Extinction Rebellion activists have held an “opening ceremony” ahead of two weeks of planned protests across London.

The environmental group plans to shut down key sites, including Westminster and Lambeth bridges, in addition to protests outside key Government departments.

More than a thousand people attended an “opening ceremony” at Marble Arch on Sunday evening, featuring meditation and dancing as “inspiration” prior to the protests.

Willing

Groups of artists held a procession around Marble Arch as the protesters were told to “surround” the upcoming demonstrations with love.

Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Zoe Jones, 24, said Marble Arch will be used throughout the two-week protests as other sites are moved between.

She said: “We’re here to pressure the Government into action because we can’t wait any longer.

“The next two weeks will involve marches and family friendly events, there’ll be some spicier actions as well and some will be arrestable.

“We’ve had 4,000 rebels sign up and say they are willing to be arrested – which is a huge increase on the number arrested in April of 1,000.

Now

“The public perception of XR is that we’re disrupting ordinary people’s lives by blocking roads and that’s why this time we’re taking our protests to the seat of power and taking it to Westminster.

“We are on the public’s side and we are ordinary people who are extremely concerned.”

Grace Maddrell, 14, told PA : “I’m here today because I am angry that no one is doing anything to save my future.

“I’m scared for that future and I’m here out of love for life and the animals that have gone extinct and everyone’s voice that has been silenced because they were not heard in time.”

“People are rebelling in these numbers because they realise the time to address this is right now, not in the year 2050, or even 2025. Scientists are despairing because we are almost out of time. They are telling us to panic.

Shameful

“The weather won’t wait for politics, and so we will gather in Westminster and stay until the Government tells the truth that families across this country need to know.

“This includes the terrifying likelihood that our supermarkets will fail us because the food system is too fragile to continually withstand the shocks of extreme weather happening in other parts of the world.”

Many protesters attended Sunday’s opening with tents and supplies in preparation for the upcoming fortnight.

The group is expecting several thousand people to target different government departments, Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament over the next two weeks, according to a Extinction Rebellion spokesman.

Chay, a 23-year-old student from Bristol, said: “We’re here to hold our government to account for the shameful disregard for the climate crisis and wider environmental issues we’re facing at the current time.

Policed

“We have many, many actions going on over the next two weeks, I won’t give too much away as I want to leave something to the imagination.

“But we are going to be focusing heavily on Westminster because we feel that our elected officials have let us down time and time again and we think it’s time they learned that we are here for the long run.”

On Saturday the group criticised the Metropolitan Police for alleged pre-emptive arrests and the confiscation of equipment including gazebos and beanbags.

Sunday’s protest was policed by two vans of officers who were stationed by Marble Arch, a small distance from the main protesters.

Fair

Ms Jones added: “There is a misconception with Extinction Rebellion that to be involved you have to be arrested but that is not the case.”

She continued: “At the moment we know we have 11 years to sort out our greenhouse emissions and that means in the next 18 months we have to have radical political change and the one way we have seen in history to get radical political change is to do non-violent political action.”

The protesters ranged in age from small children to the elderly, with many referencing the urgency of climate change for young people.

Grace added: “If you look at the people who are in government most of them are a lot older and they’re not going to be alive when this happens and they should be listening to us because they don’t have to worry about it but I do and it’s not fair.”

This Author

Jess Glass is a reporter with PA.

More than two-fifths of UK species including animals, birds and butterflies have seen significant declines in recent decades, a major study shows.

The State of Nature report, which draws on scientific monitoring since the 1970s, warns there is no let-up in net losses for the UK’s wildlife.

More intensive agriculture is still driving declines in farmland nature, while climate change is also having an increasing effect, with average UK temperatures rising by 1C since the 1980s.

Wryneck

Pollution continues to cause problems for natural areas such as streams, despite legislation to curb harmful pollutants, according to the report, which is a collaboration of more than 70 wildlife organisations with government agencies.

Thousands of acres of habitats are being lost to development – although woodland cover has increased, new wetlands have been created, heath and moors restored, and many farmers are farming in nature-friendly ways.

Data on nearly 700 species of land, freshwater and sea animals, fish, birds, butterflies and moths reveals that 41 percent have seen populations decline since 1970, while 26 percent have increased and 33 percent have seen little change.

