Biodiversity is key to the survival of life. Its loss deprives future generations of irreplaceable genetic information, potential livelihood opportunities, and compromises sustainability.

We are guardians of our environment and we have a social and moral obligation to do what we can to improve what we leave for future generations.

The UK Government recently introduced a 25 Year Environmental Plan that highlighted the social and moral obligations on society to take affirmative action in order to prevent environmental decline, and to go a stage further to create more abundant biodiversity.

Guiding principles

At NextEnergy Capital we believe that the energy industry can support the Government’s Environmental Plan and be an exemplary neighbour to the communities in which we operate, and that solar farms present a unique opportunity to enhance biodiversity.

Once established, solar farms are relatively undisturbed. With the right habitat enhancement and management they can harbour an abundance of flora and fauna that improves aesthetic value, and contributes to improving air quality, water quality, soil erosion, pest and disease regulation, while also providing an opportunity for community engagement and education. 

All of this is beneficial to our industry and to society. The Solar Trade Association is also beginning to bring biodiversity into the spotlight: a recent study ‘shows that solar farms can significantly improve local biodiversity, with benefits to wildlife and potentially even surrounding crops’.

NextEnergy notes that these opportunities to protect and enhance our natural surroundings have been largely overlooked by the industry. 

We believe the solar industry can benefit the environment even further. Achieving these aims will undoubtedly be a massive challenge that requires affirmative action in-line with a strong set of guiding principles. Governments will play an important role but can’t deliver this strategy alone, nor can we ignore the problem and assume it is someone else’s to solve.

Native species

Given that the chosen location for solar farms is generally either low-grade land or taken from a relatively intensive farming cycle, it is often left to grass and grazed over a 25-30 year horizon.

These plots are generally fenced off, with little crossing traffic or disturbance, and combined with a cessation (or dramatic reduction) in the use of fertilizers and pesticides: they allow the potential for significant sustainable habitat development.

The core concept of solar power and clean energy is based on the fundamental belief that there is a better way to generate electricity than the traditional carbon-based approach.

This mindset lends itself well to examining how each generating station can be an exemplary neighbor to the surrounding area, and how the industry can provide the additional benefits previously mentioned.

Once planning permission has been granted, developers are usually required to consider measures that support the native species that could be affected by the development.

Special measures

Actions specified can vary greatly from asset to asset, but are usually those intended to mitigate impact as opposed to enhance biodiversity.

We would consider these merely baseline measures. Yet, it could be said that these considerations are often overlooked, or dismissed over more pressing concerns, even post-construction and into operation. As an industry we have a moral obligation to do better than this.

Alongside its biodiversity partner Wychwood Biodiversity, NextEnergy has invested significant time in auditing its existing portfolio to ensure that the baseline measures have been delivered.

Over two years ago, NextEnergy began to implement baseline compliance across its fleet.  This work continues as new assets are acquired, and has enabled us to introduce improved land management methodologies, alongside planning compliance and the best practice guidance suggested by Wychwood.

NextEnergy and Wychwood have gone a stage further by establishing a number of exemplary sites  in which special measures are being implemented against strictly monitored baselines to pilot their impact.

Commercial logic

A biodiversity management plan has been tailored to the unique conditions of each exemplary site. Engagement with our landowners, operation and management contractors, and the community has proved vital, as these stakeholders have the closest relationships with the asset and its surrounding environment.

As the first annual survey results from our sites are being compiled, we are seeing a notable increase in the abundance of pollinating insects against the year zero baseline.

Looking at the industry as a whole, the short term focus should be on maturing the our approach to land management.

This will require wholesale adoption best practice guidelines, and require operation & management and asset management teams to upskill their operatives and subcontractors.

Correct operational planning can show some operational expenditure improvements too, adding a degree of commercial logic to actioning rapid change.

Mutually beneficial

Initial measures should include strip grass cutting (cutting only beneath the panels and leaving the rest of the site long), seasonal sheep grazing, spot weed treatment, alternative side hedge maintenance (every 3 years), alongside the creation of simple habitat improvements such as hibernacula, bird/bat boxes and solitary bee and bug hotels.

The exemplary sites are the initial steps in a long process, and provide a test bed for creative measures. Some of the broader objectives we are pursuing include the introduction of bee hives onto our land, alongside native wild flowers.

We are working on creating small and managed ponds to create homes for dragonflies and amphibians. We are also working on local cropping, and are currently piloting the growth of crops that can be harvested without impact on solar asset operations.

This is designed to support the surrounding community and its various cottage industries, be it by donating what is grown or in engaging community members in the crop and therefore the solar asset.

The future ambition is two-fold. Firstly, further engagement with surrounding landowners, whose wealth of localised knowledge should be brought forward to create mutually beneficial measures.

Hollow words

Secondly, we should create partnerships with key stakeholders and the education system to deliver creativity and monitoring.

It is clear that as a society we have some way to go before fulfilling the aims set out in the Government’s 25 Year Environmental Plan, but our industry can and should be a forerunner in supporting the ambition of leaving a better environment for the next generation and creating a symbiotic relationship between power generation and biodiversity.

However, we need affirmative action and not just hollow words. As a responsible business it is our ambition to deliver on this plan.

This Author

Ross Grier is managing director of NextEnergy Capital, a leading international investor and asset manager focusing on the solar sector.

Extraordinary new footage of the last surviving member of an uncontacted tribe has been released by FUNAI, the governmental protection agency for tribal peoples in Brazil.

