It’s well known that carbon in the atmosphere is causing global warming. What is less well known, outside of scientific circles at least, is the role oceans have to play in this.

Our seas contain 60 times more carbon than the atmosphere, and they can release it at sufficiently rapid rates to cause dramatic changes in the climate. In fact, as we describe in research published in Nature, CO₂ released by the oceans brought about the end of the last ice age.

More than 50 million cubic kilometres of ice once covered North America and Scandinavia. It melted away between approximately 19,000 and 10,000 years ago, releasing enough water to raise the sea level by about 130 metres.

This came after CO₂ concentrations increased by approximately 50%, from 180 to 280 parts per million between the last ice age and the current interglacial period. To explain such a pronounced increase, we have to look at the ocean.

Scientists have thought for a long time that the southern sectors of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, a region known as the Southern Ocean, may be key to explaining the increase in atmospheric CO₂.

Large volumes of deep water loaded with carbon come to the surface in this area. However, the low concentration of certain nutrients (for example iron) in surface waters limits the metabolism of planktonic organisms, which cannot fully consume all the carbon brought to the surface ocean, resulting in CO₂ being ‘outgassed’ to the atmosphere.

We wanted to assess if the ocean contributed to the atmospheric CO₂ increase during the last deglaciation, so it made sense to look at areas that are important today for the ocean-atmosphere exchange of carbon: the Atlantic Sector of the Southern Ocean and the Eastern Equatorial Pacific, another area where deep, cold water rises to the surface.

But how can we then go back in time and check if these areas were a source of CO₂ in the atmosphere? The answer is buried a few thousand meters below the surface of the oceans.

The well-kept secrets secrets of long dead plankton

Research vessels such as the Joides Resolution are capable of drilling the sea floor to recover long sequences of sediments in which the history of the oceans is recorded. The sediments contain, among other things, fossils of tiny organisms that once lived in the upper ocean, called foraminifera. These creatures build chalky shells, and the waters they live in influence their chemical composition.

After death, the shells sink to the bottom of the oceans, where they accumulate. We analysed the sediment cores and looked for the isotopic composition of the element boron present in shells that lived during particular times of interest.

Boron tells us pH levels of the waters, which in turn tells us about carbon levels: a high concentration of CO₂ in the waters will make them more acidic (lower pH), and vice versa.

We found a link. When the glaciers of the last ice age were melting, and the atmospheric CO₂ was increasing, the surface waters of the Southern Ocean and the Eastern Equatorial Pacific were also more acidic. This signalled an increased concentration of CO₂ – much higher than those in the atmosphere.

This is the key finding of our research: the deep ocean was a source of CO₂ to the atmosphere during key intervals of the last deglaciation, which explains the large increase in CO₂ concentrations.

Where did this carbon come from?

It’s the next obvious question. Previous research has found that the last ice age saw much less carbon exchanged between ocean and atmosphere than we see today, mostly because the Southern Ocean was intensely stratified at the time and deep waters rarely made it to the surface.

Nutrients and CO₂ were accumulating in the deep Southern Ocean, due to the decay of the organic matter that was being produced in the surface ocean and transported to the abyss.

During the deglaciation, the effective communication between deep and upper ocean was re-established, and this carbon ‘reservoir’ was leaked to the atmosphere.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the oceans have absorbed an estimated 155 billion tonnes of carbon, about 30% of the total human emissions.

The present atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, approximately 400 parts per million, have not been seen on Earth since the Pliocene, around 3 million years ago, and the rate of increase is unprecedented in the period of on-off glaciers we have had since.

Humanity is performing a large scale experiment with the Earth, and the consequences are already being seen in the form of increased atmospheric and oceanic temperatures, raising sea levels and ocean acidification, to name a few.

How the oceanic uptake of CO₂ is going to operate in the future remains unknown, but studies like ours advance our understanding of how the ocean works to store and release carbon on timescales of millennia and that therefore are way beyond the reach of the instrumental record.

The paper: ‘Boron isotope evidence for oceanic carbon dioxide leakage during the last deglaciation‘ by M. A. Martínez-Botí et al is published in Nature.

Miguel Martinez-Boti is Visiting Researcher, National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton.

Gianluca Marino is Researcher in Oceans & Climate Change at the Australian National University.

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

The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) is one of the corporate front groups suing Vermont in an attempt to block the state’s GMO labeling law.

The trade group is also lobbying for HR 4432, an anti-consumer, anti-states’ rights bill, introduced in April (2014) in the House of Representatives by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas).

The bill, dubbed by consumers as the ‘Deny Americans the Right to Know’ (DARK) Act, would pre-empt all state GMO labeling laws. HR 4432 would also legalize the use of the word ‘natural’ on products that contain GMOs.

