If you were to judge the outcome of this month’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit by media reporting, you would come away with the impression that world leaders had made a major breakthrough.

The WTO, which overseas global trading rules, met in Nairobi, Kenya, and attempted to break a nearly 15-year deadlock which has pitched rich nations against developing nations.

The Financial Times hailed last week’s summit as “a victory for the US and EU” and “the final nail in the coffin” of the so-called ‘Doha Development Round’ talks that had been deadlocked since 2001. Much of the rest of the media has echoed this general sentiment.

If this were true, it would be a total disaster for the poorer countries represented at the WTO. Despite the name, the Doha Development Round has little to do with ‘development’ and more to do with liberalising global trade to the benefit of big corporations – like everything about the WTO.

But at least Doha in some way recognised the hypocrisy of rich nations in the WTO: on the one hand forcing southern countries to wrench open their markets and stop protecting their farmers, and on the other hand providing as many subsidies to their own corporations as possible. It was a weak branch that countries like India could cling to in order to say “this is supposed to be about development, but you continue to obstruct our development with your hypocritical trade rules.”

That’s why, in Kenya, rich nations wanted to declare Doha over, and move the WTO onto a whole host of other extremely controversial issues which they could foist on developing countries in the name of ‘free trade’. Highest on the list is so-called ‘investment’.

The idea is that the WTO should develop a set of explicitly pro-big business rules similar to those being discussed in the US-EU deal called TTIP. The dream is that corporations have more rights than human beings, and travel the world unimpeded by democratic laws.

That’s why, in the run up to the conference, many developing countries, led by India, were strongly resisting US-led moves to end the Doha Round and move onto these ‘new issues’. However bad the Doha Round was, it provided a placeholder to allow southern countries to keep their issues on the agenda – like India’s push to be allowed to buy food from farmers at guaranteed prices to stockpile or sell cheaply to the poor.

So what really happened?

The truth is that the outcome was yet another fudge – albeit one that could prove dangerous in the future.

It is true that rich countries succeeded in getting rid of a commitment to continuing the Doha Round in the final text. Instead, the text now merely acknowledges the disagreements over whether to pursue the framework any further. But it’s also true that there was no unambiguous statement that Doha has ended. So that’s a dead heat.

More important was holding out against any mention of the new issues being pushed by rich countries. So even if Doha is destined for a slow death, what takes its place hasn’t yet been agreed. Keeping issues like investment off the agenda was extremely important and testament to the strength of developing country blocs (which the US and EU tried to ‘divide and rule’) and campaigners from across the world.

On the vital issue of whether WTO rules can trump people’s right to food, rich countries didn’t get their way either. Rich countries wanted to rule India’s National Food Security Act out of order. The Act, while successful in reducing poverty and malnutrition in India, has been attacked as being in breach of WTO rules as it involves stockpiling food bought from farmers at fixed (potentially subsidised) prices and distributing it to poor households at a discount.

They failed. India didn’t exactly win either, but at least has a stay of execution. The lack of agreement in Nairobi means that India now has another 2 years until the next ministerial to try and get an agreement for a fairer deal.

A ‘dangerous vacuum’ has been left

Finally, southern countries were successful in securing concessions on cotton (an important issue for states in West Africa in particular) but rich countries wll be the main winners from the ban on agricultural export subsidies, which won’t actually abolish general subsidy schemes like the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which is not explicitly linked to exports or production.

The CAP, which is essentially a huge welfare scheme for (mostly) rich landowners, involves handing out money to owners of land regardless of whether they produce or export anything. The uneven WTO playing field, whereby rich countries’ subsidy schemes are categorised as being ‘allowable’ while poorer countries are prevented from subsidising their farmers, will continue.

As so often at the WTO, no deal would have been better than a bad deal. In the end, there was a deal, but a very vague and weak one. But this could still leave a dangerous vacuum. Without consensus on continuing the ostensibly pro-development Doha Round, by the next ministerial in 2017 there will be greater pressure on WTO members to accept a new agenda based on the interests of richer members.

And regardless of what happens within the WTO process, parallel deals outside the WTO like TTIP will push forward regardless. The danger is that even if no consensus is reached within the WTO, the rich countries will be able to set the rules through a network of bilateral deals that will give other countries no choice but to comply with what will rapidly become a de facto global standard with the WTO increasingly relegated to the sidelines.

The Nairobi deal hasn’t changed what remains a fundamentally unfair system of global trade. But for all that, the Kenya summit did show southern countries can still stand up and prevent the rich world running roughshod over them.

The triumphal rhetoric from the media is unjustified. The outcome could also have been much worse. We have the much maligned ‘deadlock’ at the WTO to thank for that.

Alex Scrivener is policy officer at Global Justice Now.

This article was originally published by Global Justice Now.

If you were to judge the outcome of this month’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit by media reporting, you would come away with the impression that world leaders had made a major breakthrough.

The WTO, which overseas global trading rules, met in Nairobi, Kenya, and attempted to break a nearly 15-year deadlock which has pitched rich nations against developing nations.

The Financial Times hailed last week’s summit as “a victory for the US and EU” and “the final nail in the coffin” of the so-called ‘Doha Development Round’ talks that had been deadlocked since 2001. Much of the rest of the media has echoed this general sentiment.

If this were true, it would be a total disaster for the poorer countries represented at the WTO. Despite the name, the Doha Development Round has little to do with ‘development’ and more to do with liberalising global trade to the benefit of big corporations – like everything about the WTO.

But at least Doha in some way recognised the hypocrisy of rich nations in the WTO: on the one hand forcing southern countries to wrench open their markets and stop protecting their farmers, and on the other hand providing as many subsidies to their own corporations as possible. It was a weak branch that countries like India could cling to in order to say “this is supposed to be about development, but you continue to obstruct our development with your hypocritical trade rules.”

