The world has to stop burning coal to produce electricity. We cannot afford the dirtiest fuel, killing with its air pollution, heating the planet with its carbon. That’s a reality that’s dawned in increasing numbers of countries, with the UK among them, who have signed up to the Powering Past Coal alliance, launched at the Bonn climate talks.

In Britain, the reality is this signature is more symbolic than practical. The government had already promised a phase out by 2025 (which could be a lot earlier). In August only 2 percent of electricity was produced through coal and its financial cost is increasingly ruling it out.

But the politics of coal are very different in Poland, where 80 percent of electricity is still produced with highly-polluting fuel, and the government is one of the last in the developed world still building new coal-fired stations.

Industry viability

It’s also not the case in Spain, where when I was in Madrid recently, Greenpeace was unfurling a banner showing the rightwing People’s Party leader Rajoy, embracing Alvaro Nadal, his energy minister and coal enthusiast.

Only about 10 percent of electricity is produced from coal, and some areas of traditional mining have effectively closed down, due to its low quality, but others continue, and the miners’ union is a significant political force.

In both places, I was recently at conferences where these issues came under close discussion.

In Poland, I was at the Industry Forum, an event held annually by the Foundation Institute for Eastern Studies, to talk on a panel about solar energy. At a number of sessions on energy, I didn’t hear anybody outright supporting the government’s policy of all-out coal, but it was pretty well taken as a political given.

One of the strongest expressions of concern I heard was from a steel industry representative, who was worried that coal-fired electricity was already heading towards being – and in the future was certain to be – more expensive than renewables, which would affect Poland’s industry’s viability.

Financial benefit

And I learnt that while coal is often defended as a national energy security issue (meaning Warsaw doesn’t have to depend on Russia gas), in fact Poland is importing Russian coal, for both financial and supply reasons. And oddly, recently, even US coal.)

Employment in the coal industry has already plunged, from a high of over 400,000 to around 100,000, which has had a big impact the main coal region, where, uncomfortably, the global climate talks will be held next year. But, coal miners remain a potent political force, and the current government is almost defining its highly nationalist politics with coal.

I was in Spain with Equo, the Green Party which is part of the Podemos coalition in parliament, to share Britain’s experience of the Climate Change Act with those seeking to introduce similar legislation in Madrid.

I spoke of how a “just transition” – compensation and alternative ways of life – needs to be offered to regions affected by job and income losses in the move away from fossil fuels. (We also need to think about the structure of the new renewables economy.)

Also a focus was the way in which the opportunities of renewable energy, particularly solar and onshore wind, (and energy conservation) are shared around countries, with many regions having the opportunity to financially benefit.

Energy transition

Every city can have its own collection of small solar and battery installers, its own community of energy-efficiency providers, small businesses who provide jobs, use other local businesses from accountants to hardware wholesalers, and who employ people who put money back into the local economy.

Onshore wind too, can be developed locally, often by municipalities who can use the returns to support public services. (Bristol’s wind turbines are just one example of this.)  With electric cars taking off fast, there’s also the potential for income to households owning them from use as grid storage (Vehicle to Grid, VtG in the jargon).

So when we think about what this transition means, we’re seeing jobs and income that used to be concentrated in one part of nations, being replaced by a far more decentralised, equitable arrangement.

When we think about “just transition” the usual focus is on those who are losing out, but it is also important to focus on that side of the equation. While former coal regions make the case for significant extra funding, other regions with significant needs might understandably ask “why them and not us?”

If it is understood that this is a new sharing and spreading of the benefits of energy generation (as well as the greater resilience that is the other great advantaged of a decentralised system), then there’s likely to be far more political “buy-in” around nations where this energy transition can and should be understood as a great economic opportunity, rather than a threat.

It is a transition that can put the returns from energy generation in the hands of the many, helping every region of the country, so it’s both fair and reasonable that they should all make a contribution to those few regions that see a net loss from the change.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a regular contributor to The Ecologist and a former leader of the Green Party. She tweets at @natalieben. 

Britain has had a cheap food policy since the war, but the time has come to re-evaluate our priorities. Pressure on prices has forced farmers to sacrifice ecological protection in the name of productivity.

Government subsidies – while designed to encourage sustainable farming – have unfortunately failed to deliver tangible benefits to wildlife.

Michael Gove is due to make a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference today, pledging to reform the subsidy system so that it rewards the services provided by farmers, rather than simply the area of land owned.

Ecological protection

Although individual trailblazers are creating new models of sustainable farming, this complete overhaul of the subsidy system is desperately needed to ensure that all farmers are required to deliver environmental services.

Brexit – while a threat to the protections enshrined in European Union law – provides an opportunity to reset the balance, ensuring that British farmers are valued for their stewardship of the environment as much as for the food they produce.

Current ‘sustainable farming’ subsidies, under Pillar I of EU structures, consist of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and Greening obligations. Under the BPS, farmers are paid a fixed flat rate per hectare of land, which varies between lowland, upland or moorland.

The Greening obligations, required for further payment, include the rotation of a minimum number of different crops (Crop Diversification), and the creation of Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs). In addition, Pillar II supports the UK Countryside Stewardship (CS) scheme, aimed at maintaining areas of existing high biodiversity, such as limestone grassland, neutral meadows and specific bird breeding habitats.

The BPS, which requires only that land be maintained as farmland, has failed to deliver because it offers no incentive to engage in ecological protection.

Traditional systems

Indeed, ‘non-qualifying’ features – wildlife-rich habitats such as ponds, wetlands and wide hedgerows – are deducted from the area for which farmers can receive payment, encouraging their destruction.

This habitat loss, along with changes to the chemical environment, is a significant contributor to the decline of many species, as well as the catastrophic reduction in invertebrate populations. 

With respect to Greening, the rules for Crop Diversification contain many loopholes, while the EFA obligation is poorly specified; it does not enforce improvement, but allows farmers to claim for already existing ecological features, while catch-and-cover crop obligations have failed to improve biodiversity due to narrow restrictions on the species permitted and the duration that they are grown for.

