Game Of Thrones star Iwan Rheon – who played Ramsay Bolton – has warned about the “urgent” threat of wildlife decline caused by climate change.

The Olivier award-winning Welsh actor said an ecological crisis could see birds, plants and animals at risk of extinction within 20 years if more is not done to halt the decline of numbers.

Rheon has starred in E4’s Misfits, BBC One’s Our Girl, and appeared in hit show Game Of Thrones, spoke on Wednesday from the Senedd, home of the Welsh Assembly, on World Environment Day.

Frightening

Rheon joined the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to urge the Welsh and UK governments to do more to tackle climate change and make sure it retained and expanded on EU environment protection even after Brexit.

Rheon told the Press Association: “It’s very urgent now we protect wildlife in Wales and all over the world. Every species is in danger.

“We’re seeing loads of species that are in danger of being extinct forever and it’s important for the future generations to be able to enjoy nature and the beautiful wildlife we have here in Wales, in Britain and all over the world.”

He added: “We’re seeing some frightening statistics for a lot of species that look like they aren’t probably going to make it, here in Wales as well.

Protections

“We’ve got about 20 years I think to fix this problem otherwise it would have gone too far.”

Rheon said the public could undertake “small changes” to help including recycling and considering their use of single-use plastics, but called for pressure to be put onto governments to put restoration and protection of nature at the heart of future legislation.

He also called on politicians to ensure environmental protections were retained after the UK leaves the European Union, saying: “Once we’re not involved, if anyone can work out what to do about this, if we’re not part of EU, which has incredibly strict laws on the environment, we have to come up with our own laws.

“It’s important we put pressure on the government to think about everything through nature and ecological ways, and how we affect the environment around us and if we go too far now which we’re about to do, it will be too late and there won’t be any coming back.”

This Author

Adam Hale is a reporter with the Press Association.

ClientEarth is supporting a group of indigenous Australians as they battle to save the islands that have been home to their unique culture for thousands of years.

We’re helping the group to launch a world-first complaint against their government for failing to act on climate change. They’re pressing for immediate action: without it they’re at risk of becoming climate refugees in their own country.

The Torres Strait is a hidden jewel north of mainland Australia. It’s home to one of the world’s oldest living cultures but rising tides are already flooding homes, lands and cultural sites. The situation will continue to get worse as the effects of climate change ratchet up.

Devastating prospect

The people of the Torres Strait are facing the devastating prospect of their Islands disappearing beneath the waves.

With our support, a group of eight Torres Strait Islanders are taking legal steps to fight and save their idyllic island home.

A complaint has been submitted against the Australian government to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. It alleges that the effects of Australia’s insufficient plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and its failure to fund coastal defences constitute a violation of their human rights.

The Islanders hope that the case will force the Australian government to act. They need coastal defence measures to tackle the rising tides that are happening today. And they are urging politicians in Canberra to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and limit the impact in the future.

Unique culture

Tell Australia’s prime minister to act on climate change.

We are proud to be working with the group of Islanders in the battle to save their unique culture. In order to do that we have developed an approach that is legally ground-breaking.

Our hope is that as well as helping the people of the Torres Strait, it will also help others affected by climate change as they seek to hold their governments to account for their failure to act.

This  Author 

Sophie Marjanac is project lead for climate accountability and ClientEarth. 

Downpours of heavy rain can lead to flash floods, devastation, and outbreaks of waterborne disease.

The number of extreme downpours increased steadily between 1964 and 2013—a period when global warming also intensified, research published in the journal of Water Resources research shows.

The  frequency of ‘extreme precipitation events’ increased in parts of Canada, most of Europe, the Midwest and northeast region of the US, northern Australia, western Russia and parts of China.

Global warming 

Simon Papalexiou, a hydro-climatologist in USask’s College of Engineering, and an expert in hydroclimatic extremes and random processes, said: “By introducing a new approach to analyzing extremes, using thousands of rain records, we reveal a clear increase in the frequency extreme rain events over the recent 50 years when global warming accelerated.” 