That’s why, in Kenya, rich nations wanted to declare Doha over, and move the WTO onto a whole host of other extremely controversial issues which they could foist on developing countries in the name of ‘free trade’. Highest on the list is so-called ‘investment’.

The idea is that the WTO should develop a set of explicitly pro-big business rules similar to those being discussed in the US-EU deal called TTIP. The dream is that corporations have more rights than human beings, and travel the world unimpeded by democratic laws.

That’s why, in the run up to the conference, many developing countries, led by India, were strongly resisting US-led moves to end the Doha Round and move onto these ‘new issues’. However bad the Doha Round was, it provided a placeholder to allow southern countries to keep their issues on the agenda – like India’s push to be allowed to buy food from farmers at guaranteed prices to stockpile or sell cheaply to the poor.

So what really happened?

The truth is that the outcome was yet another fudge – albeit one that could prove dangerous in the future.

It is true that rich countries succeeded in getting rid of a commitment to continuing the Doha Round in the final text. Instead, the text now merely acknowledges the disagreements over whether to pursue the framework any further. But it’s also true that there was no unambiguous statement that Doha has ended. So that’s a dead heat.

More important was holding out against any mention of the new issues being pushed by rich countries. So even if Doha is destined for a slow death, what takes its place hasn’t yet been agreed. Keeping issues like investment off the agenda was extremely important and testament to the strength of developing country blocs (which the US and EU tried to ‘divide and rule’) and campaigners from across the world.

On the vital issue of whether WTO rules can trump people’s right to food, rich countries didn’t get their way either. Rich countries wanted to rule India’s National Food Security Act out of order. The Act, while successful in reducing poverty and malnutrition in India, has been attacked as being in breach of WTO rules as it involves stockpiling food bought from farmers at fixed (potentially subsidised) prices and distributing it to poor households at a discount.

They failed. India didn’t exactly win either, but at least has a stay of execution. The lack of agreement in Nairobi means that India now has another 2 years until the next ministerial to try and get an agreement for a fairer deal.

A ‘dangerous vacuum’ has been left

Finally, southern countries were successful in securing concessions on cotton (an important issue for states in West Africa in particular) but rich countries wll be the main winners from the ban on agricultural export subsidies, which won’t actually abolish general subsidy schemes like the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which is not explicitly linked to exports or production.

The CAP, which is essentially a huge welfare scheme for (mostly) rich landowners, involves handing out money to owners of land regardless of whether they produce or export anything. The uneven WTO playing field, whereby rich countries’ subsidy schemes are categorised as being ‘allowable’ while poorer countries are prevented from subsidising their farmers, will continue.

As so often at the WTO, no deal would have been better than a bad deal. In the end, there was a deal, but a very vague and weak one. But this could still leave a dangerous vacuum. Without consensus on continuing the ostensibly pro-development Doha Round, by the next ministerial in 2017 there will be greater pressure on WTO members to accept a new agenda based on the interests of richer members.

And regardless of what happens within the WTO process, parallel deals outside the WTO like TTIP will push forward regardless. The danger is that even if no consensus is reached within the WTO, the rich countries will be able to set the rules through a network of bilateral deals that will give other countries no choice but to comply with what will rapidly become a de facto global standard with the WTO increasingly relegated to the sidelines.

The Nairobi deal hasn’t changed what remains a fundamentally unfair system of global trade. But for all that, the Kenya summit did show southern countries can still stand up and prevent the rich world running roughshod over them.

The triumphal rhetoric from the media is unjustified. The outcome could also have been much worse. We have the much maligned ‘deadlock’ at the WTO to thank for that.

Alex Scrivener is policy officer at Global Justice Now.

This article was originally published by Global Justice Now.

If you were to judge the outcome of this month’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit by media reporting, you would come away with the impression that world leaders had made a major breakthrough.

The WTO, which overseas global trading rules, met in Nairobi, Kenya, and attempted to break a nearly 15-year deadlock which has pitched rich nations against developing nations.

The Financial Times hailed last week’s summit as “a victory for the US and EU” and “the final nail in the coffin” of the so-called ‘Doha Development Round’ talks that had been deadlocked since 2001. Much of the rest of the media has echoed this general sentiment.

If this were true, it would be a total disaster for the poorer countries represented at the WTO. Despite the name, the Doha Development Round has little to do with ‘development’ and more to do with liberalising global trade to the benefit of big corporations – like everything about the WTO.

But at least Doha in some way recognised the hypocrisy of rich nations in the WTO: on the one hand forcing southern countries to wrench open their markets and stop protecting their farmers, and on the other hand providing as many subsidies to their own corporations as possible. It was a weak branch that countries like India could cling to in order to say “this is supposed to be about development, but you continue to obstruct our development with your hypocritical trade rules.”

That’s why, in Kenya, rich nations wanted to declare Doha over, and move the WTO onto a whole host of other extremely controversial issues which they could foist on developing countries in the name of ‘free trade’. Highest on the list is so-called ‘investment’.

The idea is that the WTO should develop a set of explicitly pro-big business rules similar to those being discussed in the US-EU deal called TTIP. The dream is that corporations have more rights than human beings, and travel the world unimpeded by democratic laws.

That’s why, in the run up to the conference, many developing countries, led by India, were strongly resisting US-led moves to end the Doha Round and move onto these ‘new issues’. However bad the Doha Round was, it provided a placeholder to allow southern countries to keep their issues on the agenda – like India’s push to be allowed to buy food from farmers at guaranteed prices to stockpile or sell cheaply to the poor.

So what really happened?

The truth is that the outcome was yet another fudge – albeit one that could prove dangerous in the future.

