Ocean acidification is causing fundamental and dangerous changes in the chemistry of the world’s oceans.

Yet only one in five Britons has even heard of ocean acidification, let alone believes it a cause for concern.

Around 97% of climate scientists believe global warming is principally driven by human activity. Yet only 16% of the public know the expert consensus to be this strong.

These are just two examples of common misconceptions among the UK public on the science of climate change. When surveyed, many people report feeling unsure and confused about various aspects of the discipline.

Furthermore, they lack trust in scientists: in the wake of the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, nearly four in ten people felt that scientists were exaggerating concerns.

Are these realities any surprise when we see headlines such as “Planet is not overheating, says professor“ and “Scientists ‘are exaggerating carbon threat to marine life’“ in the UK’s national media?

It was the former article that recently prompted a number of members of the House of Lords, including me, to write a letter to the editor of The Times, John Witherow. We highlighted the newspaper’s recent record of tendentious and misleading coverage of climate science (among many other articles, it must be said, that are worthy of the paper’s name and tradition).

Ill-informed speculation masquerading as science

The ‘not overheating’ article described a study suggesting there is no statistically valid evidence for man-made climate change – and therefore that the planet will not warm significantly by the end of the century. But the study was not conducted by a climate scientist and it ignored basic physical laws. It did not undergo scientific peer-review and it was funded by a climate-sceptic lobby group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The fact that a newspaper of The Times‘ standing gave coverage to such a piece of research is both remarkable and deeply concerning. But it is not an isolated example. Instead it typifies a disturbing pattern in parts of the UK national media where there is an apparent determination to systematically undermine climate science and those conducting it – and to amplify marginal dissenting arguments even when they come with no evidence.

Our letter was intended to highlight the loss of credibility that inevitably comes with printing such stories. Indeed, it is precisely the failure of papers such as The Times to treat climate change properly that is prompting more informed readers to vote with their feet and turn to credible web-based news outlets such as BusinessGreen and Carbon Brief.

The media is changing rapidly and established papers such as The Times are competing for readers, credibility and eventually influence against smaller publications that are often producing better coverage.

The Times’ loss of credibility is its own problem. However, such articles raise wider concerns about the misunderstandings generated among the public, and the loss of trust in science.

The media remain important

These problems result because, despite the proliferation of new media, the established titles continue to play a very important role in perceptions of science. They form the principal conduit through which the public and politicians access scientific information, they provide a proxy for public debate and help set the tone – and often the agenda – for policy-making.

Thus poor-quality or slanted science reporting contributes, either unwittingly or wittingly, to the public misunderstanding of science.

Public misunderstanding of science can have serious consequences. In the early 1990s, The Sunday Times persisted in denying the link between HIV and AIDs after most other publications had acknowledged reality. An editorial in Nature described its reporting as “seriously mistaken, and probably disastrous”.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, media outlets gave widespread coverage to the hypothesised link between the MMR vaccine and autism – coverage that has since been criticised as naïve and misleading.

It goes without saying that such misrepresentations of scientific knowledge run against the interests of society. People are unable to make informed decisions or to demand appropriate action from politicians.

In the MMR case, outbreaks involving more than 2,000 cases of measles in 2012 were attributed to years of under-immunisation following media misreporting of the MMR issue. In the case in hand, The Times‘ poor reporting on climate science has the potential to cause real harm.

Of course, there are uncertainties in climate science, but uncertainty should not be conflated with doubt. As Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway have so clearly documented in their excellent book Merchants of Doubt, those who wish to undermine the credibility of scientific evidence, for instance the tobacco industry in relation to cancer and smoking, have systematically tried to turn ‘uncertainty’ into ‘doubt’.

Scientists need to hold media to account

So where does this leave us? Editors must be free to print what they want within the law, as a free press is vital for democracy. It is entirely right that scientists, like everyone else, are subject to questioning. Not all of us are angels – and not all research is good research. We are above neither the law nor legitimate journalistic scrutiny – and editors are quite within their rights to seek out divergent views.

But the key word here is ‘legitimate’. Scrutiny that is carried out in the public interest with the intention of uncovering genuinely bad practice is entirely fair; questions asked and articles slanted with the intention of promoting a specific argument are not. And even opinion articles must acknowledge the evidence, otherwise what are they but fiction?