Among thousands of species, from mammals to plants, assessed on international criteria, 15 percent are threatened with being lost from Britain, including wildcats and greater mouse-eared bats.

Some 133 species have already vanished from Britain’s shores since 1500, the 2019 State of Nature report says, including birds such as the wryneck and serin, which were lost as breeding birds in the 20th century.

Urgently

The study, which comes after similar analyses in 2013 and 2016, also shows that butterfly and moth numbers have been particularly badly hit.

Butterfly numbers have fallen by 17 percent on average and moths by 25 percent. Populations of some butterflies, such as the high brown fritillary and grayling, which need specialised habitats, are down by more than three-quarters since 1970.

The report also highlights successes such as the return of red kites, bitterns, large blue butterflies and beavers to Britain, and the establishment of lady’s slipper orchids at 11 sites in northern England.

Daniel Hayhow, lead author on the report, said: “We know more about the UK’s wildlife than any other country on the planet, and what it is telling us should make us sit up and listen.

“We need to respond more urgently across the board if we are to put nature back where it belongs.”

Dawn chorus

Conservation experts called for more ambitious action, including a strong new set of environmental laws to reverse declines in nature.

Rosie Hails, from the National Trust – the country’s largest private landowner – said: “We are now at a crossroads when we need to pull together with actions rather than words, to stop and reverse the decline of those species at risk, as well as protecting and creating new habitats in which they can thrive.”

Tony Juniper, chairman of government conservation agency Natural England, said there were some grounds for optimism, as he hailed groups and land managers working to help bring species back from the brink.

But he added: “This report is a wake-up call. More needs to be done to achieve the ambitions of the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan to reverse nature’s decline so that our children can experience and benefit from a richer natural environment.”

Sophie Pavelle, a young conservationist who helped launch the report, said she had felt the loss of nature more acutely this year than any other, with “a dawn chorus less deafening, hedgerows less frantic, bizarre, worrying weather”.

Ambitious

“People protect what they love, and if we can find quirky, empowering ways to encourage young people to connect with nature emotionally and see it as something they can truly champion, only then can we dig deep to find real hope for a brighter, sustained future for our natural world.”

Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers said: “We value our species and ecosystems in their own right, but they also contribute to our wellbeing and economic prosperity.”

She said the Government’s 25-Year Environment Plan marks a step change in ambition for nature, and a new Environment Bill will contain “ambitious measures to address the biggest environment priorities of our age, including restoring and enhancing nature for generations to come”.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Guy Singh-Watson, founder of organic veg box company Riverford, was joined by local Extinction Rebellion volunteers to pick thousands of surplus sweetcorn cobs to feed activists in London next week.

Riverford has donated around 5,000 cobs to the climate action group, which is due to stage a two-week direct action and mass protest across London and various other cities to step up pressure on the government.

Singh-Watson said: “I am supporting Extinction Rebellion because I want there to be a future for my children, and the billions of other people on this planet. Right now, I see government failing in its responsibility.

“I think we all have a responsibility to do our best for the planet and for future generations.”

Local volunteers

He was joined in the fields by around 10 volunteers from the Totnes branch of Extinction Rebellion, as well as Riverford co-owners, who were undeterred by the rain to pick throughout the day.

The sweetcorn cobs will be delivered to London by Riverford and used to help feed the thousands of activists expected to attend the protests from next week.

Extinction Rebellion has three core asks: for the government to tell the truth; reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025; and establish a Citizen’s Assembly to oversee climate and ecological justice.

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Riverford. 

Climate change and pollution continue to rise as threats, with severe weather, changing ecosystems and rising temperatures responsible for 33 animal extinctions, while pollution is responsible for 37 extinctions to date, new data shows. 

Agriculture and aquaculture is the biggest threat to endangered species, including the fishing and harvesting of aquatic resources, the production of food and livestock farming. 

A staggering 7,522 species are currently threatened as a result of agriculture and aquaculture, 2,562 of which are critically endangered. The second biggest threat is biological resource use, which could impact 2,406 critically endangered species. 

Animal extinctions

Animal Endangerment Map collates and analyses official conservation reports to reveal the species that are currently classed as extinct, endangered and vulnerable around the world.

The research also shows how conservation efforts have changed over the past decade, showing which countries have experienced the most animal extinction to date. 