It is true that rich countries succeeded in getting rid of a commitment to continuing the Doha Round in the final text. Instead, the text now merely acknowledges the disagreements over whether to pursue the framework any further. But it’s also true that there was no unambiguous statement that Doha has ended. So that’s a dead heat.

More important was holding out against any mention of the new issues being pushed by rich countries. So even if Doha is destined for a slow death, what takes its place hasn’t yet been agreed. Keeping issues like investment off the agenda was extremely important and testament to the strength of developing country blocs (which the US and EU tried to ‘divide and rule’) and campaigners from across the world.

On the vital issue of whether WTO rules can trump people’s right to food, rich countries didn’t get their way either. Rich countries wanted to rule India’s National Food Security Act out of order. The Act, while successful in reducing poverty and malnutrition in India, has been attacked as being in breach of WTO rules as it involves stockpiling food bought from farmers at fixed (potentially subsidised) prices and distributing it to poor households at a discount.

They failed. India didn’t exactly win either, but at least has a stay of execution. The lack of agreement in Nairobi means that India now has another 2 years until the next ministerial to try and get an agreement for a fairer deal.

A ‘dangerous vacuum’ has been left

Finally, southern countries were successful in securing concessions on cotton (an important issue for states in West Africa in particular) but rich countries wll be the main winners from the ban on agricultural export subsidies, which won’t actually abolish general subsidy schemes like the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which is not explicitly linked to exports or production.

The CAP, which is essentially a huge welfare scheme for (mostly) rich landowners, involves handing out money to owners of land regardless of whether they produce or export anything. The uneven WTO playing field, whereby rich countries’ subsidy schemes are categorised as being ‘allowable’ while poorer countries are prevented from subsidising their farmers, will continue.

As so often at the WTO, no deal would have been better than a bad deal. In the end, there was a deal, but a very vague and weak one. But this could still leave a dangerous vacuum. Without consensus on continuing the ostensibly pro-development Doha Round, by the next ministerial in 2017 there will be greater pressure on WTO members to accept a new agenda based on the interests of richer members.

And regardless of what happens within the WTO process, parallel deals outside the WTO like TTIP will push forward regardless. The danger is that even if no consensus is reached within the WTO, the rich countries will be able to set the rules through a network of bilateral deals that will give other countries no choice but to comply with what will rapidly become a de facto global standard with the WTO increasingly relegated to the sidelines.

The Nairobi deal hasn’t changed what remains a fundamentally unfair system of global trade. But for all that, the Kenya summit did show southern countries can still stand up and prevent the rich world running roughshod over them.

The triumphal rhetoric from the media is unjustified. The outcome could also have been much worse. We have the much maligned ‘deadlock’ at the WTO to thank for that.

Alex Scrivener is policy officer at Global Justice Now.

This article was originally published by Global Justice Now.

If you were to judge the outcome of this month’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit by media reporting, you would come away with the impression that world leaders had made a major breakthrough.

The WTO, which overseas global trading rules, met in Nairobi, Kenya, and attempted to break a nearly 15-year deadlock which has pitched rich nations against developing nations.

The Financial Times hailed last week’s summit as “a victory for the US and EU” and “the final nail in the coffin” of the so-called ‘Doha Development Round’ talks that had been deadlocked since 2001. Much of the rest of the media has echoed this general sentiment.

If this were true, it would be a total disaster for the poorer countries represented at the WTO. Despite the name, the Doha Development Round has little to do with ‘development’ and more to do with liberalising global trade to the benefit of big corporations – like everything about the WTO.

But at least Doha in some way recognised the hypocrisy of rich nations in the WTO: on the one hand forcing southern countries to wrench open their markets and stop protecting their farmers, and on the other hand providing as many subsidies to their own corporations as possible. It was a weak branch that countries like India could cling to in order to say “this is supposed to be about development, but you continue to obstruct our development with your hypocritical trade rules.”

That’s why, in Kenya, rich nations wanted to declare Doha over, and move the WTO onto a whole host of other extremely controversial issues which they could foist on developing countries in the name of ‘free trade’. Highest on the list is so-called ‘investment’.

The idea is that the WTO should develop a set of explicitly pro-big business rules similar to those being discussed in the US-EU deal called TTIP. The dream is that corporations have more rights than human beings, and travel the world unimpeded by democratic laws.

That’s why, in the run up to the conference, many developing countries, led by India, were strongly resisting US-led moves to end the Doha Round and move onto these ‘new issues’. However bad the Doha Round was, it provided a placeholder to allow southern countries to keep their issues on the agenda – like India’s push to be allowed to buy food from farmers at guaranteed prices to stockpile or sell cheaply to the poor.

So what really happened?

The truth is that the outcome was yet another fudge – albeit one that could prove dangerous in the future.

It is true that rich countries succeeded in getting rid of a commitment to continuing the Doha Round in the final text. Instead, the text now merely acknowledges the disagreements over whether to pursue the framework any further. But it’s also true that there was no unambiguous statement that Doha has ended. So that’s a dead heat.

More important was holding out against any mention of the new issues being pushed by rich countries. So even if Doha is destined for a slow death, what takes its place hasn’t yet been agreed. Keeping issues like investment off the agenda was extremely important and testament to the strength of developing country blocs (which the US and EU tried to ‘divide and rule’) and campaigners from across the world.

On the vital issue of whether WTO rules can trump people’s right to food, rich countries didn’t get their way either. Rich countries wanted to rule India’s National Food Security Act out of order. The Act, while successful in reducing poverty and malnutrition in India, has been attacked as being in breach of WTO rules as it involves stockpiling food bought from farmers at fixed (potentially subsidised) prices and distributing it to poor households at a discount.

They failed. India didn’t exactly win either, but at least has a stay of execution. The lack of agreement in Nairobi means that India now has another 2 years until the next ministerial to try and get an agreement for a fairer deal.

