The forest of Yatir in Israel is a magnificent achievement. A mixed forest that has been progressively planted since 1966, it now covers 30 square kilometres of the northern Negev.

And as it has expanded, the forest has rolled back the desert on the arid heights north-east of Beersheba, replacing barren bones of rock and sand with 4 million mainly native trees: Jerusalem pine and cypress, Atlantic terebinth, tamarisk, Christ’s-thorn jujube, carob, pistachio, olive, fig and acacia.

And now it is set for a significant expansion over the Bedouin village of Atir. There’s just one problem: the Bedouin are still there. There are there legally. And they have no desire to leave.

Moreover the Bedouin were settled there by Irael itself, in 1956, when the military government moved the Bedouin Abu Al-Qi’an tribe to Atir, which is registered by Israel as state land, after their forced displacement from their original homes of Khirbet Zubaleh in 1948.

Trees before people. And one People, before another

“Apparently in Israeli democracy, the state is permitted to uproot Arabs from their homes and plant trees in their place”, comments Ali Abu Al-Qi’an, a resident of Atir.

At first glance his comment would appear to be a joke or an exaggerated statement – but it is neither. In one sentence, Ali, an Arab Bedouin citizen of Israel, summarized the grim fate of his village of Atir, located in the Naqab (Negev).

The case of Atir is intricately tied with that of its neighboring twin village, Umm al-Hiran, where native Bedouin were also resettled in 1956. Decades later, in 2002, the state announced plans to retake the lands and buildings of Umm al-Hiran, and evict the residents again. The village will be demolished to build a Jewish town over its ruins.

And Atir is to be destroyed in order to expand the man-made forest of ‘Yatir’, which is sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Atir’s 500 residents, like Umm al-Hiran’s residents, will be relocated to the government-planned township of Hura.

A registed UK charity with distinguished patrons

The JNF, which counts Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Professor David Bellamy among its Patrons (and David Cameron too, until he was forced to resign in 2011) is a UK registered charity.

And it is curently raising funds to plant trees in Israel as “a meaningful way to commemorate special events such as births, anniversaries, weddings, bar / bat mitzvahs, birthdays, memorials and other occasions.”

The pitch continues: “JNF UK will help you put down roots in Israel and commemorate a life, achievement or milestone of a loved one in a way that will provide long-term benefits to the people and land of Israel.” But not, it would seem, for its non-Jewish Bedouin residents.

Atir is hardly the first case in which forestation has been used by Israel and the JNF as a method of displacement and land grabbing against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Another is the village of al-Arakib, which had to be demolished 18 times before its people were finally forced out in 2011.

In addition to designating areas as ‘state lands’ like in the Naqab and the occupied Jordan Valley, the policy is also facilitated by the Land Ordinance of 1943, a law dating to the British colonial mandate, which allows the state to confiscate and use lands for “public purposes.”

The results of this policy have included the establishment of ‘Ambassadors Forest’ and ‘God-TV Forest’ over the lands of Al-Araqib in the Naqab; ‘Ramot Menashe Park’ over Lajoun in the Triangle; ‘South Africa Forest’ over Lubya in the Galilee; and ‘Canada Park’ over Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba outside Jerusalem, among many others.

As historian Ilan Pappe described, “wherever almond and fig trees, olive groves or clusters of cactus are found, there once stood a Palestinian village: still blossoming afresh each year, these trees are all that remain.”

A legally sanctioned land grab

In a 2-1 ruling last month, the Israeli High Court acknowledged that the Bedouin residents were not on the lands illegally, as the state had claimed. However, the Court nevertheless approved the state’s ‘right’ to carry out its agenda.

Justices Rubinstein and Hendel argued that the plan for the land was “sufficiently important to justify the alleged harms involved in its achievement.” In other words, they had no objections to violating the Bedouins’ rights in order for Jewish citizens and the Jewish National Fund to benefit in their stead.

“We went to the courts seeking justice, but the judges only gave a rubber stamp to the state’s plans”, said Ali. “They admitted that we were allowed on this land, and yet they still saw us as zo’ran(‘troublemakers’).” With a chuckle, he added, “I suppose that somehow makes us ‘licensed troublemakers’.”

Justice Rubinstein added in the ruling that the state’s offer to move the Bedouin villagers to Hura served as ample compensation for the residents to leave their villages. But this has been strongly refuted by the villagers, their attorneys, and the Hura Municipality.

“We have an expert opinion showing that not only are the Hura neighborhoods unready to absorb the villagers, but the municipality is dealing with a housing crisis and other social problems among the residents already living there”, said Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany, one of the lawyers representing the village.

“Even so, regardless of any offers the state makes, it is still legally and morally absurd to remove hundreds of men, women and children from their homes just to replace them with a forest and Jewish town. It is racist and discriminatory at its core.”

‘This is our so-called democracy’

In an ironical twist, research carried out at Yatir Forest is pioneering methods that would allow the Bedouin to continue to graze their animals on forest land, without detriment. A study within Yatir Forest, reports the JNF, is investigating

“annual and multi-annual growth, where controlled grazing by flocks from local Bedouin villages is permitted within the forest; an arrangement has been in existence in the last few years to the mutual satisfaction of both KKL-JNF foresters and Bedouin owners of flocks.”

With the imminent destruction of their villages, any “mutual satisfaction” is surely wearing thin among the Bedouin. But Ali retains hope that Atir’s eviction can be forestalled, believing that public action and attention can help pressure the government and courts to reconsider their decision.

But he recognizes that the problem is much deeper than his own village’s struggle, emphasizing that the state continues to view the native Arabs as people that did not belong to the land, regardless of their citizenship.

“We have Israeli IDs, we work, we respect the law, but this means little to the state. Instead they tell us that a plant brought over from Europe has more rights than a non-Jew who was born and raised here.”

Scanning over the village, he shakes his head and says: “This is our so-called ‘democracy’.”

Amjad Iraqi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Tira who has lived between Israel/Palestine, Kenya and Canada. He works as projects & international advocacy coordinator at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, based in Haifa.

This article is based on one originally published on 972 Mag with additional reporting by The Ecologist.

What will become of UK energy policy now that the Conservative Party holds all the levers?

The government has already given clear indications of its plans to pare back onshore wind in recent days.

Tomorrow, 24th June, is the turn of offshore wind, when energy secretary Amber Rudd gives one of her first keynote speeches at the Global Offshore Wind Conference.

Rudd has been described as ‘really green’ in the past, but that is unlikely to reassure the offshore wind industry. With the government apparently committed to nuclear and shale gas and oil, renewables companies are wondering if they still have a place at the table. Here’s how the policy landscape looks to us.

Damage onshore

The government’s first big energy decision was confirmed with the announcement that the renewables-obligation subsidy scheme would be closing next April 1, a year earlier than planned. Confidence in the renewables industry has been wrecked as a result, though it goes further than that: the companies supporting renewables are the big power companies. The move is arguably as much a move against them as anyone.

Relations with the Scottish government have been damaged, with Nicola Sturgeon and others describing the decision as “wrong-headed”, “perverse” and “downright outrageous”.

Scotland has backed onshore wind for more than a decade as a cheap and proven source of low-carbon electricity. According to industry body Scottish Renewables, the decision will cost Scotland alone up to £3bn in investment and put at risk many thousands of highly paid jobs.

The move will also hit consumer utility bills. Keith Anderson, chief operating officer of Scottish Power, has estimated it will cost consumers between £2bn-3bn in more expensive electricity generation. This will increase the risk of fuel poverty across the UK (which is much higher in Scotland than England).