The man, known as the Last of his Tribe, has made it clear he wishes to avoid contact with mainstream society. His avoidance of interaction means that no one knows his story, but it is likely his tribe were annihilated by gunmen hired by colonists and ranchers who invaded the land from the 1970s onwards.

From his abandoned campsites, we know he plants corn, manioc, papaya & bananas.  He hunts too, and digs holes about 2 metres deep with sharp staves in the bottom to catch animals to eat. He makes houses of straw and thatch, and digs a hole inside, presumably to protect himself if attacked.

Quickly and violently

The ‘Last of his Tribe’s’ house and garden where he grows manioc and other vegetables. Very little is known about this uncontacted Indian. He lives on his own in a patch of forest, surrounded by cattle ranches and soya plantations in the Brazilian state of Rondônia.

FUNAI became aware of his existence around 1990 after they found evidence of destroyed houses; the type of huts the man builds. Despite a targeted attack by gunmen in 2009, he has survived thanks to FUNAI’s enforcement of the legal order protecting his territory. This is now under threat.

The man digs deep holes to trap animals and to hide in. He is believed to be the only survivor of a tribe massacred by ranchers in the 1970s and 1980s.

This region is one of the most violent in Brazil, an issue likely to increase in the run up to presidential elections in Brazil this October, and FUNAI’s budget has been severely slashed. Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples, has lobbied the government for years to protect his territory in the face of repeated attempts by surrounding ranchers to invade.

Footage like this is vital in the ongoing struggle to protect uncontacted peoples, who are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. FUNAI must prove he is still alive to retain the restriction order protecting his land, otherwise the ranchers who surround the territory will move quickly and violently to grab the land.

Powerful agribusiness

Altair Algayer, head of the FUNAI (government) team monitoring the man’s territory, says: “This man, who none of us know, and who’s lost almost everything, including the rest of his people, proves it’s possible to survive, and resist contact. I think he’s better off as he is than if he’d made contact.”

Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International says: “Uncontacted tribes aren’t primitive relics of a remote past. They live in the here and now.

“They are our contemporaries and a vital part of humankind’s diversity, but face catastrophe unless their land is protected.

“The terrible crimes that have been committed against this man and his people must never be repeated, but countless other uncontacted tribes face the real prospect of the same fate unless their lands are protected.

“Only a major groundswell of public opinion can even the odds in favour of their survival, against the powerful agribusiness interests who want nothing more than to steal uncontacted tribes’ land, at the expense of their lives.”

Survival International Research and Advocacy Director Fiona Watson visited this territory during a government monitoring expedition.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This story is a press release from Survival International.

Droughts in Southern Africa, wildfires which killed over a hundred people in Portugal in 2017: we repeatedly see the growing havoc of climate change.

We have only a few years to cut emissions enough to keep temperature rise below 2°C, as former UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres and leading scientists have warned.

As Professor Chris Rapley said in the Ecologist recently, progress is “absolutely not at the scale, or pace that is necessary.”

There are vigorous campaigns against new fossil fuel developments, for instance the inspiring resistance to the proposed Kinder Morgan tar sands oil pipeline  in Canada. However efforts to cut emissions overall are far too slow.

Not very likely

Faced with huge dilemmas, like how to tackle climate change, people’s default position is to follow the excessively risk-averse approach Kahneman describes in Thinking Fast and Slow, in which potential setbacks are given disproportionate weight in decision making.

As a result, goals which lack the necessary ambition are chosen. If we proceeded in this way, we would probably regret it in a few years when, despite any apparent victories on our modest campaigns, feedbacks due to temperature rise had led to accelerated climate change.

Instead, as Friends of the Earth Director Craig Bennett said, our campaigns must “really scale up the ambition of the transformational change we need.”

We need goals which sufficient people will consider both achievable, and large enough to make a significant difference. We will not stimulate people to rise to the challenge unless we communicate “a credible strategy that is to scale with the climate crisis”.

A large poll in eighteen European countries found that high proportions of people consider it either not at all likely, or not very likely “that enough governments will take action on climate change”.

Susceptible businesses

Two-thirds of Germans, and over half in both France and the UK have this belief. Governments’ plans submitted at Paris, even if implemented, would lead to temperature rise of at least 3°C.

The May round of UN climate negotiations was suspended in disarray. While some countries and regions have started to price carbon, the price is far too low to cut emissions and drive investment in renewables sufficiently.

This all underlines the importance of pushing business, as well as governments, to cut emissions. The eminent researcher, Ed Maibach, stated: “people who are concerned about climate change are much more likely to express their concern through their purchases as a consumer … [than] to engage politically as citizens.”

Therefore we urgently need a new campaign targeting selected susceptible businesses which could be pushed into making large emissions cuts soon.

Many large companies could follow the example of Lego and others and save substantial sums by investing more in energy efficiency or contracting to use renewable energy.

Dirty energy

The proposed campaign would flood the companies with demands from thousands of citizens, and create publicity imaginatively, to pressure and embarrass them to reduce, or cease funding, specific polluting activities.

Targeted companies, which consider their “brand strength” “critical”, would have a huge incentive to improve before their reputation and profits were seriously hit.

A relatively small cut in profits can reduce a company’s share price significantly and seriously hit executives’ income. As the leading management consultancy PWC said, companies take great care to “anticipate possible risks and opportunities before they materialize”.

We can show them that the risk of high carbon operation is too great, and that energy efficiency and using renewables would boost their reputation and profits.

Certain banks which invest the most in dirty energy could be among the targets. Current account switching has been made much less hassle than previously.

Coal mining

There are over 40 banks and building societies listed by the Current Account Switching Service.  Ethical Consumer ranks them in terms of their overall ethics.

