reported in April that Richard Walker, the managing director of Iceland, was attacked in a social media campaign funded by the Malaysian government and palm oil interests.

Human Faces of Palm Oil, a self-described “advocate on behalf of Malaysian small farmers” dismissed Walker as “trust fund Richard” in videos posted online. The Times later reportedthat two western lobbyists with links to pro-Brexit campaigns and big oil were behind the campaign.  

The Indonesian government told Unearthed that it is in dialogue with the UK government and Iceland on palm oil.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

Two billion tonnes of waste are produced annually, making it a real danger to our planet. This figure is expected to grow to four billion by 2100

Schemes and initiatives have been introduced to encourage recycling, but most of our waste continues to end up on landfill sites.

Waste is not only deposited in landfills and buried deep underground; some of it ends up in our oceans illegally. According to some studies, 1.4 billion pounds of rubbish ends up in our waters each year, severely impacting marine life — so much so, scientists have estimated that the amount of plastic will outweigh the fish by 2050.

Sustainable products 

Ninety-nine percent of the items we purchase are disposed of within a six-month period. Because of this, more businesses around the world are looking at more sustainable ways to create their products in a bid to help better the world that we live in. 

Here, Traidcraft – producers of fair trade food & drink, gifts and handmade Christmas decorations – take a look at businesses that are channelling their creativity into waste reduction methods.

Recycled tableware 

Ngwenya Glass has been producing quality glassware since 1979. Originally set up as a Swedish Aid Project, Ngwenya Glass now trains over 60 people in the art of glassblowing to create one-of-a-kind pieces of ethical homeware.

Every day, Ngwenya Glass prove that a commitment to protecting the environment can exist hand in hand with commercial success. All products are handcrafted from 100 percent recycled glass, sourced from throughout Eswatini by local people.

Ngwenya Glass encourages communities to come together for clean-up days along main roads in the area to gather discarded glass. Most of the glass used to be soft drink bottles!

Ngwenya Glass pay these glass-gatherers by the kilo, while empowering them to conserve their environment, too.

The business also works with local schools to educate young people in the importance of environmentalism and recycling, and supports schools with building materials and learning resources.

Wasteboards

Wasteboards are a company that create traditional skateboards with an eco-friendly element, in a bid to reduce waste within Amsterdam. Research has suggested that there are 20,000 plastic bottles  bought every second, this forward-thinking company collect plastic bottle tops to create the deck of the board. 

Wasteboards also believe in helping out the local community and encourage people to collect bottle tops from a range of events to ensure they can continue the development of unique skateboards. As well as this, fishermen who use the canals in Amsterdam are also asked to collect as much as they can. 

One part of the appeal is that each board is handmade and moulded into a design that creates an aesthetically pleasing product. This company loves the idea of being sustainable and being able to sell a sustainable product, so even if your wasteboard breaks — they’ll recycle the broken plastic and create you a new one!

Re-Kånken and Eco-Shell

British consumers have already latched onto the Kånken bag. Originating from a small town in Sweden, the company focuses on outdoor clothing and equipment and is committed to making nature more accessible for adventurers alike while having a focus on the simplicity of their products. 

Although they pride themselves on simplicity, the crafting of the bag is much more complex. To play their part in helping the environment, they released the Re-Kånken bag which is made entirely from polyester recycled from plastic bottles. As well as this, it is dyed with SpinDye technology which ‘radically reduces’ the amount of water, energy and chemicals used.

The Eco-Shell is another product from Fjällräven that avoids using materials that harm the environment. Eco-Shell is also made from recycled polyester and unlike many other products on the market, perflourinated chemicals are not involved in the creation. 

Lush cosmetics

Renowned as one of the eco-friendliest high street brands in the UK, it’s no surprise that Lush Cosmetics take their place on this esteemed list.

Lush claim to be 100% vegetarian, promote ethical buying, fight animal testing, craft their products by hand and offer naked packaging products which is helping reduce the chaotic packaging crisis Britain is now facing.

According to some figures, each person uses around 200 pounds of plastic a year — 60 pounds of which is thrown away instantly. This has highlighted a huge problem and put great responsibility upon businesses internationally and through innovative design, Lush Cosmetics were able to develop several products that didn’t require packaging to sell.

