Bialowieza Forest is Poland’s only natural UNESCO world heritage site – a Natura 2000 protected area and a rare remnant of the primeval forest that used to stretch across the European Plain.

The Polish government’s claim that to protect the forest, it must cut it down infuriates scientists, NGOs and the European Commission alike. The latter told the Polish government on April 27 that it had a last 30 days to call a halt to the logging or face prosecution for breaching EU conservation regulations. And whilst that deadline has now expired, Poland’s environment ministry, led by Jan Szyszko, has shown no sign of backing down.

Piotr Barczak from the European Environmental Bureau says: “The Commission’s ultimatum has just been breached by the Polish government. Axes are still chopping down trees in Bialowieza and the public is still being manipulated. Environmental law infringement is clear. Bialowieza is not a commercial plantation and will never be.”

Bialowieza Forest is home to giant spruce trees, oaks and ash trees, and more than 20,000 animal species. The most famous of these is the European bison. The forest stretches over parts of Poland and Belarus.

Since Polish Environment Minister Jan Szyszko approved the proposal from State Forests Service to expand the planned logging areas in the Bialowieza forest district, the forest in now threatened by irreversible degradation of natural habitats.

In the new 10-year plan, the logging volume tripled to 188,000 m³. This is supposed to ‘protect’ the remaining forest from spruce bark beetles that threaten spruce trees and protect tourists and rangers from falling dead trees. However, these justifications are heavily criticized by scientists and Environmental Justice Organisations (EJOs) who claim instead that the spruce bark beetle outbreak is a natural process that occurs in periods of 8-10 years.

The on the ground reality suggests that the Polish government has other motivations. Almost half of the trees marked for logging are not even trees of those species affected by the spruce bark beetle. Commercial interests are the real reason. The State Forests Service is now required to be financially self-sufficient, and selling logged wood generates profits.

The State Council for Nature Conservation in Poland and a large part of the public is against the new logging plans, with protests in larger Polish cities and on logging locations ongoing.

Seven Environmental Justice Organisations together with ClientEarth have lodged a complaint against the plans to the EU commission, asking it to intervene.

According to the lodged complaint, the logging plans go against several EU directives. For example, the approval of the environment minister was given despite not having carried out an assessment to determine whether the increased logging would have an adverse effect on the integrity of the Natura 2000 site.

The EJOs want the EU Commission to quickly intervene to halt the irreversible loss that would be caused by intense logging and to ensure the protection of the Bialowieza Forest in compliance with the Habitats Directive. Both the European Commission and UNESCO have since then strongly advised the Polish government against continuing with the expanded logging project.

Protests against the logging have been aired by Professor Mikael Marder in Al Jazeera and Arthur Neslen in The Guardian. The conflict is now likely to move to many places at the same time: the European court, the streets, a petition, in media and, not least, in the forests themselves.

Maps, images and more detail on this conflict can be found in the Atlas of Environmental Justice.

This Author 

Nick Meynen works at the EnvJustice project in the European Environment Bureau but he is also a freelance journalist, a regular contributor to the Ecologist and an author. Additional contributions to this article were made by Joel Tillgren, Philipp Kuhn and Emma Brodén from Lund University

The whole of the Paris Agreement is based upon goodwill: There are no punitive actions or means to enforce the agreement.

That goodwill also includes the Green Climate Fund for transferring money from rich countries to developing countries for building resilience, mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change.

The U.S. has pledged US$3 billion and has delivered $1 billion but seems unlikely to add to that. That alone undermines a lot of the goodwill. And it will be a major sore point in all small island-states and developing countries that have not caused the problem of global warming.

The U.S. leadership was essential in Paris. If the U.S. does not lead by example – and we have a moral and ethical responsibility to do so as the country that has contributed more than any other to accumulated greenhouse gas emissions so far – then why should anyone else go along?

Unless there is a universal carbon tax, fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest form of energy. That’s not true, of course, because of all the downstream effects on air quality and climate change.

So now what we are likely to face is either some form of trade wars in which heavy tariffs are used against the U.S. and other renegades, or the whole thing collapses and we all spiral into a race to the bottom, to see who can exploit and thus destroy the planet first.

Yes, other things are moving in positive directions, such as more use of renewable energy, but not yet fast enough: Ask India what it will do if it does not get technology transfer and help.

The U.S. cannot opt out without major other consequences, including those to the planet. Without the U.S. and Paris, we crash through the critical 2 degrees Celsius threshold before 2060 – the point at which climate scientists like me consider the most dangerous effects from climate change will become strongly evident – perhaps a decade earlier owing to U.S. pullout.

And this means increasing trouble with ecosystems being out of whack with the climate, trouble farming current crops, and increasing shortages of food and water.

But if Paris is fully implemented and feeds back on itself to a new energy economy, we can delay 2 degrees C by 40 years, maybe.

I believe that we will go through 2 degrees C by 2100 regardless. But with more time, we can adapt so much better. It will be bad enough under the best scenarios, but this could be bringing doomsday forward by 50 years (or more).

*Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research

Paris withdrawal puts American businesses last

If ever there was a decision contrary to our country’s business and economic interests – never mind our global standing and the impact on the poor countries most vulnerable to climate change – this may be it.

