A growing number of highly-paid jobs are being advertised related to climate change and sustainability, a new study suggests.

Jobs such as a chief scientific officer and climate change representative are offering six figure salaries, said jobs site Glassdoor.

Satisfaction

A director of sustainability post was advertised with a salary of £85,000, while a corporate social responsibility manager position was on offer at £44,000.

John Lamphiere of Glassdoor said: “People these days are not just looking for a job, they are looking to align themselves with an organisation and a role that shares their values and beliefs.

“Whether directly or indirectly, these jobs for the climate conscious offer professional opportunities that are both meaningful and offer real job satisfaction.”

This Author

Alan Jones is the PA industrial correspondent.

The Conservative party must commit to keeping the fox hunting ban after the general election, the The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) has said.

The leading animal welfare charity was responding to reports that the party will not include a repeal of the Hunting Act in its manifesto, a direct contrast to its stance in both the 2015 and 2017 general elections.

LACS is also urging all political parties to commit to strengthening the Hunting Act by removing loopholes and exemptions that allow hunting with dogs to still take place.

Animal welfare

Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns for LACS, said: “Just keeping quiet about the fox hunting ban is not enough. It will only leave lingering suspicions that there could be future attempts by the party to repeal the fox hunting ban.”

Luffingham continued: “If the Conservatives fully reflect public opinion on animal welfare, they should also be looking to strengthen protections, and we are asking all parties to stand united against hunting and commit to strengthening the Hunting Act.”

The League recently commissioned polling by YouGov which revealed the majority of the British public want prison sentences for those caught illegally hunting foxes.

Kinder Britain

Polling commissioned by the League Against Cruel Sports and carried out independently by Ipsos MORI in 2017 showed 85 percent of the British public are in favour of keeping the ban on fox hunting – this included 81 per cent of people in rural areas.

The same polling indicated that 73 per cent of Conservative Party supporters backed the fox hunting ban.

Luffingham added: “Support for a free vote on fox hunting was political poison for Theresa May two years ago costing the Tories valuable seats. Boris Johnson has the opportunity to show that he represents a kinder, more compassionate Britain committed to animal welfare.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports.

A gathering of 40 Indigenous activists and video practitioners assembled in South Africa last month to discuss the global human and environmental crises and how we might solve them.

Activists came from all corners of Africa to meet and learn from other Indigenous peoples who are facing the same challenges across the continent. They took new skills home to their communities – in particular ways to use video to defend their territories,  preserve and protect their cultures and amplify their voices. 

Despite coming from different countries and communities, the Indigenous activists echoed concerns for their endangered cultures and threatened land. 

Living cultures

These worries united the Indigenous activists in attendance. Samwel Nangiria, a Maasai activist and InsightShare-trained video practitioner, said: “All over the world I have seen people crying, “culture is being eroded, culture is dying, traditional systems are dying” and therefore the bond between the land and the people is destroyed.” 

These echoes of shared thought came together to form a single voice shouting out for a united effort. This desire for unity and global community was enshrined in the formulation of a Pan-African Living Cultures Alliance (PALCA).

Francis Shomet, a Maasai activist from Tanzania, captured the importance of this moment: “For me, we have no choice, for me this is the most opportune time … PALCA is really timely and it is the only strategy I see right now.”

PALCA is an alliance of InsightShare’s African partners – among them Baka, Gabbra, Maasai, El Molo, Gamo, Pondoland and San communities – who want to harness the power of participatory video to defend their cultures and lands.

Through participatory video, Indigenous communities can create locally-led media that expresses their unique cosmovisions freely and without manipulation or ventriloquism. Ivan Vaalbooi, a member of the /’Aoni N//ng, San community of Southern Kalahari, offered this account: “Participatory video has been a mind-opening discovery, simple in method, yet very powerful. It definitely has a role to play in cultural revival and to help strengthen communities in restoring their identity.”

Empowering communities 

Participatory video empowers communities by giving them confidence in their cultural systems and traditional ecological knowledge, and by enabling them to communicate with similar groups.

Global connectivity for Indigenous peoples was much spoken about at the gathering and much celebrated. Magella Hassan, from the El Molo in northern Kenya, pronounced, “Now we are coming together as one community, as one people, as one nation, as one Africa, as one world.”

