The gene-editing of DNA inside living cells is considered by many to be the preeminent technological breakthrough of the new millennium. Researchers in medicine and agriculture have rapidly adopted it as a technique for discovering cell and organism functions.

But the implications of its commercial uses are much more complex.

Gene-editing has many potential uses. These include altering cells to treat human disease, altering crops and livestock for breeding and agriculture. Furthermore, in a move that has been widely criticised, Chinese researcher He Jiankui claims to have edited human babies to resist HIV by altering a gene called CCR5.

‘Tweaking’

For most commercial applications gene-editing’s appeal is simplicity and precision: it alters genomes at precise sites and without inserting foreign DNA. This is why, in popular articles, gene-editing is often referred to as ‘tweaking’.

The tweaking narrative, however, is an assumption and not an established fact. And it recently suffered a large dent.

In late July researchers from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) analysed the whole genomes of two calves originally born in 2016. The calves were edited by the biotech startup Recombinetics using a gene-editing method called TALENS (Norris et al., 2019).

The two Recombinetics animals had become biotech celebrities for having a genetic change that removed their horns. Cattle without horns are known as ‘polled’. The calves are well-known because Recombinetics has insisted that its two edited animals were extremely precisely altered only to possess the polled trait.

However, what the FDA researchers found was not precision. Each of Recombinetics’ calves possessed two antibiotic resistance genes, along with other segments of superfluous bacterial DNA. Thus, apparently unbeknown to Recombinetics, adjacent to its edited site were 4,000 base pairs of DNA that originated from the plasmid vector used to introduce the DNA required for the hornless trait.

Animal research 

The FDA finding has attracted some media attention; mainly focussed on the incompetence of Recombinetics. The startup failed to find (or perhaps look for) DNA it had itself added as part of the editing process. Following the FDA findings, Brazil terminated a breeding program begun with the Recombinetics animals.

But the FDA’s findings are potentially trivial besides another recent discovery about gene-editing: that foreign DNA from surprising sources can routinely find its way into the genome of edited animals.

This genetic material is not DNA that was put there on purpose, but rather, is a contaminant of standard editing procedures.

These findings have not yet been reported in the scientific or popular media. But they are of great consequence from a biosafety perspective and therefore for the commercial and regulatory landscape of gene-editing.

They imply, at the very least, the need for strong measures to prevent contamination by stray DNA, along with thorough scrutiny of gene-edited cells and gene-edited organisms. And, as the Recombinetics case suggests, these are needs that developers themselves may not meet.

Understanding the sources

As far back as 2010 researchers working with human cells showed that a form of gene-editing called Zinc Finger Nuclease (ZFN) could result in the insertion of foreign DNA at the editing target site (Olsen et al., 2010). The origin of this foreign DNA, as with Recombinetics’ calves, was the plasmid vector used in the editing process.

Understanding the presence of plasmid vectors requires an appreciation of the basics of gene-editing, which, confusingly, are considerably distinct from what the word ‘editing’ means in ordinary English.

Ultimately, all DNA ‘editing’ is really the cutting of DNA by enzymes, called nucleases, that are supposed to act only at chosen sites in the genome of a living cell. This cut creates a double-stranded break that severs (and therefore severely damages) a chromosome. The enzymes most commonly used by researchers for this cutting are the Fok I enzyme (for TALENS type editing), Cas9 (for CRISPR), or Zinc Finger Nucleases (for ZFN).

Subsequent to this cutting event the cell effects a repair. In practice, this DNA repair is usually inaccurate because the natural repair mechanism in most cells is somewhat random. The result is called the ‘edit’. Researchers typically must select from many ‘edits’ to obtain the one they desire.

Like virtually all enzymes these nucleases are proteins. And like most proteins they are somewhat tricky to produce and relatively unstable once made. Typically, therefore, rather than produce the DNA cutting enzymes directly, researchers introduce vector plasmids into target cells.

These vector plasmids are circular DNA molecules that code for the desired enzyme(s). (Vector plasmid DNA may also code for the guide RNA that CRISPR editing techniques require). What this means, in practice, is that TALENS, Cas9 and the other cutting enzymes end up being produced by the target cell itself.

Stray DNA

Introducing DNA rather than proteins is thus much easier, research-wise, but it has a downside: non-host (i.e. transgenic) DNA must be introduced into the cell that is to be edited and this DNA may end up in the genome.

Plasmid vectors are not simple. As well as specifying the nucleases, the vector plasmid used by Recombinetics contained antibiotic resistance genes, plus the lac Z gene, plus promoter and termination sequences for each of them, plus two bacterial origins of replication. Each of these DNA components comes from widely diverse microbes.

As Olsen et al. and the FDA showed, using both TALENS and ZFN types of DNA cutters can result in plasmid vector integration at the target site. In 2015 Japanese researchers showed that DNA edits made to mouse zygotes using the CRISPR method of gene editing are also vulnerable to unintended insertion of non-host DNA (Ono et al., 2015).

Since then, similar integrations of foreign DNA at the target site have been observed in many species: fruitflies (Drosophila melanogaster), medaka fish (Oryzias latipes), mice, yeast, Aspergillus (a fungus), the nematode C. elegans, Daphnia magna, and various plants (e.g. Jacobs et al., 2015; Li et al., 2015; Gutierrez-Triana et al., 2018).

Contamination

The vector plasmids themselves are not the only source of potential foreign DNA contamination in standard gene-editing methodologies.

Earlier this year the same Japanese group showed that DNA from the E. coligenome can integrate in the target organisms’ genome (Ono et al. 2019). Acquisition of E. coli DNA was found to be quite frequent.

Insertion of long unintended DNA sequences occurred at four percent of the total number of edited sites and 21 percent of these were of DNA from the E. coli genome. The source of the E. coli DNA was traced back to the E. coli cells that were used to produce the vector plasmid. The vector plasmid, which is DNA, was contaminated with E. coli genome DNA. Importantly, the Japanese researchers were using standard methods of vector plasmid preparation.

Even more intriguing was the finding, in the same paper, that edited mouse genomes can acquire bovine DNA or goat DNA (Ono et al., 2019). This was traced to the use, in standard culture medium for mouse cells, of foetal calf serum; that is, body fluids usually extracted from cows.

This serum contains DNA from whichever animal species it happened to have been extracted from, hence the insertion in some experiments of goat DNA (which occurred when goat serum was used instead of calf serum).

Even more worrisome, amongst the DNA sequences inserted into the mouse genome were bovine and goat retrotransposons (jumping genes) and mouse retrovirus DNA (HIV is a retrovirus). Thus gene-editing is a potential mechanism for horizontal gene transfer of unwanted pathogens, including, but not limited to, viruses.

Unwelcome viruses

Other potential sources of unwanted DNA also exist in cell cultures used for gene editing. In 2004 researchers observed that when cells from a hepatoma cell line were caused to have DNA breaks, some of these breaks were filled by hepatitis B virus sequences (Bill and Summers, 2004). In other words, pathogens contaminating the foetal serum, such as DNA viruses, should also be a source of concern.

Furthermore, the insertion of superfluous DNA from other species is likely not restricted to the intended target site. As is becoming appreciated, gene-editing enzymes can act at unwanted locations in the genome (e.g. Kosicki et al., 2018).

DNA introduced by accident can also end up at such sites. This has been shown for human cells and also plants using CRISPR (Kim and Kim 2014; Li et al., 2017; Jacobs et al., 2015). There is every reason to suppose that the more exotic DNAs mentioned above can integrate there as well, but this has not been specifically tested for.