Corporate America already knows this. That’s why a cross-section of leading companies, including industrial powerhouses like General Electric and 3M, urged the president to stay in the plan, which would allow the U.S. a greater say in how the agreement evolves.

Even oil companies like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips have expressed support.

That’s in part because American companies have been leaders in developing clean energy, which has given U.S. manufacturing a competitive advantage in a sector that will only grow in importance. Withdrawal from Paris undermines this.

Besides ignoring the pleas of U.S. CEOs, Trump also rejected the advice of his secretary of state and the wishes of the 195 signatory countries, including American allies such as Germany and France, who pressed hard during the recent G-7 meeting to persuade Trump to stay in. They even suggested that the U.S. might have some leeway to reduce rather than increase its efforts on CO2 reduction – the accord, after all, is voluntary. Rather, we’ve now thrown in our lot with Syria and Nicaragua, the only other countries that have rejected the accord.

It is not hard to imagine the hostility Trump showed our allies could adversely affect the outcome of bilateral trade talks with those countries, the kind Trump says he prefers over multilateral deals. In a full-page Wall Street Journal ad, 30 CEOs argued that “there is strong potential for negative trade implications if the United States exits from the Paris Agreement.”

If this is the way of putting American interests first, then look for the sun to rise in the West tomorrow morning.

*Marina v. N. Whitman, Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy, University of Michigan

Pulling out of Paris will harm the poor in the US and abroad

Details on precisely what President Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris accord on climate change means and how this decision will be implemented are lacking, but it was already clear that the United States had little intention of meeting its emissions goals.

The proposed dismantling of the Clean Power Plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants would essentially ensure that outcome. But pulling out of Paris also means the U.S. will refuse to make any additional contributions to the U.N. Green Climate Fund.

The fact that the world’s largest economy and the largest per capita emitter will decline to take on policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions and simultaneously refuse to contribute to a fund largely devoted to adaptation measures in the world’s poor countries is dangerous and unprecedented.

The impacts of climate change are not hypotheticals to be worried about far in the future. The last several IPCC reports – the international scientific assessments on climate change done through the U.N. – have made it abundantly clear that impacts are happening now. And even more recent science has shown that the probabilities of even individual extreme weather events (e.g., heat waves) can be attributed to climate change.

The international and domestic U.S. scientific assessments have concluded that climate impacts are disproportionately felt by poor populations both among and within countries – including our own. But such impacts significantly hamper poor countries, which tend to be very dependent on their agricultural sectors, have larger proportions of poor people and typically do not have resources available for recovery from climate-driven damages.

The desires in the developing world to improve quality of life in a sustainable way will not go away. Programs such as the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are evidence of a deep commitment to those improvements. But with the U.S. decision to abandon the Paris accords, delivering on those commitments just got significantly more difficult.

 *Anthony Janetos, Director, Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Professor of Earth and Environment, Boston University

How American farmers will be hurt

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement fails farmers, one of the major constituencies that helped him win the White House.

Arguably, U.S. farmers are the most capable of developing systems to both reduce and remove greenhouse gas emissions. But the Trump administration is ignoring our nation’s farmers as a strategic national asset in the global fight against climate change.

For nearly a century, U.S. agriculture has been the uncontested leader in agricultural innovation. Farmers have had three important sources of support that helped them create the green revolution, which allowed production to keep up with global population growth. These include public research and education from land grant universities; private industry; and public policy, especially the federal farm bill but also state-level policies.

While there are still production challenges, the bigger challenges facing humanity are not increasing yields but maintaining productivity in the face of an increasingly hostile climate and a need to stabilize the climate before it deteriorates further.

Farmers all over the world must innovate to develop environmental services focused on greenhouse gas emissions and sinks. Unfortunately, the general attitude of U.S. farmers prevents them from embracing this new and emerging challenge. Many of them share President Trump’s skepticism about climate change.

Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement is focused on energy policy and doesn’t consider American farmers. Yet agriculture is emerging as one of the most promising players in addressing climate change by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere in the soil. One can argue China, Europe, Australia and possibly even Brazil will start investing in agricultural innovation similar to the way China and Europe are investing in renewable energy.

For the last 100 years, American farmers, their elected officials, industries that serve them and great innovators like George Washington Carver, Henry Wallace and Norman Borlaug have led the world in developing agricultural solutions to big problems. The next big problem is climate change.

American farmers can be at the vanguard of finding agricultural solutions to sequestering carbon. But by abandoning the Paris Agreement, President Trump has shown that he is not going to help American farmers work on these solutions and, thus, reap the benefits.

American farmers could still do it, but the President just made it much more difficult for them to do so and much more likely that farmers in another part of the world will lead the next agricultural revolution.

* Matthew Russell, Resilient Agriculture Coordinator, Drake University

Pulling out of the Paris Agreement is unconscionable

Like many, I have worried ever since the 2016 election that this day would come – that Donald Trump would formally announce his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

As an ethicist, I have been occupied by a very particular question, which is whether withdrawing from the agreement, itself, matters morally.

Some have suggested that the policies to lower emissions matter, not the agreement to enact such policies. If Trump has no intention of holding up America’s end of the deal, then does the actual withdrawal from the agreement make a difference?

I think that it might, because staying in the agreement and going through the motions (but failing) means something fundamentally different from formally withdrawing.

