The environment is under threat. A global scientific assessment this year highlighted the urgent crisis in biodiversity worldwide, with natural ecosystems diminished by 47 percent and many species facing imminent extinction.

The IPBES report recognized that “business as usual” will not do: a system change is needed.

But such change represents a threat to the profit-driven interests of the global corporate sector. For this reason, many corporations have sought ways to show that they are acting to address the environmental crisis, whilst maintaining unsustainable production methods and pursuing a model of endless, unstoppable economic growth. 

Natural capital

Through a process known as the financialisation of nature, corporations and political systems are redefining the environmental ‘problem’ into a ‘solution’ that can create even more economic profit, for their benefit. 

By reframing nature as “natural capital”, they are able to assign a price to it, in function of the “ecological services” it can offer—services such as carbon storage or water filtration.

Those who capture nature and its ‘services’ are able to then speculate with the prices, and compare the value of investing in nature with investing in other activities. This process reduces nature to its economic value alone, sidelining the social, cultural, political and even spiritual aspects of nature’s relationship with human societies.

The financialisation of nature takes on a particularly deceptive form in offsetting and biodiversity compensation schemes. These schemes allow companies and governments to pursue destructive activities—such as grabbing land from indigenous peoples and local communities or cutting down part of the rainforest—and claim that no damage is being done overall, as they have compensated the price of this destruction.

Compensation can be as simple as paying into a fund which promises to create or protect more nature elsewhere, or creating such an area themselves. 

Offsetting 

One such example is the Bujagali hydropower project in Uganda. The reservoir created by the Bujagali dam on the River Nile in 2012 flooded an area which had enormous ecological value, as well cultural and spiritual importance for the local Basoga indigenous peoples.

‘Comparably important’ waterfalls and river banks were set aside ‘in perpetuity’ as a biodiversity offset for the flooded area.

However, a few years later, the offset site in turn was to be flooded for another hydropower plant—with the offset needing to be offset.

On paper, any destruction has been offset, and no harm done. In reality, river banks along the Nile have been flooded, and many human right violations incurred in the process.

Compensation

A recent study by Friends of the Earth International reveals how policy makers advocate compensation and natural capital approaches as real solutions. Existing regulations based on limits and fines are increasingly turned into laws that provide offsetting and compensation options as legal solutions for environmental destruction. 

Such compensation schemes are promoted in international standards—such as the World Bank’s Performance Standard—or in national environmental legislation, in both cases giving the go ahead to destructive activities by companies that promise to offset or pay a compensation fee into a national fund designed for future ecological restoration.

These schemes are an important way for both corporate actors and politicians to ‘greenwash’ their activities—to maintain business as usual while still showing they are acting for the environment. 

Corporate gain

A complementary study Friends of the Earth International shows just how much the corporate sector stands to gain when legislation allowing offsetting is put in place at the national level.

Such legislation allows the legal approval of environmentally destructive activities which would otherwise not be allowed, especially access to land in protected areas. This approval further facilitates access to finance, especially as the International Finance Corporation (linked to the World Bank) and regional development banks approve projects more easily when they include offsetting. 

For example, the project to build a pipeline through Jasper National Park in Canada committed to offsetting, despite it not being a legal requirement. This commitment facilitated the licensing process and the project received approval without substantial environmental opposition. 

Equally, when corporations set aside land for future developments, it can end up being more profitable for them to leave it untouched and instead ‘cash in’ on the income gained from offsetting projects. 

On a wider social scale, such legislation aims to increase public acceptance for destructive activities. International conservation NGOs such as The Nature Conservancy or Flora and Fauna International offer compensation offset projects and lend corporations a positive, ‘green’ image—a well-known tactic of ‘greenwashing’.

The offsetting system relies on a huge body of research and development to keep it functional and credible: many think thanks, consultants, NGOs, academics, and accounting professionals earn their living thanks to financialization of nature processes. These actors will actively push to continue developing them, even as evidence of the ecological harm of these approaches mounts. 

Combatting financialisation 

It is fundamental that the environment, and those depending on and caring for it, are at the forefront of environmental management and related legislation.