Readers also have rights – and the right to object to distorted or biased coverage is one of them. I would argue that in the case of scientists, this extends far beyond being a right – it is virtually an obligation. In 2014, UK citizens invested about £10 billion in research and development.

If research is funded by the public, then it is the public’s right to have findings disseminated accurately. And as both the recipients of public funding and the individuals with expertise in these complex subjects, the onus is on us academics to ensure that research is properly communicated.

Engaging with the media is not to every scientist’s taste. The journalist’s world is a lot more feisty and less respectful than ours. But in the end, accurate reporting of science matters. Editors do respond to comments and criticism.

Scientists can and indeed must challenge poor reporting on climate change and, if enough of us do so regularly, it will improve – to the benefit of scientists, the public and indeed journalism itself.

John Krebs is Professor of Zoology, member of the UK Climate Change Committee, University of Oxford.

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

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Resurgence, The Resurgence Trust is to hold a three-day conference at Worcester College, Oxford from 22 to 25 September, featuring leading figures from the worlds of environmental activism, social justice, spirituality and the arts. Tickets go on sale in early May.

More than 50 speakers are already confirmed, including the poet Simon Armitage; Jonathan Bate, author and Provost of Worcester College; Paula Byrne, literary biographer; the physicist and philosopher Fritjof Capra; the author Charles Eisenstein; Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, chef and food campaigner; Mark Goldring, director of Oxfam, UK; the environmental artist Richard Long; Caroline Lucas, Britain’s first Green Party MP; the American environmental activist Bill McKibben; Michael Morpurgo, author and playwright; Jonathon Porritt, co-founder of Forum for the Future; the author Philip Pullman; David Puttnam, film-maker and educationalist; Vandana Shiva, environmental campaigner; Fiona Reynolds, Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and former director general of the National Trust; Chris Smith, former chair of the Environment Agency; and Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge and former Archbishop of Canterbury.

The event will also feature music, poetry and dance, a celebratory dinner, and a special Resurgence Trust members’ event with the editors of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine and our websites.
Satish Kumar, editor-in-chief of Resurgence & Ecologist, said: “The conference, One Earth, One Humanity, One Future, offers everyone attending the opportunity to celebrate the past 50 years of Resurgence and, more importantly, to look forward to the next 50 years.

“The event will offer a broad palette of inspiring speakers, cutting-edge thinkers, thought-provoking conversations and stimulating panel discussions. Internationally recognised speakers will be travelling from across the globe to share their ideas, beliefs, messages and passions about environmental issues, social justice, spirituality and the arts.”

The event programme and online tickets for the entire event or for individual sessions are available online.

Accommodation will be available at Worcester College.

Worcester College
Worcester College has one of the most impressive sites of any of the University of Oxford’s colleges. Though close to the city centre, it has extensive and beautiful gardens. It was founded in 1714 on the site of a college for Benedictine monks, dating back to 1283, of which some medieval buildings survive.

The gardens
Hidden behind the college walls are 26 acres of beautiful gardens, landscaped grounds and a lake. During the conference, the gardens and grounds will nourish the senses and offer a peaceful place in which to walk, relax and meet other Resurgence Trust members.

Food and accommodation
Worcester College has a long-standing reputation for having one of the finest kitchens among Oxford’s 38 constituent colleges. Food and refreshments will be available throughout the conference. There will be an opportunity to buy tickets for a special dinner in the college Hall.
Accommodation, including breakfast, is available for those wishing to stay in College during the conference. Rooms can be booked directly or via the conference booking site.

Oxford
Oxford is one of the oldest and most distinguished university cities in the world, and its college and other buildings, parks and gardens are extraordinarily beautiful. Worcester College is close to the internationally renowned Ashmolean Museum, as well as the Oxford Playhouse. There is a wide range of hotels, guest houses, restaurants, pubs and cafés in the city centre, and it has good public transport links.

To see our programme, find out about accommodation and buy tickets visit www.resurgence.org/R50event

Could things get any worse for TTIP?

