The election of Donald Trump was a rude awakening from which many people in the US have still not recovered.

Their shock is similar to that felt by UK progressives, Greens, and those on the Left following the Brexit referendum.

In both cases, the visceral reaction was heightened by the barely-disguised racist and xenophobic messaging underpinning these campaigns.

Before these sentiments grow even more extreme, it’s vital that we understand their root cause. If we simply react in horror and outrage, if we only protest and denounce, then we fail to grasp the deeper ramifications of their votes.

For the defeat of both the Clinton campaign in the US and the Remain campaign in the UK can be explained by their inability to address the pain endured by ordinary citizens in the era of globalisation.

By failing to focus on the reckless profiteers driving the global economy, they allowed their opponents to offer a less truthful and more hateful explanation for voters’ social and economic distress.

In order to move forward, we need to give those who voted for Trump and Brexit something better to believe in. And we can. Because in both countries, voters emphatically rejected the system that has inflicted so much social and economic insecurity: pro-corporate globalisation. And that is the silver lining to the dark storm clouds we see.

Late lessons from early warnings

Before the Brexit vote, we warned that the gigantist, pro-growth rhetoric of most of the Remain side was utterly alienating to many small-c conservatives and to people who have been harmed by the uncontrolled movement of capital, goods, services and workers.

And we pointed out that neither side was painting a big picture that corresponded to the brutal reality of successive trade treaties, including those within the EU itself, that have put ordinary people in permanent competition with each other. It was against that system – and against the elites that alone have benefitted from it – that many millions in Britain voted, in some desperation and anger, to Leave.

Much the same applies to the US election. While many voters saw Hillary Clinton as capable, they did not see her as an alternative to the neoliberal status quo. Bernie Sanders would probably have beaten Trump, precisely because he firmly and explicitly rejected the pro-free-trade, pro-corporate ‘consensus’.

We need to learn from the Brexit and Trump votes that the far-Right thrives because it has a populist answer to the vicious impacts of globalisation. Voters want fundamental change, and the ‘reforms’ sought by mainstream progressives, Greens and those on the Left – like job training programs for displaced workers or voluntary safety standards for Third World factories – are simply inadequate.

Instead, we need to offer an alternative to globalisation itself.

How globalisation drives racial tension

Globalisation and market-driven centralisation actually drive the increase in xenophobia and racism that we have seen, by forcing people from every part of the world to compete against each other in a vicious economic race that only a handful can win.

One of the authors (Helena Norberg-Hodge) was a first-hand witness to this process in Ladakh, a region of India in the western Himalayas known as ‘Little Tibet’. For more than 600 years, Ladakhi Buddhists and Muslims lived side by side with no recorded instance of group conflict. They helped one another at harvest time, attended one another’s religious festivals, and sometimes intermarried.

But over a period of about 15 years starting in 1975, when the region was first opened to the global economy, tensions between Buddhists and Muslims escalated rapidly: by 1989 they were bombing each other’s homes. One mild-mannered Buddhist grandmother, who a decade earlier had been drinking tea and laughing with her Muslim neighbor, told me, “We have to kill all the Muslims or they will finish us off.”

How did relations between these two ethnic groups change so quickly and completely? The transformation is unfathomable, unless one understands the complex interrelated effects of globalisation on individuals and communities worldwide. These included

• the undermining of Ladakh’s local economy through the import of ‘cheap’ but heavily subsidized products;
• the centripetal pull of urban areas where jobs and political power became centralised;
• the consequent breakdown of village-scale cultural and governance structures;
• and the creation of unemployment and real poverty (problems that were preciously unknown in Ladakh).

In combination, these factors led to rising hostility against ‘the other’. (Norberg-Hodge has described these connections more fully in her book Ancient Futures, and in the documentary film The Economics of Happiness.)

Ladakh’s experience is not unique: all over the Global South, cultures have been impacted in a similar manner beginning with the era of conquest and colonialism; so have the UK and Europe starting with the Enclosures. But in recent decades, during the modern era of globalisation, the process has accelerated dramatically.

Destroying jobs, reducing wages, undermining conditions of work

By allowing corporations to move unfettered around the globe, ‘free trade’ treaties put workers throughout the industrialised world in competition with those who will accept a fraction of a dollar per hour.