But it is not just other Indigenous communities the members of PALCA want to reach. There is a desire to work with governments, organisations and movements in the global north too.

There are some struggles in which we are all united and some systems under which we are all oppressed – here we have common cause. One cause that resonated with those at the gathering was the global plight of youth. Magella, a youth activist, said, “The youth are being affected all over the world, not just in my community.”

Concern about the future we leave for young people was tangible. Amos Leuka, a Maasai activist from Kenya, captured this anxiety in a Maasai proverb: the pride and shame of a community lies with the youth.

Leuka explained that without young people having influence “pride will lack meaning, because participation is paramount” – we encounter shame when we do not allow our youth to take positions of leadership and responsibility.

Participatory governance

Samwel confirmed this point: “Youth all over the world are devalued … [they] are worried about their future, because they don’t participate in constructing, in imagining their future … This is why you see youth in Europe and America taking to the streets as rebels. In the context of Africa, Indigenous youth are even further from being able to engage in decision making.”

This leads us to question the role each of us plays in creating true participatory governance. This is not just a matter of achieving influence for ourselves, making sure our own voices are heard; it is also a matter of ensuring that other people’s voices are heard.

This is an increasingly important consideration for movements in the global north, like Extinction Rebellion. What can be learned and applied to strengthen diverse communities, culture and unity within XR?

One way to start is through exchanging video messages. But the next step may be to train local facilitators in participatory video to create a bridge between communities in the UK, to radically improve inclusivity in the movement.

A movement that seeks to address the climate emergency by dismantling the structures that caused it in the first place must make greater efforts to learn from the people who have been marginalised by those systems, and bring them to the forefront of change. Those people include Indigenous peoples, communities of the global south, and the ethnic and economic minorities within our own borders.

Indigenous knowledge

As the gathering came to a close Befetary Demisse, a Gamo Elder from southern Ethiopia issued a stark warning: “Without Indigenous peoples, the world as we know it is gone. Biodiversity and ecological ways of living continue through Indigenous peoples’ cultures.

“Nowadays everyone talks about climate change, even the politicians, the big people, they talk about the end of the world. But politics won’t solve things! The universities, the intellectuals, they must engage with Indigenous knowledge. Our videos must wake people up, knock on all doors!”

I end with words from Francis Shomet and a call to support Indigenous communities and their solutions: “I am calling the whole planet to actually try and understand Indigenous knowledge systems… and how they can inspire us to invent new knowledge, new ways, new mindsets in order to save the planet.”

Watch the videos here. 

This Author

Nick Lunch is co-founder and director of InsightShare

New statistics by climate charity Possible show that just two percent of televised leaders election debate time over the last four years was spent discussing climate change.

Out of a total of eight debates since 2015, three quarters of them didn’t have climate change discussed for more than one minute. 

These findings come as the Prime Minister refuses to take part in a leaders debate on the climate and nature crises, that all major opposition parties have agreed to. The call for the debate has come from over 75 organisations, with a total membership of over 10 million, including the Women’s Institute, National Trust and the National Education Union, and over 150,000 people have signed the petition supporting the campaign. 

‘Kick in the teeth’

Jake Woodier, campaigner at UK Student Climate Network, said: “The climate and nature emergencies were discussed for less just sixty seconds in last night’s election debate between Corbyn and Johnson, despite being the greatest challenges of our time.

“How can our leaders claim to be serious about tackling these crises if they aren’t giving them the attention that’s crucially needed? So far only Boris Johnson has refused to commit to taking part in a dedicated debate on climate and nature.

“If he truly believes in his plans to tackle the climate and nature emergencies, the Prime Minister should lay them out to the electorate, like all other party leaders have committed to doing, in dedicated televised debate.”

“These new stats are a kick in the teeth for young people. While the world was on fire, our politicians didn’t even bother talking about solutions to climate change. 

“With no guarantee that this will be corrected in the upcoming election, the case for a climate and nature debate is stronger than ever. The public wants it. Almost all party leaders have agreed. Boris Johnson has run out of excuses for why he won’t agree, and it’s looking like he doesn’t have confidence in his own plans by refusing to take part.”

Public concern

Led by climate charity Possible and the UK Student Climate Network, the call for a climate debate was launched following concern over climate change reaching its highest ever level – 85 percent of the public are concerned about climate change and over half say it will influence how they vote in the general election. 

