Monthly Archives: January 2015

TTIP: What bit of the word ‘no’ doesn’t the Commission understand?

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Even a tyrant might baulk at effecting a policy which 97% of people oppose. But the European Commission is moving forward with the US-EU trade deal (known as TTIP), despite getting just that result from its largest consultation in history. Nonetheless, corporate plans for this huge trade deal have been badly damaged.

Last year, in response public criticism, the Commission issued a consultation on so-called ‘investor protection’. That’s the bit of trade deals which gives corporations the right to sue governments for implementing policies that damage their profits. So for Investor protection read corporate privilege.

Not surprisingly it’s hugely unpopular. Over 97% all of the 150,000 respondents to the Commission’s consultation – that’s more than 100 times that of any previous trade consultation – rejected investor protection outright.

Where’s the ‘I don’t want this’ box?

Unfortunately, the Commission insists that they were answering a question that hadn’t been asked. At no point in the whole dense, legalistic consultation document were participants given an option to say ‘we don’t want this’.

Rather they were asked questions almost impossible to understand by anyone who isn’t a trade lawyer. When campaign groups created an easy-to-follow online response action, they were accused of “hijacking” the process.

On Tuesday, the Commission released its findings in full. They show that an enormous number of EU citizens responded to the consultation, more than any consultation in history, as well as nearly 450 businesses, campaign organisations, think tanks and trade unions.

The analysis shows that this really is a battle between big business and the rest of us. The exclusion of public services is “strongly opposed by a significant number of business associations who want to see exceptions and limitations brought down to a minimum.”

Unsurprisingly, corporate giants like Chevron, Suez and Repsol, which have sued countries under similar investor protection, are fully supportive of those systems. Indeed some reject any weakening of a system which has allowed tobacco giant Philip Morris to sue Uruguay for putting health warnings on cigarette packets.

But even across the business world, there is no consensus. “[S]mall companies are more critical” – not surprising given small business is unlikely to have access to this world of corporate privilege.

UK: Cameron is all for it, we are all against it

The country generating most response to the EU (52,000 participants) is Britain. This is good, because the British government is pushing investor protection more than any other. Last year they intervened to make sure the Commission kept its nerve.

Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström admitted on Tuesday that the “consultation clearly shows that there is a huge scepticism against the ISDS [investor protection] instrument”, but she will continue to try to work out a compromise nonetheless. This is deeply worrying because the last compromise made in the Canada-EU treaty (CETA) actually risks giving corporations more power.

The deal has been welcomed by veteran investment arbitrator Todd Weiler: “I love it, the new Canadian-EU treaty … we used to have to argue about all of those [foreign investor rights] … And now we have this great list. I just love it when they try to explain things.”

The Commission now embarks on further ‘consultation’. But they have been dealt a serious blow by campaigners from across Europe, who now need to get even more active.

Will the European Parliament step up to the mark?

The European Parliament will adopt a position on TTIP in May. Early signs are that this will be a real showdown and vitally important to whether or not TTIP passes into law.

German Social Democrat Bernd Lange from the trade committee, one of the most important parliamentarians on TTIP, wrote last month that everything important “can be attained in TTIP without the inclusion of ISDS provisions”.

The Environment Committee has been even more critical, worrying “that the TTIP and other mega trade deals are likely to reshape global trade rules and set new standards, while also being discriminatory … risking sidelining important issues for developing countries such as food security, agricultural subsidies and climate change mitigation”

2015 is the make or break year for TTIP, and the coming months are vitally important. To have any hope of stopping this corporate juggernaut, we need to win critical votes in the EU Parliament on TTIP and CETA.

 

 

Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now.

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This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

 






Fracking policy and the pollution of British democracy

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During the 2000s the ‘fracking boom’ in the USA was fuelled by speculative Wall Street finance. When that bubble burst in 2008, the dodgy finance was cut off and the number of drilling rigs collapsed by over 50% within a few months.

Last December, I wrote in The Ecologist of how the ‘funny money’ from quantitative easing was once more fuelling the number of drilling rigs, supporting the Ponzi-style ‘shale bubble’.

Just over a week ago I wrote of how that junk-debt-fuelled house of cards was being shaken by the fall in oil prices.

Now Baker-Hughes, the US drilling services company which monitors industry trends, has announced the biggest weekly decline in US drilling activity since 1991; and the decline over the last six weeks – the decommissioning of 209 rigs – is the largest since their records began in 1987.

An upcoming production downturn

That interruption in the ‘shale drilling treadmill’ means that the clock has started to tick. Within a year or so, due to the high decline rate of unconventional oil and gas wells, production will begin to tail-off once more.

The gas drilling stall in 2008 led to gas production levelling-off in 2011/12. When quantitative easing cash flooded in to turn the drills back on again, many rigs switched to drilling for shale oil instead. Today it’s not clear whether the US government can or will prevent the ‘shale bubble’ imploding.

In addition to the finance issues, over the last few weeks we’ve also seen health and environmental agencies in New York State and Quebec recommend bans on future development of the industry there.

Whether or not these difficulties will bring an official realisation of the unsustainable nature of unconventional fossil fuels is not clear. That same finance treadmill ensures those involved in the industry make big bucks from this process.

As a result they have the ready cash to pay public relations agencies to obfuscate the debate on unconventional gas and oil.

Crisis? What crisis?

And here in Britain? In the corridors of power, the events of recent weeks appear to have had no recognition whatsoever. The problems of the global oil and gas industry – from the US to Britain, to Australia – has not diverted the political shale gas and oil bandwagon (at least in England and Wales).

Last week I attended the public hearings for the Environmental Audit Committee’s (EAC) inquiry into the ‘environmental impacts of fracking‘. For me, those sessions typify the problems our national politics has in examining contentious public debates.

The Committee did not appear to want any specific detail of what the impacts of fracking would be in Britain – demonstrated by experience elsewhere, or through analysis of the proposals outlined by the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

And though the Committee were looking at the ‘environmental impacts’, much of the debate was centred around conventional economics and investment models – not the identification of ecological or health impacts.

At the same time, across Parliament Square, the Government were trying to steamroller through their shale project as part of the Infrastructure Bill – from tax breaks for drillers, to weakened regulation, all designed to facilitate the Government’s unsubstantiated case for a UK ‘shale revolution’.

The myth of a ‘balanced debate’

Politicians might call for a ‘balanced debate on shale’, but arguably it is they who are peddling a manufactured rhetoric. This is because the political process has been hijacked by lobbyists paid by the industry, whose manipulative tendrils reach right inside the Government.

For me, the most eye-opening part of the EAC’s evidence session was when Caroline Spelman asked, “What could be done to address public mistrust over fracking and who would be trusted to provide an objective assessment of the pros and cons?”

They very fact the question was posed shows how out of touch politicians are on this issue. For example, they could start by asking representatives of public to their inquiry, to ask them directly what their concerns are.

Instead what we often get in the place of public involvement, or the substantiation of the Government’s claims using objective evidence, are stooges – public relations representatives who say what the political consensus wants to hear.

The witness at the EAC’s inquiry I found the most troublesome was Chris Smith: formerly chair of the Environment Agency (who issued Cuadrilla’s fracking permit last week); chair of the Advertising Standards Authority (who recently took umbrage at  an anti-fracking leaflet); and chair of the new ‘independent’ Task Force on Shale Gas.

The problem for the Committee was that the Task Force on Shale Gas hasn’t done any work yet! All Smith could do was apologetically state that they would produce statements on a range of issues at some future date.