IDFA President and CEO Connie Tipton has been an outspoken opponent of consumers’ right to know. In her address to this year’s Dairy Forum, she noted that consumers “can be harsh critics on topics such as genetically modified organisms” – and then went on to criticize “restrictive labeling requirements” as “a straightjacket on innovation and marketing.”

Tipton has also made it clear that not only does the IDFA oppose mandatory GMO labeling laws, the trade group also opposes retailers’ efforts to label voluntarily. For instance, when Walmart considered labeling the GMO sweet corn it sells (a promise that remains unfulfilled), Tipton went on the attack. Walmart, she said,

“announced this past summer it planned to sell a new crop of genetically modified sweet corn created by Monsanto. Nothing wrong with that, but a lot of us were scratching our heads when Wal-Mart added that it would label the product as containing GMO ingredients – even though the Food and Drug Administration has already said the product is safe.

“Given Wal-Mart’s size and market share, there are legitimate concerns that its decision on GMO labeling will force other retailers to march in lockstep behind the industry giant.”

What’s to hide?

Why would the IDFA spend millions to defeat GMO labeling laws, including launching a lawsuit against Vermont?

Isn’t the dairy industry the ‘Got Milk?’ people, the ones who wear milk mustaches to get kids to drink what the industry promotes as healthy whole food? Doesn’t the IDFA represent the family farmers whose black-and-white cows graze happily on green grass outside picturesque red barns?

Truth be told, those idyllic images have nothing to do with reality. They’re part of a carefully orchestrated, and very expensive public relations campaign aimed at fostering the illusion that milk and other dairy products originate from small family farms – illusions that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, the IDFA is just another wing of the processed food industry. And like the rest of the processed food industry, IDFA members have a lot to hide, where their products come from, and what’s in them.

Dairy products as delivery systems for GMO sweeteners

Milk consumption has been on the decline for some time now. Today, less than a third of dairy production goes toward making milk that people drink. To compensate, the industry pushes processed, dairy-based foods that contain a lot of decidedly non-dairy ingredients, including many that are genetically engineered.

Yogurt, ice cream, cream cheese, and flavored milk have become delivery systems for genetically modified sweeteners, especially high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – made from corn that has been genetically engineered by Monsanto to absorb Roundup herbicide and produce the Bt toxin.

It is also more toxic than regular sugar. A recent study compared two groups of rats, one fed HFCS and the other table sugar, both in doses equal to what many people eat. The rats fed HFCS had death rates 1.87 times higher than females on the sucrose diet. They also produced 26.4% fewer offspring.

Previous studies on rodents and humans tied HFCS consumption to metabolic problems such as insulin resistance, obesity and abnormal cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Yet HFCS is used by some of the most powerful brands in the IDFA leadership, including:

• Skinny Cow, the low-fat ice cream brand of Nestle USA, which is represented on the IDFA board by Patricia Stroup, chair.
• Blue Bunny, the flagship brand of Wells Enterprises, Inc., represented by Michael Wells, vice-chair.
• Hood, represented by Jeffrey Kaneb, treasurer.

Consumer demand is pushing many food companies to remove HFCS from dairy products. For instance, IDFA member Yoplait has gone HFCS-free. But Yoplait still contains sugar, which likely comes from sugar beets that have been genetically engineered to absorb Roundup herbicide, and GMO corn starch.

You want GMO trans fat-laden cheese on that?

If you add non-dairy ingredients to cheese, it no longer meets the legal definition of cheese. So how is it that as much as one-fifth of what people think of as ‘cheese’ comprises vegetable oils (usually from GMO corn, soy, cottonseed or canola), including trans fats from partial hydrogenation?

By creating multiple definitions of ‘cheese’, regulators have created a system that allows the dairy industry to load up cheese with non-dairy products by renaming their products. A product containing at least 51% cheese can be called a ‘processed cheese food’. Products that contain less than 51% real cheese must be labeled a ‘processed cheese product’.

Prior to 2006, many of these cheese ‘foods’ and ‘products’ sold in grocery stores contained trans fats. But once the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began requiring packaged food makers to list trans fat content as a separate line item on the labels of foods sold in stores, most of the cheese made with trans fats has been sold through restaurants where it doesn’t have to be labeled.

That means consumers who frequently eat out are still eating a lot of trans fats with their cheese – they just don’t know it. Though as this article notes, consumers can still buy products at the grocery store that contain trans fats without knowing it-because food makers are allowed to claim “no trans fats” on the front of their package as long as the product contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, an amount even the FDA admits can be dangerous because of the cumulative effect.