In 2019, more than 28,000 species are threatened with extinction worldwide – representing more than a quarter (27 percent) of all assessed species. The United States has experienced the most animal extinction with 237 species reported to have died out prior to 2018, followed by French Polynesia with 59 extinctions, Mauritius with 44 and Australia with 40. 

Every 22 known species of ape are now endangered, and seven primate species are at a particularly high risk of extinction as a result of deforestation, hunting and agriculture. This includes the Roloway monkeys found in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana who have a remaining population size of just 2,000. 

And it’s not just animal extinctions – the US also claimed the highest number of endangered species in 2018 with 1,046, representing a 9.87 percent increase over the past decade. This figure has since risen to 1,064 in 2019, showing a 1.72 percent increase over the past year alone. 

Predicted decline

69 percent of the 494 critically endangered species in the US are predicted to continue to decline in the future, with 48 species expected to suffer as a result of wastewater, industrial and agricultural effluents, rubbish, pollutants and excess energy pollution. This list consists of one plant and 47 animal species, including eight species of bumblebee. 

Australia also experiences a high level of endangerment, with 932 at-risk species reported in 2018, 52 percent of which are also predicted to decline.

Within this number, the list of endangered animals who are predicted to be affected by climate change includes the hawksbill turtle, which has a current estimated population of between 20,000 and 23,000 nesting females. 

With recent research showing that reptiles are particularly susceptible to the harmful effects of plastic pollution and over one million marine animals reportedly killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean, it’s no surprise that the hawksbill turtle population is declining. Australia

But the US isn’t the only country to have experienced a significant rise in the number of endangered and extinct species over the past decade. Saint Martin has seen a 1,150 percent rise in endangerment since 2008, growing from 4 at-risk species to 50. 

In fact, just four countries have seen a decline (-3 percent or more) in animal endangerment and extinction over the past decade – Uganda, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, the Falkland Islands, and Holy See. 

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the Animal Endangerment Map project. 

To find out which countries have seen the most significant rise in endangerment over the past ten years and to see some of the most threatened species in each location, visit the Animal Endangerment Map here. 

Image: US Fish and Wildlife Service, Flickr. 

There are two major options for climate policy, one is adaptation, a private good – which could be investment in one’s housing to reduce storm damages – the other is a public good, emission reductions, which is policy to reduce global carbon emissions.

The recent debate in climate policy has shifted towards creating an optimal policy mix between the two.

By contrast, we suggest here that emission reductions must be favoured over adaptation if we are to maximize global well-being.  

Economist’s perspective 

Most major international and national governmental bodies seem to increasingly view adaptation as an important contributor to climate policy, if not one of the main potential ‘solutions’ to our climate change problem.

For example, the European Union has placed adaptation highly on its policy agenda in the 2013 EU Strategy on Adaptation; the United Nations Environmental Program developed the National Adaptation Plan which supports countries in their national adaptations; the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) specifically endorses adaptation together with emissionreductions as an “effective climate policy aimed at reducing the risks of climate change to natural and human systems”; and the UNFCCC promises to channel 100 billion USD for adaptation measures to developing countries through its Green Climate Fund by 2020.

Clearly, all eyes are set on adaptation.

From an economist’s perspective, several critical arguments can be forwarded against adaptation. Firstly, investments in emission reduction benefit everyone while adaptation only benefits the party that undertakes it. For the world as a whole, it is clear that if everyone invests in emission reduction, then the accumulated returns outweigh those of adaptation.

In other words, compared to the cooperative global optimum which should solely consist of emission reductions, undertaking any kind of adaptation, may it be cooperative or unilateral, induces a significant loss to global well-being. The only reason adaptation may be pursued right now is to reduce those climate impacts that are already occuring. 

The unilateral option of adaptation also reduces the incentives to invest in emission reduction and therefore imposes a negative externality on all other countries, leading to more climate change and consequently a greater need to undertake additional climate policy.

In the worst case, adaptation will simply turn out to be a white elephant. It goes without saying that this feedback cycle can lead to significant increases in global warming, to the extent that adaptation can become very costly or even impossible.

Biophysical constraints

There are also significant biophysical and financial constraints to adaptation that make adaptation a particularly weak policy option.

Biophysical constraints tend to be related to natural thresholds that, if once crossed (e.g. desertification), seriously inhibit both nature’s as well as mankind’s ability to adapt.