From shower gels to shampoos, there are plenty of naked products available. As well as this, all of plastic used by Lush is 100 percent recycled. 

Thinking creatively 

These are only a few of the many businesses trying to play their part in helping the environment.

This proves that the ability to be creative and think outside of the box can truly have admirable benefits that help both people and planet. Could you get more creative with your waste? 

This Author 

Jo Lambert is a Digital Marketing Manager at Traidcraft, a company specializing in a wide range of organic, hand made and fair trade products from food and drink to clothing and gifts.

“The web of life is being torn apart,” declared author and environmental campaigner Tony Juniper.

The IPCC report launched in October 2018 declared that we have 12 years to acton climate change, and the WWF recently published its latest Living Planet Report.

Since the 1970 baseline year – i.e. in less than one human lifetime – animal populations have dropped by 60 percent. 

Living systems

I listened to Juniper and the Devon Wildlife Trust speak about the reality we face, and what the UK might do about it. “What is causing this destruction? – three major things,” Juniper declared. 

First, our food system. We use vast areas of land to grow crops to feed animals and ultimately the growing global middle class. If the top two billion consumers cut down meat and dairy consumption by just 40 percent it would free up an area of land twice the size of India. 

Second, deforestation and land use. Juniper said: “We forget that the Romans deforested much of our land. Our wildlife persisted until after the end of World War 2”. Then our agricultural system intensified. It’s not just habitat change, it’s system change and intensification that’s destroying wildlife. 

Third, the fragmentation of our habitats. We’ve divided up land into fields, roads, airports. Wildlife can no longer move freely. And yet in the latest UK budget, £30 billion of funding was found for road infrastructure just weeks after the IPCC’s warning.  

“This is all an assault on the fabric of living systems,” Juniper said, matter-of-factly. “It’s supposedly the price of progress – we need to keep prices down, to increase our competitiveness. But you can’t do good business on a planet that’s in chaos.” 

Environment Act 

So, where do we go? Will we nurture a low tax, free trade zone when we leave the EU, and push the natural world down the agenda? Or will we choose to step up and lead? 

The UK’s major wildlife groups are uniting to make the case for a new Environment Act – it would be the first since the 1995 Act. They’re calling for clear and measurable goals including: 

– The creation of an environmental watchdog to hold the government to account, once the European Commission no longer does so. 

– A legal duty to restore nature, backed by targets that are enshrined by law. For example, targets to restore air and water quality, and increase native woodland and bird populations. The UK is lucky to have an army of citizen scientists who can help with this. 

– Access to high quality green spaces for everyone. This would also improve our public health, reducing the burden on the NHS. 

– Sustainable supply chains. The UK currently imports produce from land equivalent to half the size of the UK, and from countries where deforestation is an issue. 

These points may sound familiar – they’re already in the government’s 25-year Environment Plan and subsequent announcement of an Environment Act. But the plan is voluntary, and the Act could be thrown into disarray with a no-deal Brexit. It needs to be moved forward into law, and that’s what the push for an Environment Act aims to do. 

Rare opportunity 

The 2020 Beijing Convention on Biological Diversity will offer an opportunity to globally prioritise the natural world. It’s an opportunity to “bend the curve of loss into a curve of recovery,” according to Juniper. “A treaty will need to ensure that nature’s vital signs are improving by 2030.” 

Beijing 2020 could result in the biodiversity equivalent of 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, Juniper explains. By the time that Paris meeting happened, the UK was already leading – our Climate Act had come into place in 2008. This showed that it was possible for a country to turn aspiration into policy and generate momentum. The Climate Act prepared the ground for the Paris Agreement.

W have an equivalent story here – an Environment Act that gets passed into law and in turn inspires global leadership at the Beijing Convention is our best opportunity to change things in a generation. It could help us step into a truly green economy. 

Restoring balance

We need to recover. But we cannot bring back species and habitats when we do not care for what we already have. On a local scale – my Devon home turf – only one third of the 200 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) here are in good condition, according to Harry Barton, Chief Executive of the Devon Wildlife Trust. 