A ‘dangerous vacuum’ has been left

Finally, southern countries were successful in securing concessions on cotton (an important issue for states in West Africa in particular) but rich countries wll be the main winners from the ban on agricultural export subsidies, which won’t actually abolish general subsidy schemes like the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which is not explicitly linked to exports or production.

The CAP, which is essentially a huge welfare scheme for (mostly) rich landowners, involves handing out money to owners of land regardless of whether they produce or export anything. The uneven WTO playing field, whereby rich countries’ subsidy schemes are categorised as being ‘allowable’ while poorer countries are prevented from subsidising their farmers, will continue.

As so often at the WTO, no deal would have been better than a bad deal. In the end, there was a deal, but a very vague and weak one. But this could still leave a dangerous vacuum. Without consensus on continuing the ostensibly pro-development Doha Round, by the next ministerial in 2017 there will be greater pressure on WTO members to accept a new agenda based on the interests of richer members.

And regardless of what happens within the WTO process, parallel deals outside the WTO like TTIP will push forward regardless. The danger is that even if no consensus is reached within the WTO, the rich countries will be able to set the rules through a network of bilateral deals that will give other countries no choice but to comply with what will rapidly become a de facto global standard with the WTO increasingly relegated to the sidelines.

The Nairobi deal hasn’t changed what remains a fundamentally unfair system of global trade. But for all that, the Kenya summit did show southern countries can still stand up and prevent the rich world running roughshod over them.

The triumphal rhetoric from the media is unjustified. The outcome could also have been much worse. We have the much maligned ‘deadlock’ at the WTO to thank for that.

Alex Scrivener is policy officer at Global Justice Now.

This article was originally published by Global Justice Now.

Native bees are on the decline in some of the major agricultural regions in the United States, according to a new study.

The study scientists produced the first national map of bee populations and identified numerous trouble areas.

Since 2006, honey bees and other pollinators in the US and throughout the world have experienced ongoing and rapid population declines.

The continuation of this crisis threatens the stability of ecosystems, the economy, and food supply, as one in three bites of food are dependent on pollinator services.

The study, titled ‘Modeling the status, trends, and impacts of wild bee abundance in the United States‘ and published in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science, for the first time aims to assess the status and trends of wild bees and their potential impacts on pollination services across the US.

It found that between 2008 and 2013 bee abundance declined across 23% of the nation’s land area. The decline is generally associated with conversion of natural habitats to row crops. The researchers also list pesticide use, climate change, and disease as other threats to wild bees.

The researchers specifically cited 139 counties as especially worrisome, with wild bee numbers decreasing while farmland for crops dependent on such pollinators is increasing. The counties include agricultural regions of California such as the Central Valley, as well as the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest and Great Plains, west Texas and the southern Mississippi river valley.

It’s not just native bees – honeybees also declining

In the study, the counties grew crops such as almonds, pumpkins, squashes, blueberries, watermelons, peaches and apples that are highly dependent on pollinators, or had large amounts of less pollinator-dependent crops including soybeans, canola and cotton.

According to US News, Taylor Ricketts, PhD, director of the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, said the 139 counties represent 39% of the pollinator-dependent crop area of the United States and most likely will face inadequate pollination in the future. “Wild bee declines may increase costs for farmers and, over time, could even destabilize crop production”, Dr. Ricketts said.

Their decline may prompt greater dependence on commercial honeybee colonies for pollinating crops, but honeybee numbers also are falling, added Gund Institute researcher Insu Koh, PhD, the lead author of the study.

“Our results highlight the need for strategies to maintain pollinator populations in farmland, and the importance of conservation programs that provide flowering habitat that can support wild bees and other pollinators”, said Michigan State University entomologist Rufus Isaacs, who heads the US Department of Agriculture-funded Integrated Crop Pollination Project.

Delayed action impacts of pesticide exposure

Earlier this year, researchers at Cornell University found that as the use of pesticides on apple orchards in New York State increased, the abundance of wild bees declined significantly.

The researchers analyzed wild bee populations on 19 apples orchards across the state of New York between 2011 and 2012. Data was broken down by class of pesticide (fungicide, insecticide, herbicides), and timing of applications (before, during, and after flower bloom).

Researchers also analyzed the percentage of natural areas within the surrounding landscape. Wild bee numbers declined significantly as pesticide use increased, but the overall impact of pesticides on wild bees was found to be highest in generations following pesticide exposure, indicating that pesticides affect bee reproduction or offspring.

Further, researchers found that fungicides, widely regarded as having low toxicity to bees, had a measurable impact on wild bee abundance. “High and repeated exposure was the likely explanation” for this finding, according to the study. Fungicide applications prior to apple flower blooming resulted in the steepest decline in wild bee abundance and diversity.

This result indicates that wild bees are visiting orchards before apple trees begin to bloom. Further, researchers found insecticide applications affected bees the mostly after bloom occurred.

The authors explain that, while honey bees are placed in orchards for a short time during bloom, wild bees are more frequently exposed to chemical pesticides because they continue to forage in and around apple orchards before and after the bloom period.

The studies follow a 2014 memorandum by Barack Obama creating a task force to study pollinator losses. The task force in May called for preserving wide swathes of pollinator habitats, yet falls short of recommendations submitted by Beyond Pesticides, beekeepers, and others who stress that pollinator protection begins with strong regulatory action and suspension of bee-toxic pesticides. 

The papers

• ‘Modeling the status, trends, and impacts of wild bee abundance in the United States‘ is published in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science.
• ‘Negative effects of pesticides on wild bee communities can be buffered by landscape context‘ by Mia G. Park, E. J. Blitzer, Jason Gibbs, John E. Losey, Bryan N. Danforth is published in Royal Society Proceedings B.