Papalexiou, who led the research at the Global Institute for Water Security, added:  “This upward trend is highly unlikely to be explained by natural climatic variability. The probability of this happening is less than 0.3 percent under the model assumptions used.”

The USask study of over 8,700 daily rain records from 100,000 stations monitoring rain worldwide found the frequency of torrential rain between 1964 and 2013 increased as the decades progressed.

Between 2004 and 2013, there were seven percent more extreme bouts of heavy rain overall than expected globally.

Global warming can lead to increased precipitation because more heat in the atmosphere leads to more atmospheric water which, in turn, leads to rain.  

Robust records

Torrents of rain not only lead to flooding, but can threaten public health, overwhelming sewage treatment plants and increasing microbial contaminants of water. More than half a million deaths were caused by rain-induced floods between 1980 and 2009. 

Heavy rain can also cause landslides, damage crops, collapse buildings and bridges, wreck homes, and lead to chaos on roads and to transport, with huge financial losses.

Co-author Alberto Montanari, Professor of hydraulic works and hydrology at the University of Bologna and President of the European Geoscience Union, said: “Our results are in line with the assumption that the atmosphere retains more water under global warming.

“The fact that the frequency, rather the magnitude, of extreme precipitation is significantly increasing has relevant implications for climate adaptation. Human systems need to increase their capability to react to frequent shocks.”

The researchers screened data for quality and consistency, selecting the most robust and complete records from the 100,000 stations worldwide monitoring precipitation. Regions in South America and Africa were excluded from the study, as records for the study period were not complete or robust.

Government planning

Papalexiou said planning for more frequent ‘extreme’ rain should be a priority for governments, local authorities and emergency services. 

Papalexiou warned: “If global warming progresses as climate model projections predict, we had better plan  strategies for dealing with frequent heavy rain right now. Our study of records from around the globe shows that potentially devastating bouts of extreme rain are increasing decade by decade.

“We know that rainfall-induced floods can devastate communities, and that there are implications of increasing bouts of heavy rain for public health, agriculture, farmers’ livelihoods, the fishing industry and insurance – to name but a few.”       

The research was funded by the Global Water Futures program at the University of Saskatchewan and the Italian Government’s “excellent department” grant to the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Material Engineering at the University of Bologna.          

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Global Institute for Water Security.         

Image: Air babble, Flickr.                                              

We need to reinvent luxury. We need a better understanding of high quality. We need to treat ourselves, but treat ourselves well. Or to rediscover.

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was a hedonist, and spent a considerable amount of time pondering what made for a good life. When it came to food, he advised only bread and water which, he argued, always tasted sublime to a person experiencing real hunger.

This article was first published as the Foreword to Envirocidal: How Livestock Farming is Killing the Planet, published by Viva!

For hundreds of years meat has occupied the territory of luxury. The old kings of England used the country as a hunting ground and paintings of the era show feasts resplendent with dead animals.

Reinventing luxury

Indeed, the foundation myth of our origins as humans is that we were apes rolling around in the forest undergrowth eating leaves until the desertification of the Savanna. Then we became man, upstanding, a hunter, an eater of meat. There is actually no evidence to support this, the prevailing hypothesis about what makes us human.

And yet, if it is true, what does it tell us about ourselves? That we are a contented beast, a great animal surrounded by an abundance of food. The African forest contained all the wealth we early humans could possibly need – it was this environment rich in foods including plant proteins that allowed us to develop such a powerful mind.

The transition to meat was in fact the act of desperation. The effective suckling of goats and cows in this story does not seem luxurious but really quite grim. The bleeding of cattle, and eventually the slaughtering of our fellow living creatures seems utterly dreadful. Yet this is the myth that is supposed to make eating meat a natural part of who we are.

So what does this mean for us today? I think we need to evoke the deep emotional relationship we have with food in order to influence behaviours towards what is healthy for us as human beings and also what is sustainable for our planet. We need to celebrate plant food, and build customs and myths that place the beetroot and the potato at the centre of our celebrations, of our identities.