Trans fat is the worst type of dietary fat. Trans fats create inflammation, which is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and other chronic conditions. They contribute to insulin resistance, which increases the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

They can harm health in even small amounts: for every 2% of calories from trans fat consumed daily, the risk of heart disease rises by 23%. There is no safe level of consumption.

Kraft, the nation’s largest manufacturer of cheese, has largely phased out trans fats, but it hasn’t dropped the GMOs.

When Kraft reformulated Cheez Wiz, the company removed the cheese, leaving a taste of “axle grease” – in the words of a former Kraft food scientist who helped invent the original product. But Cheez Wiz still contains GMOs, in the form of canola oil and corn syrup.

Kraft is represented on the IDFA executive committee by Howard Friedman.

Stretching the limits of what ‘dairy’ means

Genetically modified ingredients like HFCS and trans fats are super cheap. This has pushed the dairy foods industry to use such ingredients to the point of stretching the limits of consumers’ understanding of what’s actually a dairy product.

Enter government regulators, who have had to step in to define just exactly what is – and isn’t – a legitimate ‘dairy’ product.

A ‘Frozen Dairy Dessert’ can’t be called ‘ice cream’ if it contains less than 10% milk fat. Statistics on the market share of ‘dairy desserts’ versus ice cream is unavailable, but even Breyer’s, known for its ‘all natural’ ice cream has converted about 40% of its ice creams to ‘dairy desserts’.

Why would the dairy industry embrace a declining amount of milk in dairy foods? As it turns out, breaking milk into its constituent parts and selling them separately has been an efficient way for the industry to eliminate waste and increase profits, even if there might be less actual milk in any one particular product.

Skim milk used to be a waste product that was either discarded or fed to farm animals. Now it’s sold as skim milk and fat-free dairy products (even though there’s little evidence dairy is the best diet food).

Once the dairy industry had successfully created a market for skim milk, it realized it had another problem on its hands: what to do with the glut of whole milk and extracted milk fat created by soaring sales of skim milk. The solution? Make more ‘cheese foods’ and ‘cheese products’. But that led to a new problem – what to do with all that cheese?

For a time, the federal government bought the industry’s excess cheese and butter, packing away a stockpile valued at more than $4 billion by 1983. Then, in 1995, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) created Dairy Management Inc, a nonprofit corporation, partially funded by the USDA (and your tax dollars), that defines its mission as increasing dairy consumption.

Dairy Management teamed up with restaurant chains like Domino’s and Pizza Hut to launch a $12 million marketing campaign promoting pizza with extra cheese. (Remember, restaurants don’t have to label their cheese as containing GMO-laden trans fats).

The Dairy Management’s program directly benefitted Leprino Foods Company, supplier of cheese to both Domino’s and Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut lists ‘modifed food starch’ among the ingredients in its cheese. Modified food starch is another name for modified corn starch, which is most always made with GMO corn.

Leprino Foods is represented on IDFA’s board by Mike Reidy, who serves as secretary.

As long as the dairy industry’s fortunes continue to be built upon the sales of GMO-containing ‘dairy products’ and ‘cheese foods’, its principal lobbying group, the IDFA, will continue to spend millions to keep consumers from knowing what’s really in those foods.

This is not an industry that cares about farmers, or wholesome, healthy foods. What used to be a community of farmers selling real, whole foods has long since morphed into a processed food industry.

And as such, the industry, represented by the IDFA, will continue to fight tooth-and-nail against what they portray as “restrictive labeling requirements” that create “a straightjacket on innovation and marketing.”

Alexis Baden-Mayer is political director of the Organic Consumers Association.

This article was originally published by the Organic Consumers Association.

A battle is raging for control of resources in Africa – land, water, seeds, minerals, ores, forests, oil, renewable energy sources.

Agriculture is one of the most important theatres of this battle. Governments, corporations, foundations and development agencies are pushing hard to commercialise and industrialise African farming.

Many of the key players are well known. They include the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the G8, the African Union, the Bill Gates-funded ‘Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’ (AGRA), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the International Fertiliser Development Centre (IFDC).

Together they are committed to helping agribusiness become the continent’s primary food commodity producer. To do this, they are not only pouring money into projects to transform farming operations on the ground – they are also changing African laws to accommodate the agribusiness agenda.

Privatising both land and seeds is essential for the corporate model to flourish in Africa. With regard to agricultural land, this means pushing for the official demarcation, registration and titling of farms. It also means making it possible for foreign investors to lease or own farmland on a long-term basis.

With regard to seeds, it means having governments require that seeds be registered in an official catalogue in order to be traded. It also means introducing intellectual property rights over plant varieties and criminalising farmers who ignore them. In all cases, the goal is to turn what has long been a commons into something that corporates can control and profit from.