Indigenous peoples and local communities are the best guardians of ecosystems: it is proven that areas where they organize territorial conservation using locally-relevant techniques are conserved better than national parks and private protected areas.  

We need strict legislation to counteract the consequences of deregulation, and ensure protection for the defenders of territories and human rights, who too frequently face persecution.

We need a binding treaty for corporations on human rights. We need a system change: reforming our economy to make sure that the needs of all are covered in a fair and community based manner, while stopping the greed of the few. 

This Author

Madeleine Race is a communications officer at Friends of the Earth International. 

Image: Ollivier Girard/CIFOR, Flickr.

“Nature for Sale” report coming soon.

The government has given permission to Drax Power Station in East Yorkshire to build the UK’s biggest gas power capacity.

The Secretary of State has given this green light to a project that will lock us into fossil fuel production for at least another two decades against the recommendation of their own planning inspectorate.

Read: ‘You burn our trees to power your homes’

This is blatantly a disaster for the climate and must be challenged. But this is only part of Drax’s story, and we must tell it all to tackle it at the root problems.

Environmental justice

Drax Power Station is also the world’s biggest burner of wood-based biomass. Falsely classified as renewable, this source of energy is on the rise across Europe – now making up two thirds of the EU’s renewable energy supply – with the majority of wood being sourced from the Southeastern US.

In states such as North Carolina, wood pellet companies such as Drax’s main supplier Enviva clear cut around 50 acres of forest a day to feed growing demand from across the Atlantic, and are planning a massive expansion.

Scratch below the surface more and we see that the majority of wood pellet mills and facilities constructed in the Southeastern US to feed biomass demands are clustered around certain areas and communities.

These communities are predominantly rural, predominantly of colour, and have a below state-average income. They are also likely to have already experienced some kind of pollution from nearby industry, be that energy, agriculture or transport. They are often known, for these reasons, as environmental justice communities.

A study from last year found that all wood pellet mills in North and South Carolina were located in environmental justice communities. Residents here, already subject to industrial pollution and economic depression, and which suffer from five times the asthma rate of the rest of the state, now face a tide of increased air and noise pollution and a loss of the forests they have grown up with. This alongside all the benefits the forests provide – water filtration, flood protection, and fresh, cool air.

Sense of community

These impacts are covered up by Enviva and Drax but are severe. Wood pellet facilities are known to release significant amounts of particulate matter, which cause a range of health issues from obesity to asthma.

Deborah Kornegay, lives 6-7 miles from Enviva’s Sampson County facility in North Carolina. She explained that this one facility increased particulate matter levels to 75 percent over pre-operation levels. Neighbour after neighbour has become reliant on inhalers, and are unable to sleep due to logging trucks barreling by every night.

The loss of the local environment has had a potent effect on the surrounding communities. James Woodley, who grew up in Northampton County, North Carolina, gave a heart-wrenching testimony recently, in which he described the importance of the local forests where he and his friends and family would visit when growing up – the fish would come and nibble at their feet when dabbled in the water: “Now the forests are gone, so is the sense of community”.

Woodley continued: “Dust is everywhere, and even people are breathing in dust and becoming sick from it. The roads where the trucks barrel through the community daily are damaged, and until they are fixed they are also dangerous.

“We fear for our children and pets being hit by a truck, if those kids or animals are on the road during the heavy truck traffic periods, which seems to be all the time. The noise from the facility, and the trucks barreling through the community, is constant, and a real nuisance. We hate living here, we have nowhere to go though. We just try to make it through day by day.”

Biodiversity hotspot

Why is this aspect of the story often lost? Because, as residents themselves say, companies such as Enviva deliberately pick the communities that are less able to fight back.

In fact, concerned citizens have been denied the ability to comment on newly proposed pellet mills in the past, despite Enviva being given more than enough time to make their case. No wonder these voices are never heard, if they are being systematically silenced.

Back to Drax. Why is it that last year, millions of tonnes of wood from a UN Biodiversity Hotspot was cut down and shipped 4000km overseas to be burnt in a UK power station, only to increase emissions? Why is it that communities on the sharp edge of environmental injustice are being marginalised further by an industry that, as Cindy Elmore rightly pointed out, is simply a continuation of British colonialism?