Industry ‘astroturf’ has become the benchmark of impartiality

While the Task Force on Shale Gas might laud itself as being independent, and command Parliamentary time in the place of those who might have something substantive to say, the details surrounding the Task Force’s organisation say something rather different.

There is another body called the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Unconventional Gas and Oil. Like a number of other APPGs in Parliament it’s essentially an industry ‘astroturf’ group, set up as a lobbying vehicle to access decision-makers in government.

The secretariat for APPG on Unconventional Gas and Oil is provided by a political lobbying company, Edelman, using funding from companies with direct links to or investment in the shale gas industry – such as IGas, Cuadrilla, The Weir Group, Centrica, Total and GDF Suez.

And what has this to do with Chris Smith’s ‘independent’ Task Force on Shale Gas?:

In fact the Task Force on Shale Gas’s ‘industry front’ credentials go deeper than that:

  • One of the three panel members the Task Force’s panel has an academic post which is part-funded by BG Group – who have investments in shale in the USA;
  • Another panel member is a professor at the University of Manchester – where research funded by Cuadrilla and others is being carried out – who signed an ‘open letter’ with other academics calling for politicians to recognised the “undeniable economic, environmental and national security benefits” of shale gas in Lancashire”;
  • One of the three ‘advisory experts’ has done consultancy work for an oil and gas exploration company, promoting the business case for shale gas development in Poland; and
  • Another advisory expert has spoken in support of shale gas at other Parliamentary committees, and has stated that “UK climate campaigners should support fracking for shale gas.”


Fracking is also polluting British democracy

To return to Caroline Spelman’s question, ” … who would be trusted to provide an objective assessment of the pros and cons?” – arguably not the Task Force on Shale Gas!

Such ‘objectivity’ is not based within people, or their credentials. Objectivity is defined by how evidence is assessed, and the transparency of the assessment process which digests and ranks that evidence.

When we trace the connections, and examine the substances of the debate to date, much of the media promotion of shale gas presents a partial view, overtly hostile to any contrary view, and often based upon debatable evidence.

Politicians ask for a ‘balanced debate’ from campaign groups, and yet much of the imbalance is fronted by the industry side. Even witnesses at the EAC’s inquiry believed that politicians had over-stated the benefits of shale gas.

When governments pursue policies such as unconventional energy in the absence of balanced evidence, then ultimately it’s the public and the environment who will suffer.

However, that’s not simply because ‘fracking’ is bad for the environment. It’s because the exercise of executive power in Britain today has become toxic for our democratic institutions.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer, and maintains the Free Range Activism Website.

A fully referenced version of this article is located on FRAW.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Parliament’s fracking examination must be inclusive and impartial‘ and other articles by Paul Mobbs.

 






Fail – 2014 badger cull didn’t kill enough badgers to be effective

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In the flurry of the holiday season, many people will have missed the government’s verdict on the 2014 badger culls, published on December 18 (but not The Ecologist).

Farmers’ representatives have branded these recent culls “successful“, and environment secretary Liz Truss claims that they show how culling “can work to reduce disease“, confirming her plan to extend this controversial approach across western England.

Cattle farmers have suffered terribly as a result of bovine tuberculosis (TB). Many are desperate, and would welcome a cull of badgers, which research (including my own) has shown to be a source of infection for cattle. Sadly, a closer look at the evidence suggests that the 2014 culls bring little hope of succour.

Despite the environment secretary’s optimism, there is so far no evidence that these pilot culls have reduced disease.

The government has commissioned research to estimate the impacts of pilot badger culling on cattle TB but no results have been published to date, nor are any benefits anticipated so soon after the start of the annual culls. Culled badgers have not even been tested for TB.

Since changes in cattle TB take so long to emerge, in the short-term the government measures culling success in terms of reduced badger numbers. This is an appropriate measure because, perversely, killing too few badgers increases cattle TB rather than reducing it.

The effects of badger culling

In a randomised controlled trial conducted in 1998-2007, cattle TB was consistently elevated where culling reduced indices of badger numbers by 10-35%. By contrast, nearby farms saw gradual reductions in cattle TB where large-scale culling reduced the same indices by 69-73%.

To achieve similar benefits (and to avoid increasing cattle TB), the 2013-4 culls were intended to reduce badger numbers by at least 70%.

The first two culls, conducted in 2013, clearly failed to achieve this aim. Government scientists, overseen by an independent expert panel, estimated the reduction in numbers by identifying individual badgers from hair entangled in barbed wire traps.

They estimated that between 37% and 51% of badgers were killed in the Somerset cull zone, with between 43% and 56% killed in Gloucestershire.

For the second year of culling, the government discarded both independent oversight and the hair trapping method which had revealed the first year’s failures.

Before the 2014 culls commenced, the government’s planned monitoring methods were so inadequate that I warned: “any future claim that the 2014 culls have reduced badger numbers sufficiently to control TB will be completely baseless.”

The claims – and the numbers

Although ministers and farming representatives do indeed now claim success, the numbers tell a different story. There are no published estimates of the percent reductions achieved by the 2014 culls.

Instead, claims of success are based on the number of badgers killed in Somerset, which reached the minimum target required by the culling licence (the Gloucestershire cull spectacularly failed to meet its target, killing just 274 badgers against a target of 615).

Yet the Somerset target was derived from the lower bound on the range of possible badger numbers, rather than from the best estimate. If the estimation method was accurate, there would be a 97.5% chance that the true population size was greater than this lower bound, and hence that the target was too low.

Despite having met this target, statistically it is still far more likely than not that the 2014 Somerset culls failed to reduce badger numbers by 70% as planned.

Simple calculations provide further evidence of ineffective culling in Somerset. Government scientists estimate that, before any culling took place, the Somerset zone contained between 1,876 and 2,584 badgers. The total number of badgers killed (341 last year plus 955 in 2013) comprises just 69% of the lowest estimate.

Taking into account the fact that births and immigration would have increased badger numbers between the two culls, the population cannot have been reduced by “at least 70%” if the government’s population estimates were correct.

How many more ‘victories’ like this can the NFU afford to win?

Government documents describe Somerset’s low target as “precautionary”. But from the perspective of disease control – the justification for killing otherwise protected wildlife – it risked worsening cattle TB and was hence the opposite of precautionary.

With separate maximum targets in place to avoid killing too many badgers, the only risk reduced by a low target was the risk of a cherished project being branded a failure. Failing to reduce badger populations sufficiently risks exacerbating cattle TB, potentially making a bad situation worse.

Farming leaders have managed to press forward with badger culling in the face of scientific consensus, legal challenge, public opinion and a groundswell of protest.

In future they may look back on such victories as Pyrrhic: one more such victory might undo the farmers they strive to support.

 

 

Rosie Woodroffe is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology, Senior Research Fellow at the Zoological Society of London and Visiting Professor at Imperial College, London. A biologist developing tools to foster coexistence of people and wildlife, she is undertaking field projects on badgers in Cornwall and African wild dogs and cheetahs in Kenya.

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

The Conversation

 






Inequality does matter – and we must fight it!

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Since the 1980s, we’ve been told that inequality doesn’t matter. Mainstream thinking has it that you can fight poverty without tackling inequality.

This has been part of an attempt to make poverty eradication easier and more palatable to an increasingly dominant right-wing agenda.

The beauty of separating poverty and inequality is that you can care about ‘the poor’ while not worrying about the need for any of the radical changes which might upset your lifestyle.

You can both be “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, as Peter Mandelson1 said, and also care about very poor people getting less poor.