Ironically, frustration with the present system in which even high inputs and production levels do not enable farmers to compete with cheap food from abroad is driving innovation.

A growing minority of farmers are experimenting with more traditional systems, producing higher quality food that commands a premium in the market, and simultaneously achieving a multitude of ecological benefits.

Crop yields

One farm has been trialling a rotational approach using grass and herbal leys, which gives nature the opportunity to restore soil health and faunal diversity between crop yields.

In 2011 an 11-hectare field, which had been in continuous arable cropping for over 30 years, was drilled with grass seed and white clover and left for five years, untouched save for grazing sheep and cows.

In 2015 the grass was removed and winter oilseed rape and winter wheat were direct drilled into the field. The direct drilling method has precluded the need to cultivate the soil for seven years, and so the field is currently acting as a carbon sequestration facility.

According to the farmer’s data, carbon levels in the soil increased from 1.4 percent in 2011 to 2.6 percent in 2015, and the earthworm population and structural quality of the soil improved. This has, in turn, provided the foundation for stable crop yields, improving commercial revenue. 

On the farm’s other fields, the cropping programme has moved away from narrow, two-crop rotations of wheat and rape to rotations of eight to 10 diverse crops, including spring crops, linseed and catch-and-cover crops which act as green ploughs and cultivators. 

Farming legislation

A suckler herd and sheep flocks now graze the rotational grass leys, and close to 20,000 extra trees have been planted, the area under which will be used for free-range chickens.

The rotations have improved the soil condition enough to allow direct drilling for the foreseeable future.  This has resulted in a 65-70 percent saving on establishment costs and a reduction in the CO2 emissions previously caused by in-field cultivations prior to drilling. 

The longer crop rotation has also improved soil health, and herbicide sprays across the farm have been reduced by 10-15 percent as the ground becomes cleaner.

Other estates are experimenting with various forms of ‘re-wilding’, allowing natural re-diversification and enhanced profitability, while groups such as the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association (PFLA) are working to encourage the restoration of species-rich grasslands, and also producing higher value meat at lower cost.

It remains to be seen how widely these methods can be adopted by others, particularly given current, Brexit-related, uncertainty around farming legislation.

Meadow flora

While it is widely understood that British environmental policy will initially be identical to EU legislation, the current farm subsidies are only guaranteed until 2022.

Speculation suggests that, once farming subsidies are paid directly from the Treasury and not through the EU, the public may increasingly demand quantifiable tax-payer benefits in return for subsidy payments. 

The recent indication from Mr Gove that farmers are likely to be paid by results – whether increases in the ’natural capital’ of the soil and water or better delivery of biodiversity across the countryside – certainly suggests that change is on the way.

Forty years ago, the respected Professor of Agriculture Gerald Wibberley was fond of saying that farmers will always respond to ‘price signals’, growing whatever society pays them to.

This concept could form the basis of a new contract between farmers and their communities. An EU-funded pilot scheme in Wensleydale, for example, awards farmers with grants, dependent on the biodiversity they can produce in the dale’s hay meadows, including re-establishing meadow flora and increasing the population of wet grassland birds, such as the Curlew. Farmers are already discussing their achievements, and even competing for the best result.

Promised overhaul

To restore biodiversity and encourage a shift away from intensive farming methods, government subsidies need to be refocused along similar lines.

From 2014-2020, BPS funding totalled around €25.1 billion, while Countryside Stewardship funding came to only €2.6 billion. Redirecting funds towards programmes such as the CS scheme could yield an increase in tangible ecological benefits.

However, it is not simply a matter of numbers. Grants must be better integrated across landscapes. Regulatory focus in UK, unlike most of Europe, has tended to home in on individual fields, at the expense of a more comprehensive overview of the potential for reconnecting land and restoring soils and isolated or lost features across larger areas.

Strategies targeting soils, geology and drainage, and semi-natural vegetation patterns, must be developed for suites of adjoining farms. As the ‘Making Space for Nature’ report of 2010, led by ecologist Professor Sir John Lawton, stressed, biodiverse areas need to be bigger, better, and better-connected.

These concerns must feed into the promised overhaul of the system, to ensure that each and every farmer is incentivised to become a provider of environmental services.

Sustainable farming

These services could include carbon sequestration, the storage of floodwater to prevent flooding in towns, and the conservation of biodiverse wildlife habitats. DEFRA should change its philosophy from controlling to enabling.

If these indications that reform is on the way do not come to fruition, farmers may begin to act together to improve the ecology of their productive land.

Experiments carried out by trailblazers such as the farmers mentioned above prove that individuals can have a significant impact, both in improving the health of their own land and by acting as an example for others. 

However, this alone is not sufficient. The subsidy system needs dramatically rethinking, to reward farmers for their stewardship of the land as much as for food production. Sustainable farming should not be an oxymoron.

These Authors

Tom Heathcote is a Partner at Fisher German LLP, which offers a range of specialist services across all property sectors including property consultancy, estate agency and chartered surveying. Phil Colebourn is Chairman of EPR (Ecological Planning and Research), an ecological consultancy which focuses on the complex interface between biodiversity and land-use planning.

Trade deals with the EU and beyond post-Brexit could pose the biggest peacetime threat to the UK’s food security if current environmental and public health standards and existing farmers’ needs are not prioritised in the terms of the negotiations, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology for Food and Farming (APPG on Agroecology) warned today.

The cross-party group of MPs and peers conducted an inquiry into the ways Brexit trade negotiations could impact UK agriculture and food production, with special emphasis on areas of practice and legislation most likely to impact producers working to sustainable, agroecological standards.

The inquiry’s overriding concern was that issues such as food security, environmental protection and welfare standards may be significantly weakened by the UK exiting the EU.