The reason stated by Number 10 for refusing to take part in the debate was fear of ‘siloing’ the issue, despite polling by Ipsos Mori revealed that less than a quarter (23 percent) of adults have heard the Conservative party discuss climate change issues in the last twelve months.

Max Wakefield, director at Possible, said: “These numbers are shocking – and reveal a political class completely out of touch with the public’s climate concern.

“We clearly need a TV leaders climate debate – and it’s time for the Prime Minister to stop running scared of scrutiny. Climate change is the biggest threat we face and we need leaders to stand up and be counted.’

“Over the last four years, warnings from scientists on climate and nature breakdown have become increasingly urgent, yet the most high-profile election debates have hardly even paid lip service to it.  No wonder we’re now in climate emergency – you don’t fix the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced by ignoring it. Yet that’s just what the Prime Minister is currently doing by refusing to join other party leaders in a climate debate and finally give it the priority the public demands.”

This Author 

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

New statistics by climate charity Possible show that just two percent of televised leaders election debate time over the last four years was spent discussing climate change.

Out of a total of eight debates since 2015, three quarters of them didn’t have climate change discussed for more than one minute. 

These findings come as the Prime Minister refuses to take part in a leaders debate on the climate and nature crises, that all major opposition parties have agreed to. The call for the debate has come from over 75 organisations, with a total membership of over 10 million, including the Women’s Institute, National Trust and the National Education Union, and over 150,000 people have signed the petition supporting the campaign. 

‘Kick in the teeth’

Jake Woodier, campaigner at UK Student Climate Network, said: “The climate and nature emergencies were discussed for less just sixty seconds in last night’s election debate between Corbyn and Johnson, despite being the greatest challenges of our time.

“How can our leaders claim to be serious about tackling these crises if they aren’t giving them the attention that’s crucially needed? So far only Boris Johnson has refused to commit to taking part in a dedicated debate on climate and nature.

“If he truly believes in his plans to tackle the climate and nature emergencies, the Prime Minister should lay them out to the electorate, like all other party leaders have committed to doing, in dedicated televised debate.”

“These new stats are a kick in the teeth for young people. While the world was on fire, our politicians didn’t even bother talking about solutions to climate change. 

“With no guarantee that this will be corrected in the upcoming election, the case for a climate and nature debate is stronger than ever. The public wants it. Almost all party leaders have agreed. Boris Johnson has run out of excuses for why he won’t agree, and it’s looking like he doesn’t have confidence in his own plans by refusing to take part.”

Public concern

Led by climate charity Possible and the UK Student Climate Network, the call for a climate debate was launched following concern over climate change reaching its highest ever level – 85 percent of the public are concerned about climate change and over half say it will influence how they vote in the general election. 

The reason stated by Number 10 for refusing to take part in the debate was fear of ‘siloing’ the issue, despite polling by Ipsos Mori revealed that less than a quarter (23 percent) of adults have heard the Conservative party discuss climate change issues in the last twelve months.

Max Wakefield, director at Possible, said: “These numbers are shocking – and reveal a political class completely out of touch with the public’s climate concern.

“We clearly need a TV leaders climate debate – and it’s time for the Prime Minister to stop running scared of scrutiny. Climate change is the biggest threat we face and we need leaders to stand up and be counted.’

“Over the last four years, warnings from scientists on climate and nature breakdown have become increasingly urgent, yet the most high-profile election debates have hardly even paid lip service to it.  No wonder we’re now in climate emergency – you don’t fix the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced by ignoring it. Yet that’s just what the Prime Minister is currently doing by refusing to join other party leaders in a climate debate and finally give it the priority the public demands.”

This Author 

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

New statistics by climate charity Possible show that just two percent of televised leaders election debate time over the last four years was spent discussing climate change.

Out of a total of eight debates since 2015, three quarters of them didn’t have climate change discussed for more than one minute. 

These findings come as the Prime Minister refuses to take part in a leaders debate on the climate and nature crises, that all major opposition parties have agreed to. The call for the debate has come from over 75 organisations, with a total membership of over 10 million, including the Women’s Institute, National Trust and the National Education Union, and over 150,000 people have signed the petition supporting the campaign. 

