I am beginning to feel a bit like the Kremlinologists of old, who used to try to work out what was really going on in the heart of the massive Soviet empire – the Kremlin – from the crumbs of news or gnomic statements that emerged from the edifice.

Except the focus is (as the Financial Times christened it) the biggest and most controversial infrastructure project in Europe, Hinkley Point C nuclear power project.

Given UK consumers are on the hook for an undiscounted £37billion of subsidy to this project, you’d think democratic principles would require that all developments were subject to full public scrutiny.

But no – it’s all happening behind closed doors and we have to do the Kremlinology thing. 

A few new scraps of information have emerged that do suggest the project is far from going swimmingly. There are three main points.

The EPR – a turkey that may never fly

First, the reactor design, the European Pressurised water Reactor (EPR) isn’t very good. A nuclear engineer now affiliated to University of Cambridge recently described it as “unconstructable“.

Further understanding of the weakness of the EPR design come from the actual experience of trying to build it. The French project in Flamanville has announced further delays and will now take a decade to build instead of the original timetable of five years.

The other EPR under construction in Europe is in Finland at Olkiluoto. Construction started in 2005 was originally scheduled complete in 2009, but earlier this Autumn it was announced it will now be almost a decade late in 2018, if there are no more delays. It’s not easy building an EPR.

Secondly, the other observation the Cambridge engineer had was that the Chinese – who are experimenting with building several models of reactor – appear to have rejected it for their future nuclear programme.

This is a little hard to square with what the Chinese view of the Hinkley project is, because the Chinese state-backed companies China General Nuclear and China National Nuclear Corporation reportedly want a greater share of the supply chain contracts.

Presumably because they anticipate the skills that would be developed would be transferrable to other nuclear designs / engineering, but if anyone can shed any light on this thinking I’d be glad to know.

The Chinese are playing sufficiently hard-ball that an industry source has told The Times “We are desperate. The Chinese are not going to invest in Hinkley Point unless they get a supply chain.”

However a key justification (presumably) for the French Government in standing behind the companies EDF and Areva who are developing and deploying the EPR is getting some employment in the French nuclear sector. They cannot be happy about the Chinese wanting to pinch some of those jobs as part of the funding negotiations.

So in turn this means that EDF are turning to other potential investors such as Saudi Arabian state-controlled Saudi Electric. Presumably having other investors and reducing the Chinese stake means more leverage in the negotiations about where those valuable supply chain jobs land.

Jobs – yes, but don’t expect them to be in the UK!

This leads to a couple of conclusions. One is that if you’re based in UK looking for some high value contracts from the Hinkley project, don’t bet the farm on getting any – the destination of those jobs will be stitched up alongside the funding arrangements, with the UK likely to lose out.

The other conclusion is around engineering standards. Questions have already been raised about the how an independent regulator would police standards with Chinese company involvement.

With the Chinese companies clearly wanting supply chain manufacturing jobs, that issue becomes more than a notional one. The challenge to the UK regulator, the Office of Nuclear Regulation, when some of the problems at Olkiluoto emerged from the production of components, is obvious. 

Thirdly, a minor investor but a significant player in the Hinkley project (10% of funding) are Areva, the reactor vendor. They are in considerable financial trouble and still face the possibility of their shares being downgraded to junk bond status by ratings agency Standard and Poor.

So the prospect of them finding around £2.4bn to fund their 10% of the project – in order to show off a design that clearly isn’t that good – has to remain in doubt, even though the French state is standing behind them.

In fact it turns out that without telling anyone, the UK government has been quietly questioning whether Hinkley will go ahead after all, or worrying if it does go ahead that it might be years late (that Kremlinology thing again).

EDF: ‘Hinkley C  will be completed on time – because I say so’

The only thing that guarantees a prompt arrival for an (allegedly) critical piece of UK energy according to The Times is “Vincent de Rivaz, EDF chief executive, providing his word that it will be on time”.

This is the same bloke who promised that Hinkley would be cooking Christmas turkeys in 2017, when now even under best case it will barely be started by then. You’d have thought the UK government would want a guarantee with slightly more teeth, but apparently not.

And in case anyone is thinking that other models of reactor might be a lot better, the first AP1000 being built in USA appears to be coming in at a cost of $6,360/kW, compared to Hinkley’s $7,600/kW, which is obviously less.

Except that notably price comparisons (although difficult) tend to show most forms of power are significantly cheaper to deliver in US than in UK, so there is good reason to think those AP1000 prices would be significantly higher this side of the Atlantic.