Every year about fourteen million people invest in savings accounts, about three per cent of bank customers switch accounts, and millions of young people open their first account.

All this constitutes substantial consumer power we could influence. On and in the weeks around Bank Transfer Day in the USA in 2011, 650,000 customers shifted $4.5 billion out of major banks.

Target companies could include HSBC, which in response to activist pressure including the Climate Serious petition has introduced a somewhat improved energy policy.

However, it is continuing to finance substantial coal mining in three countries, leading the campaign group BankTrack to point out that HSBC is Happy Still Being in Coal.

Irresponsible companies

The Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2018 shows that HSBC are the 7th worst bank in the world for financing the dirtiest, most climate-harmful fossil fuels.  They have failed to follow the example of thirteen European banks which have stopped direct funding of coal power plants.

It would also be very helpful to enlist high-profile and respected supporters, provided they are well-chosen to stick to the campaign’s line. They can have a strong impact, as Bob Geldof did for Live Aid, and Mark Ruffalo for renewable energy.

One strength of the campaign would be that it would offer supporters a range of actions, from signing a petition to the target companies, joining other activists to collect petition signatures outside target companies’ premises, embarrassing the companies at their AGMs, or by visiting their premises to highlight their failures, using music and drama.

Posing a major threat to various high-emitting companies, and therefore potentially also to many others before long, could create the well-known radical flank effect, making business and governments more receptive than previously to the demands of less radical environmental groups.

The campaign would show all large companies that citizens will not tolerate them wrecking our climate, and that they could be targeted next. Once the initial target companies had made adequate commitments, the campaign would target other irresponsible companies. You can contact me to help make this campaign a reality, telling all businesses: go green, or go bust!

This Author

Tim Root is co-ordinator of Muswell Hill & Hornsey Friends of the Earth. Tim’s work on climate campaigns has previously been published in a few magazines, including at https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/tim-root/prospects-for-paris

The government’s environment bill must have clear and binding targets, and be backed up by strong enforcement, campaigners have said.

Prime minister Teresa May announced the government’s intention to draw up the first environment bill in the UK since 1995 on Wednesday. She did not provide many details, except to say that it would include action on air pollution, and “some of the opportunities that we think will be available to us after we leave the European Union.”

She added it would not just be an issue for the environment department (DEFRA). “It encompasses a number of departments, both in the action needed and in the positive impact that it will have. The Department of Health, for example, will benefit, as individuals benefit from cleaner air.”

Nature’s recovery

The government has been repeatedly criticised and taken to court for failing to reduce air pollution, levels of which are above those allowed by EU law.

The legislation meets calls by NGOs to enshrine the government’s 25-year environment plan, published earlier this year, into law. The plan promised action on waste, the natural environment, air pollution and improving health through access to nature.

The government has also recently pledged to create a watchdog, to replace the oversight of the European Commission after Brexit. It has been heavily criticised for falling short of the EU’s legal systems, as it would only be able to issue legal proceedings against the government, not other public bodies.

NGOs want the new bill to deliver this watchdog, and also enshrine and strengthen EU protections in law, and set measurable short and long-term targets for nature’s recovery and a healthy environment.

Bills covering agriculture and fisheries have already been announced by the government. NGOs want these to include binding targets backed up with funding.

Nature depleted

Tony Juniper, executive director at WWF, said: “Our country is increasingly bereft of wildlife, our rivers polluted, there is more and more plastic in the sea and an ever-increasing area of green space covered with concrete. This new law must set clear targets for the recovery of the natural world that we all depend upon. There is no time to waste.”

Martin Harper, director of conservation at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, pointed to the organisation’s State of Nature report from 2016, which ranked the UK as the 28th most nature-depleted country out of 218 countries it assessed.

He said: “As the UK seeks to leave the European Union, we urgently need all our governments to not only maintain the current levels of nature protection but to raise the bar and allow our wildlife to recover.”

Marian Spain, chief executive of Plantlife, said: “Brexit gives the government a major chance to hit the reset button on policies that have been damaging nature in the UK for years. The time for action is now. We have seen floral diversity crash in our magnificent but vanishing meadows, a staggering 97% of which have been lost since the 1930s.”

Doubts voiced

However, Tom Burke, chairman of environmental think tank E3G, who has advised both government ministers and big business on environmental issues, tweeted: “Why would anyone trust a government that has crippled the planning system, destroyed the independence of environmental regulators, cut investment in energy efficiency and delayed the deployment of renewables with an environment bill?”

Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth was also cautious. He told the BBC: “This could be an act that really moves forward protection of nature. But we don’t know what the bill will include, what will be its foundations and when it will be delivered.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The government of Thailand has pledged to start sending plastic scrap back where it came from as part of a crackdown on illegal waste imports.

The news poses another problem for the UK’s beleaguered recycling sector and follows reports of recycling facilities in Thailand becoming overwhelmed by a surge in trash shipments since China’s ban on low-quality waste came into force.

An Unearthed analysis of customs data revealed that UK waste exports to Thailand shot up in the first four months of this year: from just 123 tonnes in January to April 2017 to 6,810 tonnes.

Plastic pollution

According to reports in Thai media, the government has announced new measures to restrict plastic imports, with the country struggling to cope with increased imports of plastic waste since China shut its doors to “foreign trash” in January.

The Thai government will introduce [story in Thai] inspections of all plastics and electronic waste imports into the country and will send waste back where it came from if it’s imported without proper description.

Since China stopped accepting plastic waste imports in January, western countries, including the UK have been scrambling for alternative export markets.