‘Kick in the teeth’

Jake Woodier, campaigner at UK Student Climate Network, said: “The climate and nature emergencies were discussed for less just sixty seconds in last night’s election debate between Corbyn and Johnson, despite being the greatest challenges of our time.

“How can our leaders claim to be serious about tackling these crises if they aren’t giving them the attention that’s crucially needed? So far only Boris Johnson has refused to commit to taking part in a dedicated debate on climate and nature.

“If he truly believes in his plans to tackle the climate and nature emergencies, the Prime Minister should lay them out to the electorate, like all other party leaders have committed to doing, in dedicated televised debate.”

“These new stats are a kick in the teeth for young people. While the world was on fire, our politicians didn’t even bother talking about solutions to climate change. 

“With no guarantee that this will be corrected in the upcoming election, the case for a climate and nature debate is stronger than ever. The public wants it. Almost all party leaders have agreed. Boris Johnson has run out of excuses for why he won’t agree, and it’s looking like he doesn’t have confidence in his own plans by refusing to take part.”

Public concern

Led by climate charity Possible and the UK Student Climate Network, the call for a climate debate was launched following concern over climate change reaching its highest ever level – 85 percent of the public are concerned about climate change and over half say it will influence how they vote in the general election. 

The reason stated by Number 10 for refusing to take part in the debate was fear of ‘siloing’ the issue, despite polling by Ipsos Mori revealed that less than a quarter (23 percent) of adults have heard the Conservative party discuss climate change issues in the last twelve months.

Max Wakefield, director at Possible, said: “These numbers are shocking – and reveal a political class completely out of touch with the public’s climate concern.

“We clearly need a TV leaders climate debate – and it’s time for the Prime Minister to stop running scared of scrutiny. Climate change is the biggest threat we face and we need leaders to stand up and be counted.’

“Over the last four years, warnings from scientists on climate and nature breakdown have become increasingly urgent, yet the most high-profile election debates have hardly even paid lip service to it.  No wonder we’re now in climate emergency – you don’t fix the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced by ignoring it. Yet that’s just what the Prime Minister is currently doing by refusing to join other party leaders in a climate debate and finally give it the priority the public demands.”

This Author 

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

New statistics by climate charity Possible show that just two percent of televised leaders election debate time over the last four years was spent discussing climate change.

Out of a total of eight debates since 2015, three quarters of them didn’t have climate change discussed for more than one minute. 

These findings come as the Prime Minister refuses to take part in a leaders debate on the climate and nature crises, that all major opposition parties have agreed to. The call for the debate has come from over 75 organisations, with a total membership of over 10 million, including the Women’s Institute, National Trust and the National Education Union, and over 150,000 people have signed the petition supporting the campaign. 

‘Kick in the teeth’

Jake Woodier, campaigner at UK Student Climate Network, said: “The climate and nature emergencies were discussed for less just sixty seconds in last night’s election debate between Corbyn and Johnson, despite being the greatest challenges of our time.

“How can our leaders claim to be serious about tackling these crises if they aren’t giving them the attention that’s crucially needed? So far only Boris Johnson has refused to commit to taking part in a dedicated debate on climate and nature.

“If he truly believes in his plans to tackle the climate and nature emergencies, the Prime Minister should lay them out to the electorate, like all other party leaders have committed to doing, in dedicated televised debate.”

“These new stats are a kick in the teeth for young people. While the world was on fire, our politicians didn’t even bother talking about solutions to climate change. 

“With no guarantee that this will be corrected in the upcoming election, the case for a climate and nature debate is stronger than ever. The public wants it. Almost all party leaders have agreed. Boris Johnson has run out of excuses for why he won’t agree, and it’s looking like he doesn’t have confidence in his own plans by refusing to take part.”

Public concern

Led by climate charity Possible and the UK Student Climate Network, the call for a climate debate was launched following concern over climate change reaching its highest ever level – 85 percent of the public are concerned about climate change and over half say it will influence how they vote in the general election. 

The reason stated by Number 10 for refusing to take part in the debate was fear of ‘siloing’ the issue, despite polling by Ipsos Mori revealed that less than a quarter (23 percent) of adults have heard the Conservative party discuss climate change issues in the last twelve months.

Max Wakefield, director at Possible, said: “These numbers are shocking – and reveal a political class completely out of touch with the public’s climate concern.