Lifting the veil of secrecy

This survey aims to provide an overview of just who is pushing for which specific changes in these areas – looking not at the plans and projects, but at the actual texts that will define the new rules.

It was not easy to get information about this. Many phone calls to the World Bank and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) offices went unanswered. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) brushed us off. Even African Union officials did not want to answer questions from – and be accountable to – African citizens doing this inventory.

This made the task of coming up with an accurate, detailed picture of what is going on quite difficult. We did learn a few things, though.

While there is a lot of civil society attention focused on the G8’s New Alliance for Food and Nutrition, there are many more actors doing many similar things across Africa. Our limited review makes it clear that the greatest pressure to change land and seed laws comes from Washington DC – home to the World Bank, USAID and the MCC.

‘Land reform’ is to benefit investors, not farmers

Land certificates – which should be seen as a stepping stone to formal land titles – are being promoted as an appropriate way to ‘securitise’ poor peoples’ rights to land. But how do we define the term ‘land securitisation’?

As the objective claimed by most of the initiatives dealt with in this report, it could be understood as strengthening land rights. Many small food producers might conclude that their historic cultural rights to land – however they may be expressed – will be better recognised, thus protecting them from expropriation.

But for many governments and corporations, it means the creation of Western-type land markets based on formal instruments like titles and leases that can be traded. In fact, many initiatives such as the G8 New Alliance explicitly refer to securitisation of ‘investors’ rights to land.

So this is not about recording and safeguarding historic or cultural rights, but about creating market mechanisms. So in a world of grossly unequal players, ‘security’ is shorthand for the power of the market, private property and creditors.

Most of today’s initiatives to address land laws, including those emanating from Africa, are overtly designed to accommodate, support and strengthen investments in land and large scale land deals, rather than achieve equity or to recognise longstanding or historical community rights over land at a time of rising conflicts over land and land resources.

Most of the initiatives to change current land laws come from outside Africa. Yes, African structures like the African Union and the Pan-African Parliament are deeply engaged in facilitating changes to legislation in African states, but many people question how ‘indigenous’ these processes really are.

It is clear that strings are being pulled, by Washington and Europe in particular, in a well orchestrated campaign to alter land governance in Africa.

Seed laws based on neoliberal ideologies

When it comes to seed laws, the picture is reversed. Subregional African bodies – SADC, COMESA, OAPI and the like – are working to create new rules for the exchange and trade of seeds. But the recipes they are applying – seed marketing restrictions and plant variety protection schemes – are borrowed directly from the US and Europe.

And the changes to seed policy being promoted by the G8 New Alliance, the World Bank and others refer to neither farmer-based seed systems nor farmers’ rights. They make no effort to strengthen farming systems that are already functioning.

Rather, the proposed solutions are simplified, but unworkable solutions to complex situations that will not work – though an elite category of farmers may enjoy some small short term benefits.

With seeds, which represent a rich cultural heritage of Africa’s local communities, the push to transform them into income-generating private property, and marginalise traditional varieties, is still making more headway on paper than in practice. This is due to many complexities, one of which is the growing awareness of and popular resistance to the seed industry agenda.

But the resolve of those who intend to turn Africa into a new market for global agro-input suppliers is not to be underestimated, and a notable consolidation of seed suppliers under foreign corporate ownership is under way. The path chosen will have profound implications for the capacity of African farmers to adapt to climate change.

Interconnectedness between different initiatives is significant, although these relationships are not always clear for groups on the ground. Our attempt to show these connections gives a picture of how very narrow agendas are being pushed by a small elite in the service of globalised corporate interests intent on taking over agriculture in Africa.

New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition

“The 50 million people that the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition claims to be lifting out of poverty will only be allowed to escape poverty and hunger if they abandon their traditional rights and practices and buy their life saving seeds every year from the corporations lined up behind the G8”, warned Tanzania Organic Agriculture Movement in September 2014.

Launched in 2012 by the G8 industrialised countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and US – the aim of the gtrandly titled G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is in fact to mobilise private capital for investment in African agriculture.

To be accepted into the programme, African governments are required to make important changes to their land and seed policies. The New Alliance prioritises granting national and transnational corporations (TNCs) new forms of access and control to the participating countries’ resources, and gives them a seat at the same table as aid donors and recipient governments.

As of July 2014, ten African countries had signed Cooperative Framework Agreements (CFAs) to implement the New Alliance programme: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania.

Under these agreements, these governments committed to 213 policy changes. Some 43 of these changes target land laws, with the overall stated objective of establishing “clear, secure and negotiable rights to land” – tradeable property titles.

The New Alliance also aims to implement both the Voluntary Guidelines (VGs) on ‘Responsible Land Tenure‘ adopted by the Committee on World Food Security in 2012, and the ‘Principles for Responsible Agriculture Investment‘ drawn up by the World Bank, FAO, IFAD and UN Conference on Trade and Development. This is considered especially important since the New Alliance directly facilitates access to farmland in Africa for investors.

