Sustainability is the fashion buzzword of 2019 – with designers and retailers everywhere pledging to do more to protect the planet.

Yet somehow, animal leather is still being used in allegedly “sustainable” and “eco-friendly” collections – and this does the ethical fashion movement a big disservice. The leather industry – like other forms of animal agriculture – is responsible for serious, far-reaching environmental damage.

Turning animal skins into leather requires the use of dozens of chemicals, including highly toxic mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, and various oils, dyes, and finishes, some of which are cyanide-based. Tannery run-off contains large quantities of pollutants, such as lime sludge, sulphides, and acids. 

Pollution

Tanneries are far from the only problem with leather. The 2017 Kering Environmental Profit & Loss report found that 93 percent of all the environmental damage caused by leather occurs even before the tanning stage, while the 2017 Pulse of the Fashion Industry report ranks it as the most polluting material in fashion.

Indeed, animals on factory farms produce vast amounts of greenhouse gases and 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population – without the benefit of waste-treatment plants.

Farming animals for their skin or flesh also requires massive amounts of water and grain, both of which are scarce in much of the world, and 80 percent of all deforestation in the Amazon is linked to cattle ranching.

More than a billion animals are killed for the leather trade every year. Almost all leather – even if it’s labelled, “Made in Italy” or “Made in France” – originates in Bangladesh, China, or India, where animal welfare laws either are non-existent or go unenforced.

In India, the slaughter of cows is legal in only three states, so animals may be forced to walk hundreds of miles on “death marches”, during which many collapse and die by the side of the road out of sheer exhaustion. When the survivors arrive at the abattoir, their throats are cut while they’re still conscious.

Toxic chemicals

In China, the world’s leading exporter of leather, an estimated two million cats and dogs are killed each year for their skin.

A PETA exposé shows a processing-plant owner explaining that the facility identifies items made out of dog skin, which are exported around the globe, as “lambskin”. If you buy leather, there’s almost no way, short of conducting a DNA test, to tell what – or rather, whom – you’re wearing. 

Leather production also harms human health. People who work in or live near tanneries suffer as a result of exposure to the toxic chemicals that are used to process and dye animal hides. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the incidence of leukaemia among residents near one US tannery was five times the national average.

Arsenic, a common tannery chemical, has long been associated with lung cancer in workers who are exposed to it on a regular basis. Studies of tannery workers in Italy found cancer risks “between 20 percent and 50 percent above those expected”, while in developing nations where the industry is poorly regulated, the figures are even more alarming. In certain areas of Bangladesh, 90 percent of leather workers die before the age of 50. 

Innovative alternatives

But there is hope. Vegan materials crafted from natural, eco-friendly resources such as mushrooms, pineapples, cork, and apples are gaining in popularity with designers and consumers.

The launch of Vegea, or “wine leather” – made with grape residue from the Italian winemaking industry – made waves in the fabric world, earning it H&M’s Global Change Award in 2017.

Last year, Peruvian brand Le Qara won the same award for its vegan leather derived from flowers and fruits. And Piñatex, Ananas Anam’s pineapple leather, is rapidly becoming a household name, thanks to its use in H&M’s Conscious Exclusive collection and in ranges by other brands, like Hugo Boss. 

High-fashion events like Helsinki Fashion Week are banning leather from their catwalks, and Stella McCartney, Bruno Pieters, Vika Gazinskaya, and Faustine Steinmetz are among the top designers who have sworn off the use of skins in their collections. Even the likes of Givenchy and Versus Versace have prominently promoted vegan “eco-leather” items in order to attract ethically aware millennial consumers. 

Minimising impact 

The vegan leather market is predicted to be worth $85 billion by 2025 – and in the long run, the practice of raising and slaughtering animals for leather is likely to be made obsolete by the arrival of lab-grown leather, which is currently being developed by US-based company Modern Meadow.

Its “bio-leather”, Zoa, can be manufactured to look similar to cow leather or exotic skins – but without using any animals. This innovation will allow designers to use animal leather without harming living, feeling beings and with less impact on the environment.

Truly sustainable fashion seeks to minimise its impact on the natural world – and leather production is one of fashion’s biggest crimes against the living planet.

For brands to be able to proclaim their products “sustainable” with any credibility, they must distance themselves from animal skins and embrace natural, ethically produced vegan fabrics. 

This Author

Elisa Allen is the director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) UK.

Image: Tomascastelazo, Wikimedia. 

Rural families in Bangladesh, many of whom live in poverty, are spending an average of almost two billion US Dollars (158 billion taka) a year ― US$79 (6,608 taka) a year per family ― on addressing the impacts of climate change, a new report reveals. 

This is twice as much as the government and nearly 12 times the amount Bangladesh receives in multilateral international climate financing in absolute terms, according to the latest data.