This embracing of inequality has, unsurprisingly, gone hand-in-hand with soaring levels of it. Today the richest 80 people own almost as much wealth as half the world’s population.

The situation continues to get worse. While most ordinary people endure pay freezes and austerity, the world’s richest 300 people became richer by 16% in 2013.

Those who are unhappy with inequality are accused of pursuing the ‘politics of envy’, or as Margaret Thatcher once put it, of preferring that the poor were poorer provided the rich were less rich. There are two big problems with this argument.

Inequality matters

The first is that inequality does matter. This is not a matter of serious debate. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), hardly a progressive voice, has issued a warning that rising inequality is threatening economic growth.

This is firstly because rich people are far more likely to spend money in ways that do not benefit the majority of people, such as on luxury imported goods or simply stashing it away in an account in the Cayman Islands. The idea that if you get enough tycoons buying yachts, the jobs created by the yacht building industry will be enough to feed everyone else is a fiction.

Second, inequality warps democracy. It raises the voices and interests of tiny elites above the rest of society. This can lead to perverse results and greater corruption, with laws and policies tailored to the personal interests of tycoons and to the detriment of wider society.

It’s not just the economy that is affected by inequality. Most of the attributes of a decent society – health, education, crime levels, social cohesion – are most present in more equal societies.

Take the USA and Sweden, two countries with similar levels of wealth in GDP per capita terms. The infant mortality rate in the USA is more than double that of Sweden and the murder rate is over three times Sweden’s figure.

This pattern holds up across the world. The charts (see report) show that, in general, countries with high levels of inequality have higher murder rates and lower life expectancy.

The poor are not getting richer

So it’s no wonder that we find that since the big surge in free market, neoliberal economic policies in the 1980s, while the rich have certainly got richer, the poor have, by and large, stayed poor.

Back in 1981, when the free market revolution was just taking off, there were 288 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $2 a day (205 million were living on under $1.25 a day). By 2008, this figure had almost doubled to 562 million (386 million on under $1.25 a day).

Of course the region’s population has also increased over this period, but even proportionally, there has been almost no improvement in poverty rates in sub-Saharan Africa since 1981.

Other continents have done a little better but mostly because of the arbitrary measures chosen. Why $1.25? Much anti-poverty work has been geared to getting people from just below, to just above the international poverty line. It has been claimed that if you changed the poverty line from $1.25 to $1.27, most recent poverty reduction gains would be wiped out.

In fact the vast majority of the fall in global poverty since 1981 has come from China, a country that, despite engaging its very own state-led, form of capitalism, has not followed World Bank-led free market policies.

Here in the UK, real wages have fallen since the economic crisis in 2008. But in those same terms, wages hardly rose in the boom years of the 1990s and 2000s either. Almost all of the proceeds of this boom went to a tiny elite. The big winners from this decline in income have been the credit card companies.

Consumer debt has tripled over the last two decades as people borrow in order to make ends meet, reaching £158 billion in 2013. Meanwhile, the proportion of UK income controlled by the top 1% of the population has doubled since 1970 and the top 1% own as much as the bottom 55%.

The corrosive injustice of inequality

Inequality isn’t good for getting people out of poverty, which shouldn’t be surprising. Poverty isn’t about having a certain amount of money, but the lack of those resources we all need for a decent life; food and water, housing and energy, healthcare, education and decent employment.

Poverty is lack of power. And that lack of power is a direct consequence of others having too much power – ultimately too much control over resources. Wealth comes from exploitation of people and the planet’s resources.

This is why even well-intentioned plans to make the poor richer are doomed to failure if they ignore the question of power.

Helping the poor to buy more products or rent more resources from the rich might provide short-term relief, but in the long-term will reinforce the unequal relationship between the two – just as 19th-century American slave owners who decided to treat their slaves better missed the real injustice that they were perpetrating.

The poor will only get richer by radically reducing inequality, which in turn requires confronting power.

 

 

This article is an extract from the report ‘The poor are getting richer and other dangerous delusions‘ by Global Justice Now (formerly the World Development Movement).

 






Herbivory effects of climate change

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Herbivory may be changed by climate change and how does that affect the host plants? Find out in the Early View paper “Colonization of a host tree by herbivorous insects under a changing climate” by Kaisa Heimonen and co-workers. Below is their summary of the paper: Climate warming is predicted to increase the abundance of herbivorous insects due to increased survival, growth and multivoltinism. In addition, due to warming climate many insect species are predicted to shift their ranges to higher latitudes. Host plants are adapted to the present day herbivore pressure and insect communities but in the future the abundance of insects and the composition of herbivorous insect communities might change which can lead to more intense herbivore damage. We wanted to study the susceptibility of silver birch (Betula pendula Roth) populations from different latitudes to the insect herbivores that are expected to spread northwards in the future. To do this we established three common gardens with 26 genotypes of silver birch from six latitudinal populations in Finland ranging from 60°N to 67°N. The common gardens were located at three different latitudes 60°N, 62°N and 67°N. At each study site 260 silver birches were growing. This experimental setup is being used also for several other studies (see the project homepage: http://www.uef.fi/fi/birchadaption).

Figure 1. Map showing the three common garden sites (filled squares) and the six source populations (filled circles). Mean annual temperature isoclines are shown in grey.

Figure 1. Map showing the three common garden sites (filled squares) and the six source populations (filled circles). Mean annual temperature isoclines are shown in grey.

Figure 2. The three common garden sites in Finland where the study was conducted. A) Southern study site is located in Tuusula 60°N, B) Central study site is located in Joensuu 62°N and C) Northern study site is located in Kolari 67°N. Photo credits: Kaisa Heimonen.

Figure 2. The three common garden sites in Finland where the study was conducted. A) Southern study site is located in Tuusula 60°N, B) Central study site is located in Joensuu 62°N and C) Northern study site is located in Kolari 67°N. Photo credits: Kaisa Heimonen.

We wanted to study how the local insects at each of the common garden sites colonized the translocated birch genotypes. We asked if the insect herbivore density, species richness or community composition could be explained by the source population of the birch or by the direction or distance of the latitudinal translocation. The herbivore community on the study birches was examined during two growing seasons in 2011 and in 2012.

Figure 3. Kaisa Heimonen (lead author) observing the herbivorous insects on silver birch at the northern study site in 2012. Photo credits: Sari Kontunen-Soppela.

Figure 3. Kaisa Heimonen (lead author) observing the herbivorous insects on silver birch at the northern study site in 2012. Photo credits: Sari Kontunen-Soppela.

Herbivore density among the source populations differed in 2012 but not in 2011 and species richness was not affected by the source population. Latitudinal translocation could not explain the variation in the herbivore density or in the species richness. Community composition of the herbivores differed among the source populations at two of the three study sites and the similarity of the herbivore communities decreased with increasing latitudinal distance of the source populations.

Figure 4. Common insect species on silver birch belonging to the orders Lepidoptera, Coleoptera and Hymenoptera. A) White-shouldered smudge (Ypsolopha parenthesella), B) Birch leaf roller (Deporaus betulae) and C) Early birch leaf edgeminer (Fenusella nana). Photo credits: Kaisa Heimonen.

Figure 4. Common insect species on silver birch belonging to the orders Lepidoptera, Coleoptera and Hymenoptera. A) White-shouldered smudge (Ypsolopha parenthesella), B) Birch leaf roller (Deporaus betulae) and C) Early birch leaf edgeminer (Fenusella nana). Photo credits: Kaisa Heimonen.