In summary, the new findings are very simple: cutting DNA inside cells, regardless of the precise type of gene editing, predisposes genomes to acquire unwanted DNA. The unwanted DNA may come from inside the edited cell, or it may come from the culture medium, or it may come from any biological material added to the culture medium, whether accidentally or on purpose.

Therefore, it is not hard to imagine, for instance, gene-edited animals becoming the breeding stock that leads to the development or spread of novel or unwelcome viruses or mycoplasmas.

Human applications

Stuart Newman of New York Medical College is a cell biologist, a founding member of the Council for Responsible Genetics, and Editor-In-Chief of the journal Biological Theory. According to him, the addition of DNA originating from cell culture “is something that has not been broached in the discourse around safety of CRISPR and other gene modification techniques.”

Newman explained that in the case of gene-editing intended to generate altered living organisms, cell culture media “contain genes that could cause developmental problems if reincorporated by CRISPR/Cas9 into the zygote genome in extra numbers and uncontrolled chromosomal sites.

“I have little doubt E. coli DNA has been inadvertently incorporated into many CRISPR targets, and it is likely to cause problems, as it has in the horned cattle.”

Similar concerns apply to human applications. The incorporation of DNA from other species has not publicly been raised in connection with the gene-edited human babies of researcher He Jiankui. Clearly, it should be.

From what cell types, for example, did He Jiankui purify the proteins he presumably used to edit the CCR5 gene? Rabbit cells? Insect cells? Those, at least, are the standard methods.

The second important conclusion, and what the Recombinetics case exemplifies, is that researchers are often not looking for stray DNA. If they were to look, many more examples would likely be reported. We can conclude this because the research cited above used standard methods of gene-editing. The only untypical aspect was the extra effort put towards detecting superfluous DNA.

GMOs

What these recent findings also highlight is a more general, but little-discussed, aspect of gene-editing. Although the goals of gene-editors and genetic engineers are assumed to be very different, their standard methods are, in practice, virtually indistinguishable.

Consider crop plants, which are where much of the immediate commercial interest in gene-editing resides. To edit plants, DNA, in the form of vector plasmid, is introduced into plant cells. In contrast to methods of animal gene-editing, this vector plasmid is necessary (and not optional) since proteins cannot penetrate plant cell walls.

This vector plasmid must access the cell interior, which requires either a gene gun or infection with the DNA-transferring bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Lastly, in-vitro cell culture is used to regenerate the edited cells into whole plants.

Gene guns, tissue culture, and A. tumefaciens are all standard genetic engineering methods for crops. They also all create mutations. That is, they damage DNA. Depending on the specifics of the method used, such as the length of time in tissue culture, the collective result can be ten thousand mutations per genome (Wilson et al., 2006; Latham et al., 2006).

For gene-editing of crops this means that one on-target mutation may be dwarfed by thousands of off-target ones.

The other necessary comparison with GMOs is their track record of being found, long after commercialisation, to have unintended foreign DNA present in their genomes. Cornell’s virus-resistant papaya, released in Hawai’i, turned out to contain at least five (and possibly six) separate fragments of transgenic DNA.

Cornell had previously told regulators its papaya contained two transgenes (Ming et al., 2008). Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soybean, by then grown on 96 percent of US soybean acres, was found by independent researchers to have substantially more foreign DNA than Monsanto had claimed (Windels et al., 2001).

Solutions

So, if one only listened to the rhetoric contrasting ‘precise’ ‘tweaks’ of gene-editing with ‘messy’, ‘random’ genetic engineering one would hardly suspect that, when it comes to plants, and often to animals as well, there is little difference between the reality of gene-editing and that of genetic engineering.

Solutions to the presence of superfluous DNA (at or distant from the editing site) come in two basic forms: prevention, or detection followed by removal.

An obvious preventive step is to avoid the use of vector plasmids and undefined culture media (undefined media are those containing fluids or extracts from living organisms). Another is to explicitly breed (backcross) gene-edited animals and plants to remove superfluous DNAs. A third is to sequence their whole genome, compare it to the parent genome, and select only unaltered lines, if they can be found (Ahmad et al., 2019).

However, these remedies are time-consuming and costly, or not yet fully developed, or only available for some species. These are also solutions that nullify the advantages of speed and ease that are often the stated reasons for editing in the first place.

The requirements for expertise and effort do much to explain the second major problem, which is that the industry, and not just Recombinetics, is not showing much interest in self-examination. Far greater even than the GMO industry before it, there is a cowboy zeitgeist: blow off problems and rush to market.

Thus most gene-editing companies are reluctant to share information and consequently very little is known about how, in practice, many of these companies derive their ‘gene-edited’ products.

Regulations

Many countries are at present formulating regulations that will go a long way to determining who benefits and who loses from any potential benefits that gene-editing may have.

But, in any event, these results provide a compelling case for active government oversight.

It is not just regulators who need to step up, however. Investors, insurers, journalists, everyone, in fact, should be asking far more questions of the scientists and companies active in gene-editing. Otherwise, boom is likely to stray into bane.

This Author 

Jonathan Latham is a molecular biologist and former genetic engineer. This article was first published by Independent Science News. 

Much of the world has been shifting away from coal. But Pakistan, one of the smallest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions historically, is intending to burn a lot more of it in the coming years.

Less than one percent of global emissions currently come from Pakistan – but this number is likely to increase four-fold in the next decade due to its growing portfolio of coal-fueled plants.

Until three years ago, the South Asian country had just one active coal-fired plant. Today, it has nine – with more to come in the pipeline.

Energy crisis 

One of these plants is a mile-wide pit that runs nearly 500 feet deep being dug by hundreds of workers in the heart of the Thar Desert, in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh.

The project is on its way to becoming Pakistan’s biggest industrial site – a $1.6 billion power project by Sindh Engro Coal Mining Co (SEMC), backed by a combination of Chinese and Pakistani companies.

The project promises to bring 3,960MW of electricity to a country that is currently facing a crippling energy crisis – nearly 25 percent of Pakistan’s 197 million population still lacks access to grid electricity – which costs the country billions per year, according to a World Bank report.

Imran Farooq, a resident of Karachi, the capital of the province of Sindh and the premier industrial and financial centre of the country, said: “We just need electricity – cheap electricity, it doesn’t matter from where.” 

Karachi is also one of the world’s most polluted cities in the world. “The air is already bad, how much worse can it get? At least we can have air-conditioning we can afford during the heatwaves.”

Thar’s coal was first discovered in 1992 but because of its poor quality, it was considered too expensive to be mined and only became a less likely prospect as environmental awareness rose globally. But China has recently shown interest. 

Local opposition

Shahzad Qasim, the Prime Minister’s special assistant on the power sector, has said: “Finding international financing for coal had been difficult, with China the only country willing to invest.” 

China is moving away from domestic mining in an attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions and curb climate change, but many activists have criticized the country for promoting dependence on fossil fuels in many developing countries by actively investing in their nonrenewable projects. 

Currently, China is investing in 21 energy projects under the Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – an economic ‘zone’ between the two countries that started in 2015 and on its eventual completion with connect a number of countries in South and Central Asia for trade and industrial purposes. Although a number of them are wind, solar, and hydropower fueled, at least 70 percent of the nearly 14GW of power projects will be coal fired.

Asad Jatoi, an activist and environmental lawyer based in Pakistan, states that the reason there isn’t a louder national outcry about projects like the coal-fired plant in Thar, is because of the lack of awareness.