Free-trade agreements

Kerry McCarthy MP, the group chair, said: “There are serious concerns that if negotiators don’t value farmers enough and build poorly managed trade deals that reflect this – particularly a US-UK deal – it could trigger a race to the bottom in terms of standards and ability of our own farmers to compete. The APPG is determined that this sector should not become a bargaining chip or something that can easily be traded.”

The most important trade arrangement for the UK to resolve remains the EU. As much as 60 percent of UK food, feed and drink exports went to the EU, with just 16 percent shipped to Asia and 14 percent to the United States.

The APPG on Agroecology believes Defra must work with DIT to make sure that in all new trade agreements British farmers are protected and not undermined by lower welfare imports, such as the US with the concerns over chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-filled beef, because those countries will oppose any improvements and want standards reduced.

These concerns would apply to environmental standards, which again would harm agroecological producers more than any other sector. The recent news that the DIT is pushing to carry out secret negotiations with the US only serves to fuel publicly held fears.

A statement from the APPG on Agroecology stated: “It is understood that free-trade agreements smooth the way for foreign direct investment, including by transnational agribusinesses.

Food security

“There is a very real risk that this could encourage farmers to adopt input-heavy, intensive systems, or systems which are not suited to local environmental or cultural conditions.

“All of this may have a detrimental impact on soil health, local biodiversity and broader ecosystem health, and move the UK ever further away from sustainable ways of producing food and managing land.”

Kerry added: “If discussions are not handled by a negotiating team ready to support our agriculture industry in its entirety – not just the largest businesses, or those with capacity to lobby loudest – then the government is severely hampering its own ability to make good on its election manifesto promises to farmers, and will run the very real risk of permanently damaging our leading role in setting and improving food standards for current and future generations.”

The APPG on Agroecology has released the results of its inquiry into the impact of Brexit on food and farming trade to coincide with the opening of the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC).

Grasses and grazing

Kerry added: “The hundreds of farmers that attend the ORFC are among some of the most vulnerable groups in the UK’s agricultural sector and often the least heard.

“They will be the most affected by a botched Brexit trade deal, and yet they are the ones best positioned to preserve the UK’s food security for decades into the future.

“The APPG on Agroecology calls on Defra, DExEU and DIT to work together to not only maintain, but to improve our production, public health and environmental standards as we navigate trade deals, for the good of the country.”

Agroecology is increasingly being seen as the answer to many of the concerns facing modern land management concerns. This includes soil health management techniques that focus on crops, grasses and grazing rather than fertiliser, which has been a key driver of the FAO announcement that the world only has 60 harvests left. It also includes agroforestry techniques to combat climate-change related flooding and encourage biodiversity and natural pest control.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist and tweets at @EcoMontague. 

First, any chance that hunting would be made legal again in the near future was crushed by the reaction to Theresa May’s announcement that she personally supported the sport.

Secondly, the attempted ban of trail hunting on National Trust land was an unwelcome exposure of what has been hunting’s main deception since ‘lethal’ hunting was banned in 2005.

Thirdly, Michael Gove’s announcement that animal sentience must now be considered in any future law-making must be of great concern – it’s a lot harder to inflict animal cruelty, even in the guise of ‘sport’, when your prey is recognised as having feelings.

The ‘nasty’ party

It’s worth looking at each of these in more detail. The announcement of an election back in Spring buoyed those who support hunting – there was every chance that a government with a pro-hunting majority would be elected for the first time since hunting was banned in 2005.

The mood was positively jubilant among some, thinking that the hated Hunting Act would finally be gone. Theresa May’s comment that she personally supports hunting would have given another boost to their cause – but her statement triggered a backlash in the media. 

Over the next couple of weeks, fox hunting became one of the most talked about issues of the whole election, which frankly was interesting given how many major issues should have been on the table.

But the discussion went beyond the normal debate of pro versus anti hunting. It became an issue of compassion. Are we a nation of animal lovers or not?

The debate stirred up party vs party differences, and the perception of the Conservative Party as the ‘nasty’ party was reignited. It’s hard to know exactly how much of an impact this debate had on the election result as a whole, but it’s generally recognised that it cost the Conservative Party a lot of votes. It may even have cost them seats.

Killing foxes

The result was that the Conservative Party won the election but quickly dropped the manifesto promise to hold a free vote on repeal of the Hunting Act. A massive switch from just weeks before.

Quickly after the election came another hunting-related battle, this time fought on the grounds of a beloved institution – the National Trust. NT members put forward a motion asking for trail hunting to be banned from National Trust property – if successful, hunts would have lost a significant amount of the land they use and could have resulted in some hunts having to close down.

The National Trust issue was not a simple one. The crux of it was the term ‘trail’ hunting and what that actually means. Most people’s understanding – guided by the National Trust’s advice – was that ‘trail’ hunting is a legal activity whereby hunts follow an artificial trail and do not kill animals.

If that was true, then of course most people wouldn’t vote to ban it – why would they? But again, if that was true, this motion would never have been put forward, as no-one was trying to ban legal hunting from NT land.

This reality of trail hunting is very much disputed. Evidence gathered for ten years or more events shows trail hunts repeatedly chasing and killing foxes, deer and hares.

Animal-based scent

The most common reason they give is that the hounds picked up the scent of the animal accidentally and couldn’t be stopped. But this happens repeatedly. When does an accident become deliberate? We believe that these are no accidents, and never have been.

Trail hunting is not the only kind of hunting – there is also ‘drag’ hunting. Drag hunting has been in existence for 200 years, and involves the hounds following an artificial scent – such as aniseed. The chances of any animals being killed ‘by accident’ are minimal. There was no attempt to ban drag hunting from NT land.

When ‘lethal’ hunting was banned in 2005, if those hunts who had been chasing animals had genuinely wanted to obey the law, they could have switched to drag hunting. But they didn’t – none of them.

Instead they invented trail hunting. This looks similar to drag hunting, but there are key differences: the fact that hounds are still trained to follow an animal-based scent is vital.