For all the trumpeting of a nuclear renaissance, Hinkley still looks to be as distant and expensive as ever.

Doug Parr is Scientific Director at Greenpeace UK.

This article was originally published on the Greenpeace Energy Desk blog.

Mysterious, seemingly coordinated, drones have appeared in the past month over a number of nuclear power stations in France. We don’t know what these flights are for or who is behind them.

But perhaps the most crucial question they raise is whether this now widespread technology poses a threat to nuclear facilities.

Drone flights were first reported over at least 13 nuclear facilities in October.

The flights have taken place mostly at night, involving drones of different sizes and capability, from smaller models that would need to be operated within the immediate vicinity to larger ones around two meters in size, which could be controlled from kilometres away.

Flights have been carried out both in isolation and concurrently, with drones flown simultaneously over nuclear facilities hundreds of miles apart.

Violating 2.5km ‘no fly’ zones with impunity

It is difficult to assess the risk posed by the recent drone flights as at this point it is unclear who is behind them and crucially what their intentions and capabilities are.

The fights are in breach of the 2.5km no-fly zones, which protect the air space around French nuclear power plants. However, nuclear operator EDF has been quick to down-play the potential threat noting, “these objects are not capable of damaging anything if they fall, nor is any object they might drop.”

Since the 1980s, French nuclear regulation has considered the risk of light aircraft crash, dictating that certain nuclear power plants had to be able to withstand a collision by an aircraft of 5.7 tonnes (the size of a small private jet).

Following 9/11 the French authorities will undoubtedly have revisited the issue. However drones themselves are relatively light and slow: a nuclear plant should easily brush off the impact of a crash.

More worryingly, drones could be used to carry explosives for detonation close to the reactor or other sensitive parts of a nuclear site, although there have been no reports to date that these drones have been carrying a malicious cargo.

Is the camera more dangerous than the gun?

Although this may seem alarming, the use of explosives to cause a radiological release or disruptive plant operations will have been assessed by nuclear operators when designing onsite security systems.

A typical reactor design includes a high strength steel pressure vessel at least a foot thick to contain the reaction and a concrete containment structure several feet thick. While this is mostly in place for safety reasons, it also brings benefits in terms of security.

That said this specific attack route – involving drones as a delivery vehicle – may not have been considered as the wide availability of this technology is a recent phenomenon.

If so France and other countries will no doubt be in the process of updating their Design Basis Threat, a restricted document that outlines the capabilities and intentions of potential adversaries and serves as a guide against which physical protection systems are designed and evaluated.

Drones could also have other malicious uses. When mounted with small cameras, they could be used to conduct reconnaissance or to test security provisions before carrying out a follow-up attack by other means.

Or they could be potentially used to drop equipment onsite to help out a malicious insider. A recent case in Belgium involving the sabotage of non-nuclear systems of a power station by an employee highlights that insiders can pose a real threat.

Greenpeace: ‘it wasn’t us!’

The malicious use of drones – although unlikely – is certainly a threat worthy of consideration. However, the actors and intentions behind the French cases still remains a mystery.

A group of three model aeroplane enthusiasts were arrested and questioned by French authorities in early November. They were allegedly about to launch a basic drone (costing around €100) in the vicinity of a power plant.

However, following their arrest the mysterious flights have continued, with reports suggesting those arrested were either copycats or just pursuing their hobby in an unfortunate location.

More likely than a malicious group being behind the flights is that they are the work of anti-nuclear pressure groups. There have been a number of incidents in recent years involving protesters breaking in to nuclear facilities to highlight inadequate security and nuclear ‘risks’.

These include a break in by more than 60 people earlier this year at a facility in France, a break in at a Swiss plant in March, and three break ins to Swedish nuclear plants over two years up to 2012.

A bumpy ride.

In 2012 a Greenpeace activist flew into the secure area surrounding a French reactor using a motorised paraglider. But a spokesperson for Greenpeace – which has denied any connection to the recent drone flights – stated at the time that “we wanted to illustrate an external danger, like a fall of an aeroplane” onto nuclear facilities.

Perhaps the use of drones represents the work of another group of activists seeking to highlight the risk that readily available drone-technology could pose to nuclear facilities.

Huge costs could be inflicted by forced shutdowns

The drone flights, as with other breaches of security involving terrorists, spies or protesters, can have important implications for the nuclear industry.

While a radiation release caused by a malicious act at a nuclear facility is unlikely, incursions and other breaches of security can impact in other ways. Events leading to outage or plant shutdown can be hugely costly.