Last week, shipping giant APL announced a temporary ban of plastic scrap shipments to three ports (Laem Chabang, Bangkok and Songhkla) in Thailand, in response to “the escalating number of idle shipping containers” at the ports.

Thailand has long grappled with plastic pollution and the death of a pilot whale earlier this month, found in a canal in the southern province of Songkhla with 80 plastic bags in its stomach, drew international attention to the issue.

Place a strain

Erik Solheim, head of the UN environment programme, told Unearthed the news from Thailand was a sign of “the slow motion collapse of a completely absurd and unsustainable business model. We’re creating so much rubbish that we don’t know where to put it.

The solution here is blindingly obvious. We need a dramatic cut in the waste we’re generating. It’s not just plastics, but also e-waste, construction materials, chemicals and more.

“China, Thailand and many other rapidly developing countries have their own growing waste problems, so the old option for rich nations to ship their waste halfway across the planet is disappearing. Our planet is only so big, but we’re running out of landfill and the world’s recycling facilities can’t keep up.”

The move by the Thai government could place added pressure on the UK recycling sector.

Simon Ellin, the head of the UK Recycling Association told Unearthed, the Thai move “will place a strain on the British recycling sector due to the restrictions imposed by yet another export market and the huge costs of repatriation if a shipment goes wrong”.

Fundamentally constrained

A spokesman for the waste firm Suez said that the China ban had created “backlogs” in Thailand and other countries around the world and that while the UK government is working on a solution to the plastic waste crisis, the Thai move added urgency to the issue.

“Although Suez does not export to Thailand and is therefore not directly affected by this development, it does have the potential to constrain yet another market for the global flow of secondary materials.

“In Thailand, in particular, it would seem that in addition to a prohibition on electronic and plastic waste products, the market is fundamentally constrained by port capacity, which has caused backlogs as material has flowed to smaller ports from China.

“These new barriers to another secondary material market place further urgency on the need to… grow domestic markets, if we are to collectively avoid wasting these commodities in future.”

As well as Thailand, other countries have moved to restrict imports since the China ban came into force.

Shutting their doors

Vietnam introduced a temporary ban on plastic scrap shipments earlier this month, as ports in the country became congested due to the number of idle shipping containers.

The Polish government has moved to make it tougher to import waste into the country. While APL wrote to its customers on April 19 to announce a “temporary ban of plastic scrap shipments” from the US and Canada to Malaysia.

Ellin said that his body has warned the government that seeking export markets for waste could not be a long-term solution and that the UK’s recycling infrastructure needed investment.

“The restrictions now being implemented in Vietnam and Thailand is demonstrating to the UK that we have not yet seen the full implications of China’s restrictions. 

“Countries like Vietnam and Thailand simply do not have the port or processing infrastructure to support these huge increases in volumes arriving from across the globe.”

After Unearthed broke the story about China banning plastic waste imports, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said in December that Britain had to “stop offshoring our dirt”.

Asked to comment on this story, a Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ spokeswoman said the government’s long term vision was to recycle more waste in the UK and that Defra was “working with the waste industry, Environment Agency and local authorities to ensure exported waste is managed to safeguard the environment.”      

A spokesman for the waste firm Suez said that the China ban had created “backlogs” in Thailand and other countries around the world and that while the UK government is working on a solution to the plastic waste crisis, the Thai move added urgency to the issue.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

Heavily redacted reports recently released by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) revealed a catalogue of safety concerns at the Fife Ethylene Plant at Mossmorran and its neighbouring Braefoot Bay terminal.

As DeSmog UK reported back in April, after years of complaints and locals suffering the ill-effects of flaring from the Fife Ethylene Plant run by ExxonMobil and Shell at Cowdenbeath, residents celebrated the ‘final warnings’ given by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).

But the ruling raised deeper questions of regulatory failure and corporate power in a small community.

Corporate culture

Now the documents, released under a Freedom of Information request made by Green MSP Mark Ruskell, reveal ongoing concerns about the safety management system at the plant, and a series of incidents over the last three years including:

• A gas leak from a compressor which was allowed to continue for several years;
• Damage to fire proof coatings which were deemed ‘not safety critical’ and not repairs;
• Ongoing water leaks at Braefoot Bay which could be causing the pier to corrode.

Failed seals on two gas tanks, with the operators deciding to run on back-up seals and push back repairs for another two years.

The reports also reveals that the plant often relies on manual intervention by staff to deal with a major hazard incident, rather than having automatic trips or shutdowns in place, and that the HSE has major concerns about staffing levels, which have been reduced in recent years.

The plant and the neighbouring terminal are jointly operated by Shell and Exxonmobil, and have been in operation since 1985. An increase in flaring incidents in recent years has raised concerns in the local community that the aging plant is not being maintained properly.

Mark Ruskell MSP stated: “These reports reveal a corporate culture where health and safety compliance sits at a bare minimum and where actions demanded by the regulator are allowed to drift from year to year.

Regularly inspected

“It’s clear that the operators have, like the plant itself, failed to move with the times with an under-investment in corroding infrastructure, safety systems and specialist staff.”

“Mossmorran and Braefoot are major employers in Fife, the operators have a responsibility to stop the corner cutting and get the plants operating at a higher standard. I expect the joint investigation launched by SEPA and HSE last month to thoroughly consider these ongoing concerns, alongside community issues like flaring.”

A spokesperson for Shell told DeSmog UK: “Earlier this year, Shell identified an issue with a historical emissions reporting calculation, corrected the calculation and immediately disclosed updated data to SEPA to rectify the error. 