Anxiety offshore

Even before the election, offshore wind was not a good place to be. The sector has seen many projects mothballed and a number of key players drop out altogether in the face of a subsidy regime that is insufficient.

Offshore is already now much smaller than originally envisaged. It remains an expensive option in the UK even compared to new nuclear, and although costs are falling, it is not being deployed on the scale necessary to reduce costs to the point that it is commercially viable. If the subsidies are now cut, it will become a dead duck.

Compare Denmark, where the industry is now seeing costs fall dramatically through learning by doing. While the industry has benefited from highly competitive support mechanisms, deployment has been greatly facilitated by having 20% local ownership of projects.

Shallower waters have helped too, but the UK could still learn from the Danish approach. Danish offshore wind costs are significantly less than the projected new nuclear build costs at Hinkley Point C in Somerset in the UK, the country’s first new nuclear plant since the 1990s.

Bright nuclear future?

The Tories have long backed new nuclear power as the panacea to combat the looming electricity crunch that is often talked about in energy circles. Yet new nuclear is proving so challenging across the world that delivering even one new station will be no easy task.

As Hinkley Point C has already illustrated, the financial costs of new nuclear are enormous, and construction overruns look inevitable. The government also faces an impending legal challenge by the Austrian government over the up to £25bn of state aid required to bring the project to fruition.

This could delay completion by up to four years. Meanwhile Greenpeace Energy, Germany’s largest energy cooperative, is suing the European Commission for allowing the state aid to go ahead. In sum, it might well be 2030 before we see the plant generating any new electricity for UK consumers – about seven years later than intended.

This is a big problem for Rudd. Hinkley Point was promising to generate up to 7% of the UK’s electricity demand by 2023, at a time when big coal-fired stations in Scotland and England are closing. New and significant investment in energy infrastructure is needed before 2020 but it is currently unclear where this new generating capacity is going to come from.

Fast-track fracking

David Cameron has also made clear the government’s commitment to shale gas and its desire to repeat the US revolution here. It promises new tax revenues, jobs and a more secure gas supply. Yet these benefits must be balanced against the need to protect land and water supplies and manage hostile public opinion.

One widely overlooked issue is the infrastructure, which will take time and money to build. Fracking in the US requires an oil price to be at least $60 per barrel to be economical, and in some areas up to $100. With Brent Crude in the new era of mid $60 per barrel, is fracking economically feasible? Evidence from the US suggests not.

Earlier this year the Commons Environmental Audit Committee questioned whether fracking was compatible with UK climate-change targets. With the fifth carbon budget due soon to set targets beyond 2027, this presents Rudd with another conundrum.

The UN climate change conference in Paris later this year may well prove a very challenging conversation for the government. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this central strand of the government’s new energy agenda has some serious credibility issues.

The big picture

Put this all together and the government’s emerging approach to wind looks very unwise. New nuclear looks a very costly and unreliable drain on the government’s budget, while fracking looks expensive, incompatible with emissions targets and probably uneconomic at current oil prices.

It remains to be seen if these technologies will yield any long-term and positive outcomes for the country.

If the government gets it wrong, the consumer could be saddled with soaring electricity and gas bills for years to come. If ever we needed some sign of reprieve for UK renewables, it is now.

Peter Strachan is Strategy and Policy Group Lead and Professor of Energy Policy, Department of Management at Robert Gordon University.

Alex Russell is Head of Department of Management and Professor of Petroleum Accounting at Aberdeen Business School at Robert Gordon University.

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

Devon Wildlife Trust has announced the arrival of baby beavers – kbown as ‘kits’ – born to the first wild colony of beavers in England. New film footage proves that England’s only wild beaver population is growing.

The footage, taken by local film-maker Tom Buckley, shows the kits taking their first swimming lessons and being helped through the water by their mother at an undisclosed location on East Devon’s River Otter.

Two of the kits have been seen together, however beavers often give birth to three in a litter, so there may in fact be three of them.

“We are thrilled that the beavers have bred”, said Devon Wildlife Trust’s Mark Elliott. “The baby kits appear fit and healthy and the adults seem as if they are taking their parenting responsibilities very seriously. It tells us that the beavers are very much at home in this corner of Devon.

“The slowly expanding population of these wild animals will help us to gain valuable insights into beavers and their environment – both in terms of animal behaviour and any benefits and effects on the surrounding river system.”

Mark also makes a plea to people who might want to catch a glimpse of the new additions to a local beaver population:“The beavers have proved enormously popular with local people and we understand that many will now want to see the kits for themselves.

“But like all new parents, the beavers will need a bit space and peace at this time. So we ask that visitors take care not to disturb them. This means remaining on public footpaths, keeping a respectful distance from them, and keeping dogs under close control especially when near the river.”

England’s first free-living beavers in 400 years

A population of beavers was first confirmed on the River Otter in February 2014. This was the first time that breeding beavers were known to be living in the English countryside for as much as 400 years. In summer 2014 Defra expressed its intention to remove the animals and enclose them in a zoo, citing their potential disease risk and their unplanned introduction as reasons.

It was at this stage that Devon Wildlife Trust built a partnership of supportive local landowners, academic institutions and beaver veterinary and management experts to offer a different solution, to turn the situation into England’s first wild beaver monitoring project.

Friends of the Earth also campaigned to prevent the beavers’ capture, as first planned by Defra, and even commenced legal action last October under the EU’s Habitats Directive, forcing a government climb-down. But today FoE’s wildlife campaigner Alasdair Cameron was in celebratory mood:

“The fact that these beavers have given birth for the second year in a row shows that the animals are thriving in Britain – and should increase calls for them to be reintroduced to other suitable areas around the country. Beavers bring huge benefits to the countryside – boosting biodiversity and keeping the rivers clean – we’re delighted they’re back and doing well.”

In January 2015, Devon Wildlife Trust received a licence from Natural England allowing the beavers to stay. The licence also signalled the setting-up of the River Otter Beaver Trial – a project which will measure the benefits and impacts of the animals on local landscapes, wildlife, communities and businesses, especially farming.

Natural England’s licence stipulated that the beavers had to be health screened. This meant capturing all the adults which were known to be living on the river. The captures were carried out in February this year – the tests found them clear of disease.

Looking forward to a slow but steady recovery

Mark Elliott of Devon Wildlife Trust looks ahead to the beavers’ prospects: “Beavers give birth to an average of three kits. If both mothers have given birth that could mean that there are now up to 15 beavers on the River Otter. Beavers are relatively slow breeders and it’s possible that not all the kits will make it to adulthood.

“This means the expansion of their numbers during the coming years will be steady rather than rapid. The River Otter certainly has room for a slowly growing population. The kits present us with a unique opportunity to study the development of a beaver population in the English countryside.”

Dr Sam Bridgewater, Nature Conservation Manager for Clinton Devon Estates, commented on the arrival of baby beavers: “The birth of the kits is very exciting as it indicates that beavers can thrive in the lower River Otter. We still have much to learn about the impacts of an expanding beaver population on the Devon landscape.

“Although we know that beavers can improve the ecological health of rivers, we also know that their damming – particularly in upper catchment areas – and tree-felling behaviour can cause conflict. One of the key objectives of the partnership over the five year trial is to gather evidence to clarify the positive and negative impacts of this species and the management techniques that will likely be required in the future to minimise any detrimental impacts of an increasing population.”