“We clearly need a TV leaders climate debate – and it’s time for the Prime Minister to stop running scared of scrutiny. Climate change is the biggest threat we face and we need leaders to stand up and be counted.’

“Over the last four years, warnings from scientists on climate and nature breakdown have become increasingly urgent, yet the most high-profile election debates have hardly even paid lip service to it.  No wonder we’re now in climate emergency – you don’t fix the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced by ignoring it. Yet that’s just what the Prime Minister is currently doing by refusing to join other party leaders in a climate debate and finally give it the priority the public demands.”

This Author 

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

Labour has set out plans for companies that fail to tackle climate change to be delisted from the London Stock Exchange.

In a speech to business leaders in Westminster, shadow chancellor John McDonnell outlined proposals to move away from a shareholder economy towards a stakeholder model, as well as reforming corporate governance, accountability and regulation.

Delisting occurs when a stock is removed from a stock exchange and is usually prompted by a company failing to meet the requirements of the exchange.

Employee-ownership

Companies already have to meet rules set by the London Stock Exchange and Financial Conduct Authority and Labour is proposing amending the Corporate Governance Code to put in place a minimum standard to listing relating to “evidence of necessary action being taken to tackle climate change”.

Speaking to the PA news agency, Mr McDonnell said: “It will be for, basically, those companies themselves to bring forward their proposals and plans – exactly what sort of proposals they’ll be, how effective they’ll be.

“And then during the listing process, they’ll be assessed about how successful they are either performing or how successful their plans will be. On that basis, just as with the rest of the code that there is, they’ll then be assessed and determined if they can be listed.”

Mr McDonnell also outlined plans for 10 percent of company shares to be transferred to workers over a decade at a rate of one percent a year.

He added: “What we’re trying to promote is a stakeholder economy. Again, it is something we have been arguing for for over three decades now. So the idea is, we’ll introduce legislation where companies hand over one percent of their shares for 10 years into an employee-ownership scheme.

Democratic

“Again that fund will then retain those shares, have the dividends rewards and put them into that fund and the individual employees will draw upon those dividends, of course, but they’ll be collectively owned.

“There’ll be a limit of £500 of income that they can have. On average, it looks as though it will be about £180 a year they’ll get to. Above the £500, elements of that funding will then go towards, again, another fund that is about tackling climate change and funding green apprenticeships.”

During his speech, Mr McDonnell said Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders was considering a similar proposal but with 20 percent of shares.

He added: “We’ve arrived at 10 percent on the basis of consultation that we’ve had. In America, it’s a different debate going on overall. But it’s interesting that the idea which started with us is now spreading across the globe.

“And I think you’ll see there will be a demand, by particularly democratic and labour parties, to try and ensure we lay the foundations of a stakeholder economy in that way.

Giveaways

“I think it will be incredibly popular but effective, we know the greater levels of employee-ownership, the greater levels of productivity and longer-term decision making.

“We’ve been touring around, we’ve been looking at the German model, in terms of the national investment bank. We’ve been looking at some of the investments that have taken place in the States with regard to community wealth building for example.

“It’s quite eclectic, we’ve been trying to look at what works elsewhere to develop that into our own programmes and in that way I think we’ll get the best of all worlds.”

Labour has also published research on Tuesday which, it said, showed 48 of the 151 billionaires listed in the latest Sunday Times Rich List had donated more than £50 million to the Tories since 2005.

The opposition party has calculated that by 2023/24, the Conservatives will have handed out “tax breaks and corporate giveaways” worth almost £100 billion since coming to power in 2010.

Billionaires

Labour said they included £86 billion in corporation tax cuts, £5.6 billion in reductions to inheritance tax and £5.5 billion in cuts to capital gains tax.

Mr McDonnell accused the Tories of siding with “the billionaires, the bankers and big business”.

He said: “No-one needs or deserves to have that much money, it is obscene. It is also obscene that these billionaires are buying access and tax breaks to Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party.

“We know whose side Boris Johnson is on – the billionaires, the bankers and big business.

Families

“Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party are on the side of the people, offering real change for our country, putting wealth and power in the hands of the many, not the few.”

The Conservatives said the “top one percent” were paying a greater share of taxes than at any time under the last Labour government while tax receipts from business were at an all-time high.