On Monday the hugely damaging leak of consolidated texts confirmed exactly what everyone had feared about the deal, with all its massively pro-corporate provisions on display for everyone to see.

And then the following day the French government launched one of the most high profile attacks on TTIP that’s ever been seen. Whether TTIP survives these body blows is debatable, but it is almost fatally wounded.

Francois Hollande, the French president, is lagging in the polls and his threat to block TTIP could be seen as a gambit to shore up some votes. But it is a reflection of the popular mood in the country, where the media’s negative reporting on TTIP has soared in the past fortnight.

Hollande said at a conference that he could not accept “the undermining of the essential principles of our agriculture, our culture, of mutual access to public markets.”

France’s lead trade negotiator, Matthias Fekl, now thinks talks will be halted. He argues that the EU has bent over backwards to offer the US what it wants but the generosity has not been reciprocated.

TTIP backers must be livid – including Cameron!

This follows similar recent comments from Germany’s Economic Minister Sigmar Gabriel: “Whether we can reach a deal this year really depends on whether we can create trust in the process. And unfortunately, we are very far from creating trust in the process.”

These growing French and German concerns reflect the current state of negotiations, as revealed by the May Day leaks which indicate that the EU’s precautionary principle (not allow things on the market until proven safe) may be sacrificed in favour of the US so-called ‘scientific principle’ (don’t ban anything from sale until it is proven dangerous).

The news from France is already causing arguments and tension in the European Commission. The UK’s pro-‘free trade’ camp must be livid, with David Cameron having previously claimed that TTIP was his own idea.

Last year he announced he wanted to put rocket boosters under the negotiations. But now he’ll be wanting to fit stabilisers. Because these latest developments follow a series of disasters for TTIP.

We released papers last week that show that the UK government isn’t taking the corporate courts too seriously. In fact, the only risk assessment they’ve carried out on TTIP strongly advises the government that there are lots of risks and no benefits.

CETA – a Trojan horse for US corporations’ attack on Europe

Events have also been moving rapidly last week on CETA, an EU-Canada ‘free trade’ deal similar to TTIP that’s a lot closer to being ratified. CETA risks becoming a Trojan horse for TTIP, with many of the same provisions, including the infamous corporate court system.

Although the EU Commission has created a reformed version of this system in CETA, all the most notorious cases we cite would still be a problem under this ‘new’ system. So CETA is effectively a backdoor to TTIP, with any US corporation operating in Canada able to exploit its provisions to sue EU governments should they take decisions that may impact on expected profit margins.

In June the EU Council will see European governments come together to ratify CETA. Although final government approval is expected in September, the June meeting is the last chance for European governments to raise serious objections. It will then go to the EU parliament, where we expect a vote next January or February.

One problem with EU trade deals is that they can come into effect even without a vote in member parliaments. Under something known as ‘provisional implementation‘, the European Commission could bring CETA into effect before national parliaments have had the chance to debate – and reject – an international treaty.

This includes the now infamous corporate court system. In other words, a corporate case could be brought against the British government before Parliament has even ratified CETA. In fact, even if the British parliament voted CETA down, the corporate court system would still stay in effect for three years! The June meeting is the last chance governments have to block these processes.

Although we didn’t expect to win any victories at the Council, that’s all changed. First up, Romania, in dispute with Canada over visa issues, has threatened to veto CETA at the June meeting. Next, the Walloon parliament voted a critical motion on CETA that could tie the hands of the Belgian government and force it’s abstention. The Dutch parliament also voted last week in support of a non-binding motion to reject provisional implementation. The Netherlands might yet hold a referendum on CETA too.

With TTIP on its knees, we need to double our efforts to prevent this similarly toxic deal from being ushered in through the back door. With the EU referendum approaching, is David Cameron really going to attend an EU meeting and support the idea that CETA come into effect without a parliamentary vote?

We have two months to convince him that that’s a terrible idea.

It’s not EU versus US – it’s corporations versus people

There is a danger, however, in framing TTIP as a battle between the squabbling components of the EU and the US.

What is now clear is the sheer scale of opposition to ‘free trade’ deals in the US. All leading presidential candidates have expressed some opposition to the current free trade agenda, with even free trader Hillary Clinton saying she’s deeply uneasy. A new opinion poll shows only 18% of Americans support TTIP, down from 53% in 2014.