How can we care for our local patch? We can manage our verges and gardens less to encourage wildlife habitats and corridors. We can make sure there is accessible nature in every city, town, and community.

We can contact our MPs and local companies and speak to them about the Environment Act. We can connect with and support local farmers. 76 percent of land in Devon is farmed – if more of this was run by nature-friendly farms, we’d better look after the pollinators and soil that we all depend on. 

The local, national and international are all vital if we are to prioritise and restore the natural world. And ultimately, progress on climate change goes hand-in-hand with the restoration and protection of our natural world, too.

Wildlife, humans and the climate that sustains us all are mutually dependent. Creating a new UK Environment Act could show the world how we might prioritise, restore and protect this balance.   

This Author

Elizabeth Wainwright is a contributing editor for The Ecologist and a freelance writer. She also co-leads Arukah Network. You can find her on Twitter @LizWainwright

If you’re in Devon, you can learn more about what the Wildlife Trust is calling for by clicking here.

I recently accompanied Rohit Naniwadekar and Monali Mhaskar from the Nature Conservation Foundation on a survey for Rufous-Necked Hornbills in Upper Siang, Arunachal Pradesh.

They wanted to assess the status of the Hornbills’ population and the feasibility of a Conservation Program in the area, so we were out to walk trails in the forest and to interview experienced hunters from the village. 

Towards the end of my time with them – having walked nearly 40 km of forest paths – we’d gotten but a single momentary glimpse of one individual Hornbill. It had called from the bare branches of a tree sticking out above the canopy. While its loud KOKK… KOKK… still resonated in our ears, it flew up a side valley and out of sight.

Sombre evening

Even without preliminary analysis, we could tell that the numbers in Siang were far less than the density estimate: one bird for every two square kilometres for community forests in Eastern Arunachal Pradesh – to say nothing of the seven birds per square kilometres for protected areas like Namdapha Tiger Reserve.

Our extremely poor encounter rate was validated by the locals as well. Every time Rohit introduced us and stated the purpose of our visit, he’d be cut short by the locals saying that we wouldn’t find Hornbills near the villages: “You’ll have to sleep a night in the forest […] They used to be found closer, but not anymore.”

Then in one of the villages we saw the head of a young female Hornbill (pictured above), killed a day and a half’s walk away from the village. It still carried the smell of rotting meat.

It was a sombre evening at the end of a tiring day and we sat talking to the village Gamburas (Headmen) while the head dried in the smoke over the kitchen fire. It was surprising how little, for a hunting community, they seemed to know about the Hornbill’s ecology.

“They’re seasonal visitors”, we were sometimes told. But Rohit was convinced, given how good the forest is, that at some point there must’ve been sizable resident populations migrating locally, and our interviews confirmed this. The older men remembered times when the birds were more common and could be seen closer to the villages.

Collective action

Rohit asked them politely, with all due courtesy: “Given their dwindling numbers, do you ever talk amongst yourselves about whether your kids will ever see them in the wild? That your children might have to go to a zoo in Assam to see the state bird of Arunachal Pradesh?” 

What makes tragedies so poignant is that they’re theoretically preventable, and yet overwhelmingly inevitable. Individually, we know what needs to be done, and yet the momentum of collective action seems too great for any one person to be able to stop it.

“Yes, I guess we must do something”, they said. For over the last few generations they’ve seen Malayan Giant squirrels disappearing with the coming of air guns; porcupines, with the arrival of flashlights.

We spoke to to Anirban Datta-Roy of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, who worked in Siang valley studying the hunting and farming practices here. We discovered that there are indeed precedents of successful action against hunting.

Take fishing, for instance. When blasting and rampant use of nets led to dwindling of the catch at the annual fishing ceremony – during which the whole village go out to fish together – a number of villages banned their use, restricting fishing to angling and the use of traditional traps.

Traditional knowledge

And there is the example of Karko village. One of the largest villages in the valley, with nearly 180 households, they have officially banned hunting through the year – imposing a fine even on the carrying of a gun. They have a good catch during the week of the annual village hunt at the beginning of winter.

Hunting has been the way of life for the Adis of Siang valley for as long as they can remember, though traditionally they hunted using traps and with bows and arrows. Their love for the forest clearly shows through.