It is because Drax’s burning of coal, wood, and potentially now gas, is just a symptom of a wider model. The model that Drax operates is one that sees both forests and communities as their right to exploit. This model exacerbates existing injustices, rather than tackling them.

The model is always the same, whether it is the indigenous Shor of Siberia losing their villages and culture to coal imported by Drax, the communities of the South Eastern US losing their forests and health to wood imported by Drax, or any new communities overseas being displaced and broken apart by gas imported by a future Drax facility. The natural world and communities on the frontline are expendable. Big corporations are not.

False separation

This is why we cannot create a false separation between the environment and social justice. If the solutions are devised by the powerful, they will continue to be weak, and hurt the marginalised the most.

This has been the case with carbon offsetting for decades now, which industries still pretend will solve all our problems. It is why mega-mining companies are rushing to extract metals and minerals they claim are required for the renewable energy transition, but in fact are a smokescreen for continued human rights abuses.

This is why a burgeoning biomass industry, which destroys forests and biodiversity, harms the climate, and ravages communities, has taken off with barely any question from policymakers. It is why the people whose voices need to be centred are those that are most affected by these activities, not those committing them.

Drax is just a company clinging onto a model of the past that will not deliver climate justice. Time and time again it has proven that it is willing to open up new rounds of exploitation simply to survive, to keep burning. Now it wants to be the world leader in a technology that requires vast amounts of land, water and forests, just so it can stay in operation.

North Carolina is already on the frontline of the climate crisis and is said to be the birthplace of the environmental justice movement. The communities there should have the final say on the decisions that affect their livelihoods, not Drax. Otherwise, we risk repeating mistakes of the past over and over again. 

This Author 

Mark Robinson is a campaigner with Biofuelwatch, working to raise awareness of the negative impacts of industrial biofuels and bioenergy on biodiversity, human rights, food sovereignty and climate change. Biofuelwatch are currently campaigning to transfer over £1 billion in UK subsidies for biomass electricity towards genuinely renewable wind, wave and solar power.

Image: US Forest Service, Flickr. 

Right of Reply

“In the UK, biomass-generated electricity has already played an important role in helping to decarbonise the UK’s power system. In October, [Drax] published an updated sustainability policy and set up an Independent Advisory Board of scientists, academics and forestry experts. Drax only uses wood pellets from sustainably-managed working forests. Sustainable biomass supports healthy forest growth, biodiversity and absorbs more carbon than undermanaged forests. For example, in the US southeast, forest growth is almost twice as much as tree harvests since the 1950s, even though wood harvests have increased.”

Boris Johnson has been given the chance to make good on his word and lay in front of a bulldozer in opposition to the Heathrow expansion.

A bulldozer was brought to his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency on Tuesday to give the Prime Minister the chance to oppose the third runway at Heathrow Airport.

As mayor of London in 2015, Mr Johnson vowed to “lie down in front of those bulldozers” rather than see the airport expand.

Lose

Taking on Mr Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip is Labour’s Ali Milani, who laid in front of the bulldozer in opposition to the expansion on Tuesday.

Mr Milani said the bulldozer was a visual representation of how Mr Johnson has let down the community.

“This is a symbolic moment for us and an important moment for us to remind residents that Boris Johnson has failed not only the people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip but great Britain more broadly,” he told the PA news agency.

“With the election just 17 days away we have a unique opportunity here to make history by unseating Boris Johnson and making him the first sitting prime minister to lose his own seat.”

Expansion

The Labour candidate said he was “extremely confident” he could unseat the prime minister.

“One of the reasons the third runway is so important to us is because the air we breathe is the worst in western Europe,” he said. “Boris Johnson doesn’t live here. He literally doesn’t breathe the same air as we do.

“He has lied to us on a consistent basis. We are confident on December 12 that we are going to make history by unseating a sitting prime minister.”

While the Labour Party has not clearly opposed or approved the Heathrow expansion plan in its manifesto, Mr Milani said as a local candidate he opposed the third runway.

Climate-wrecking

The Liberal Democrat for the nearby seat of Ruislip Northwood and Pinner, Jonathan Banks, also laid in front of the bulldozer on Tuesday.

He said the impacts of the airport expansion are “unacceptable”.

