British high street banks have spent a lot of time and money rebuilding their battered brands following the financial crisis ten years ago.

But they are in danger of tipping themselves into the mire once again with their environmentally damaging investments which are viewed as immoral by large swathes of the public.

ComRes polling commissioned by Christian Aid reveals that:

• 78 percent of the public believe that investing in companies which cause dangerous climate change is morally wrong no matter how profitable it is.
• 80 percent (four out of five) say they do not want banks to use their savings to invest in projects that damage the environment, and:
• 81% hold bank CEOs responsible for ensuring their investments don’t cause environment damage.

It’s particularly galling to see the big four banks – Barclays, RBS, Lloyds and HSBC – announcing profit rises of up to 40 percent this week while communities from South Asia to the Caribbean continue to count the cost of extreme weather in lives lost and massive clean-up bills.

Profit from pollution

America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reported that there have been 15 weather and climate disaster events in the US alone this year where, total financial losses exceeded $1bn each.

A new Christian Aid report, out today, shows how Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS are all funding the companies behind the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia, the coal from which generates nearly the equivalent carbon pollution in a year as Colombia’s entire national emissions.

Although communities in the developing world are not the cause of climate breakdown, cruelly they are the ones suffering the most impacts – and they are starting to shift their investments accordingly.

The Archbishop of Cape Town, Most Reverend Thabo Makgoba, leads the Province of Southern Africa which recently decided to divest all its fossil fuel investments on climate grounds.

He said: “Climate change is hurting people in the developing world first and worst. In response to this we are divesting from fossil fuels and can no longer profit from pollution.

Economic self-interest

“But in Britain UK banks are still propping up coal mines which are driving the climate change we suffer from. This is morally questionable and they have a responsibility to clean up their act.”

The big four high street banks have all signed up the pledge to support the goals of the Paris Agreement but their investment practices have barely changed.

Banks have a vital role to play in providing the crucial lending facilities to companies that do the very opposite of leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

Last month former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres called on banks to invest a ratio of 2:1 in favour of green investments over brown investments to avoid an economic cliff edge.

Speaking at an event on sustainable finance in Europe she said banks needed to do some heavy lifting out of economic self-interest.

Bury their heads

And this is the crucial point. Not only is it unwise to keep doing something that 80 percent of your potential customer base thinks is immoral, it also will soon make very little financial sense too.

Hannah McKinnon, Energy Futures & Transitions Director at Oil Change International pointed out: “The fossil fuel era is coming to an end.

“Banks should be looking for every opportunity to shift investments before the ship sinks: along with a worthless portfolio of stranded assets, there will be a massive moral price tag for those that insist on trying to be the last one out.

“Financing the climate crisis is an inexcusable ethical decision and a reckless financial one, banks too can decide which side of history they want to be on.”

And it’s not just climate organisations saying this. Last month the editor of The Banker magazine, Brian Caplen warned that banks faced an existential crisis if they continue to bury their heads in the sand.

Follow suit

“Under clean-energy scenarios, oil majors become rather less blue-chip to lend to than those engaged in the technologies of the future – for example renewable energy, electric cars and insulation,” he argued.

“In these sectors, there are big opportunities with one estimate putting the investment needed to transition to a lower carbon economy at $1,000bn each year for the foreseeable future.

“This figure is not something dreamed up by an idealistically green organisation – it comes from the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, chaired by Michael Bloomberg.”

Some banks are showing there’s an alternative to doing business without fouling up the planet. Triodos don’t lend to companies that make more than 5 percent of their revenue from extracting, producing, selling or generating electricity from oil, gas or coal while 23 percent of its loans support renewable energy projects.

Maybe with enough pressure from the majority of the public that think it’s immoral to profit from climate change the high street banks will follow suit.

This Author:

Joe Ware is a journalist and writer at Christian Aid. He is on twitter @wareisjoe. To join the Big Shift campaign and write to the CEOs of the big four banks, visit the website. You can also view the spoof bank TV ad that Christian Aid has produced.

How do you engage the next generation in a conversation about environmental issues that is becoming increasingly urgent? A story about a recognisable feature of their world is a good place to start. This is why the Lorax’s rallying call of “I speak for the trees!” is something children can immediately see as relevant. And this is the heart of this entertaining and heart-warming children’s musical.