The report – Bearing the Climate Burden – is the first report to measure household spending on climate change in any country compared to public climate finance.   

Diverting resources 

Even though the Bangladesh government’s annual budget for addressing climate change in rural areas rose in 2018-19 to 1.46 billion dollars (123.18 billion taka) – up from 884 million dollars (74.32 billion taka) in 2014-15 – it is still substantially less than the amount rural households are spending on climate change.  

Rural households receive an estimated total of 154 million dollars a year in international climate and disaster finance ― or 6.42 dollars (533 taka) for each rural household per year.     

The research found female-headed households spend three times more money as a share of their income than households headed by men, evidence that addressing the impacts of climate change is more of a priority for women.

As a result, households living in poverty are diverting money away from basic necessities including food, education and health in order to repair damage to their homes and replace animals or destroyed crops. Or on such defensive measures as raising their houses above flood levels. 

This is causing climate disaster-affected households to borrow from informal sources at high interest rates pushing them deeper into poverty.

Climate finance 

It is vital for more climate finance to be directed to the local level. This is crucial for developing countries to be able to achieve the Paris Agreement’s targets and for keeping temperature rise below 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. Low-cost loans from formal financial institutions and microfinance NGOs also need to be more widely available.

It is important that local people are included in designing programmes to tackle climate change and address its impacts to ensure their priorities are met. And to make sure that female-headed households are given the extra support they need.

Andrew Norton, Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said: “This research reveals an alarming imbalance. It is unacceptable that the poorest people are shouldering the burden of spending for adapting to climate change in Bangladesh.

“Far too little support is being directed to the women, children and men who are living on the frontline of climate change. Much more needs to be done to make sure more public climate finance reaches the people who need it most.” 

​​​​​​​Local funding 

Previous IIED research shows that less than one dollar in every ten of international climate finance is being committed to the local level.

As a result, local priorities and the flexibility to respond both to rapidly changing needs and new opportunities are not being met.

This will make it significantly harder for developing countries to implement the Paris Agreement and meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

The majority of Bangladesh’s population (65 percent) lives in rural areas. The country is one of the most vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events and is one of the poorest countries in the world.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from the International Institute for Environment and Development. 

Image: DFID, Flickr. 

The air is partitioned, apportioned, and legislated like every other part of the environment.

At London Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, the needs of aviation collide with those of daily suburban life, rendering the air a site of significant contestation. For some, the air is a hypermodern space of networks, flow, and transit where routines and daily rhythms are structured around economic priorities.

For others, it is what they must breathe. The conflation of incompatible requirements within a shared space presents a significant societal challenge that has implications for sustainable development, wellbeing, and human dignity. If these are considerations for policy at national and supra-national levels, then there is a need for fresh though.

Air and culture 

Air Matters is an exhibition and programme of events that responds to this challenge. Through walking tours, workshops, a symposium and commissioned artworks we ask: What are the local cultures of air use?

How does the air shape our societies, and how democratically is it governed? How is the air fought over and by whom? What ethical questions around air use, noise and air pollution do planners face and how might we equip them to shape its future?

In her work Ascending Composition 1 (For planes) (2019) Kate Carr reflects on the governance of air by using sound to infiltrate its forbidden zones. Working with the conception of the air as a contested space, this artwork inverts the relationship of residents subject to the vagaries of aircraft noise by using helium balloons and kite tail sound systems to take the terrestrial sounds of Heathrow’s neighbourhoods into the sky.

The three kite tail sound systems shuffle through recordings taken in residential and natural areas surrounding the airport, creating a shifting soundscape intended for broadcast along the flight path.

In a world where both who gets to make noise and enjoy silence is so tied to wealth and corporate influence, this work seeks to carve out a moment where forgotten, over-powered and fragile sounds take flight. The composition is broadcast via the balloon-elevated kite tails in Watermans gallery.

Global transfer

Nick Ferguson’s research has focused on the aircraft landing gear compartments as an instrument of global transfer. Aside from housing aircraft wheels, landing gear compartments are mobile pods in which organisms, such as spores and aphids become trapped, and in which they are transported, into the UK from faraway places.

These themes pointed to the idea of forensically examining the landing gear compartment of a long-haul aircraft and representing it in a way that evokes the space at a physical level. On display in the exhibition is the outcome of such a project.

The work, Capsule (2019), comprises s 0.7 scale model of an aircraft landing gear compartment accompanied by a set of photographic prints. Suspended from the ceiling and occupying a central part of the gallery, the model is proposed as a pavilion or auditorium in which to host discussions of air politics.  

The prints show samples of material gathered forensically from a wheel bay of Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC upon retirement in the UK in March 2019. Captured under an electron microscope, the sample includes sand, spores, seeds, insects and fragments of reflective runway paint which have become trapped and transported from one part of the world to another.