“When Boris Johnson said he was going to lie in front of the bulldozers he was just lying,” he told the PA news agency.

The bulldozer was placed on High Street in Uxbridge by Greenpeace. Political campaigner Sam Chetan-Welsh called on Mr Johnson to stop the “climate-wrecking” third runway.

Majority

“At the moment the prime minister is massively sitting on the fence on this issue,” Mr Chetan-Welsh said. “Show your commitment to stopping this climate-wrecking third runway.”

The Greenpeace campaign was briefly interrupted by Sarah Green, the Green Party candidate for Ruislip Northwood and Pinner, who was demanding HS2 be scrapped.

Ms Green unfurled a banner calling for the high speed rail to be abandoned and yelled “stop the HS2” during the Greenpeace campaign.

Mr Johnson is going into the General Election defending the smallest constituency majority for a prime minister in nearly 100 years.

He won the seat in 2017 with a majority of just 5,034. Mr Johnson has been the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip since 2015.

This Author

Dominica Sanda is a reporter with PA. Image: Greenpeace. 

Gardens that focus on combating climate change will take centre stage at next year’s Chelsea Flower Show, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has said.

As it unveils the 2020 line-up for the world-famous show, the RHS said designers and growers were using the event as a platform to encourage a more environmentally sustainable future.

Award winning design duo Hugo Bugg and Charlotte Harris have designed a communal residential garden for show sponsor M&G, with a focus on forging “vital green space” in places that need them most.

Bamboo

Ms Harris said while more people were living in cities, and those cities are getting hotter with climate change, there was a “primal need for green space on a physical level, mental level, environmental level”.

The garden design has recycled and repurposed materials and sustainable elements such as permeable paving woven through it.

“The planting will be led by looking at resilient plants that are suitable for the climate challenges of urban spaces, mitigating the heat island effect, creating habitat, fixing nitrogen.

She said the garden would look at how to create “moments of joy and respite”, adding “it will be a very beautiful but urban space”.

Guangzhou China: Guangzhou Garden’ by Peter Chmiel and Chin-Jung Chen of Grant Associates also looks at a sustainable future city garden, with a woodland dell to clean the air, a pool to clean water and bamboo structures which represent homes for humans and wildlife.

Organic

In the face of global deforestation, the Facebook Garden: Growing the Future, by Chelsea gold medal winner Joe Perkins, focuses on increasing UK tree cover and the need for better woodland management as the climate changes.

Mr Perkins said living trees locked up carbon and prevented flooding, and were also a productive resource for timber, which also stores carbon.

“It’s about trying to open up the discussion about what a wonderful material it is, how resilient trees are for us and our cities, and also the importance of the management of that timber,” he said.

Every structure in the garden will be made from timber, including surfacing and walls, and will feature different types of wood, including UK-sourced and recycled timber.

Elsewhere at the show the Yeo Valley Organic Garden is using plants grown organically where possible to create a wildlife-friendly exhibit, and carbon used to make it will be offset at Yeo Valley’s farm in Somerset.

Sustainable

Designers are using wood for its carbon-storage potential and looking for ways to avoid concrete and cement, as well as focusing on UK sourced materials and plants, the RHS said.

A number of growers and nurseries exhibiting at the show this year have made environmental changes including going peat free and growing in biodegradable pots.

Rose Gore Browne, RHS Chelsea show manager said: “As gardens and horticulture are key to helping combat climate change, it is very encouraging to see a number of gardens addressing these issues and more designers and growers adopting suitable practices.”

She told the PA news agency: “With Chelsea, it’s a huge industry gathering and then we also have 160,000 interested gardeners coming through the door.

“So it’s an unrivalled platform in horticulture to demonstrate to visitors how they can be gardening more sustainably, and there’s no better way to do that than a show garden.”

She said sustainability was an important issue for the show itself, and the RHS is working with A Greener Festival, which helps events become more environmentally sustainable.

The RHS is hoping to get to the point where all power from onsite generators comes from biodiesel, while suppliers and contractors are pitching ways of serving takeaway food in reusable containers, she said.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

The leading trade association for the UK offshore oil and gas industry has launched an attempt to defend the sector’s tarnishing reputation following growing calls from MPs to divest from fossil fuel companies in order to tackle the climate crisis.

