Old growth longleaf pine trees that towered as tall as 30 meters covered up to 90 million acres of the southern United States when English settlers first arrived to America in the late sixteenth century.

When cut, these ramrod-straight trees made an ideal ship’s mast, so many of the best specimens were cut down for use by the British navy. Others were slashed for “naval stores” — tar, pitch, rosin and turpentine — that were exported to England as early as 1608. Today, those majestic, old-growth longleaf pine forests are almost gone.

Given that these trees take 150 years to mature and grow for over 300, they were not replaced. Today, in my state of North Carolina, the British are still effectively cutting our forests. Our trees are being chopped into pellets, trucked up to 200 miles to a port on our southern coast, dispatched across the Atlantic in container ships, and burned in UK power plants. 

For what?

Even here, few people know this, because this environmental travesty occurs in poor, rural areas of color, where people are already beset by low health outcomes and high unemployment.

And for what? So you can tell yourselves that our trees are your “renewable biomass” and therefore better than burning coal. Apparently, burning our trees and leaving us a denuded landscape meets a European Union standard for carbon reduction.

I attended a public hearing last month by North Carolina’s Division of Air Quality in the latest county where Enviva Biomass, the world’s largest producer of wood pellets, wants to expand operations. To get an idea of the surroundings, the hearing was held in a rural high school where nearly 64 percent of all children are considered economically disadvantaged and 45 percent of students are chronically absent. 

Enviva put forward all the requisite support, including its VP for environmental affairs, director of sustainability policy, sustainability foresters, supporters from forestry and loggers’ associations, and a woman representing Enviva’s “community partnership.”

At a PR and legal level, the Enviva supporters said all the right things: more trees are planted in North Carolina than are cut down; the Enviva plant supports scholarships, apprenticeships, school supply drives, 300 “direct and indirect jobs;” and the company’s “significant capital investment” toward the proposed air quality permit modification seemed to meet what is required by law.

Sensitive forests

So why not let the Enviva plant in tiny Garysburg, North Carolina, spew out 46 percent more wood pellets than it did before? That’s 781,000 tons of wood pellets each year, not counting the three more Enviva plants in my state alone.

Plenty of reasons. Most of those newly planted trees come in the form of “pine plantations,” comprised of rows upon rows of artificially fertilized, crop-like trees, where the undergrowth is controlled just like weeds on a tobacco farm, and where biodiversity does not exist.

J.C. Woodley, a retired environmental biologist for the US Environmental Protection Agency who was raised in the latest county where Enviva wants to raze more forests, said: “The pine forests are monocultures – they’re just one kind of tree. They don’t store carbon in the manner that an old growth forest does.”

Of course, an old growth forest would take 30 to 40 years to regenerate, and environmentalists say Enviva wants to cut whole trees again faster than that. They also report that Enviva is cutting bottomland and coastal forests with wetland habitat, even though Enviva says it does not source wood from sensitive forests.

But really, who would know? In my state, private landowners have significant rights to do what they want with their land, even though we need the forests to help protect us from unprecedented hurricanes and rains that left sizeable areas of my state under water just last year.

Community opposition 

None of the biomass companies have policies where they reject the use of whole trees, according to the Dogwood Alliance, one of the groups fighting the cutting of our forests for the UK’s fuel. When these companies insist that they only use “residual” trees, that is, the treetops and branches, that promise is not in their company policies.

Environmental groups say they’ve been hindered when they want to see Enviva’s cutting and transport operations for themselves, instead of taking the company’s word for how it obtains its “product.”

The three other North Carolina Enviva plants are also in poor, distressed, rural counties where people struggle with poor health, low rates of insurance and not enough doctors. In two of the four counties, most residents are African-Americans, and in one, Northampton, discrimination against them was historically so bad that white county leaders took their intentionally racist voter “literacy test” all the way to the US Supreme Court, which in 1959 decided it was okay. 

Are these the places where a biomass company was likely to meet strong community opposition?  

No, says Woodley, the retired EPA scientist. People’s “issues are bigger to them than this, like keeping the electricity on.” Besides, Woodley added: “They’re very proud of those jobs,” probably not realizing that taxpayers of this poor county and the rest of the state are also helping to pay for them.

Measuring emissions 

Enviva has gotten $6 million in state and local subsidies, in part by taking advantage of North Carolina’s anti-environment Republican legislative majority to open and repeatedly expand operations. This is the same majority that in 2017 enacted an 18-month moratorium on the construction of new wind farms, even though the state’s lone wind operation had become the largest taxpayer in two other economically distressed counties the very day it opened.

Enviva’s jobs and even Enviva’s $5 million endowment of a Forest Conservation Fund to preserve bottomland hardwood trees in the Coastal Plain of North Carolina and Virginia doesn’t match the subsidies it receives.

Belinda Joyner, who leads the Concerned Citizens of Northampton County group, told state regulators at last month’s public hearing: “You don’t live here, so therefore you don’t have to be bothered with the noise. You don’t have to be bothered with the trucks” that grind their way to and from the Enviva plant seven days a week at all hours carrying logs or pellets. Referring to Enviva’s yearly school supply drive, Joyner added: “You’re going to kill us at the same time [that] you’re giving our children a book bag.”