This matters because Obama only has eight months left in office and it seems unlikely that substantial progress will be made in that time. After that, the future is anyone’s guess. That’s a key reason Obama came to Germany last week – to speed things up.

But the US President was met by tens of thousands of protestors in Hannover – making clear that in Europe too, TTIP is toxic. The same opinion poll already quoted found 17% of Germans support TTIP – down from 55% two years ago. TTIP campaigning is reporting to have accelerated substantially in France, and it’s growing as an issue throughout Europe.

The truth is that TTIP and CETA are essentially means for the corporate world to impose its agenda on the rest of society. Negotiators on both sides are doing the bidding of a highly effective and well-resourced corporate lobby.

What now has TTIP and CETA in trouble is the continent-wide resistance of ordinary people in both Europe and North America. It is this transatlantic movement of peoples that can – and we believe will – defeat both of these toxic trade deals.

Action: Tell David Cameron that at the Council of Europe meeting in June, he must insist that the UK gets the chance to decide on toxic trade deals before they are implemented.

Guy Taylor is trade campaigner for Global Justice Now.

Nick Dearden is Director of Global Justice Now.

This article combines two original articles published by Global Justice Now.

I felt a mixture of emotions last week as I watched the jubilant celebrations of the Hillsborough families being fully vindicated after their tireless 27-year battle for truth and justice.

I knew only too well the pure hell they have had to endure fighting a battle that they never should have had to – the continued strength and determination needed, and all the sacrifices involved in getting what they always knew was right accepted.

I therefore felt elated for them when I saw the outcome of the jury’s verdict – and the critical fact that there is no way that this verdict can be overturned or appealed.

But I also felt a total wave of despair because getting justice for all the rural residents that my pesticides campaign represents is something which still feels such a very long way off.

Last week’s scenes then reminded me of 14th November 2008 when I stood victorious on the steps of the High Court in London following the landmark ruling by a Judge that the Government had acted unlawfully in its policy on the use of pesticides in crop spraying, and that public health – in particular rural residents, like me, exposed to cocktails of pesticides from living in the locality of sprayed fields – is not protected.

In the statement I read out on the day I said that I felt fully vindicated by such a ruling as the Judge was the first person to actually properly consider the full evidence and arguments I had been presenting to the Government since 2001 and ruled in my favour unequivocally on every single one of the four grounds involved in the case.

The High Court judgment was extremely damaging to the Government, all its departments, officials and scientific advisors, responsible for pesticides, as it clearly confirmed what I had always said from the outset of my campaign – that the Government had fundamentally failed to protect people in the countryside from pesticides, and had also knowingly allowed residents to continue to suffer from adverse health effects – some of which had led to fatalities – without taking any action to prevent the exposure, risks and adverse impacts occurring.

I ended my statement outside the High Court by pointing out that I should not have had to have spent so many years of my life fighting to get the Government to do something on this when the evidence and arguments I identified were very clear from the outset and the Government should have acted when I first started to present the case in 2001.

But sadly, the victory was all too short-lived

The Hillsborough families made these same points this week in relation to their 27 year fight which they only had to continue fighting as a result of all the establishment cover ups, lies, corruption, false narratives, and simply not being listened to or believed. The disgraceful treatment of the Hillsborough families for so many years will now be forever marked in history as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice.

However, unlike the definitive justice that the Hillsborough families have finally received this week, the justice for rural residents was only short-lived, as following very heavy lobbying on the Government from the pesticides industry and big farming unions the Government appealed against the High Court Judgment in my favour.

That High Court ruling – that had found the Government was in breach of both EU law and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – clearly had massive legal and political implications on the Government involving issues of responsibility, accountability and liability, especially in relation to the many individuals and families living near crop fields who have suffered adverse health effects from crop spraying.

Furthermore, it was reported in the press at the time that the Government maintained that if the High Court Judgment stood then the “Government’s pesticide policy would be fundamentally undermined” and that the policy and approvals system “might even grind to a halt.” [1]

The Government no doubt would also have been mindful that, in addition, it would have cost the Government many millions not only in relation to lost income from the pesticide industry to the regulators, the CRD (who were the acting defendants in the legal case on behalf of the Government), but also in the threat of any potential legal action against the Government by the industry if new product approvals were no longer able to be granted, and/or if pesticides the Government had previously approved and that were subject to long approvals were no longer able to be used.