Presumably, many countries will fail in their climate obligations at one time or another. Other parties to the agreement will have the opportunity to admonish them for this failure, and to work together to form a new plan that is more likely to succeed.

But, announcing America’s intention to withdraw from the agreement sends a clear message to the rest of the world that the second-highest emitting nation has no intention of doing its part to save the world’s most vulnerable people from impending harm. Indeed: The U.S. government takes the problem so unseriously, and values the lives of those at risk so little, that it will try desperately to undermine the already far-too-modest climate actions that the Obama administration set in motion.

The game-theoretic puzzle here is a common feature of collective action problems: Abandoning an agreement (or “defecting”) changes the rational deliberation of other parties to the agreement. It may be rational for some nations to sacrifice for the greater good when they believe that everyone will do likewise. But, is it still rational when one of the major players – one who has gained most from causing the problem, and will pay least as the problem becomes more serious – announces his intention to defect?

My hope is that every other party to the Paris Agreement will believe that the answer is yes, and that they will count on us, the American people, to right this wrong as soon as we can. But my most desperate fear is that this announcement will confirm the world’s suspicion that America cannot be trusted to do its part, and that this will make it harder for them to justify making any sacrifice at all.

This sort of scenario will not likely mean the end of the Paris Agreement, but it could weaken it considerably, as other nations’ leaders become less willing to make sacrifices on the backs of their people.

In short: Trump’s actions today may further slow our already-too-modest climate action and threaten the health and lives of the most vulnerable. This would be a serious injustice, and its commission by our elected leader is unconscionable.

* Travis N. Rieder, Research Scholar at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University

These articles are shared with the Ecologist by The Conversation US (www.theconversation.com)

At a time when costs in the renewable energy sector are falling significantly and clean tech employment is reaching record levels,  President Trump’s decision to withdraw fromthe Paris Agreement ignores the very significant shifts occurring in the global energy system.

Combined with other key economies’ desire (notably the EU and China) to accelerate rather than to stop these trends, politically the US will find itself in growing isolation, and face accusations of scientific ignorance and moral irresponsibility. 

Fortunately for the US and the world at large, American businesses, communities, cities and states are already miles ahead in their assessment and responses to the threats posed by climate change.

Just days after even the shareholders of the world’s largest public oil company ExxonMobil voted in favour of the fossil fuel giant analysing and disclosing the risks it faces due to climate change, so other companies are increasingly integrating proactive responses to climate change in their strategies by setting ambitious science-based carbon reduction targets and aiming to source their electricity almost exclusively from renewable sources.

Put simply, the commercial and economic opportunities are already changing America’s competitive landscape such that this withdrawal will be largely seen as an unwelcome irritation, rather than a wholesale shift in the political economy.

Still, the challenges of a global transition towards a low-carbon economy remain sizeable. American businesses and non-governmental stakeholders should therefore engage with their partners around the world to drive this process and truly live up to the President’s slogan.

*Frederik Dahlmann is Assistant Professor of Global Energy, and researches the transition to a low-carbon economy at of Warwick Business School

Yesterday (31^st May, 2017) shareholders at ExxonMobil backed a resolution that requires the oil major to publish an annual assessment of the impact of climate policies on its business.

The resolution gained more than 24 percentage points of shareholder support over last year, bringing the combined votes in favour to 62.3% (from 38.1% in 2016).

This result suggests that all three of Exxon’s largest shareholders (Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street) backed the resolution this year.

The Wall Street Journal writes: “Vanguard Group and BlackRock Inc., Exxon’s two largest shareholders, supported the measure, people familiar with the votes said.” The Washington Post reports the same and also cites voices indicating that State Street supported the resolution.

Last year BlackRock and Vanguard had voted against the resolution. To date, none of the three asset managers have officially confirmed how they voted.

The resolution was co-filed by Church Commissioners for England and New York State Common Retirement Fund and had over 90 investors pre-declaring support.

At yesterday’s annual meeting, Edward Mason, Head of Responsible Investment at Church Commissioners for England, addressed the Exxon board: “Members of the board, do you leave your understanding of climate change at the door when you attend the ExxonMobil board meeting?”, he asked.

The result came just ahead of an announcement by the US president, indicating a decision on the Paris accord will be communicated today (1^st June, 2017) at 3:00 P.M. (presumably ET) at the White House Rose Garden.

Against this backdrop, the Exxon vote is an important signal. Politico write: “The Trump administration may be preparing to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate change accords, but shareholders at Exxon Mobil and at least one other U.S. oil company are demanding the companies incorporate the international deal in their business models.”

Raj Thamotheram, CEO and Founder of Preventable Surprises said: “Investors voting against management at Exxon is a powerful rebuke to the climate denialist policies of this White House. Markets are moving and Corporate America would be foolish to bet so much on the protection from this regime.”

The vote at Exxon may also be a precedent for shareholder activism at other corporations. “Exxon Mobil was one of the last hold-outs among major oil companies on the issue of climate change. Earlier in May, Occidental Petroleum shareholders also passed a similar motion in a vote at its annual meeting”, writes BBC news.

CNNMoney wrote ahead of the annual meeting that: “the Exxon vote is seen as ground zero for efforts to get fossil fuel companies to acknowledge the ground is shifting beneath them”. 