The sabotage at the Belgian power plant, for example, along with the unrelated shutdown of two other reactors is costing the operator €40m a month.

More broadly, the reputation of operators, regulators and the whole industry is at stake when security weaknesses are highlighted.

It is for this reason that – whoever is behind the mysterious flights – it is in the interests of the nuclear industry and the French authorities to get to the bottom of the issue as soon as possible.

Christopher Hobbs is Co-Director, Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS) at King’s College London. He receives funding from the UK and US Governments.

Daniel Salisbury is a PhD Student and Research Assistant at King’s College London. He does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Last year, when I was in Ma Ja Yang in Northern Kachin State, Burmese fighter bombers, at the height of the peace process, had just flown low over the nearby IDP camp.

Two terrified children dug themselves into an earth bank for refuge. In heavy rains the bank collapsed and they suffocated to death: two unrecorded deaths in a sixty year old war involving, arguably, the deaths of millions.

But this year these two children may have surfaced, along with millions of others, in the most unlikeliest of places: the government’s 2014 census. Burma’s population, it turns out, is about 9 million below what was expected.

Don’t ask, don’t tell

These two children, and 9 million others, are not there. No one is commenting on this. No one is asking why. The most significant and extraordinary information to have come out of the country for decades, identifying 20% of Burma’s expected population is ‘missing’, is disregarded.

This figure cannot be explained away by the flawed methodology of  the census, which, albeit inadvertently, exacerbated the intimidation, persecution and dehumanisation by the Rohingya. It is the result itself which needs to be examined.

The census may in fact have come up with an inconvenient Truth: millions of people may be missing in Myanmar who were expected to be alive based on the perfectly modest realistic estimates of the 1983 census which predicted an annual 2% growth rate.

Exculpatory explanations for some of the missing millions can, admittedly, be made:

• Many people were simply not counted, including the Rohingya and some Kachin;
• so called economic migrants, in reality often refugees escaping persecution, were, by their very nature, out of the country;
• others were inaccessible;
• AIDS and drug addiction have probably substantially contributed to many premature deaths;
• 130,000 perished during Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath;
• cultural practices, such as celibacy and monasticism, may have lowered birthrates;
• the 1983 census may itself have been flawed.

Finally, the global media’s failure to expose decades long destruction may have contributed to the disregard of the result: people slowly dying over decades do not fit the media’s 24-hour news cycle, especially when most victims have disappeared in remote jungle mountainous terrain far from journalists and diplomats.

These factors, amongst others, may help explain away some of the missing millions, and the disregard of the result. They cannot, however, fully account for 9 million missing people.

Official, but ignored: ‘elements of genocide’

The elephant in the room is government policy. Widespread, systematic human rights violations, i.e., crimes against humanity, have been identified and condemned by successive UN Special Rapporteurs and General Assembly Resolutions since 1992.

The country was specifically placed on the UN Genocide Watch list back in 2005 and, I understand, still remains so. The outgoing UN Special Rapporteur, Tomas Ojea-Quintana, affirmed “Elements of genocide” apply as recently as June 2014.

Genocide, we should remind ourselves, involves the physical “Destruction of ethnic, racial, religious or national groups in whole or”, significantly, “In part”. If even a small fraction of these millions of missing people have disappeared due to government policies, the Genocide Convention would apply.

The decades long systematic violations targeting mostly ethnic civilians with destruction need to be seen in their historical context. UN condemnations have been explicit and specific. Special Rapporteur, Rajsoomer Lallah QC in 1998, condemned widespread, systematic violations, including “The killing of women and children”, as:

“The result of policy taken at the highest level entailing legal and political responsibility.” (Situation of Human Rights Myanmar, para. 59, Report to the UN Economic and Social Council, July, 1998.)

Systematic and widespread violations, inflicted for decades have inevitably caused the deaths of many people; the two aforementioned children died as a consequence of the Burmese army’s military attack.

Exposing the lie of the ‘new Burma’

We need to reflect on 9 million missing people: the number is about the same as the population of Sweden. It is about one and a half times the number of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. It is nearly twice the number who died as a result of Stalin’s inflicted famine in the Ukraine.

In Burma nearly one in five people is not alive who was expected to be alive based upon a modest estimate of the 2% population growth rate. Despite its significance, the news does not chime with the media’s brave new world: “Burma Unbound”,  “Burma booming”, the “Mandela-like transition”. The figure is met instead with silence.