Adapted from Dr Seuss’s original book by award-winning playwright David Greig, and with music and lyrics by former Noah and the Whale frontman Charlie Fink, the Old Vic’s The Lorax takes Dr Seuss’s prescient story for children and creates energetic, visually exciting and beautifully produced theatre that has its young audience captivated from the start.

Animal and human inhabitants

Starring the irrepressible, moustachioed Lorax (ingeniously manipulated by three puppeteers) whose commitment to the beautiful environment where he lives is pitted against the Once-ler’s desire to impress his family, contrivingfame and fortune via the destruction of the same treesthat the Lorax seeks to protect.

Simon Paisley Day’s axe-wielding Once-ler is by turn laconic, naïve and dastardly, a good match for the lovable, quirky Lorax, voiced and animated by David Ricardo-Pearce, assisted by puppeteers Laura Caldow and Ben Thompson, and completely convincing in its characterisation.

Keeping to Seuss’s rhyming text, the ingenious play on words to amuse both children and their accompanying adults alike even has a few contemporary references (Trump, anyone?) cunningly thrown in.

Beautifully designed by Rob Howell, the imaginative staging of the show with its instantly recognisable, Seuss-referenced sets, complements the talents of the cast and musicians, with lots of exuberant, imaginative choreography and songs that range from ballad to jazz.

At its heart, this is something of a dark tale of corporategreed and the production of a worthless item which sapsthe natural resources of a paradise of clean air and fresh water, until the toxicity of the spoiled environment begins to show an impact on both its animal and human inhabitants.

A whole awful lot

At its heart, too, this rollicking family showalso has a message of hope. We can all be Loraxes; we can all “speak for the trees” and stand against the destruction of our planet.

In an excellent feature written for the show’s programme, Leo Hickman (editor of CarbonBrief) writes, “Dr Seuss absorbed all the key environmental talking points of the day […] and joyously found a way to construct for his readers a beguiling, insightful mirror on our world and its ways.

He even found a way to gently chide the often preaching manner of the environmentalists when the Once-ler describes the Lorax as ‘sharpish and bossy’. There are lessons for us all on every page.”

The theatre is also actively embracing some of these lessons, by issuing e-tickets and encouraging ticketholders not to print them off, but let front-of-house staff scan their phones instead.

This is in an effort to become 90% paperless by the theatre’s 200th birthday in May 2018 and, along with a number of other measures including using a completely sustainable energy supplier, Good Energy, recycling all paper, glass, plastic and other items, using VegWare for any take-away items in the all-day café, providing programmes in pdf format and advising audiences on public transport, the theatre is making a concerted effort to become more green.

Straightforward message

An effort that is embodied in the Lorax’s key message:”Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot/Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
It’s good to see a public venue make this wholehearted commitment to a green agenda and, during the play’s run, renowned ethologist and conservationist Dr Jane Goodall also gave a live audience at the theatre, discussing her global youth programme Roots & Shoots.

Active in nearly 100 countries, Roots & Shoots is an education programme supporting children to implement practical, positive change for people, animals and the environment by providing teachers with free resources and activities.

I feel sure Seuss would have applauded all this. His children’s book, with its straightforward message delivered by the Lorax, was originally published in 1971, a year after the first Earth Day in April 1970 which had brought focus to an emerging global environmental movement that saw the formation of organisations like Greenpeace, the National Resources Defense Counciland the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Very much a product of its time at the beginning of the 1970s, some 20 years later Seuss said about the book that it “…came out of me being angry. In The Lorax I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.” The only alarm is that, 40 years later, we have even more reason to address these issues not less.

So the chips must continually be made to fall and, having been revived for this short run in London, this production of Dr Seuss’s The Lorax will be travelling to Toronto for a Christmas run from December 9th, and then Minnesotain April 2018.

It will be delighting new audiences and, hopefully, continuing to spread the word that the beautiful and precious environment on which we all depend must be continually protected for future generations of children.

This Author

Harriet Griffey is cultural editor of The Ecologist.

Birds of prey in Britain face a bleak future unless urgent action is taken to stop shooting, poisoning and trapping, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

The RSPB today published its latest report, Birdcrime 2016, which found that there were 81 cases of persecution in 2016 alone. This included 40 shootings, 22 poisonings, 15 trappings and four other incidents.

Hen harriers, peregrine falcons, red kites and buzzards were among the victims. The charity suggests these figures are just the tip of the iceberg with many illegal killings going undetected or unreported.