Dogs don’t by nature tend to chase and kill foxes, they have to be trained to do so. Thus by training the dogs to follow an animal-based scent, the hunts are making these accidents much more likely.

Anti-compassion

There’s a list of other evidence and incidents which cast a huge shadow over the credibility of trail hunting; these have been discussed this year, perhaps more than ever, and the veneer of respectability around trail hunting has been dangerously cracked. 

Coming to the recent announcement of a new Animal Welfare Bill by Michael Gove, this has generally been met with enthusiasm by animal welfare groups.

An increase in sentencing for animal cruelty, which includes dog fighting which the League has been working hard on, was a popular move which few would have argued with – congratulations to the Government for pushing this through.

The section on sentience was interesting because it came soon after a story (or was it fake news?) around the potential removal of acknowledgement that animals are sentient from UK legislation once Brexit goes through.

Once again, the government were being hit with accusations that they are anti-animal and anti-compassion, so for a new Bill to be announced so quickly was always going to be seen as a direct response to what had gone before.

Trail hunting

The recognition of sentience in future legislation does pose a real problem for those who like hunting. Can a decision be taken to repeal an Act which is designed to protect animals from cruelty? An Act which was built on a report which stated that animals suffer from hunting?

With sentences for animal cruelty being increased, what does (or should?) this mean for those convicted of illegal hunting, which at present only leads to paltry fines. Why is setting one dog on another dog (dog fighting) any different to setting a pack of dogs on one fox? 

There are interesting questions to be answered. Meanwhile, this Boxing Day, hunts will parade, and claim that the number of people watching them is a sign that hunting is as popular as ever.

This year has shown that not to be true. The election showed that people are massively opposed to the killing of animals. The National Trust story showed that people previously didn’t realise that trail hunting generally equals ‘lethal’ hunting – but more of them do now. And the new Animal Welfare Bill showed that the government has realised that voters in this country want them to be compassionate towards animals. It’s not been a good year for hunting. 

This Author

Chris Pitt is deputy director of Campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports.

Lola took her inspiration for the title of her piece from a quote from Chris Rapley, one of the world’s most eminent climatologists. Ironically, we wouldn’t be here this evening – celebrating the work of these wonderful musicians, the genius of Lola herself, and all those who’ve helped to bring ClimateKeys to fruition – unless we’d been burning things and making fire for millennia.

Because right from the start of humankind’s ascent to the dominant position of the human species today, we’ve been burning things with huge enthusiasm, starting with fire from trees, and moving on to fossil fuels: coal, then oil, and then gas.

Until 1980, burning fossil fuels was seen as a wonderful boon to humankind, making life better for hundreds of millions of people on this planet. Since 1980, we’ve had to recalibrate our thoughts about fossil fuels.

Deeply moved

We’ve realised that they didn’t come cost-free for us or the planet. Every time we put a match to the next bit of fossil fuel, we emitted CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere. And we know now what the consequences of that look like.

We understand that, if we continue to burn things with the same astonishing enthusiasm and abundance, the future for humankind looks very grim indeed.

So we have to stop burning things. It’s as simple as that. We have to stop burning fossil fuels in our power stations, cars and cement kilns.  We have to make it possible for people throughout developing and emerging countries to stop burning kerosene for lighting and cooking, which kills millions of people every year. We even have to stop burning wood in our wood-burning stoves! 

So this is about gradually becoming aware of one of the most important aspects of human civilisation: the use we’ve made of fossil fuels to get us to where we are now. And it’s also about the imperative of not continuing to use those fossil fuels in the way that we have, if we’re to go anywhere sustainable from here. 

The big picture is quite scary, but that big picture translates, of course, into thousands, millions of smaller pictures, each of which has real significance. I suspect we’ve all been deeply moved by hearing Nicole talk about the Truth About Zane campaign. 

Solar revolution

And every time you hear about one of these climate-induced disasters, somewhere in the coverage there’ll be a death count attached: people killed in Californian fires, hurricanes in the Caribbean, or floods in Bangladesh. Of course people don’t just die in the disasters themselves. They die, too, as a consequence of being made homeless, and trauma from the loss that they feel. 

I’ve had the privilege of looking through synopses of the talks of all 31 speakers at the different ClimateKeys concerts over the next few weeks. They’re all immensely powerful testimonies to what we as human beings already feel, deep in our hearts, about the impact of climate change.

Inevitably, there’s anger, grief, fear. But each testimony is balanced by the sense of empowerment that we now see springing up everywhere, finding some line between hope and despair. Two of the pieces performed at this concert illustrate this: Debussy’s ‘Église Engloutie’ (‘Sunken Cathedral’), and Karen Tanaka’s ‘Wind Energy’.

All the testimonies stress the importance of empowerment, and talk about hope in the ways in which solutions to so many of today’s most pressing sustainability challenges are now proliferating around the world.

Here’s a tiny example: a SunnyMoney solar lantern. It symbolises what’s happening in the world today – a solar revolution, which is going to drive the next epoch in humankind’s history. A revolution which is already happening!

Full potentiality

There’s a kind of cosmological elegance to this. Fossil fuels are nothing more than stored sunshine, which we then extract from the earth. The amazing thing about this revolution is that we can stop burning stored sunlight and start using real-time sunlight, along with a whole array of technologies that go with that.

We can start using the earth itself more intelligently, through better use of our land, better farming, better use of natural resources all round. And people are actually getting incredibly excited about energy efficiency!

These solutions are what makes a good, sustainable, compassionate future for the whole of humankind possible. And this is how we can generate hope. We have to stop burning things that we take out of the earth, but we ourselves have to burn, with a much more fiery spirit than perhaps we’ve felt able to until now. Stoking up those fires is what I love about ClimateKeys, and why I’ve been so happy to play even a tiny part in it.

And I would add our spiritual resources to that list of solutions for a sustainable future, because in the end what we face is not just a challenge of technology; humankind also faces a deep, deep spiritual challenge. So that’s the energy we have to burn, inside ourselves and working with other people.