In a letter sent to MPs on 29 October, before Parliament was dissolved, the trade body Oil & Gas UK (OGUK) sought to counter the mounting calls to divert investments away from fossil fuel companies.

The letter comes as a direct response to the October announcement that over 300 MPs have signed the Divest Parliament Pledge, calling on the trustees of the MPs Pension Fund to divest from fossil fuel firms.

Maximise extraction

OGUK represents around 400 organisations involved in upstream oil and gas extraction in the UK, including the international oil majors BP, Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil, who alone are responsible for more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965.

OGUK’s stated aim is to “strengthen the long-term health” of the industry.

In the letter, OGUK refers to its ‘Roadmap 2035: a blueprint for net zero’ and attempts to position the oil and gas sector as part of the solution in the transition to a net zero economy.

But its claims of being “unequivocally” committed to reducing carbon emissions contrast with recent analysis that shows the industry’s average capital expenditure on clean energy was only 1.3 percent in 2018.  

OGUK’s roadmap proposes no viable concrete measures to decarbonise the sector, while openly boasting about increased drilling activity and new investments to maximise extraction.

Running scared

Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org who initiated the global divestment campaign, said: “The fossil fuel industry is clearly running scared – because we are winning and our movement is forcing political leaders to understand that bold action against fossil fuels is required.

“OGUK’s feeble attempt to defend the industry to MPs is a dangerous form of climate denialism and barely masks the industry’s recent billion pound investments in new climate wrecking oil and gas projects.

“Our political leaders must work together to keep fossil fuels in the ground and bring about a global Green New Deal that invests trillions into a clean energy future to enable planet and people to thrive.”   

Caroline Lucas, Green Party candidate for Brighton Pavilion, who has championed the Divest Parliament initiative, said: “The oil and gas industry is desperately trying to greenwash their dirty business model, but MPs must not buy their spin about decarbonising. To make a net zero future reality, we must shift our money out of industries that pollute and into industries that are clean.

“The public are calling for decisive action on the climate emergency, and that means voting for MPs who will stand up to an industry which is pushing us over the climate cliff edge. The Green Party has long championed the transformation of the UK economy and energy system by 2030 through a radical Green New Deal.”

Increasing pressure

Globally, oil and gas companies have approved $50 billion for new extraction projects since 2018.

Divestment campaigners argue that funding these companies is morally wrong and fatally undermines progress in tackling the climate crisis. Investors have also been warned about major financial risks associated with overvalued carbon assets.

Celebrating successes around the world, the global divestment movement is now backed by more than 1000 funds worth over $11 trillion.

In a further sign of the industry’s struggle for survival, the UK government recently imposed a moratorium on fracking (extracting gas from shale rocks), following years of intense opposition by local communities and climate activists.

With high-profile divestment campaigns such as Divest Parliament, the youth climate strikes and growing public awareness of the climate emergency, political leaders are under increasing pressure to take tangible action on fossil fuels. Polling suggests that the climate will be a decisive issue for most voters at the general election in December.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from Divest Parliament. 

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) brings producers and processors together with manufacturers, retailers, banks, and NGOs, and has advocated a “multi-stakeholder approach” to reduce the environmental impact of the palm oil industry.

The RSPO presents a highly optimistic view of the sustainability of palm oil, and Darrel Webber, its chief executive, has said the body’s consensus-driven model is more geared towards “continuous improvement” than rapid change.

Even so, a new report from Greenpeace has underscored how little progress the palm oil industry has made in distancing itself from its ignoble track record of devastation and deforestation.

Forests on fire

But while palm oil’s grim environmental credentials draw increasing attention, another closely linked industry – paper – racks up ecological black marks with far less public notice.

The Greenpeace palm oil report focuses on Indonesia, where more than half of the world’s supply of palm oil is produced. While Indonesia is home to some of the most biodiverse tropical forests on Earth and a significant share of the world’s plant and animal species – including 10 percent of flowering plants, 12 percent of mammals, 15 percent of reptiles and amphibians, and 17 percent of birds – it also has one of the highest rates of deforestation, losing around one million hectares of forest early.