Financial constraints arise if, for example, poor agricultural households cannot afford to buy the seeds that new climatic conditions require, or to insure themselves sufficiently against greater climate variability; or those needing to migrate have not sufficient funds to do so.  

Finally, there are also social limits to adaptation. Who wants to live with three meter high flood barriers around the house? Which societies can really easily cope with large-scale climate migrants especially if there are strong cultural differences?   

These arguments tilt the scale away from adaptation and towards emission reductions. Additionally, they imply that accepting adaptation as part of our climate policy mix also entails that we accept climate change and its consequences for our future generations; that we accept our failure to coherently establish international cooperation in order to reduce carbon emissions; and that we accept to `agree’ on a global policy that is far from the optimal one.

Allowing a large role for adaptation simply means we failed in following the simple Kindergarten Rule of Sustainable Development – cleaning up our own mess. 

Last resort

If policy makers manage to introduce a global cap-and-trade program, or converge on the ‘right’ carbon price, or proceed with sufficiently large Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, then this should take us close enough to the social optimum such that no, or only very marginal, adaptation efforts will be necessary. 

However, if policy makers are unable to agree and to commit to the globally optimal policy, then we have to accept that we as human beings are incapable of achieving the level of coordination that problems like climate change demand from us.

Only then should we allow adaptation to play a part in our climate policy, while we, at the same time, have to always remember that this is neither optimal nor, despite the IPCC’s claim,  effective or desirable. 

Instead – and this is an important change in rhetoric that must be acknowledged – adaptation is a last resort and only a testimony of mankind’s inability to cooperate.

This change in rhetoric would also make room for more stringent views on adaptation, for example that adaptation is only acceptable for countries if this does not negatively impact their emission reduction efforts. 

This Author 

Ingmar Schumacher is Professor of environmental economics at the IPAG Business School in France.

Schumacher’s paper, ‘Climate Policy Must Favor Mitigation Over Adaptation’ is forthcoming in Environmental & Resource Economics. 

Image: Brigitte Leonie, Flickr. 

Four people have been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage after climate change activists sprayed the Treasury in central London with fake blood.

Extinction Rebellion demonstrators parked an old fire engine outside the building and a pool of red liquid – said to be 396 gallons (1,800 litres) of water coloured with food dye – lay opposite the entrance.

A police spokesman said: “Police were called at 10.17am to Horse Guards Road. People on a privately-owned fire engine had sprayed a liquid at the Treasury building. No reported injuries.

Future

“Three men and one woman were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.”

The campaigners said they aimed to highlight the inconsistency between the Government’s insistence that the UK is a world leader in tackling the climate emergency and its funding for fossil fuel exploration and carbon intensive projects.

At least 30 police officers surrounded the fire engine outside the Treasury building in Westminster, which had protesters standing on top of it, including 83-year-old Phil Kingston, from Bristol.

Ahead of the action, he said he was a Christian caring for the Earth as God’s creation and he was fighting “with all my being for my four grandchildren in this situation of existential danger”.

Fellow protester Cathy Eastburn, 52, said: “I’m terrified – as things stand my children do not have a future, and that goes for all children alive today.

Biodiversity

“Around the world people are already losing their lives and homes because of climate breakdown – floods, droughts, food shortages, more frequent extreme weather events, and so on.”

And she said: “Decisions being made here in the Treasury right now – including huge subsidies for fossil fuels, financing massive fossil fuels projects overseas, airport expansion – have devastating consequences and are incompatible with a liveable future for my children and all children everywhere.”

The protest comes ahead of next week’s International Rebellion, when Extinction Rebellion protesters will take action in more than 60 cities around the world.

In the UK, Extinction Rebellion activists are urging the Government to “act now to halt biodiversity loss” and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025.

Fossil fuel

They staged the protest at the Treasury in the wake of a report by the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) which said billions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money supporting fossil fuel schemes around the world was undermining the UK’s commitment to tackle climate change.

Following the incident, a Treasury spokesman said: “The UK is a world leader on climate change – having reduced its emissions by 42% between 1990 and 2017, while growing the economy by more than two-thirds.

“In June, we became the first major economy to legislate to end our contribution to global warming by 2050. We will continue to build on this proud record.”