We have to call on the full potentiality of each individual human being on this planet to be part of this transformation, part of this solutions story. That story is actually all around us, if you want to see it for what it is.

To do that, we have to call on all our resources: intellectual, practical, artistic and spiritual. I call it the genius of the human spirit, which has been part and parcel of the ascent of humankind for as long as our habit of burning things has been. And now we have a chance to see that genius create an astonishing transformation which I think will surprise everybody on this planet over the course of the next few years.” 

This Author

Jonathon Porritt is an environmentalist and author.

Shell and Italian oil giant Eni have been ordered to stand trial in Milan on charges of aggravated international corruption for their role in a 2011 $1.1bn deal for Nigerian oil block OPL 245. Mrs Justice Barbara handed down the ruling today and set March 5 as the date for the trial to begin.

Claudio Descales, Eni’s current CEO, Paolo Scaroni, the former CEO and Roberto Casula, the chief operations and technology officer,  were also ordered to face trial alongside four former Shell Group staff members, including Malcolm Brinded CBE, former Executive Director for Upstream International and two former MI6 agents then employed by Shell.

Prosecutor’s efforts

No company as large as Shell Group or such senior executives of a major oil company have ever stood trial for bribery offences.

The investigation by the Milan public prosecutor was triggered by a complaint filed in Autumn 2013 by Global Witness, The Corner House, Re:Common and Nigerian anti-corruption campaigner Dotun Oloko. The case has also been investigated in Nigeria and the United States following the groups’ complaints. Public prosecutors in The Netherlands are also investigating the case.

“The Nigerian people lost out on over $1 billion dollars, equivalent to the country’s entire health budget, as a result of this corrupt deal. They deserve to know the truth about what happened to their missing millions.  

“We welcome the prosecutor’s efforts to bring this case to trial. It will be the biggest corporate bribery trial in history – and act as a warning to others who see corruption as a route for quick financial wins”, said Simon Taylor, co-founder of Global Witness.

In a statement today Shell said “We are disappointed by the outcome of the preliminary hearing and the decision to indict Shell and its former employees.  We believe the trial judges will conclude that there is no case against Shell or its former employees.”

Powerful corporations

Eni said: “Eni’s Board of Directors has reaffirmed its confidence that the company was not involved in alleged corrupt activities in relation to the transaction.

“The Board of Directors also confirmed its full confidence that chief executive Claudio Descalzi was not involved in the alleged illegal conduct and, more broadly, in his role as head of the company. Eni expresses its full confidence in the judicial process and that the trial will ascertain and confirm the correctness and integrity of its conduct.”

Antonio Tricarico of Italian NGO Re:Common said: “Prime Minister Renzi was utterly wrong in 2014 when he defended Mr Descalzi’s appointment as Eni’s CEO, by warning that it would ‘not allow a media scoop to put jobs at risk, or a notice of investigation issued on newspapers to change the business policy of a country’.

“If the deal for OPL 245 represents business as usual for Italy’s biggest company, partly controlled by the government, prosecutors were right to investigate and right to bring this matter before the courts. Renzi should apologise to the Italian and Nigerian public”.

“This case heralds the dawning of the age of accountability, a world where even the most powerful corporations can no longer hide their wrongdoing and avoid justice.” Said Lanre Suraju, Chairman of Nigerian NGO Human and Environmental Development Agenda.

Law enforcement

For years, Shell had claimed that it only paid the Nigerian Government for the oil block. But after the joint investigations of Global Witness and Finance Uncovered, Shell confessed it had dealt with former oil minister Dan Etete, via his front company Malabu.

Dan Etete was convicted of money laundering in France in 2007. Etete had awarded the OPL 245 oil block to his secretly owned company while serving as oil minister.

In December 2016, the Milan Public Prosecutor alleged that $520 million from the deal was converted into cash and intended to be paid to the then Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, members of the government and other Nigerian government officials.

The prosecutor further alleges that money was also channelled to Eni executives with $50 million in cash delivered to the home of Eni’s then Head of Business for Sub-Saharan Africa, Roberto Casula.

Nigerian authorities have also filed charges against a Shell subsidiary and Eni as well as several of their staff. In January Nigerian law enforcement also charged Mohammed Adoke, the former Nigerian Minister of Justice and Attorney General with money laundering over his receipt of $2.2m in alleged proceeds of the OPL 245 deal.

Abusive corporate power

The Nigerian government successfully recovered US$85m in proceeds of the deal from the UK. The money had previously been frozen as suspected proceeds of crime at the request of Italian authorities.

The Nigerian government has also issued a billion dollar civil claim against JP Morgan for their role as a banker to the deal. JP Morgan has stated that they consider the allegation against them to be “unsubstantiated and without merit”.

“This is not a case involving a few rotten apples,” said Nick Hildyard of Corner House. “The evidence points to systemic corruption – from the top down. In this case Italy has championed the rule of law over abusive corporate power. The world waits to see if the UK and The Netherlands, where Shell is based, will have the backbone to follow suit.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

The debate over fox hunting in Britain is a binary issue that has polarised opinion in the pub and parliament alike. Similarly, discussions on wildlife conservation in Kenya have historically been cast in black and white terms: Western wildlife conservancy is “good” and indigenous human activity is “bad”.

The narrative treats local communities as enemies of conservation. Local people are blamed for environmental mismanagement and seen as at odds with their own landscape.

Endangered species

The problem with this model is that it dictates that the African wilderness is to be saved largely by non-Africans. Or, to take it one step further, the ‘white saviour’ is considered the only actor capable of protecting native wildlife. This discourse is clearly rooted in Kenya’s colonial legacy. It is a narrative in which the Kenyan people have no place. 

Denied a role in wildlife management, and not sharing in its economic benefits, impoverished Kenyan citizens have been pushed towards illicit land activity. In other words, if one is struggling to put food on the table, poaching and illegal grazing can seem the only viable solutions.