For example, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) resulted in a net loss of 680,000 American jobs, and the Permanent Normal Trade Relations deal with China led to a net loss of another 2.7 million jobs. And it’s not only the disappearance of jobs that leads to impoverishment, but the threat that jobs can be easily taken elsewhere if workers don’t accept lower wages or fewer benefits.

At the same time, the infiltration of big business throughout the global South – most often with the support of national governments and backed by international financial institutions – has eliminated many of the livelihoods that local economies in those countries once provided.

With locally-adapted ways of life systematically undermined by economic policies geared towards the big and the global, millions of desperate people in the South find themselves with just two options: to accept minimal wages and appalling working conditions in industrial metropolises, or to migrate.

It is estimated that, as a direct result of heavily subsidized corn flooding the Mexican market under NAFTA, 2.4 million small farmers were displaced, and subsequently funneled into crowded urban centers or across the border to the US. So the loss of jobs in the North and the migrant crisis in the South are two sides of the same coin. But people have been steered away from looking at the flawed rules of the global economy that are behind both problems.

Although philosophically opposed to government regulation, the Right is now exploiting a situation – the cultural, economic, and psychological insecurity of vast swaths of the population – that is a product of the systematic deregulation of big business. Rather than allowing them to pull this sleight of hand, Left and Green voices must present a cogent critique of globalisation, and a coherent alternative.

We must show that it is not real progress to force every culture to commodify their commons, to subject every policy decision to the ‘discipline’ of monopolistic markets, to transform citizens into mindless consumers, and to lengthen supply-lines endlessly. The world has become dominated by a neoliberal ideology that makes all of this seem natural, desirable, unavoidable. It is none of those things.

In fact, voters are telling us that the age of David Cameron, Hillary Clinton and Francois Hollande is already over. The question now is: will it be succeeded by the age of Farage, Trump and le Pen. Or will we instead offer a viable green set of alternatives to globalization. If it is to be the latter, then our best option is localisation.

The solution: going local

Essentially, localisation means reducing the scale of economic activity – it’s about bringing the economy home. That doesn’t mean pulling up the drawbridges and retreating into isolationism. Nor does it mean an end to trade, even international trade.

But it does mean a fundamental change of emphasis: away from monoculture for export towards diversification for local needs. In a time of human-induced climate chaos and dwindling energy supplies, we need to reject out of hand the absurdities of the global marketplace, in which countries across the world routinely import and export identical products in almost identical quantities. The subsidies and other supports that currently make such practices ‘efficient’ and ‘profitable’ need to be reversed.

By reducing the scale of the economy, the environmental impacts of economic activity shrink as well. But the argument for localisation goes beyond the environment. Among other things, localisation allows us to live more ethically as citizens and consumers.

In the global economy, it’s as though our arms have grown so long that we can no longer see what our hands are doing. By contrast, when the economy operates on a smaller scale, everything is necessarily more transparent. We can see if the apples we are buying from the neighbouring farm are being sprayed with pesticides; we can see if workers’ rights are being abused.

We can already catch glimpses of localisation in action. Across the world, literally millions of initiatives are springing up-often in isolation one from another, but sharing the same underlying principles. The most important of these initiatives relate to food – which is important since food is the only thing humans produce that we all require every day.

From farmers’ markets to community supported agriculture, from ‘edible schoolyards’ to permaculture, a local food movement is sweeping the planet. But there are also projects underway to localise business, energy sources, banking and finance, and other needs.

Seeing the big picture

The UK decision to leave the EU is a risk, in that it might lead this country to seek to race even faster to the bottom, in particular by abandoning hard-won environmental protections. But it is also a great opportunity. We could choose, now, to disentangle ourselves from a fragile, resource-intensive and utterly-destructive global economy, in favour of re-embedding ourselves back into the Earth and our localities.

Similarly, President Trump is likely to serve up an incoherent mélange of protectionism on the one hand and deregulatory, pro-corporate policies on the other. Localisation, on the other hand, represents a coherent and comprehensive shift in direction – it protects not only our countries and workforces but also the Earth, future generations, and the poor.

Relocalising would radically reign in the invisible Right of corporate domination, and would reverse the rising tide of the more visible Far-Right. But this can only happen if we see the bigger picture. It isn’t enough to defend immigrants against bad treatment if we fail to act against the system that drives the breakdown of community and of civility, that pulls people out of their own cultures and economies.