Therefore there was no doubt that the Government wanted the landmark High Court ruling overturned no matter what. And low and behold it was overturned in the Court of Appeal a mere eight months later in July 2009, but only as a result of very wrongly and bizarrely ignoring all my critical evidence and arguments and substituting it with the conclusions of a Government requested/funded report four years earlier in 2005.

A deliberate cover up?

Yet in reviewing a High Court judgment the Court of Appeal would have needed to have based its judgment on the same cogent case, detailed factual evidence and arguments that led to that landmark victory in the High Court, but it clearly did not.

The Court of Appeal Judgment was a complete whitewash and I said at the time it came out and will reiterate it again, the Government could not have wished for a better result than if it wrote the Judgment itself!

In fact it was clear to a number of those who attended the Court of Appeal hearing in May 2009 that the Judges came in with a pre-formed view, and did not display any genuine interest in the case, evidence and arguments presented by my side. But why did they come in with a pre-formed view? Was it indeed, as I always believed it to be, just part of the cover up?

Listening to the various statements being made this week by those involved in fighting for justice for the Hillsborough victims and how the cover up went right to the heart of the judicial system in this country then I am even further convinced that some sort of ‘arrangement’ was made to ensure my historic victory was quashed.

The Supreme Court subsequently refused permission to appeal. This was always highly questionable considering how bizarre and inaccurate the Court of Appeal Judgment was – as anyone who reads my six Witness Statements will see that it simply was not based on the cogent factual evidence and arguments I had presented, and that were in full support of the legal arguments involved in my case.

Human rights? You just be joking

I then tried to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights but it was simply not interested in the plight of residents and turned its back, just as it had done on one of the Hillsborough family’s when they had applied seeking justice in their case.

The Strasbourg Court had decided in October 2012 – nearly two and a half years after I had lodged my detailed 1785 page application – not to even consider the merits of the residents case and refused to give any reasons as to why.

I then discovered that this was in clear breach of Article 45 of the European Convention on Human Rights that states: “Reasons shall be given for judgments as well as for decisions declaring applications admissible or inadmissible.”

Hillsborough families QC Michael Mansfield, who is a supporter of my campaign, said to me in an email at the time that a decision without any reasons given for inadmissibility was “extraordinary” and advised me to “press hard for these.”

I did pursue the reasons – especially considering that crucially all the admissibility criteria had definitely been met – but over a year later and still with no explanation given to substantiate the court’s decision then I had to give up and walk away as dealing with that court was a nightmare in itself, and due to the very structure of it there was simply no one of any higher authority to go to regarding what happened.

In fact I have never admitted this in public before but my experiences with that wholly unaccountable court led me to initially consider ending it all, as I was left feeling even lower in life’s rankings than axe murderers, terror suspects, rapists, paedophiles and other criminals that the Strasbourg court often rules in favour of.

It seems the words ‘human rights’ have become synonymous with criminals rights and not those of the victims of crime or in this case of a flawed Government policy.

Fighting back

However, just like the Hillsborough families had done each time one door was slammed shut on their case, I was determined to fight on and so soon bounced back.

Indeed at the end of 2013 a review of the policy on pesticides that DEFRA Ministers had requested as a direct result of the originallandmark ruling in the High Court led to the Government finallyacknowledging that the risk assessment approach relied upon to date had been inadequate, as it publicly committed to various changes to the policy and approach for assessing the risks to people from agricultural pesticides.

Yet, despite again vindicating the crux of my critical campaign arguments (that residents are simply not covered by the existing short term bystander model), overall the changes Ministers committed to were still woefully inadequate. In any event, 2½ years on and the Government still does not appear to have implemented the changes it previously committed to do.