Wildlife protection efforts in recent years have begun to challenge Africa’s most damaging conservation myths. A new emerging debate recognises that communities are an integral part of the surrounding nature and are best placed to manage its biodiversity.

Respecting and using local knowledge in conjunction with environmental education is the only way wildlife preservation can thrive. The success of the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conversancy is testament to this approach.

You most likely won’t have come across the Mountain Bongo. The Mountain Bongo is the world’s largest forest antelope, distinctive in its red chestnut colour and white stripes. With approximately 100 left in the wild, the Mountain Bongo is a critically endangered species. Kenya is the only place where this magnificent creature is found in its natural habitat. 

Education initiatives

The Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy is working to protect and breed the Mountain Bongo using a community-centred approach. After years of unrestricted hunting, poaching, loss of habitat and disease, in 2004 we initiated the only bongo-breeding programme of its kind.

Now, 68 bongos can be found in Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy’s semi-wild environment. Working with the Kenya Wildlife Service, the National Bongo Taskforce and the Kenya Forestry Service, we are on our way to repopulating the Mountain Bongos in their ancestral wild homes. 

Crucial to this aim is the participation of local community, the true custodians of the wildlife with which they share their lands. We recognise that the responsibility for conservation lies with the Kenyan people themselves.

The Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy is proud to be collaborating with the local community, government agencies and having dozens of Kenyans in its workforce.

Integrated approach

Beyond this, we recognise the critical need for conservation knowledge from a young age. The Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy has developed environmental education initiatives, and over 10,000 Kenyan students visit the facility each year.

Our outreach programmes help to introduce these local issues into the school curriculum, cultivating a more holistic understanding of the environment and wildlife.

From recognising the economic value of the landscape to the simple aesthetic appreciation of their environmental heritage, students are empowered to preserve the wildlife for future generations. Indeed, many go on to work in conservation and use their expertise to create a richer and more sustainable conservation agenda. 

Kenyan citizens are the key stakeholders in the conservation fight, and their local knowledge about the natural world is paramount to its success. This is why we take an integrated approach to wildlife education. As our programmes develop, so too does respect for the environment and wildlife. Ultimately, conservation goals can be conducive to all.

This Author

Humphrey Kariuki is a patron to Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, whose mission it is to save endangered species. 

More than 27,000 bull calves were forced onto the rusting NADA, a 12 story Panamanian ship designed for cattle transportation, during the last week of November. They will remain on board and at sea until December 21st, 2:00 am, local time.

Brazil´s most significant port – Santos harbour, in São Paulo state – is once again open for live cattle transportation after 20 years.

Sérgio Levy is an economist and a vegan. He has been coordinating efforts towards raising awareness of animal sentience for more than a decade.

Animal rights

He told The Ecologist: “About 90 bulls were loaded into each of 300 trucks heading to Santos harbour. They were not given a single break for food or water.

“We posed as a human barrier in front of the vehicles in order to document their condition, but it was all very sudden. The port’s security personnel were quickly activated.”

He added: “As the calves entered the ship’s loading area, the steers were directed into a corridor that conveyed the animals into the vessel. The oxen by now were covered by manure and urine from the previous road journey.”

The Panamanian flagged vessel is the world’s largest livestock carrier. It can carry 30,000 oxen distributed throughout its 12 stories. The operation to load the ship was launched on the night of November 29th and ended on the afternoon of December 4th.

The animals are expected to arrive at Iskenderum harbour, Turkey, before Christmas. “Hopefully, we are able to reach out to animal rights activists in Turkey and intercept the operation,” Levy stated.

Extremely cruel

There are upcoming animal shipments scheduled for January under the same precarious and cruel conditions. São Sebastião harbour, also in São Paulo state, dispatched 23,000 bulls to Singapore on December 13th.

Sergio added: “We suspect that the Brazilian company in Turkey is purchasing live cattle from Brazil, perhaps to bypass the high taxes of industrialised products  – animals are still seen as ‘objects’. Exported as commodities, taxes are lower.”

According to the company behind the shipments, the animals should be accompanied by a veterinarian and would have complete follow-up, including food and water.

Sérgio claims this was not always properly implemented: “According to research by the World Organization for Animal Health these transports are extremely cruel. There are hardly any veterinarians onboard and often no food.”

Dr. Lynn Simpson is an Australian veterinary surgeon and has spent the past 10 years in livestock vessels, documenting the routine of suffer of these animals.

Foreign markets

Her research on long-term sea shipping has found: “There are numerous cases of injuries, stress, unnecessary pain caused by the precarious infrastructure, diseases and their dissemination due to the poor conditions in which these animals are kept.

“Salmonellosis and pneumonia – the so-called ’embarkation disease’ – are common. The illnesses spread easily due to the high density, precarious ventilation and hygiene. Disease is common.”

The Brazilian meat industry has taken a great interest in the live cattle exportation over the past decade. Previously the market was dominated by Canada, Mexico and Australia. The first two mostly supplied United States domestic demand while Australia supplied southeastern Asian countries.

Meat consumption in Brazil has plummeted – but for the wrong reasons: recession, unemployment, poverty. At the same time, Brazil is the second largest producer of beef in the world and the largest exporter.

The Brazilian Federal Police launched operation ‘Weak Meat’ in March, 2017 amid allegations that large producers had been adulterating the meat they sell into both domestic and foreign markets. As a result, the European Union, South Korea, China and Chile reported that they would also stop Brazilian meat imports.

The Brazilian meat export industry is cruel – but it also has a devastating impact in terms of deforestation in the Amazon region. The work is cut out for Brazilian animal rights activists. The same can be said for our Turkish and Singaporean fellow activists.

This Author

Ana Luisa Diniz Naghettini is an undergraduate student at The Federal University of Minas Gerais. She studies computational mathematics and intends to specialise in climate modeling. She is a Brazilian animal rights and environmental activist and a vegetarian. Petitions related to the article can be found at Change.org and Animals International.