If we do not relocalise – if we continue to throw people into ruthless competition with each other while making local communities unviable – then we are watering the seeds of further anti-immigrant sentiment, and worse. But if we embrace localisation, then we sow new seeds of cooperation and international understanding.

Relocalising won’t be easy. The forces that promote globalisation control most of the avenues of information to which people have access, and their propaganda saturates the media, including the Internet.

It is going to take a linking of hands internationally – among labour and environmental groups, small businesses and family farmers, educators and students, religious groups and peace activists – to put new political leaders in place who do not ratify treaties that devastate our present and our future.

Instead, they need to collaborate to create treaties that protect the local, everywhere. And it will take determined effort in localities everywhere to restore local food and energy systems, and to rebuild local knowledge and local democracy.

Perhaps you are already part of that determined effort. If you are not, we hope you decide to join us in this vital work.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is author of ‘Ancient Futures’ and a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award.

Rupert Read is co-author of ‘The post-growth project‘.

From North to South America and around the world, the ascendency of authoritarian leaders portends dangerous days ahead.

Such trends manifest starkly through Donald Trump’s election in the US and the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

Yet at the same time, remarkable stories continue to emerge of determined resistance to these brutal regressions, led by the continent’s indigenous peoples from the Amazon to Standing Rock.

Such imbalanced struggles are most striking because they inspire hope in times of crisis. Against the odds, the collective action of Brazil’s indigenous movement – like the resilient, water and land protectors at Standing Rock – is blazing new pathways toward justice and leading a vital, global movement from the grassroots.

Hard-fought victories from within Brazil’s embattled democracy help tell this story. Following the contentious and dubious impeachment of President Rousseff, the unelected regime of Michel Temer has gone about dismantling Brazil’s social and environmental order.

When the State turns against the People

Seeking to slash critical social spending and undermine fundamental ecological protections, his government wasted no time in implementing a wish list of budget-cutting and de-regulation ‘reforms’ long sought by a conservative political elite unable to win the last four presidential elections.

Under the dubious rationale that such draconian measures are needed to streamline ‘cumbersome’ environmental licensing and boost global investor confidence in order to pull the country from its dire economic doldrums, the Temer government is sponsoring Constitutional Amendment (PEC) 241, which would constitutionally enshrine drastic cuts to government spending for 20 years.

Among the losers in this reallocation of funds from social services like health and education toward the servicing of the country’s growing debt, the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) would see its budget cut to the bone.

Today’s snowballing threats to the wellbeing of Brazil’s indigenous peoples, embodied by an belligerent agribusiness sector, dam-driven energy policies, and reckless industrial mining interests, demand a strong federal indigenous agency to act as a counterbalance and watchdog.

The gutting of FUNAI can therefore be seen as a deliberate effort to eviscerate indigenous resistance when it’s needed most to defend rights and territories. Similarly, Brazil’s Health Ministry recently attempted to undermine its indigenous healthcare system by issuing two sweeping ordinances.

The response – live, direct and effective

The response from indigenous organizations was swift and decisive: drawing off of the success of July’s ‘Occupy FUNAI’ movement, which denounced the current assault on indigenous rights and blocked the nomination of a military general to head the agency, the country’s indigenous movement just days ago assembled 600 community leaders in Brasilia to demand the immediate cancellation of the ordinances.

In a testament to the power of this grassroots movement, Health Minister Ricardo Barros immediately backtracked, revoking the ordinances and signing a statement guaranteeing strengthened indigenous participation in their healthcare system.

“Once again, the indigenous movement took a step forward, demonstrating its strength as [Barros] backed all of our demands”, said Sônia Guajajara, coordinator of the National Indigenous Association (APIB). Thanking its Brazilian and international partners for supporting the struggle, APIB declared:

“We mobilized against the Temer government’s intention to revert and suppress the rights we fought hard to win over the last two decades. This experience demonstrates once again that we can only defend our achievements and the respect for our rights through collective struggle, organized response, and strong mobilization and pressure.”

Stopping an unacceptable candidate from assuming FUNAI’s presidency and defending the indigenous management of health services may appear to be small victories, but they are nonetheless significant against the backdrop of negativity and defeat currently hanging over Brazil’s progressive movement.

Important lessons for the whole world

Reeling from an impeachment led in part by an ultra-right wing political insurgency which ushered in a president with a glaringly absent popular mandate, the country’s progressives must rally around and replicate such victories for rights and democracy. Brazil’s indigenous movement thus provides important lessons for others countries experiencing their own setbacks.