“We very much regret this situation.  Shell prioritises the safety of our staff, community and care for the environment. The inadvertent reporting error had no impact on actual levels of carbon dioxide emitted by the plant.”

As Rob Edwards at The Ferret reports: “The sites are regularly inspected by HSE as ‘major accident hazards’ because of risks that gases could leak, catch fire and explode. According to the HSE, ExxonMobil has identified 38 major accident hazards at Mossmorran and 14 at Braefoot Bay.”

Fear and stress

“HSE has released 17 files amounting to nearly 200 pages on its inspections of Mossmorran and Braefoot Bay in 2015, 2016 and 2017. They listed 23 ‘issues’ at Shell plants, one of which was said not to have been completed, and 10 issues at ExxonMobil facilities, four of which were described as ‘ongoing’.

“HSE has withheld files on the uncompleted problems, but has provided detailed information on some of those that have been resolved. HSE was particularly worried in July 2016 about Shell’s failure over ‘a number of years’ to repair flawed seals on a gas compressor that could have resulted in leaks.”

But while regulatory bodies seem to be engaged in endless prevarication, local residents are both angry and upset.

Local resident James Glen is unimpressed by how little communities are being told about the issues at the plant. He told DeSmog UK:

“Easy apologies from ExxonMobil bring no comfort to residents suffering the fear and stress created by yet another emergency flaring period when the operators are under a final warning and are still under investigation for two other emergencies in the last year.”

Terrible accident

“As usual, no one appears to know how long the flaring will last, and the operators and regulators are tightlipped about the causes and extent of the emergency.”

“After SEPA blamed a previous recent emergency flaring on negligence by ExxonMobil, we want to know the full extent of the current ‘equipment failure’, what exactly was leaked, how the spillage is being treated and what risks it has presented to emergency workers and local residents.”

“Seven appliances at such an emergency may be protocol, but as these emergencies are increasing, questions should also be asked about the cost, to both the public purse and the ability of the Fire Service to respond to concurrent local incidents.”

This ongoing crisis points to a lack of transparency, accountability and regulatory control. As one resident told DeSmog UK:

“There’s a growing fear that nothing will happen until there’s a terrible accident.”

Community trust

Reacting to a community notice acknowledging the fine, seen by DeSmog UK, a spokesperson for the Mossmoran Action Group said the fine “illustrates the pitfalls of relying on self-reporting by Shell and ExxonMobil to monitor and regulate pollution from Mossmorran.”

They added that the letter being sent to residents now “begs the question why communities weren’t told about this omission when Shell discovered it last year.

“As ever, Shell’s PR machine is seeking to control the narrative, since the fact of a £40,000 fine means the story can no longer be kept from public view”.

“How many other things have the operators failed to report? After all, the plant is aging and becoming ever more prone to breakdown, so that emergency flaring is now a regular occurrence.”

“Community trust in what Shell and ExonnMobil say is zero.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

What’s the single most important aspect of the natural world in Britain? The inspiring beauty it offers us? The way it can prompt creativity? The fact that it is often a haven of peace in an increasingly fractious world?

Nope. None of those. The key thing is, we’ve destroyed more than half of it in the last 50 years.

The second most important thing to get your head around, when considering Nature in our country, is the weird and startling fact that although the mass wildlife destruction of recent decades has left much of the land sterile and lifeless, this is neither perceived nor comprehended by the public at large. People instinctively think the countryside is still Blake’s green and pleasant land. But it isn’t.

Impoverished landscape

“In the 20th century the British drained their landscape of wildlife, otherness, meaning, cultural riches and hope,” writes Mark Cocker in Our Place, his impassioned account of this extraor­dinary historical event.

“Yet because it is central to our purposes and our relationships with each other, we continue in denial, and what we have done to the country becomes the truth that dare not speak its name.”

It’s bizarre: in what seems like a display of obtuseness on a nationwide scale, it is still not generally realised or admitted that across huge swathes of the land, the biodiversity that at the end of the second world war was giving animation and vibrant life to the countryside as it had always done has simply vanished.

By the government’s own admission, farmland birds have declined by 56% just since 1970; and the wild flowers have gone, and the butterflies have disappeared in their turn.

Farewell to the spotted flycatcher, adios to the corncockle, goodbye to the high brown fritillary: what remains may be green, at least in spring, but that is mainly the pesticide-saturated crops; in wildlife terms, the landscape is now grossly impoverished, beyond any other one in Europe.

The great divide

In his important new book, Cocker, one of our leading Nature writers, tackles head-on this remarkable twin phenomenon of destruction and ignorance, and he does so on an ambitious scale, seeking to explain and understand it by looking back in detail over a century of growing conservation efforts by individuals, charities, quangos and governments.

How have they failed? In particular he is preoccupied with a paradox: how can our Nature have been so devastated, when there are more people who are members of green organisations in Britain than anywhere else? How can it have happened at the very moment in history that saw the rise of a new popular philosophy, environmentalism?

The simple answer is that this moment in history also saw the rise of intensive farming, a juggernaut beyond the power of green groups to control – and indeed beyond the power of individual governments once the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union was fixed in place.

It is modern industrial agriculture, above all by its immense reliance on poisons to boost crop yields, that has wiped out the wildlife of our countryside on a scarcely believable scale.

But there are other, more complex reasons why our biodiversity has proved hard to defend, and on these Cocker is enlightening.