Pest control 

The work of Hermione Spriggs and Laura Cooper takes up the issue of bird exclusion. Their work The Substitute (2019) is a sci-fi ghost story responding to the “bird free” environment of Heathrow Airport.

The story is delivered via Tannoy speakers common to airport announcements and pest control, and is accompanied by a spinning bird decoy on which are mounted images of the artists’ eyes. The Substituteis presented in the square overlooking the river Thames, Brentford Ait and Kew Gardens, natural reserves for birds.

Narrated through the speakers, the work explores the spectral transformation of birds as we know them into data bodies and zombie-like decoys.

Mapping Heathrow

Matthew Flintham’s Heathrow (Volumetric Airspace Structures) is a planning table showing a map of the Greater London area and focused on the land surrounding Heathrow.

The shape of the table is defined by the limits of the London airspace control zone which consists of two intersecting irregular rectangles combining rounded edges and hard corners.

The map shows the major traffic routes across central and west London, as well as the polygonal restricted and controlled airspace zone over Heathrow.

The map also extends vertically, projecting the airspace zones into three dimensions, revealing the invisible volumetric structures that define the London skies. In this way the structure becomes an extension of the map following its stylist design and iconography.

Radio transmission

If the works discussed so far focus on the present, Magz Hall engages with a historical dimension of aerial contestation. Her installation Skyport (2019) takes its name from the pirate radio station Skyport Radio which broadcast from a garden shed under the Heathrow flightpath between 1971 and 1979.

Aircraft noise could be heard in the transmissions. The commission extends the artist’s enquiry into the contested nature of radio frequencies and their governance.

In the skies above London private transmissions from air traffic control compete for wavelength with a range of public transmissions, both pirate and licenced, and indeed, the AM spectrum is dominated by the airport’s transmissions.

While these transmissions are available for all to hear, in the UK it is both illegal to listen to them and to relay what has been heard to a third party. In defiance of these regulations, aviation enthusiasts eavesdrop on air traffic control and there is a burgeoning market for the scanning technologies that make it possible.

On display for Skyport are items from the Skyport Radio archive, a set of scanners and a plasma screen showing in wave form current air traffic radio activity.

Human experience 

Louise K Wilson’s Frequency explores human experiences of flying. In an audio installation voice and field recordings are combined to explore the affective and ‘felt’ experience of air travel.

Verbal accounts from passengers describing their memory of take off and landing are undercut with a layer of airport location recordings. These soft, whispered voices are suggestive of recordings made in an ASMR (‘autonomous sensory meridian response’) register, typically created with the intention of stimulating a ‘tingling’ and relaxing sensation.

They are amplified with the use of resonance devices that turn the skylight windows themselves into speakers, broadcasting the voices both downwards into the atrium space and outwards into the ether.

Elsewhere, recordings of the ‘sonic fallout’ collected from the Airport provide a ‘darker’ background for the presence and effect of aviation. Accompanying this piece is a set of postcard drawings sourced from photographs distributed on social media showing passengers’ window views of cloudscapes.

Frequency alludes to a set of contradictory positions implicating anxiety and desire within the context of air travel.

This Author 

Nick Ferguson is an artist. He is Associate Dean for Research at Richmond University and Senior Lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art.

Air Matters: Learning from Heathrow is at Watermans Arts Centre from 3 October 2019 to 5 January 2020. Watermans Arts Centre, 40 High Street, Brentford  TW8 0DS. 020 8232 1010. 

The internet has been awash in new health apps to improve sleep and wellness and an enormous amount of information on CBD oil, a product derived from cannabis, also commonly known as the source of marijuana.

Of cannabis’ compounds called cannabinoids are two primary components: THC and CBD, the latter is its non-psychoactive component. CBD has been rebranded – it was previously known as hemp oil and is also called cannabis oil and cannabidiol. 

CBD is heavily marketed in the EU and is sold to remedy everything from pain relief to stress to depression. While some have questioned the benefits of CBD, there is some hope that this marketing drive towards CBD might open up more awareness of benefits that cannabis in all its forms might offer the planet. 

Ecological benefits

While the chemical ecology of cannabis is largely unknown to most, the reality is that the cannabis plant is turning out to be one of the best responses to our planet’s current demise.

The recreational and medicinal uses of cannabis are far more widely publicised today due to the growing trend of legalisation (although cannabis with THC remains illegal in the UK), in addition to the expansion of cannabis dispensaries. 

But what is less emphasised in the media today are the may uses of the cannabis plant in addition to its added benefits to the soil. Unlike cotton and many other plants used in textile, hemp needs less water and requires no pesticides, allows for soil remediation (phytoremediation) – whereby hemp can absorb pollutants from the earth – and it returns 60-70 percent of the nutrients it takes from the soil.