But here’s the bigger picture, the thing that astounds my friends who had no idea this “sustainability” perversion is going on: the only reason why cutting our forests meets the EU standard for greenhouse gas emissions is because emissions are measured only at your power plants.

What never gets added to that equation are the effects of the carbon storage that is lost when the trees are cut down, or the carbon that is emitted by the massive, and hot, pellet plants, the carbon spewed from smog-emitting logging and pellet trucks, or the emissions from container ships that transport our trees across the Atlantic to UK power plants.

Lose-lose 

Even more astounding is that new studies are finding that burning wood pellets for fuel releases as much as, or even more, carbon dioxide per unit of energy than coal.

Woodley added: “The thing that’s disheartening to me is the scam. We’re emitting and [UK power plants are] at zero emissions, according to their calculations.”

Biomass supporters will respond to this piece and PR every claim. But they cannot deny the big picture. In today’s climate crisis, it is nothing but absurd that in the UK you burn our trees to power your homes and businesses.

As one opponent at the hearing summed up: “This is a lose-lose proposition on both sides of the Atlantic.”

This Author 

Cindy Elmore is a professor in the School of Communication at East Carolina University. She holds a PhD from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She was also a recipient of the Professional Fulbright in Journalism in New Zealand, and a Rotary International Fellowship for graduate study in the UK.

Image: Bobistraveling, Flickr. 

I am in the Amazon with Manari Ushigua, a shaman and healer, within the Ecuadorian territory of the Sapara indigenous nation, a people who have inhabited the forest for thousands of years, and whose deep immersion within it is legendary.

On our journey, Manari stops and points above his head to a thick vine snaking its way up the trunk of a tree. “This,” he says, “is the source of curare, which was used as an anaesthetic in the old days; we also use it as a poison for hunting.” He had rubbed the bark of another tree a few minutes beforehand. A white paste formed in his hand. As applied it to my head, he said: “This is our botox, use it if you want to appear young!”

Manari is also head of the Sapara Association. He has just displayed a tiny fraction of what they know about the forest and its beings. Their knowledge is so profound that it has been recognized by UNESCO as part of humanity’s ‘intangible heritage’. 

Population decline

Unfortunately, this intangible wealth is threatened by the modern world’s quest for financial profit, and the ideology of economic growth that fuels it.

The Sapara are threatened by concessions given by the Ecuadorian government to oil companies within its territory. If these plans go ahead, it could be the death-knell for a people already beleaguered by severe population decline. The Sapara are down to about 600 from 20,000, decimated by diseases brought in by outsiders who also enslaved them for the rubber trade and other commerce.

Fortunately the population is now stable, but any new factor such as incursions by oil extraction and mining could tip it over towards extinction. 

The threat is not only physical – the destruction of the forest and water on which the Sapara depend – though that is real enough. Perhaps much more insidious, and very difficult for the modern world to understand, is the violation of the spirit of the Sapara and all the beings they live with, an attack that could kill them psychologically and emotionally even if they survive physically.

The Sapara have lived as part of nature, as one amongst millions of beings in the Amazon, for as long as they can remember. They believe their past, their ancestors, are what guide their present, and their dreams tell them what to do next.

Resisting and rebuilding

The Sapara ‘read’ their dreams, interpreting them to understand what the spirits are telling them, and what steps they must take today and tomorrow. Daily rituals to stay connected are as important as eating and drinking and making love; we learnt this as every day started with a ‘cleansing’ ceremony, washed with water in which chiricaspi leaves were immersed, or painted on our faces with the deep red of achote tree fruits, or given guayusa tea to drink.

Oil extraction, mining, logging, and any other such extractivist activities would irrevocably undermine this delicate balance between the material and the spiritual, as much as it would destroy the intricate web of life that this rainforest supports. 

As devastating is the decline of their language. Manari said: “Only 2-3 people now know it fully, the rest of us have grown up being told Spanish is the proper language to speak. We are trying now to bring it back by teaching it in our school.”

UNESCO’s heritage tag includes the Sapara language, since it encodes so much of their knowledge. It is a sobering fact that most of the world’s endangered languages, and there are thousands, are the ones that indigenous people have spoken, and they are mostly unconnected to the few globally dominant languages. 

The Sapara are resisting and rebuilding. They have travelled out of their territory to Quito, and other parts of the world, to tell their story. They have been supported in this by indigenous networks such as the CONFENIAE (Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuadorian Amazon) and COICA (Coordinator of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon River Basin), and civil society groups like Fundacion Pachamama and the Pachamama Alliance.

These people have told the Ecuadorian Government in clear, unambiguous terms: we don’t want oil drilling and mining in our territory … or for that matter, anywhere in the Amazon. 

Palpable unfairness 

Resistance is one of two strategies they are using. The second is providing alternatives to the narrative of the Ecuadorian government, that extractive industries are the only way it can generate enough revenues to put into programmes for people’s welfare.

The Ecuadorian Government has over the last few years become seriously indebted to the Chinese, having taken enormous amounts of their investments without a thought on how they would repay. Chinese companies, fully backed by their government, have moved into Latin America in a massive way in the last decade or two, funding major infrastructure as a means to reach the continent’s rich natural resources. 