As the United States endures an ultra-conservative regression that seeks to roll back decades of positive, progressive change, those of us who care about the environment, human rights, and dignity for all must look to indigenous peoples for determined and principled leadership, like that currently exemplified by the water protectors peacefully fighting to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.

Now more than ever, these stories of indigenous leadership must inspire and orient our resistance against the grim realities we collectively face. The stakes could not be higher.

Christian Poirier is a senior member of Amazon Watch’s team. He has coordinated the Brazil Program since 2009, and led the organization’s efforts to encourage a shift toward non-hydro energy alternatives in Brazil’s electricity matrix. Prior to joining Amazon Watch, he assisted Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, and managed rural development and micro enterprise projects in West Africa.

This article was originally published by Amazon Watch.

The election of Donald Trump was a rude awakening from which many people in the US have still not recovered.

Their shock is similar to that felt by UK progressives, Greens, and those on the Left following the Brexit referendum.

In both cases, the visceral reaction was heightened by the barely-disguised racist and xenophobic messaging underpinning these campaigns.

Before these sentiments grow even more extreme, it’s vital that we understand their root cause. If we simply react in horror and outrage, if we only protest and denounce, then we fail to grasp the deeper ramifications of their votes.

For the defeat of both the Clinton campaign in the US and the Remain campaign in the UK can be explained by their inability to address the pain endured by ordinary citizens in the era of globalisation.

By failing to focus on the reckless profiteers driving the global economy, they allowed their opponents to offer a less truthful and more hateful explanation for voters’ social and economic distress.

In order to move forward, we need to give those who voted for Trump and Brexit something better to believe in. And we can. Because in both countries, voters emphatically rejected the system that has inflicted so much social and economic insecurity: pro-corporate globalisation. And that is the silver lining to the dark storm clouds we see.

Late lessons from early warnings

Before the Brexit vote, we warned that the gigantist, pro-growth rhetoric of most of the Remain side was utterly alienating to many small-c conservatives and to people who have been harmed by the uncontrolled movement of capital, goods, services and workers.

And we pointed out that neither side was painting a big picture that corresponded to the brutal reality of successive trade treaties, including those within the EU itself, that have put ordinary people in permanent competition with each other. It was against that system – and against the elites that alone have benefitted from it – that many millions in Britain voted, in some desperation and anger, to Leave.

Much the same applies to the US election. While many voters saw Hillary Clinton as capable, they did not see her as an alternative to the neoliberal status quo. Bernie Sanders would probably have beaten Trump, precisely because he firmly and explicitly rejected the pro-free-trade, pro-corporate ‘consensus’.

We need to learn from the Brexit and Trump votes that the far-Right thrives because it has a populist answer to the vicious impacts of globalisation. Voters want fundamental change, and the ‘reforms’ sought by mainstream progressives, Greens and those on the Left – like job training programs for displaced workers or voluntary safety standards for Third World factories – are simply inadequate.

Instead, we need to offer an alternative to globalisation itself.

How globalisation drives racial tension

Globalisation and market-driven centralisation actually drive the increase in xenophobia and racism that we have seen, by forcing people from every part of the world to compete against each other in a vicious economic race that only a handful can win.

One of the authors (Helena Norberg-Hodge) was a first-hand witness to this process in Ladakh, a region of India in the western Himalayas known as ‘Little Tibet’. For more than 600 years, Ladakhi Buddhists and Muslims lived side by side with no recorded instance of group conflict. They helped one another at harvest time, attended one another’s religious festivals, and sometimes intermarried.

But over a period of about 15 years starting in 1975, when the region was first opened to the global economy, tensions between Buddhists and Muslims escalated rapidly: by 1989 they were bombing each other’s homes. One mild-mannered Buddhist grandmother, who a decade earlier had been drinking tea and laughing with her Muslim neighbor, told me, “We have to kill all the Muslims or they will finish us off.”

How did relations between these two ethnic groups change so quickly and completely? The transformation is unfathomable, unless one understands the complex interrelated effects of globalisation on individuals and communities worldwide. These included

• the undermining of Ladakh’s local economy through the import of ‘cheap’ but heavily subsidized products;
• the centripetal pull of urban areas where jobs and political power became centralised;
• the consequent breakdown of village-scale cultural and governance structures;
• and the creation of unemployment and real poverty (problems that were preciously unknown in Ladakh).