More than one young man told us: “Once we go into the forest, we just don’t feel like coming back. It is so beautiful in there.” And nothing I had ever seen can match their love for meat. How else can you explain a wholehearted relish of dishes of smoked meat boiled with just salt?

But what of the traditional knowledge that went with this love for the hunt? As encounters with the birds became rarer, it seemed that the birds had slowly lost their dignity in the minds of the hunters, their lore forgotten, their identity reduced to the amount of meat described by hands held apart in a circle, thumb to thumb, fore fingers touching.

Finally an old man, his face wrinkled with age, who had never himself seen a Hornbill nest, told us about the stories that his father had told him when he was a child about the birds’ elaborate courtship. The male woos the females with gifts of fruits, cajoling her to incarcerate herself into their nesting hole.

Once she squeezes in, the female begins to close the mouth of the hole with her faeces – made sticky from eating figs – leaving only a small slit. Soon she lays two eggs and the male then continues to feed her and the two chicks, bringing them hundreds of fruits every day, and the occasional treat of a poached fledgling, a hunted lizard or a squirrel that he’s managed to capture. 

Labours of love

The old man said: “They keep their nest hole very clean, defecating out of the slit and throwing out any seeds that they regurgitate. There thus rises a dense growth of sapling under the nest tree.

“When the saplings are this tall” – he said, holding his hand palm down by his knee – “they’d know that the chicks were fully grown.” Yes, nodded Rohit, all this is well documented and studied at length for the Great and the Wreathed Hornbill in other places in Arunachal Pradesh, the Western Ghats, as well as in Thailand.

In about four months, the chicks are ready to leave the nest – four months, during which the male continues to forage for the family. Then, their labour of love finally done, the female will emerge from the nest and slowly over the next day or so, the parents will together coax the chicks to leave the nest. 

But the old man had more to say. “When the saplings are this tall, then the hunter would climb up and get two, sometimes three, fully grown birds.” 

No animal can withstand that kind of hunting, where every young one as well as any breeding female is taken.

Younger generations

Hornbills are unusually vulnerable to hunting. Individuals in captivity have been known to survive to the age of 40, and they don’t start breeding until the age of three or four. Add to that the high mortality rates for Hornbill chicks, with only one of the two surviving the first year and picture becomes even more dismal.  

We were often told: “But these mountains have a world full of forests on them, and we hunt only on our own trails.” One could try to believe that there were indeed safe havens hidden amongst the folds of the tortuous ridges, in which the birds could live without fear, nest at peace.

But as we travelled down the valley, we soon realized that every section of every slope has its owner, every mountain has been spoken for, every ridge, walked.

Another question were were often asked was: “So are you here to ask us to stop hunting”. Rohit would honestly reply: “Not at all. That is your way of life; these are your forests; who are we outsiders to tell you how to live your life? We’re here to merely gather information that you will have access to, to make informed decisions about how to keep your forests well stocked.”

We had heard about people who hunted despite the village council’s ban in Karko. An official order to stop hunting, implemented by outsiders, is never going to work here. It is for the people themselves, nudged along by the more thoughtful ones amongst them, and the well-read and widely travelled younger generation, to tackle the question of collective action. 

Living sustainably 

It is proof of thoughtful policies – and a matter of much pride for the Adi community – that they have access to one of the largest expanses of contiguous forest in the country.

For once in history, the owners of the forest also have all the resources of the modern world at their disposal to come up with an answer to certain fundamental questions about what it means to live sustainably and in harmony with nature. 

The answer that they come up with will be a crucial one, for it will also implicitly tell us what the extinction of a species means to a community, and what it means to protect the essence of one’s traditional way of life. For what would it mean to be a hunter when there’s nothing left to hunt?

This Author 

Sartaj Ghuman is a freelance biologist, writer and artist based in India. 

The Unist’ot’en clan, members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, built their family home in 2010 on the GPS coordinates of a projected pipeline. Since then, their occupation has flourished. It is now home to a traditional pit-house, a permaculture garden, a solar powered mini-grid and a healing lodge.

To date, no pipeline work has been done on their unceded territory. The re-occupation of their lands is in the path of several proposed pipeline projects, including the Pacific Trails Pipeline, the Enbridge pipeline, and the Coastal Link Gas Pipeline.