The Ecuadorian state’s inability (or unwillingness) to imagine and move towards an economy not dependent on extractivism (the only recent shift by socialist governments being to move away from private capitalist control to state control), has meant that indigenous peoples and civil society organisations are having to think up radical alternatives.

While the unfairness of this is palpable, nevertheless the Sapara and other indigenous nations are coming up with diverse ideas. 

Ecological understanding 

Our forest walk with Manari and other Sapara is part of one such attempt. The community has set up a community-led tourism initiative deep inside their territory, called Naku (Sapara for forest), near the village of Llanchamacocha.

It is not a typical tourism venture; rather, it is focused on healing, where visitors can spend a few days immersed in the sights and sounds and smells and spirits of the forest, receive the wisdom of the local people, have their dreams interpreted, and partake in cleansing and medicinal ceremonies including (if they so wish) a session with the legendary plant ayahuasca (iyouna in Sapara).

My colleagues and I are being treated to all this for five amazing days in June this year, days with no internet or phone connection, the pace slowed down to that of one of the stunning millipedes one could see in the forest, and no schedule to stick to.

It was so different from my usual routine of doing one thing after the other, of constantly referring to my watch, that it took me the first two days to just make the bodily, emotional and mental shift.

The Naku initiative is now providing resources for the community to invest in some other crucial needs. A school has been started where apart from the regular curriculum set by the state, the community has introduced elements of its own culture, knowledge, and ecological understanding.

The resources are now adequate even for the Sapara to employ a full time project coordinator: Estefania Paez is a young woman from Quito, who has taken to the task with enthusiasm (and was, incidentally, our trip organizer and interpreter). 

Ecological limits

The Sapara are also aware that dependence on tourism for generating alternative livelihoods is fragile. They have begun experimenting with products, made from things obtained from the forest using their artistic skills and traditions, that can be sold. They are conferring amongst themselves and with supporters from outside on other possibilities. 

The Naku initiative is of course a very partial alternative to the economic approach of the Ecuadorian state. There is no way it can compete with the revenues generated by oil and minerals.

Ecuador will need to look at alternatives like reviving its agriculture through agroecological approaches, community-led tourism, localizing the economy for basic needs, and other such options that are sensitive to the region’s biocultural diversity and fragility.

The government also needs to step up its efforts to get global assistance to keep the Amazon intact, emphasising its incredible role in maintaining global hydrological and climate cycles, the incalculable value of its biodiversity and its indigenous cultures and knowledge systems. Not as carbon trading kind of mechanisms, for those only legitimize the capitalist system that is one of the roots of the crises in the first place, but more in the form of reparations from the global north for the enormous damage it has done to both the Amazon and to the world’s environment, i.e. repayment for its ecological debt to the peoples and biodiversity of the Amazon. 

These are difficult and long-term struggles. For the immediate, the Sapara are expressing to the world that they want to be left in peace, with no incursions by oil and mining companies, and that they have ideas for how they can build a bioeconomy that respects ecological limits as also the wisdom of the peoples that inhabit that Amazon.

Ambitious initiatives 

Sapara are participating in an ambitious Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, combining several indigenous networks in Ecuador and Peru, with support from groups like Pachamama Alliance and Amazon Watch, to build the case for protecting 30 million hectares of the Amazon from extractive industries. 

With one final ceremony, we bid an optimistic ‘hasta pronto’ to our Sapara hosts. Our tiny plane rumbles off the dirt runaway, and as it circles around Llanchamacocha and begins to head towards the nearby Shell airport, the enormous expanse of the Amazon comes into view.

The river along which we had camped appears like a snake gleaming in the sun. Verdant green all the way to the horizon, broken by winding water snakes, the crowns of skyscraping trees emerging like sentinels …  it’s a view unlike anywhere else on earth. Can it survive the onslaught of the greed-driven, power-hungry world of ‘development’? 

As I write this news of the fires affecting the Amazon (and nearby regions) is waning in global media, making the prospect of survival seem even more bleak. Nevertheless, people are resisting and rebuilding.

This Author 

Ashish Kothari works with Kalpavriksh, an NGO working on environmental and social issues, based in Pune, India. He is a member of the Global Commission of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative. 

A top scientist has said it is “appropriate to be scared” about the pace at which climate change is taking place.

Former chief government scientist Professor Sir David King said the situation was so grave that the UK should bring forward the date for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases to almost zero from 2050 to 2040, according to the BBC.

Another scientist told the broadcaster about the “numbing inevitability” of climate change, while another expressed concern about public fear around the issue and compared it to the fear of nuclear war in his youth.

Hurricanes

Prof King told the BBC: “It’s appropriate to be scared. We predicted temperatures would rise, but we didn’t foresee these sorts of extreme events we’re getting so soon.”

He said the world could not wait for scientific certainty on events like Hurricane Dorian, but said he believes the likelihood that Dorian is a climate change event is “very high”.

He added: “I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty, but what I can say is that the energy from the hurricane comes from the warm ocean and if that ocean gets warmer we must expect more energy in hurricanes.”

Scared

He continued: “If you got in a plane with a one in 100 chance of crashing you would be appropriately scared.

“But we are experimenting with the climate in a way that throws up probabilities of very severe consequences of much more than that.”

Physicist Prof Jo Haigh from Imperial College London told the BBC: “David King is right to be scared – I’m scared too.”