Luxury, when one really digs into its meaning, is simply that which is not affordable to everyone. We show off by eating meat. But meat is cheap, and dirty, and everywhere. Real luxury is organic foods, locally sourced foods, home grown foods, plant based food. These foods need to be rich with stories – grown by those we love, only for us, over time and with great care.

Comprehensive review

Meat in turn needs to be treated with disgust. As a journalist, I have seen the new mega farms spreading into British agriculture like mould. The cows are chained, clearly in pain, barely able to suffer the weight of their bloated udders. Thousands of them. Living within the rivers of slurry they produce. It’s not luxury, it is despair, and it is disgusting.

The publication of this second edition of the Envirocidal report could not be more timely.

Sir David Attenborough has finally taken the message to middle England that climate change is an existential threat. The inspiring and innovative manifestation of Extinction Rebellion, with more than a thousand people willing to be arrested peacefully protesting in London, and the direct actions simultaneously taking place in cities around the world, show that people of all ages are determined to act on climate change – and also biodiversity loss.

Veganism is becoming the new normal. I became vegan this year after holding a vote of readers of The Ecologist asking whether its editor could have a pescatarian diet without some level of hypocrisy. The answer was resounding.

And as this report makes clear, eating fish and foregoing other meat is not sufficient if we want to significantly reduce our personal climate impacts – and lead in our communities and in our countries on carbon reduction.

This report is most valuable because it provides a comprehensive review of the current scientific literature. While it is an appeal to emotion and identity that will influence behaviour, we really do need to be confident about our claims before we go into the world making demands of other people. We need to be clear about the rational arguments, as well as the emotional appeal.

Government action

This report sets out beyond reasonable doubt that continuing to eat meat is irrational, and dangerous. It reveals exactly how livestock farming is linked to all the main areas of concern including global warming and climate change, land and water use, overfishing, biodiversity loss, deforestation, desertification, air pollution, antibiotic resistance, world hunger and food waste.

Those of us who are already committed to environmentalism now have to face up to the fact that the vegan diet (perhaps peppered with the occasional supplement) is the only truly green diet.

The best solution to the compound crises of climate, biodiversity, soil depletion is to simply stop eating animals. A global switch to diets that rely less on meat, fish, dairy and eggs and more on fruit and vegetables could make a huge difference to us and future generations.

I am also encouraged that this report talks about government action. We can only do so much as individuals and fundamental change will come only through changes in how we eat, how we farm, how we produce at a national and international level. We need to lobby, transform and replace many of the institutions that form our civil society.

Our schools can no longer have any ethical authority while serving meat based meals to our children. Our hospitals cannot serve meat that, in time, will make patients sick. The government needs the Green Pea Marketing Board, sending free food into our schools just as when I was young we were given free milk.

Discovery

But ultimately, we need to change our feelings about food. Plants are healthy, rich, plentiful and tasty – they are luxurious.

Spice is very obviously the spice of life. Animals bring us tremendous joy especially as companion animals – but the idea that they should be minced and ground down to form part of our diets is macabre and grotesque.

This report explains the many benefits of moving to a plant-based diet. But this is not about sacrificing meat, it’s about discovering that we can and must do so much better.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article was first published as the Foreword to Envirocidal: How Livestock Farming is Killing the Planet, published by Viva!

There is little doubt that food systems and the natural world will come under ever-increasing pressure in the coming decades.

Without concerted action, existing cropland soils will become even more degraded and less resilient to weather extremes. Subsistence farmers in the drylands will also continue to degrade soils as they and the livestock on which they depend are pushed onto more marginal, brittle land.

Farmers tend to get the blame for this, but look a little closer and it becomes clear that the degradation caused by their over-stocked animals is often the result of developed and developing countries continuing to acquire, by fair means or foul, more and more of their better land to grow food for their own burgeoning populations back home.

Reducing consumption

At the same time, unless we are very careful, yet more of the last remaining natural habitats, such as rainforest and savannah grasslands – home to some of our most iconic and threatened wildlife – will be converted to food production, principally soya beans, palm oil, sugar and maize, with devastating impacts on the environment and biodiversity.