New Alliance pushing seed ‘reform’

As to seeds, all of the participating states, with the exception of Benin, agreed to adopt plant variety protection laws and rules for marketing seeds that better support the private sector.

Despite the fact that more than 80% of all seed in Africa is still produced and disseminated through ‘informal’ seed systems (on-farm seed saving and unregulated distribution between farmers), there is no recognition in the New Alliance programme of the importance of farmer-based systems of saving, sharing, exchanging and selling seeds.

African governments are being co-opted into reviewing their seed trade laws and supporting the implementation of Plant Variety Protection (PVP) laws, as has been seen in Ghana where farmers have risen up against the changes.

The strategy is to first harmonise seed trade laws such as border control measures, phytosanitary control, variety release systems and certification standards at the regional level, and then move on to harmonising PVP laws.

The effect is to create larger unified seed markets, in which the types of seeds on offer are restricted to commercially protected varieties. The age old rights of farmers to replant saved seed is curtailed and the marketing of traditional varieties of seed is strictly prohibited.

Concerns have been raised about how this agenda privatises seeds and the potential impacts this could have on small-scale farmers. Farmers will lose control of seeds regulated by a commercial system, while crop biodiversity may be eroded due to the focus on commercial varieties.

Making these processes hard to combat is the mutliplicity of programmes and initiatives carried out by different countries and both national and transnational entities in different parts of Africa, all offering short term benefits to governments but all directed towards a single objective – the neoliberal transformation of land, seed and plant variety governance to open the continent up for full scale agribusiness invasion.

The report: ‘Land and seed laws under attack: who is pushing changes in Africa?‘ was drawn up jointly by AFSA and GRAIN. Researched and initially drafted by Mohamed Coulibaly, an independent legal expert in Mali, with support from AFSA members and GRAIN staff, it is meant to serve as a resource for groups and organisations wanting to become more involved in struggles for land and seed justice across Africa or for those who just want to learn more about who is pushing what kind of changes in these areas right now.

AFSA is a pan-African platform comprising networks and farmer organisations championing small African family farming based on agro-ecological and indigenous approaches that sustain food sovereignty and the livelihoods of communities.

GRAIN is a small international organisation that aims to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

This article is based on the above report.

The UK Government is planning a suite of retaliations against Austria if it pursues its planned challenge in the European Court of Justice to the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, according to a leaked document published by Greenpeace UK’s Energydesk.

In the leaked memo, sent from the Austrian Embassy in London to the Austrian government, a senior international diplomat warns:

“The UK has obviously started systematically elaborating countermeasures that could be harmful to Austria … Further steps and escalation ensuing the complaint are not to be ruled out.”

“The new Europe Director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Vijay Rangarajan made clear that the Austrian plans to bring forth a complaint related to the EU State Aid Rules at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has already shown a negative impact on the bilateral relations.”

There is a “strength of feeling” that goes “all the way up to PM Cameron”, it adds, “and the Prime Minister has instructed all the responsible members of government to call their Austrian counterparts.”

‘We will cause maximum damage to Austria’s interests’

According to the document, Rangarajan also made it clear that the UK would “embrace any future opportunity that arises to sue or damage Austria in areas which have strong domestic political implications.” Three specific points that are envisaged as first steps:

• “A complaint before the ECJ against the labelling of electricity sources of the power provided by electricity suppliers, since, according to the British point of view, this violates the internal market rules.”
• “An investigation of whether the Austrian complaint violates the Euratom Treaty.”
• “Exertion of pressure for Austria – if it is not willing to recognise nuclear power as a sustainable energy source – to bear a greater share in the EU-internal effort sharing” on climate change.

On the face of it is hard to see how providing energy users with information on the source of the electricity they use would violate internal market rules, but as Greenpeace’s Christine Ottery explains: “As nuclear is so unpopular in Austria this in could effect mean Austria would go nuclear free.”

Faced with this onslaught of threats, the un-named Austrian diplomat insisted that “Austria was not under any circumstances interfering with the UK’s sovereign right to choose its own energy mix.”

Rather, they said, “the present case concerns a state aid-related complaint given that the Contract for Difference approved by the EC violates EU State Aid rules. It would be in the interest of rule of law principles that such a decision of the EC be appealed before the ECJ.”

The diplomat also “referred to the consensus of the Federal Government on the issue and to the respective resolution which was passed by parliament.”

Legal challenge imminent

Austria has made no secret of its intention to take legal action over the EU’s decision to allow £17.6bn of subsidies for two Hinkley C nuclear reactors under the bloc’s State Aid (competition) rules, and the legal papers are expected to be filed imminently.