Contractors attempting to gain access have been turned away at a checkpoint by peaceful land defenders. The Unist’ot’en are reimagining free, prior, and informed consent, and, in-so-doing, re-establishing themselves in their ancestral lands.

Colonial violence

On November 27th, the land defenders of the Unist’ot’en camp were served an injunction and civil lawsuit by TransCanada, the company behind the Coastal Gas Link pipeline project. The injunction, which asks the RCMP to arrest and remove all people from the camp as soon as next week, will be heard in a BC court on Monday, December 10, International Human Rights Day.

TransCanada is seeking an “interim, interlocutory or permanent injunction,” police enforcement, and financial charges against those “occupying, obstructing, blocking, physically impeding or delaying access” to Wet´sewet´en territory.

The notice doesn’t name the Unist’ot’en house group and hereditary chiefs, who collectively hold title and govern Unist’ot’en territory according to Wet’suwet’en law. Instead, it’s directed at and aims to criminalize two individuals: Freda Huson and Warner Naziel. According to Smogelgem, Hereditary Chief of the Laksamshu Clan, “this as an attempt to individualise, demobilise, and criminalise us in order to bulldoze through our home.”

The camp´s press release declares that “the Unist’ot’en Camp is not a blockade, a protest, or a demonstration – it is a permanent, non-violent occupation of Unist’ot’en territory, established to protect our homelands from illegal industrial encroachments and to preserve a space for our community to heal from the violence of colonization.

We see TransCanada’s legal threat, which requests that the RCMP enter our territory by force, as a direct challenge to the safety of our residents and an extension of the colonial violence from which we are trying to heal.”

Violations of law

Pushing pipelines through on sovereign territory without free, prior and informed consent violates both Canadian law and international law. The Wet´sewet´en, along with the Gitxsan, were plaintiffs in the ground-breaking Deglamuukw-Gisday’wa court case, which recognized that Wet’suwet’en rights and title have never been extinguished across 22,000 km2 of northern British Columbia.

This aboriginal title includes the right to use, manage, and possess land, and to decide how the land will be used. With the 1997 Delgamuukw-Gisday’wa case, the Gitxsan and Wetsuwet’en demanded recognition of their unextinguished jurisdiction over the land based on the fact that they had never signed any land treaties with the governments of Canada and therefore that they had never ceded title to their traditional territories.

The supreme court acknowledged that in the absence of a ratified treaty and having never been conquered in war, the Gitxsan and Wetsuwet’en thus retained title and jurisdiction over their land, according to Canadian law. Despite this ruling, the Canadian federal and provincial governments continue to push through industrial and extractive projects without consent.

Pre-election Trudeau expressed a mandate based on a renewed national “nation-to-nation relationship, based on recognition, rights, respect, co-operation, and partnership” with First Nations in Canada. 

Trudeau also pledged that his government would “fully adopt and work to implement” the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which included the provision that “Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources.”

Global attack

Yet the dream has been slowly dying ever since. Instead the current government has abandoned its duty to informed consent under UNDRIP and requires only “duty to consult and accommodate.” The government´s failure to respect internationally recognized indigenous rights and to trod over them by pushing through projects such as Kinder Morgan represents a serious betrayal to indigenous peoples in Canada.

Another significant outcome of the Delgamuukw case was that, for the first time, the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en were able to use their oral histories as principal evidence in the case to demonstrate their long-time use, occupation, possession, and administration of the contested land and their deep and enduring social, cultural, and historical connections to their territory. Their system of hereditary governance is enacted through the feast system, where stories, songs, and crests, lands and ranks are passed from one generation to the next, renewing the sacred connection that they have with their lands.

The jurisdiction and authority of the hereditary chiefs and the feast system recognized by the Deglamuukw-Gisday’wa court case is currently being ignored by Trans-Canada. According to Huson, “All Wet’suwet’en Clans have rejected the pipeline because our medicines, our food, and our water are all here and not replaceable.”

Further, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples protects Indigenous right to self-determination, including Article 10, which stipulates that “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories.”