Prosecutions arising

The report also revealed close to two-thirds (53) of the confirmed incidents took place in England, with particular concern for raptors in North Yorkshire.

Over the last five years the county recorded the highest number of confirmed bird of prey persecution incidents in the UK, with 54 incidents since 2012 and 19 last year alone.

The problem wasn’t confined to England, with the report highlighting confirmed case in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, where there is growing concern over the repeated suspicious disappearance of satellite tagged birds of prey.

This year, a study by Scottish Government examined the fate of 131 golden eagles fitted with satellite tags between 2004-16 concluding that ‘as many as 41 (one third) disappeared, presumably died, under suspicious circumstances connected with records of illegal persecution.’

Increasingly, people in the UK are being robbed of the chance to see these spectacular birds because of these illegal incidents, yet in 2016, there wasn’t a single prosecution arising from a confirmed incident, the first time this has happened in 30 years.

Compelling evidence

Martin Harper, RSPB Conservation Director, said: “Birds of prey bring our skies to life. There is nothing like seeing a diving peregrine or a skydancing hen harrier.

“The sights of these spectacular birds are something we should all be able to enjoy, unfortunately illegal activity is stopping this and preventing the birds from flourishing.

“There are laws in place to protect these birds but they are clearly not being put into action. We need governments across the UK to do more to tackle illegal killing to protect our raptors for future generations to enjoy.”

Previous research has shown that illegal killing of birds of prey is associated with land managed for intensive driven grouse shooting, leaving vast areas of our uplands without raptors.

A Natural England study revealed ‘compelling evidence’ that persecution of hen harriers – associated with driven grouse moors – was the main factor limiting their recovery in England.

Environmental costs

The RSPB believes the introduction of a licensing system for driven grouse shooting would help tackle the ongoing illegal persecution that occurs on these grouse moors.

This would also help tackle the wider problems of intensive management of ‘big bag’ driven grouse shooting, like the draining of and burning on fragile peat bogs.

A fair set of rules in the form of a licensing system could help ensure shoots are operating legally and sustainably and introduce the option of restricting or removing a licence in response to the most serious offences, for example where staff on an estate have been convicted of illegally killing birds of prey.

The RSPB welcomes a recent announcement by Scottish Government that will see an independent panel established to review options for regulation of grouse shooting and to look at the economic and environmental costs and benefits of the industry.

Bob Elliot, RSPB Head of Investigations, said: “This latest Birdcrime report continues to highlight that in the UK we have a major issue with birds of prey being deliberately and illegally killed, despite having full legal protection.

“This type of crime has serious consequences for the populations of species, such as the hen harrier, and we must see a change in attitude and more effective law enforcement to protect these birds for years to come.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. For the full copy of Birdcrime 2016 report summarising the extent of illegal persecution offences against birds of prey in the UK, visit the RSPB website.

When we think about the impacts of climate change it’s often melting glaciers, stranded polar bears or tropical hurricanes that most readily spring to mind.

But a new study published today in The Lancet medical journal suggests that global warming is fundamentally a health crisis on a global scale. The findings are stark.

Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people exposed to heatwave events has increased by approximately 125 million.

Need to migrate

Undernutrition is identified as the largest health impact of climate change in the 21st century. Related impacts of climate change on crop production referenced in the report include a 6 percent decline in global wheat yields and 10 percent fall in rice yields for each additional 1 °C rise in global temperature.

A 9.4 percent increase in the vectorial capacity for the transmission of Dengue due to climate trends since 1990. With 50 to 100 million infections of Dengue estimated to occur each year, this will exacerbate the spread of the world’s most rapidly expanding disease.

– The world has seen a 46 percent global increase in weather related disasters since 2000. This contributed to $129 US billion of economic losses caused by climate related events in 2016 alone. 99% of losses in low-income countries are currently uninsured.

– More than one billion people globally will be faced with a need to migrate within ninety years, due to a rise in sea level caused by ice shelf collapse, unless necessary action is taken.

This report is no half-baked effort from a campaign group: 26 major institutions contributed including the likes of the World Bank, World Health Organisation, University College London and Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

Warning signs

Professor Hugh Montgomery, co-chair of the report and Director of the Institute for Human Health and Performance at University College London, didn’t pull any punches in summarising the predicament.

He said: “We are only just beginning to feel the impacts of climate change. Any small amount of resilience we may take for granted today will be stretched to breaking point sooner than we may imagine.”