Silver birch genotypes from source populations originating from closer geographical distance had more similar herbivore community composition at our experimental sites possibly because they are genetically more similar than the geographically more distant birch genotypes. All birch genotypes were colonized by some of the local herbivores at all three study sites suggesting that in the future herbivorous insects are able to colonize novel host plant genotypes. The results of this study show that compositional changes in the insect communities on their host plants are expected in the future. Newly structured herbivore communities might affect the herbivore damage and thereby also the plant growth.

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Sellafield – how the nuclear industry fleeced taxpayers

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Last 4th November the managing director of Sellafield, the giant nuclear waste processing plant on the Cumbian coast in NW England, issued its report to the six-monthly meeting of the nuclear sites stakeholder group covering the Sellafield plant. 

In bullish tone he opened his introduction, boldly pronouncing: “This time last year, in my first report to WCSSG as Sellafield Ltd’s Managing Director, I talked about our new strategy Key to Britain’s Energy Future.

“I explained that I wanted a clear strategy, understood by our employees and the local community, to drive improved performance in our nationally important task of cleaning up the Sellafield Site.

“The strategy describes how we will deliver our clean up mission by keeping Sellafield safe and secure, by making demonstrable progress on all of our activities and by providing a return on taxpayers’ investment through value for money and socio-economic benefit in our local community.

“Our strategy describes where we want to be, and the Sellafield plan explains how we will get there. We recently launched a companion document, the Excellence Plan which outlines activities that will improve our ability to reach our goal.”

Everything in the Sellafield garden is rosy

Rising to his optimistic theme he went on to claim: “Twelve months on and I believe we are beginning to see the strategy deliver improvements in performance and this gives me increasing confidence that we can achieve what we promised to do, on time and to budget …

“Looking ahead, we will continue to drive for reliable performance, an increasingly challenging task given the age of our plants and infrastructure. This means we need to strive to find innovative solutions to problems.

He concluded by noting: “We are being supported in this through a new collaborative approach with key stakeholders most associated with the delivery at Sellafield. The organisations include Sellafield Ltd, Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the Environment Agency (EA), Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Department of Energy and Climate Change, (DECC) and Shareholder Executive …

“As part of our drive for excellence we have recently completed a programme of nuclear safety culture surveys.  As we achieve more successes over the next number of months alongside the member organisations,” he finished off, “we will share this information at future meetings.”

Two months later – sacked

Barely two months later, on 13 January, Energy Secretary Ed Davey announced in a statement to Parliament that he was sacking Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), the private consortium awarded the £22 billion top tier management contract for Britain’s biggest nuclear installation, in early October 2008.

Davey told MPs: “The government agreed last year with the Public Accounts Committee’s conclusion that it was a priority to consider what contractual model might best deliver improved performance and value for money at Sellafield.

“In the meantime, we endorsed the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA)’s decision to roll the current Parent Body Organisation (PBO) contract forward into the second term (from 1 April 2014) to ensure that the progress made in the first five year term could be built upon.

“Sellafield Limited (the Site Licence Company which operates the site under the ownership of the PBO) continues to make progress and is currently on track to deliver against its key performance measures and milestones in 2014/15.

“Despite this progress, the NDA has concluded that a change in model is now the best way forward … Under the new arrangement, Sellafield Limited will become a subsidiary of the NDA and will continue to be led by a ‘world class team’, who will be appointed and governed by a newly-constituted Board of the Site Licence Company. “

DECC’s nuclear quango the NDA, the owners of Sellafield on behalf of the taxpayer, produced an 8-page so-called ‘Stakeholder Briefing‘ to explain what was going on.

It states, inter alia, that: “This decision is the result of careful consideration and review of various commercial approaches in use where the public and private sector comes together to deliver complex programmes …

“The review is consistent with the undertaking that NDA gave at the 4 November 2013 and 4 December 2013 Public Accounts Committee Hearings, based on the NAO report ‘Assurance of reported savings at Sellafield’, HC778, 29 October 2013, that NDA would consider its options in regard to the way the Sellafield site was operated and in particular the use of the PBO (parent body organization) model.”

But it is as illuminating as much for what it omits as what it reveals.

A scandalous agreement to fleece the taxpayer

How could such a turn-around happen so quickly? As with everything in the nuclear industry, all is not what seems, and there is a complicated backstory to the Sellafield decision, which is startling.

I have worked on this issue with Labour MP Paul Flynn for seven years, and his attempts to make transparent the deal done to give NMP the contract have been met with obstruction – by Government and the nuclear industry at every turn.

In July 2008, Flynn got a sniff that some dodgy dealing was under way by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), then responsible for nuclear energy policy, to award a management contract for Sellafield to a new consortium.

At its crux was the stipulation that all the potentially vast liabilities would be covered by the taxpayer, while all the profits went to the consortium,

To probe this possibility, he asked the Labour minister responsible what recent communications or discussions had taken place with both the NDA and consortium applicants for the Sellafield decommissioning contract on the indemnification of the contract holder against claims arising.

The now late Malcolm Wicks responded: “The Department has been informed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) that it expects to have to grant an indemnity against uninsurable claims arising from a nuclear incident that fall outside the protections offered by the Nuclear Installations Act and the Paris / Brussels Convention to whichever of the four bidders for the Sellafield contract is successful.

“The NDA is conducting the Sellafield parent body organisation competition under the EU Competitive Dialogue procedure, evaluating the four bids received against agreed evaluation criteria. Within that process bidders were invited to make proposals for a nuclear indemnity under competitive tension against an established framework.

“It would not be viable for any of the bidders to proceed without an indemnity because any fee earning benefits of the contract would be overwhelmed by the potential liabilities. The NDA has assessed that the benefits of engaging a new contractor far outweigh the remote risk that an indemnity might be called upon. The final form of the indemnity will reflect the specific terms proposed by the preferred bidder.” (Hansard, 14 July 2008 : Column 76W).

But were MPs bothered?

The cat was out of the Sellafield Boondoggle bag. By 22nd October – after an exchange of letters with both the then chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Tory right winger, Sir Edward Leigh, and The Speaker, over the summer, Flynn tabled an early day motion (EDM 2321) – a kind of Parliamentary kite flying with political wallpaper covering – under the title ‘Parliamentary oversight of Sellafield indemnification’. It read:

“That this House notes that when the Government decided to provide indemnification against insurance claims following nuclear accident at the Low-level Waste Repository at Drigg, for the new American management company, the then Minister for Energy published a written statement in Hansard of 27th February 2008 and the associated Minute was placed in the Library to allow 14 sitting days for objections from hon. Members; contrasts this open procedure with the approach adopted for a similar insurance indemnification for the new private sector management company for Sellafield, Nuclear Management Partners, when no written statement was placed before Parliament but instead, the then Minister for Energy wrote on 14th July 2008 to the chairmen of the Committee on Public Accounts and Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee, enclosing a copy of the Minute setting out the proposed arrangements and stating that a copy of the Minute would be placed in the Library; further notes that this Minute arrived in the Library on 14th October, more than 75 days after the period for hon. Members to object officially elapsed; believes it is unacceptable for hon. Members to be denied the opportunity to comment on this Minute, the effect of which is to privatise the profits of the Sellafield management contract leaving the potentially multi-billion pound liabilities with taxpayers; declines to give approval to the proposed indemnification arrangements; and calls upon the Government to reopen the period in which hon. Members may signify objections to Government guarantees for which no statutory authority exists.”

In so doing, he flagged up a scandal in the making, but few fellow MPs noticed. Flynn asked a clarificatory question to the energy minister, by now Mike O’Brien, (in the newly formed Department for Energy and Climate change, headed by Ed Miliband as Secretary of State).