In fact, in relation to one of the key changes that Ministers committed to undertaking – that both acute and longer-term exposure assessments will be required for residents – DEFRA has recently stated it will not be expecting applicant companies to undertake any assessment for acute exposure. [2]

It is therefore a matter of fact that there is still no actual risk assessment for the real life exposure of rural residents who live in the locality of sprayed fields (however much DEFRA may try and insist there is), as the Government’s current approach continues to exclude entirely many of the exposure factors and routes that are necessary to include in the calculations for a residents specific exposure scenario.

Yet no pesticides should ever have been approved for use in the first place in the absence of all the necessary risks assessments being undertaken, as the relevant legislation is clear in that it must be established before a pesticide can be approved for use that there will be no immediate or delayed harmful effect on human health.

Facts and data ignored in favour of unevidenced industry assertions

The actual facts, evidence, and data of the reality of residents exposure, direct from residents themselves, has continued to be sidelined by regulators in favour of the unevidenced assertions of the manufacturers and producers of pesticides as to what they maintainthe exposure of residents involves!

Yet the primary concern of the pesticides industry has always clearly been to protect the sales of their products and related profits and to keep such pesticides being used.

Pesticides are obviously very big business. Sales of pesticides in the UK alone each year is around £627 million [3] and reports have put the value of the world pesticides industry at around a staggering $53 billion.

Therefore it has never been in the interests of the pesticide corporations to have the real life exposure of rural residents and communities properly recognised, as it is absolutely clear that if a proper assessment was undertaken to assess the exposure and risk for residents, then the result would be that pesticides would simply not be allowed to be approved at all for use in the locality of residents’ homes, as well as schools, children’s playgrounds etc.

There is also a striking and astonishing fact related to the continued reliance of the regulators on the unevidenced assertions of the pesticides industry – in that the Chemicals Regulation Directorate (CRD) which is part of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), receives approximately 60% of its funding from the agro-chemical industry.

This is broken down into the fees charged to manufacturers for applications, and a charge on the UK turnover of pesticide companies. [4] This results in the CRD receiving around £7 million or more per year from the industry. This has always been a completely inappropriate structure.

Therefore, even though CRD’s main priority is supposed to be to protect public health and the environment from pesticides, this absolutely conflicts with the fact that its main customers/clients are the big agro-chemical giants.

This may go some way to explaining why the CRD has always, very notably, been far more concerned with the protection of industry and business interests, particularly applicants for approval, rather than the protection of the public, especially residents.

CRD and pesticides industry behind latest outrageous EU proposal

In fact, the CRD, along with representatives of the pesticides industry, appear to be behind the astonishing proposal currently being considered in Europe – in a EC draft Technical Guidance [5] – to interpret pesticides being applied in “closed systems” and “in other conditions excluding contact with humans” as being applicable to the outdoor use of pesticides from crop spraying applications on fields in the open air.

This is in order for the exposure of residents to then be deemed so low and insignificant that it is included within the context of the term“negligible exposure.”

This is yet again outrageous, especially considering that EU law already recognises that the exposure for residents living in the locality of pesticide sprayed fields is high, as residents are now specifically defined as a “vulnerable group” in Article 3, paragraph 14, of the EU Regulation 1107/2009, which clearly recognises and clearly states that residents are “subject to high pesticide exposure over the long term.”

Thus what is currently being considered in Europe is again not in line with existing EU laws, in which residents exposure cannot possibly be considered as “negligible”.

My campaign is battling hard in Europe to try and get these proposals scrapped.

A catalogue of adverse health impacts

It is now beyond dispute that pesticides can cause a wide range of both acute, and chronic, adverse effects on human health. This includes irreversible and permanent chronic effects, illnesses and diseases.

High quality, peer-reviewed scientific studies and reviews have concluded that long-term exposure to pesticides can disturb the function of different systems in the body, including nervous, endocrine, immune, reproductive, renal, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems.

Such studies have concluded that exposure to pesticides is associated with a wide range of chronic diseases including, cancers of the breast, prostate, lung, brain (including childhood brain cancer), kidney, testicles, pancreas, oesophagus, stomach, bladder, bone, as well as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, soft tissue sarcoma, leukaemia, (including childhood leukaemia).