UK Export Finance (UKEF), which provides loans, insurance and guarantees for firms operating overseas, gave £2.5 billion to fossil fuel projects between 2013/14 and 2017/18.

These Authors

Catherine Wylie and Emily Beament are reporters with PA. 

Work affecting ancient woodlands in the path of HS2 has been put off until next year, the company building the high-speed railway has said.

Last month Transport Secretary Grant Shapps ordered HS2 Ltd to halt clearances of ancient woodland for the rail project while the scheme is reviewed, unless they were necessary to avoid major costs and delays.

But campaigners raised concerns woods were still in jeopardy, with protesters led by TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham setting up a “woodland” outside HS2 headquarters to campaign against the destruction of trees.

Track

And the Woodland Trust accused the firm of acting with “reckless haste” to go ahead with work to translocate soil from South Cubbington Wood in Warwickshire, where locals set up a protest camp to protect the woodland.

But now HS2 has said work affecting 11 ancient woodlands in Warwickshire and Staffordshire which was due to go ahead this autumn has been deferred until 2020.

The scheme is being reviewed by the company’s former chairman Douglas Oakervee, who was commissioned by the Government to analyse whether and how the project should continue.

Work will take place in early 2020 at six sites, the company said, and at five further sites in autumn and winter next year.

An HS2 Ltd spokesperson said: “As highlighted by the Secretary of State, during the Oakervee Review we must strike a sensible balance between keeping the programme on track, and recognising that some works cannot be undone.

Clearance

“We have assessed 11 ancient woodlands, parts of which were due to be affected by preparations to build Britain’s new high-speed railway this autumn, during the period of the Oakervee review.

“Work will now be deferred to autumn or winter 2020 on five of these sites, and to early 2020 on six of the sites, including South Cubbington Wood.

“We will also take measures to protect wildlife to ensure they are not affected when work begins in early 2020.”

Other preparatory works including “low-level vegetation clearance”, fencing and preparation of site access will continue, the company said.

Ancient

The Woodland Trust welcomed the news that work in all ancient woods would be deferred until the completion of the HS2 review.

Director of conservation and external affairs at the Woodland Trust Abi Bunker said: “This is the right decision but it has come very late in the day and only after much pressure from the Woodland Trust and many other organisations and individuals.

“We remain concerned about the fact that HS2 will still be carrying out some work at these sites.

“The richness of ancient woodland isn’t just about trees. It’s also the vegetation, the soils and the wildlife that makes ancient woodland a special irreplaceable habitat.

Woodland

“Work that permanently affects these habitats like clearing vegetation and evicting bats and mammals must be stopped too while the review is completed. We will be watching closely.”

Mr Shapps tweeted: “Pleased @HS2Ltd have confirmed all ancient woodland clearances scheduled to take place during Oakervee review will be paused. Strikes a sensible balance between avoiding irreversible actions and causing unnecessary delays to the project if it continues.”

Work is being deferred until autumn and winter 2020 at Roughknowles Wood, North Wood and Burnt Firs in Warwickshire and an unnamed copse off Drayton Lane and Rookery Wood in Staffordshire.

It is being deferred until early 2020 at Fulfen Wood in Staffordshire and at Broadwells Wood, Birches Wood, Crackley Wood, unnamed woodland south of Ashow Road and South Cubbington Wood in Warwickshire.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Oil giant BP has been dropped from sponsoring a scheme that allowed students to buy heavily discounted tickets for Shakespeare plays after young climate strikers threatened a boycott.

The move was prompted by a letter from the UK Student Climate Network to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), which stated: “If we, as young people, wish to see an affordable play at your theatre we have to help to promote a company that is actively destroying our futures by wrecking the climate.”

The RSC needed young people more than it needed BP, whose contribution comprised less than 0.5 per cent of the group’s income, the letter added.

Debate “often difficult”

Announcing the end of the relationship yesterday, the RSC’s artistic director Gregory Doran and executive director Catherine Mallyon, said that it had been listening to a variety of opinions from its board, staff, audiences and artists about its partnership with BP for several months.

The debate had been “often difficult”, and the decision to end the sponsorship had not been taken “lightly or swiftly”, they said.

“Young people are now saying clearly to us that the BP sponsorship is putting a barrier between them and their wish to engage with the RSC. We cannot ignore that message,” they added.