Specifically, he enquired on what dates between 14th July and 6th October 2008 Ministers or officials of his Department met officials of the NDA to discuss the indemnification of the successful bidder for the PBO chosen to manage Sellafield, and what meetings his Department and its predecessor had had with the European Commission on the compliance with state aid rules of the Government accepting an indemnification for Sellafield.

Mike O’Brien told him: “There were no meetings between 14 July and 6 October 2008 between the NDA and Ministers or officials of BERR about the indemnity for the successful bidder for the Sellafield PBO … There have been no meetings with the European Commission on this issue. As a normal commercial arrangement involving no subsidy for the new PBO the proposed indemnity does not raise any State aid concerns.” (Hansard, 11 Nov 2008: Column 1143-4W.)

‘It’s all a ludicrous conspiracy theory‘

Perhaps ministers believed there were no subsidy concerns, but there were a raft of other very worrying, unresolved concerns. To air these, Flynn secured an unusual Parliamentary debate, held in Westminster Hall on 19 November 2008, under the headline: ‘Nuclear Industry Finance’ (Hansard, 19 Nov 2008: Column 119WH)

Mr Flynn was dismissed by Mike O’Brien as a conspiracy theorist asserting that “his concoction of conspiracy theory, innuendo and hyperbole has reached new heights in the House”, further telling MPs that Flynn had “exaggerated, went way over the top in his condemnations.”

Mr Flynn’s Labour colleague, Jamie Reed – who then, as now, represented the Copeland constituency, which includes Sellafield – chipped in with the observation that Mr Flynn’s exposure was an “incoherent concoction”. (Hansard, 19 Nov 2008: Column 125WH)

On 13 th January, after the Sellafield contact cancellation, the prodigal MP Jamie Reed, pronounced to his local paper, The Whitehaven News, that  “If the contract has been terminated, it’s the right decision: both inevitable and overdue … and common sense, operational sense and business sense has now prevailed. The site will move on from this and improve. This decision is in the best interests of the industry, the site workforce and my constituents.”

The Ecologist’s readers may judge for themselves, now that the current energy secretary has sacked NMP from their £22 billion contract, who was exaggerating – and whether or not Mr Flynn’s criticisms were coherent.

Freedom of Information request spills the beans

Just before Christmas in 2008, the NDA delivered to my inbox 140 pages of internal memos, emails and other documentation concerning how the Sellafield contract had been awarded – after a protracted battle over disclosure for many months.

Many of the documents were very heavily censored prior to release with whole pages, and the names of most of the officials involved had been systematically blanked out.

Nonetheless, they included buried in the pages released, the extraordinary revelation that BERR, and the NDA, wanted to go ahead with awarding the deal to NMP, by avoiding Parliamentary scrutiny and circumventing democratic oversight, detailing how the deception of Parliament was to be effected. It was a clear scandal.

The collusion between Government and the NDA on behalf of the private consortium, and manifestly against the public interest of the taxpayer, was revealed on 4th January 2009 in The Independent on Sunday – with my detailed assistance – in an article by Geoffrey Lean, ‘Officials plotted Sellafield cover-up: MPs were denied the chance to challenge sweetener to private firm’s nuclear deal‘:

“A rushed timetable was drawn up which involved naming a preferred (PBO) bidder for the contract on 11 July 2008 and signing a transitional agreement on 6 October 2008. But this clashed with the long parliamentary summer recess, which ran from late July to the very day set aside for the signing.

“If the Government were to stick to its speeded-up timetable, the documents say, ‘the very earliest date’ in which the minute could be laid before Parliament would be 14 July, shortly before the recess began on the 22nd.

“Determined not to slow down the handover, the Government decided to reduce the period in which MPs could object. On 26 March, an official whose name and department has been blanked out emailed the official Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to stress the requirement to ‘shorten the 14 working parliamentary days that an indemnity would normally need before it can become effective’.

“The official added: ‘To get this down to five days, we will need to muster some persuasive arguments and I wondered where you had got to on assembling these.’ Two days later he was sent a ‘first draft’ of the argument including an assertion that the ‘vulnerability of Sellafield operations is already seen as a significant safety risk’.

Any time at all for MPs’ scrutiny is too long

“But by early June [2008], the idea of giving MPs any time at all to object had been abandoned. Another email to the NDA, from apparently the same blanked-out official, reported a ‘conclusion’ that a letter should merely be written to Edward Leigh MP, the chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, ‘rather than go for a shorter notice period to the House’.

Thus a minute ‘explaining what has happened’ would be laid before MPs only ‘when Parliament reconvenes in the autumn’, by which time it would be too late to raise objections. On 14 July, the then energy minister Malcolm Wicks duly wrote to Mr Leigh; he did not object and the indemnity went into force before MPs knew about it.

“Other confidential documents, received after two Freedom of Information Act applications, divulge that three local Councils in Somerset asked for £750,000 to fund a planning officer and legal advice from companies that want to build nuclear power stations in their areas, raising questions about conflicts of interest, and that the officially neutral NDA considered coming out in favour of new reactors.”

Fast forward to the Coalition’s governance of Sellafield: Mr Flynn tabled another EDM, number 1048, two years ago, on 6 February 2013, which included the observation:

“DECC were questioned on the probity of such huge sums being awarded (to NMP) without Parliamentary scrutiny; recalls an earlier EDM 2321 on Parliamentary Oversight of Sellafield Indemnification tabled on 22 October 2008 observed accurately that the agreement would privatise the profits of the Sellafield management contract leaving the potentially multi-billion pound liabilities with taxpayers; acknowledges the subsequent release of internal memoranda and emails between DECC and NDA officials which expose the deliberate cover up from Parliament.”

A damning critique hidden from Parliament

In the summer of 2013, I submitted a Freedom of Information Request to the NDA for any internal review they had conducted on the performance of Nuclear Management Partners, who had been controversially been awarded the PBO management contract for Sellafield.

Finally, following the Coalition announcement that the NDA was extending the NMP PBO contract worth several more billions, the Public Accounts committee – now chaired by former Labour minister, Margaret Hodge – announced it would investigate the extended contract.

Then, after initially turning down my FOI request, on appeal, NDA conceded, and sent me a copy late on a Friday afternoon in early November, just before the PAC hearing on the following Monday with the NDA and DECC officials on Sellafield.

After reading the explosive criticisms contained in the internal evaluation by auditor, KPMG I forwarded it to Mrs Hodge, suggesting she might raise it with the PAC witnesses. Here is a transcript of what happened in the opening of the hearing on 4 November, as published the following day:

Q9 Chair (Mrs Hodge): “On the KPMG report, which we only got this morning, my understanding is that that was never shared with the NAO. Why not?”

John Clarke (NDA CEO): “The KPMG report was only completed very recently.”

Chair: “No, you had a copy of it in September.”

John Clarke: “We had a draft copy of it in September.”

Q10 Chair: “Well, we only got it this morning because of a freedom of information request. The final copy has a September date.”

John Clarke: “We have spent a considerable period of time redacting what we believe was commercially sensitive information.”

Q11 Chair: “That information was absolutely pertinent as to whether or not you took the view on whether to renew the contract. Why was that not shared with the NAO, even in draft form? I do not know whether you want to comment, Amyas.”

Amyas Morse, National Audit Office chief executive: “It would have been illuminating, knowing that we were producing a follow-up report. It certainly would have been illuminating to know of the existence of this report. I have carefully checked with my staff. As far as we know, we did not know of its existence, let alone having seen it.”