It’s particularly cruel that most of these impacts are being felt first and worst in the developing countries that did the least to create this health horror show, and why it’s so shameful that the Daily Express, among others, is calling for the mere 0.7 percent of our national income we spend on international aid be clawed back.

As the first nation in the world to industrialise, Britain should be proud to lead the way in helping those suffering from the health impacts of climate change.

These finds should be a wakeup call to politicians meeting in Bonn, Germany, next week for this year’s UN climate summit, but the report highlights some signs that we may already be starting to heed the warning signs.

Health opportunity

The study authors write: “Although progress has been historically slow, there is evidence of a recent turning point, with transitions in sectors that are crucial to public health reorienting towards a low-carbon world.”

Global coal consumption appears to have peaked in 2013 and is now declining. This coincides with the increasing decarbonisation of national electricity systems.

We’ve also reached an important crossover with global employment in renewable energy at 9·8 million people last year, compared to jobs in fossil fuel extraction trending downwards to 8·6 million.

The rapid growth of electric vehicles will also lead to drastic improvements in urban air quality. The report also reveals that there has been an uptick of 78 percent in global newspaper coverage of the health impacts of climate change since 2007, and scientific studies on the subject have tripled over the same period. It would make sense that this public awareness would only increase as the impacts become more obvious.

While climate change may be our greatest health challenge, the report authors point out that it is also our greatest global health opportunity.

Professor Anthony Costello, report co-chair and a Director at the World Health Organization said: “The outlook is challenging, but we still have an opportunity to turn a looming medical emergency into the most significant advance for public health this century.”

Christiana Figueres, the UN’s former climate chief who helped coordinate the Paris Agreement said political leaders meeting in Bonn next week needed to follow doctors’ orders: “When a doctor tells us we need to take better care of our health we pay attention and it’s important that governments do the same.”

This Author

Joe Ware is a journalist and writer at Christian Aid and a New Voices contributor to The Ecologist. He is on twitter at @wareisjoe.

In recent times, as awareness of the threats posed by CO2-driven climate change has increased, I have focused my attention on considering the possibility that trees, especially when successfully growing on impoverished soils with little agricultural potential, may provide an important ‘sink’ for the carbon released by human activities. I see such tree planting activities as providing WIN WIN WIN opportunites. 

The first WIN obviously involves CO2 capture, and hence contribution to the UK’s commitment under the Paris Climate Change Agreement to reduce CO2 emmissions.

The second WIN, arising from the conversion of unproductive moorland soils to productive forests involves the provision of an economically valuable product which can reduce our dependence upon timber imports while serving as a significant source of employment in rural areas. 

Simulated conditions

The third and no less significant WIN concerns environmental diversification. The UK has the lowest proportion of forest cover in the whole of Europe – currently at around 12 percent.

As they mature, these forests provide diverse environments that can serve as  health-giving playgrounds for human recreation.

I like to cite the example of England’s largest National Forest, Park-Kielder in Northumberland. This covers an area of over 250 square miles – 90 percent of which consists of coniferous trees. 

These are the homes of red squirrels, various deer species, and ospreys-amongst much other wildlife. The Park hosts over 300,000 visitors a year. 

With others in the University of Sheffield, I obtained significant Reasearch Council funding for the construction of a facility, the Sir David Read Controlled Environment Laboratories, in which trees and agricultural crop plants can be grown under simulated conditions of atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment. 

Re-greening our future

This facility provides us with the unique capability both to predict impacts of future atmospheric CO2 scenarios and to select species which promise to be most adaptable to the evolving environments. 

It is currently in use to investigate the responses of tropical as well as temperate tree and food-crop species to grow under elevated CO2 (and temperature) environments.

I am passionate about the need to confront the emerging CO2-driven scenarios. And I am glad to have lived a long and happy life with the chance to have added to atmospheric carbon enrichment. 

I feel a sense of duty, for the sake of future generations, to contribute to and encourage, if only in a modest way, activities that can reduce the threatened impacts.

For this reason I am delighted to be joining the panel at The Tree Conference in Glastonbury on Saturday 4th November, where leading tree scientists, tree and reforestation project leaders and artists, will come together to share their research, practical projects and visions for re-greening our future.

The panel and talks at the event will also be available to watch via Livestream on the day, so people can tune in from around the world. 