Over recent years, a large number of reports, which have considered at least some of these issues, have almost all come to the similar conclusion that we need to reduce our consumption of meat, because feeding grain directly to humans is more efficient than feeding it indirectly, via farm animals producing meat or milk.

Almost without exception, these reports recommend cutting beef and lamb production and consumption. Some additionally recommend cutting dairy consumption, but many also recommend either leaving chicken and pork consumption at current levels or actually increasing it, as recently recommended by the UK’s Committee on Climate Change.

Underlying these conclusions is evidence that demand for meat is growing in developing countries, as some of them become more affluent and adopt Western-style diets, where meat consumption is already high.

However, if current projections are correct, it is clear that the planet will not be able to produce enough grain to feed the animals to meet this demand, without destroying more of the natural world. From this has developed the concept of introducing a tax on meat to reduce its consumption.

Methane emissions 

Ruminants produce the greenhouse gas methane, of which the levels in the atmosphere are about twice as high as they were before the industrial revolution.

Chickens do not produce methane and pigs produce only small amounts, though the manure from housed cattle, pigs and poultry can also result in some methane emissions, especially if not well managed. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Beef and lamb are considered unhealthy meats by some nutritionists, because about half of the fats they contain are saturated.

Studies consistently show a small increased risk of bowel cancer and some other diseases in people who eat a lot of processed red meat, but the evidence on red meat itself is less clear with some studies appearing to find a small link between high red meat consumption and diet-related disease and many other studies finding no such a link.

Two teams of researchers now have found that people who eat red meat have lower levels of disease than people who do not, when – and this may one of the keys to explaining the confusion – both meat-eaters and those who don’t eat meat, also have an otherwise healthy diet.

Meat tax

With much of this in mind, the idea of a meat tax was recently debated at a meeting organised by the Food Ethics Council (FEC), a charity founded with the help of a donation of £100,000 from the late Joanne Bower. 

Joanne’s life was, and continues to be, an inspiration. She cared passionately about farm animal welfare, about farming in harmony with the precious beauty of the natural world and all the creatures and plants that inhabit it.

One of her long-standing concerns was that we needed a committee on ethical standards in farming and food production. She proposed this to successive administrations, but as she couldn’t get any Government to establish one, she did what she could to set it up herself, giving half of the money she had saved over the decades on behalf of the Farm and Food Society, by never charging for her time while running it.

Overall, I’m sure she would have been delighted by the quality of the FEC’s meat tax debate.

While the SFT shares the same serious concerns as other campaign groups, government committees and many scientists, our analysis of the issues, especially in relation to methane, saturated fat and red meat (as part of a healthy diet) leads us to significantly different conclusions about how to address these problems.

Small farms

Our primary concern is that a meat tax would force the last small family farms in the UK out of business, to be replaced by fewer, larger farms using more intensive farming methods.

The main reason for this is that small to medium-sized beef, lamb and dairy farmers are already struggling to survive; allowing for inflation, prices of meat and dairy are historically low. The financial pressures on British livestock farmers as a result are severe.

Problems with mental health are rising in an occupation normally associated with mental wellbeing. On average, more than one farmer a week commits suicide, and agricultural charities are buckling under far more requests for help than they can meet.

A meat tax would only exacerbate this. When you make a tiny profit on every animal you rear, the only practical options for most producers are to sell up or keep a lot more animals and cut costs by intensifying.

The SFT fears this would result in more mega-pig and poultry farms, increased use of grain and soya, and more dairy cows kept indoors on concrete and not allowed out to graze; with all this, is a reduced quality of life and greater use of feed additives, including antibiotics.

Sequestering carbon

We believe that researchers make the mistake of assuming that all red meat is the same in terms of its impact on the environment and human health, regardless of the way animals are farmed.

It is also clear that most of those who call for big reductions in ruminant numbers in the UK fail to understand the key role they play in maintaining our pastoral landscapes and soil fertility and biodiversity.