Sue Reid, Vice-President, Climate & Energy at Investor group Ceres said: “This historic majority vote sends a resounding message that market forces are continuing to drive toward low carbon transition, and investors expect companies – especially carbon-intensive companies like Exxon – to show how they are addressing the corresponding risks and opportunities. Business as usual is no longer an option for carbon-intensive companies like Exxon.”

This year, equivalent resolutions were put forward at a number of US Utilities and Oil companies. At all meetings, shareholder support for the 2°C scenario resolutions was substantial and at PPL, Occidental and Exxon a majority was won. In 2015, resolutions asking for climate action passed with resounding support at BP and Shell.

Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive of ShareAction, reminds us that passing resolutions alone is no guarantee for stringent action: “The passing of this resolution is excellent news, marking a step-change in investor sentiment for climate engagement.

“While we celebrate this vote, and others that we hope will follow from it, let’s not forget that the success of climate resolutions ultimately isn’t measured by voting numbers, but by the substantive changes they catalyse.

“The 2015 resolutions at BP and Shell passed with close to 99% support, yet both firms are still pursuing business strategies that take us towards a frightening 3 degrees of temperature growth. We must recognise this is just a first step towards the transformation required by the world’s oil majors to make them safe investments that earn a social licence to operate.”

*This briefing report was compiled by Remo Bebié of the Finance Dialogue.  Previous to his role at Finance Dialogue, Remo worked as a financial news editor with awp Finanznachrichten, a leading Swiss business news agency.

A sucker for a statistic, I was pretty horrified to learn that every year around 2.3 billion kilograms of Styrofoam ends up in landfill and worse still, our waterways.

You’re probably most familiar with the Styrofoam cup, a pretty outdated way of transporting an Americano, or some equally fancy-named coffee, but did you know just how bad this material is for the environment?

Styrofoam is simply the term used for expanded polystyrene foam. Resistant to photolysis, your coffee cup may take anywhere between 500 and one million years to naturally decompose. Let’s face it, we’re not going to be around when it finally disappears.

So with these statistics in mind I’m excited to hear about the WooBox – yes, you heard right – the Woo part comes from the materials that form it – wood and wool (see, makes sense!)

A small team based in Belgrade, Serbia, is heading up the No More Styrofoam Project, the machine behind the WooBox. Their hopes are that we can all turn our backs on this damaging material and instead embrace their new concept, designed to fit a variety of transportation and storing requirements, offering a green alternative to Styrofoam packaging.

Through a crowdfunding campaign, the No More Styrofoam team is confident they can raise $50,000 in order to put their innovative alternative into production.

Conceived as a “transportational box” for storing and packaging food and other goods, the WooBox is designed to meet all the requirements of the food delivery industry. Due to the thermal insulation properties of its materials, it’s ideal for long distance transportation, ensuring product quality and optimising shelf life.

With Styrofoam made up of a toxic petroleum-based plastic, which threatens human health and the environment, it’s no wonder that alternatives are being sought.

Styrene – one of the main ingredients within the material is regarded as a potential human carcinogen. Styrofoam is recyclable, however due to its density it is rarely recycled and so lays in landfill or is contaminated by pollutants in sea water and consumed by micro-organisms.

The California Department of Conservation estimates the cost to recycle Styrofoam to be around $3000 per tonne and the US alone produces three million tonnes of the material each year.

On the campaign group’s Facebook page, No More Styrofoam states that Polystyrene recycling is not “closed loop”, adding: “collected polystyrene cups are not remanufactured into cups, but into other products, such as packing filler and cafeteria trays. This means that more resources will have to be used, and more pollution created, to produce more polystyrene cups.”

No More Styrofoam has launched its new WooBox on Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform, off the back of its desire to raise global awareness about the threats caused by Styrofoam.

The box itself is created from the leftovers of the wool industry, which the team says provides exceptional insulation in terms of the temperature- controlled logistics. On the outside, the WooBox is created out of wood, guaranteeing the protection for the goods stored inside.

You can back the No More Styrofoam Project by donating on their crowdfunding page at https://igg.me/at/woobox/

You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube or visit their website, nomorestyrofoam.org

This Author

Laura Briggs is a regular contributor to the Ecologist. Follow her here: @WordsbyBriggs

Ecuador has struck another blow against the power of big business, ripping up 16 trade deals with countries including the US and UK.

President Correa cited the notorious ‘corporate court’ system as the key reason for ending the deals.

Officially known as Investor State Dispute Settlement, these ‘corporate courts’ allow foreign investors to sue governments for taking action they believe to be unfair.

Such courts have been used to challenge government’s attempts to prohibit smoking, raise minimum wages and renationalise parts of the health system. And they do so in secret, and without the right of the country concerned to appeal.

This blatantly undemocratic system was at the heart of the protests around TTIP, the US-EU trade deal, which was defeated last year following opposition from millions of European citizens and hundreds of local authorities. 

President Correa of Ecuador has railed against the damage which international finance and trade has done to his country throughout his tenure. Early in his first term he set up a debt audit, which declared large portions of Ecuador’s debt illegitimate and saw his government wiping out billions of dollars of payments. With Correa’s term due to end this week, he seems determined to go out fighting.

‘Trade deals’ cost Ecuador $21 billion, but failed to attract investment

Ecuador’s latest move is the result of a second commission, created in 2013, to look into the damage and benefits brought to Ecuador by trade and investment deals.