Afraid

Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, told the broadcaster: “I have a sense of the numbing inevitability of it all.

“It’s like seeing a locomotive coming at you for 40 years – you could see it coming and were waving the warning flags but were powerless to stop it.”

Petteri Taalas, who is secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), said he wants to “stick to the facts”, which he said are “quite convincing and dramatic enough”.

“We should avoid interpreting them too much. When I was young we were afraid of nuclear war. We seriously thought it’s better not to have children.

“I’m feeling the same sentiment among young people at the moment. So we have to be a bit careful with our communication style,” he said.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

When your average person thinks of a climate activist in this country, they think of a white, middle-class person. Perhaps they have dreadlocks and chain themselves to buildings; perhaps they are less loud with their activism but sign online petitions and only eat locally-sourced vegan food.

Either way, British Muslims and other ethnic minority communities have long been excluded from the narrative.

But there is a shift taking place. More and more Muslims are engaging in the climate justice issues and beginning to see how protecting the living planet is an important part of our faith. 

Our values

As Muslims, we have a duty of custodianship over the Earth and its resources. It is said that Allah made the human race his khalif (trustee) of the earth. The Prophet Muhammad said: “The world is green and beautiful and Allah has left you in charge of it, so be careful of how you conduct yourselves”.  

At Islamic Relief UK, where I work as campaigns co-ordinator, custodianship is one of our key values and it is integral to how we operate as development and humanitarian practitioners.

Not only do we have custodianship of the Earth, but also of the trust placed in us by our supporters to be accountable and transparent to the communities we serve. We work in countries that are hit hardest by extreme weather events, like Somalia – frequently affected by drought – and Bangladesh – often affected by floods. It would be disingenuous to support these communities in their mitigation and adaptation projects while carrying on business-as-usual in a society largely responsible for the climate crisis.

Many of our supporters among the British Muslim community have relatives in some of these countries and are starting to understand the severity of the climate emergency. For example, there is a clear connection between the way we live in the industrialised world and people’s grandparents back in Bangladesh moving from place to place because of rising water levels.

My own Nana lives in Pakistan and when I look at her life – which would be considered ‘poor’ or ‘deprived’ by many in the West – I think of how much more sustainable it is than my own. She and her family grow all their own vegetables and rear their own livestock. Everything they live on comes from their own land – they don’t rely on out of season food wrapped in plastic and flown in from the other side of the world; or livestock from other continents that could be reared right where they live.

When my parents moved to the UK, they thought they were progressing, but our consumerist lifestyle and our reliance on fossil fuels is creating a crisis that will only force humanity and our life expectancy backwards.

Holy pilgrimage

I have never been on holy pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajjas it is known by our community. But it is a key tenant of the Muslim faith, and every Muslim from the UK to Indonesia is expected to do it at least once in their lifetime, if they are physically and financially able to do so. Like many of my peers, I have spent my life looking forward to taking part.

However, recent research from scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shows that due to extreme temperatures, conditions in Mecca are getting more and more dangerous for human health. 

Through the analysis of historical climate models and past data, scientists project that should the world’s emissions continue in a business-as-usual scenario, temperatures in Mecca will soon rise to a level that the human body can no longer cope with. 

According to the research, summer days in Saudi Arabia could surpass the ‘extreme danger heat-stress threshold’ from as early as next year. When the temperature of our skin reaches this level, and combines with a certain level of humidity in the air, sweat no longer evaporates efficiently, so the body can no longer cool itself and overheats. 

But crucially, mitigating climate breakdown through reducing emissions could limit the severity of these temperatures. It is up to us as Muslims to make it as safe as possible for us and future generations to be able to practice Hajj. 

That doesn’t mean we’re only interested in tackling climate change so we can fulfil our religious obligations. Not at all. We are interested for the sake of all humanity.

Global strike

In June, Islamic Relief staff and campaigners marched to Parliament to lobby our MPs to take the crisis seriously. On Saturday 14 September, one of our brilliant young activists, Munadiah Aftab, spoke to an audience of two hundred about the link between her faith and the climate at the UK Youth Climate Takeover. 

On Friday 20 September, Islamic Relief staff will be getting up from our desks, leaving our offices in London and marching up to Trafalgar Square to join the #FridaysForFuture global climate strikes inspired by Greta Thunberg and other school strikers across the world. Colleagues in other offices will be joining – from Birmingham to Germany.

This is the first time as an organisation that we have fully backed and are joining a strike. 

Persuading people was no doddle. But the news about Hajj was a wake-up call for many and I have already noticed a shift in the way people are talking about the climate crisis and what it means for them and their families. 

On 20 September, we will march to Trafalgar Square where we will gather with other faith-based groups from the Faith for Climate network, including Christian Aid and CAFOD, showing  that people of all faiths and none can, and should, work together to tackle climate breakdown – the most pressing issue the world has ever faced. 

Net Zero

But what is our aim of the strike, you might ask?

In June, former Prime Minister Theresa May committed to ensuring our greenhouse gas emissions reach Net Zero by 2050. We don’t think this is adequate for the scale of the emergency the world is facing. We want the UK Government to bring this target forward to 2045 and immediately outline the specifics of their plans to achieve Net Zero through legislation. 