This Author

Professor Sir David Read is the lead author of the Forestry Commission’s report Combating Climate Change: A Role for UK Trees. He is Emeritus Professor of Plant Science in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at University of Sheffield. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was formerly its Vice President and Biological Secretary until 2008.

The pharmaceutical industry is often touted as the most profitable industry in the world. A common defence for expensive drugs is that pharmaceutical companies need to recoup their research and development (R&D) costs.

But in fact, marketing costs often outstrip R&D costs, and as recent research shows, the top pharmaceutical firms spend more on share buy-backs and dividends than on R&D.

The companies’ claim is further undermined this week by a new report by Global Justice Now and STOPAIDS which argues that the public purse is a major contributor of health R&D.

Denied access

In particular, treatments for multiple sclerosis, prostate cancer and rheumatoid arthritis are among drugs that have had significant contributions to their R&D from public money, but are now costing the NHS vast sums of money.

Public money into R&D should lead to positive outcomes for public health rather than lining the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies.

Instead, we are seeing a big rip-off taking place. Last year the NHS spent more than £1 billion on drugs that were discovered with significant public funding.

But rather than ensuring they are publicly available for all patients who need them, these drugs have been priced to maximise drug company profits.

Two of the top five most costly medicines for the NHS have received substantial public research funding. As pharmaceutical companies reap the profits, the people who need the treatments are denied access.

Too expensive

This is a classic case of socialising the risks but privatising the rewards. The public pay twice – first for the research and then in high prices and some would say they pay a third time as patients suffer needlessly.

Innovative discoveries based on public funding are often bought up by drug companies who then sell the drugs produced back to the NHS at extortionate prices. Take the drug abiraterone (brand name: Zytiga), a treatment for advanced prostate cancer (where the cancer has spread to other parts of the body) and where other hormone treatments have not worked.

The drug has the potential to help some men to live longer and can also help control symptoms.

Abiraterone was discovered at the Institute of Cancer, part of the University of London, and tested in clinical trials with the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Through a number of acquisitions, the drug was bought up by Janssen, which is part of Johnson and Johnson. But the drug was initially marketed at a price that was deemed too expensive for the NHS.

Government action

In the five years of negotiations, spanning two reviews, and following pressure from patient groups and the Department of Health, the drug was finally approved for NHS use only after the price was dropped to just below the limit of acceptable cost.

During the period of the second review, 5,900 people could have benefited from the drug. Eligible patients had to take their chances of getting the drug through the NHS’s Cancer Drugs Fund, which rationed its use. For those untreated patients, abiraterone could have been a life-saver – a recent trial showed a 37% improvement in survival rate three years after treatment.

Even today, the NHS now spends £98 per day per patient on the drug, despite an estimated cost of production of £11 per day.

It is far beyond time for public investment in medicines to yield public returns, with health outcomes and patient access prioritised over profits.

We need to attach conditions to taxpayer funded research and development  to ensure that drugs produced as a result are both affordable and accessible.  This needs government action – as NHS England has this week suggested, in response to our report.

String of controversies

There also need to be stronger measures to ensure transparency around the contribution of public money to the development of drugs. In the long run, a radical overhaul of the whole R&D model is needed.

This has been recognised internationally, at the UN. But without urgent action now, the cost to the cash-strapped NHS will be unsustainable. And the even bigger human cost, where people can’t get hold of much-needed treatment, will only grow.

The industry has been marred by a string of controversies, from suing the South African government for importing non-branded life-saving medicines during the height of the AIDS pandemic, to charging extortionately high prices for a drug that could cure hepatitis C. The inflated price of drugs should be the next. 

This Author

Heidi Chow is senior campaigns officer at Global Justice Now, which is hosting a Sick Of Corporate Greed speaker tour from 31 October to 9 November 2017.

What does it take to create a conversation about the environment? Sometimes, as poet Jackie Kay said at the recent FlipSide Festival in Suffolk, it requires the space for it.

And this was clearly demonstrated by the Green Alphabet Writing Prize (GAWP) the results of which were announced during the event.

Flipside is East Anglia’s leading literary and arts festival with a Latin Beat, being the sister festival – literally the flipside – to FLIP (the Festa Literaria Internacional de Paraty) South America’s first and largest international literary festival.

Everything interacts

This year, FlipSide debuted its unique, environmentally themed writing competition, in association with Friends of the Earth, attracting entries from all over the world.