An ‘overwhelming experience’

Tom Buckley captured the fabulous footage of the beaver and kits. He said: “When I saw these new born baby beavers (kits) I was totally overwhelmed and thought it must be a miracle. My first sighting of this year’s new born kits was when I saw their mother swimming with one of them in her mouth to an area nearby where their father was waiting to greet them.

“One of the kits, however, seemed extremely unhappy to be out in the big wide world and as soon as its mother let it go it rushed back to its burrow. Not surprising really – the world can be a very scary place. This was possibly their first experience of what lies outside of their burrow.”

The births signal the latest chapter in a story which has attracted great support from the local community. Devon Wildlife Trust is leading the River Otter Beaver Trial in partnership with landowner Clinton Devon Estates, the University of Exeter and the Derek Gow Partnership.

The Wildlife Trusts are at the forefront of bringing back beavers to the UK.

The forest of Yatir in Israel is a magnificent achievement. A mixed forest that has been progressively planted since 1966, it now covers 30 square kilometres of the northern Negev.

And as it has expanded, the forest has rolled back the desert on the arid heights north-east of Beersheba, replacing barren bones of rock and sand with 4 million mainly native trees: Jerusalem pine and cypress, Atlantic terebinth, tamarisk, Christ’s-thorn jujube, carob, pistachio, olive, fig and acacia.

And now it is set for a significant expansion over the Bedouin village of Atir. There’s just one problem: the Bedouin are still there. There are there legally. And they have no desire to leave.

Moreover the Bedouin were settled there by Irael itself, in 1956, when the military government moved the Bedouin Abu Al-Qi’an tribe to Atir, which is registered by Israel as state land, after their forced displacement from their original homes of Khirbet Zubaleh in 1948.

Trees before people. And one People, before another

“Apparently in Israeli democracy, the state is permitted to uproot Arabs from their homes and plant trees in their place”, comments Ali Abu Al-Qi’an, a resident of Atir.

At first glance his comment would appear to be a joke or an exaggerated statement – but it is neither. In one sentence, Ali, an Arab Bedouin citizen of Israel, summarized the grim fate of his village of Atir, located in the Naqab (Negev).

The case of Atir is intricately tied with that of its neighboring twin village, Umm al-Hiran, where native Bedouin were also resettled in 1956. Decades later, in 2002, the state announced plans to retake the lands and buildings of Umm al-Hiran, and evict the residents again. The village will be demolished to build a Jewish town over its ruins.

And Atir is to be destroyed in order to expand the man-made forest of ‘Yatir’, which is sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Atir’s 500 residents, like Umm al-Hiran’s residents, will be relocated to the government-planned township of Hura.

A registed UK charity with distinguished patrons

The JNF, which counts Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Professor David Bellamy among its Patrons (and David Cameron too, until he was forced to resign in 2011) is a UK registered charity.

And it is curently raising funds to plant trees in Israel as “a meaningful way to commemorate special events such as births, anniversaries, weddings, bar / bat mitzvahs, birthdays, memorials and other occasions.”

The pitch continues: “JNF UK will help you put down roots in Israel and commemorate a life, achievement or milestone of a loved one in a way that will provide long-term benefits to the people and land of Israel.” But not, it would seem, for its non-Jewish Bedouin residents.

Atir is hardly the first case in which forestation has been used by Israel and the JNF as a method of displacement and land grabbing against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Another is the village of al-Arakib, which had to be demolished 18 times before its people were finally forced out in 2011.

In addition to designating areas as ‘state lands’ like in the Naqab and the occupied Jordan Valley, the policy is also facilitated by the Land Ordinance of 1943, a law dating to the British colonial mandate, which allows the state to confiscate and use lands for “public purposes.”

The results of this policy have included the establishment of ‘Ambassadors Forest’ and ‘God-TV Forest’ over the lands of Al-Araqib in the Naqab; ‘Ramot Menashe Park’ over Lajoun in the Triangle; ‘South Africa Forest’ over Lubya in the Galilee; and ‘Canada Park’ over Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba outside Jerusalem, among many others.

As historian Ilan Pappe described, “wherever almond and fig trees, olive groves or clusters of cactus are found, there once stood a Palestinian village: still blossoming afresh each year, these trees are all that remain.”

A legally sanctioned land grab

In a 2-1 ruling last month, the Israeli High Court acknowledged that the Bedouin residents were not on the lands illegally, as the state had claimed. However, the Court nevertheless approved the state’s ‘right’ to carry out its agenda.

Justices Rubinstein and Hendel argued that the plan for the land was “sufficiently important to justify the alleged harms involved in its achievement.” In other words, they had no objections to violating the Bedouins’ rights in order for Jewish citizens and the Jewish National Fund to benefit in their stead.

“We went to the courts seeking justice, but the judges only gave a rubber stamp to the state’s plans”, said Ali. “They admitted that we were allowed on this land, and yet they still saw us as zo’ran(‘troublemakers’).” With a chuckle, he added, “I suppose that somehow makes us ‘licensed troublemakers’.”

Justice Rubinstein added in the ruling that the state’s offer to move the Bedouin villagers to Hura served as ample compensation for the residents to leave their villages. But this has been strongly refuted by the villagers, their attorneys, and the Hura Municipality.

“We have an expert opinion showing that not only are the Hura neighborhoods unready to absorb the villagers, but the municipality is dealing with a housing crisis and other social problems among the residents already living there”, said Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany, one of the lawyers representing the village.

“Even so, regardless of any offers the state makes, it is still legally and morally absurd to remove hundreds of men, women and children from their homes just to replace them with a forest and Jewish town. It is racist and discriminatory at its core.”

‘This is our so-called democracy’

In an ironical twist, research carried out at Yatir Forest is pioneering methods that would allow the Bedouin to continue to graze their animals on forest land, without detriment. A study within Yatir Forest, reports the JNF, is investigating

“annual and multi-annual growth, where controlled grazing by flocks from local Bedouin villages is permitted within the forest; an arrangement has been in existence in the last few years to the mutual satisfaction of both KKL-JNF foresters and Bedouin owners of flocks.”

With the imminent destruction of their villages, any “mutual satisfaction” is surely wearing thin among the Bedouin. But Ali retains hope that Atir’s eviction can be forestalled, believing that public action and attention can help pressure the government and courts to reconsider their decision.

But he recognizes that the problem is much deeper than his own village’s struggle, emphasizing that the state continues to view the native Arabs as people that did not belong to the land, regardless of their citizenship.

“We have Israeli IDs, we work, we respect the law, but this means little to the state. Instead they tell us that a plant brought over from Europe has more rights than a non-Jew who was born and raised here.”

Scanning over the village, he shakes his head and says: “This is our so-called ‘democracy’.”

Amjad Iraqi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Tira who has lived between Israel/Palestine, Kenya and Canada. He works as projects & international advocacy coordinator at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, based in Haifa.

This article is based on one originally published on 972 Mag with additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The forest of Yatir in Israel is a magnificent achievement. A mixed forest that has been progressively planted since 1966, it now covers 30 square kilometres of the northern Negev.

And as it has expanded, the forest has rolled back the desert on the arid heights north-east of Beersheba, replacing barren bones of rock and sand with 4 million mainly native trees: Jerusalem pine and cypress, Atlantic terebinth, tamarisk, Christ’s-thorn jujube, carob, pistachio, olive, fig and acacia.

And now it is set for a significant expansion over the Bedouin village of Atir. There’s just one problem: the Bedouin are still there. There are there legally. And they have no desire to leave.