With increasing political uncertainty in this country, we are asking people to do what they can in their own lives. Making a stand by leaving work and going on strike will hopefully spark a conversation with colleagues about the severity of the climate crisis. But there are other things we can do in our daily lives: reduce car travel and flights; reduce meat and dairy consumption; say no to plastic. 

There is nobody on this earth who will escape the impacts of the climate crisis. I am pleased that the British Muslim community is taking action, and we hope that the COP26 summit in Glasgow next year will give us even more opportunity to make our voices heard.

We all have a stake in the climate emergency. There really is no Planet B.

The Author

Maria Zafar is campaigns and community mobilisation co-ordinator at Islamic Relief UK. She is passionate about social and climate justice.

Image: Floods in Pakistan, where Islamic Relief works. Asian Development Bank. 

Grassroots campaign group Labour for a Green New Deal have taken aim at airport sponsorship at Labour Party Conference in a statement released today, following their announcement of a protest against BP’s presence at the annual gathering in Brighton.

Labour for a Green New Deal called for Labour members to boycott events sponsored by Heathrow and Gatwick airports at the Party’s conference in September, and for “the Party as a whole to reconsider its relationship to corporate bosses at conference.”

The full statement read: “Labour for a Green New Deal is deeply disappointed to see Heathrow, City and Gatwick airports sponsoring events at Labour Party Conference, including with Sadiq Khan”.

Boycott events

The statement goes on to argue that: “Labour is rightly in favour of a dramatic reduction in emissions, not only to protect the natural world but as a necessary act of solidarity with the working class across the world, above all in the Global South, who suffer the devastating impacts of climate breakdown.

“Opposition to airport expansion should be as natural to the Labour Party and Labour politicians as support for new green jobs and a worker-led just transition. Just as we protest fossil fuel companies’ presence on conference fringe, so too do we condemn events with airport bosses intent on profit at the expense of the working class our party seeks to represent.

“We urge party members to boycott these events, and the Party as a whole to reconsider its relationship to corporate bosses at conference. We need a party conference for the many, not the few.”

The statement comes after Labour for a Green New Deal called a protest of the New Statesman’s event with BP at Labour Party Conference. BP is also hosting a stall inside the conference zone.

Climate criminals 

Noga Levy-Rapoport, a youth striker and spokesperson for Labour for a Green New Deal, said: “Airport expansion and further fossil fuel extraction are totally incompatible with Labour’s ambition to combat the climate emergency and keep global temperature rises beneath 1.5c.

“The fact is that these airports primarily serve the needs of a wealthy minority, with just 15% of the population taking 70 percent of UK flights, just as BP’s drilling enriches its executives at the grave expense of working-class people around the globe.

“Party members would rather have a Green New Deal which would make invest in cheap or free, high-quality transport linking up the country.

“We can’t allow environmentally destructive businesses free reign to use our party conference as a ground for lobbying and greenwashing. Labour Conference must no longer be a safe space for climate criminals.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Labour for a Green New Deal. 

Ronaldo Golez, Mayor of Dumangas in the Philippines, is not a shy man but he is modest, especially  considering the challenges that he and his town of 70,000 are facing.

The Philippines and Dumangas would not normally be associated with desertification and drought, but throughout six months of the year the city experiences drought, and for the other six months, floods. Typhoons are also a common occurrence. 

How can he govern, adapt and prosper in this new climatic scenario with such optimism?  I spoke to him about urban and rural linkages during the Local Governments Day event at the recent United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification COP14. He said: “The key is land use. You see, we collaborate with local communities on land use maps and this is critical for developing a better relationship between urban and rural areas”. 

Unsustainable agriculture 

Dumangas is not alone in experiencing climatic change in a city due to the impact of changing weather patterns.

In Nepal for example, rainfall happens in March-April rather than in June-July, preventing the growth of crops and putting food security is at stake.

Ahmed Aziz Diallo, Mayor of Dori in Burkina Faso, tells us: “We experience climate change in our daily lives. We breathe climate change”. Deforestation and unsustainable agricultural practices have increased desertification, land degradation and drought.

Young people left in the rural areas no longer have any opportunities; there’s not enough access to education, healthcare and reasonable lifestyles. There are often visionary entrepreneurs that, due to a lack of any other opportunities become an easy target for terrorist organisations to recruit, not because they follow their ideology, but because of a lack of choices.

Some people end up migrating to cities, leaving behind the elderly and vulnerable, and exemplifying one of the biggest challenges of uncontrolled urbanisation: rural-urban migration.

Unofficial slums

There is much to say about the role of intermediate and secondary towns in holding the rural population away from the mega cities, but secondary infrastructure roads are also important. 

Rural-urban migration for better opportunities in cities is creating informal settlements on the urban outskirts. Gunda Prakash Rao, Mayor of Greater Warangal in India, shared his experiences of trying to assist one million citizens living in 93 slums in his city.

I asked Rao, “How do you that?” he replied: “You see 93 slums are the slums officially recognised by the government. We have in fact 183 slums in total, the remaining 90 with 300,000 inhabitants are not recognised by the government”.

1.3 million inhabitants living in 183 slums in one city is something that I find difficult to comprehend. Legalisation of informal settlements might be a solution to this problem, as A. Mahendra and C. K. Seto have pointed out in a working paper. 