John Clarke: “There was certainly no intent to keep it secret. There was a lot of talk about the fact that we were producing it. It is worth pointing out that KPMG’s report assessed the performance of the site over a wide period of time. It was not advising us on the right course of action.”

Q12 Chair: “I understand that. The report, which I have only just shared with my colleagues on the Committee, is a terrible indictment of the contract: it says that progress on major projects within legacy ponds and silos, which no doubt we will come to, ‘is behind schedule and has exceeded … cost estimates. It appears this is principally attributable to SL’, Sellafield Ltd, ‘often as a result of poor project management … whilst savings have been made, overall schedule progress has not met PP11 targets, which over time risks costing more than efficiency savings generated.’

“On Sellafield Ltd’s capability, it says that ‘there remain continued deficiencies in project management, supply chain management and resource allocation’. We then go on to leadership, where there has been a ‘high turnover of SL executive secondees and a predominantly reactive response to issues.’

“Governance ‘does not appear to be effective or unified.’ On alignment, ‘parties in the PBO model are not aligned in their objectives, with fractures evident in many relationships due to complexity, competing priority and contractual tensions’. Interfaces ‘do not deliver’, incentives do not work, there is no appetite for risk and there is no stakeholder confidence. I cannot see anything good in that.

John Clarke: “Essentially, the comments about performance fall into three categories. There is the inherent nature of Sellafield itself, with the complexities that it presents. The Major Projects Authority came in to review it recently, and their conclusion was that Sellafield presents unique technological project management and leadership challenges unparalleled anywhere.

“So there is the inherent nature of the beast that is Sellafield. Many of the comments you related there relate to the capability of Sellafield Ltd itself. Sellafield Ltd is the enduring entity, the site licence company, the licence holder and the environmental-“

Chair: “It is wholly owned by NMP.”

John Clarke: “Yes it is, for the duration of the contract. But the 10,000 people work for Sellafield Ltd. One of the things we have asked NMP to do-“

Chair: “NMP is responsible.”

John Clarke: “We have asked NMP to improve the capability for Sellafield Ltd.”

Q13 Chair: “What have you been doing for the last four to five years?”

John Clarke: “I would say that the rate of improvement in that capability has been less than we would have wished. There have been improvements in capability, but not as much as we would have wished for.”

DECC Permanent Secretary Stephen Lovegrove told the PAC: “The Department knew of the KPMG report. I did not personally, but officials had sight of it and read it.”

Mrs Hodge observed: “It’s an appalling waste of public money. It’s like scattering confetti. Time extends and extends. I have looked at this two or three times now and every time I look at it the cost goes up – not in hundreds of millions, but in billions.”

NMP: contrite all the way to the bank

Indeed so. A month later the NMP bosses themselves were instructed to appear before an enraged PAC. It was a veritable political mauling of the NMP witnesses inside the committee’s coliseum.

Tom Zarges, the chair of NMP, backed up again by the hapless NDA boss John Clarke, and Sellafield Ltd’s MD Tony Price, told the MPs that he was “humbled and truly sorry” for mistakes made during his firm’s five-year tenure at Sellafield, and vowed that they would “not be repeated in the future.”

Mrs Hodge observed she was “bewildered” the NDA had recently awarded NMP a five-year extension to run the nuclear site, adding caustically: “Mega-bucks are paid to NMP in fees, yet NMP does nothing [to address issues] other than waiting for the NDA to chivvy you along.”

Mr Zarges defensively said: “While we have had achievements, we are not satisfied with these. We are a long way from satisfied … If we have not learned from these experiences, we are not doing our job.”

Meanwhile Mr Clarke conceded that he has been “disappointed with elements of NMP’s performance … The quality of leadership has been less than what we would wish for, and we have been disappointed with elements of performance. But to continue with the contract will provide a better outcome than the alternatives.”

Two months later, on 4 February 2014, the PAC published its devastating report ‘Managing risk at Sellafield‘, which inter alia concluded the NMP contract for Sellafield achieved “little improvement” commercially “for extra money spent”.

Another conclusion was that “The use of cost reimbursement contracts for Sellafield Limited and its subcontractors means the financial risks are borne by the taxpayer. This contracting approach may be the best option where costs are very uncertain.

“However, as project and programme plans firm up and the lifetime plan becomes more robust, it should be possible to move away from cost reimbursement contracts. The Authority should determine how and when it will have achieved sufficient certainty to expect Sellafield Limited to transfer risk down the supply chain on individual projects and then to reconsider its contracting approach for the site as a whole.”

An appalling waste of public money

One re-imbursement was not so much financially huge as extraordinary in its absurdity: an NMP executive claimed £714 taxi fare for a family cat to go to an airport! And was paid (although later it was recovered after a public uproar).

Margaret Hodge proclaimed the contract was an “appalling waste of public money … The cost of one project soared from £387 million to £729 million in 18 months; another rose from £341 million to £750 million, with completion delayed for six years, in much the same short period.”

The most damning conclusion read: “In 2011-12, the Authority paid out £54 million in fees, £17 million for ‘reachback’ staff and £11 million for executive staff seconded from Nuclear Management Partners. Sellafield Limited also awarded contracts to Nuclear Management Partners’ constituent companies worth some £54 million in 2011-12.

“That means, in effect, that those who let contracts awarded their own constituent companies contracts, which raises concerns about fair competition and value. The Authority should ensure all payments are linked to the value delivered and that payments are not made where companies have failed to deliver. It should also routinely provide assurance on the operation of its controls over payments for Nuclear Management Partners’ constituent companies.”

Tom Zarges nevertheless maintained: “The first term of our contract has been characterised by many successes but also a number of disappointments and areas for improvement. Our job now is to build on our experience of the last five years to safely and reliably deliver our customer’s mission, while further accelerating the pace of change and providing value for money to the NDA, Government and the UK tax payer.”

An NDA statement insisted that “[we] now have a much better understanding of the issues and complexities that exist at the site and the challenges that lie ahead. Whilst progress has been made on a number of fronts we will require significant improvements during the next contract period.

“We have had extensive discussions with NMP and made clear where these improvements must be made. We will continue to monitor performance closely and remain focused on achieving our goal of safe, effective, value for money decommissioning at Sellafield.”

Contract termination ‘an operational matter’

A few weeks later, the then energy minister, Michael Fallon, since promoted to Defence Secretary, told Paul Flynn in a written answer:

“The contract review at the first break point, and the decision to continue with the contract into a second five year period, was an operational matter for the NDA. The NDA reached its decision based on a thorough review of performance in the first period of the contract and consideration of all available options.

“The Government endorsed the NDA’s decision on the basis that it represents the best way forward at this time, giving NMP the opportunity to build on the progress made in the first five years of its contract for Sellafield Ltd (it has met some 90% of its targets to date and safety at the site has improved), address weaker areas of performance, and make further real progress in this next five year term.” (Hansard, 24 Feb 2014 : Column 142W)

On the day Ed Davey announced the big U-turn, by chance Treasury Permanent Secretary, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, appeared before the Parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee inquiry on ‘Whitehall: capacity to address future challenges’, to be challenged by committee member Paul Flynn, asking:

“Just as a general principle, are you happy for the public purse to take all the risk, as I pointed out as clearly as possible in 2008, and for the private company, a foreign company, to take any profit that will come out?  Is that an abiding effort for the Treasury?”