By digging deep into administrative history – it makes for a dense read – he identifies convincingly what he calls “the great divide”, which was the bureaucratic separation of landscape protection (in the national parks) from wildlife conservation (in the national nature reserves), diffusing focus and purpose and weakening both.

Furthermore, the government’s wildlife watchdog, the Nature Conservancy (later the Nature Conservancy Council), which told truth to power for 40 years after its foundation, was put to the sword by Conservative environment secretary Nicholas Ridley in 1989: he split it into three national agencies, which were never as formidable as the unified body had been.

Sense of loss

There are yet more reasons, Cocker suggests, why the defenders of Nature have not made their case more widely heard.

One is a failure of language, firstly in the complexity of the environmental nomenclature with which we have saddled ourselves: how many people know the difference between an SSSI, an AONB, an SPA and an SAC? 

Many would agree with him on this, but perhaps not on his further suggestion that the Latin scientific names of species should all be anglicised – for Latin is an international lingua franca, and your Brazilian botanist would give this idea short shrift.

And there are subtler causes still, on which Cocker is eloquent, such as the challenge of communicating what Nature means to us: just why we feel it is special and worth saving.

It has to be said, however, that his extensive excursion into bureaucratic history might begin to seem a tad long were he not such a superb writer – he seems incap­able of composing an inelegant sentence.

But there is another side to Our Place: Cocker also explores the successes and failures of conservation in an intermingled personal narrative, a journey through six landscapes that have fascinated him, from Upper Teesdale with its ice-age relict flora, to the Flow Country peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland.

And in his personal responses to Nature lies the best of this fine and timely book, above all in the terrible sense of loss occasioned by the steady disappearance of the wild flora and fauna he and so many of us loved as children.

 “For statistics and columns of figures do not begin to express the effects of the changes at a personal and interior level,” Cocker writes.

“For some people, agricultural intensification has triggered an emotionally charged, even visceral response, at the root of which is a baffling confrontation with local extinction and loss of meaning.

“The event is powerful enough to alter an individual’s personality and their entire view of life. It amounts to a persistent low-level heartache, a background melancholia, for which there is little remedy short of emigration…”

The green and pleasant land, alas, no longer.

This Author

Michael McCarthy was formerly environment editor of the Independent, and is the author of The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy.  His book, Our Place: Can We Save Britain’s Wildlife Before It Is Too Late? is available online. He tweets at @mjpmccarthy.

This article was first published in the current issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, which is available now. 

Insects are at the heart of our ecosystems. They make up about two thirds of all life on earth, and their decline is being described as catastrophic. The BBC’s Chris Packham recently called this ‘an ecological armageddon’.

This decline is not confined to the insect world; farmland birds have seen considerable fall in numbers since the 1970s, and the number of hedgehogs living in the British countryside has plummeted by more than half since 2000.

Many factors are at play in the decline of insects; habitat destruction, climate change and pesticide usage are clear drivers, and now evidence suggests that even light pollution is a factor.

Insects are critical to life on earth, but it is pollinators that perhaps have the most obvious contribution to human society. Pollinators are estimated to contribute around £650m a year to the UK economy and we would struggle to feed ourselves without them.

Animal pollination (mostly insects) directly affects yield and quality of approximately 75 percent of globally important crops – and without pollinators we wouldn’t see many wildflowers.

Despite providing such obvious services, pollinators are facing hard times; 35 UK bee species face extinction, while two-thirds of UK moths and 75 percent of butterflies are in decline.

Neonicotinoids

The impact of pesticides on pollinators is now undeniable and the world’s most commonly used insecticides neonicotinoids have been at the centre of a debate across Europe for many years.

In light of the evidence, the European Council recently voted for a full ban on the use of the systemic pesticide on all outdoor crops which has subsequently been reinforced by the UK Government in the 25 Year Environment Plan.

Most worryingly for pollinators, this evidence showed concentrations of the chemicals have been greater in the very places that are intended as wildlife havens, such as hedgerows and field margins.

There has been a partial ban on neonicotinoids since 2013, with some positive results. Oil seed rape, a crop that is widely considered reliant on the use of the chemical, has in fact seen some increases in yields since the partial ban came into effect.

Wider studies back up this evidence, showing that neonicotinoids can reduce yields for a number of reasons, including killing predatory beetles which allows slugs to eat crops, increased usage creating pest resistance to chemicals and the reduced pollination services as the insecticides impact wild pollinator numbers.

Banning neonicotinoids is a positive step, but it will not solve the wider problem if they are simply replaced with another pesticide. What is required is a transition to ecologically sensitive ways of farming that support insects and ecosystems to thrive, such as organic farming.

A National Strategy

Making this shift is complex, which is why we work to influence policy change on a range of issues including support for agroecological farming systems and pesticide regulation.

As part of the Pollinator Advisory Steering Group (PASG) the Soil Association has been calling for pesticides to be recognised as a driver in the decline of pollinators. Until now, Defra’s National Pollinator Strategy has failed to make this link, separating the two issues as if they are unconnected.

But the tide is turning and we are encouraged that Defra’s Expert Committee on Pesticides will be ‘updating their evidence base to include pesticides as a driver of pollinator status and trends’, a move that we applaud but consider long overdue.

Bees Needs

Influencing policy change is only one part of the puzzle to protect pollinators. Farmers across the UK can be part of the solution to support a shift to alternative systems of farming, to find environmentally-sensitive ways of producing food while reversing the recent terrifying collapse in insect populations.

Organic farming offers opportunities boost pollinators, supporting 50 percent more abundant wildlife, a third more species including almost 50 percent more pollinator species and 75 percent more plant species.