The litigation against the peaceful non-violent resistance of the camp can be seen as part of a global attack on Indigenous peoples and a colonial history of criminalization. According to Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “The rapid expansion of development projects on indigenous lands without their consent is driving a global crisis. These attacks – whether physical or legal – are an attempt to silence Indigenous Peoples voicing their opposition to projects that threaten their livelihoods and cultures.”

A space for healing

The Unist’ot’en are defending their land and the sacred waters of the Talbits Kwah (Gosnell Creek) and Wedzin Kwah (Morice River), where salmon spawn. But their visionary struggle also goes further. Asserting their jurisdiction over unceded territory has come along with a process of healing the land and themselves. Through practicing food sovereignty, traditional medicine, and local energy production, and re-establishing a system of governance based on the matriarchal hereditary clan and feast system.

The healing lodge, built in 2015 in the path of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, has become the focus of the camp. Its focus is to provide support for those in the community suffering from substance abuse and trauma. More broadly, it was envisioned as a way to heal historical trauma from colonial and extractivist violence that so many First Nations in Canada suffer from and which projects such as the Trans-Canada pipeline continue.

According to Freda Huson, the need for the healing camp emerged from seeing so many indigenous people come out to Unist’ot’en land and finding it to be healing experience, to live on the land and have a connection with the natural world and our teachings. “It is a chance to return to some of our traditional teachings and land-based wellness practices of our ancestors.”

Dr. Karla Tait, Unist’ot’en Healing Centre Programmer, said: “Our people have been impacted by intergenerational trauma, and disconnected from those practices. Our clan discussed this dream of a healing centre that would be land based, with all of the programming stemming from our teachings and our ancestral ways of wellness that are much more holistic and that recognise the impacts of colonisation and of trauma on our youth and our families and communities.

“The projects proposed to run through our territory as a threat to us reclaiming and self-determining our own health and wellness.” Currently the lodge is home to Wet’suwet’en community members who are receiving holistic and land-based treatment for substance abuse.

Fracked gas

The TransCanada Coastal GasLink pipeline will run approximately 670 kilometres across Northern B.C, bringing fracked gas from Dawson´s creek to Kitimat. It is part of a recently-approved $40 billion fracked gas project, LNG Canada, the single largest private sector investment in Canadian history.

LNG Canada is a fracked gas processing facility run by five companies, of which Royal Dutch Shell is a 40 percent owner.  The impacts of fracking have been well documented, including the use of vast amounts of groundwater and up to 750 chemicals used to break up shale formations to release the trapped gas. Fracking is a major source of methane, leaked during production, one of the most potent greenhouses.

According to author and activist Harsha Walia, “It’s shameful that the NDP provincial government has announced tax breaks for LNG and is working with the federal government to push fracking throughout BC.

The biggest driver of climate change in the province over the coming decades will be from the LNG industry and the Alberta’s tar sands is the top consumer of fracked gas in Canada, accounting for one-quarter of the fracked gas used.”

The government would violently evict the Unist´ot´en at its own peril. The camp has become a powerful symbol against extractivism and for indigenous sovereignty and decolonization in practice across Canada and beyond.

Enacting responsibility

Their perspective of asserting responsibilities to the land and to rather than demanding rights from a government that pays lip service to reconciliation but that refuses to abide by the decisions of its own apex court of justice has created a space where they have been able to reinstate their own governance systems, and their own legal understandings.

Freda said: “The land is not separate from us. The land sustains us. And if we don’t take care of her, she won’t be able to sustain us, and we as a generation of people will die.”

While the Enbridge and Kinder Morgan pipelines generated heated opposition from many of the Indigenous territories whose lands they would cross, opposition to “natural” gas pipelines has generally been more muted.

This is because communities are told that in case of a spill the gas would simply evaporate. In contrast, the position of the Unist’ot’en camp transcends concerns for impacts on their territory alone.

The Wet´sewet´en hereditary chiefs have adopted a more holistic perspective, one founded on their relationship with the territory and with affected communities all along the commodity chain, from those suffering water pollution from fracking at the commodity frontier of extraction, to the coastal communities resisting export terminals and tanker traffic, to communities in island states impacted by the rising waters.