It seems like a long time ago now: the Conservative party’s catastrophic 2017 election manifesto. Yes, the one that promised a new care home tax on the elderly, and an end to the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance. And that went on to turn Teresa May’s repeated mantra of ‘strong and stable’ government into hubris of the first order as she lost her overall majority in Parliament.

But not everything in the manifesto was a disaster. Indeed it contained one excellent policy – on energy. Remarkably – given the long-standing Tory obsession with nuclear power – the word ‘nuclear’ did not appear once in the entire document.

Solar auction

Instead the manifesto insists that a future Tory government would remain utterly indifferent to how electricity is generated, so long as it’s reliable, cheap and low carbon. “Above all, we believe that energy policy should be focused on outcomes rather than the means by which we reach our objectives,” it read. 

“So, after we have left the European Union, we will form our energy policy based not on the way energy is generated but on the ends we desire – reliable and affordable energy, seizing the industrial opportunity that new technology presents and meeting our global commitments on climate change …

“We want to make sure that the cost of energy in Britain is internationally competitive, both for businesses and households … Our ambition is that the UK should have the lowest energy costs in Europe, both for households and businesses. So as we upgrade our energy infrastructure, we will do it in an affordable way, consistent with that ambition.”

This sounded good to the green brigade because renewable energy prices, in the UK and elsewhere, have been hitting new lows. In a September 2017 contract auction, two offshore wind projects came in at a record low price of £57.50 / megawatt hour (MWh).

Onshore wind costs even less: contracts awarded in Germany in May went as low as €42.80 / MWh (£38.24) – less than the UK’s wholesale power market price. And in October, Germany’s solar auction delivered bids as low as €42.90 / MWh – just a few pence higher than onshore wind.

Reactor designs

It is also clear that new nuclear plants are an incredibly costly way of generating power. Hinkley C, now under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset, is set to receive a guaranteed £92.50 / MWh, for 35 years. That’s in 2013 money, so is now worth around £100.

With current wholesale power prices around £40-45 per MWh, that’s one hell of a deal for its developers, France’s EDF and its Chinese partner, CGN. But even at this price, many analysts think EDF should walk away from the project, such are its technical and financial risks.

So now we have power from onshore wind, solar and offshore wind all much cheaper than new nuclear. So we can safely assume that the UK government has seen the writing on the wall and dumped hyper-costly nuclear power in favour of increasingly low-cost renewables, can’t we?

No: its nuclear obsession continues unabated. The Tories’ election manifesto – which some old-fashioned ‘my word is my bond’ types might view as part of a binding covenant between government and electorate – is clearly only so much chip paper to the incumbent technocrats. 

Instead, we see a renewed determination to press ahead with massive nuclear power construction no matter what the cost. In addition to the twin EPR’s at Hinkley Point C, the government is pushing ahead with plans to build reactors at Moorside in Cumbria, at Wylfa on Anglesey, at Bradwell on the Essex coast, at Oldfield in Gloucestershire, at Sizewell on the Suffolk coast – employing surprisingly diverse reactor designs.

Design enhancements

These include the Westinghouse’s AP1000, Hitachi’s Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), China General Nuclear’s Hualong HPR1000, and South Korean group Kepco’s APR1400.

In total, the government wants to procure 19GW of new nuclear power, much of it to be operational by 2030 as the UK prepares to close some 10 gigawatts (GW = 1,000 MW) of existing nuclear capacity. But that’s not the limit of its nuclear ambitions.

Business Secretary Greg Clarke recently announced that the winner of a competion for a new generation of ‘small modular reactors’ (SMRs), an industrial consortium led by Rolls Royce, will receive an initial £100 million from taxpayers to progress its project to design and manufacture reactors around a tenth the size of the 1.2GW behemoths to be deployed at Hinkley Point.

The idea is that these SMRs will be built by the hundreds on production lines, and installed in urban fringes across the UK, achieving ‘process engineering’ improvements and enormous economies of scale. But the policy suggests the triumph of hope over experience.

The first SMRs were built in the 1950 and hundreds have been installed in nuclear powered submarines and other ships since. If there were huge cost savings available from design enhancements and production-line construction, why have the last 65 years of nuclear engineering enhancements failed to deliver them already?

New nuclear

The truth is that nuclear reactors have got ever bigger for a very simple reason – that it’s cheaper that way, a fact recently confirmed in a July 2016 analysis by Atkins consultants for Clarke’s BEIS Department which revealed that the first SMRs would probably cost 30 percent more to build than existing large nuclear designs.

Only after 5-8 GW – that’s 50 – 80 100 MW units – had been deployed might the price finally be competitive with the large reactor designs that are already way too expensive. “SMRs could become cost competitive against large nuclear after 5-8 GWe of global deployment of a single design”, states the report.

The report goes on to estimate a ‘net present value’ (NPV) of a 2 GW UK SMR programme, compared to large nuclear, of minus £4.8 billion – indicating a likely thumping loss of taxpayers funds. And even that strongly negative assessment depends on generating improbably high SMR exports of 300MW to 750MW per year.

The same volume of offshore wind – even based on 2015/16 prices of around £100 / MWh, almost double the lowest achieved in 2017 – delivered a plus £400 million NPV.

So what’s the likely bill to tax payers and energy users of all this new nuclear power? Assuming an average 2030 wholesale power price (constrained by zero marginal cost wind and solar) at roughly today’s level of £40, an average nuclear power price of £100 (both in today’s money), new nuclear will need a subsidy of £60 / MWh.

Jobs and pensions

Assuming the nuclear plants work flat out for 90% of the time, 19GW will deliver 150 million MWh of power per year, earning £9 billion in support payments. Split over Britain’s 25 million homes, that comes to about £360 extra on energy bills each per year.

Assuming 35 year contracts for nuclear (as at Hinkley C) rather than the 15 year contracts given to most renewables generators, the bill comes to a total £315 billion ‘nuclear tax’ to be paid by British power users. That’s a massive £12,600 per household. 