One interesting example of this misunderstanding is that several studies have found that grass-fed cattle tend to produce more methane than cattle eating grain.

But if you use this to conclude that feeding them on grain is no worse and maybe better than feeding them on grass, you overlook the loss of soil carbon from land producing grain, and the extent to which grasslands sequester and store carbon in their soils.

A further, recent example, is that research from Oxford University reassessing the impact of methane on global warming shows that, contrary to established scientific assumptions, because the gas is short-lived, we only need to make small reductions in emissions to achieve zero warming, rather than the dramatic reductions needed in the long-lived greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.

Arguably these could more easily be made by the fossil fuel industry – the biggest source of methane emissions, as well as carbon dioxide.

Tipping the balance

A similar paradox occurs when comparing pork and chicken with beef and lamb. Chickens produce no methane and convert grain to protein much more efficiently than cattle and sheep.

But pig and poultry diets are heavily based on grain and imported soya, the production of which causes many environmental issues, particularly relating to deforestation and use of chemical inputs.

Cattle and sheep, however, are far more efficient at converting grass to protein than pigs and poultry.

As we can grow grass in much of the UK where we can’t grow grain, this tips the balance in their favour. Two-thirds of our farmland is in fact under grass, most of this for sound environmental and agronomic reasons.

If we don’t make the best use of this land to produce food, we will need to increase our protein and fat imports even more and, as a result, be responsible for more rainforest destruction and even more indigenous people being evicted from their ancestral lands because they have no documented land rights.

Incentivising habits

Taxing foods considered unhealthy or environmentally damaging has increasingly been promoted as an effective way to incentivise better eating habits.

There is mounting evidence to suggest that this can work, when proper care is taken: perhaps the best results to date have come from countries which have introduced taxes on sugary drinks, like Mexico.

However, implementing a tax on food requires absolute certainty that reducing consumption of the targeted food group will bring about overwhelmingly positive benefits. With sugary drinks, which pose a major public health challenge, there is almost unanimous agreement that this is the case.

We cannot say the same about the production and consumption of red meat in the UK, where most (though not all) is reared on grass, with all the environmental and health benefits that this brings.

This Author 

Richard Young is policy director of the Sustainable Food Trust.

UN shipping talks stalled as slow-moving players – including Saudi Arabia, Brazil and the US – obstructed attempts to decide how the sector should begin to decarbonise.

The negotiations, which took place at the London headquarters of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), are part of a global process on how to cut shipping’s large and growing emissions.

Setting speed limits on ships and increasing operational efficiency were just two of the 15 proposals on the table for reducing emissions in the short term, meaning before 2023.

Negotiations

But much of the week-long environmental protection committee talks were spent debating the order in which different proposals should eventually be discussed, with little to no progress made on which of them should actually be implemented.

NGO observers and delegates hoping for more headway expressed frustration that an undue focus on these and other nitty-gritty procedural issues essentially amounted to filibustering by countries wishing to slow progress.

After decades of talks, countries agreed last year on a climate deal for international shipping. Part of this deal was to set these short-term emissions cuts — considered an important step to avoid delaying action for decades.

But procedural dithering meant decisions on measures that will have the highest impact on shipping emissions were pushed to next April at the earliest.

“We have only one week of negotiations, at best two weeks of negotiations, every six months,” says Faig Abassov, manager of shipping campaigns at Transport and Environment.

Aspiration

“If [those who want slow progress] can just get everybody really busy with those details, before you realise time is up, and everybody has to go back home. That’s essentially what happened last week.”

Saudi Arabia, Brazil and the US were among the worst offenders for blocking progress,  even objecting to the concept of prioritising emissions reduction measures.

The same three countries last year refused to sign up to the greenhouse gas deal agreed by the IMO, which targets a 50 percent cut in emissions from shipping by 2050, compared to 2008 levels. Chile, Peru and Argentina were also active in slowing down ambition, says Abassov.