In addition, he said: “People who are most vulnerable to and most directly impacted by the project have already been voicing their complaints against the project but are completely ignored.”

The past two years have seen several cases of opposition from local residents of Thar over concerns of land seizures, air pollution, fly ash contamination in wells, and displacement of communities.

Water pollution 

Once construction is complete, the mine’s watery effluents will be regularly transported into a reservoir nearly 30km away.

But several villagers nearby have been protesting the construction and the potential pollutants in their sweet water wells.

SEMC has provided alternative pastures for villagers nearby as well as as new houses to relocate to and a training centre for labor jobs needed for the construction project. But many villagers are protesting the damages done to their ancestral land. The villages of Senhri dars and Thareo Halepoto, for instance, have been completely relocated. 

One of the residents from Senhri dars said: “We don’t want their money, we want to keep our ancestral land.”

Several grassroots activists in Sindh have also been calling for the complete shutdown of the mining project because of how detrimental it will prove to be to the region’s ecosystem and for Pakistan’s emission rates.

Public outcry

Although Pakistan has one of the smallest contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions globally, it is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, while also lacking the technical and economical capacity to mitigate its worst impacts.

Mohammed Khan, a member of Pakistan’s Anti-Coal Alliance, an emerging grassroots civil society campaign, said: “Pakistan is going to face the brunt of climate change and it should be prioritising adapting to changing climate conditions. Coal is disastrous to the climate and it is tragic that, as the world moves away from it, Pakistan is moving towards it.”

Anti-Coal Alliance, in collaboration with locally affected people, plans to continue protesting against the construction of coal-fired plant projects in Thar as well as others.

Khan explains that the province of Sindh province is more prone to climate change due to its geographical location and if coal projects will not just impact emissions, result in additional displacement of many of the 1.6 million local people of the desert, but will also negatively impact the ecosystem of the region.

Khan added: “We have been protesting for two years and we will continue to protest until our voices our heard by someone. Pakistan’s future cannot be coal and it is only a matter of bringing enough awareness about it to people before there is a loud enough public outcry about it.”

This Author 

Rabiya Jaffery is a freelance journalist and multimedia producer covering stories from the Middle East and South Asia. She reports on climate, culture, and conflicts. She tweets at @rabiyasdfghjkl.

Hundreds of thousands of girls and young women are calling for the UK to make a promise to reduce single-use plastic.

The call is part of a new campaign, launched by Girlguiding, aimed at tackling plastic pollution.

Nearly half a million members – including the Rainbow, Brownie, Guide and Ranger divisions, as well as volunteers – are due to take part in a week of action dedicated to the issue, Girlguiding said.

Pledge

The majority of girls and young women – aged seven to 21 (88%), feel it is urgent that everyone does more to protect the environment, a poll conducted by the organisation in the summer found.

The #PlasticPromise campaign has five pledges, and anyone can sign up by visiting the website plasticpromises.co.uk.

Girlguiding members will be asking their friends, family, politicians and the public to join them in making in a pledge, the organisation said.

The pledges are:

– Start using a reusable water bottle

– Start using an alternative to disposable cutlery

– Start using a reusable coffee cup

– Start using a reusable box or reusable wrapping instead of clingfilm

– Stand up and speak out about cutting plastic waste – and make big brands listen

Planet

TV presenter Liz Bonnin, who is supporting the campaign, said: “We all need to take action to create the change our planet needs.

“Today, thousands of girls all over the UK are making their #PlasticPromise, leading by example and inspiring others to be part of the solution too.

“I am joining forces with these powerful young women to say to those who can enforce change where it matters most: treat the future of our children and our planet with the respect they deserve.

“These girls and young women want you to act now, for their future.”

This Author

Alison Kershaw is the PA education correspondent.

– The annual Girlguiding Girls’ Attitudes survey questioned over 2,000 UK girls and young women aged seven to 21

The Green New Deal policy passed by the Labour conference at Brighton last week was among the most far-reaching attempts by any big political party to face up to the climate and ecological emergency.

The conference urged a future Labour government to “work towards a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2030”, guaranteeing “an increase in good unionised jobs” and ensuring that the cost is “borne by the wealthiest, not the majority”.

It also called for “public ownership of energy, creating an integrated, democratic system”, including “public ownership of the Big Six [electricity generating companies]”.

Union

The resolution (text here) was passed on 24 September by an overwhelming majority, with support from trade unions including Unite and Unison.

A separate resolution supported by the GMB union and urging decarbonisation as fast as possible – but without the 2030 target – was also passed. That amounts to a “challenge to the Labour party and its grassroots activists to come up with a concrete plan to meet the 2030 target”, the journalist Ellie Mae O’Hagan argued.

More than 128 Constituency Labour Parties sent in motions on the Green New Deal – more than on any other topic – after a whirlwind campaign by Labour For A Green New Deal (LGND).

This is an important shift, forced by the upsurge of radical climate protest. It is no coincidence that it came straight after the school students’ global “climate strike” on 20 September.

But these aims of these resolutions will not be achieved without conflict – not only with energy companies, but also with senior Labour politicians and union bosses who talk green but support carbon-heavy policies.

Grid

The Labour leadership’s existing energy policy was crafted in part to avoid conflict with these powerful interests.

In the electricity sector, Labour is committed to nationalise networks, but not generation (i.e. power stations) or supply (i.e. the marketing of electricity to customers). It is silent on nuclear power, effectively leaving the pro-nuclear GMB to drive policy.

On transport, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour’s shadow minister for business, energy and industrial strategy, announced in Brighton a proposed “electric car revolution”. This risks wrapping the carbon-heavy car industry in green colours, instead of focusing on the shift to cities with overwhelmingly non-car transport.

To shift these policies, along the lines the conference urged or even further, will be a battle. The grounds on which it will be fought include:

a. Labour’s current electricity sector policy, Bringing Energy Home, would extend public ownership to electricity networks (cables that carry electricity from place to place, now owned by National Grid, Scottish Power and regional distribution companies).

b. The generation of electricity (power stations, wind farms, and so on), and its supply (essentially, the marketing of the electricity to users) would stay private.

Renewables

It is hard to see how a Labour government could implement strong policies on climate change and socially just electricity provision, with this half-public-ownership approach, for at least three interconnected reasons:

1. Modern electricity technologies – renewables, plus networks that distribute flows – can only realise their decarbonisation potential as part of integrated systems. The electricity sources need to be coordinated not only with each other, but with gas, heat and transport systems. If bits of these are owned by private companies, profits will be put before climate and social justice imperatives. (See a separate article on decentralised electricity, here.)

2. To roll back the effects of neoliberalism, the market model under which electricity is sold to people as a commodity needs to be challenged. The Big Six and other corporates will resist this fiercely.

3. If investment decisions are left in corporates’ hands, the shift to renewables will never happen on any timescale relevant to tackling climate change. Labour’s plan to invest heavily in publicly-controlled offshore wind, announced at Brighton last week, could be part of the answer to this.

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015, there was talk of taking the whole electricity sector into public ownership. David Hall of the Public Services International Research Unit showed how cost-effective it would be (see his very good paper here).

Tide

But Labour’s approach was watered down under pressure from some unions. The GMB in particular values the agreements on pay and conditions negotiated for staff at the Big Six – and behind the scenes, union bosses have argued that nationalisation would endanger these agreements.

This twisted logic even found its way into Labour’s Bringing Energy Home document, which said: “The fragmentation of larger energy companies can also weaken the ability of energy workers to organise collectively.”