The commission found that so-called bilateral investment deals had failed in their central purpose of encouraging foreign investment into the country. In fact, most of Ecuador’s  investment was from countries which don’t have such deals.

What the deals had achieved was to undermine Ecuador’s development, preventing the state from fulfilling its constitutional duty to regulate investment so that it works in the interest of Ecuador’s people. Again, this mirrors concerns around TTIP, namely that such deals inhibit governments regulating in the public interest, in case their actions are judged ‘unfair’ to big business.

Ecuador has faced 26 corporate court cases, and lost the majority, owing a whopping total of $21 billion dollars. One infamous case, brought by Chevron, has been used to try to evade justice on the part of the oil company.

When Texaco, Chevron’s predecessor company, dug for oil in Ecuador, it dumped billions of gallons of toxic water into the Amazon, poisoning the land of thousands of Amazon residents. It is one of the world’s biggest environmental disasters.

But Chevron claimed the government’s attempt to seek compensation was unfair, and succeeded in getting a ‘corporate court’ – consisting as usual of three arbitrators – to overturn the ruling.

‘We hope other governments will learn from Ecuador’s example’

This month, Correa signed decrees terminating 16 trade and investment deals, including with the US, Canada, China and the UK.

Importantly, they also agreed to develop specific rules on how the state can regulate investment going forward – something every country needs to do if investment can work for the majority of its citizens. The president of the audit commission Cecilia Olivet commented:

“Ecuador has taken a sound decision by terminating its investment protection agreements. The auditing process revealed that these treaties not only failed to attract additional investment or advance the country’s development plan, they also diverted millions of dollars of government money to fighting costly lawsuits. We hope other governments will learn from Ecuador’s example.”

Ecuador follows the lead of South Africa and Indonesia who are also in the process of  terminating corporate court deals. And last week the European Court of Justice ruled that while trade deals in general don’t require a lengthy process of ratification involving all European member states, the corporate court system does.

This only adds to the headaches of the European Commission, desperately trying to reformulate its trade policy while maintaining some sort of corporate court body. The EU is scrabbling round for an alternative which preserves the essence of the corporate court system, while introducing a more formal process – with transparency, appeals and ‘proper’ judges.

But with even the Financial Times running editorials calling for corporate courts to be removed from trade deals, could this system finally be on its last legs?

Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now since 2013. Previously he has worked for War on Want, Amnesty International and Jubilee Debt Campaign.

TTIP: Transatlantic Trade & Investment Agreement

CETA: Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement

This article was originally published here by Global Justice Now.

The Marine Conservation Society runs ‘The plastic challenge’ throughout June each year to raise awareness about single-use plastic waste and its impact on the Earth, mainly our oceans and marine wildlife. According to its 2016 Great British Beach Clean report “over 69% of all litter on UK beaches discovered was plastic – with 449 plastic items per 100m of beaches cleaned” (Plastic challenge pack, 2017, p3).  

Having previously taken part in local beach cleans, picking up multiple plastic ear buds, plastic straws, bottles/ bottle caps, crisp packets, balloons (the list goes on) and watching the documentary ‘A plastic ocean‘ (also mentioned in Lesley Henderson’s June 2016 report for the Ecologist, ‘plastic Ocean, why the world should declare plastic ‘hazardous waste”) it’s certainly made me more environmentally aware and driven me on a personal level to campaign for better conservation of our shores and oceans.

To give you an idea of how bad it’s got, “over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century” (“A Plastic Ocean”, 2016) and there are “studies showing that 90% of seabirds have ingested plastic” (“Iconic seabird colony polluted…”, Greenpeace UK, 2017).

This has inspired me to take on the MCS challenge and go single-use plastic free for a whole month, starting on Thursday (1^st of June, 2017.)

Need motivating? Read this What Really Happens to the Plastic You Throw Away

What is the plastic challenge?

The aim of the challenge is to give up single-use plastics, whilst raising awareness about plastic pollution and raising funds to fight this cause

When does it run?

The challenge runs from the 1^st – 30^th June each year, though you don’t have to do a whole month. You can practice plastic free for a day, a few days, a week etc.

 Where?

You can practice the challenge wherever you are! You can register to take part via the MCS website, join their social media community @mcsuk and engage using the hashtag #plasticchallenge

 Why should I take part?

Why not? By reducing your own/ your family plastic consumption you’ll be lessening your waste and environmental impact. To give you a rough idea of how much plastic you use, you can check your plastic footprint via the Greenpeace plastic calculator here.

Tips for staying on track

The MCS has a plastic challenge tip swap page, which is quite useful. I’ll also be publishing tips for reducing plastic waste here and on my own blog and will share how I’ve prepared myself for the challenge.

Join my journey

I hope I’ve inspired you to take part, and though it may seem a little daunting since it’s so different to our customary habits (use plastic, throw in bin, magically disappears), it’s something that I believe can be done.

I’ll be posting weekly progress updates here, as well as on my own website ecowildchild.com. You can also contribute to my fundraising page here, or sign-up and download your plastic challenge pack from the MCS here.

Consumers generally decide what they want, when they want it and rarely take into consideration the environmental and social impact of their actions. This has become ‘the norm’ in Western societies on a global scale and is seldom challenged, yet it is clear we are going to need a significant change in all of our behaviours to avoid increasing impact on our planet (Koch, Buch-Hansen, & Fritz, 2017).