The partnership with BP began in 2013, and had allowed 80,000 16-25 year olds to buy tickets to RSC shows for £5.

“Disappointed and dismayed”

A spokesman for BP said it was “disappointed and dismayed” by the premature end of the partnership, which was due to run to at least 2022. The oil company shared many of the concerns that contributed to the decision, he said. He added: “Ironically, the increasing polarisation of debate, and attempts to exclude companies committed to making real progress, is exactly what is not needed.

“This global challenge needs everyone – companies, governments and individuals – to work together to achieve a low carbon future,” he added.  

However, Morten Thaysen, climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK said that it was hard not to think that “the walls were closing in on BP”.

“Despite the millions they throw at cleaning their reputation through ad campaigns and sponsorship deals, in the public eye their complicity in the climate emergency is catching up to them,” he said.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Microplastics may harm human health, researchers at the University Medical Centre (UMC) Utrecht have claimed today.

Research presented at the Plastic Health Summit in Amsterdam will reveal immune cells that recognise and attack microplastics will die quickly as a result of the contact.

Experiments showed immune cells that encounter microplastics under laboratory conditions die around three times more quickly than those that don’t.

Cell death

Some forms of accelerated cell death or damage can prompt an inflammatory response in the body.

The study was led by Nienke Vrisekoop – Assistant Professor at the UMC Utrecht Center for Quantitative Immunology.

Microplastics coated in blood plasma were placed in culture dishes alongside human immune cells under laboratory conditions.

Some 20 percent of immune cells tested in culture dishes without microplastics died within 24 hours.

When immune cells came into contact with microplastics 60 percent of the cells died within the same time period.

Growing evidence 

This rate of cell death is thought to be far in excess of when immune cells encounter and engulf most bacteria or foreign bodies.

A growing body of evidence is pointing to the presence of microplastics in humans. Last year researchers at the Medical University of Vienna found 20 microplastic particles in every 10 grams of stool.

The Plastic Health Summit in Amsterdam is set to see respected health experts from around the world debate the latest state-of-the-art research on micro- and nanoplastics, plastic additives, and health.

The summit represents the first time the world’s top scientists have got together to explore new and existing research on the impact of plastic and health.

At the summit Liz Bonnin will be receiving the results of a urine test revealing the levels of potentially harmful plastic-related chemicals in her body.

Urgent research 

Organised by the Plastic Soup Foundation and supported by environmental campaign group A Plastic Planet, the summit will see vital new evidence presented exploring the link between plastic and ill-health.

Assistant Professor Nienke Vrisekoop said: “These results raise serious questions about what microplastics are doing to our immune health.

“Urgent further research is needed to paint as full a picture as possible.”

A Plastic Planet co-founder Sian Sutherland said: “Anyone who cares about their health or the health of their children will be profoundly worried about today’s findings.

“With plastic production set to quadruple in the next decades, we need to ask ourselves – is this risk worth it for the sake of convenience in our throwaway lifestyle or is this finally the proof needed to turn off the plastic tap?

“The Plastic Health Summit is a vital catalyst for us to finally understand the true cost of plastic on human health.”

Responsibility 

Maria Westerbos, founder and director of the Plastic Soup Foundation, said: “With this Summit, we want to prove once and for all that plastic doesn’t just harm nature and animals, but also ourselves.

“If we want to give our children and their children a fair chance, then all this proof is enough to turn the tide.”

David Azoulay, Environmental Health Program Director at the Center for International Environmental Law said: “The demonstrated impacts along the life cycle of plastic paint an unequivocally toxic picture: plastic threatens human health on a global scale.

“It’s high time businesses across the world took responsibility for the plastic they produce.”

This Article 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Plastic Health Summit.

Many of us across the UK have been looking anxiously at ash trees and thinking, “This year it will really start to show.”

Ash is always the last tree to come into leaf, but this spring there were many bare twigs that will not produce leaves again. The march of ash dieback is upon us. All around us, ash trees are dying quietly.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine

Ash dieback is a fungal disease that attacks the common ash tree, Fraxinus excelsior. It is caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, which originally came from Eastern Asia and has spread throughout Europe, decimating ash populations.