Treasury minister Simon Clarke said: “Corbyn’s Labour have revealed their true colours. They want to stop people from passing on their family homes to their children after they die.

“Rather than helping people to succeed, they want to take away your family home in higher taxes. Their plans would not hit billionaires – they would overwhelmingly hurt hard-pressed families.”

These Authors

George Ryan and Gavin Cordon are PA political staff.

Students at the University of Manchester are protesting the institution’s investments in the fossil fuel industry by occupying the finance offices on campus. 

The students are calling for the University to remove all of its investments from fossil fuel extraction and equipment companies. This amounts to  £11,975,986 in companies such as Shell, Glencore, and Rio Tinto.

The Fossil Free campaign at the University of Manchester has been running for eight years with little to no response from university management, despite a student and staff petition with over 1000 signatures and constant lobbying outside Governors meetings. 

Symbolic action

Earlier this semester the students released an open letter to the university, asking for a dialogue to be started about divestment. The students warned that if they received no reply from the university they would be taking action against them. 

Following a lack of response from university management, 18 students entered the John Owens building at 9am yesterday morning, occupying the entrance hall and finance boardroom.

The students say this location is symbolic: “We’re bringing this to their doorstep so that they can’t ignore us anymore. We’ve tried hard to engage with the University Officers and the Board of Governors but they refuse to open a dialogue with us. If we’re sitting inside their offices they don’t have that option.” 

The group previously staged an occupation in June, where eight students occupied the entrance to Vice-Chancellor Nancy Rothwell’s office. This occupation only lasted twenty-four hours as a result of the University’s management denying access to food, water, and toilets.

Divestment

The group say they are more prepared this time, with double the number of participants and huge support from a range of organisations across the Greater Manchester area. Amongst these supporters include the Manchester branch of the University and College Union (UMUCU) and the Manchester Green Party. 

Lucy Bannister, Green Party PPC for Manchester Withington and University of Manchester alumnus, has spoken out on behalf of the students. “I am heartened to see the energy on this campaign, which started whilst I was a student, continue at the University of Manchester.

“But I am disappointed that the University has made little to no progress and has failed to act on this urgent issue and recognise its responsibility as an anchor UK institution.”

The group intends to occupy until the University of Manchester commits to full divestment from fossil fuel companies. The University of Manchester has issued a statement. 

This Article 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from People and Planet Manchester. 

The wild and domesticated plants, animals and fish that form the foundation of our food systems are under severe threat, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned earlier this year.

The FAO’s State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture report reveals that plant diversity in farmers’ fields is plummeting particularly rapidly.

Just nine plant species of roughly 6,000 cultivated for food globally account for 66 percent of total crop production. This means that we are far too reliant on a very small number of crops, and any threat to them through disease or extreme weather conditions means a threat to our food security.

Corporate control

Much of this decline is down to the influence of the industrial food industry, which seeks corporate control of food through seed patenting, and uniformity of production through chemical and fossil fuel intensive monocultures.

This week marks Seed Week 2019 in the UK and Ireland- an opportunity to celebrate the farmers, gardeners and others who are protecting and growing back the diversity of seed that is our heritage and our future.

Their work provides us with a crucial reminder that diversity and local adaptation bring us nutritious, healthy food and give farming and food systems resilience to the shocks – from floods, to drought to new pests- that climate change is bringing with it.

Over the past three years, a new UK and Ireland Seed Sovereignty Programme has been helping kick start the process of growing back the diversity of locally adapted seeds and crops here in these islands.

The programme’s unofficial slogan is “a food revolution starts with seed”, and its focus on seed sovereignty involves growers, gardeners and citizens reclaiming our common seed heritage, and therefore our food system, from corporate control. 

Revival

“Only three corporations sell 75 percent of the worlds seed – if we all start sowing open source, organic seed, we can grow a democratic food system,” says programme participant, David Price of the Seed Cooperative.

Coordinated by UK-based NGO The Gaia Foundation, the programme has brought together a network of small-scale growers, seed specialists, organisations like the Irish Seed Savers and movements like the Land Workers Alliance.

These partners are now working together in regional networks to both increase the availability of open-pollinated, locally adapted seeds, and to revive the knowledge and skills required to effectively grow, process and save the seeds that lie at the heart of our food system’s diversity.