“We could sense there are some delegations who might be just playing some delaying tactics and not allowing the IMO to move quickly on some of these things,” says Jimmy Nuake, the Solomon Islands representative at the talks, without naming specific countries.

Abassov agrees that progress was slow. “We have an aspiration, we need to have measures that are binding that change or guide the behaviour of individual ships or shipowners,” he says. “A year after the IMO agreed that it will have to eventually decarbonise shipping, there have been no substantial discussions on those measures.”

Shipowners

On the first day of the talks, Extinction Rebellion blocked traffic outside the IMO in a Titanic-themed demonstration to demand the organisation declare a climate emergency and decrease shipping speeds to reduce emissions.

“We saw again that they managed to avoid committing themselves to any binding regulations,” says Paulo Enock, an Extinction Rebellion campaigner. “There are alternatives to fossil fuel-driven marine navigation, and they ought to be coming on stream right now.”

International shipping is responsible for around three percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, roughly the same as Germany. And these emissions are on the rise: the IMO’s most recent study on the topic estimates they will grow 50 to 250 percent by 2050.

Despite such growth, a report from the International Transport Forum published last year found the whole industry could in theory be fully decarbonised by 2035.

But progress on climate regulation at the IMO is stalled by powerful shipping trade associations, according to a 2017 report from InfluenceMap. It found that the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), a global shipowners trade body that represents over 80 percent of the world merchant fleet, was leading efforts to oppose action.

Flag-states

Other major trade bodies such as BIMCO, the world’s largest international shipping association, were also slowing progress, it said.

At last week’s talks, both ICS and BIMCO were pushing for voluntary measures that research suggests are too weak to achieve the IMO’s 2030 climate targets.

The ICS process means the voices of more progressive companies tend to get lost, Transport and Environment’s Abassov explains, because they are represented in trade associations alongside less progressive actors.

As well as these powerful industry groups, corporate representatives are also often part of official state delegations. InfluenceMap found that 31 percent of nations were represented in part by direct business interests at an IMOenvironmental committee meeting in 2017.

This is in part because many of the biggest “flag states” — countries where ships are registered  — are small countries.

Ban

Panama, for example, is the world’s largest flag state, followed by the Marshall Islands and Liberia. These small countries have small institutional capacity, says Abassov, leading private actors to emerge. “These end up speaking on behalf of the government at the IMO,” he says.

Another Transparency International report last year found that five states — Panama, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Malta and the Bahamas — own over half the world’s fleet and contribute 44 percent of the total funding from the IMO’s 170 member states.

“These countries potentially have exaggerated weight in the IMO policymaking processes, particularly when no mechanism exists to protect against undue influence,” the report said.

The IMO has also frequently been criticised for a lack of transparency. Unlike the UN’s international climate talks, the IMOplenary is not live-streamed or open to those without official access to the talks.

Journalists with permission to attend the talks can view the plenary, but are not permitted to report on anything said without first gaining direct permission from the person who spoke to do so. At least one journalist has received a temporary ban from the IMO for reporting comments made in the open plenary.

Urgent

In one unexpected move at the talks, the IMO’s environment chair, Hideaki Saito, refused to set up a special working group to fast-track GHG discussions, despite a majority of countries supporting this measure.

“That was a bit of a mess,” says Nuake. “The majority of the room were [supporting] that, and the chair’s sort of summary of what was discussed was not to have it, which really surprised a lot of us.”

Nuake argues such additional working groups are essential to making progress on emissions cuts quickly enough. Measures will need to be decided on at the next environmental protection committee meeting in April 2020 in order for them to come into effect by the 2023 deadline set out in the IMO’s greenhouse gas strategy,” he says.

The chair’s decision creates “a major obstacle” to the timely implementation of a greenhouse gas policy,” another IMOdelegate told shipping news website Splash 247, on condition of anonymity.

“This work clearly needs to be undertaken urgently and efficiently, but the IMO seems not to want to do that,” they added.

Fuels

Some progress was made at the talks, however, with countries agreeing to tighten up mandatory efficiency standards for some new ships. These set limits on the amount of CO2 different vessel types are allowed to emit per tonne of cargo transported.