The obvious answer is that public ownership firstly need not cause “fragmentation”, and secondly, could guarantee a regulatory framework more, not less, favourable to workplace organising.

Other unions are ready to go further than the GMB. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, recently called for the supply business to be taken into public ownership. And the Trades Union Congress passed a resolution in September for the whole electricity sector to go public, paving the way for the Labour party conference to do the same.

The movement can now build on these decisions, to reverse the neoliberal tide with public ownership, and move towards a future where electricity is a right and not a commodity.

Investment in renewables

Rebecca Long-Bailey announced at the Labour conference a “people’s power plan” to deliver a seven-fold increase in offshore wind turbines in 12 years.

“We can’t rely on the market to act fast enough”, she said: a Labour government would therefore take a majority stake in all new offshore wind farms, and “allocate £6.2 billion to jumpstarting a home-grown renewable industry”.

This sounds promising, because – despite the cost of renewable generation assets plummeting – investment in them has slowed down substantially in recent years.

Recent research by Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) showed that internationally, excluding China, levels of investment in renewables have fallen for three years running. In Europe, renewables investment peaked at $138 billion in 2011, slumped to $70 billion in 2013, picked up slightly, and fell to $57 billion in 2017.

The heart of the problem is that renewables have big up-front capital costs (to install wind turbines or solar panels), and minimal running costs. Electricity is sold on markets where prices change daily, and renewables supply drives down prices.

Investors

This proves that renewables are competitive with fossil fuels – but also means that companies wait longer to get a return on their initial investment.

Green hype churned out by the electricity industry and others usually ignores these harsh realities of capitalism.

Governments, including in the UK, have arranged various forms of subsidy to make companies’ investments worthwhile – most commonly, a “feed in tariff” where renewable suppliers are guaranteed a level of return.

But as soon as these schemes produce some results, governments are tempted to withdraw or alter the subsidies schemes.

And then, as TUED puts it: “Investors then see diminishing profit margins and lose interest. (‘Too bad about the planet but, hey, there are other things to invest in.’)”

Current

TUED continues: “Because of falling auction prices [in electricity markets], many people still assume that the market share of renewables will reach a ‘tipping point’ once they become the ‘least cost option’. [And certainly friends in the Labour Party have put that argument to me, in defence of its approach.]

“But because there is simply not enough profit in ‘low carbon solutions’ like renewable power generation – at least, not without subsidies – renewables are unlikely to attract the levels of capital needed to achieve the Paris [climate change] targets.

“[…] The insistence on private-sector-led investment in renewables, which we are told needs to be ‘unlocked’ through various incentives – subsidies, feed-in-tariffs, guaranteed returns through power purchase agreements, etc – has proven to be a disastrous failure.”

History shows that, under capitalism, large-scale public investment – whether to build railways or sewage systems, or to electrify the countryside – is almost always borne by the state. Corporations are too short-sighted and too profit-focused. State-led investment is surely the best way to start a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, too.

So Labour’s plan to invest in offshore wind is welcome – although it’s not clear how it will fit with current policy of leaving the Big Six privately owned.

Nuclear power

The GMB and many Labour MPs see nuclear power, rather than renewables, as the main alternative to fossil-fueled electricity generation. Tim Roache, GMB general secretary, argued recently for “a fleet of new nuclear power stations to make emissions reduction a reality”.

Were such an approach adopted, a future Labour government would help to lock electricity into a centralised system, closely allied with the UK’s reactionary (and deluded) military aims. Renewables, and the decentralisation that realises their potential, would suffer.

Under the Tory government, subsidies to renewables are being cut, while the new nuclear power station being built at Hinkley has been guaranteed a price for its electricity, far above the market rate, for 35 years into the future. There is no sign Labour intends to change this.

Dave Toke, the energy policy researcher, reckons that the GMB will use the regulatory structure that Labour proposes to nuclear’s advantage.

He commented: “The proposals [in Bringing Energy Home] make a gesture in favour of municipalisation, but for most places the reality will be central control.

“[…] The GMB has consistently urged the government to shore up plans for nuclear power stations with state money. This is despite the fact that the nuclear power plants are taking decades to deliver at very high costs for the energy consumer and almost certainly also the public finances.

“Of course the GMB is guided by its members, and many of them work in nuclear power stations. Fair enough. But why should this fact dominate UK energy policy? Yet Labour’s centralist dominated proposals seem destined to achieve just this.”

Transport

The Labour conference’s Green New Deal resolution called for “community transport”, a “transition to sustainably powered rail freight” and “local schemes that make walking and active travel safe, attractive, environmentally sustainable options”.

This is at odds with votes and statements from leading Labour politicians which enthusiastically support huge infrastructure projects that will increase the number of cars on the road and planes in the skies. These include, most notoriously:

■ The planned third runway at Heathrow, for which 115 Labour MPs voted last year; and

■ The Silvertown tunnel in east London, which is opposed by a local residents’ campaign – as well as most local Labour councils and Labour party branches – but is being pushed ahead by London mayor Sadiq Khan.

Electric cars

The “electric car revolution” announced by Rebecca Long-Bailey, which aims to “strengthen British car manufacturing and tackle climate change”, is potentially the most damaging piece of greenwash endorsed by Labour.

On day one of forming a government, Labour says it will consult with industry and unions on the transition from internal combustion engines (ICEs) to “zero emission vehicles” – classic double-speak that ignores technological reality.

There is simply no credible possibility of vehicles being “zero emission”. Until a radical change in the way electricity is generated – which under Labour’s plans could be a couple of decades away – there is not even much chance of electric vehicles being significantly less carbon-intensive than those running on petrol.

That’s because, while electric engines are about twice as efficient as ICEs, gas-fired power stations – the most common type in the UK – are less than 50 percent energy-efficient: that is, for physical reasons, half of the energy content of the gas is lost at the power station.

Apart from that, there are the energy and emissions costs of building cars, roads and parking spaces.

Revenue

Resources put into electric cars could instead be invested in public transport and urban development schemes, that would focus on drastically reducing the number of cars. This means changing not only the way we move around cities, but the way we live and work in them. It means envisioning cities in which there is no rush hour.

All this is well understood by LGND, and the campaign group wrote in a briefing paper: “Many strategies for a decarbonised transport system envisage a virtually one-for-one swap from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles (EVs).

“Aside from the role of continued personal vehicle use in driving inequality […] a private-car dominated transport system will have other serious negative impacts, [including adding to demand for cobalt and clean electricity, air pollution, etc].

“The Green New Deal will therefore prioritise green, low-cost or free public transport that avoids these damaging impacts.

“Premising the decarbonisation of transport on supply of EVs by major automotive companies looking to maximise the remaining revenue they can extract from fossil fuel powered vehicles could become a serious bottleneck to rapid decarbonisation, particularly as the automotive industry continues to dismantle climate legislation [in the USA] despite claiming to support an EV-based future.”

Tax havens

Campaign groups including ScotE3, and Extinction Rebellion Scotland, are urging a just transition away from oil production in the North Sea, to ensure that communities dependent on it do not suffer. Labour has yet to formulate a policy on the issue.

Traditionally, Labour went along with the government-backed strategy of “maximising economic recovery”, that is, recovering every last drop of oil and gas possible, as the North Sea’s production levels go into natural decline. That approach contradicts all the climate targets signed up to by Labour and Tory governments alike.

Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour’s stance has started to change. Clive Lewis, shadow treasury minister, has denounced tax cuts that form part of “maximising economic recovery”.