One of the main objectives of the RSPO has been to curb the fires linked with palm oil production.

The fastest and cheapest way for palm oil producers to clear land for oil palms has traditionally been to burn down the forests already occupying the land, to catastrophic effect: 80 percent of the fires in Indonesia are blamed on oil palm fields, and the country lost approximately 26 million hectares of tree cover (meaning 16 percent of its total forest land) between 2001 and 2018.

This burning destroys the diverse tropical forests but also releases gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Damning findings

While the RSPO claims to hold its members to ‘environmental and social criteria’ in order to claim their products as sustainable, Greenpeace’s report has unmasked a much more somber reality. Despite intense criticism for purchasing palm oil linked to fires in Indonesia, many of the world’s largest food companies have failed to distance themselves from culpable producers. 

According to the group, global food brands such as Unilever, Mondelez, and Nestlé all bought palm oil linked to this year’s spate of fires in Indonesia, as did traders from Cargill, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), and Wilmar.

Greenpeace found that all of the major companies it evaluated – despite being RSPO members – were linked to anywhere between 6,300-9,900 fire “hotspots” in 2019. Each had links to tens of producers facing government or judicial action over the fires they had set. 

Greenpeace’s report adds to a mountain of evidence surrounding the unsustainable palm oil sector, but while there’s no disputing the damaging effects of oil palm monoculture, another serial offender – paper – has quietly passed under the radar, despite the fact that many of the same companies are involved in its production.

Paper production has arguably just as big an environmental effect as palm oil. Even so, and despite the fact that the environmental damage caused by the palm oil and paper industries are being committed in the same places at the same time and on the same scale, paper has largely skirted public scrutiny. 

Sinar Mas

This reality puts the lie to the idea of a “paperless revolution.” Although per capita paper consumption is declining in the USA and Europe, consumption is simply shifting, rather than reducing, especially with companies looking for alternative biodegradable alternatives to single-use plastic.

According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, 35-40 percent of trees cut for industrial purposes become paper products. While some of this wood comes from ‘forestry practices’, much of it comes from unsustainable deforestation in places like Indonesia.

The overlap between the palm oil and paper industries is demonstrated clearly by the global forestry giant Sinar Mas, parent group of both palm oil trader GAR (spotlighted in Greenpeace’s report) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), Indonesia’s largest pulp and paper company.

Allegations surrounding the company’s role with the destruction of forests for pulpwood previously forced Greenpeace to cut ties with the company after several years of collaboration on sustainability initiatives.

Sinar Mas’ footprint extends far past the tropical forests of Indonesia, with environmental controversies reaching well beyond Asia to make themselves felt as far afield as Europe, Canada, and Brazil.

Bolsonaro connection 

To try to distance themselves from its name and negative associations, Sinar Mas’s operations in Canada, for example, are grouped under a Netherlands-based company called ‘Paper Excellence.’

While ostensibly different entities, both APP and Paper Excellence are owned by the family of Sinar Mas founder Eka Tjipta Widjaja, one of Indonesia’s richest men until his death early this year. 

Paper Excellence’s first Canadian purchase, in 2007, was a pulp mill in Meadow Lake in Saskatchewan. From there, Paper Excellence carried out a string of purchases of existing assets, taking aim at Canada and Brazil.

These acquisitions are purportedly part of the company’s strategy to ensure a steady supply of pulp for the production of paper and other products for customers in Asia. The company clearly sees the pristine forests in both Canada and Brazil as ripe for additional mills and production facilities. 

While Sinar Mas may have used a different name for its new markets, its subsidiaries do not appear to have changed their attitudes towards responsible forestry. In fact, one of Paper Excellence’s most recent claims to fame is its close relationship with the Bolsonaro family in Brazil, one of the worst global actors when it comes to protecting natural forests. 

Global conglomerates

While Western consumers are quick to speak out over deforestation in Southeast Asia, are we prepared to challenge global conglomerates once they start doing business in our own backyards?

The global outcry over palm oil has forced at least some action to clean up the palm oil supply chain. To save our planet’s tropical forests, it is high time to take action on paper as well.

This Author

Natasha Foote is an environmental journalist and writer, specialising in conservation and agriculture. She holds a BSc in Biological Sciences and an MA in Environment, Development and Policy.