Moreover the Bedouin were settled there by Irael itself, in 1956, when the military government moved the Bedouin Abu Al-Qi’an tribe to Atir, which is registered by Israel as state land, after their forced displacement from their original homes of Khirbet Zubaleh in 1948.

Trees before people. And one People, before another

“Apparently in Israeli democracy, the state is permitted to uproot Arabs from their homes and plant trees in their place”, comments Ali Abu Al-Qi’an, a resident of Atir.

At first glance his comment would appear to be a joke or an exaggerated statement – but it is neither. In one sentence, Ali, an Arab Bedouin citizen of Israel, summarized the grim fate of his village of Atir, located in the Naqab (Negev).

The case of Atir is intricately tied with that of its neighboring twin village, Umm al-Hiran, where native Bedouin were also resettled in 1956. Decades later, in 2002, the state announced plans to retake the lands and buildings of Umm al-Hiran, and evict the residents again. The village will be demolished to build a Jewish town over its ruins.

And Atir is to be destroyed in order to expand the man-made forest of ‘Yatir’, which is sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Atir’s 500 residents, like Umm al-Hiran’s residents, will be relocated to the government-planned township of Hura.

A registed UK charity with distinguished patrons

The JNF, which counts Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Professor David Bellamy among its Patrons (and David Cameron too, until he was forced to resign in 2011) is a UK registered charity.

And it is curently raising funds to plant trees in Israel as “a meaningful way to commemorate special events such as births, anniversaries, weddings, bar / bat mitzvahs, birthdays, memorials and other occasions.”

The pitch continues: “JNF UK will help you put down roots in Israel and commemorate a life, achievement or milestone of a loved one in a way that will provide long-term benefits to the people and land of Israel.” But not, it would seem, for its non-Jewish Bedouin residents.

Atir is hardly the first case in which forestation has been used by Israel and the JNF as a method of displacement and land grabbing against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Another is the village of al-Arakib, which had to be demolished 18 times before its people were finally forced out in 2011.

In addition to designating areas as ‘state lands’ like in the Naqab and the occupied Jordan Valley, the policy is also facilitated by the Land Ordinance of 1943, a law dating to the British colonial mandate, which allows the state to confiscate and use lands for “public purposes.”

The results of this policy have included the establishment of ‘Ambassadors Forest’ and ‘God-TV Forest’ over the lands of Al-Araqib in the Naqab; ‘Ramot Menashe Park’ over Lajoun in the Triangle; ‘South Africa Forest’ over Lubya in the Galilee; and ‘Canada Park’ over Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba outside Jerusalem, among many others.

As historian Ilan Pappe described, “wherever almond and fig trees, olive groves or clusters of cactus are found, there once stood a Palestinian village: still blossoming afresh each year, these trees are all that remain.”

A legally sanctioned land grab

In a 2-1 ruling last month, the Israeli High Court acknowledged that the Bedouin residents were not on the lands illegally, as the state had claimed. However, the Court nevertheless approved the state’s ‘right’ to carry out its agenda.

Justices Rubinstein and Hendel argued that the plan for the land was “sufficiently important to justify the alleged harms involved in its achievement.” In other words, they had no objections to violating the Bedouins’ rights in order for Jewish citizens and the Jewish National Fund to benefit in their stead.

“We went to the courts seeking justice, but the judges only gave a rubber stamp to the state’s plans”, said Ali. “They admitted that we were allowed on this land, and yet they still saw us as zo’ran(‘troublemakers’).” With a chuckle, he added, “I suppose that somehow makes us ‘licensed troublemakers’.”

Justice Rubinstein added in the ruling that the state’s offer to move the Bedouin villagers to Hura served as ample compensation for the residents to leave their villages. But this has been strongly refuted by the villagers, their attorneys, and the Hura Municipality.

“We have an expert opinion showing that not only are the Hura neighborhoods unready to absorb the villagers, but the municipality is dealing with a housing crisis and other social problems among the residents already living there”, said Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany, one of the lawyers representing the village.

“Even so, regardless of any offers the state makes, it is still legally and morally absurd to remove hundreds of men, women and children from their homes just to replace them with a forest and Jewish town. It is racist and discriminatory at its core.”

‘This is our so-called democracy’

In an ironical twist, research carried out at Yatir Forest is pioneering methods that would allow the Bedouin to continue to graze their animals on forest land, without detriment. A study within Yatir Forest, reports the JNF, is investigating

“annual and multi-annual growth, where controlled grazing by flocks from local Bedouin villages is permitted within the forest; an arrangement has been in existence in the last few years to the mutual satisfaction of both KKL-JNF foresters and Bedouin owners of flocks.”

With the imminent destruction of their villages, any “mutual satisfaction” is surely wearing thin among the Bedouin. But Ali retains hope that Atir’s eviction can be forestalled, believing that public action and attention can help pressure the government and courts to reconsider their decision.

But he recognizes that the problem is much deeper than his own village’s struggle, emphasizing that the state continues to view the native Arabs as people that did not belong to the land, regardless of their citizenship.

“We have Israeli IDs, we work, we respect the law, but this means little to the state. Instead they tell us that a plant brought over from Europe has more rights than a non-Jew who was born and raised here.”

Scanning over the village, he shakes his head and says: “This is our so-called ‘democracy’.”

Amjad Iraqi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Tira who has lived between Israel/Palestine, Kenya and Canada. He works as projects & international advocacy coordinator at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, based in Haifa.

This article is based on one originally published on 972 Mag with additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The forest of Yatir in Israel is a magnificent achievement. A mixed forest that has been progressively planted since 1966, it now covers 30 square kilometres of the northern Negev.

And as it has expanded, the forest has rolled back the desert on the arid heights north-east of Beersheba, replacing barren bones of rock and sand with 4 million mainly native trees: Jerusalem pine and cypress, Atlantic terebinth, tamarisk, Christ’s-thorn jujube, carob, pistachio, olive, fig and acacia.

And now it is set for a significant expansion over the Bedouin village of Atir. There’s just one problem: the Bedouin are still there. There are there legally. And they have no desire to leave.

Moreover the Bedouin were settled there by Irael itself, in 1956, when the military government moved the Bedouin Abu Al-Qi’an tribe to Atir, which is registered by Israel as state land, after their forced displacement from their original homes of Khirbet Zubaleh in 1948.

Trees before people. And one People, before another

“Apparently in Israeli democracy, the state is permitted to uproot Arabs from their homes and plant trees in their place”, comments Ali Abu Al-Qi’an, a resident of Atir.

At first glance his comment would appear to be a joke or an exaggerated statement – but it is neither. In one sentence, Ali, an Arab Bedouin citizen of Israel, summarized the grim fate of his village of Atir, located in the Naqab (Negev).

The case of Atir is intricately tied with that of its neighboring twin village, Umm al-Hiran, where native Bedouin were also resettled in 1956. Decades later, in 2002, the state announced plans to retake the lands and buildings of Umm al-Hiran, and evict the residents again. The village will be demolished to build a Jewish town over its ruins.

And Atir is to be destroyed in order to expand the man-made forest of ‘Yatir’, which is sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Atir’s 500 residents, like Umm al-Hiran’s residents, will be relocated to the government-planned township of Hura.

A registed UK charity with distinguished patrons

The JNF, which counts Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Professor David Bellamy among its Patrons (and David Cameron too, until he was forced to resign in 2011) is a UK registered charity.

And it is curently raising funds to plant trees in Israel as “a meaningful way to commemorate special events such as births, anniversaries, weddings, bar / bat mitzvahs, birthdays, memorials and other occasions.”