The cannabis plant has a wide range of uses which makes its cultivation both a boon for the ecology as well as for nutrition among other uses. This plant can provide oil used for cooking, fuel, personal care products, dietary supplements, beverages, baked goods, protein powder, beer, flour and animal feed.

Beyond this, hemp is used in building materials (fiberboard, insulation, cement and mortar), paper products and industrial textiles. Additionally, there are myriad agricultural benefits from this plant: it suppresses weeds, its roots provide soil aeration and it allows for pollen isolation.  

Production benefits

What this means for the planet is that hemp offers the most far ranging uses for our sustainability. For instance, hemp requires half the amount of water that cotton needs to produce a 250 percent higher yield than cotton because when processing is figured into the water usage equation, “cotton uses more than four times as much water as hemp”.

Cotton production relies on pesticides while hemp does not and hemp is naturally resistant to pests as its dense foliage provides enough shade to prevent or suppress weed growth. 

From industrial hemp farming which is expected to almost double in growth by 2026 to “pick-your-own” hemp fields, the future of textile is quickly moving towards a hemp-based production in North America.

Earlier this month New York Fashion Week’s runway show by Korto Momolu showcased her collection consisting of 26 designs created from hemp fabric among other sustainably-manufactured textiles.

Where the CBD craze is being pushed endlessly online, hemp production for textiles is the best possible outcome of what might end up being a passing fad.

The positive by-product of this current rage is that hemp production is having a boost and many fashion designers are advocating for more sustainable textiles such as bamboo and hemp. Even Levi’s has gotten behind the momentum and recently released styles made with “cottonised hemp.” As hemp is 100 percent biodegradable, this fabric is becoming more and more the harbinger to future fashion.

Renewable fuel 

As for the possible transportation benefits, hemp is a replacement for non-renewable energy sources despite the many challenges that hemp biodiesel made from Cannabis Sativa Linn. Still, many scientific studies such as “Advantages and Challenges of Hemp Biodiesel Production” (2015) see great promise in expanding hemp for biodiesel production. 

This study notes the following: “Hemp seeds present a viable feedstock option for biodiesel production. This is demonstrated by the plant’s high yield, ability to grow on infertile soil, resilience to disease and bugs.

“Hemp biodiesel may be used an alternative to the highly controversial biodiesel produced from palm oil. Legalization and increased production of hemp oil may improve the cost of producing hemp oil and subsequently hemp biodiesel.”

This report makes astonishing findings, among which it notes its potential to be used as a primary feedstock and for the purpose of the production of biodiesel fuel.

It states: “When compared with similar crops that are used in large-scale commercial biodiesel production, hemp provides a substantially greater yield and has a higher oil content than that of rapeseed and soybean.

“In addition, biodiesel made from hempseed can meet the ATSM D6751 and EN 14214 requirement for fuel quality and surpass that of conventional diesel except in the area of oxidation stability, as is the case with other biodiesel products. However, the oxidation stability can be improved with the addition of antioxidants to the fuel prolonging its shelf life.”

Positive change 

Among all of hemp’s uses today and potential uses for the future, we must move our fashion, transport and purchasing habits towards that of sustainable oils, fabrics and fuels.

We must also sit down and write to our politicians urging them for the adoption of hemp throughout industrial and local enterprises in addition to paving the way for the legalisation of this plant.  

Where biofuel from hemp has been consistently side-lined from the discussions on climate change throughout the years,  there is always promise that researchers will turn this paradigm around and realise what was Henry Ford’s dream car and bring hemp biofuel into the future of transportation. 

It is only through political, social and personal changes that we can bring about positive changes to our ecological reality.

This Author

Julian Vigo is an independent scholar and filmmaker who specializes in anthropology, technology, and political philosophy. Her latest book is Earthquake in Haiti: The Pornography of Poverty and the Politics of Development (2015). She is a contributor to Forbes, Quillette, TruthDig, Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, The Morning Star and The Ecologist.

People of colour spend less time in nature in the UK than white people. But we are often closely connected to nature in our countries of heritage – the disconnect seems to occur in the west.  Why is this?

My ethnographic research explores the relationship of black and Asian people to nature in the UK, drawing on my work as a nature allied psychotherapist and leading a nature connection programme in London.

This exploration is situated within the context of racialised narratives about our place within natural settings. Environmental organisations that are typically staffed by white middle class practitioners have framed our apparent absence as rooted in a lack of interest in or appreciation of nature. A colonial perspective that regards white people as the true custodians of nature persists. 

In what follows, I describe some of the findings of my research and practice. 

Race and place

Nature is a source of spiritual nourishment for many, and a means to supporting physical and emotional health, providing a sense of home and place in being connected to the land, knowing that we are part of nature. 

But Natural England found that just 25.7 percent of Asian, 26.2 percent of black and 38.8 percent of mixed race people spend time in nature, compared to 44.2 percent of white people.  