Regional trainings for commercial growers have been taking place to build back seed skills, in which participants have learnt everything from how to effectively plant, nurture and harvest a seed crop, to how to make a seed cleaning machine out of scrap wood and a vacuum cleaner

There is much still to be done, but Programme Manager Sinéad Fortune says she is seeing signs of a meaningful revival underway after three years of work.

Black oat

“We have lost so much in such a short amount of time. The seeds that once had personal significance to families and communities around the UK and Ireland are all but lost.

But right now there are still traces of these seeds and their importance which can be followed. Traces like this exist in every part of the UK and Ireland; we aim to seek them out, to find those who have living memory of these heritage varieties that could provide an answer in terms of resilience and food nutrition”, says Sinéad.

“For example, Gerald Miles of Caerhys Organic Community Agriculture and Llafyr Ni (Our Cereals), a group formed with Wales Regional Coordinator Katie Hastings and other growers, talks of black oats.

Gerald spent 25 years searching for the black oats that his grandfather once grew on the land, to no avail. But a rugby trip to Northern Ireland put him in touch with a farmer who was still growing them, and now the heritage oat grows once again on Gerald’s land.

Better for the soil, more resilient to the weather, and more nutritious, the black oat was a great loss to the biodiversity in Wales that has now been reinstated.”

Seed Week – celebrating seed custodians

Seed Week 2019 provides an opportunity to celebrate the work and achievements of the people driving this seed revival so far, and the knowledge and expertise of those who have been stewarding the diversity of our food system for years.

One of the week’s key aims is to encourage gardeners and growers looking ahead to next year’s planting to consider buying seed from seed sellers who are already producing a diversity of open-pollinated, organic seed adapted to different climes around the UK and Ireland, such as:

• Vital Seeds, Devon.
• Real Seeds, Wales.
• Irish Seed Savers, County Clare.
• Brown Envelope Seeds, West Cork.
• Seed Cooperative, Lincolnshire.

A series of short films produced by the Seed Sovereignty programme introduces these seed producers for those who wish to learn more and introduces some useful information about, for example, the difference between hybrid and open-pollinated seeds.

“We are lucky to work with a handful of dedicated, passionate seed growers who are fighting to keep open-pollinated seeds in production and to spread their knowledge and skills so that more growers will join in.” says Sinéad.

“Supporting these growers is vital so that they can continue to grow themselves, and so that they can encourage other growers that producing seed is viable. Every seed packet you buy from a local, open-pollinated independent producer is a vote for a more equal, resilient, and diverse food system.”

Diversity

Now in its third iteration, Seed Week is also an opportunity for commercial growers to find out more about the programme, connect with their regional coordinator and learn how to incorporate seed production into their business.

Liv and Henry of Down Farm in Devon started down the path of seed production for personal and commercial use after attending trainings put on by the programme’s West England network. As a result, they’ve found there is both a business and ecological case for growing back seed diversity.

‘‘Seed production is important to us at Down Farm as it helps make us more resilient in an unstable environment and provides us with another income stream whilst learning a skill that is in danger of being lost amongst western people. Without seeds we can’t grow any food!”

As more growers like Liv and Henry begin building their knowledge, regional seed networks, and the variety and quantity of open-pollinated organic seed, the potential for a new, more diverse seed system in the UK and Ireland grows stronger.

“We can create a thriving agriculture in this country – one which stewards our countryside brilliantly, which puts a high value on biodiversity, has at its core the production of healthy food for local communities, and has the potential to bring thousands of people into meaningful, healthy work.

“This can and should all start with the seed, which has been lost to the large companies, and now needs taking back”, says Dan Burston, a market gardener with Chagfood in Devon.

This Author

Hannibal Rhoades is head of communications at The Gaia Foundation. 

If you are a grower and want to help realise this vision for seed sovereignty, healthy food systems and local economies in the UK and Ireland, connect with the programme’s regional coordinator in your area via this interactive map.

For more information about the UK and Ireland Seed Sovereignty Programme, visit the website. Read regional blogs from the programme’s coordinators throughout Seed Week here. Keep up with #SeedWeek on social media, follow: @GaiaFoundation, @IrelandSeedSov & @IrishSeedSavers, @EEnglandSeedSov, @WEnglandSeedSov, @ScotSeedSov, @WalesSeedSov