Along side this, the Labour conference resolution included laudable statements on “supporting developing countries’ climate transitions”, welcoming climate refugees and pressing for heavy UN penalties for “ecocide”.

To put teeth into such principles, LGND advocates measures including closing down the UK’s tax havens and eliminating subsidies including international public finance support.

It called for actions to address the “unjust, neo-colonial and unsustainable economic structures” that help multinational corporations to plunder countries in the global south and use indebtedness to keep them poor. Obviously all this depends on a future Labour government’s ability and willingness to challenge international financial capital more broadly.

A concluding thought

Many of the policies advocated by LGND implicitly challenge the Labour party’s traditional commitment to “economic growth”. Alongside the political battles mentioned above, we need an ideological battle.

Naomi Klein, the ecosocialist writer, offered a challenge last week to “a left worldview that is essentially only interested in redistributing the spoils of extractivism and not reckoning with the limits of endless consumption”. Too right.

This Author

Gabriel Levy is a writer with People & Nature, where this article first appeared. 

Further reading

■ How to win a socialist Green New Deal, by Chris Saltmarsh

■ What does “climate emergency” mean? Let’s define that OUTSIDE parliament (People & Nature, May 2019)

Jair Bolsonaro defied his critics at the UN General Assembly in New York this month – as expected – denouncing those maintaining that his policies have fanned the flames of the Amazon fires.

Brazil’s President declared: “We all know that all countries have problems. The sensationalist attacks we have suffered due to fire outbreaks have aroused our patriotic sentiment.”

This echoed his repeated claim that the fires in the world’s largest tropical rainforest were being used as an “excuse” to attack his government by countries who want to “control” the Amazon and get their hands on its riches, and that the G7 nation’s offer of $20 million to help tackle the fires was colonialism by another name.

Brazilian vanguard

The idea that outsiders are using the fires to undermine Brazil’s sovereignty resonates with Bolsonaro’s core constituency. But it ignores key facts.

First, it is Brazilians – among them, the one million Indigenous Peoples who call the Amazon home – who are suffering from the fires’ impact, and it is Brazilians who are in the vanguard of fighting them.

Second, while clear policy choices by the Bolsonaro government have increased the deforestation which has driven the fires, the European leaders criticising him are also complicit, as their countries are often importing the products that are grown on recently deforested land.

At the end of August, Fern and 25 other NGOs highlighted this in an open letter to the President-elect of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and other EU leaders.

The letter pointed out that European consumption is intimately linked to the current disaster in the Amazon – as well as the global increase in deforestation. 

This is because of EU producers’ voracious appetite for agricultural products, including from Brazil. The fires in the Amazon were started by landholders wanting to improve grass cover in cattle pastures, or to burn felled trees in preparation for crops. Much of what they produce is for export.

New chapter

This week in New York, world leaders have the chance to write a new chapter in alleviating the crisis that is affecting the world’s forests – which, after all, has global consequences.

It’s a path that does not impinge on other countries’ sovereignty: international regulatory action. 

After all, voluntary commitments by companies, however well-meaning, do not work in isolation. This was the conclusion of those Member States and companies who signed the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF), which saw dozens of countries and more than 50 of the world’s biggest companies committing to end deforestation by 2020, a deadline which they admit they will fail to meet. National and international laws will be needed, as all the evidenceshows.

The need for EU governments to take collective action was made by Frans Timmermans, First Vice President of the European Commission, on Sunday in New York at an event to mark the fifth anniversary of the NYDF.

“When it comes to deforestation, no one gets to say that this is not our business too. Forests are a global public good. When healthy we all benefit, when burning we all suffer,” he said.

The EU is considering developing legislation to rid its supply chains of deforestation and human rights abuses, and others should follow suit: on 23 July it released a communication committing itself to measures to “increase supply chain transparency and minimise the risk of deforestation and forest degradation associated with commodity imports in the EU.”

But it qualified how it wanted to do this, emphasising it wanted to engage in a ‘partnership approach’.

Partnership approach

The communication states that within bilateral dialogues with major consumer and producer countries it would:“Share experience and information on the respective policy and legal frameworks; and identify joint activities to inform policy developments based on an advanced understanding of the impacts of deforestation and forest degradation”.

While these sound vague, the EU has in the past shown itself to be capable of turning a partnership approach into reality  – principally through its flagship measures to address illegal logging, where they chose to hardwire partnership into the core of their approach by negotiating Voluntary Partnership Agreements with timber-producing countries.

The strength of these agreements is that they aren’t imposed from outside, but evolve within the countries themselves through wide consultation with a variety of parties, including civil society and forest communities.

Such an approach should be the template for the EU’s approach to ending the deforestation and human rights abuses in its agricultural supply chains. It could also set an example for the rest of the world.

As the 2020 commitments approach fast, now is the time for unified, ambitious – and constructive – international action to combat deforestation. And Regulation must be at their core.

This Author 

Nicole Polsterer is a sustainable consumption and production campaigner at the forests and rights NGO, Fern

Oaxaca’s Yaguar Xoo sanctuary is based in the area of Yagul, a UNESCO heritage site, rich with archaeological and environmental history. Victor Sosas and his team are developing the premise of the space, bringing in the local community and visiting academics to learn about their projects.

Key initiatives at the sanctuary are Jaguars en Selva with the Jaguars of the Light and Batagave; respectively focused on rehabilitating jaguars and raising awareness about bat populations through a bat-conscious mezcal certification.

Mezcal is a Mexican spirit distilled from agave, and bats are one of the major pollinators of this iconic plant. Batagave will work with mezcal producers, encouraging them to embrace the importance of bat conservation.

Rescue and rehabilitation

A significant element of this certification will be leaving a percentage of agave plants to flower, rather than harvesting it for use in mezcal production. Producers will be reimbursed with agave seed, grown on site at Yaguar Xoo. The site will also offer educational tours and mezcal tastings for visitors in a dedicated space in front of the sanctuary.

I first met the team when discussing a collaboration with the sanctuary and my project Rambling Spirits.

We work with mezcal producers in Oaxaca offering guided tours to understand the terroir of this complex drink. Our initial plan was to bring guests to explore the area of Yagul and learn about the Batagave project.

We were welcomed by Sosas and his team, and after finishing our business were shown around. My partner and I were blown away by the space and immediately committed to being involved with the sanctuary as a whole.

Sosas has taken over much of the running of the sanctuary from his father, who opened the space almost twenty years ago. The sanctuary rescues animals from all over Mexico. They receive exotic creatures from unfit environments, and when possible, work towards their rehabilitation into the wild.

Enriching environment 

The first big enclosure you see as you enter the sanctuary houses two bears. Sosas remembers when the bears were rescued in the late nineties, when he was just a boy. They show their age, but seem happy and mellow, running over to the sounds of Sosas’ voice. Beyond the bears are two tigers (one white), a lion and lioness and pair of pumas.

The main focus of the sanctuary are the jaguars. The sanctuary offers walking tours around some of the enclosures. Many jaguars are not visible, which is part of the rehabilitation for those that might be released into the wild. Animals you can see have been rescued from circuses or domestic situations. When they come to the sanctuary they are often in poor condition and have never developed their natural instincts.

Biologists at the sanctuary feel it is important that these animals do not just sit and sleep in their enclosures. They have developed an environment enrichment program, using meat and obstacles to build strength and agility, while having two jaguars attempt it at once encourages natural territorial behaviour. Through these activities it is possible, that some of these jaguars, if they are Mexican genus, may be introduced into the wild.