And there is, as we all know, growing concern regarding the effects of overconsumption of our finite resources, the environmental impact of gross consumerism, the ideals of social responsibility and sustainability, and business ethics (McEachern and Carrigan, 2012).

Informative watching:

A plastic ocean

Dianna Cohen: Tough truths about plastic pollution

Plasticized

Plastic SEAS

Van Jones: The economic injustice of plastic

This Author

Alanna resides on the south coast of the UK with her faithful cat Eli and enjoys cycling, reading a variety of literature (fiction, journals and articles) and writing her blog (ecowildchild.com). For the past four years, she has worked at a the University of Portsmouth and has been an active part of their environment network, which involved being one of the lead organisers for the Future Solent conference (2014) around the theme “Energising the Solent.”

She has worked in outreach education to children; teaching them to make biodegradable plastics and paper with local wildflower seeds. Working with and around topics such as sustainability and the environment fuelled Alanna’s passions for conservation, regeneration and protection for our planet. She hopes to go on to educate people through her own blog and contributing to the Ecologist about current issues in the fashion trade, and how to be more mindful when consuming and minimising waste

On the very day Theresa May triggered Article 50, her government quietly issued another bold statement to Brussels.

Documents obtained by Energydesk reveal UK government attempts to significantly weaken draft EU climate and energy rules, even as Brexit is underway.

Key renewable energy and energy efficiency targets proposed by the European Commission should be reduced, made non-binding, or even scrapped altogether, the UK said, despite the fact that they would not take effect until after the UK had left the EU.

“This smells of obstructionism”, Jonathan Gaventa, director of environmental think-tank E3G, told Energydesk. “The UK is pissing off countries it needs as allies.”

The news comes as the future of the Paris climate agreement hangs in the balance, with the United States refusing to commit to the deal at the G7 meeting.

“This leak shows Donald Trump has a mole in the EU, and she is called Theresa May”, Shadow Climate Change Minister Barry Gardiner said. “It is calculated dishonesty to publicly embrace the Paris agreement whilst trying to block the very steps needed to implement it.”

Caroline Lucas – a sign of Theresa May’s plans for post-Brexit UK?

The move also suggests a Conservative government alter European climate and environment rules once they are transposed into British law via the much-touted Great Repeal Bill. Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, said this is

“a strong indication that, unless we fight back, Britain could become an offshore pollution haven where the environment is in the firing line of an aggressive Government with a blind and brutal deregulation agenda.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: “Any future decisions on energy efficiency policy would be a matter for the next government.”

The Conservative Party failed to comment for this story, however the party has stated that it is committed to retaining the UK’s carbon reduction targets and its support for the Paris climate agreement.

One of the laws the UK is lobbying to weaken is the revised Energy Efficiency Directive, a key component of the EU’s plan to tackle climate change by reducing consumption of fossil fuels.

The European Commission’s proposal would set a binding target of 30% increased energy efficiency by 2030 (compared to the ‘business as usual’ scenario), but the UK would like to see that ambition considerably scaled back, recommending it be reduced to 27% and made non-binding.

Every 1% improvement in energy efficiency means saving the (equivalent of the) annual CO2 emissions of 12 million cars, and averting thousands of premature deaths caused by air pollution, according to data compiled by Friends of the Earth.

UK: ‘Let’s make this energy saving target voluntary’

The British delegation – which is formally part of the Department for Exiting the European Union – is also pushing to gut the proposed Directive’s key clause, that would require energy companies to to achieve annual energy savings of 1.5% post-2020.

“The UK does not believe Article 7 should be rolled forward beyond 2020 but if it is to continue targets should be indicative not binding”, the document reads.

Jan Rosenow, Senior Associate at the Regulatory Assistance Project, said: “Efforts by the UK to water down the EU’s energy efficiency mandate is not only concerning, but wholly inappropriate given that the targets apply to the period after 2020 at which point the UK will have left the EU.”

This, he suggested, is in keeping with the UK’s approach to energy efficiency, which “has been in reverse gear since 2012 … Unfortunately the UK’s position on EU energy efficiency targets does not instil hope for a change in direction after Brexit.”

Energy ministers are reportedly divided on how ambitious the target should be, but an agreement on a common position is expected to be taken when they meet on June 26.

UK: ‘States should be allowed to leave renewables targets until the last minute’

The other proposed regulations the UK is trying to water down concern the governance of Europe’s internal energy market. The UK’s comments – delivered the day before Article 50 was triggered – were similarly in favour of less oversight and weaker targets.

Most significantly, the UK takes issue with the clause calling for ‘linear progress’ on renewable energy in the lead up to the EU’s 2030 target, which is still being negotiated.

“We do not consider that linear progress to the target should not be expected or determined at the EU and, rather, that it should be for MS (member states) to determine based on their plans”, the government states.

Member states would therefore not be required to steadily scale up their share of renewable energy – meaning they could simply could delay action until just before the target is due, and so burn more fossil fuels in the meantime.

The UK government’s feedback also repeatedly called for language – such as ‘if applicable’ – that would water down the strength of the agreement.

And it went even further, rejecting a call for “national objectives for total (public and private) spending in research and innovation” because the UK does not collect total figures on private sector activity.