Affected communities

This positioning and their complete opposition to all pipelines – existing, proposed or approved to expand – means the camp has wide support. “We always have to be mindful that we are the first people of the headwaters,” Huson says. “This water hits us first; it’s our duty that we’re not making decisions that are going to impact clans downstream from us.”

Communities across Canada have already begun responding to the Unist´ot´en call for support.

Protests will be held across Canada in the coming days as a show of strength of support, and as of Wed. December 5th, over sixty-five organizations and 1527 individuals have pledged support to the Unist’ot’en Camp.

Numerous supporters have also pledged to travel to the camp to defend the Unistoten home if need be. What is clear from these pipeline politics is that Indigenous nations are not backing down and have pledged to continue to resist extractivist projects and colonial incursions into their unceded homelands.  

The Wedzin Kwa may be the next touching down point battleground between extractivist development and a  global movement for climate and environmental justice. 

This Author

Leah Temper is the author of Blocking pipelines, unsettling environmental justice: from rights of nature to responsibility to territory, Local Environment.

Resources:

A syllabus that gathers resources, facts, and videos so that educators are able to spread the word about Unist’ot’en Camp.

https://nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/teaching-unistoten/

Corridors of Resistance: Stopping Oil and Gas Pipelines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDR1l_Xw7ts

Leah Temper (2018): Blocking pipelines, unsettling environmental justice: from rights of nature to responsibility to territory, Local Environment, DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2018.1536698

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13549839.2018.1536698?journalCode=cloe20

Letter of support: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNtxbSahBWHsa9Wy_sEelq8BAEp1mOsiiOzkvq9dE7ryMnGA/viewform?fbclid=IwAR2w54zj5sB_sPkA5uKO5PBLgLDe5xqJG6oT_B4RkmKMmfKNuIIRRZTI524

EJatlas case: https://ejatlas.org/conflict/unistoten-camp-v-the-ptp-pipeline-bc-canada

His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, respected spiritual leader and environmentalist of the Himalayan region, inaugurated COP24 by criticising materialism and reinforcing our duties to the coming generations.

His Holiness gave his speech at the Action Hub – the centre prized by the conference to showcase initiatives taken around the world to halt climate change in line with the Paris Agreement guidelines. He focussed on our global society’s misdirected sense of progress and success, which he highlighted needed to be reengineered. 

Under capitalism, people are taught from birth that they should seek happiness and a wellbeing in material accumulation. In such a world, environmental destruction is unsurprising. 

Paradigm shift

Built on a foundation of spiraling accumulation for accumulation’s sake, the continuous pursuit of profit on a planet of limited resources will never satisfy us. In fact, that’s the point: “We say it is like drinking salt water. It will only make you thirstier. It is an endless pursuit until death.”

The speech emphasised that to truly halt climate change we need to change where we look for happiness. This will cut our economic structure at its root, prioritising our relationships with each other and valorising our connection to nature.

A move away from what we want, to what we need; from a sole focus on the individual, towards the greater good. His Holiness centered that such a redirection of our society that is required existentially for our species is to be realised in the moral education we give to children since infancy, shaping their behaviors and lifestyle. 

The ecological destruction of our planet’s rich biodiversity for the latest gadget, shiniest jewelry, biggest house etc. could be curbed by changes in the mindset of everyone from parents to policy leaders. 

Economic pressures

However, such a reassessment will be difficult for those deeply embedded in our unequal economic structure.

Under the pressure of debt, unemployment, rising living costs and family dependency, the struggle to survive ties our immediate loyalty to what puts food on the table for our children today, even at the expense of our grandchildren. 

According to the Gyalwang Drukpa, this mentality is understandable – but it also centres unduly on the individual, flouts responsibility and deprives empathy. 

Many indigenous spiritual leaders – such as the Iroquois, who emphasise each generation’s obligation to take care of the land for the next 7 generations – take a similarly long view.

Interconnected world

Although we might focus on our immediate desires, each part of the world’s ecosystem is deeply reliant on and connected the others. This is especially so in the Gyalwang Drukpa’s home, the Himalayas, which has suffered increasingly dangerous floods created and exacerbated by unsustainable practices in the West. 