In combination, these factors led to rising hostility against ‘the other’. (Norberg-Hodge has described these connections more fully in her book Ancient Futures, and in the documentary film The Economics of Happiness.)

Ladakh’s experience is not unique: all over the Global South, cultures have been impacted in a similar manner beginning with the era of conquest and colonialism; so have the UK and Europe starting with the Enclosures. But in recent decades, during the modern era of globalisation, the process has accelerated dramatically.

Destroying jobs, reducing wages, undermining conditions of work

By allowing corporations to move unfettered around the globe, ‘free trade’ treaties put workers throughout the industrialised world in competition with those who will accept a fraction of a dollar per hour.

For example, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) resulted in a net loss of 680,000 American jobs, and the Permanent Normal Trade Relations deal with China led to a net loss of another 2.7 million jobs. And it’s not only the disappearance of jobs that leads to impoverishment, but the threat that jobs can be easily taken elsewhere if workers don’t accept lower wages or fewer benefits.

At the same time, the infiltration of big business throughout the global South – most often with the support of national governments and backed by international financial institutions – has eliminated many of the livelihoods that local economies in those countries once provided.

With locally-adapted ways of life systematically undermined by economic policies geared towards the big and the global, millions of desperate people in the South find themselves with just two options: to accept minimal wages and appalling working conditions in industrial metropolises, or to migrate.

It is estimated that, as a direct result of heavily subsidized corn flooding the Mexican market under NAFTA, 2.4 million small farmers were displaced, and subsequently funneled into crowded urban centers or across the border to the US. So the loss of jobs in the North and the migrant crisis in the South are two sides of the same coin. But people have been steered away from looking at the flawed rules of the global economy that are behind both problems.

Although philosophically opposed to government regulation, the Right is now exploiting a situation – the cultural, economic, and psychological insecurity of vast swaths of the population – that is a product of the systematic deregulation of big business. Rather than allowing them to pull this sleight of hand, Left and Green voices must present a cogent critique of globalisation, and a coherent alternative.

We must show that it is not real progress to force every culture to commodify their commons, to subject every policy decision to the ‘discipline’ of monopolistic markets, to transform citizens into mindless consumers, and to lengthen supply-lines endlessly. The world has become dominated by a neoliberal ideology that makes all of this seem natural, desirable, unavoidable. It is none of those things.

In fact, voters are telling us that the age of David Cameron, Hillary Clinton and Francois Hollande is already over. The question now is: will it be succeeded by the age of Farage, Trump and le Pen. Or will we instead offer a viable green set of alternatives to globalization. If it is to be the latter, then our best option is localisation.

The solution: going local

Essentially, localisation means reducing the scale of economic activity – it’s about bringing the economy home. That doesn’t mean pulling up the drawbridges and retreating into isolationism. Nor does it mean an end to trade, even international trade.

But it does mean a fundamental change of emphasis: away from monoculture for export towards diversification for local needs. In a time of human-induced climate chaos and dwindling energy supplies, we need to reject out of hand the absurdities of the global marketplace, in which countries across the world routinely import and export identical products in almost identical quantities. The subsidies and other supports that currently make such practices ‘efficient’ and ‘profitable’ need to be reversed.

By reducing the scale of the economy, the environmental impacts of economic activity shrink as well. But the argument for localisation goes beyond the environment. Among other things, localisation allows us to live more ethically as citizens and consumers.

In the global economy, it’s as though our arms have grown so long that we can no longer see what our hands are doing. By contrast, when the economy operates on a smaller scale, everything is necessarily more transparent. We can see if the apples we are buying from the neighbouring farm are being sprayed with pesticides; we can see if workers’ rights are being abused.

We can already catch glimpses of localisation in action. Across the world, literally millions of initiatives are springing up-often in isolation one from another, but sharing the same underlying principles. The most important of these initiatives relate to food – which is important since food is the only thing humans produce that we all require every day.

From farmers’ markets to community supported agriculture, from ‘edible schoolyards’ to permaculture, a local food movement is sweeping the planet. But there are also projects underway to localise business, energy sources, banking and finance, and other needs.