Under supervision from Sosas and his team, we got to enter one of the enclosures that they use for enrichment, and were shown how to set it up. It was explained to us that it is important for visitors to the sanctuary to witness these activities with the jaguars, to see their strength and understand their nature. These are not pets, but strong animals that need a huge habitat to survive.

Jaguars are the largest native cat species in the Americas and the third largest in the world. They are robust, with large heads that house one of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom. Jaguars are part of the ‘panthera’ family, which also includes lions, tigers and leopards. Typically jaguars have bold rosette-like markings. Some appear completely black and are commonly known as ’black panthers,’ but if you look closely the markings are still visible.

Complex mythology 

Jaguars are imbedded in Mexico’s history and mythology. They are represented as sacred figures, belonging to another space and world, not that controlled by men. María del Carmen Valverde Valdés, Doctor of Mesoamerican Studies UNAM, said: “The jaguar represents what is outside, in another space. He is seen as the lord of the animals.” 

There are famous caves in Yagul with paintings showing jaguars dating back thousands of years. Jaguars sometimes make their dens in caves, which linked them to the earth and fertility. These majestic beasts became absorbed into a complex dual mythology, representing both light and darkness, heaven and earth. Embracing this idea, Jaguars of the Light is the name of the progressive rehabilitation project that is at the forefront of activity in the sanctuary right now.

There are a total of fifteen jaguars in the sanctuary and two are almost ready to be released back into the wild. In October 2016, these two females were discovered alone in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Campeche. They were just a fortnight old. Yaguar Xoo was awarded the opportunity to raise them because of their experience with rehabilitating jaguars. They are called Celestun Peten and Nicte ha, they are theJaguars of the Light.

The objective of Jaguars of the Light is to demonstrate, over a two year period, that these jaguars are able to survive and be independent in the wild.

Luis Yescas is a published biologist working with Victor, he is in charge of monitoring the two cubs. On arrival they stayed with Yescas so he could keep them alive at such a fragile young age. They received a special milk formula, using a pillow and teats covered with a faux fur, rubbed with the scent of a female jaguar. Once stable, the cubs were put into a large space, enclosed so there is no human influence.

Specialised methodology

Sosas and the team have been working on this specialised methodology to stimulate natural behaviour and supply the learning and needs of Celestun and Nicte ha, which they would have received from their mother.

In the first few moths in their enclosure they were fed using a gilly suit, so that the cubs did not associate getting food from humans. Eventually they were weaned off the milk and were introduced to live prey. They are now fed by putting the prey into the area using a chamber, so that there is never any human interaction.

The jaguars are monitored to make sure they are away from this entrance at this time, so the prey enters without fear and the jaguars do not get used to one point of entry. There is also a large source of water where they have learnt to swim, dive and fish. This is essential for a wild jaguar.

Around the enclosure are towers (hides), where for a time Sosas and his team could watch the jaguars live. As they have matured the jaguars have become extremely alert. In minutes they are aware of movement in the towers, so this is now restricted. We were honoured to be invited into one of these hides to see the Jaguars of the Light ourselves.

Now the cubs are monitored using four cameras inside the space and each has a GPS collar. Yescas watches and documents 24 hours of footage, collecting notes on growth and behavioural development.

Fluctuating population 

The sanctuary must record every detail documented to show their progress to funders. Although jaguars are officially protected in Mexico, Sosas said there needs to be more active support to improve understanding of these animals and create a template to support the growth and rehabilitation of cubs like Celestun Peten and Nicte ha. Sosas and his team are part of a Mexican collective researching jaguars and raising awareness to protect them (Alianza Nacional para la conservation del jaguar).

The sanctuary have supported surveys into jaguar populations that has seen a rise of 20 percent from from recorded 4000 two years ago.

Despite this positive data, Victor expressed a concern at the lack of data in general. There are similar projects in Brazil and Argentina, but there is little official information about the process of rehabilitating jaguars. There is hardly any literature covering the kind of work they are doing in the sanctuary, and experts in the field are not all in agreement on the best way to follow through with a study such as this, where the end goal is liberating the jaguars.

The team have to write their own guide and build a clearer picture of how jaguar populations fluctuate in the wild and how they can be reintroduced safely.

Next month Celestun and Nicte ha will be taken back to Campeche where they will enter the final stage of their rehabilitation. An enclosure will be set up allowing the team to monitor the jaguars as they get used to their environment. They anticipate a two month period to allow for this adjustment.

Finally the jaguars will be back where they belong – the youngest to ever have ben raised and released back into the wild.

This Author

Anna Bruce is a photojournalist based in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is a founding partner of Rambling Spirits, a project offering tailored experiences in Oaxaca with a focus on learning about mezcal and the region where it is produced.

You can donate to the sanctuary here. 

Students have taken to the streets across the globe in the hundreds of thousands for a second wave of worldwide protests demanding swift action on climate change.

The protests were inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who spoke to world leaders this week at a United Nations summit in New York.

Friday’s rallies kicked off in New Zealand, where young people marched on parliament in Wellington, holding one of the largest protests ever held there.

Schoolchildren

Organisers in the capital were forced to change their security plans to accommodate the crowds, while thousands more marched in Auckland and other parts of the country.

On the other side of the planet, more than 100,000 rallied in Italy’s capital Rome, where protesters held up signs with slogans such as “Change the system, not the climate” or just the word “Future”.

Marches took place in about 180 locations across Italy, including the financial hub of Milan where one banner read “How dare you!” – the accusation Greta, 16, levelled at world leaders during her UN speech in New York on Monday.

The Italian Education Ministry said students attending the event would not be penalised for missing school.

Fears about the impact of global warming on the younger generation were expressed by schoolchildren in Dharmsala, India. South Asia depends heavily on water from the Himalayan glaciers that are under threat from climate change.

Movement

In Berlin, activists from the Fridays for Future group braved persistent rain to protest against a package the German government recently agreed for cutting the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Experts say the proposal falls far short of what is needed if the world’s sixth biggest emitter is to meet the goal of the Paris climate accord.

Actor Javier Bardem joined dozens of young people in San Sebastian in one of several early demonstrations and rallies held across Spain on Friday morning, ahead of evening demonstrations in major towns and cities. They are expected to draw big crowds, especially in Madrid and Barcelona.

Bardem was in San Sebastian to promote a documentary he worked on with Greenpeace.

The youth climate movement has drawn criticism from some who accuse the students of overreacting and say they would be better off going to school, but the 16-year-old suggested people like her should take it as a compliment.

Leaders

In an apparent sarcastic jibe at Greta this week following her haranguing of world leaders, US President Donald Trump tweeted: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”

On Friday, she told a rally in Montreal: “I don’t understand why grown-ups would choose to mock children and teenagers for just communicating and acting on the science when they could do something good instead.

“But I guess they feel like their world view or interests is threatened by us. That we should take as compliment, that we are having so much impact that people want to silence us. We’ve become too loud for people to handle so people want to silence us.”

She earlier met Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who praised her activism on climate change. “She is the voice of a generation, of young people who are calling on their leaders to do more and do better,” he said. “And I am listening.”

Greta indicated that she expects more, even of leaders who welcome the movement.

Listened

“He (Trudeau) is of course obviously not doing enough, but this is just a huge problem, this is a system that is wrong. My message to all the politicians is the same: just listen and act on the science.”

In Wellington, 18-year-old university student Katherine Rivers said it was great to see young people taking action and personal responsibility by marching.

“We need to stop pandering to some of the people who are making money off climate change. The big oil companies, the dairy industry etc,” she said. “And make a change for the future of these kids that are here.”