The League Against Cruel Sports has welcomed the convictions of two men associated with the Kimblewick Hunt after they were sentenced today at Oxford Magistrates Court for animal cruelty offences.

Ian Parkinson and Mark Vincent were filmed brutally dragging out a fox trapped in an artificial earth, before releasing it in front of baying hounds to provide ‘sport’ for the hunt on New Year’s Day.

Both men were found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal under the Animal Welfare Act, and were today given a twelve week custodial sentence, suspended for twelve months. They were also ordered to undertake fifteen days rehabilitation activity and 120 hours unpaid work. Full costs of £960 were ordered to be paid by both men and both were ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £115.

Animal protection

The League is campaigning for stronger hunting laws, as well as lobbying for minimum animal welfare sentences to be increased.

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports and former head of the police’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, welcomed the sentence.

He said: “These two men associated with the disgraced Kimblewick Hunt were clearly flouting animal protection laws by dragging the fox out and then releasing it in front of a pack of hunting hounds which would then chase it and potentially tear it apart.

“Not only does it show hunting still takes place, fourteen years after the ban came in, but with a general election in full swing and with law and order an important issue, it’s time political parties were united against hunting and pledge to strengthen the Hunting Act.”

The judge said the offence was so severe that only a custodial sentence was justified. This is because it involved the use of a weapon, it was to assist in an illegal activity, and there was risk of further suffering to the fox.

This Article 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

The Prime Minister could be “empty-chaired” during a televised climate change debate on Thursday.

Boris Johnson and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage have yet to respond to a request to attend the hour-long Emergency On Planet Earth debate on Channel 4 News, which will focus solely on climate change.

The broadcaster said the debate will take place even if they are unable to take up the invitation.

Seriously

Channel 4 has invited seven party leaders to the discussion, but so far only Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson and Green co-leader Sian Berry have accepted the invitation.

Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said if the Prime Minister fails to attend the debate it would show the Tories “aren’t taking the climate crisis seriously enough”.

She added: “This Thursday’s climate debate is a monumental moment in an election campaign that should have the climate and nature emergencies at its heart.

“The pitiful 45 seconds given to the topic in the last head-to-head was an absolute joke. And while Boris Johnson acknowledged that the climate emergency is a colossal issue for the entire world, his failure to commit to this ‘oven-ready’ climate debate raises question marks over his sincerity.

“An empty chair on Thursday night would confirm his party aren’t taking the climate crisis seriously enough.

Fast cars

“The Prime Minister cannot afford to run scared of public scrutiny on the defining issue of our generation. This is a test of leadership anyone wishing to run the country must pass.”

Ben de Pear, editor of Channel 4 News, said: “There is no more urgent issue facing the planet and we are delighted to open the whole of our programme for all the party leaders to show what plans they have to confront it.”

Presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy added: “It is a huge privilege to be hosting the people who want to run the country debating the most important issue in the world.

“How much do we need to change the way we live? Is it the end of fast fashion, fast cars, foreign holidays and red meat? Do any of them have a credible plan to cut our net emissions to zero?”

The debate will take place on Thursday at 7pm and will begin with a short opening statement from each leader.

This Author

George Ryan is the PA political reporter.

Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached another record high, the World Meteorological Organisation has warned.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main gas driving global warming, reached new highs of 407.8 parts per million in 2018, up from 405.5 parts per million (ppm) in 2017, a report by the UN body shows.

That is well above the level of around 280 ppm seen before the industrial revolution and the start of large scale burning of fossil fuels for energy and transport, which have driven up carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Welfare

The rise is close to the increase seen between 2016 and 2017 and just above the annual average over the last decade, continuing of a long term trend set to drive increasingly severe impacts of climate change, the WMO said.

Concentrations of other climate-warming greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide also surged by higher amounts in 2018 than in the past decade, the observations from the global atmosphere watch network show.

WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said: “There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

“We need to translate the commitments into action and increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of the mankind,” he said.

Scientists

He said the last time Earth experienced comparable concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was three to five million years ago, when temperatures were 2C to 3C warmer and sea levels were 10-20 metres higher than today.