Significant challenges

The spores of H. fraxineuscan be carried on the wind, although its spread has been accelerated by trade in ash trees. The fungus can kill young trees quickly, and it weakens older ash trees over a period of years until other pathogens finish them off.

Recent studies suggest that we could lose over 95 percent of our ash trees from the UK in the next ten years. On a practical level, ash dieback will bring significant challenges and costs for land managers.

The health and safety implications of unsafe trees in public areas are huge, with an estimated £30 million per year needed to deal with them in Devon alone.

But figures like this cannot reflect the full impact of such huge ecological change on our society. The looming reality of ash dieback brings the prospect of a different degree of loss to our countryside, one that it is impossible to control: it brings a deep grief.

Ash is Britain’s third most common tree, so familiar that we are used to taking it for granted, like a family member who has always been there for us. It is a core constituent of our broadleaved woodlands, our hedgerows and our timber supply. The ash tree has been fundamental to British life for millennia.

Folk tales

Ash is considered a feminine tree in British folklore, counterpart to the masculine oak, and it brings us protection and healing. Young children would be given ash sap to drink; sick children were passed through a cleft in an ash tree to cure them.

Strong ash wood was used for many purposes, from spears and bows in battle to cartwheels, tool handles, wooden bowls and furniture. The yule log was originally made of anash log or a bundle of ash sticks. Both the wassail bowl and the maypole were made of ash, and the witch’s broom or besom was made of an ash staff, with birch twigs bound by willow.

Ash magic is peppered throughout the folk tales of the British Isles, although the benevolence (or otherwise) of individual ash trees varies in the stories. In the Welsh epic of the Mabinogion, Gwydion the magician bears a staff of ash, the World Tree in Celtic mythology, the tree that joins the lower, middle and upper worlds.

However, it’s in the Norse myths that we find the ash tree at its most fundamental, intertwined with Germanic and British tradition. They tell us that at the beginning of time, the first gods found an ash and an elm tree with their roots ripped out of the soil. They set them straight and created the first man (Ask) and woman (Embla), and all the world’s people were descended from these trees.

Connecting the worlds of humans, gods, giants and the underworld is the ash Yggdrasil, greatest and best of trees, the tree that always was and always is and always will be. Yggdrasil holds all of creation. Deer nibble at Yggdrasil, and a dragon devours its roots from the underworld, but it constantly regenerates from the dewdrops that are sprinkled on its roots by the three Fates.

It is from Yggdrasil that Odin hangs upside down for nine days and nine nights, learning great wisdom to become Odin the Allfather.

Grief and inspiration

At the end of the Norse mythological cycle, Ragnarök, the end of the world, is brought about by the unleashing of dark and trickster forces.

Yggdrasil the ash tree shakes and groans and everything is frightened as wars rage and the land is ravaged by fire. Two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, hide inside Yggdrasil, and they do not emerge again until the world is safe to reinhabit.

It is tempting to think that ash dieback is a ‘sign’ of our mismanagement of the environment or our ecological doom. This denies the natural law of cause and effect, and I don’t think it is entirely fair in this case. Nevertheless, the loss of ash, and the grief, are on their way.

An important part of grieving is to take inspiration from the one who has died – to take their lessons and use them positively, to find motivation for renewal. How can we find this in the face of such huge change?

Let’s return to the old stories. When the two humans hid inside the trunk of Yggdrasil to survive Ragnarök, they did not emerge afterwards, as from the ark, into a bright, shiny new world. They stepped out into a challenging place, wrecked by the egos and wars of the gods and the giants. They had no choice but to take it on.

Respect

It won’t be only the loss of ash trees that is remembered from the mythology of our own times, but also our response.

We can replace dead trees with other species, we can value and propagate our woodlands and hedgerows and treat them with respect; we can think about the source of the wood that we use, and how we can use wood more wisely.

Ash dieback is a wake-up call for us to bring genuine renewal to our countryside, not just to stem the loss that will inevitably come, whether that loss is due to greed, technology or disease.

It is up to us now to turn our intentions to the positive. Perhaps we can invoke the healing and the inspiration of the ash, greatest and best of trees, to help double our efforts.

This Author 

Lisa Schneidau is an ecologist working with Devon Wildlife Trust on landscape-scale conservation. She is a professional storyteller and is the author of Botanical Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland (The History Press).

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine

Image: Woodland Trust Media Library