Since these efficiency standards only apply to new build ships, and most ships have lifetimes of 25-30 years, they will take years to filter through to the wider fleet, however.

Campaigners also accused the IMO of failing to set the standards high enough to drive decarbonisation.

“What a shame that IMO continues to treat the [targets] as a way of describing what is already happening rather than mapping out a future pathway to decarbonisation,” says John Maggs, senior policy advisor of Seas At Risk.

Increasing ship efficiency is also a crucial driver for the adoption of alternative fuels other than fossil fuels, says Aoife O’Leary, senior legal manager at the Environmental Defense Fund. “Because of the lifetime of ships we really, really, need to be doing [efficiency measures] today to make sure that the ships are ready for these alternative fuels,” she adds.

Delay

There were other small bits of progress. A procedure for assessing the impact of greenhouse gas reduction measures on states was decided on, as well as plans for a new study assessing shipping emissions, to be published in 2020.

But those concerned about climate change continue to worry that progress is nowhere near fast enough.

“The IMO just needs to get its act together and start progressing some of this work,” says Nuake. “Unless the sector does its part and quickly transitions to low carbon shipping, it will be quite difficult to achieve the 1.5C temperature goals set in Paris.”

“Our biggest concern in the Pacific and other small islands states is that we can’t afford to delay any of this any more, because our islands are already going underwater.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

A Lake District viewpoint immortalised by the artist JMW Turner is to be opened up to the public after being acquired by the National Trust.

Brackenthwaite Hows was a popular spot with Lake District tourists in Georgian and Victorian times, and the view from the hill was captured by the young Turner in a watercolour on his first visit to the Lake District in 1797.

Today it is a well-loved landscape, renowned for its views and areas of woodland and heathland rich in bluebells, wildflowers and wildlife, including rare red squirrels, the Trust said.

Historic

Now the National Trust has purchased the 77 acres of land at Brackenthwaite for £202,000, with a third of the value of the sale being donated back to the charity by one of the previous owners.

The Trust has pledged to preserve the landscape in the heart of the Lake District World Heritage Site, respecting its history, encouraging nature and improving access to the area.

Turner turned to landscape painting at the age of 17, in 1793, looking for inspiration at home in the UK, including the Lakes, before travelling abroad through Europe.

His 1797 watercolour Crummock Water Looking Towards Buttermere from the viewpoint formed the basis of a later oil painting of the dramatic vista.

Tom Burditt, general manager for the National Trust in the North Lakes, said the organisation would explore ways to improve access routes to the historic viewing station.

Beauty

“We know it was visited by Turner and formed a popular stopping off point for early Lake District tourists in the Georgian and Victorian eras. We’ll work hard to support this area of high cultural and ecological importance, which neighbours woodland, fells and lakes that we already look after.

“We plan to maintain its mosaic of veteran and younger trees and heathland habitats which provide a haven for rare birds, bluebells and red squirrels.”

The land that the Trust has bought, which includes parts of Lanthwaite Wood as well as Brackenthwaite Hows, was previously in multiple ownership and two of the owners, Ruth and David Hill, have gifted their share to the Trust.

They said: “We have owned and cared for a share of Brackenthwaite Hows since 1990. During that time, we were privileged to maintain the property and walk this magical summit in all seasons. We always wanted the National Trust to look after the property as we felt they would be the best possible custodian of its heritage.”

And they added: “We would encourage others to consider the wider benefits of giving such properties to be cared for on behalf of the nation, so the natural beauty can be preserved.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

More than 100,000 members of the public have supported the idea of rewilding in an online petition by campaign group Rewilding Britain.

Rewilding means the large-scale restoration of ecosystems where nature can take care of itself as natural processes are reinstated, for example, tackling flooding through moorland restoration and reintroduction of beavers.

The NGO launched the petition on 17 April, expecting to get 10,000 signatures in the first month, and then “see how far we could get over the six-month life-span of parliamentary petitions,” it said.