Writers were asked to submit, fiction, non-fiction or poetry with a green theme – and to take one letter of the alphabet as their starting point. 

“The more threatened we are, the more creatively we respond,” said poet Jackie Kay at Flipside where, at an event entitled Singing From the Page, she both launched her new poetry collection Bantam and announced the results of the GAWP competition, for which she was one of the judges alongside Blake Morrison and Jon Canter.  

“It feels like art finds a way to value the world,” Kay said, in conversation with me after the event. “We can’t forget how deeply and dearly we love our planet and everything in it, and art shows us a way of treasuring our planet.

“It articulates for us, if you like; it is the earth’s voice speaking. Art is the landscape speaking, it’s the roar of the sea, it’s the sky, it’s the planet, it’s the moon. It’s how everything interacts and moves around each other.  

Future generation

“The very fact that people write poems, create pieces of music, write literature, means that they have to have some sort of hope – hope, for a start, that someone else will be receiving it, this gift, in some way or another – and the fact that there is this open conversation between a writer and a reader is cause for hope.

“If we didn’t have that there would be cause for concern, because the minute our voices are silenced, the minute we can’t speak about something, however difficult it is, the minute we can’t speak – that becomes a real problem.”

Announcing the winners, Kay said that in looking for solace, in trying to find meaning and make sense of the senseless, then poetry – for example – “… holds out a helping hand…”. 

“The competition was extraordinarily valuable in contributing to this conversation,’ said Kay. ‘We got such amazing, different responses and different ways of looking at the environment, ways of caring for it – it was really inspiring.

“And particularly the children’s contributions, because they seem to instinctively care about the planet, they don’t need necessarily to be taught to care, they know the value of things and it’s exciting to me that we have a future generation of children that are passionate about looking after our world.”

Planting seeds

In the under-16s category, winner Dhylan Patel imagined what it would be like if the only animals we could see were dead, stuffed and exhibited in a museum, in his poem The X Animal Museum, extracted below:

This one’s an X polar bear,

But its nose is made of coal,

Its white fur is polyester,

And not from the North pole.

We couldn’t get the originals,

Because we made them flee

When we melted their icy world,

And dumped it out to sea.

“So if we look to the future we look to those children who wrote for the competition,” concluded Kay. “We look to what they want to survive of our world and what would be awful if we lost it.

“Dhylan’s poem was a frightening vision of what it would be like if all the animals were gone and there was just an animal museum and because he conceived of this, the horror of it, the horror of losing things and of species becoming extinct, and because children are asking these very deep questions, then that’s cause for hope, too.”

Grace Blackwood’s poem S for Survival – which came first in the over-16s category – explored what small steps are necessary to create a larger survival through the metaphor of planting seeds in your own pocket, extract below:

Line your pockets with soil (trouser turn-ups are an option, if you have them)… Soon the seeds will split and spindly yellow-green shoots will yearn up towards the slit of sky at the top of your pocket/turn-up. Keep frets at bay by cultivating a positive hum inside your body. Walk carefully, keeping your arms at, but not on, your sides. If conditions are right, a verdant fringe will eventually appear at the top of your pockets/turn ups. Act casual. Prepare to become a laughing stock, both for your appearance and ambition.

Another festival

All art is political insofar as it engages with society in some way, either being influenced by or influencing it. Protest art in particular, but often in small, quiet but meaningful ways, through the literary expression of hopes and fears.

“Art has something to say about the world we live in,” concludes Jackie Kay. “What resonates is the way it’s said, which allows the space for everyone to join the conversation.”

The competition hopes to be repeated and winning entries are to be considered for a future anthology. Full details about GAWP and this year’s winning entries is available here.

The FlipSide Festival has another festival, specifically for children, running over half term on 24^th, 25^th and 26^th of October. Further details available here.

Jackie Kay’s new collection of poetry Bantam is published by Picador, priced £14.99 in hardback and £9.99 in paperback.

This Author

Harriet Griffey is cultural editor of The Ecologist.

Watching The Wildlife Trusts’ president Sir David Attenborough enthuse about the wonders of our Blue Planet for the new BBC series; we were given tantalising glimpses of an amazing underwater world.

These wonders are not limited to tropical islands or the cold arctic though. Our seas around the UK coast are worth boasting about too. 

There’s a breath-taking world below our waves, where pink sea fans stretch out their tentacles to snatch food passing by; jewel anemones in pinks and orange light up reefs, and shape shifting cuttlefish change colour to escape predators.