The Hinkley C reactors are projected to provide 7% of the UK’s electricity by 2023 but Austria’s appeal could delay the UK government’s final investment decision by more than two years.

The news of the UK’s countermeasures coincides with the news that the final decision on the project will be delayed until months after the UK general election due to concerns from the projects’ Chinese backers about the creditworthiness of Areva, one of the partner companies involved in the Hinkley C project.

In a surprise decision, the European Commission decided to give the stamp of approval to the UK government’s massive subsidies for Hinkley’s new reactors in October last year.

The 35-year Hinkley subsidy deal, under Contracts of Difference, has been criticised for being poor value for money for UK bill payers with much of the money going to French and Chinese state-owned energy firms.

The subsidy is worth £17.6bn on paper, but a Greenpeace analysis put the total (undiscounted) subsidy to Hinkley over its lifetime as much higher at £37bn – working out as a £14 increase per household per year.

Austrian Chancellor (equivalent to prime minister) Werner Faymann came out against the European Commission approval of the Hinkley subsidy deal, saying: “Alternative forms of energy are worthy of subsidies, not nuclear energy.”

As for the efficacy of the UK’s threats, Fayman said last week that he will not back down over the legal action as nuclear is not “not an eligible new technology” eligible for State Aid, according to the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung.

Principal source: Greenpeace EnergyDesk: ‘Energy Files: UK government threatens to strike back over Austria’s Hinkley legal challenge‘.

In today’s back-to-front world those wanting to safeguard seas and oceans are struggling to do so.

The conservationist has to justify protecting a critical global resource, even though healthy seas sustain us all. Those who empty them, pollute them and profit from them can often do so unchallenged and uncontrolled.

Common sense says it should be the other way around; that all seas and oceans are protected from the outset. We should expect them to be unspoiled and unpolluted. We should assume that marine life is properly valued.

Accountability and responsibility then passes from the defender to the exploiter and the integrity of nature is always put before the importance of profit.

Many marine species are now on the verge of extinction due to commercial fishing, pollution and ocean acidification. Millions of birds and mammals are killed by nets, lines and debris of all kinds. Plastic waste covers hundreds of thousands of square kilometres.

Coral reefs are trashed by fishing gear and weakened by global warming. Mining, oil and fishing companies are making excessive profits whilst impoverishing coastal communities. Industry is getting away with blue murder, and on a vast scale.

A new thinking is needed

The existing system isn’t working because the thinking behind it is flawed. We need to develop a very different perception of the natural world and a true understanding of how we fit into it. Indeed the concept of ‘ocean management’ is absurd.

We cannot ‘manage’ oceans. We cannot ‘manage’ Earth’s chemical and biological systems: they do that unaided and have done so for millions of years. We need only to manage ourselves and our activities in a way that doesn’t diminish nature’s largesse. While the processes of nature, its wildlife and its beauty, are secured as a given.

With the well-being of the sea always coming first, commercial use will then only be possible if it is rational and truly sustainable. Industry will no longer have the right to ransack. Misuse will be a criminal act.

Working together, governments must become accountable to the people they represent, who want clean and vibrant seas. All marine industries will be strictly regulated, compelling them to practice in ways that are neither harmful nor unsustainable.

Damaging land-based activities must also be addressed, such as excessive fossil fuel emissions and the proliferation of plastic waste. Over-fishing and destructive mining will become a thing of the past; pollution and plastic waste will diminish and eventually disappear; wildlife will flourish – in coastal waters, ocean depths and on the high seas.

The sea will provide employment for millions of people and yield a never-ending supply of food and renewable resources.

These principles are already enshrined in law

Does that sound unrealistic? Too idealistic? It shouldn’t. Not when you realize that the world’s seas and oceans are already protected by international law; by treaty law and by customary law.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (which 178 states have signed and 166 have ratified) obliges nations to co-operate on a global basis to protect the marine environment and to prevent, reduce and control pollution.

It also stipulates the preservation of rare or fragile ecosystems as well as the habitats of depleted, threatened or endangered species and other forms of marine life.

Also relevant is the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which covers the conservation of all ecosystems and species using the precautionary approach – giving nature the benefit of the doubt when there is sketchy scientific data.

There is also the Public Trust Doctrine – the principle dating back to the Roman Emperor Justinian that certain resources are preserved for public use, and that the government is required to maintain them for the public’s reasonable use.

Thus it requires governments to manage natural resources solely in the best interests of present and future citizens – including the global commons, meaning areas and resources beyond national jurisdiction, such as the high seas and atmosphere.