A connection between systematic, widespread human rights violations and possible missing millions exists, however. Martin Smith, generally regarded as a leading authority on Burma’s ethnic peoples, identified a dramatic “slump in birth rates” back in 1990, opining:

“The birth rates of most minority races (and not just the Mons and the Karens) have inexplicably slumped.” (‘Burma, Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity‘, page 38, Zed Books, 1991)

We should note his use of the word “slump”, i.e. a sudden and dramatic fall. This “slump” in birth rates, moreover, has been accompanied by some outright “collapses in population” as identified by Amnesty International:

“In some areas complete collapse in ethnic populations has occurred, such as in Kunhing Township in Shan State where a 70 percent drop in population was recorded.” (‘Atrocities in Shan State‘, Amnesty International, 1998.)

Smith estimated 10,000 dying a year for four decades back in 1990 which would make 400,000. Extrapolated forward to 2014 the figure would approach 550,000, a figure which would be unlikely to include the hundreds of thousands who have died indirectly from denial of shelter, food and medicines.

Nor would it include the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya forced to flee, and often die, in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. The Transnational Institute cited a figure of 600,000 casualties in 2005.

“The true death toll”, Smith wrote, quoting former SLORC Chairman General Saw Maung vack in the 1980′s, “Would reach as high as millions”. (‘Burma‘, Zed Books, 1990 ed. p.101.)

The ‘Four Cuts’ strategy – aimed at the civilian population

Specific evidence of  widespread destruction has been documented, often graphically, in Karen, Karenni, Chin, Kachin, Shan, Mon, Delta, Karen, Rohingya areas over the decades. Mass forced location of the Bamar population, we should remember, was also inflicted in lowland Burma during the 1990′s.

These “slumps in birth rates”, and local “collapses in population” contrast with earlier “Prolific high birth rates of ethnic peoples” identified in the unique, in depth, detailed bench mark study carried out just before Burma’s civil war began by W.D. Hackett. He explains:

“The minorities … are more prolific than the Burman population and increasing at a very rapid rate.” (‘The Pao People of Shan State‘, p. 3, W.D. Hackett, PhD Thesis, University of Cornell, 1953.)

Although Smith does state the slump in birth rates as being “inexplicable”, observation of what has been inflicted in conflict areas; analyses of infant and maternal mortality rates documented by, amongst others, the Mae Tao Clinic; detailed mapping of widespread, systematic destruction in eastern, western, northern regions and the Delta, including satellite imagery, and numerous reports, demonstrate the destruction must have inevitably resulted in the deaths of large numbers of people.

Moreover, these “collapses in population” and “slumps in birth rates” is certain to be greatest in so called ‘ethnic areas’. If the full regional breakdown of the results of the 2014 census is ever revealed, it will probably confirm this. Latest reports, however, indicate this information is not being released indicative of  a cover up.

We need to ask, however, what government strategies have contributed to the slump in birth rates and much lower than expected population figure.

The central strategy outlined by Smith is known as the Four Cuts strategy which is explicitly intended to destroy the civilian base of resistance. Ethnic civilians are thus the target.

The first circle: deliberate mass killing

Successive military juntas, and the current hybrid civilian / military successor, have been killing and causing deaths for decades.

In January 2013 I was in Kachin State. A young boy, sitting on a wall, described to me how soldiers had come to his mother’s kitchen and shot her while he looked on from the edge of a sugar cane field.

An old man sobbed hysterically next to him: he had just described his daughter bayoneted to death through the left breast. That’s also where I head about the deaths of the two small boys as they hid from fighter bombers.

These small boys, the old man’s daughter and the boy’s mother are part of Myanmar’s missing millions. In this case they died as a result of a systematic onslaught – not ‘ethnic conflict’ –  by the Burma army.

This attack occurred just after President Thein Sein had formally announced a ceasefire on prime time television, supported by a vote of the whole lower house, and dutifully echoed by the global media and Ban Ki Moon.

Along the “ceasefire line” human wave attacks were carried out on Kachin positions involving tens of thousands of troops, helicopter gun ships and fighter bombers. Jane’s Intelligence reportedly estimated 5,000 Burmese troops and 1,000 Kachin were killed – that’s double the number estimated killed in the 1988 student uprising.

These deaths predictably remain disregarded, downplayed, understated or denied. They don’t fit the narrative of democratic transition, or the assumptions of top down, urban, Burman centred journalists, politicians and diplomats whose views have been co-opted by the rhetoric of ‘transition’.

Needless to say young Burmese conscripts, forced to fight and die are also victims and just as deserving of our compassion, as ethnic victims.