Action: The Saving America’s Pollinator’s Act of 2015 remains an avenue for Congress to address the pollinator crisis. Contact your US Representative and ask them to support this important legislation today. You can also get active in your community to protect bees by advocating for policies that restrict their use. Montgomery County, Maryland recently restricted the use of a wide range of pesticides, including neonicotinoids, on public and private property. Sign here if you’d like to see your community do the same!

This article was originally published by Beyond Pesticides.

Bullfighting appears to be facing tough times once more. As many as 76% of the Spanish public may oppose it receiving public funding.

What’s more, the conservative Partido Popular has just lost its absolute majority in the Spanish parliament, which it had been using to support bullfighting.

This follows the loss of key city councils to allies of Podemos, which recently resulted in Madrid scrapping its longstanding subsidy to the oldest of the country’s 52 bullfighting academies.

The European Parliament also recently voted to prevent Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies going to breeders of fighting bulls – potentially affecting bull-breeding estates in France and Spain, where bulls die in the arena.

Opponents see bullfighting as a barbarous and medieval relic which has no place in modern Europe. But who are these 21st-century ‘barbarians’ who breed fighting bulls? And what do we know about the lives of the animals themselves, beyond their deaths on the torero’s sword?

Probably not very much, in most cases. But as an anthropologist who worked for 15 months on a bull-breeding estate in Andalusia, I can offer some insight into the people who care for and know these animals.

‘Care’ and ‘know’ are the right words here, incidentally. The job of the foreman on bull-breeding estates is to care for (‘cuidar‘) the herd. To care for fighting bulls means to know (‘conocer‘) them, so the foreman is often referred to as the ‘conocedor‘: the one who knows. The conocedor is in charge of the everyday well-being of the bulls, with a particular focus on feeding up and exercising animals which will bear the colours of the estate at bullfights.

I worked closely with Joaquín, the conocedor of the Partido de Resina bull-breeding estate. He was an animal lover. His little dogs, Mona and Mono, were sleek working animals. They got more cuts of cured ham than I did. And while Joaquín was aware that raising bulls was a commercial endeavour, caring and good animal husbandry were central aspects of his job.

Bull welfare is taken seriously – very!

The bulls’ psychological and physical well-being is part of what determines whether they perform to their potential. This encourages breeders to raise them as ‘naturally’ as possible: in herds, with varied grazing, space, shade, dust baths, water and hidden spots to which they can retreat.

These formidable creatures are incredibly sensitive to change. To ensure proper care and minimise disruptions, the foreman works with a team of cowhands, working horses, the estate owner/manager, secretaries, grounds staff, vets, ethologists and even nutritionists.

As with any industry, standards can vary. I cannot speak for all bull breeders, but I certainly saw how seriously people took correct care and a modern approach in Andalusia. The world of the bulls is often labelled ‘traditional’, but breeders don’t oppose modernity. These ‘barbarians’ have their own vision of the future, which actually complements the CAP in some respects.

Aside from food production – and let’s not forget fighting bulls are high-quality beef animals – CAP subsidies are intended to support the sustainable management of natural resources and rural economies. Partido de Resina is an island of biodiversity: around 500 hectares of open woods and marshland surrounded by a sea of monotonous orange, olive and peach plantations.

You could of course argue that commercial horticulture employs more locals, or that there are other ways of protecting biodiversity which do not involve bullfighting. You might be right. Right now though, outside Seville – and across Spain, France, Portugal and Latin America – there are vast stretches of bull breeding land that are already spaces of biodiversity.

The Common Agricultural Policy is modern: progressive, science-based, future-oriented and bureaucratic. So are many estates in the world of breeding fighting bulls.

Self-righteous cultural imperialism?

Whatever your view, the European Parliament’s decision to ban subsidies for bull breeders will be diffiult to enact. It would require legistlative change to the CAP, which is a sticky area of EU politics. After the vote, the European Commission informed the Parliament that there was no legal basis upon which to enact the amendment.

Every such challenge pushes the scattered bullfighting lobby to unite and strengthen its legal position. That could be important in future battles, but for now the victory for the European Greens who tabled the budget amendment is purely symbolic.

As for the the state of bullfighting more generally, things are more complicated than they might appear. Recent attendance figures from the Spanish ministry of culture don’t support a simple narrative of decline. Though there was a clear dip during Spain’s economic crisis, attendance in the year 2014/2015 overtook pre-crisis figures.

The industry was also placed under government protection in Spain after the government voted in 2013 to give bullfighting intangible cultural heritage status. We are certainly not talking about a one-way losing battle.

So we should take care when it comes to derogative rhetoric, particularly about poorly understood traditions. It’s worth noting that attacks on bullfighting, while often out of genuine concern for the suffering of animals, also come from a tradition of northern moral supremacy.

Not surprisingly, the European Parliament vote on the anti-bullfighting amendment largely divided along a north-south axis, with 57% of Spanish MEPs voting against.

There is still a large public out there who appreciate bulls and bullfighting: 9.5% of Spaniards attended events involving fighting bulls in 2014-15. These people live in the same modern Europe as the rest of us.

Anyone who condemns bullfighting as barbaric should not judge until they have looked beyond the arena to the wider world of the bulls.

Robin Irvine is Pre-doctoral Researcher in Social Anthropology , University of St Andrews.

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

Bullfighting appears to be facing tough times once more. As many as 76% of the Spanish public may oppose it receiving public funding.

What’s more, the conservative Partido Popular has just lost its absolute majority in the Spanish parliament, which it had been using to support bullfighting.

This follows the loss of key city councils to allies of Podemos, which recently resulted in Madrid scrapping its longstanding subsidy to the oldest of the country’s 52 bullfighting academies.

The European Parliament also recently voted to prevent Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies going to breeders of fighting bulls – potentially affecting bull-breeding estates in France and Spain, where bulls die in the arena.