Peri-urban areas have become the focal point of rural – urban migration stories, acting as connectors between rural areas and cities and places where we can, hopefully, change a paradigm.

Informal settlements 

Informal settlements upgrading without the provision of jobs is no longer a viable option – it is also no longer a story about aesthetics and the provision of low-cost housing, as this is simply not sufficient.

Economic diversification, can ideally be achieved here by sustainable resources management and the circular economy.  The ILO expects global employment growth services and waste management to create up to 45 million jobs in total.

There is also a role for local and regional governments, as candidly explained by Emani Kumar, Deputy Secretary General of ICLEI, which has in its network 1,750 cities from over one hundred and twenty countries. The local and regional governments are implementors of national policies because they are closer to the local communities – decentralisation has a very important role to play.

Policy recommendations 

It was a great privilege to be engaged by the UNCCD to produce ‘Rural – Urban Dynamics Policy Recommendations’ as part of the Global Land Outlook Second Edition Advanced Working Paper.

Research on the policy took me back to 1992 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit and Agenda 21, which in fact points out solutions for the urban and rural continuum. Where did we go wrong in twenty-seven years of international dialogues and conceptual frameworks?

Perhaps the conceptual framework that separates cities and hinterlands needs to change. It might be that the fragmented approach to sustainability can impact on thinking and result in organisational silos, which in turn prevents a more uniform approach to city planning and governance. 

The paper offers a holistic review of relationships between rural and urban areas. It attempts to identify contemporary challenges that are encountered by both habitats and seeks to provide a variety of solutions to these challenges.

To effectively address the complexity of issues between rural areas and cities, the analysis is structured thematically around five ‘capitals’ – natural, human, social, manufactured and financial –  to enable the implementation of holistic approaches.  

Special focus is given to a possible way forward aimed at greater integration of rural and urban areas through sustainable land management to prevent productive land loss through the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Framework. 

Holistic approach

The paper identifies a diverse range of co-dependencies between rural and urban areas: ranging from food and water security, poverty alleviation, globalisation and migrations, governance and land regulations, affordable housing, land degradation and livelihood strategies in peri-urban areas, to sustainable resources management and circular economy opportunities.

This holistic approach may the answer to what Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of UNCCD, stated in his special address during Land and Regional Government Day: “We need to find a new development paradigm that is working for all,” using land as an agent for change.

His words on social inclusion were reiterated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who during the Opening Ceremony of the High Level Segment of COP14 concluded his speech with a suggestion that we need to change our thinking about a sustainable development paradigm and replace “me” with “we” in order to come up with a prosperous model of society. 

In the meantime, the mayors Dumangas, Dori and Warangal are doing extraordinary work in extraordinary circumstances, delivering on many Sustainable Development Goals, but above all on the SDG13 – Climate Action.

I have learnt from them that doing business as usual is no longer enough.  

This Author 

Dr Sandra Piesik is an architect and a researcher specialising in technology development and transfer. She is the founder of Habitat Coalition and a director of 3 ideas Ltd, UNCCD policy support consultant on Rural-Urban Dynamics, and a stakeholder in several UNFCCC and UN-HABITAT initiatives. She is the author of Arish: Palm-Leaf Architecture, and the editor of HABITAT: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Planet, both published by Thames and Hudson. 

The Local and Regional Governments Day took place on 7 September 2019 during the UNCCD COP14 and was co-organised by the UNCCD Secretariat, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Government of India.

Image: Thar Desert, India © contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Britain’s loudest bird has enjoyed its best year since records began, according to a new survey by the RSPB.

Conservationists are heralding the success of a project to bring bitterns (a type of heron) back from the brink of extinction.

Bitterns are highly secretive despite their claim to fame as Britain’s loudest bird. With their well camouflaged, pale, buffy-brown plumage, bitterns spend most of their time hiding in dense stands of reed and are so elusive scientists count them by listening for the males’ distinctive booming call.

Astonishing recovery

Since 2006, there has been a year-on-year increase in the number of bitterns making their home in Britain. This year numbers reached record levels once more with 198 males recorded at 89 sites. This compares to 188 at 82 sites in 2018.

They had completely disappeared in Britain by the 1870s, before recolonising early in the 20th century. However, they found themselves back on the brink in 1997 when numbers dropped to 11 males.

Simon Wotton, RSPB Senior Conservation Scientist, said: “Bitterns are one our most charismatic birds. Their astonishing recovery from the brink of extinction is a real conservation success story and example of what is possible through targeted efforts to restore wildlife habitat.

“It’s a delight to hear their distinctive booming call echoing across the reedbeds every year as more and more bitterns are making new or restored wetlands their home.”

Two EU LIFE funded projects helped reinvigorate the bittern population, alongside the legal safeguards in place within Special Protection Areas (SPAs).But the number of SPAs has not increased for 20 years, despite plans to designate more SPAs as bitterns arrived in their newly created habitats. 

Success story

When the RSPB first started regular annual bittern monitoring in 1990, over 90 percent of booming bitterns were found on SPAs designated for the bird but this year only 23 percent were recorded on designated SPAs, leaving bittern nests vulnerable to damage and destruction.

The UK has the second lowest percentage of its national territory designated as SPAs of the EU28 member states.