The vast majority of the UK’s black and Asian population live within urban areas, with only a very small number of ethnic minorities living in the countryside – just 1.9 percent of Black people and 2.6 percent Asian people. For many people of colour, journeying into the countryside means navigating a new environment. 

This absence is not simply about people of colours’ relationship with nature, but also about our relationship with other people and how we’re received and responded to in natural settings.

Relationships with nature are often rooted within historical messages about belonging, as well as people’s own direct experiences. In many instances there is a causal flow stemming from the historical experience of colonialism, slavery, and our families’ arrival in the west and a continuing legacy affecting how our relationship with nature is navigated, including the development of cultural attitudes that shun nature.

Support networks 

In our differing migrations people of colour have tended to gather in cities to feel a sense of safety and community in numbers; we had lives to build with a focus on finding work and networks of support to sustain ourselves.  

Experiences of hostility are hard enough to bear when you are surrounded by other people of colour, but they’re more intimidating when you are isolated. This brought about a protective attitude among our parents and grandparents who came to see the countryside and nature in urban spaces as unsafe and alienating. 

Racism is a big part of why people of colour are less present in nature. Many people of colour feel an apprehension about stepping into nature, especially in more remote and open spaces, wondering how they are going to be received. 

A sense of vulnerability increases with increased visibility. A significant proportion of people had experienced or feared being stared at, snubbed, verbally assaulted, followed or physically threatened. People of colour are made to feel their difference, that they were out of place and unwelcome, all of which impacts on our sense of safety. 

Racism has shaped how some of us behave in nature, creating a barrier to simple enjoyment. For example, our presence has been treated with suspicion in natural settings.

Some people of colour, particularly men, feel a pressure to change their behaviour to prove they are not a threat – which sabotages their own relaxation. Some worry that they are perceived as ‘up to no good’ and felt pulled into ‘respectability’ to make white people feel comfortable. This dynamic occurs in cities but is exacerbated in frequency and intensity in areas with fewer people of colour.

Generational disconnect

Many people of colour are disconnected from nature in the UK because their parents and their grandparents didn’t feel safe enough to take them or had other survival preoccupations. This creates a chain of disconnect – not having adults who take us into these spaces means that time in nature isn’t normalised.

People of colour experience a generational loss of connection and cultural attitudes emerge for us to cope with that loss.

In countries of heritage we often learn about the natural world relationally, through conversation and experience with older relatives. In UK settings our elders may lack knowledge about wildlife and often haven’t had connections with established communities from whom they could learn. 

This breaks down the generational oral traditions for learning and leaves us without a bridge into knowledge about nature and relevant practicalities, such as how to keep warm, what to wear, or how to get there; and relationalities such as names, behaviour and the uses of plants and wildlife. 

In this way nature becomes a stranger, while in countries of heritage it was familiar. 

Hardship and subsistence

Time in the natural world is associated with leisure and recreation for many people in the west.

But for some people with a recent history or lived experience of subsistence within the family, having come from rural areas in developing countries, nature can be associated with hardship and struggle in having to work the land – it is a place of survival.  

In coming to the west people may have a desire to leave behind lifestyles where you might get dirty and hands-on in nature, seeing their own rural background as backwards and wanting to integrate into a more urban lifestyle as an indicator of status and implied progression.

Added to this, rather than a romanticised relationship with nature as a source of relaxation, for some people of colour nature can be painfully associated with being the scene of a crime or mistreatment – whether through hard physical work, poverty, legacies of slavery, colonialism and limited options.   

There is a trauma of abuse and coercion in the fields. Abandoning nature can be perceived as escaping systemic oppressions associated with under development. In the UK context there can be a fear of criminality in parks, being seen by some as a place where bad things, such as drug dealing and assault, can happen.

Urbanised culture

An urbanized culture develops when people migrate into cities. Focus turns to successfully being in a city, which is different from successfully being in nature.

How we function in an urban setting and the value codes of claiming status within city contexts tends to have a greater emphasis on material consumerism, on how we present ourselves, what we own, and the kind of activities we partake in.

Our understanding of these value codes are demonstrated, for example, through clean, tidy, box fresh clothes and not dirty, scuffed nature tarnished clothes. Our appearance carries a statement about identity, and about what we do and what we don’t do that is connected with where we feel we belong and where we don’t feel we belong.

Looking good and well turned out is important to feel a sense of self-esteem and to counter anxieties about status, or ‘looking poor’. For people of colour who have experienced poverty in the UK, families may not have a set of clothes that children are allowed to get dirty.  

Children being dirty from outdoor play is a sign of an afternoon well spent, being healthy and productive for white middle class families without economic and status anxieties. This measure of worth remains for people of colour even as financial circumstances improve: getting dirty is often seen as naughty or transgressive. 

Internalised racism 

Middle class white people are free to enjoy nature without feeling they’re having to prove that they’re separate from it.  