While thousands of high school students elected to take time off school to protest, many adults also joined the marches. One of them was 83-year-old grandmother-of-three Violet McIntosh, who said: “It’s not my future we’re thinking about, adding that it was time politicians listened to young people like Greta.

Emissions

In the Netherlands, where thousands joined a protest in The Hague, some participants acknowledged that getting politicians to take action against global warming is only part of the story.

“It’s also about then leading sustainable lives and making changes to make your life more sustainable,” said Utrecht University student Beth Meadows.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said part of the government’s plan is to encourage citizens to shift their behaviour.

“People, and businesses too, know that over the coming years, step by step, behaviour that harms the climate (and) causes a lot of emissions will have a higher price than before,” he told reporters in Berlin.

This Author

Frank Jordans and Giada Zampano are reporters with Associated Press. 

Labour Conference 2019 has overwhelmingly voted to support a socialist Green New Deal with an ambitious target to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030.

The motion also includes nationalising the Big 6 energy companies, transferring finance and resources to the Global South, instituting universal basic services, massively expand public transport, repealing all anti-trade union laws, implementing a program of ecological restoration, and measuring and tackling consumption emissions (to avoid offshoring emissions reduction).

Taking as a whole, the Labour Party now has the most radical and ambitious climate policy of any major party in the G20. 

The motion also won widespread support among the trade union movement. Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), moved the motion with a scintillating speech.

The motion also received the support of Unite, UNISON, Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU).

Passing such a radical Green New Deal motion weeks before an imminent general election is a historic moment. Doing so with strong support across the labour movement is incredible. 

Labour for a Green New Deal was founded just six months before our victory at Labour Conference. The campaign has been run on an entirely voluntary basis and our income has been just £5,000 – all raised from a crowdfunder in September.

It’s hard not to compare our achievements in that limited time with such tight resources to what the environmental NGO has failed to achieve with millions collectively spent over decades. 

Big organising 

Labour for a Green New Deals’ victory could not have been possible without the hard work of hundreds of talented activists committed to united the climate and labour movements around a bold plan for our shared future. 

The campaign has recruited openly to quickly bring activists with skill and dedication into positions of leadership or responsibility. At the same time, we have been careful to set an organisational DNA by prioritising activists who share the campaign’s vision, principles and subscribe to the plan. 

The campaign was inspired by lessons from the Bernie Sanders for President Campaign, shared by Becky Bond & Zak Exley in their book Rules for Revolutionaries. It taught us to “ask big to get big”.

This is true of what you ask of people who want to help and the goals you want to achieve. Six months ago few would have even conceived of Labour Conference voting for such a radical climate policy with the support of seven unions. Few would have conceived of the labour movement taking charge of climate action in the UK. But we knew it needed to happen. So we made it happen. 

Labour movement 

During my time in the environmental movement I’ve heard despicable things said about trade unions over their positions on climate breakdown. This is never a majority, but the movement’s lack of class politics has allowed such hostility to breed and excluded those on the front lines of climate injustice from its ranks. 

Labour for a Green New Deal is explicitly socialist. Our analysis is that climate change is fundamentally a class issue with capitalist exploitation and appropriation at the root.

We understand that UK unions have been under sustained attack by decades of neoliberal government. Our solidarity with trade unions and workers is not conditional on alignment regarding specific policy issues.

Our solidarity is unconditional because we are comrades in the same struggle against the immiseration of the working class, and towards public luxury and climate justice.

The FBU moved Labour’s Socialist Green New Deal because firefighters are on the front lines of climate change in the UK now.

Unite’s Assistant General Secretary, Steve Turner, spoke in favour of the motion including calling for “environmental reparations including the free transfer of green technology to the developing world” because the trade union movement is an internationalist one.

It is by celebrating and working from these shared commitments that has allowed us to come together around a radical climate program at this Labour Conference. 

Standing firm 

It has been widely reported that Labour’s socialist Green New Deal, and specifically its net-zero by 2030 target, received opposition from the GMB union.

This is true and divergent perspectives on whether to include a decarbonisation target proved irreconcilable. This led to two Green New Deal motions being heard – and overwhelmingly supported – on conference floor. 

The spirit of debate in the compositing meeting – where all the motions on a topic are synthesised into one, by consensus – was comradely.

Delegates and activists understand and respect the competing perspective of comrades on the other side of the discussion. CLP and union delegates supporting the 2030 target did come under considerable pressure from GMB and the Labour leadership to compromise on the decarbonisation target. 

A weaker group may have folded under that pressure from experienced negotiators and powerful figures. Had elected delegates not had the confidence to stand firm, and assert the necessity of such an ambitious target on the grounds of global justice, the successful motion may never have been heard.

Labour and union members have serious power. By standing together we can achieve incredible things. 

Keep organising

Celebrate though we must, Labour for a Green New Deal’s organising will not stop here. Labour Conference 2019 is just the beginning. There remains a democratic deficit in the Labour Party.

Although conference has backed our motion, it must still be approved by the party’s ‘Clause V meeting’ which decides the next manifesto. The meeting is composed of the shadow cabinet, national executive committee and trade union representatives. We need to make sure that meeting adopts the socialist Green New Deal in full. 

Going forward, Labour for a Green New Deal will build continue to build our power by supporting local groups to form, grow and take action. They will play a crucial role in holding decision-makers in Labour to account and developing plans to deliver the motion’s ambitions. 

As Laurie MacFarlane writes, the landmark policies of Labour Conference 2019 came from “the blood, sweat and tears of thousands of thinkers, doers and campaigners” rather than PR lobbyists and special advisors.

There’s plenty more work to do to flesh out the details of Labour’s socialist Green New Deal. If you want to be part of making history, get involved. 

This author

Chris Saltmarsh is co-founder and co-director of Labour for a Green New Deal. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

We must change the way we manage land, a recent report by the world’s leading climate scientists at the IPCC leaves no doubt. 

Agriculture, the very industry that sustains us, also threatens our continued existence as a species. This sector produces at least 23 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (second only to the energy sector), according to the report.

To solve the climate crisis it is not enough to transform industrial sectors like energy and manufacturing – we need a fundamental change in agriculture and forestry practices.

Global ramifications 

The devastating fires in the Amazon that captured the world’s attention in August illustrate how land misuse has global ramifications. These fires, set to clear land for crops, sent vast swaths of the Amazon up in smoke – not only harming local people and wildlife, but destroying critical carbon sinks that the world needs to help slow climate change.

It’s an all-too-common pattern seen across the tropics: to make room for crops, forests come down. In fact, according to recent satellite data in 2019, clearing land for agriculture causes rainforest deforestation at the rate of forty football pitches a minute. 

Meanwhile the farmers working to meet the ever-increasing global demand for products like coffee, tea, and cocoa, struggleto feed their own families.

But the second and equally important message of the IPCC report is this: solutions exist. There are ways to produce food that protect forests, reduce emissions, and provide co-benefits for livelihoods, biodiversity, and local climatic conditions.

How do these two main takeaways – that countries must change how food is produced, and that there are workable solutions – translate into actions? As governments, policy makers and legislators work to address the grand challenge of feeding nine billion people by 2030 while maintaining a habitable and biodiversity-rich planet, we must seek strategies tailored to different commodities and contexts.

Production and certification 

Recognizing the role that commodity production—palm oil, soy, timber, and beef, but also cocoa and coffee – plays in deforestation, companies and producers must identify and eliminate deforestation from supply chains. That means working with companies and farmers to adopt better practices and increase productivity, thus preventing further deforestation. 