So here’s the key question: how can a government that has declared in its election manifesto its commitment to delivering the lowest cost power in Europe, and its utter impartiality in deciding between any one power generation technology over any other, justify an obsessively pro-nuclear energy policy that could land every household in Britain with a £12,600 ‘nuclear tax’? 

No less pertinent a question is: where is the political opposition to this nuclear madness? Despite a stinging critique of Hinkley C from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee last month, The Labour party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn have been notably silent on the issue, apparently under the influence of the big nuclear sector unions, GMB and Unite.

But at least that’s consistent with its manifesto statement, which states that: “The UK has the world’s oldest nuclear industry, and nuclear will continue to be part of the UK energy supply. We will support further nuclear projects and protect nuclear workers’ jobs and pensions. There are considerable opportunities for nuclear power and decommissioning both internationally and domestically.”

Democratic process

The LibDems, who were strongly against nuclear power until they joined the Tories in coalition government in 2010, were then hugely for it in office. Now it appears the party has turned against it again.

Its manifesto promised to “accept that new nuclear power stations can play a role in electricity supply provided concerns about safety, disposal of waste and cost are adequately addressed, new technology is incorporated, and there is no public subsidy for new build.”

And since the public subsidies are enormous, that means the LibDems should be fiercely opposing the government’s plans. But – with the recent exception of former energy secretary Ed Davey MP, talking good sense this week on Greenpeace’s Unearthed – they too are keeping quiet about the monstrous subsidies the Tories are ready to throw at nuclear power.

This leaves the UK is now suffering something arguably even worse than a disastrously ill-judged energy policy: a total failure of democratic process and governance that will cost us this country dear for half a century or more to come. 

This Author

Oliver Tickell is an environmental journalist, author and campaigner, and a former editor of The Ecologist. 

Britain has lost half its rural population of hedgehogs while one third have disappeared from urban areas since the year 2000, according to the latest estimates from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES).

“Not long ago the Erinaceus Europaeus was a common sight in our neighbourhoods, but today we’re seeing much less of this intelligent and endearing creature,” the PTES states.  

“The reasons why we’re quietly losing our hedgehog population are entirely man-made. The shocking statistics of their decline puts them on a par with the plummeting worldwide tiger population.”

Safe havens

The reasons for hedgehog decline are complex and research is underway to identify why this is the case. Badger predation and food source competition, climate change and human activities may all have an effect. The PTES regularly commissions research that helps understand why hedgehogs are in such trouble, and how we can best help them.

Education is essential if our hedgehogs are going to make it through the next few decades, because increasing urbanisation means we have less contact with nature and less understanding of our wildlife.

The British Hedgehog Preservation Society is working to create awareness through their short film ‘Hedgehog Street’ an activity essential stop the disappearance of our native hedgehogs.

Perhaps the most obvious reason for hedgehog decline is the reduction of hedgehog-friendly environments which are increasingly under threat from the concrete-slide of our communities.

It seems easy to lay this blame this on the government and building companies, and in part the responsibility does lay at their feet, but we are responsible individually too. Our gardens could provide safe havens, but faced with fences and designer landscaping hedgehogs are losing their foothold in our communities.

Spiky creatures

Hedgehogs roam over 2kms a night, but our fences are a considerable barrier to their movements. This environmental fragmentation prevents hedgehogs gathering enough food, finding suitable nesting areas, and meeting a mate.

Paving, decking, and hard-landscaping is endemic in the modern garden, but it leaves little to no space for hedgehog needs. Longer grass, rough areas, and native plants that attract insects and invertebrates are essential. Tidy gardens sterilised by landscaping, leaf blowers, strimmers and sprinkled with slug pellets are deserts for native wildlife.

Hedgehogs have been around in one form or another since the dinosaurs, but our modern habits are testing their ability to survive. Garden tools cause horrific injuries, uncovered drains are one way pitfalls, and they become hopelessly entangled in netting.

Bonfires and ponds pose problems too. A bonfire heap is perfect hedgehog accommodation, but leads to death when the pile is lit. Ponds with slippery sides that offer no means of escape exhausts unfortunate hedgehogs that eventually drown.

We can help these endearing spiky creatures more than we realise. An area of garden left wild without slug pellets or pesticide use will support a hedgehog’s search for food.

Cat food

Hogs predominately eat insects, beetles, caterpillars, snails and slugs, effectively clearing a garden of pests, and whilst hogs don’t eat slug pellets, they do eat dead slugs and ingest the poison.

An easily purchased hedgehog house offers safe accommodation for hogs that need dry, warm places to raise young and hibernate throughout the winter.

Supplemental feeding can help make up the shortfall of natural prey, but well-meaning folk often cause serious problems offering bread and milk.

Hogs are lactose intolerant, so the resulting diarrhoea can cause dehydration and death. Bread has no useful nutrients for a small mammal, and neither do mealworms, peanuts and household scraps. Instead offer dry or wet cat food and a shallow, heavy bowl of fresh water.

Underlying problem

But all this effort is no use without access. We can boost the hog population by creating doors in our fence lines. This opens up a road network that hedgehogs can travel around. A 15cm x 15cm gap will allow hogs access to your insects, snails and water sources.

This non-threatening mammal is often the first point of contact people have with our native wildlife. From Shakespeare’s Furze-pigs to Enid Blyton’s Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Sega’s Sonic, hedgehogs are steeped in our culture.

It’s easy to support these endearing creatures. It doesn’t take much to start reversing their fortunes – a simple hole in the fence line can make a big difference.

If we ignore the plummeting decline of our much loved native hedgehog we won’t be seeing them in the near future. A garden without the charming hedgehog is indeed an empty one that points to a serious underlying problem with our environmental health.  

This Author

Clive Harris is a garden writer and environmentalist. You can find his blog at https://diygarden.co.uk