Sir Nicholas Macpherson answered: “Put in those terms, I would never be happy with any contract like that. Ensuring that risk is borne in the right place is one of the biggest lessons of the financial crisis.  I do not want to get into this individual issue, because I am not sufficiently informed about it.”

Meanwhile, John Robertson MP, Labour chair of the All Party Nuclear Power Group (a nuclear cheerleader set-up) said on 16 January, three days after Sellafield management were sacked:

“The industry really has turned Parliament around. We do now have a political House singing from the same hymn sheet on nuclear power. We need to work hard to keep it that way!” 

In so saying, he revealed just how out of touch the pro-nuclear cheer-leaders in Parliament really are.

NMP paid shareholders 145m in dividends

The Sunday Times Business section reported on 18 January that the failed NMP was paid its shareholders £145.1m in dividends during its tenure, starting with a £24.5m payout in 2009-10. The terms of its deal entitled it to £50m a year in fees from the NDA, “dependent on performance”.

NMP said last week it was “surprised and disappointed” to be ditched and had improved its performance and saved taxpayers £650m during its tenure. It declined to comment on the dividends.

 

 

 

David Lowry is an environmental policy and research consultant who has been following the unfolding Sellafield imbroglio for over 10 years.

 






Warmer world threatens wheat shortages

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Climate change threatens dramatic price fluctuations in the price of wheat and potential civil unrest because yields of one of the world’s most important staple foods are badly affected by temperature rise.

An international consortium of scientists have been testing wheat crops in laboratory and field trials in many areas of the world in changing climate conditions and discovered that yields drop on average by 6% for every one degree Celsius rise in temperature.

This represents 42 million tonnes of wheat lost – about a quarter of the current global wheat trade – for every degree. This would create serious shortages and cause price hikes of the kind that have previously caused food riots in developing countries after only one bad harvest.

Global production of wheat was 701 million tonnes in 2012, but most of this is consumed locally. Global trade is much smaller, at 147 tonnes in 2013.

Price hikes and food insecurity

If the predicted reduction of 42 million tonnes per 1˚C of temperature increase occurred, market shortages would cause price rises. Many developing countries, and the hungry poor within them, would not be able to afford wheat or bread.

Since temperatures – on current projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – are expected to rise up to 5˚C this century in many wheat-growing regions, this could be catastrophic for global food supply.

Dr. Reimund Rötter, professor of production ecology and agrosystems modelling at the Natural Resources Institute Finland, said that wheat yield declines were larger than previously thought.

He said: “Increased yield variability is critical economically as it could weaken regional and global stability in wheat grain supply and food security, amplifying market and price fluctuations, as experienced during recent years.”

One of the crucial problems is that there will be variability in supply from year to year, so the researchers systematically tested 30 different wheat crop models against field experiments in which growing season mean temperatures ranged from 15°C to 26°C.

Heat tolerant wheat strains are needed

The temperature impact on yield decline varied widely across field test conditions. In addition, year-to-year variability increased at some locations because of greater yield reductions in warmer years and lesser reductions in cooler years.

The scientists say that the way to adapt is to cultivate more heat-tolerant varieties, and so keep the harvest stable.

The results of the study – by scientists from the Finland, Germany, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, Colombia, Mexico, India, China, Australia, Canada and the United States – are published in Nature Climate Change.

Professor Martin Parry, who is leading the 20:20 Wheat Institute Strategic Programme at Rothamsted Research to increase wheat yields, commented:

“This is an excellent example of collaborative research, which will help ensure that we have the knowledge needed to develop the crops for the future environments.”

 

 

 

Paul Brown writes for Climate News Network.

 

 






Kathryn Bigelow and the bogus link between ivory and terrorism

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It is often said that if something is repeated often enough, it becomes accepted as true. This has certainly been the case for the link between terrorism and the poaching of elephants for the ivory trade.

A wide range of public figures have repeated the claim that ivory plays a major role in bankrolling terrorist organisations in Africa.

These include former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, UK foreign secretary William Hague and Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta. The most recent voice to be added to the choir was that of cinema director Kathryn Bigelow.

The Oscar-winning director teamed up with charity WildAid to create a short video asserting that trade in ivory is funding the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab, responsible for the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Kenya in which 67 people died.

 

 

As with any illegal activity, it is very difficult to obtain reliable data on the size of the ivory trade. Although there is evidence that it has been used to finance armed groups in Africa such as the Lord’s Resistance Army or the Janjaweed in Darfur, the allegations linking ivory to terrorist groups are much weaker.

The real ‘terrorist trade’ is charcoal

They essentially rest on a single report published by the Elephant Action League in 2012. The report asserts, based on a single unnamed “source within the militant group”, that al-Shabaab makes between US$200,000 and US$600,000 from ivory, up to 40% of its income.

This over-reliance on a single source and the fact that only a short ‘journalistic summary’ of the report was ever released, has led to scepticism.

Recently, a joint report by INTERPOL and the UN Environmental Program classified EAL’s claims as “highly unreliable“ as they would require al-Shabaab to bring nearly all ivory poached from west, central and eastern Africa to a single Somali port.

However, this same report establishes a solid link between al-Shabaab’s finances and another environmental crime: illegal charcoal production.

The trade in charcoal leads to widespread deforestation and is already driving erosion and desertification in parts of Somalia. Al-Shabaab’s main financing mechanism appears to be the taxing of charcoal coming to the port of Baraawe (and until recently Kismayo) south of Mogadishu, with the value of the trade estimated to be US$38-56m per year.

This means that, even if the EAL’s inflated ivory estimates were true, the trade in charcoal would still generate 60 to 94 times more revenue for al-Shabaab.

We’ve known about the charcoal trade in the Horn of Africa for a while now – the UN, for instance, highlighted the issue in a 2013 monitoring report on the Somali conflict.

Is it because elephants make a ‘better story’ for media and fund-raising?

It is thus puzzling that some western political and conservation figures have decided to focus on the unproven link between ivory and terrorism instead of the more relevant and substantiated conservation issue.

A possible (yet cynical) explanation is that those highlighting the issue are trying to gain notoriety by bringing together terrorism, a top issue for all western governments, and the elephant, one of the most widely used conservation flagship species.

This would surely generate more attention than the more abstract issue of desertification and a few obscure tree species. The increased visibility could then be used to generate extra votes, donations or simply a more environment-friendly image.

If this was the case, then we would for example expect these efforts to focus on those more likely to vote or donate, instead of those more likely to buy ivory.

In the case of Kathryn Bigelow’s video and the ‘Last days of ivory‘ campaign it spearheads, all materials are only available in English, a language not relevant for the key ivory markets in Southeast Asia.

Like, share, donate

All the first four actions proposed to those who visit the campaign’s website revolve around either sharing the campaign image and content on social networks or donating to the associated charities.

This campaign does indeed appear to be targeting those who can donate rather than those who can directly impact the ivory trade.

Those involved clearly have something to gain from pushing the link between ivory and terrorism beyond the available evidence. However, it is also clear that in the long run it is not only their own credibility that is at risk but that of a whole conservation movement.

Conservationists have focused large on messages of doom and gloom that often sound as if holding humanity for ransom if the environmental crisis is not addressed.

If we are serious about keeping the public’s trust, we must ensure that we are driven by evidence, not the hype, lest we become the boy who cried wolf.

 

 

Diogo Veríssimo is David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow at Georgia State University.