Opponents see bullfighting as a barbarous and medieval relic which has no place in modern Europe. But who are these 21st-century ‘barbarians’ who breed fighting bulls? And what do we know about the lives of the animals themselves, beyond their deaths on the torero’s sword?

Probably not very much, in most cases. But as an anthropologist who worked for 15 months on a bull-breeding estate in Andalusia, I can offer some insight into the people who care for and know these animals.

‘Care’ and ‘know’ are the right words here, incidentally. The job of the foreman on bull-breeding estates is to care for (‘cuidar‘) the herd. To care for fighting bulls means to know (‘conocer‘) them, so the foreman is often referred to as the ‘conocedor‘: the one who knows. The conocedor is in charge of the everyday well-being of the bulls, with a particular focus on feeding up and exercising animals which will bear the colours of the estate at bullfights.

I worked closely with Joaquín, the conocedor of the Partido de Resina bull-breeding estate. He was an animal lover. His little dogs, Mona and Mono, were sleek working animals. They got more cuts of cured ham than I did. And while Joaquín was aware that raising bulls was a commercial endeavour, caring and good animal husbandry were central aspects of his job.

Bull welfare is taken seriously – very!

The bulls’ psychological and physical well-being is part of what determines whether they perform to their potential. This encourages breeders to raise them as ‘naturally’ as possible: in herds, with varied grazing, space, shade, dust baths, water and hidden spots to which they can retreat.

These formidable creatures are incredibly sensitive to change. To ensure proper care and minimise disruptions, the foreman works with a team of cowhands, working horses, the estate owner/manager, secretaries, grounds staff, vets, ethologists and even nutritionists.

As with any industry, standards can vary. I cannot speak for all bull breeders, but I certainly saw how seriously people took correct care and a modern approach in Andalusia. The world of the bulls is often labelled ‘traditional’, but breeders don’t oppose modernity. These ‘barbarians’ have their own vision of the future, which actually complements the CAP in some respects.

Aside from food production – and let’s not forget fighting bulls are high-quality beef animals – CAP subsidies are intended to support the sustainable management of natural resources and rural economies. Partido de Resina is an island of biodiversity: around 500 hectares of open woods and marshland surrounded by a sea of monotonous orange, olive and peach plantations.

You could of course argue that commercial horticulture employs more locals, or that there are other ways of protecting biodiversity which do not involve bullfighting. You might be right. Right now though, outside Seville – and across Spain, France, Portugal and Latin America – there are vast stretches of bull breeding land that are already spaces of biodiversity.

The Common Agricultural Policy is modern: progressive, science-based, future-oriented and bureaucratic. So are many estates in the world of breeding fighting bulls.

Self-righteous cultural imperialism?

Whatever your view, the European Parliament’s decision to ban subsidies for bull breeders will be diffiult to enact. It would require legistlative change to the CAP, which is a sticky area of EU politics. After the vote, the European Commission informed the Parliament that there was no legal basis upon which to enact the amendment.

Every such challenge pushes the scattered bullfighting lobby to unite and strengthen its legal position. That could be important in future battles, but for now the victory for the European Greens who tabled the budget amendment is purely symbolic.

As for the the state of bullfighting more generally, things are more complicated than they might appear. Recent attendance figures from the Spanish ministry of culture don’t support a simple narrative of decline. Though there was a clear dip during Spain’s economic crisis, attendance in the year 2014/2015 overtook pre-crisis figures.

The industry was also placed under government protection in Spain after the government voted in 2013 to give bullfighting intangible cultural heritage status. We are certainly not talking about a one-way losing battle.

So we should take care when it comes to derogative rhetoric, particularly about poorly understood traditions. It’s worth noting that attacks on bullfighting, while often out of genuine concern for the suffering of animals, also come from a tradition of northern moral supremacy.

Not surprisingly, the European Parliament vote on the anti-bullfighting amendment largely divided along a north-south axis, with 57% of Spanish MEPs voting against.

There is still a large public out there who appreciate bulls and bullfighting: 9.5% of Spaniards attended events involving fighting bulls in 2014-15. These people live in the same modern Europe as the rest of us.

Anyone who condemns bullfighting as barbaric should not judge until they have looked beyond the arena to the wider world of the bulls.

Robin Irvine is Pre-doctoral Researcher in Social Anthropology , University of St Andrews.

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

After more than five years of delay, relaunches and circuitous consultations, the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s 14th Landward Licensing Round concluded last Thursday.

DECC’s Oil and Gas Authority awarded the final 132 exploration and production licences; overall none of the 159 licences applied for were refused.

Arguably though, this announcement was a cynical act of misdirection. The announcement of a further 132 drilling licences was bound to capture the headlines.

And the Government used that, and a few other announcements, to distract attention from the many other announcements which might have been the lead item in their own right.

The holiday season policy dump

Anyone who has been closely involved with government and regulatory procedures knows that three times a year – before Christmas, Easter and the Summer holidays – the most controversial development and policy proposals are announced.

This Christmas though the Government went far, far further than before. Last Thursday they releasing a trove of studies, statistics and announcements, some of which had been kept hidden for many months – over 400 separate policy announcements.

And you can bet that by 5th January, when politicians and pundits return to work with their festive hangovers, many of those controversial announcements will be allowed to pass without comment.

All sorts of unwelcome news came out last Thursday:

• from the widening wealth gap in Britain, and its threat to social cohesion;

• to the cutting of the annual financial grant to state schools pupils by 11%, from £87 to £77;

• to the withdrawal of financial support for those training to be nurses, a change the Department of Health tried to dress-up as a move towards ‘creating a modern nursing workforce’.

We also got information, for the first time since 2011, on minster’s private interests, along with the latest details of their special advisers (or ‘SPADs’) – and the fact that SPADs have been awarded massive pay-rises compared to the rest of the civil service.