Zachary Davies Boren is an environment journalist writing for Greenpeace Energydesk, the Press Association, The Telegraph, The Independent, Huffington Post, IBTimes, Yahoo, Chicago Tribune and other media. He tweets @zdboren.

This article was originally published by Greenpeace Energydesk.

Read the UK’s comments on the Governance of the Energy Union.

Read the UK’s comments on the Energy Efficiency Directive.

The empowerment of women and girls is the number one solution to global warming. This is the conclusion of the environmentalist and recent New York Times bestselling author in his book Drawdown.

By providing education for girls in countries where they are usually taken out of school prematurely to be married off, better-schooled young women get the chance to develop a better standard of living, will start families at a later stage and will, on average, only have two children compared to five children for unschooled, young brides, ultimately stablising population growth.

Empowering women, however, has far more impact on the fight against climate change than on curbing population growth.

Women worldwide are currently revolutionising their local agricultural systems; they play a lead role in shaping climate policy and are being included more equally in the climate framework of the United Nations.

In this special report, we take a look at the differet levels in which women are key in taking climate actions and the influence of empowering women to tackle climate change in specific areas such as food production, education, and policy making.

Women in rural Benin fighting climate change

It is often the people in the least developed countries that are most affected by climate change. The Sub-Saharan country of Benin is a good example. The six-month dry season in the West-African country has been steadily increasing in intensity over recent years, mainly affecting the semi-arid northern side of the land. As in many arid and semi-arid regions on the continent, intensified droughts are causing extended periods of malnutrition and famine, leading to more local conflicts.

In the Northern district of Alibori, agricultural communities are highly dependent on the rain patterns to be able to work the lands, and consequently only have six months to produce enough food for the year. With women being the primary providers in these agricultural societies, a group of 400 of them decided to take their fate in their own hands and change the way they farm the land. Under the guidance of the women-led NGO Adaska, and with the aid of both the local cooperatives and the Solar Electric Light Fund, 10 villages have implemented what they called ‘Solar Market Gardens’ or SMG’s.

These SMG’s are a sustainable energy solution, combining a solar-charged water pumping system with drip-irrigation that enables isolated communities to no longer be dependent on seasonal changes for their crop raising. The technical innovation of SMG’s lies in the combination of two technologies: using solar energy to pump water from aquifers all-year round and utilizing drip-technology to guide the water directly to the roots of the plants, using the sparse resource as efficiently as possible.

Even more importantly than being technically innovative, the Solar Market Gardens bring social innovation to how communities have thus far dealt with climate change and food insecurity. By involving the local women – who traditionally cultivate the land – in the transformation of the agricultural system, and this from conception to implementation, the community was able to reach an inclusive and sustainable solution. More than 185,000 people in the region now have access to renewable energy and stable crop production, with women driving this positive development. The project rightly won the ‘Women for Results’ Climate Prize awarded by the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Including gender in policymaking

“Involving women on all levels is a necessity if we want to convert to a more sustainable future,” says Natalie Elwell, the first gender advisor ever for the World Resource Institute (WRI), one of the most prestigious Think Tanks in the world on sustainable development and climate change. In its research on sustainable practices worldwide, the WRI now consistently explores what barriers there are for different groups of people – one of which is being a woman – to get access to more sustainable solutions.

“Creating more nuanced socio-demographic analyses that help us understand in what way different groups of people are being hindered in behaving in a more sustainable manner, [this] helps us to make decisions that are better for the communities as well as for the environment,” Elwell told us during her first visit of the UNFCCC headquarters in Bonn, Germany.

 “Gender-issues have a direct effect on sustainable practices: if you look at public transportation in India, for example, women are harassed so extensively and so constantly that as soon as they can get off public transport they do get off public transport. That practice, besides being disrespectful and morally wrong towards women, impacts emissions as well, with many women avoiding public transport altogether. In Brazil we see a similar phenomenon regarding women riding bikes, harassment drives them to other modes of transport.”

“In changing these practices, education is key. In India we tried introducing pink women-only busses, but that only provided a short-term, symptomatic solution since it did not tackle the social habit of harassment. In the America, women used to be harassed more frequently as well, so we decided to educate people on how to behave in a respectful way towards women, to create a stigma around harassing women, and we have made significant progress since. A similar learning process is needed in places like India and Brazil to improve both social and environmental practices.”

“In this battle, women are not just a tool for social and environmental improvements, women are agents of change, and they have the right to be engaged in this, since it affects their lives as much as any other group of people.”

Gender-balance during climate negotiations

In striving towards more parity and inclusion, efforts need to be made from the most local level (as in the rural communities in northern Benin), to educational practices (as in the campaigns of institutions like WRI), to international negotiations on the highest level. Since COP21 and the Paris Agreement in 2015, the international community has included women’s leadership and participation in its decision-making process. Since then, the UNFCCC has taken further steps to reach gender-balance, and this by:

–        Including targets, quotas and timeframes for women’s participation in all decision-making processes

–        Committing to co-leadership or rotating leadership & creating panels that are gender-balanced

–        Follow up the progress and remaining issues regarding structural impediments to women’s participation through technical reports and workshops

–        Allocating money from the UNFCCC Trust Fund for Participation to fund the participation of women delegates, with a focus on women from least-developed and small-island states

By implementing these measures, UNFCCC is at the forefront of gender parity relative to other UN bodies, and can have a major influence on international bodies and institutions that are connected to its functioning.