Double emergency

However, in one day, 10,000 people had already signed it. Within two months, the 100,000 signature target was met, meaning that the proposals have to be debated in Parliament.

“Our demand for nature to be restored at scale isn’t based on a vague idea. There are specific steps our government can take, to rise to the double climate and biodiversity emergencies with natural climate solutions and rewilding,” the organisation said.

Ecosystems such as woodland, peat bog, wetlands and marine areas can draw carbon out of the atmosphere, according to a report by the campaigners. For example, for every hectare, wetlands can absorb an average equivalent of around 5.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, it said.  

“This feels like a massive step for Rewilding Britain – it’s the first time we’ve asked people to show political support for rewilding in the UK, and the response has been astounding!” the organisation said.

Trees

The petition was signed by people across the UK, with rural areas often showing the most support, it noted (see map below).

In response, the environment department (Defra) pointed to its 25-year environment plan, which commits the government to improving the condition of protected sites and to creating or restoring 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat in England. The plan will become statutory through the environment bill, currently in draft form.

“The bill will include ambitious legislative measures to take direct action to address the biggest environmental priorities of our age, many of which are linked directly to climate change: air quality, nature recovery, waste and resource efficiency, and water resource management,” it said.

It is also working on plans to restore peatland, plant 11 million trees by 2022, and pay land managers for actions that benefit the environment, it said.

This Author

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

A rare flower which has almost vanished from the countryside is being given a helping hand, with a study into the best conditions for reintroducing it.

Red hemp-nettle was once common in southern England and South Wales but the use of herbicides, fertilisers and the spread of highly productive crop varieties have led to it almost vanishing from fields.

The distinctive plant with a spike of two-lipped red flowers is now critically endangered and is only found in a few dozen places, according to wildlife charity Plantlife, which is pioneering a reintroduction experiment.

Germination

To help the scheme, some 27,000 seeds of the wildflower have been sent from Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank to the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), where they have been sown in experimental plots to find the best conditions for reintroducing them.

The experiment at the university’s Harnhill Farm, near Cirencester, will look at the germination and survival of the red hemp-nettle under three different conditions, in plots without crops and others sown at normal or reduced rates.

The seeds are being monitored for germination success, with further surveys in the summer and autumn, the university said.

Keen

Efforts to bring back red hemp-nettle are part of the “colour in the margins” project led by Plantlife to boost cornfield plants and other wildlife.

It is one of 19 “back from brink” initiatives led by Government agency Natural England that aim to revive a range of threatened species across England.

Dr Kelly Swallow, senior lecturer in ecology and agro-ecosystems at the RAU, said: “Although once classified as a weed, the reintroduction of this scarce plant is important, not only for its aesthetic contribution to the landscape, but because biodiversity is key to the health of our environment and ecosystem functions.

“Students are keen to be involved throughout this project.”

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Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) has rejected its shortlisting for a design award sponsored by Beazley, an insurance company which sells insurance for environmental liability, a practice that XR argues supports “immoral environmental practices”.

The London Design Museum’s Beazley Designs of the Year is an annual award celebrating designs that have impact, including inspiring people, representing change in their field, or thought leadership, according to its website.

Beazley also sells insurance for war, aviation, energy and weather.

Artwash

Clare Farrell a spokeswoman for the Extinction Rebellion UK Art Group, said: “This is yet another example of a major cultural institution attempting to Artwash the unacceptable behaviours of its financial backers.

“For Extinction Rebellion to be co-opted by an organisation like Beazley runs counter to our movement’s values.

“We are in the business of refusing business as usual, and the insurance industry, which supports the mitigation of financial loss caused by immoral environmental practices, is not something we can have anything to do with,” she added.

A spokesman for the Design Museum said that it was surprised at XR’s decision. “The Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition embodies the museum’s purpose to make the impact of design visible and highlights the role that design can play in providing solutions to many of the challenges we face today – including challenges to the environment.”

He added that the exhibition was visited by thousands of people each year and demonstrated that design projects could improve lives.

This Author

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