For many people of colour there is a sense of shame in being connected to nature, through our experience of colonialism and slavery which stigmatised us as having an inferior and primitive way of life, close to nature. Our poor, under-developed villages are contrasted to the west’s superior affluent technological cities.  

These racist stigmas become internalised and some people of colour may want to distance themselves from being perceived as ‘backward’, often by perpetuating self-limiting myths about nature and our place in it: black people don’t ‘do’ camping/hiking/skiing/swimming.

These myths articulate a message that we have no business being there, that we’re relieved to no longer be there, that you’re mad for wanting to go, that being in nature is a sign of being mentally unwell, weird or of acting white.  

Trevor Noah, Walter Kamau Bell, Gina Yashere, Romesh Ranganathan all have material laughing at the absurdity of being close to nature.

Culturally there is often force in the ridicule that aims to disparage. It serves as a coping mechanism to protect feelings about something lost or that doesn’t feel safe by dismissing and trivialising nature.

Disenfranchisement

People of colour rarely see ourselves in nature in a western context. There is a widely acknowledged lack of black and Asian representation within environmental organisations and nature based activities, and we are rarely presented as knowledge-holders or leaders in natural spaces, creating a feedback loop further increasing a perception that green spaces are not for us.

Many people of colour have been disenfranchised from nature through human interference. Our experiences of how we’re received by white others in nature and negative narratives about our connection have led to a sense that we are outsiders who are not welcome.  

We are less likely to feel entitled to be in natural spaces or to have a sense of ownership, feeling more of a guest in the space than it being our home.

The issue of our absence in nature isn’t simply self-limiting behaviour, but is linked to cultural responses to historical and current traumas of shame, hardship and racism.  

Consequently some people feel they’re escaping something negative and stepping into something better in cities, while simultaneously being negatively received by other humans in the natural world – providing cause to see ourselves as uniquely urban in western contexts.

For those who do want to explore, being in nature can start to feel emotionally complicated, creating a barrier to just getting on with enjoying ourselves.

Although people of colour in the west currently spend significantly less time in nature than white people, for many of us the desire to be connected with nature remains strong. In many cases it is the relationship with other humans that have made being in nature feel unsafe and out of reach.

This Author 

Beth Collier is a nature allied psychotherapist and anthropologist who teaches woodland living skills and natural history. She is director of Wild in the City, supporting urban residents’ well-being through interacting with nature. 

We need innovative thinking and radical transformation to engage the UK public in climate action. 

The charity Possible has published a new report – 10 Bold Ideas – that reflects five key challenge areas in accelerating climate action: cleaning up energy, working with nature, changing what we eat and buy, talking about the climate crisis, and changing how we travel. 

Possible’s ten ‘bold ideas’ – combining policies, technologies and cultural interventions – were developed within the context of last year’s IPCC report on keeping to 1.5°C global warming and the clear need for rapid transformation. The report is published in tandem with the charity’s name change from 10:10 and new strategy.

Rapid transformation

One of the proposed programmes is a “National Climate Service” which would enable everyone to take paid leave to work on practical climate action projects such as tree planting, training exercises in retrofitting, renewable energy or low carbon farming techniques.

The report also includes calls to create a network of “electric motorway lanes” so that lorries and coaches can use the same overhead cable technology as trams and trains; a publicly owned “climate forest” on top of the nation’s disused open cast coal mines; and a “National Climate Helpline”, offering information on climate change, and support for anyone struggling with climate dread and access to crisis support on the impacts of climate change.

Max Wakefield, co-director at Possible, said: “Once the urgency and scale of the climate crisis is truly understood, you quickly realise that we’re stuck between the impossible and the unthinkable.

“You can either carry on business as usual and let the unthinkable become reality or you can make the impossible possible. The goal of this report it to inspire people to choose the latter and build the rapid, zero carbon transition the climate crisis demands.”

Imagining the future

Alice Bell, co-director at Possible, said: “This report was an exercise in imagining better futures. We all know how depressing the issue can be – it’s no surprise that climate dread is on the rise – but that shouldn’t let us lose sight of what we can do to tackle the crisis.

“The sheer scale of changes we need to make means it will touch everyone’s lives. If we’re going to move at the speed required – and if we’re going to ensure the new world we build is fair – everyone’s got to be involved.

“It’s vital we have ideas that don’t just cut carbon, but inspire people with positive climate action.” 

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Possible. 

Image: 10:10, Flickr. 

To provide a dialectical definition of dialectic we begin by establishing its genus and then by identifying its differentia to other concepts in the same genus, and finally arrive at its essence. In more Hegalian terms, we are searching for both identity and difference.

Read: An introduction to Aristotle’s Dialectic. 