Let’s rewind to the autumn of 2000 when I was in the mountainous areas of Karen State. Four women were brought into our encampment who had just been forced to watch their husbands being beheaded in front of them.

Nearby in a burning village two toddlers had been thrown into the flames. Their dying screams were heard in the surrounding hills for minutes.

An old lady, unable to move, burnt to death silently. In a nearby village a Baptist pastor was beaten for three days, his Bible shredded and then beheaded. I could go on.

These people were murdered by the Burmese army. This has been going on for decades, and is still going on. These dead are part of the missing nine million.

These killings include not just individuals, but massacres such as in the Delta in September 2001 and Dooplaya district. Karen State in May 2002 (‘Dying Alive’, Images Asia, 2005)

The second circle: cyclone Nargis 

About 130,000 people, more than the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, died in the Delta as a result of Cyclone Nargis.

Many of these deaths resulted from the Junta’s criminal negligence failing to warn the population and impeding relief efforts.

We can infer that the population of the Delta would now be higher if the government had carried out its responsibilities effectively.

The third circle: sexual violence

If systematic killing is the first circle, denial of aid the second circle, widespread, systematic rape and sexual violence represents the third.

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Rajsoomer Lallah QC, condemned it as being a “regular, routine feature” and “the result of policy” as far back as 1998. It has been condemned in most UN reports.

This form of targeted violence of women undermines birth rates because, amongst other things, it often destroys women’s desire and ability to marry and have children.

The fourth circle: indirect destruction, denial of medical care

This encompasses those subjected to slow, indirect violence, defined in the Rome Statute as: “The deliberate deprivation of resources indispensable for survival, such as food, medical services,  or systematic expulsion from homes.” (Rome Statute, Genocide, Article 6c).

Burning people out of their  homes, like the 3,600 villages documented by the Thai Burma Border Consortium in eastern Burma, or what has been inflicted in Rohingya and Kachin areas recently, leads, indirectly, to death because people lack shelter or basic services.

I remember the gloves of a back pack medic being destroyed in order, presumably, so that babies could not be born hygienically and die as result. I recall a report of  a man shot through the leg for carrying antibiotics in 2005.

The denial and destruction of medical services and supplies, deprivation of clean water and food, often inevitably results in death. The Rohingya are particularly victimised by this slow motion, low intensity form of genocide.

Very many people have died prematurely and unnecessarily over the decades as a result of these deliberately inflicted conditions. Maternal and infant mortality rates in particular, documented by the Mae Tao Clinic and others, resulting from these conditions have been some of the highest in the world.

We should note that 250,000 people, a quarter of a million, have been terrorised out of their homes since the ‘democratic transition’ began and ‘peace’ broke out.

The fifth circle: systematic persecution

In the fifth circle there are the millions who over the decades have been forced to flee persecution, i.e., the denial of their fundamental rights. Many of those in the refugee camps, or those fleeing into the Indian Ocean, or into China, India, Malaysia etc., are not economic migrants, but victims of systematic Persecution.

In the case of the Rohingya,  as the former Special UN Rapporteur asserted, the conditions they are escaping include “elements of genocide”.

The sixth circle: enforced migration

In the sixth circle we do admittedly find very many economic migrants working in foreign countries. Many of these have, however, not really made free choices but have had to escape  the extreme poverty resulting from government policies which have failed to provide people with, amongst other things, adequate medical and educational services.

The seventh circle: general poverty

Here are the great majority of the Burmese people who are mired in the poverty resulting from governmental negligence. Such conditions can lead people to put off, or not marry, or have smaller families than they otherwise would have had, which leads, in turn, to a probable reduction in birth rates.

In conclusion, decades long State inflicted violence and deliberate deprivation of the necessities for life must have resulted in at least hundreds of thousands, and if former SLORC Chairman General Saw Maung was right, “millions”, of premature deaths.

The numerical qualifying criteria of  what comprises the attempted destruction of a part of a people to justify a charge of genocide is: “substantial”.

Those two young children should not have died, nor should hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, be allowed to disappear into a vortex of complicit silence.

A Truth Commission should be set up to find out what has really happened. Perpetrators should be held to account.

And cheerleaders for the bright, new, booming Burma should take a hard, cold look at the country they are applauding, and ask themselves – did the missing 9 million people evaporate? Or are the country’s rulers the perpetrators of a genocide that ranks in scale with Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot?

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Aung San Suu Kyi: complicity with tyranny‘ by Guy Horton.