The RSPB’s conservation director Martin Harper added: “The recovery of the bittern is a great success story.  It highlights the importance of nature reserves and protected areas in providing this species a lifeline. 

“Equally, we know that dedicated funding from the EU has been instrumental in driving positive action. 

“Rhetorical commitments to restore nature in a generation must be backed up with legal targets and adequate resources. That is why it is essential that governments across the UK pass new environment laws to drive nature’s recovery and replace the funding that will be lost if and when the UK leaves the European Union.”

Secretive bird

102 male booming bitterns were recorded across RSPB sites, up from 92 last year.

Booming was reported from five new sites. Although the number of confirmed booming males in Somerset dropped from 55 to 48 boomers, record levels were noted in the Fens and North Eastern England.

Bitterns are a secretive bird, very difficult to see, as they move silently through the reeds at the water’s edge, looking for fish.

If you keep your eyes peeled you might be lucky to spot one at a number of RSPB nature reserves in Somerset, East Anglia and Yorkshire. Click here to find a reserve close to you. 

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the RSPB. 

This summer was a “painted lady year”, with almost half a million of the migratory butterflies recorded as part of an annual count, experts have said.

Results from members of the public taking part in the survey run by Butterfly Conservation have allowed the wildlife charity to confirm that 2019 was a year when unusually high numbers of painted ladies arrived in the UK.

A “painted lady year” is a natural phenomenon that occurs about once a decade, the experts said, with the last big influx of the migratory butterfly taking place in 2009.

Sightings

Results from the Big Butterfly Count, which took place over three weeks in the summer, show that the number of painted lady butterflies was almost 30 times greater than in 2018.

The count also revealed that several other common species have experienced a good summer, helped by the fine weather – in some cases boosting butterflies which have been struggling in recent years.

Peacock butterflies had their best summer since 2014, with a 235 percent increase in numbers sighted compared with last year, while the marbled white saw a 264 percent increase.

Red admirals were up 138 percent, gatekeepers up 95 percent, and there was a 64 percent rise in sightings of the six-spot burnet moth, one of two day-flying moths counted in the survey.

Tortoiseshell

And the struggling small tortoiseshell had its best result since 2014, with around 70,000 spotted during this summer’s count.

Scientists continue to be worried about the butterfly, which has seen declines of around 78 percent since the 1970s, and suggested climate change could be having an impact on its fortunes.

Butterfly Conservation’s Richard Fox said: “Last year the small tortoiseshell experienced its worst summer in the history of the Big Butterfly Count, so to see its numbers jump up by 167 percent this year is a big relief.”

He added that the results showed the species performed far better in Scotland and Northern Ireland than in England and Wales.

Parasitic

“We’re still trying to establish what is behind the long-term decline of the small tortoiseshell and, while it is good news that the butterfly fared better this summer, the poor results in southern England in particular suggest that climate change may be having more of an impact on this species than we have previously realised.”

Mr Fox added: “The painted lady obviously stole the show this summer, taking the top spot in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but 2019 has also been the most successful Big Butterfly Count in its 10-year history, with more people taking part and more counts being submitted than ever before.”

It was less good news for small white, large white and green-veined white butterflies, which all saw their numbers drop by 42 percent compared with last year, while common blue and holly blue butterflies were both down by more than half.

The experts said these species all experienced a bumper year in 2018, and this year’s drop could be the result of being preyed on by parasitic wasps whose populations may have been boosted by the butterflies’ success last year.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Bus operators across England are setting out a bold strategy to work with government to improve services, help tackle climate change and get a billion more passenger journeys by bus by 2030. 

The new strategy Moving Forward Together was launched by the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT).

The strategy includes new commitments from the industry, including a pledge to work with government to make every new bus an ultra-low or zero emission bus from 2025. 

Bus strategy 

The CPT is the voice for bus and coach operators across the UK, representing over 95 percent of the bus industry including the major operators Arriva, First Group, Go Ahead, National Express and Stagecoach as well as hundreds of smaller operators.

Additional commitments in the strategy include reducing travel costs for job seekers and apprentices by 2021, introducing price-capped daily and weekly tickets across multiple operators by 2022 in urban areas and working with government to develop innovative sustainable solutions to rural transport. 

Alongside the industry’s commitments CPT is calling on the Government to introduce a national bus strategy to help deliver better bus services across England. This would include bus journey time targets for local transport authorities, speeding up millions of journeys to work, school and leisure and encouraging more people to get on the bus.

Graham Vidler, CPT Chief Executive said: “Buses are already the cleanest form of road transport and have a crucial role to play in tackling environmental issues and helping to meet important targets on improving air quality and reducing carbon emissions.

“With the right support from government to make the transition the bus industry will buy only ultra-low or zero emission buses by 2025, reducing CO2 emissions by half a million tonnes a year.” 

Essential infrastructure 

Buses are a vital part of the UK’s infrastructure with passengers generating £64 billion of economic output annually. Each person takes around 50 bus trips per year and 60 percent of all public transport journeys are taken by bus. 

Every day, over two million people all over the country travel to work by bus, and a million more to school or college.

Graham Vidler continues: “We can do even more to tackle climate change and improve air quality by getting people out of their cars and onto the bus. If everyone switched just one car journey a month to bus, there would be a billion fewer car journeys and a saving of two million tonnes of CO2 a year.