Its key principles are wise resource management, government accountability and responsibility to future generations, and these provide a clear-cut legal basis for conserving marine environments and the rest of the natural world.

Also applicable is the Common Heritage of Mankind principle, which asserts that the commons should not be exploited by individual nations or corporations but held in trust for the benefit of all and for future generations.

Indeed it has specific application to the high seas. Article 136 of the UNCLOS Treaty explicitly declares the “seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction” to be the “Common Heritage of Mankind”.

So what’s the problem?

Firstly, the Law of the Sea needs to be modernized. It came into force in 1994 and was drawn up over 12 years before that. There have been many technological and environmental developments since then which are not accounted for in the treaty, such as the ease with which vessels can now track and capture fish. Big issues like ocean acidification and the great Pacific garbage patch were unknown at the time.

Most importantly though, protective legislation; the Law of the Sea, the CBD, the Public Trust Doctrine and the Common Heritage of Humankind principle are not properly enforced, and in many areas – notably the high seas – they are rarely enforced at all.

And yet today’s technology makes law enforcement possible across the globe. With GPS and vessel monitoring systems, ships can be under surveillance everywhere.

Other actions to combat over-fishing will include a massive reduction in global fishing capacity in line with stocks, revoking the licenses of vessels fishing unsustainably, and preventing illegally caught fish from entering the market.

Enforcement can be financed by revenue from responsibly managed activities such as mining and fishing, from individual nation’s contributions based on GDP, and from benevolent subsidies.

Reform is necessary, urgent – and achievable!

The way in which humankind despoils our watery world is depressing indeed. And even more depressing is the failure of governments to react. Those who we elect, who we empower and we pay for, are failing us and they are failing the natural world.

They are allowing the cruel and unnecessary slaughter of millions of sea creatures and the ruin of undersea habitats. Some governments are making the problem even worse by subsidizing unviable and damaging commercial fishing.

Now let’s imagine a different scenario – that we take the dominant paradigm of over-exploitation and turn it completely around, so that respect for the sea and its wildlife becomes the norm, not the exception.

Marine governance can be transformed so that seas and oceans are valued as they should be. When governments co-operate they can deliver the big picture legislation so urgently needed to bring our attitude out of the Dark Ages and into the 21st century.

With the urgent reform of the UN Law of the Sea, the entire marine environment becomes protected as a universal principle rooted in law, upheld by all nations as a shared heritage. Seas and oceans will be unpolluted, with clear waters, teeming with life, for good.

The concept is simple. It is logical. It is achievable. The legal framework for it is already largely in place. And as with many of society’s steps forward, it is essentially about ending what is wrong and replacing it with what is right.

We invite you to help bring this proposal to fruition!

Action: The first step is to create a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) specifically for oceans. Pledge your support and the Terramar Project will automatically send a message to the UN urging them to properly protect seas and oceans.

More information: Read Conserving the Great Blue (PDF file) and browse the Marinet website.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘UN talks begin on a new law to save our oceans‘.

Deborah Wright has worked with Marinet since 2009. Her publication The Ocean Planet reviews the serious challenges which our seas and oceans now face and outlines proposals for fundamental changes in marine management to solve this crisis using an ecosystem-based approach.

A camera follows a peregrine falcon as it swoops low over an attractive, pristine river hugged by trees in remote northern Sweden.

It then soars higher, revealing that the river flows through a large area which has been clear-felled of forest.

Stripped bare, it is as if an atomic bomb has been detonated over the land.

Aimed at raising public awareness, the message of the video by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) (see below) is clear: Sweden no longer looks like what you think.

While Sweden’s forest cover of 60% of the country’s land area is one of the highest in Europe, it is calculated that more than half of Sweden’s productive forests have been felled since the 1950s.

With paper, pulp, cardboard, and sawn timber comprising the main products of the forestry sector, much of it bound for European markets, the vast majority of the country’s forest landscape has been affected by intense forestry methods.

Dominated by five large companies (the largest of which, state-owned Sveaskog, owns 14% of the country’s forest) and a number of smaller landowners, the forestry sector has the rights to 96% of Sweden’s productive forests – land deemed as suitable for forestry.

Logging vs. old growth and biodiversity

With much of Sweden’s forest cover comprised of young forests not yet ready to be harvested, there is intense pressure to log Sweden’s remaining mature, old-growth forests – ‘natural’ forests so far only minimally affected by modern forestry and typically of great importance for the ecosystem and biodiversity.

Sweden no longer looks as you think – from SSNC / Naturskyddsföreningen on Vimeo.

I sit down with a worried Malin Sahlin, the SSNC’s boreal forest policy officer, in her office in Stockholm. “The country is going into the last stage of transformation in terms of forest ecology right now due to the fact we are clear-felling the last of our forests that have never been clear felled before … and turning the forest landscape, through replanting, pretty much into a monoculture”, she tells me.