This article was originally published by DVB.

Guy Horton has worked on Burma and its border areas since 1998. His 2005 report, “Dying Alive” and supporting video footage, received worldwide coverage and contributed to the submission of Burma to the UN Security Council in January 2007. As a result of the report, the UN Committee on the Prevention of Genocide carried out an investigation and placed Burma/Myanmar on the Genocide Watch list.

Since 2005 Guy Horton has focussed on establishing a coalition of governments, funders, institutions and leading international lawyers with the aim of getting the violations investigated and analysed so that impunity can be addressed. He is currently a researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

He was short-listed for the post of UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar 2014. He can be contacted at: ghrtn7@gmail.com

The European Court of Justice delivered a landmark verdict today by ruling in favour of ClientEarth’s case against the UK Government for its failure to tackle air pollution.

This ground-breaking ruling, the first ever on the effect of the EU’s Air Quality Directive, puts the UK Government in “ongoing breach” of UK law.

And it means that the UK Supreme Court will be compelled to take action against the Government, with the threat of huge fines being handed out further down the line if the breach continues.

The ruling has also paved the way for future legal actions to enforce other EU targets on emissions and energy efficiency.

How did the Government get in such a mess?

The EU’s Air Quality Directive sets legal limits on air quality which member states are required to meet within a certain time frame.

Our current government is failing spectacularly to meet these targets: it has drawn up plans which show it will not meet nitrogen dioxide limits until after 2030 – 20 years after the original deadline!

This prompted environmental lawyers at ClientEarth to take our Government to court. This is embarrassing for the Government to say the least – and it’s deeply concerning that it takes an EU Court ruling for them to start taking the issue of air pollution seriously.

ClientEarth got it right when they said: “We have a legal right to breathe clean air. When the government fails in its duty to uphold that, the courts must step in.

“If the government were allowed to stick with current proposals for tackling pollution, a child born today in London, Birmingham or Leeds would have to wait until after their 16th birthday before they can breathe air that meets legal limits.

“ClientEarth does not believe this is acceptable, which is why we have challenged the government through the courts for the past five years to tackle the problem urgently. The longer government is allowed to delay, the more people will die or be made seriously ill by air pollution.”

In their judgment, the panel of European judges said the Government should have planned to secure compliance with the Directive by January 2015 – 15 years earlier than it intended.

Air pollution and disease – the facts

Air pollution, primarily caused by emissions from road vehicles, is the second biggest killer in our country after smoking. According to the Healthy Air campaign, air pollution contributes to around 200,000 early deaths in the UK each year.

Cars, lorries, vans and buses emit large amounts of air pollution directly into the streets where we live and work. With more vehicles on the road than ever, this is creating significant problems. In densely populated areas like London the impacts are exacerbated.

Burning fuels in boilers and power stations is another source of air pollution. Heating boilers, power generation, and industry burning coal, oil, wood, petrol, diesel and natural gas – energy sources which we are very reliant on, are all significant sources of pollution.

I also remain concerned about the impact of aviation on air pollution – particularly with proposals for a new runway at either Heathrow or Gatwick.

Air pollution is an invisible public health crisis. Long term exposure to air pollution is associated with heart and lung disease. Diesel fumes are the main source of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) – a harmful gas linked with heart attacks and asthma and the gas that this court case rests on.

Children can be particularly vulnerable to the impacts. Research has shown that children growing up near motorways can suffer permanently reduced lung capacity. This may also be the case for people living nearby to other high polluting industries such as airports.

Even those who live and work in areas with clean air can have their health affected when they visit a polluted area as short term exposure to air pollution can irritate our airways, causing wheezing and shortness of breath. This is particularly a problem for those with existing respiratory conditions, such as asthma.

What happens next?

The growing problem of air pollution isn’t going to go away. As the Green MEP for South East England, an area widely affected by poor air quality, I believe this issue needs to be tackled at every level of Government, from local councils to Westminster.

For that to happen the Government must wake up to the reality of air pollution. Clean air is one of the fundamental things we need in order to enjoy good health and a good quality of life.

The judgment is also good news for the rest of Europe. As ClientEarth points out, today’s judgment sets a “groundbreaking legal precedent in EU law” – one that will paves the way for other legal challenges across the EU. ClientEarth has promised to “spearhead these efforts to help people defend their right to clean air in court.”

The legal case will return to the UK Supreme Court for a final ruling in 2015, for judges to apply the ECJ’s ruling to the facts in the UK case, following the judges order that