“Better bus services are the key to shifting travel habits and growing the significant economic contribution the industry makes. We know that congestion remains the biggest barrier to increasing passenger numbers in towns and cities and that many rural communities feel current bus services don’t meet their needs.

“We’ll continue to invest in better buses with better facilities and simpler ticketing. We need government to incentivise local authorities to cut congestion and work with us to examine new ways of delivering transport services that work for more isolated communities”. 

Cutting emissions

Buses Minister, Baroness Vere said: “Buses link people with work, school, friends and family and are vital to helping drive down emissions by providing a greener travel option.  

“That’s why this Government is spending an additional £200 million on boosting bus services. This is on top of £250 million already spent each year, as well as funding for a range of low-emission technologies across the sector.

“The Confederation of Passenger Transport’s strategy emphasises the importance of the bus industry and I look forward to working with them to continue to bolster bus services across the country.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the Confederation of Passenger Transport.

Music and politics often go hand in hand. Womad has dealt with annual visa challenges for large bands entering the UK determinedly and diplomatically, for over three decades.

The festival goes the extra mile to source signature new finds from across the globe, with its roots in world music, platforming performers in an appreciative, supportive environment and championing diversity.

This year, it was women performers who won the limelight. 

Sense of identity 

The two most established performers were Nadine Shah and Anna Calvi. Each brought fire and terror, musical beauty and brevity in what proved to be electrifying performances.

Shah, with her Tyneside and Muslim background, brought a sense of place and belonging, coupled with the contradiction of experiencing daily racism and bullying. She’s now celebrated and treated with pride by some locals who formerly terrorised her. 

Shah’s punk attitude helped her to negotiate a region where a sense of identity is strongly associated with local geography, social expectations and folklore – and often with being white.

At once demonic and possessed, Shahs on stage persona, merged seamlessly with her everyday self, is an expression of out and out ‘living it’. Her songs clearly reveal that she was up against prejudice that would prove much more than a thorn in her side – it shaped her. 

It’s heartening beyond measure to see Shah’s defiance translated into musical brilliance. Her’s was one of those performances where everyone was left ruffled and in awe. A raw power, provocative and politicised, yet with a compassionate and essentially Northern sensibility, in which empathy will out.

She spoke with a  Tyneside twang of ‘being told to go back home’, which brought me to tears. Shah is a mesmerising and electrifying performer. Once experienced, never forgotten.

Bold and daring

Anna Calvi strutted the stage, singing with an operatic range in which the long held notes hung in the air like lost souls. Swaying and sauntering, she almost floated, poltergeist-like.

Calvi drew in an audience who came like moths to a flame. A dramatic show and intense presence, guitar riffs surely re-purposed from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Calvi called the shots.

She appeared to leave the stage in tears amidst rumours and an announcement that this was potentially her last performance. 

It was a bold and somewhat daring move of Womad to programme both Calvi and Shah, neither of whom are usually associated with the festival’s emphasis on ‘world music’, a term and a genre that constantly stirring debate.

Womad is a familiar and safe space, particularly for punters who return annually on family holidays. But this year’s programming was a smart move to attract a new and more varied audience. That said, they also included some old school faves, such as Orbital, resplendent with signature insect-aping headsets, contemporary ‘techy’ anarchy,  amagnificent lightshow, on-screen politicised text and edgy energy. 

Ethno-chaos

In sharp contrast, Robert Plant’s new project ‘Saving Grace’, with Elaine Dian, was a melancholic affair, prompting an (rather un-WOMAD!) audience member to shout “Make the next one a f*****g happy one!”.

Nevertheless Plant’s long-term eagerness to embrace diverse music, cultures and traditions remains admirable.

The high hats of Dhakhabrakah, a Ukrainian quartet, gained much audience approval, for their unique sound and ‘ethno-chaos’.

Their strong female physicality and musicality, powered the big-top tent with forceful drumming, singing and funked-up bass-lined fused with the more traditional had the audience erupting after each song. This splendid subversion in sound is a Womad’s signature offering. 

Coaxing discussion

In addition, Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights is a retail paradise for bookworms and a magical palace of insight and fantastical tales. Its staff informatively introduce potential reader-book-buyers, to suitable (book) matches. It is a beacon to the book and written word, in an ocean of drudgery battling a challenging market for print. 

Womad annually secures literary masters and persons of great social impact, intent on coaxing discussion and open-mindedness.

Should ever the heinous thought enter one’s mind that, “Oh yes, I have life sussed”, some speaker, often unexpectedly, will answer an audience question to swiftly quash such a notion with refreshing consciousness. Hurrah and also, how very dare you!

This is Womad’s calling card, to expect the unexpected, is encountered in their arts, annually. More than any festival, it generously understands the need for creative expression and modern musical ‘purism’. 

In a rapidly changing global society, Womand stands like a steadfast, steel ship, anchored and proud, it has weathered all-sorts, at times looking like it would sink. Yet it buoys back and floats freely through frequently difficult waters – politically, financially, culturally, and logistically.

This Author

Wendyrosie Scott is an anthropologist, journalist & stylist focusing on design & creative communities. She looks at positive partnerships between lifestyle trends & the natural world.