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

The Conversation

 






Amphibian responses to diversity of native and non-native litter

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Fig. 1. Recently metamorphosed green frog (Lithobates clamitans) at the edge of a pond (photo by Laura Martin)

Fig. 1. Recently metamorphosed green frog (Lithobates clamitans) at the edge of a pond (photo by Laura Martin)

 

Fig. 2 American toad (Anaxyrus (Bufo) americanus) adult (photo by Carrie Brown-Lima) American

Fig. 2 American toad (Anaxyrus (Bufo) americanus) adult (photo by Carrie Brown-Lima) American

 

Amphibians develop in watery places that are full of plants. And yet we know little about how these plants affect larval amphibians. As disease, climate change, and land-use change continue to threaten amphibian populations worldwide, it is more important than ever to understand what makes for good amphibian habitat.

 

 

Fig. 3 Shauna-kay Rainford at Bear Swamp, NY, one of the litter collection locations(photo by Laura Martin)

Fig. 3 Shauna-kay Rainford at Bear Swamp, NY, one of the litter collection locations(photo by Laura Martin)

 

In the study “Effects of plant litter diversity, species, origin and traits on larval toad performance,” Cornell undergraduate Shauna-kay Rainford (now a graduate student at Penn State University), graduate student Laura Martin, and Professor Bernd Blossey investigated how plant litter communities influence the growth and survival of Anaxyrus americanus (American toad) larvae. They reared tadpoles in singles species and litter mixtures using 15 native and 9 nonnative plant species common to central New York, USA, recording survival, time to metamorphosis, and growth rate.

 

 

Fig. 4 Microcosms in which individual larval amphibians were reared in leaf litter treatments. (photo by Shauna-kay Rainford)

Fig. 4 Microcosms in which individual larval amphibians were reared in leaf litter treatments. (photo by Shauna-kay Rainford)

 

Survival in single species treatments ranged from 0% (in Rhamnus cathartica litter) to 96% (Pinus strobus). Tadpoles also failed to metamorphose in Acer rubrum, Cornus racemosa, Rosa multiflora, and Tsuga canadensis. Percent metamorphosis was highest in nonnative Lonicera spp. (76.7%), native Phragmites australis americanus (73.3%), nonnative P. australis (60.0%), and nonnative Alnus glutinosa (60.0%). Interestingly, whether the plant was native or nonnative did not affect amphibian performance.

In multi-species treatments, number of plant species had no effect on larval survival or metamorphosis. However, larvae reared in mixtures of 3 species were larger than those reared in single species treatments of the same species. But increasing litter diversity to 6 or 12 species did not further improve larval survival or performance. This result is consistent with analyses that reveal that most ecological processes saturate at relatively low levels of diversity.

Currently, understanding of the relationships of biodiversity and ecosystem function is drawn largely from studies of plant communities in temperate grassland ecosystems. But the vast majority of plant material is not consumed green; it enters detrital food webs like the one studied in this experiment. This study is an important first step towards understanding the mechanisms that underlie plant-amphibian interactions. It further highlights the importance of plant traits, but not origin, when considering amphibian habitat restoration and conservation.

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Toxic landfills, fracking and the lethal threat of Environment Agency neglect

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Zane, a beautiful bright 7-year-old boy who had just won his green stripe belt at martial arts class, and who was described by his headmaster as a “larger than life” figure, died on the nmight of 8th February 2014. Both his parents were taken ill, and his father, Kye, remains paralysed from the waist down.

The cause of death and harm remains officially unknown nearly a year later. Initial reports suggesting carbon monoxide poisoning from water pumps were later discounted. But firemen at the scene detected hydrogen cyanide, later confirmed by Public Health England.

In fact, the house is a rare all electric house with no gas supply and no capability of generating carbon monoxide. No carbon monoxide was found in the family home. Also, it took Public Health England 14 weeks to confirm to the family that hydrogen cyanide was indeed found in their flooded house.

Was it a cover-up?

And amazingly, despite the immediate finding of hydrogen cyanide in the home, the pathologist was never told to test Zane’s blood for hydrogen cyanide.

As early as March, the family sent a report to the coroner suggesting important lines of enquiry including testing for hydrogen cyanide. But there is still no official confirmation of what actually killed Zane.

The family’s own investigations into the surrounding area have since revealed that a field 6 metres from their home that contains a lake and looks so idyllic, is actually contaminated land – but this did not show in environmental searches.

Zane’s parents bought the house in 2004, when an environmental report showed no land contamination. However, subsequent reports for a neighbouring property in 2011, and for their own home, ordered by Zane’s parents last month, indicate contamination due to an old landfill site behind their home, now an infilled lake.

They also discovered that the Environment Agency knew about the toxic hazard from the landfill, ordering gas-proof membranes to protect their own staff when they built cabins nearby. This week, the family told Talk Fracking that the authorities, including the Environment Agency, have been “walls of silence”.

In response to questions about climate change, the Met Office confirmed that the flooding was “consistent with what is expected from the fundamental physics of a warming world“, thus increasing the potential dangers that flooding could compromise more landfill sites.

Fracking may need countless new landfills to dump its waste

In a recent submission to the Environmental Audit Committee, researcher and consultant Paul Mobbs analyses the water treatment and waste management associated with fracking. He forecasts a 50% increase in hazardous waste landfill, a staggering quarter of a million tonnes.

In December, Talk Fracking gave the Government some Christmas reading in the form of scientific reports on the health dangers of fracking. They included the Government’s own scientific advisor warning that fracking could join historic scandals such as asbestos, thalidomide, and lead in petrol.

Energy Minister, Matthew Hancock replied to Talk Fracking this week, citing two reports, one a three-year old study by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), and the other by Public Health England. In his reply he concedes that both reports call for effective regulation and strong enforcement to bring the health, safety and environmental risks to a low level.

With the proposed massive expansion of this new industry across the country, and the many known and accepted risks, including the landfill issues highlighted by Paul Mobbs, you would expect a responsible Government to increase Environment Agency staff accordingly.

And now the Environment Agency cuts its regulatory capacity

In one of the reports Matthew Hancock used in his defence, the RAE stated that “regulatory capacity must be maintained“. But just two days after Zane’s sad death, news of 25% staff cuts hit the headlines.

Frontline services, according to Chris Smith, the then head of the EA, wouldn’t be affected by cuts, even while the agency was already struggling, calling nearly a fifth of frontline staff in from other teams in order to cope with the flooding.

Chris Smith now heads the ‘independent’ Shale Gas Task Force, where he earns around £1,500 a day, funded by fracking companies.

The new head of the Agency is Sir Phillip Dilley, earning £100k for three days a week work. He used to head the engineering firm, Arup, and is still listed as a trustee. Arup was employed by the leading fracking company, Cuadrilla – whose chairman Lord Browne sat as an advisor in the Cabinet.

It’s also been recently revealed that the EA pension fund invests in the very fracking companies it is supposed to regulate. The Environment Agency has just issued Cuadrilla with a brand new permit for drilling in Lancashire.

What Zane’s tragic story tells us is that regulators are less concerned about public safety, than about avoiding public awareness of the risks posed by contaminated, unregulated landfill sites throughout the UK. How many are there? Could you be living by one?

And if the Environment Agency cannot even monitor and ensure the safely of our existing industrial and domestic waste dumps, how wise is it to encourage a fracking boom that will cause a 50% increase the landfilling of hazardous waste, creating a massive new toxic legacy for the future?

 

 

Petition: ‘Call for a public debate into the death of 7 year old Zane‘ (38 degrees).

This article is based on one originally published by Talk Fracking, a campaign group committed to highlighting the issues surrounding fracking in the UK, holding the policy makers and industry to account and providing a forum for debate.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Death by landfill – cutting ‘green tape’ costs lives‘.