The pitch continues: “JNF UK will help you put down roots in Israel and commemorate a life, achievement or milestone of a loved one in a way that will provide long-term benefits to the people and land of Israel.” But not, it would seem, for its non-Jewish Bedouin residents.

Atir is hardly the first case in which forestation has been used by Israel and the JNF as a method of displacement and land grabbing against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Another is the village of al-Arakib, which had to be demolished 18 times before its people were finally forced out in 2011.

In addition to designating areas as ‘state lands’ like in the Naqab and the occupied Jordan Valley, the policy is also facilitated by the Land Ordinance of 1943, a law dating to the British colonial mandate, which allows the state to confiscate and use lands for “public purposes.”

The results of this policy have included the establishment of ‘Ambassadors Forest’ and ‘God-TV Forest’ over the lands of Al-Araqib in the Naqab; ‘Ramot Menashe Park’ over Lajoun in the Triangle; ‘South Africa Forest’ over Lubya in the Galilee; and ‘Canada Park’ over Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba outside Jerusalem, among many others.

As historian Ilan Pappe described, “wherever almond and fig trees, olive groves or clusters of cactus are found, there once stood a Palestinian village: still blossoming afresh each year, these trees are all that remain.”

A legally sanctioned land grab

In a 2-1 ruling last month, the Israeli High Court acknowledged that the Bedouin residents were not on the lands illegally, as the state had claimed. However, the Court nevertheless approved the state’s ‘right’ to carry out its agenda.

Justices Rubinstein and Hendel argued that the plan for the land was “sufficiently important to justify the alleged harms involved in its achievement.” In other words, they had no objections to violating the Bedouins’ rights in order for Jewish citizens and the Jewish National Fund to benefit in their stead.

“We went to the courts seeking justice, but the judges only gave a rubber stamp to the state’s plans”, said Ali. “They admitted that we were allowed on this land, and yet they still saw us as zo’ran(‘troublemakers’).” With a chuckle, he added, “I suppose that somehow makes us ‘licensed troublemakers’.”

Justice Rubinstein added in the ruling that the state’s offer to move the Bedouin villagers to Hura served as ample compensation for the residents to leave their villages. But this has been strongly refuted by the villagers, their attorneys, and the Hura Municipality.

“We have an expert opinion showing that not only are the Hura neighborhoods unready to absorb the villagers, but the municipality is dealing with a housing crisis and other social problems among the residents already living there”, said Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany, one of the lawyers representing the village.

“Even so, regardless of any offers the state makes, it is still legally and morally absurd to remove hundreds of men, women and children from their homes just to replace them with a forest and Jewish town. It is racist and discriminatory at its core.”

‘This is our so-called democracy’

In an ironical twist, research carried out at Yatir Forest is pioneering methods that would allow the Bedouin to continue to graze their animals on forest land, without detriment. A study within Yatir Forest, reports the JNF, is investigating

“annual and multi-annual growth, where controlled grazing by flocks from local Bedouin villages is permitted within the forest; an arrangement has been in existence in the last few years to the mutual satisfaction of both KKL-JNF foresters and Bedouin owners of flocks.”

With the imminent destruction of their villages, any “mutual satisfaction” is surely wearing thin among the Bedouin. But Ali retains hope that Atir’s eviction can be forestalled, believing that public action and attention can help pressure the government and courts to reconsider their decision.

But he recognizes that the problem is much deeper than his own village’s struggle, emphasizing that the state continues to view the native Arabs as people that did not belong to the land, regardless of their citizenship.

“We have Israeli IDs, we work, we respect the law, but this means little to the state. Instead they tell us that a plant brought over from Europe has more rights than a non-Jew who was born and raised here.”

Scanning over the village, he shakes his head and says: “This is our so-called ‘democracy’.”

Amjad Iraqi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Tira who has lived between Israel/Palestine, Kenya and Canada. He works as projects & international advocacy coordinator at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, based in Haifa.

This article is based on one originally published on 972 Mag with additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The forest of Yatir in Israel is a magnificent achievement. A mixed forest that has been progressively planted since 1966, it now covers 30 square kilometres of the northern Negev.

And as it has expanded, the forest has rolled back the desert on the arid heights north-east of Beersheba, replacing barren bones of rock and sand with 4 million mainly native trees: Jerusalem pine and cypress, Atlantic terebinth, tamarisk, Christ’s-thorn jujube, carob, pistachio, olive, fig and acacia.

And now it is set for a significant expansion over the Bedouin village of Atir. There’s just one problem: the Bedouin are still there. There are there legally. And they have no desire to leave.

Moreover the Bedouin were settled there by Irael itself, in 1956, when the military government moved the Bedouin Abu Al-Qi’an tribe to Atir, which is registered by Israel as state land, after their forced displacement from their original homes of Khirbet Zubaleh in 1948.

Trees before people. And one People, before another

“Apparently in Israeli democracy, the state is permitted to uproot Arabs from their homes and plant trees in their place”, comments Ali Abu Al-Qi’an, a resident of Atir.

At first glance his comment would appear to be a joke or an exaggerated statement – but it is neither. In one sentence, Ali, an Arab Bedouin citizen of Israel, summarized the grim fate of his village of Atir, located in the Naqab (Negev).

The case of Atir is intricately tied with that of its neighboring twin village, Umm al-Hiran, where native Bedouin were also resettled in 1956. Decades later, in 2002, the state announced plans to retake the lands and buildings of Umm al-Hiran, and evict the residents again. The village will be demolished to build a Jewish town over its ruins.

And Atir is to be destroyed in order to expand the man-made forest of ‘Yatir’, which is sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Atir’s 500 residents, like Umm al-Hiran’s residents, will be relocated to the government-planned township of Hura.

A registed UK charity with distinguished patrons

The JNF, which counts Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Professor David Bellamy among its Patrons (and David Cameron too, until he was forced to resign in 2011) is a UK registered charity.

And it is curently raising funds to plant trees in Israel as “a meaningful way to commemorate special events such as births, anniversaries, weddings, bar / bat mitzvahs, birthdays, memorials and other occasions.”

The pitch continues: “JNF UK will help you put down roots in Israel and commemorate a life, achievement or milestone of a loved one in a way that will provide long-term benefits to the people and land of Israel.” But not, it would seem, for its non-Jewish Bedouin residents.

Atir is hardly the first case in which forestation has been used by Israel and the JNF as a method of displacement and land grabbing against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Another is the village of al-Arakib, which had to be demolished 18 times before its people were finally forced out in 2011.

In addition to designating areas as ‘state lands’ like in the Naqab and the occupied Jordan Valley, the policy is also facilitated by the Land Ordinance of 1943, a law dating to the British colonial mandate, which allows the state to confiscate and use lands for “public purposes.”

The results of this policy have included the establishment of ‘Ambassadors Forest’ and ‘God-TV Forest’ over the lands of Al-Araqib in the Naqab; ‘Ramot Menashe Park’ over Lajoun in the Triangle; ‘South Africa Forest’ over Lubya in the Galilee; and ‘Canada Park’ over Imwas, Yalo and Beit Nouba outside Jerusalem, among many others.

As historian Ilan Pappe described, “wherever almond and fig trees, olive groves or clusters of cactus are found, there once stood a Palestinian village: still blossoming afresh each year, these trees are all that remain.”

A legally sanctioned land grab

In a 2-1 ruling last month, the Israeli High Court acknowledged that the Bedouin residents were not on the lands illegally, as the state had claimed. However, the Court nevertheless approved the state’s ‘right’ to carry out its agenda.