Unsustainable development

I’ve been passionate about our seas and have been campaigning to protect them for the last 30 years; whether it’s kayaking the coastline, whale watching off a headline, or diving deep, there are blue planet moments to thrill and mesmerise, right here.

Although we don’t often see what’s living below the surface of the sea, we do know what it provides for us. A vital resource for wildlife, marine industries and leisure.

Whilst there is much to celebrate, our seas all over the world are seriously under threat from over fishing, waters becoming more acidic, pollution and unsustainable development.

We are witnessing unprecedented pressures on UK seas and their fragile seagrass meadows, reefs and mud plains on which fish, dolphins and whales depend.

Plastic is in the marine food-chain and is now affecting humans too.  Seabird numbers are dropping due to lack of food. More dolphins are being caught in fishing nets than ever and sea bass stocks have declined by 50% in five years.

Fish stocks

The natural balance of our seas is at an all-time low and we need a brand-new strategy for the new era that we’re entering which tackles all these threats together – simultaneously.

That’s why today The Wildlife Trusts has launched a new report which sets a challenge to the government to bring back living seas, and shows a way forward.

There are unprecedented challenges for our seas which must be addressed before the UK leaves the European Union.  

Government’s first responsibility is to ensure that we bring across existing European regulations which provide protective measures for our seas and sea-life – we need to safeguard existing protective law, as promised in the Withdrawal Bill.

We need more, and a greater range of protected wild places at sea to ensure our marine life thrives. After the significant reform of the Common Fisheries Policy we have begun to see some of our fish stocks recover.

Killing wildlife

But there are still significant discard issues. We need to make sure that this process is continued which will benefit jobs, consumers and wildlife

Marine planning needs to be more coherent. Competing interests – fishing, oil rigs, wind farms and gravel extraction from the seabed all take a huge toll on UK seas, fragile seabed habitats and the wildlife that lives in them.

We need to plan our seas so that we have space for wildlife to recover and to provide certainty to industry for areas where they can develop and fish. 

We urgently need to reduce pollution. Sewage, farming chemicals, plastic litter washed out to sea, abandoned fishing nets and noise pollution from new developments off shore are killing wildlife and adversely affecting human health

A holistic approach with regional sea plans would tackle many of these issues.

Living seas

Working together is supported by Peter Barham, Chair, Seabed Users Development group. He says: “Marine industries are essential to meet the challenges of Blue Growth and UK climate change targets.

“Marine industry is also quite rightly highly regulated to make sure that developments have minimal impact on the environment.

“We are working with The Wildlife Trusts and decision-making authorities to examine potential impacts and using that information to look for better ways of working. In this way we can meet the needs of both the economy and the environment.”

Finally, we’re asking everyone that we all consider our impact on this amazing blue planet. Everyone can play their part in creating living seas, seas which can sustain and delight us for generations to come.

This Author

Joan Edwards is The Wildlife Trusts’ Director of Living Seas. The new report by The Wildlife Trusts, ‘The way back to Living Seas’, is published today, Wednesday 25th October, and will be presented to the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Dr Thérèse Coffey MP.

Projects worldwide demonstrating environmental and social regeneration can apply for the Lush Spring Prize, awarded by Lush cosmetics and the Ethical Consumer Research Association.

The prize celebrates projects that increase the capacity of communities and societies to thrive in harmony with nature and each other, build health and resilient ecosystems and livelihoods.

Last year’s winners included a permaculture project in Zimbabwe, a regeneration project involving migrants in Granada, an organisation set up to monitor mining in Romania and a group lobbying in favour of small scale agro-ecological farmers around the world.

The 2018 Spring Prize will award prizes in the following categories: Intentional projects (£10,000) for four great ideas in the early stages; Young projects (£20,000) for three projects 1-5 years old seeking to grow; Established projects (£25,000) for two beacons demonstrating success and withstanding the test of time; and the Influence award (£25,000) for two campaigns influencing policy or public opinion in support of regeneration.

Judges include Andy Goldring, chief executive of the Permaculture Association, Filipa Pimental from the Transition Network and Pandora Thomas, founder of the Black Permaculture Network.

For more information on how to enter, click here. Entries must be received by 23.59 GMT on 10 December 2017. Prizes will be awarded in May. Videos showcasing last years’ winners can be viewed here.

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