The first step is to place dialectic into a genus.  So how do we define genus? In more contemporary language a genus is basically the more ‘general’ category or class in to which our concept, dialectic, can be placed. Aristotle gives the definition of genus as ‘that which is predicated of a number of specifically differing things as part of their nature.’

My interpretation of this is that each thing in the genus shares a significant or fundamental characteristic but are not the same as everything else. So the genus animal would include human, lion, rabbit. So we want to know, ‘to what category of concepts does dialectic belong?’

Intellectual investigation 

The meta-genus to which dialectic belongs is ‘intellectual investigation’. Dialectic is an intellectual practice. It is one of the methods we use to interpret the information that we gather through our senses, and through language.

But it is not the only one. This meta-level genus of intellectual investigation can be divided into the genuses of arts and science. The difference between the arts and the sciences is that the arts are relative – our findings can be different based on the individual person or the material to which they refer; whereas, the sciences search for the absolute or universal – where our findings are true in all cases.

Aristotle places dialectic in the genus of arts along with rhetoric and medicine. These are human practices that take place in a social arena. Even though both rhetoric and dialectic deal with concepts or language, and medicine with plants and bodies, they belong together because they are skilled activities. They are not sciences because they concern individual humans, are subjective. They seek to test definitions rather than attempting to define absolute truth, to discover the one definition.

However, the arts like science do seek knowledge which is generalisable. As Dr Evans points out in Aristotle’s Concept of Dialectic: “[T]he arts – dialectic, rhetoric, medicine – are concerned with the individual perspectives as well as with that which is seen through, and distorted by, them. But the arts too search to achieve universality and objectivity.”

Further: “Dialectic is distinguished from the particular sciences, which are didactic rather than interrogatory and take their start not from views but from premisses which are true and primary.” 

Arts

The arts – dialectic, rhetoric, and medicine – also involve the careful selection of materials that can have a desired impact on a specific human being: “[Aristotle] compares dialectic with rhetoric and medicine, and says that in the case of all three faculties the possession of skill is marked by the ability to work successfully with suitable materials; not all materials are suitable, and it is not required of the man who exercises these faculties that he should be able to achieve success with just any materials.”

The art of dialectic uses syllogisms as does the science of logic, but does so in subtly different way: the premises used in dialectic are sought from or agreed with a specific human individual engaged in a dialectic debate. Its aim is to validate and invalidate arguments, and to discover truths. It is concerned with testing the claims of a specific person through question and answers to establish what the premises, logical argument and conclusions used are, and whether they are valid. Logic is concerned with objectively true premises.

As Dr Evans points out: “The study of the apparent syllogisms must be organised on the basis of some selection among the varieties of ways in which people may be deceived; and it is this organisation and selection which makes this study an art. A science must study a concept in its absolute form.”

This affirms that dialectic belongs to the genus of art – and not the genus of science. It is concerned with opinion. You begin not with what is irrefutable (such as established scientific fact) but instead with what the person you are in conversation takes to be true. This is to bring them towards a state of a higher understanding, but also means that dialectic can be used in complex areas of life where no such truth is yet established.

Differentia

We now move to differentia – the things that make dialectic stand out from other concepts in the same genus. Differentia are those properties that allows us to distinguish from one thing (an object or concept) and an other.

The subject – the thing being described – is qualified by the predicate – the thing being used to describe the subject. A genus is a class (or collection) of things that share a defining predicate. The differentia is the property of any subject that makes it distinguishable from other subjects in the same genus. Therefore, in Dr Evans phrase, that “every differentia is felt to show some qualified thing.” (109) 

Dialectic – for Aristotle – belongs to the same metagenus as logic in that both are intellectual activities. Indeed, dialectic is a debate between two individuals who use logic to test arguments. Dialectic and logic both rely on the use of premises, inference and conclusions – and also the syllogism.

The differentia between dialectic and logic are primarily 1. Dialectic is deployed in debate with a specific individual while logic is not; 2. Dialectic can make use of premises that have not been established as absolute truth, as pure logic should not.

Dr Evans observes: “So there are two ways in which we may have to qualify the absolute character of the dialectical argument – by reference to the other people involved in the dialectical exercise, or to the nature of the problem which we are dealing (81).” These differences mean that dialectic belongs in the genus art, whereas logic belongs in the genus science. 

Ontology

Let us explore further these two essential differences further: Let’s begin at 1. Aristotle says of dialectic: “All this sort of thing is relative to another person”. It’s about the person you are in dialogue with. Dr Evans interprets this in the following way: “[D]ialectic is necessarily concerned with the individual and his logical reactions, since in the practice of dialectic it is only with individuals that one can deal.” (75) He adds later: “In serious dialectic it is important to be clear about whose views, if indeed they are those of any particular person, are being examined”. (81)

This has significant implications. I have often heard it asserted that dialectic means that everything is part of a whole, and that everything is connected. This does not apply to Aristotle’s dialectic.