Justices Rubinstein and Hendel argued that the plan for the land was “sufficiently important to justify the alleged harms involved in its achievement.” In other words, they had no objections to violating the Bedouins’ rights in order for Jewish citizens and the Jewish National Fund to benefit in their stead.

“We went to the courts seeking justice, but the judges only gave a rubber stamp to the state’s plans”, said Ali. “They admitted that we were allowed on this land, and yet they still saw us as zo’ran(‘troublemakers’).” With a chuckle, he added, “I suppose that somehow makes us ‘licensed troublemakers’.”

Justice Rubinstein added in the ruling that the state’s offer to move the Bedouin villagers to Hura served as ample compensation for the residents to leave their villages. But this has been strongly refuted by the villagers, their attorneys, and the Hura Municipality.

“We have an expert opinion showing that not only are the Hura neighborhoods unready to absorb the villagers, but the municipality is dealing with a housing crisis and other social problems among the residents already living there”, said Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany, one of the lawyers representing the village.

“Even so, regardless of any offers the state makes, it is still legally and morally absurd to remove hundreds of men, women and children from their homes just to replace them with a forest and Jewish town. It is racist and discriminatory at its core.”

‘This is our so-called democracy’

In an ironical twist, research carried out at Yatir Forest is pioneering methods that would allow the Bedouin to continue to graze their animals on forest land, without detriment. A study within Yatir Forest, reports the JNF, is investigating

“annual and multi-annual growth, where controlled grazing by flocks from local Bedouin villages is permitted within the forest; an arrangement has been in existence in the last few years to the mutual satisfaction of both KKL-JNF foresters and Bedouin owners of flocks.”

With the imminent destruction of their villages, any “mutual satisfaction” is surely wearing thin among the Bedouin. But Ali retains hope that Atir’s eviction can be forestalled, believing that public action and attention can help pressure the government and courts to reconsider their decision.

But he recognizes that the problem is much deeper than his own village’s struggle, emphasizing that the state continues to view the native Arabs as people that did not belong to the land, regardless of their citizenship.

“We have Israeli IDs, we work, we respect the law, but this means little to the state. Instead they tell us that a plant brought over from Europe has more rights than a non-Jew who was born and raised here.”

Scanning over the village, he shakes his head and says: “This is our so-called ‘democracy’.”

Amjad Iraqi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Tira who has lived between Israel/Palestine, Kenya and Canada. He works as projects & international advocacy coordinator at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, based in Haifa.

This article is based on one originally published on 972 Mag with additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment has quickly made him one of the world’s most significant figures in the climate debate.

His message was notable not just for its acceptance of mainstream climate science but also for its outright rejection of market logic.

Nowhere is this more clear than when he addresses the various emissions trading and carbon offsetting schemes that leave decisions such as whether to phase out coal power in the hands of the market.

These ‘carbon markets’, he said, are a “ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.”

If only our politicians were able to see this as clearly as Pope Francis. As we approach the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris, carbon markets just won’t go away – even despite the fact market solutions actively hinder our ability to make serious emissions cuts.

The first round of pre-Paris negotiations in Geneva in February produced a draft negotiating text that is littered with references to new and expanded market mechanisms. The market-based agenda was pushed by negotiators from the EU, US, Japan and Brazil and provoked an optimistic response from financial, fossil fuel and other industry interests at the recent Carbon Expo in Barcelona.

It looked like a good idea at the time …

Ahead of Paris, many will ask whether we are in for a repeat of the disastrous Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009. But given the current focus on market-based approaches, it is necessary to look at the record of the carbon markets that formed the basis of the agreement that a Paris deal will replace: the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto was a landmark agreement that bound developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% between 2008 and 2012 from 1990 levels. It also included a number of novel market instruments for meeting that goal – one of the most important of which was the Clean Development Mechanism.

The CDM allows developed countries to substitute domestic efforts to combat climate change for emissions reductions generated by projects in developing countries. The operators of these projects, which can be anything from wind farms to rubbish dumps, are awarded ‘carbon credits’ for each tonne of carbon they reduce compared to what would otherwise have occurred.

The credits are then traded, bought and surrendered by governments that ratified Kyoto, or corporations covered by the EU’s Emissions Trading System, as an alternative to reducing their own emissions.

Paying to export pollution

We have carried out research, recently published in a special carbon offsetting edition of the journal Environment and Planning A, which explores some of the problems with the CDM.

We used the Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited industrial gas destruction facility in Gujarat, India, as a case study – it was the first of more than 7,000 registered CDM projects. Our findings demonstrate why governments should exclude carbon markets from international climate negotiations.

Between 2005 and 2013, the GFL project was awarded more than 55m carbon offset credits for destroying a potent greenhouse gas known as HFC-23, a by-product of the refrigerant gases produced by the factory. Sales of the credits proved to be extremely lucrative for the company, bringing in more than half a billion US dollars and generating business for associated carbon trading industries.

However, local communities surrounding the project weren’t so happy. They claim to have suffered from pollution from the GFL plant for many years and have had to put up resistance. Local villagers, GFL workers and activists from NGOs told us the air, soil and water pollution generated by the plant had harmed their health and agricultural output.

The CDM entrenched and exacerbated these problems as it encouraged the company to maximise the production of refrigerant gases that were causing the pollution in order to destroy HFC-23 and receive as many carbon credits as possible.

The ‘polluter is paid’ principle

The company was effectively profiting from local pollution in order to let richer nations of the hook for their own emissions. While working on this article we put these accusations to GFL but the company did not respond.

This perversity benefited the European corporations that purchased the credits but was bad news for the climate. For example, EDF Energy, which made a pro-carbon market submission to the UK’s Energy and Climate Change Committee, surrendered more than 200,000 GFL offset credits.

The purchases allowed the company’s fossil fuel power stations in the UK to pollute over their level of allocated by the EU, while at the same time EDF could justify its attempts to cultivate a ‘green’ marketing image, such as sponsoring the 2012 London Olympics as “official sustainability partner“.

Campaigns from NGOs such as Carbon Market Watch and Paryavaran Mitra resulted in the EU banning the use of HFC-23 offsets and the United Nations making some changes to rules governing carbon credits. However, the poor social and ecological impacts of the GFL project were the product of the economic imperatives that underpin carbon markets in general.

Market mayhem

Carbon markets are in fact designed to seek out cheap emissions reductions such as HFC-23 destruction over fundamental structural changes to energy systems away from fossil fuels and towards renewables.

Researchers and activists have linked this profit-driven logic to the creative accounting, financial fraud, phantom emissions reductions and polluter subsidies that have riddled carbon markets, arguing they cannot be reformed and should be scrapped.

Further, the negative impacts of CDM offset projects have not been restricted to large industrial projects like HFC-23 destruction, with projects from forestry to biogas and coal to wind, repeatedly being exposed as fuelling local conflicts in developing countries.

Expanding protections for local communities and environments beyond the ‘boutique‘ schemes currently in place face strong structural barriers because they interfere with the profits of project developers or fossil fuel industries.

As a result, the continuation, expansion or creation of new market mechanisms in the Paris agreement is likely to generate further damaging outcomes at offset projects, mostly in the Global South. At the same time, relying on carbon markets will work against the capacity of governments around the world to end the era of coal, oil and gas.

Policies that benefit the already powerful and harm those most affected by climate change? Nothing could be further from Pope Francis’s message linking climate issues with development and global justice.