Ringing all the alarm bells possible, His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa’s speech is part of a growing and outspoken spiritual sector that is realising the urgency of our obligation to preserve life – evident in the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative, brought forth at the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Peoples in April. 

This burgeoning group argues that saving ourselves requires a reformation of our relationship with nature and with one another, if we are to truly get a chance of implementing the Paris Agreement guidelines. 

This Author 

Temo Dias is a journalist and researcher in East Asian political affairs, environmental issues and governmental corruption. 

A reinvigorated climate justice movement saw more than 3-4,000 campaigners march through central London last weekend. The protesters brought a message of increasing urgency for decisive action to the doors of No. 10.

The annual march took place on the back of the Extinction Rebellion day of action on 17 November, and the two incontrovertible reports from the IPCC and the World Meteorological Organisation. 

Asad Rehman summed up the general mood with a fiery speech outside the Polish Embassy, deliberately chosen as the meeting point to coincide with the COP24, UN climate talks kicking off in Katowice.

Fiery speech

“You don’t need to be a climate scientist to see there is something very wrong with the planet. All you need to do is listen to people on the frontline in the global south,” said the executive director of the charity War on Want. 

“Just a one degree of warming and we see killer floods, droughts – we’ve seen famine, we’ve seen super typhoons and hurricanes, millions of people losing their homes and their livelihoods and while the death toll continues to go up and up we have to ask ourselves when climate scientists tell us we are in Decade Zero. 

“Why haven’t we made progress when we’re heading for not 1.5, not 2 degrees, but anything up 5 to 7 degrees warming?

“It’s because we’re in system that says that black and brown and poor people can be sacrificed for profit. Some people at the climate talks used to say to me ‘you’re too radical we have to live within the system we have to work within the system’ and I say to them that’s easy when you’re not dying from that system.”

Social justice

He added: “Keep the fossil fuels in the ground yes, but also let’s bring energy to the one and a half billion people in the world who don’t have energy. 

“We have to take on the agro-business that rack up huge profit while people go hungry, it means taking on the corporations that are cutting down the forests. Our big challenge is to connect our fight in this country to our fight globally. 

“Just a mile down the road is the City of London where our banks and corporations are driving climate injustice. We need a vision of the world which is fairer and we have that, we have the solution to the climate crisis. 

“What we lack is power and to build – we need to build a powerful movement and that means everybody here has to recognise that we have to go home after today’s march and connect our fight with the fight for social justice.”

International pressure

Speaking about the Amazon rainforest and the global south, Beatriz Ratton, from Brazilian Women Against Fascism said: “Bolsonaro’s government wants to open protected areas to economic interests and reduce environment agencies’ relevance. 

“This follows all the previous work to reduce deforestation which was reduced by 80 percent between 2005-12. He’s also merged the ministry of farming with the ministry of environment, which will now be clearly in favour of the farming industry.

“The Brazilian government withdrew the offer to host the next UN climate conference, while threats to the Amazon risk the rights to indigenous people. 

“Bolosnaro recently said he won’t recognise one more centimetre of indigenous land and will reduce the size and even undo indigenous territories that are officially recognised. If he enacts this threat he’ll destroy entire unique and vibrant peoples who rely totally on their land. 

“We need to act now by demanding there is international pressure as well sanctions should the government not adhere to committing to fighting climate change.”

Creative movement

Anna Gretton from Extinction Rebellion said: “Arrests are a very small part of our activity. Most of our efforts are going on behind the scenes – there is role for everyone in our movement. 

“We need to see everyone coming together, it really is now or never – the environmental movement has got to be bold creative and imaginative we need to use all the tactics in the tool box and ultimately none of us know if this will work but we can but try.”

Other speakers included Clive Lewis MP, Labour Party; Sian Berry, co-leader, Green Party; Richard Roberts, fracking direct action campaigner whose recent prison sentence was overturned; Paul Allen, Zero Carbon Britain; Nita Sanghera, Vice President, UCU; Neil Keveren, No 3rd Runway Coalition; Barry Gardiner MP, Labour Party; Liz Hutchins, Friends of the Earth; Peter Allen, Frack Free United; Claire James, Campaign against Climate Change.

This Author

Jan Goodey is a regular contributor to The Ecologist.