Bowing to pressure from dictators

After a long period of avoiding the issue, the Government has announced a shifting of position on the Muslim Brotherhood, reportedly under pressure from the Saudi government.

Why the pressure? We sell a lot of armaments and other related engineering to the Saudis and other Middle Eastern states with a dislike of the Muslim Brotherhood.

That dependence on ‘selling death’ was further highlighted by the simultaneous announcement that the Government would continue to fund a British armaments industry stand at a number of global arms trade fairs in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Indonesia, Chile, Malaysia and India.

Of course while one state’s democrat is another’s terrorist, this event confirms that the Government has taken the side of a dictatorial regime in a regional conflict – and is doing so purely for short-term economic interests rather than seeking a longer-term settlement of the various conflicts in that region.

Even without Britain’s troubling history in the region, it is difficult to be an honest broker of peace if you’ve already taken sides.

Expanding the British (in)justice system

Another story to emerge last Thursday was the fault in an on-line form which resulted in courts wrongly awarding assets in divorce cases. Rather like the fracking licences, that was the ‘positive’ story played-up to avoid other, more troubling announcements about the justice system.

In early December the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, repealed the ‘criminal courts charge’ – otherwise known as the ‘poll tax for justice’.

What was announced last Thursday, in addition to raising a variety of court charges by 10% or more, was new evidence that the Government’s recent reforms to our courts are having a chilling effect on justice.

A new study for the Ministry of Justice found that, with the withdrawal of legal aid for most cases, people taking part in the justice system felt increasingly lost – unable to understand the process, nor where they could get help to take part in the proceedings.

Another survey of not-for-profit legal advice providers found that most were experiencing difficulties with funding, many were shrinking the level of support given to the public, and 10% said they might close completely in the near future.

Other policy injustices were also obliterated in the shadow of more ‘positive’ announcements.

For example, the Government released a new policy on tackling homelessness, and the Bank of England sought powers to try and control the amount of money going into buy-to-let housing – which some blame for the current housing affordability crisis.

What was given less coverage were the new statistics showing the greater problem of homelessness, which has consistently increased for the last few years. Not only the rough sleepers who are visible on the streets, but also the hidden problem of people in temporary local authority accommodation.

More significantly, new statistics released on Thursday showed that the Government’s bedroom tax had has little effect in encouraging people to move house, or let spare rooms. Instead it continues to penalise many people by removing their benefits.

More bad news for the environment

Other announcements were outrageous, and should have been front-page headlines.

The Government is breaking European law on air pollution limits in many of our major cities. On Thursday, in response to the Supreme Court issuing an order for action on the issue, their decision was to delay measures to combat air pollution – which kills more than 30,000 people a year – for another five years.

Certain politicians might call protesters ‘NIMBYs’. In response we should call them ‘NIMTOOs’ as their response to critical environmental problems is, “Not In My Term Of Office”.

They are clearly willing to break the law instead of taking action to save lives – far more lives in fact than are endangered by terrorism in Britain, on which they appear to be willing to spend billions.

Persecuting badgers, and routine animal cruelties

Last Thursday though, in terms of your future health and well-being, the worse thing to be in Britain was a badger.

Without presenting any clear evidence of the effectiveness of the badger cull, the Government announced that it was extending the badger cull policy to the rest of England.

And with echoes of DEFRA‘s ‘redacted report’ on fracking and house prices, DEFRA published a cost-benefit analysis of the badger cull which was impossible to validate. Many of the figures associated with the cull had been omitted for reasons of ‘commercial confidentiality’.

Given the more reasonable costs of the Government’s trial vaccination programme, a report on which was released at the same time (without redacted data), it is arguable that the Government are providing an unjustifiable subsidy to the beef and dairy industry.

Also last Thursday, the Charity Commission released a report on how they pursued an investigation of The Badger Trust, and made the organisation distance itself from ‘political’ criticisms of the Government’s policies on the badger cull.

OK then, bad news if you’re a badger – though it’s not much better if you’re a farm animal. Just as Britain is shifting towards even more intensive forms of animal husbandry the Government has decided that the legislative burdens on the industry are too great.

Last Thursday the Government proposed a new non-statutory system of animal welfare standards for meat and dairy producers in England. Each sector will produce its own guidelines, and will self-enforce those guidelines against farmers.

That’s arguably a recipe for future trouble. It’s not just animal welfare that’s an issue here. The shift towards more intensive farm production increases the risks to consumers. Not just in terms of food quality, but also greater pollution of the environment.

‘And finally … ‘ fracking

The Department of Energy and Climate Change made various announcements last Thursday: From cuts to renewable energy subsidies; to a new review of the feed-in tariff scheme; to new data on household energy efficiency which showed that the level of home energy improvements is collapsing as cuts to the green deal and other schemes take effect.

What really grabbed the headlines though were the 132 new oil and gas exploration licences, coming so soon after the commitments to cut carbon emissions given the week before in Paris.

On balance, however, these were not the most significant announcements on this issue. We knew the fracking licences were coming – and the industry’s strategy has been apparent for a while.

What the licence issue masked was the announcement of new regulatory standards – known as the ‘Regulatory Roadmap‘. Back in 2013, when these standard were first promoted, we were told that regulation would be “gold-plated”.

Now it seems the plating has become rather tarnished by these new vague standards. Weakened by changes in planning and environmental law in the interim, they no longer provide the regulatory protection and guarantee of local accountability they did two years ago.

Perhaps the most significant change which was sneaked past the media’s gaze last Thursday were the changes to the permitted development rules for oil and gas operations.

This allows for further well drilling for monitoring boreholes around well sites, and for seismic surveys, without requiring the hurdle of a separate planning application – and its associated requirement for public consultation. This again raises the level of environmental intrusion permitted by Government policy without local regulation and accountability.