The impact of public campaigns against the use of neonicotinoids demonstrates how we all have a part to play. A recent UK poll revealed that an overwhelming majority of the public want tough EU controls on pesticides to continue after Brexit; the public have a crucial role to play in pushing the role of pollinators up the agenda.

This author 

Sam Packer is the Soil Association’s policy officer for farming and land use. You can find him tweeting at @samtpacker.

The environmental impact of coffee is becoming a major concern – from the impact of single-use cups, to the splash of milk that is linked to the emissions of the entire dairy industry.

In Costa Rica, it is the emissions and the energy used to make the coffee itself that are of most concern – but there is a solution at hand thanks to the pioneering Nama Café project.

The programme is the world’s first Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (Nama) project in agriculture, working with 3,000 producers across the country and with a total investment of €8 million from several international partners.

Warmer temperatures

The concept was developed at the 2007 United Nation’s climate change conference in Bali, as a blueprint for sustainable growth in developing countries. It’s also part of Costa Rica’s overall aim to become the first country in the world to become carbon neutral by 2021.

At a training workshop in the Coto Brus province in southern Costa Rica, there are around 12 representatives from a range of coffee mills across the region, including a large co-operative, an organic specialist and a micro coffee mill run by women.

“We want to produce more coffee in a more sustainable way, and defend a Costa Rican tradition,” says Gisele Solis, from the Women’s Association of Biolley (Asomobi), a coffee co-operative and social enterprise close to the Panamanian border.

“It is important for our growers that we work with them to change, and I think it’s possible for them to adopt different practices and produce coffee in a more sustainable way.”

For many growers, Nama Café was a chance to tackle something they had already been experiencing. The area of planted coffee in Costa Rica has reduced from around 110,000 ha to 84,000 ha over 20 years, according to figures from the National Institute of Coffee, as warmer temperatures force production into higher altitudes where there is less available land.

Greenhouse gases

Stephanie Novoa, technical manager at another co-operative, Coopesabalito, says growers are witnessing climate change on their own farms.

She said: “They can see it in the kind of diseases they are getting in their coffee plantations, and also in the rainy season, which is no longer predictable. These kinds of things really affect the production of coffee.

“The coffee growers in Costa Rica aren’t going to reduce climate change, but they can set an example, and they feel like they are trying to solve the problem that is affecting them so much.”

As part of the Nama project, producers learn to measure their environmental impact through two ways: water use and disposal, and carbon footprint.

On farms, growers are encouraged to plant trees to absorb more carbon dioxide, and optimise fertiliser use, while at the processing and roasting stage, most emissions come from waste coffee shells, or pulp, which release greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide and methane.

Measuring and reducing

Coffee mills are encouraged to invest in a specialist technology to capture these gases and create a green composting process.

Another area of focus is the viscous waste water left over from processes such as removing the shell and washing the beans, which have a sticky coating.

“The most common way of disposing of waste water is in big lagoons, and they use a lot of water,” says environmental engineer Alexia Quivros, explaining that instead they could use a plant called Pasto Estrella that can absorb the waste water.

Exactly what changes they make depends on the size of the business. Co-operative Coopesabalito, which buys coffee from over 1,000 growers, was able to invest $24,000 in new machinery to reduce its water use by 80 per cent, as well as updating roasters to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and planting over 1,800 trees.

Other smaller businesses don’t have the means to invest, and so the emphasis of Nama Café is on understanding, measuring and reducing environmental impact, and there are no compulsory certification costs.

Low-carbon technology

But even for larger businesses there is little incentive to invest in often expensive new green technologies without the possibility of charging a premium for the final product.

Costa Rican coffee already receives higher prices than the global average due to its high quality, but Quivros says producers need a further surplus if low-carbon coffee is to become financially viable.

The problem is the lack of consumer awareness around what it actually means. “We did a survey last year and found that in Germany only two per cent of consumers are interested in low-carbon coffee,” she explains. “They don’t know what the difference is, and a higher price puts them off.”

Part of the Nama Café programme has looked at different ways of marketing low-carbon coffee, with a new logo in the pipeline that could help flag it up on shelf. There is also a credit service that has been established alongside the project to help smaller producers invest in green technologies, but it’s clear that price remains a major barrier.

“It’s expensive to change actions and invest in low-carbon technology,” says Quivros. “Producers only get $20 more per sack for low-carbon coffee, and that is not enough. Maybe $50 extra would do it.”

Major achievement

For some, the biggest success of the Nama Café project has been the organisation of an entire industry geared towards one goal.

“The project has caused a type of awakening in our ministry,” says Gabriel Umana, head of coffee at Costa Rica’s ministry of agriculture. “The concept behind Nama has made us think about subjects that we were not used to thinking about, like for example climate change, and how to adapt to it.”

As it draws to a close in 2019, there are possibilities of expanding the impact of Nama Café to other agriculture sectors.

A small-scale project is looking at turning waste pulp from the coffee process into cattle feed, and there are also rumours of a similar ‘Nama Banana’ programme.

“In the short-term, the major achievement has been to generate a conversation around low-carbon coffee. And it has also helped producers think more long-term in their goals,” says Umana. “The hope is that we can share information and help make the country a more sustainable place.”

This Author

Nina Pullman is a freelance journalist specialising in food, supply chains and sustainability. She has travelled extensively and has just returned from South and Central America.

When I first came to Ta Phin Village, three years ago, I had to dismount my moped at the base of a muddy slope. It was about a mile away from my destination. However, by the look on the faces of a small crowd of local people there was no other way to get through.