The future for Sweden’s forests looks bleak. According to Sahlin, “if we continue today business as usual, there might in 20 years from now only be 5% of natural-like forests left and the rest could be in production.”

Sweden’s forest cover comprises part of the vast boreal forest that stretches across the northern part of the globe. Its old-growth forests are an important carbon sink that helps to regulate the earth’s temperature.

Not only this, but such forests typically contain a large amount of dead wood, which forms a crucial habitat for many species. A report by the WWF cites the severe lack of dead wood as constituting one of the main reasons for the loss of biodiversity in European forests.

Of over 20,000 species of flora and fauna assessed in Sweden according to IUCN criteria, around 20% are categorized as ‘red-listed’ (nearly half of which are threatened), with mature forests being especially important for many of those species.

Published every five years, the Swedish Species Information Centre in Uppsala is currently updating Sweden’s Red List, which is due to be issued in 2015. While pointing out that extinction processes in forest ecosystems are long term, Artur Larrson of the Centre argues that the current situation is “bad with a constant decline in species.”

Larsson further explains: “Typically more sedentary species like species like fungi, bryophytes and lichens are harmed most … but even more mobile species like birds, mammals and flying insects can also suffer from the extensive landscape change that forestry causes, for example a lack of dead wood of the right quality, lack of old and slow growing trees, denser and darker forests, and so on.”

Failures of regulation, protection and certification

In 1999 Sweden outlined 16 environmental objectives to be met by 2020 – one of which is sustainable forests. However, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency – the body tasked with monitoring the objectives – has deemed the objective as unreachable under current policy instruments.

With the forestry model based on the principle of ‘freedom with responsibility’, critics argue that the lack of clear and stringent legislation has led to this freedom being hijacked by irresponsible forestry practices.

As a report by the SSNC argues, “the Swedish forestry model involves clear-cutting as the default method, soil scarification, systematic use of chemicals, plantation forestry and the use of non-native species.”

Failure is also laid at the door of the certification schemes of the Forest Stewardship Council and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification tasked with monitoring that forestry is conducted sustainably according to the criteria.

“We’ve been out in the field over many years and we have found that the big five forest companies are not following the criteria of the certification”, says Malin Sahlin. “Furthermore, the certification bodies have not done their job properly in many of the cases of violations that we have reported.”

The wider issue is also that there is not enough protected forest in Sweden. With only 4% of its productive forest under formal protection, Sweden lags far behind the recommendations of conservationists who argue that at least 20% of the country’s productive forest land should be protected.

Furthermore, it is also clear that Sweden is not meeting the biodiversity objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which stipulates that at least 17% of the land surface area should be conserved by 2020. Artur Larsson points out that it is not only a question of protecting what remains, but also restoring already ‘degraded’ forest if biodiversity targets are to be met.

Jobs, profits, and biofuels

The powerful Swedish forest industry and its allies – former Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson has been a chairperson of Sveaskog since 2008 – have branded the assessments of critics as “alarmist” and point to the importance of the industry for Sweden’s economy.

According to the Swedish Forest Agency, exports of forestry and forest industry amounted to SEK 118 billion (over £10 billion) in 2013, contributing to 11% of the country’s total export value. In terms of jobs, it is estimated that around 60,000 people directly depend on the industry whilst employing triple that number indirectly.

The industry is also keen to burnish its image in terms of the growing role of wood fuels as a renewable energy source. In fact, having eclipsed oil, bioenergy now accounts for one-third of Sweden’s domestic energy use, with wood fuel accounting for nearly half of biomass sources.

Critics counter that while commercial forestry is indeed an important generator of jobs and revenue, it is only one consideration among many. Maintaining biodiversity, clean air and water, as well as eco-tourism – a boom industry in Sweden – all depend on healthy forests.

Looking to the future

In just two decades from now, Sweden faces the prospect of having lost much of its remaining old-growth forests with the rest (outside of protected areas) turned more or less into plantation forests lower in biodiversity, their original character and value having been degraded.

Many people agree that, in addition to the adoption of better practices and more effective regulation including formal protection, there needs to be an immediate stop or at least scaling back of the cutting down of natural-like forests to halt the current trend. Yet such a decision would be unpopular as it would cut into the profits and jobs of the big forestry companies.

With Sweden’s forests at a critical juncture, it remains to be seen whether Sweden’s new government, with the Green Party occupying key posts, will muster up the necessary political will to take the necessary steps.

Petition: ‘Saving old growth forest in Sweden‘.

Alec Forss is a freelance writer living in Sweden. He specializes in writing on the outdoors as well as social and environmental issues (www.alecforss.com).