Certification offers just that, a system whereby producers are encouraged to use more sustainable methods. It may not be a perfect system but it includes various key tools, such as farmer training, access to digital tools, online resources, benchmarking and climate smart agricultural advice; it also allows products to be traced back to origin, helping ensure that crops are not grown on recently deforested land. Certification also integrates social safeguards with environmental objectives.

Global food producers, corporates and multinationals purchasing key commodities must commit to stop deforestation with fixed and accountable targets. Companies that have made no-deforestation commitments must be pressured to adhere to global standards and penalized if they do not comply.

In the past ten years, multiple commitments to drive deforestation out of the global supply chain by 2020 have been made by the Consumer Goods Forum, the New York Declaration on Forests in 2014, as well as many individual companies. But there has been remarkably little progress on the ground.

To change this, a group of international environmental NGOs has recently joined forces to launch the Accountability Framework, providing necessary guidance to companies to make rigorous commitments—and to keep them. 

Land rights 

Deforestation has long been fueled by poor governance. This manifests as illegal activity, corruption, unclear or inequitable land tenure, and conflicting authority over forest resources particularly evident now in the Amazon crisis where indigenous land custodians are having their land rights eroded.

By contrast, solidifying or re-instating forest ownership by legitimate rights holders, including local and indigenous communities, can support forest conservation, reduce conflict, and enhance equitable social development.

With clear rights, communities are better able to manage standing forests as economic assets and realize multiple benefits from activities such as sustainable logging, sale of non-timber forest products (like honey, spices, and nuts), and payment for ecosystem services, such as watershed protection.

The EU has rightly identified good governance partnerships with producer countries’ governments as a priority in its action plan on deforestation. 

Powerful solution 

Finally, we need to transform the way food is produced on existing farms. Agroforestry, the practice of growing trees with crops, is a solution particularly relevant for multi-year tropical crops like coffee, cocoa, and tea.

Importantly, and also recognized by the IPCC report, agroforestry can work to address many climate change challenges: mitigation, adaptation, reducing desertification and land degradation, and food security. 

Coffee, for example, requires, to thrive, a temperature range from 15–30 deg C, rainfall averages between 1,500 to 2,500 mm per year, and relative humidity in the 70–90 percent range. In agroforestry systems, shade trees have been shown to reduce temperatures on the coffee plants by up to 4-6 degrees, thereby limiting the effect of climate change on the plant.

Shade trees can increase the water and nutrient holding-potential of the soil, and their fallen leaves create organic matter in the soil. When fruit or timber trees are used, these can provide additional income to farmers that can complement the income from the cash crop.

Agroforestry is a powerful solution, even though it is not appropriate everywhere. And there are a lot of examples where it is benefitting the landscape compared to traditional forms of agriculture for example, in cocoa-growing Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana where shade trees are now promoted.

Marching orders

It is important to remember that the IPCC is not only a group of scientists. It is an intergovernmental panel and its reports are approved by 195 governments. The recommendations in its reports are, in essence, internationally agreed-upon marching orders. And the order is clear: it is time to take action. 

We have the solutions at hand and little time left to enact them.

This Author 

Henriette Walz is the global theme lead for deforestation at the Rainforest Alliance. 

Education is our most effective tool when it comes to shaping our future.  Take schools during the industrial revolution, they gave children approximately standardised skills in reading, writing and arithmetic that would help to drive a rapidly growing economy and ultimately raise living standards.

The challenges we face today are not simply supplying an industrialising economy with labour, they are environmental – climate change, biodiversity collapse, plastic pollution. 

There have been a number of recent calls to introduce the teaching of climate change into the mainstream curriculum. Currently only secondary geography and chemistry touch upon the issue, but campaigners would like to see it become a core subject, possibly even constituting part of the primary curriculum. 

New system

Children care about what is happening to our planet. Earlier this year, the YouthStrike4Climate protests saw over 15,000 children march in more than 60 towns and cities across the UK.

But just like climate change has caught the attention of children, so has plastic pollution. Schools up and down the country have engaged in the issues by writing letters to politicians and business urging them to take action. 

The images from David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series made the whole world sit up and take notice, but the biggest impact has been on young people. Children feel strongly about this issue and we should help them to tackle this problem.

However, taking on the issue of plastic pollution in schools should not merely be limited to extolling the virtues of recycling. We need to be more dynamic, and this is where circular economics comes in. 

A circular economy is one that seeks to establish a system of consumption where materials continuously flow, being used and then reused, with as little waste and negative environmental impact as possible. Biological materials are returned to the environment and technological materials are utilised in a ‘make – use – repair/upgrade’ cycle.

Circular economics is seen as a breakaway from our current linear economic system, whereby resources are used in a ‘make-consume-dispose’ model, with high waste and significant negative environmental impact. It seeks to make our societies less wasteful and more resourceful.  

Understanding impact

So, how would this theory be used in the curriculum? The teaching would begin by looking at our current linear system of consumption, and dealing with the first objective of circular economics, making us less wasteful.

This is not as complicated as it first sounds: it means giving children an understanding of the true cost of making things. For example, the typical pair of jeans requires over 15,000 liters of water in their manufacturing process; plastic bottles take at least 450 years to biodegrade; and, many multi-material objects, such as coffee cups (which are made of both cardboard and plastic) are never recycled.

Properly understanding the impact our consumption has upon the world will help our young people make more sustainable choices when they are older. 

Secondly, the teaching would look at how circular economics can help us to be more resourceful. Children would be taught how to better recycle things they have used themselves, or to upcycle things for others to use.

An interesting example of this came earlier this year: the North London Waste Authority has held a series of ‘Repair Cafes’, where people took along worn and damaged items, such as clothes and bikes, and had them repaired by trained specialists.

The participants were then given tutorials on how to undertake future repairs themselves. If we could transfer workshops such as these into schools, children could learn valuable skills whilst doing their bit for the environment. 

Creative and collaborative

Teaching circular economics in schools could encompass projects that would lend themselves to the design curriculum. For instance, in Scotland circular economics research and advocacy body, Ostrero, has been running the ‘Making Circles’ initiative, which has sought to get children thinking about reusing waste materials.

The project saw children taking part in a ‘Circular Economy Design Challenge’, where participants submitted designs for items made from disposed objects.

Last year a large number of schools in the Netherlands took part in the Clean2Antarctica project, which saw children collecting and sorting plastics that would be used to make a vehicle that will eventually travel to the South Pole.

What’s more, projects such as these also develop children’s creative and collaborative skills – two of the 4Cs of twenty-first xentury learning (areas identified as being essential to the future of education).

Empower

The potential impact that circular economic thinking could have on our education system is profound. It could help us to nurture future generations with more sustainable mindsets, and the tools with which to help our planet. But its potential will not be unlocked unless we want it to be. 

We should not omit key world challenges from our curriculum, and merely hope that some children find a vocation in tackling them sometime later in their life. We should actively engage young people in the problems our planet faces. 

Children care greatly about the problems facing our environment, as we have seen this year with the schoolchildren’s climate protests across the UK and Europe, and with their thousands and thousands of letters campaigning against plastic pollution. 

They want to do something; they certainly have the passion; and, they undoubtedly have the potential to make a real difference.

As teachers it is our job to empower them to take on the great challenges of their day.  

This Author 

Matthew Murray is a teacher from the UK and the creator of the primary teacher blog 2 Stars and a Wish.

If you would like to learn more about Circular Economics please visit The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s website where you can also find lesson resources that you could use with your class.