Perhaps he’ll be the man to finally make inroads with the people that matter, as governments will be faced with a stark choice in Paris: continue with the failed market-based approach or plan a serious transition away from fossil fuels.

Steffen Böhm is Professor in Management and Sustainability, and Director, Essex Sustainability Institute at University of Essex.

Gareth Bryant is Ph.D Candidate and Teaching Fellow at University of Sydney.

Siddhartha Dabhi is Researcher in Ecology, Environment and Sustainable Development, at Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

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

One of my favourite films is Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. In the final scenes a guard, strapping the hero into an evil-looking torture chair, advises him,

“Don’t fight it son. Confess quickly! If you hold out too long you could jeopardize your credit rating.”

In Brazil, I always found the bizarre world of a repressive bureaucracy entertaining – in part because I’ve spent a proportion of my working life involved in public inquiries and regulatory processes where sometimes bizarre, self-justifying administrative actions are commonplace.

Unfortunately, I believe that such aspects of the film are fast becoming a reality in Britain.

From my recent discussions while touring around Britain, most people, it would appear, are not aware of what Government is doing to our justice system – and why that makes the events depicted in Brazil more ‘real’ than before.

To understand our justice system, go there

Most of you will probably not understand what I’m talking about – until, that is, you become unwittingly enmeshed in the court process.

Last Thursday I spent a second day waiting in Marylebone Central Magistrates’ Court – the result of a day spent pressing for action on an issue last March.

Looking around the waiting area, I was probably not like most of the people present. I wanted to be there! I wanted to defend my case.

Clearly though most of those waiting their turn on the court’s roster of cases did not like being there. And as I had prepared my case, what I found myself doing was spending time observing my fellow defendants rather than worrying about the details of my own situation.

Queuing to inform the clerk of my attendance just before 10am, the line of people before me were representative of the problems within our justice system:

Some had been there before. Perhaps a number of times. They appeared to treat the experience with a nonchalant acceptance – of a process that was being impersonally done to them, and over which they had little or no control.

Some had legal representation. But as I watched the briefs dash backwards and forwards that morning – trying to deal with cases which they had very little time to examine (some were taking initial instructions just before entering court) – it was clear that justice was under pressure.

And, as I listened-in to the hushed conversations around me, the clear emphasis of that pressure was to “plead guilty” if they wanted to exit this situation as quickly as possible.

Some have no representation. With trepidation, when asked for details by the clerk, they said the dreaded words, “I am representing myself.” In particular I’m thinking of one, apparently ordinary woman in the queue who looked almost moved to tears. When she was told she could see the duty solicitor for advice, her relief was palpable.

That said, under current Government reforms the number of duty solicitors is set to be cut by half.

Trial by ordeal

I cannot fault the calm and courteous court staff, nor the hard pressed solicitors bustling around the building. They’re trying their best to work within an imperfect system.

Increasingly though, and in a nod to the medieval roots of our modern justice system, for most ordinary people ‘the trial’ isn’t where a judge hears the facts. For those who do not have the means or ability to engage with this officious process, the whole legal process itself has become, once more, a ‘trial by ordeal‘.

Recently I have written for The Ecologist about the Government’s reforms to judicial review, and other parts of the general law – and how this will enable the Government to impose policy unchallenged.

Judicial review is of course, in terms of the number of all cases, a rare event in our legal process. Most everyday cases are summary offences – such as traffic offences. The fact that such cases are more numerous magnifies the impact of the recent ‘reforms’, as they involve many times more people that the reforms to judicial review.

The most significant are the changes to legal aid, which began with the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. As with the cuts to duty solicitors noted above, these changes strike at the heart of our basic rights to access the justice system.

One of the early impacts was the cut in funding for law centres, which gave free advice to the public. Many have been forced to close as a result.

The Government’s on-going project of legal aid reform will leave many with no choice but to turn up at the court and, unless they have the money for professional representation, throw themselves into that ordeal unaided.

Incentivizing the innocent to plead guilty

The most recent part of this long-standing Government strategy to reduce our participation in democracy has been the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. For me, this law enacts the most damaging of the reforms to date.

In the film Brazil, perhaps alluding to the real-world ‘bullet fee’ charges made by executioners, one of the unjust means of oppression depicted are the charges for “information retrieval”: those detained must pay for their torture. Prisoners are even sold loans and other financial services while in detention to cover the costs of those fees.

That’s not as far fetched as it seems. A few weeks ago John Oliver produced a brilliant exposé of America’s bail bond system – and how it disproportionately hits the poor, in effect creating a modern ‘debtors’ prison‘ system. US courts routinely set bail and other administration charges out of all proportion to a person’s income, and imprisons those who cannot pay.

Under the US justice system, pressure is put on people to plead guilty to crimes they have not committed. That is because the immediate financial and practical implications of pleading their innocence are far worse than the punishment for the crime. That pressure is exacerbated by a lack of timely and adequate legal advice.

And for those without means, but who have the courage to plead ‘not guilty’, that also leads to egregious miscarriages of justice. I believe that is where the British justice system is heading, unless we do something to stop it.

The ‘Criminal Courts Charge’ – justice costs, and you will pay

Under the reforms ushered in by section 54 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, in future, when a court hands down certain decisions, in addition to a fine you will now receive an administration bill – known as the Criminal Courts Charge.

The best way to think of this measure is as a ‘poll tax’ for the justice system.

Previously courts could impose costs orders as part of judgements – though the ability to pay was still assessed as part of that process. The new system gets rid of means assessments, and sets a fixed tariff for all cases irrespective of their specific complexity.

Rather like the American system, with its emphasis on cheaper plea bargains versus high-cost bail, this process is incentivized with significantly lower charges for those who immediately plead guilty.

These charges are set under the regulations enacted at the same time as the Act was commended in April 2015 – and are explained it the accompanying Department of Justice guidance. Currently the ‘Criminal Courts Charge’ is set as follows:

• £150 if you plead ‘guilty’ to a summary offence in a Magistrates’ Court;
• £180 if you plead ‘guilty’ to a more serious ‘either way’ offence in a Magistrates’ Court;
• £520 if you plead ‘not guilty’ to a summary offence in a Magistrates’ Court and lose the case;
• £900 if you plead ‘guilty’ to a serious offence in a Crown Court;
• £1,000 if you plead ‘not guilty’ to a more serious ‘either way’ offence in a Magistrate’s Court and lose the case;
• £1,200 if you plead ‘not guilty’ to a serious offence in a Crown Court and lose the case.

And if you try to appeal your conviction to a higher court, and lose, you’ll get another £150 bill on top of the above charges.

Ignoring the ability to pay – is that equality before the law?

The way the Government has introduced this legislation is also, like the US system, guaranteed to hit the poorest the hardest.

Few outside of the legal profession appear to know of this issue today – but it is almost certain to become a significant concern once its implications have worked through the criminal justice system in a few years time.

Currently the fines imposed by courts are means tested. When you go to court you fill out an official form with details of your income and outgoings. When the court imposes a fine, it assesses your liabilities and sets the fine accordingly.

This varying scale can be considered ‘just’ because, for a similar offence, and reflecting a person’s lifestyle and disposable income, everyone receives a fine which is set proportionately to their ability to pay.

Under the new system, the Criminal Courts Charge is not means tested – the poorest have to pay the same as the richest. Both the Law Society and the Magistrates’ Association have expressed a concern that the charge may encourage poorer defendants to plead guilty rather than risk the possibility of being convicted.