Other chronic health impacts that pesticides have been associated with in studies include, birth defects, reproductive disorders, neuro degenerative diseases (including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)), cardio-vascular diseases, respiratory diseases, diabetes, chronic renal diseases, and autoimmune diseases (such as rheumatoid arthritis, and systemic lupus erythematous).

Such findings add further support and vindication to the many residents who have continued to raise concerns over the association of pesticides and such chronic conditions.

The most common chronic long-term effects, illnesses and diseases reported to my campaign from residents living in the locality of crop sprayed fields include neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, Motor Neurone Disease, and neurological damage, as well as various cancers, especially those of the breast and brain, leukaemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, amongst many other chronic conditions.

The economic costs of the health conditions that pesticides can cause are massive. Obviously it goes without saying that the personal and human costs to those suffering chronic diseases and damage, and the impacts on all those around them, cannot be calculated in financial terms.

I myself have also known a number of residents lose their lives, or the lives of their husbands or wives, sons or daughters. It has been heart breaking to watch this happening, especially knowing that if pesticides were not sprayed in the locality of residents’ homes then such health conditions would have been totally preventable.

Real effects, real people

Take Douglas Lee, for example. Douglas and his family lived in the locality of pesticide sprayed fields. Douglas lost his son to leukaemia and had also previously recorded three other cases of leukaemia, seven cases of cancer and six neurological diseases from just 50 properties in his area.

In addition, he reported that several dogs which walked through fields shortly after crop spraying had died from cancer, and that entire ponds of fish had also died following spraying. Douglas himself subsequently succumbed to cancer a few years ago. I spoke to him two weeks before he died and he asked me to use his name and to carry on campaigning on behalf of all those affected. Mrs Lee lost both her husband and her son.

There is also the tragic case of Keren Robbins. She was subjected to years of pesticide spraying in the locality of her home, while suffering from both a neurological condition, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).

Keren was left feeling so powerless to stop the chemical onslaught that, after a spraying application in 2009 in which she suffered further adverse effects on her health, she took her own life by jumping in front of a train. Her husband was left utterly devastated at the loss of his wife.

Millions of rural citizens have been put in a massive guinea pig-style experiment, for which many of us residents have had to suffer the serious, devastating – and in some cases fatal – consequences. There are so many horrific stories of people being poisoned from crop spraying in the locality of their homes and many involve children.

Despite this – and despite the fact the primary duty of any Government is supposed to be to protect its people – successive Governments’ have continued to fail to act to secure the protection of rural residents from exposure to these harmful chemicals.

They have instead just continued to shift the goalposts, cherry picked the science to suit the desired outcome (of maintaining the status quo wherever possible), and misled the public over the safety of crop pesticides sprayed on UK fields – as there has never been anyevidence of safety for residents, or children attending schools near sprayed fields, just successive Governments’ own unfounded assertions.

Disgraceful ‘Honour’ for failing to protect people from poisons

The most recent outrageous development in relation to this issue has been the disgraceful MBE awarded to a Government official, Paul Hamey, who has been at the very heart of the long standing and catastrophic failure to protect rural residents from exposure to the cocktails of poisons sprayed on crops across the UK.

Mr. Hamey was the official that represented the Government in the legal proceedings and wrote/produced the majority of the Witness Statements on its behalf.

The fact that he was given the responsibility of representing in the UK courts the policy approach taken by DEFRA – and in doing so he was really defending his own work, as the official in charge of human exposure and risk assessment – only further demonstrated the influence he has on the policy decisions taken by DEFRA.

Therefore awarding him an MBE just adds further insult to injury to all those affected from the lack of duty of care in protecting people in rural areas and it goes way beyond rewarding for failure. This is rewarding someone directly involved with one of the biggest public health scandals of our time, and which can only be described as a national disgrace.

It would actually be akin to an MBE or other such honour being given to David Duckenfield who was the senior police officer and match commander during the fateful match at Hillsborough on 15th April 1989 and who has now been held fully responsible by the inquest jury this week due to a clear breach of his duty of care.

Following an objection I made regarding Paul Hamey’s MBE I was assured by the Cabinet Office that there would now be an “assessment”. [6] However, it is ludicrously being assessed by the same Government department that nominated him to receive the honour in the first place! So what are the chances of it being revoked? Not much.