Moreover, these measures have also been translated to policies at the national level: countries’ delegations, for example, currently need to aim for 30% presence of women in their UN assemblages and need to up this to full parity (50% presence of women) in the course of the next six years. In addition, national climate change action plans need to be gender-responsive, training and capacity-building on gender-related issues needs to be promoted financially, and representatives need to be present on every organisational level.

The trickling down of these gender-just practices and incentives from an international to a national and regional level is a promising indicator of the progressive movements worldwide that are connecting social and environmental justice to one another, something that in the near future might be as straightforward a relationship as the connection we see today between human rights, peace and democracy.

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a regular contributor to the Ecologist. He is a tropical biologist who has previously worked in Australia, Costa Rica, Austria and Belgium and is currently studying the processes that drive biodiversity in the Black Forest in Germany. Arthur writes articles on sustainable development, forest ecology, conservation biology and climate change and together with a group of young biologists he founded Lonely Creatures  – an organisation that highlights the plight of endangered species across Europe – and is an author at Climate Tracker (www.climatetracker.org)

Delegates at the First Nations Constitutional Convention at Uluru have issued a powerful “statement from the heart“.

They called for the establishment of a “First Nations Voice” enshrined in the Australian Constitution, and a commission to progress treaty-making between governments and Indigenous people.

The Uluru statement reflects long-held Indigenous aspirations. But, in rejecting symbolic constitutional recognition, it puts pressure on Australia’s political leaders. Will they – and non-Indigenous Australians – listen?

The Uluru statement is not a unanimous view. Seven delegates walked out in protest on Thursday, concerned that any reform would lead to a loss of sovereignty. Not all returned.

However, the statement reflects a strong consensus position of Indigenous Australians. It is the culmination of three days of meetings at Uluru, which followed six months of regional dialogues held across Australia.

Grounded in their inherent right to sovereignty, the statement calls for constitutional reform to empower Indigenous people to take “a rightful place in our own country”. The delegates believe this can be achieved through:

• a national representative body with the power to advise parliament on laws that affect Indigenous people; and

• a ‘Makarrata Commission‘ to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations, and undertake a public truth-telling process.

Makarrata is a Yolngu word meaning ‘a coming together after a struggle’. These are long-held aspirations.

A rightful place in their own land – 80 years of demands ignored

Indigenous Australians have long fought for their rightful place in their own country.

In 1937, William Cooper, secretary of the Aboriginal Advancement League, gathered 1,814 signatures in a petition to King George V that called for Indigenous representation in the federal parliament. The petition was passed to Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, but cabinet refused to forward it to the king.

In 1963, the Yolngu people in eastern Arnhem Land sent a series of bark petitions to the parliament. In these they called for recognition of their land, resource and cultural rights, and their sovereignty.

The government had transferred their land to a bauxite mining company without consulting them. The Yolngu people explained that that land “has been hunting and food-gathering land for the Yirrkala tribes from time immemorial”, and the “places sacred to the Yirrkala people, as well as vital to their livelihood are in the excised land.”

They expressed their concern that “their needs and interests will be completely ignored as they have been ignored in the past.”

A few years later, in 1971, more than 1,000 Indigenous Australians signed a petition organised by the Larrakia people. They described themselves as “refugees in the country of our ancestors”, and called for land rights, a treaty, and political representation. Their voices went unheard.

In 1979, the National Aboriginal Conference, an elected Indigenous body advising government, passed a resolution calling for a ‘Makarrata‘. This resolution sparked talk of a treaty within the federal parliament.

Four years later, a Senate committee delivered a report on the idea of a treaty. It recommended constitutional change to implement a ‘compact’. That report was also ignored.

In 1998, the Barunga Statement called on the federal parliament to “negotiate with us a treaty recognising our prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty and affirming our human rights and freedom.”

Prime Minister Bob Hawke promised to negotiate such a treaty by 1990. But no treaty was forthcoming, and it dropped off the political agenda.

This week Indigenous leaders have again called for a voice in their country. The central concern is an oft-repeated one: that, as a small minority, dispersed across the continent of their ancestors, and continuing to resist the legacy of colonialism, Indigenous Australians have almost no say about legislation that affects them.

Treaty now?

A constitutionally enshrined national representative body is an important proposal, but the Makarrata Commission is more significant.

The statement records that a “Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda.” For Indigenous people, it “captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.”

Treaties are accepted globally as the means of reaching a settlement between Indigenous peoples and those who have colonised their lands. They are formal agreements, reached via respectful negotiation conducted in good faith, that recognise an inherent right to some level of sovereignty or self-government.

Treaties have been achieved in the US and New Zealand, and are still being negotiated in Canada. In contrast, no treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians has ever been recognised.

Indigenous Australians are willing to negotiate. But are non-Indigenous Australians ready to enter into respectful negotiations? Or will they, once again, ignore the invitation?

Next steps

The Uluru summit was organised by the Referendum Council, a body set up by Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten to advise on the path toward a referendum.

Through the Uluru statement, Indigenous people have invited non-Indigenous Australians to walk together for a better future. The statement is the voice of Indigenous Australians.

Now is the time for non-Indigenous Australians to hear that voice. 

Harry Hobbs is PhD Candidate, Constitutional Law and Indigenous Rights, UNSW,

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.