And in the age of the computer database, as is now becoming apparent in the USA, being pressured to plead guilty when you need not has consequences which can last a lifetime.

For those who cannot or will not pay, the Government will ‘attach’ their earnings, or benefits, through the tax system to recover the charge. This will pile-up further hardship for those on the lowest incomes when there is already concern about the impacts of the Government’s austerity benefit cuts.

With cuts to legal aid, and the funding for duty solicitors at police stations and courts, the pressure for those who cannot afford to contest a case will always be to plead guilty – irrespective of whether they are guilty of the offence or not.

Whether by design or not, we are on course to enact a system of justice every bit as unjust as the US system.

Putting a much higher price tag on ‘conscience’

At the Government’s behest, the courts are making it ever-more expensive to obtain justice. In effect, by introducing something akin to a ‘poll tax‘ for justice, they make it easier for the rich to escape their offences than it is for the poor to demonstrate their innocence.

This constitutes an administrative reversal of the traditional presumption of innocence. And by effectively forcing many poor defendants to please ‘guilty’ regardless of the facts of the case, it will afflict unknown thousands of people with undeserved criminal records and make it even harder for them to rise out of their poverty and exclusion.

In the case of deliberate acts of dissent, however, to conscientiously say ‘no’ to any Government enactment becomes more onerous for the individual. I say that as someone who has embarked on precisely that course of action. Even a minor wilful infraction of the law becomes an expensive undertaking for those who feel compelled to act out of conscience.

Today we have a divisive Government, with an agenda which was not supported by a majority of the electorate. Be it austerity, or energy policy, or reform to the legal system – never have such regressive, wide-ranging and controversial changes been enacted in modern political history.

On the specific point I am challenging, I believe that the law is on the public’s side – and that it is the Government who are breaking the law. But what I have discovered over the last two years, in pursuit of that case, is that there is a much more serious issue at stake here.

Through my past work with those who have experienced what it is to live in a repressive country, I believe that we should all be gravely concerned about the Government’s reforms to the justice system – and what they mean for our future well-being.

Who shall judge the courts themselves?

The true character of a democratic society, as Dostoyevsky stated, can be judged by entering its prisons. But what of the administrative processes before that? What does that tell us about the character of a nation?

What binds us together, more than a monarch or a ballot box, is a sense of shared justice; the belief that our safety and well-being lies within our allegiance to ‘our’ state, its values and its system of laws.

But what if the state becomes prejudiced, for overtly ideological reasons, against those traditions? Are we then necessarily called upon to defend those values through seeking to uphold them?

On that point, I believe we should all take note of the words of a significant figure within modern British political history, John Stuart Mill:

“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

Seriously, if you want to gain a detailed understanding of this issue – perhaps to express your personal opposition to these changes – find yourself a worthy and constructive method to put yourself through this process.

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

A fully referenced version of this article can be found on FRAW.’creaking and outdated’ 

Europe’s weather systems tend to cross the Atlantic and slam into Britain, which should make the UK ideal for wind power.

With very low running costs, cheap and easy integration into the grid in most of the country, and with wind being a mature industry that’s still evolving continuous improvements, how could it not be the country’s cheapest renewable?

Just look at the alternatives. There’s not that much hydro to be harnessed. Tide and wave power aren’t yet ready. Geothermal? This isn’t Iceland, not many volcanoes here. Straightforward, then? No, it never is.

The government has announced it is to end subsidies for onshore windfarms from April 2016, a year earlier than expected. When asked about the decision to withdraw support from a growing industry, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, claimed solar energy is just as cost-effective as onshore wind.

And that’s half-true: it has come down in price so far, so fast, that solar farms are bidding for deals as cheaply as some onshore wind farms. Then again, this government also prefers more costly rooftop installations to solar farms.

Anyway, solar and wind are complementary, not direct substitutes, with wind farms generally generating more power than solar in winter – and at night, of course, or under cloudy skies.

So why is onshore wind more expensive?

Onshore wind is often more expensive than it needs to be in this country. Sure, some onshore wind in Britain is not only the cheapest renewable there is, it’s the cheapest electricity we’ve got from any source, once insurance, pollution and all the other costs are factored in.

However quite a few planned UK onshore windfarms are more expensive than this. Bids to develop onshore wind came in at around £80 per MWh (8p per KWh) in the February 2015 round of CfD allocations, a bidding process meant to reveal the lowest available supply costs. That’s about the same price as some proposed solar parks.

Onshore wind is cheaper in other countries such as Germany (between €0.05 (3.6p) and €0.11 (7.9p) per kWh). That price premium for onshore wind in Britain seems to be back-to-front, given the UK’s powerful wind resource.

There are several compounding factors. Many years of policy uncertainty and persistent meddling with the revenue schemes presents higher risks to investors. Planning regulations in England and Wales have created further uncertainty, with unpredictable local decisions.

Often, rulings will be reversed on appeal, only for the energy secretary to step and reject the application. Investors, faced with higher risk, will require higher rewards.

Even more significantly, investors in wind farm supply chains can choose to locate instead in jurisdictions which offer far greater long-term clarity and security. This is why both Denmark and Germany have strong wind supply chains, and Britain’s is still nascent.

Not only does that mean new turbines typically have to be shipped to the UK from factories overseas, it adds currency risk, and means that less of the money invested stays within the country. So, by removing the policy uncertainties, it is within the government’s power to remove part of the need for onshore wind to be subsidised.

Does onshore wind need subsidy?

The chief assistance for onshore windfarm operators comes in the form of top-up payments from bill-payers, above what the operators receive from selling their electricity in the wholesale markets. The question is to what extent these are a subsidy at all.

Given the payment represents a transfer over and above the market price, it might seem surprising that this is even a question. But it has to be asked, due to a subtle process, known as the merit order effect.

An electricity grid tends to rank different generators in order of marginal cost, prioritising the cheapest forms of generation. This is the merit order. Cheap electricity is brought online first, and the plants with the highest marginal generation cost are saved till last.

The merit-order effect is the reduction in wholesale prices that comes about when more wind is generated. Wind is never the most expensive fuel on the grid, because its fuel is free. The cost of wind power is almost entirely in construction; marginal generation cost is next to nothing.

Therefore when the wind blows and power is generated, it knocks out the most expensive generator (and whether that’s coal or gas, depends on their relative prices, the carbon price, and the relative efficiency of the generators) and it lowers prices across the whole market.

Previous research in Germany and Spain has found that these cost reductions outweigh the revenue support paid to wind. Wind is not subsidised in those two countries – indeed, quite the reverse, wind lowers total costs for consumers. The thing that is called a subsidy, whether existing schemes or future ones, acts to correct a market failure.

Two simple things the government can do

First, it needs to figure out how much of these top-up payments merely reflect the merit order effect, simply levelling the playing field with regard to genuinely subsidised generators such as coal and gas. The rest is subsidy. But we can’t make true progress until we recognise this reality.

Second, government policy could give wind farm developers much greater long-term assurances of a supportive and consistent policy environment, thus lowering their risks and hence lowering costs.

Doing these will improve transparency, and reduce the cost of onshore wind further. It would give certainty to investors through decisiveness and leadership, and it would show that the government is taking a pragmatic and cost-effective approach to tackling climate change.

Andrew ZP Smith is Co-author of the Wind chapter in the forthcoming UKERC book ‘Global Energy’ (Oxford University Press), to be published in September 2015. He is the Academic Head of RCUK Centre for Energy Epidemiology at UCL.

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