Truth and Justice

Following the Hillsborough verdict this week the Home Secretary, Theresa May, said in a statement in the House of Commons that the Hillsborough families have faced “hostility and obfuscation. And the authorities that should have been trusted have laid blame and tried to protect themselves instead of acting in the public interest…..But the families have never faltered in their pursuit of the truth.”

One of the leading campaigners of the Hillsborough families, Trevor Hicks, said following the jury’s verdict, “I think if anyone is a winner today, it’s society at large in that, no matter who you are, how big you are, or where you are in your organisation, the public will come after you if you do anything wrong.”

The long fought justice for the Hillsborough families gives heart to all of us fighting for the truth and justice of an appalling scandal that has destroyed human lives. It is now very long overdue for other such scandals and cover ups to be fully recognised and acted on.

Many rural residents are waiting for the day we get a Hillsborough-style victory for the ‘double injustice’ we have endured from: firstly being poisoned by the Government’s very own policy; and then having to fight for years for recognition of the damage caused and for the necessary protection to prevent other families suffering the same.

Despite all the great difficulties involved with continuing to campaign, including the many obstacles presented by the ‘agents of self-interest’ – regulators, politicians, the big business players of the pesticide industry and farming unions, and even state and EU funded charities and NGOs – I shall carry on doing my best to get that result.

Georgina Downs is a journalist and campaigner. She has lived next to regularly sprayed crop fields for more than 30 years and runs the UK Pesticides Campaign.

This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

References

1. These quotes appeared in various articles in the UK in May 2009, including Farmers Weekly.

2. As stated by David Williams from DEFRA in an email dated 20th September 2015, and again in an email from Adrian Dixon, Head of Policy, CRD, on 15th January 2016.

3. Taken from an email from the finance department of the Chemicals Regulation Directorate (CRD) on 25th September 2012 confirming this figure.

4. Source: paragraph 3.1 of a 2011 DEFRA document.

5. European Commission draft Technical Guidance on points 3.6.3. to 3.6.5 of Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, in particular regarding the demonstration of negligible exposure to an active substance in a plant protection product under realistic conditions of use. The latest draft is November 2015 which is unpublished.

6. As stated in a letter dated 14th. March 2016 from the Honours Diversity and Outreach Co-ordinator at the Cabinet Office.

Greenpeace Netherlands has released a huge cache of secret documents from the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations on its specially created ttip-leaks.org website.

The leaked papers show that EU negotiators are prepared to drop hard won environmental protections to secure a deal, while measures to tackle climate change would be trumped every time by trade and investment rules.

In addition the ‘precautionary principle’ is abandoned in favour of a US-style ‘risk based’ approach to health and environmental regulation on chemicals, drugs, GMOs and other potential hazards, while environmental and consumer protection are consistently sidelined in favour of big business.

“These documents make clear the scale and scope of the trade citizens of the United States and the European Union are being asked to make in pursuit of corporate profits”, said Sylvia Borren, Executive Director Greenpeace Netherlands.

“It is time for the negotiations to stop, and the debate to begin. Should we be able to act when we have reasonable grounds to believe our health and wellbeing is at risk, or must we wait until the damage is done?”

According to BBC News today, France’s trade minister Matthias Fekl said a freeze in the TTIP talks was the “most likely option in view of the United States’ state of mind today”, adding that Europe was offering a lot with little in return.

“It is an agreement which, as it would be today, would be a bad deal”, he said on French radio, commenting on the leaked papers. “It cannot be agreed without France and even less so against France.”

Climate change, environmental protection omitted

Coming just months after COP21 and days after the signing of the Paris Agreement, the TTIP texts carry an extraordinary omission: climate change. Nothing indicating climate protection can be found in the obtained texts, indicating that where climate protection clashes with any provision that is in the text it will be overruled.

Worse, the scope for climate mitigation measures is directly limited by provisions of the chapters on Regulatory Cooperation or Market Access for Industrial Goods. As an example these proposals would rule out regulating the import of CO₂ intensive fuels such as oil from Tar Sands.

“Were our governments serious in Paris when they said they would do what was necessary to protect the planet, and keep climate change under 1.5 degrees?”, asks Borren.