Human activity is creating greenhouse gas emissions, which are driving up the concentrations of the gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, where they have a warming effect on the Earth’s climate.

This global warming is driving impacts such as melting glaciers and sea level rise, more extreme droughts, heatwaves and storms and posing a threat to food security, water supplies and wildlife.

But the WMO warns that even with the pledges made by countries under the international Paris deal, global emissions are not estimated to peak by 2030, let alone by the 2020 date that scientists have said is necessary to curb dangerous climate change.

Preliminary findings for 2018 suggest greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise last year.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Living in a more polluted area is associated with a greater likelihood of having glaucoma, a debilitating eye condition that can cause blindness, a new UCL-led study in the UK has found. 

People in neighbourhoods with higher amounts of fine particulate matter pollution were at least 6 percent more likely to report having glaucoma than those in the least-polluted areas, according to the findings published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.

Professor Paul Foster (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital), the study’s lead author, said: “We have found yet another reason why air pollution should be addressed as a public health priority, and that avoiding sources of air pollution could be worthwhile for eye health alongside other health concerns.” 

Irreversible blindness

Foster continued: “While we cannot confirm yet that the association is causal, we hope to continue our research to determine whether air pollution does indeed cause glaucoma, and to find out if there are any avoidance strategies that could help people reduce their exposure to air pollution to mitigate the health risks.”

Glaucoma is the leading global cause of irreversible blindness and affects over 60 million people worldwide.

It most commonly results from a build-up of pressure from fluid in the eye, causing damage to the optic nerve that connects the eye to the brain. Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease.

Professor Foster said: “Most risk factors for glaucoma are out of our control, such as older age or genetics. It’s promising that we may have now identified a second risk factor for glaucoma, after eye pressure, that can be modified by lifestyle, treatment or policy changes.” 

The findings were based on 111,370 participants of the UK Biobank study cohort, who underwent eye tests from 2006 to 2010 at sites across Britain. The participants were asked whether they had glaucoma, and they underwent ocular testing to measure intraocular pressure, and spectral-domain optical coherence tomography imaging (a laser scan of the retina) to measure thickness of their eye’s macula (central area of the retina).

Toxic

The participants’ data was linked to air pollution measures for their home addresses, from the Small Area Health Statistics Unit, with the researchers focusing on fine particulate matter (equal or less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, or PM2.5).

The research team found that people in the most-polluted 25 percent of areas were at least 6 percent more likely to report having glaucoma than those in the least-polluted quartile, and they were also significantly more likely to have a thinner retina, one of the changes typical of glaucoma progression.

Eye pressure was not associated with air pollution, which the researchers say suggests that air pollution may affect glaucoma risk through a different mechanism.

Dr Sharon Chua (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital), the study’s first author, said: “Air pollution may be contributing to glaucoma due to the constriction of blood vessels, which ties into air pollution’s links to an increased risk of heart problems. Another possibility is that particulates may have a direct toxic effect damaging the nervous system and contributing to inflammation.” 

Exposure and prevention 

Air pollution has been implicated in elevated risk of pulmonary and cardiovascular disease as well as brain conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and stroke. Particulate matter exposure is one of the strongest predictors of mortality among air pollutants.

This study adds to previous evidence that people in urban areas are 50 percent more likely to have glaucoma than those in rural areas, suggesting now that air pollution may be a key contributor to that pattern.

Professor Foster said: “We found a striking correlation between particulate matter exposure and glaucoma. Given that this was in the UK, which has relatively low particulate matter pollution on the global scale, glaucoma may be even more strongly impacted by air pollution elsewhere in the world. And as we did not include indoor air pollution and workplace exposure in our analysis, the real effect may be even greater.”

Co-principal investigator of the study, Mr Praveen Patel (NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust & UCL Institute of Ophthalmology), added: “Our study shows the potential of new retinal imaging techniques to identify disease and to understand how diseases develop so that we can improve health care and find new ways to prevent blindness.”

This Article 

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

The study was conducted by researchers at UCL, Moorfields Eye Hospital, Cardiff University and Topcon Healthcare Solutions, and supported by Moorfields Eye Charity, the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, the Alcon Research Institute, and the International Glaucoma Association