Pledge to take action

‘Fracking’ might be a bad policy, but what makes such bad decisions possible are the standards of conduct within political system itself – and its currently low regard for the public’s wishes.

Contrary to their repeated assertions, the Government do not have a popular mandate for radical change. They received just 37% of the vote on a 66% turnout in May’s election – meaning that only a quarter of eligible voters actually voted Conservative.

Shortly after the 132 licences were announced last week a new on-line petition, #PledgeNVDA, began on Change.org. The petition asks people to pledge to take non-violent direct action against fracking.

I urge people to participate in this initiative – to take personal responsibility for the irresponsible governance of our country by signing the pledge, and take action against these demonstrably wrong decisions.

However, I would ask that you don’t just target unconventional oil and gas companies. We must also act against those who are the primary enablers of this process: The Cabinet, and the minsters of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Fracking represents a ‘crisis of governance’

It would appear that under the Government’s current vision of executive power, any opposition, however factually well-founded, appears to be considered a threat.

More than that, our leading politicians are quite openly planning to run their extreme, ideologically driven vision for change for years to come – and are engineering our political system to enable that.

Any opposition to their greater political project is being systemically crushed – the most recent example being the House of Lords, the ‘reform’ of which was also announced last week.

Are recent events also a sign of a generally dictatorial, Putin-esque stance against citizens groups who oppose Government policy?

Perhaps. Certainly, under the guise of preventing radicalization in schools, the police are highlighting envir­onmental activists and anti-fracking protesters as a threat to the state.

More disturbingly, the dismissal of European court judgements that conflict with national policy objectives, recently enacted in Russia, appears to be modelled on a proposal by David Cameron back in January 2012.

Fracking is, based on the available evidence, an unwarranted policy. But the ideological objectives behind these policies is far more significant than the process itself. The reality is that we cannot address one without addressing the other.

We need not a change of government, but a change of governance in order to move towards a more sustainable policy framework on energy and the environment.

Paul Mobbs is an environmental and peace campaigner. He runs the Free Range Activism Website (FRAW) and is the author of Energy Beyond Oil and A Practical Guide to Sustainable ICT (which is available free on-line).

Petition: ‘#PledgeNVDA‘ against the fracking menace!

For a fully referenced version of this article visit the FRAW site.

The coal mining company working on climate denier Matt Ridley’s country estate tried and failed during a court case yesterday to impose £100,000 in costs on eight protesters who had successfully closed down its operations last October.

This represents the total estimated loss for the day the mine was shut.

The climate activists will have to pay almost £10,000 to Banks Group to cover wages for miners unable to work when the protesters locked themselves to a large excavator and blocaded the only road onto the site at Blagdon, north of Newcastle.

The campaigners snuck onto Ridley’s estate, which is home to Shotton Surface Mine, before dawn on October 26, where they chained themselves to machinery, while others lay across the entrance with their hands locked inside concrete-filled tubes.

Despite the protest being one that “could not have been more peaceful” prosecutors still sought more than £100,000 in compensation from the defendants on behalf of Banks Group for coal and salary costs that were lost over the day.

Company’s claim cut back by 90%

But the large request, which included £90,000 for production losses, was rejected by a district judge who ordered the group to pay back £883.76 each to cover salary and replacement staff costs.

South East Northumberland Magistrates Court heard Guy Shrubsole, 30 (pictured) and seven other protesters had become frustrated that coal mining and burning is leading to climate change and were concerned that in the near future people will suffer.

Prosecutor Sarah O’Neill told the court that three or four protesters climbed into the mine owned by the Conservative member of the House of Lords and fastened themselves to an excavator on arrival.

Another group were lying on the ground with their arms locked into concrete-reinforced tubes. Eight to ten people also wore T-shirts and there was a banner which read “Keep it in the ground”.

Ms O’Neill said: “When the staff approached them and asked them what they could do to help they replied ‘stop opening coal mining’.

“They prevented access to the site which holds 150 employees who were diverted to a public car park and delivery trucks were stuck in an industrial estate. The company estimates the loss of productivity in excess of £50,000 and a total of £100,000 loss.”

In a victim impact statement, Mark Dowdall, environment and community director at Banks Group said 150 of the colleagues were unable to gain access or exit to the site, adding: “I understand freedom of speech and support this but can’t condone illegal enterprises.”

Shrubsole, from London, and seven other protesters all pleaded guilty to obstructing or disrupting a person engaged in a lawful activity.

‘Morally obliged’ to act for climate

Richard Brigden, who represented all of the defendants, all of whom had degrees, some having studied at Oxford, said that they had become frustrated with the government’s approach to climate change and had always been involved in peaceful protests and lawful campaigning.

Brigden said: “They feel strongly that fossil fuels, mainly coal, will lead to climate change and that in the near future people will suffer. We know they are right, the government in Paris accepted we should move away from coal.

“The government accepts what the defendants think is correct. The owner of the site was once a speech writer for the minister for the environment and an adviser. The group have become incredibly frustrated because they are concerned that this is like a slow car crash. They feel morally obliged to do something. There has never been a more peaceful protest – even their placards were pretty calm.”

District Judge Bernard Begley gave each of the defendants a conditional discharge and ordered them to pay £85 in court costs as well as the £800 fine in compensation to Banks Group.

They were also subject to a restraining order that prohibited them from going within 50 metres of any Banks Group site or office for three years.

He told them: “You are all of impeccable character. This was a group action that was obviously planned. Whatever your frustrations you embarked on this course and you were aware of the implications.”

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Coal protesters must be Matt Ridley’s guilty consience‘.

This article was originally published on DeSmog.uk.

Brendan Montague writes for DeSmog.uk. Follow Brendan @brendanmontague .