Dialectic has no axioms, nor does it have any findings. It is the process of moving from premises to conclusions through question and answer between two individuals. Aristotle is clear that there is a difference between dialectic and ontology, the theory of reality.

Even though his ontology does posit that everything is part of a whole, this argument is not seen as a property of dialectic. Dr Evans writes: “Aristotle … makes the distinction … between ontology, which studies everything in the respect in which all things constitute a unity, and dialectic, which does not as an intellectual activity have such a structure as to reflect any unity in the subjects which it treats…”

The individual

There is another fundamental feature of dialectic which results from its concern with that a specific individual knows or argues. Logic – according to Aristotle – attempts to establish a single, central universality.

Universal refers to the qualifier “all” in the class of claim that takes the form of “all s is p”. This essentially means that we are looking for propositions that state all something shares a particular property, or belongs to the same genus.

For example, ‘all humans are animals’. Logic, in the end, is looking for the all of everything. The aim of logic ultimately is to establish a single truth. Dr Evans explains: “[Dialectic] is not the same as the ideal of pure logic, which is to free the conditions of proof from dependence on the variations which may be imposed by the audience or the problems treated (92).”

However, dialectic accounts for two types of universality – the central and the peripheral. The central universality is the object of study of logic. The logician is seeking universals that describe objects and concepts with a single definition which is true in all cases.

Dialectic can make use of both central universality, as established with logic, and also peripheral universality. An example of this is the claim “all humans are good”. It is a universal statement because it refers to “all” humans, and therefore is not a particular statement that refers only to “some” humans. But it is not – or at least not here – predicated on a long coherent chain of argument back to first principles as it would need to be to qualify as a central universality.

If your interlocutor in dialectical argument agrees with you that “all humans are good”, you can start here and infer conclusions from it, but cannot play this fast and loose when engaged in pure logic. 

Universality 

Dr Evans puts it like this: “[T]he nature of dialectic is determined by the fact that it employs certain concepts which, as Aristotle’s analysis shows, possess a double type of universality; these are the type of universality which characterises the concept in its central and primary form, and the type which characterises it in all its forms, peripheral as well as central. It was the distinction between these two forms of universality which was the basis for the analysis of the relation between dialectic and science”. (105).

In reality, every attempt to define the world relates to the person attempting such a definition. It is not possible, in the end, to be completely objective. Even objectivity itself is defined by being separate to the subject.

The real, human, subject is necessary to hold the concept of objectivity. Logic is nonetheless the attempt at establishing propositions which are universal and objective entirely, are free of the subject.

Dr Evans puts it like this: “For such subjects as proof, argument, inference, all contain a reference to the subjects who exercise or experience these things. The study of logic seeks to free these concepts from their dependence on the subjects and to establish theses about them which are objectively and universally valid, and only if it can achieve this do we allow that the study of logic is a skillful activity…” (74) This is not the case with dialectic.

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is part of the Endoxa.review project. 

Page references given refer to J. D. G Evans, Aristotle’s Concept of the Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

A humpback whale which swam into the River Thames has died, according to a charity.

The British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), which has been dedicated to the rescue and well-being of marine animals in distress around the UK for more than 30 years, said it has found the dead whale.

In a statement on Twitter, the organisation said: “Terribly sad news that soon after 5pm today the humpback whale which had not been seen in the Thames all day, was found dead around the Greenhithe area.

Navigational

“A necropsy will be carried out to determine the cause of death.”

The whale, nicknamed Hessy, was first spotted swimming along the Thames on Sunday.

A spokesperson for charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation said the death of the whale was “not unexpected”, adding: “There was always the possibility that the humpback had come up the Thames because he or she was lost or ill.

“Sadly, thousands of whales and dolphins and porpoises die on shores across the globe every year, some through natural causes such as disease, disorientation, and some due to human activity such as loud underwater noise pollution from military activity or oil exploration.”

BDMLR national co-ordinator Julia Cable said it is “very unusual” for a humpback whale to be seen within the Thames Estuary. “It’s very likely that it just made a navigational error,” she said.

Bottlenose

However, Ms Cable said there was no indication that the whale was in any distress.

The BDMLR added: “The Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) will carry out a necropsy as soon as it’s possible, they will then publish their findings.”

In 2006, a northern bottlenose whale was spotted in the Thames in central London. On that occasion the whale, which was too weak to find its way back out of the river on its own, died as rescuers attempted to transport it back to sea.

In 2009 a humpback whale was found washed up on the shore of the Thames in Kent, having seemingly died from starvation.

A year ago a beluga whale, which was given the nickname Benny, was spotted swimming in the Thames near Gravesend. It is thought to have made its own way back out to sea in the new year. In 2006, a northern bottlenose whale was spotted in the Thames in central London. 

This Author

Will Stone is a reporter for PA.