So, somewhat reluctantly, I parked my bike along with another half a dozen others and squelched onwards. I have regularly visited this region since, but upon my most recent visit things are beginning to noticeably change – a bigger road is coming.

Ta Phin is situated in the mountains of Northwestern Vietnam, bordering China. The village is near the former French hill station town known as Sa Pa. These verdant hills and valleys consist of iconic rice terraces, some of the world’s most stunning scenery, and are inhabited by a colourful collection of Vietnam’s myriad ethnic minorities. 

Diaspora tales

A total of 87 percent of the Vietnamese people are known as Kinh (Viet), however, there are fifty-four separate ethnic groups living within these borders.

This complex assemblage of communities in Vietnam has an equally diverse historical background: some groups are thought to have arrived over 2,000 years ago, whilst others more recently, from over the last five hundred years or so.

Those in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and the Mekong Delta region have migrated from the west, whilst those farther north have migrated southwards from China.

Each ethnic group has its own diaspora tales; whatever their story — these communities have found home and settled in Vietnam.

Embroideries translated

Ta Phin village is predominately Red Dao (pronounced zow). The settlement itself is a mere crossroads of two muddied tracks.

Ethnically garbed women sit in clusters embroidering their wares. The Red Dao women are easily identified by their distinctive bright red and white headscarves, their indigo dyed hemp jackets and trousers — at times fronted by complex silver jewellery — all elaborately embroidered with distinct colours and motifs.

I was privileged to have some of the stories of their embroideries translated for me and was surprised to hear that many of the intricate patterns depicted their diaspora.

Journeys over mountains, changes in trees from fruits to pines and curiously bright yellow and gold swastikas. “What are these?” I enquire. “Ah, they are the tiger’s footprints in the snow.” 

Land labourers

One particular family I have stayed with over time have allowed me great insight into their ancient way of life. Their homestead on the outskirts, down by the river, is where my lovely friend Tan Ta May and her husband Sieu live.

May is a Red Dao medicine woman: the Dao are renowned for their wisdom in regard to plant medicine.

Here the extended family run a small business for herbal bathing. Wooden tubs are filled with an extremely hot brew concocted from local plants and trees.

One immerses into the sweltering hot tub and slowly sinks into the medicinal infusion. It’s a heady and steamy experience.

As hot as one can bear, yet with windows open to views of rice terraces, lush hillsides and water buffaloes — all accompanied by the babble of the adjacent stream; it’s a simple paradise.

Whether to alleviate the aching limbs of hard worked land labourers, to detoxicate or simply to relax – this ‘therapy’ is at least locally a well-known cure-all; and May and Sieu have the reputation to run a good business. 

Commercial operations

However, traditionally the main ingredients for this treatment have been locally foraged – but visitors are coming from further afield, and the demand for the baths is increasing.

Larger commercial operations are also in the main town and surrounding areas. In addition, the concentrated liquid for these baths can now be bought by the bottle.

Other vital ingredients have been concentrated into essential oils and now soaps are also being made. It’s proving very popular amongst the Vietnamese and trade is increasing into the northern cities such as Hanoi and even as far south as Saigon.

All good for business – but nonetheless, the forest’s supply is finite. And here is the positivity I encountered.

Through an amalgamation of a recently formed Red Dao cooperative (2015), a Vietnamese NGO and funding from the Vietnamese government and some foreign investment — a little bit of cash is hopefully going to go a long way to protect at least one of the essential herbal ingredients being utilised by this group.

The plant is known locally as Chu Du (pronounced chew zoo) Elsholtzia penduliflora. A relatively tall plant of the mint family, with a delightful aroma and almost magical properties, indeed I personally call it ‘magic oil’.

I use the concentrated form on a daily basis. I live in one of the most polluted cities in the world, Hanoi. The oil can be rubbed on your chest, face and head and it immediately relives breathing, blocked sinuses and gives a sense of calm – a wonder it truly is.

Deftly scythed

So, on my most recent visit – the main question on my mind was — ‘how was money going to help protect an endangered plant?’

Upon arrival, May walks us up and down some serious hills and deep into the forest. Here we arrive at extremely isolated small holdings, only women and children at home, the men are out ploughing the terraces for the next season of rice.

Surrounding these large, dark and smoky old wooden houses are farms that simply blend into the surrounding forest. From the chickens in the wood pile to the pigs in their sties, all seemingly merge quite naturally.

As we step into the forest I saw pots of orchids under the canopy, one essential source of income for these mountain dwellers. And then through marshy areas and onto the forest edge and I am introduced to patches of Chu Du.

I witnessed the careful harvesting of this wild plant. Deftly scythed to ensure regrowth and a quick demonstration of how easily it is to propagate by simply taking a stem and sticking it back in the mud. 

‘How then is cash going to prevent overharvesting?’ It is simply a matter of land and time management amongst the entirely female cooperative.

With some money and an emphasis on the importance of these forest plants, the Dao women are able to prioritize attention to their foraging activities.

It gives value to the wooded area where the Chu Du grows and may prevent forest clearance for future arable growth or livestock grazing. The investment will also allow for simple fencing to protect against the free-range buffaloes.

Last year May’s own operation required 14 tons of Chu Du, 700kg of the plant is needed to make 1 litre of essential oil. She is not alone, many people in this region are commercialising their plant medicine enterprises, I am so grateful to have witnessed the sensible sustainable management of these wild herbs. 

This Author

Grant J Riley is a writer, photographer and freelance ecologist from the south-west of England.  He is the author of A Journal from the End of Times and Marginal. To find out more, visit www.lulu.com.