Seeing the big picture

The UK decision to leave the EU is a risk, in that it might lead this country to seek to race even faster to the bottom, in particular by abandoning hard-won environmental protections. But it is also a great opportunity. We could choose, now, to disentangle ourselves from a fragile, resource-intensive and utterly-destructive global economy, in favour of re-embedding ourselves back into the Earth and our localities.

Similarly, President Trump is likely to serve up an incoherent mélange of protectionism on the one hand and deregulatory, pro-corporate policies on the other. Localisation, on the other hand, represents a coherent and comprehensive shift in direction – it protects not only our countries and workforces but also the Earth, future generations, and the poor.

Relocalising would radically reign in the invisible Right of corporate domination, and would reverse the rising tide of the more visible Far-Right. But this can only happen if we see the bigger picture. It isn’t enough to defend immigrants against bad treatment if we fail to act against the system that drives the breakdown of community and of civility, that pulls people out of their own cultures and economies.

If we do not relocalise – if we continue to throw people into ruthless competition with each other while making local communities unviable – then we are watering the seeds of further anti-immigrant sentiment, and worse. But if we embrace localisation, then we sow new seeds of cooperation and international understanding.

Relocalising won’t be easy. The forces that promote globalisation control most of the avenues of information to which people have access, and their propaganda saturates the media, including the Internet.

It is going to take a linking of hands internationally – among labour and environmental groups, small businesses and family farmers, educators and students, religious groups and peace activists – to put new political leaders in place who do not ratify treaties that devastate our present and our future.

Instead, they need to collaborate to create treaties that protect the local, everywhere. And it will take determined effort in localities everywhere to restore local food and energy systems, and to rebuild local knowledge and local democracy.

Perhaps you are already part of that determined effort. If you are not, we hope you decide to join us in this vital work.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is author of ‘Ancient Futures’ and a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award.

Rupert Read is co-author of ‘The post-growth project‘.

From North to South America and around the world, the ascendency of authoritarian leaders portends dangerous days ahead.

Such trends manifest starkly through Donald Trump’s election in the US and the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

Yet at the same time, remarkable stories continue to emerge of determined resistance to these brutal regressions, led by the continent’s indigenous peoples from the Amazon to Standing Rock.

Such imbalanced struggles are most striking because they inspire hope in times of crisis. Against the odds, the collective action of Brazil’s indigenous movement – like the resilient, water and land protectors at Standing Rock – is blazing new pathways toward justice and leading a vital, global movement from the grassroots.

Hard-fought victories from within Brazil’s embattled democracy help tell this story. Following the contentious and dubious impeachment of President Rousseff, the unelected regime of Michel Temer has gone about dismantling Brazil’s social and environmental order.

When the State turns against the People

Seeking to slash critical social spending and undermine fundamental ecological protections, his government wasted no time in implementing a wish list of budget-cutting and de-regulation ‘reforms’ long sought by a conservative political elite unable to win the last four presidential elections.

Under the dubious rationale that such draconian measures are needed to streamline ‘cumbersome’ environmental licensing and boost global investor confidence in order to pull the country from its dire economic doldrums, the Temer government is sponsoring Constitutional Amendment (PEC) 241, which would constitutionally enshrine drastic cuts to government spending for 20 years.

Among the losers in this reallocation of funds from social services like health and education toward the servicing of the country’s growing debt, the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) would see its budget cut to the bone.

Today’s snowballing threats to the wellbeing of Brazil’s indigenous peoples, embodied by an belligerent agribusiness sector, dam-driven energy policies, and reckless industrial mining interests, demand a strong federal indigenous agency to act as a counterbalance and watchdog.

The gutting of FUNAI can therefore be seen as a deliberate effort to eviscerate indigenous resistance when it’s needed most to defend rights and territories. Similarly, Brazil’s Health Ministry recently attempted to undermine its indigenous healthcare system by issuing two sweeping ordinances.

The response – live, direct and effective

The response from indigenous organizations was swift and decisive: drawing off of the success of July’s ‘Occupy FUNAI’ movement, which denounced the current assault on indigenous rights and blocked the nomination of a military general to head the agency, the country’s indigenous movement just days ago assembled 600 community leaders in Brasilia to demand the immediate cancellation of the ordinances.

In a testament to the power of this grassroots movement, Health Minister Ricardo Barros immediately backtracked, revoking the ordinances and signing a statement guaranteeing strengthened indigenous participation in their healthcare system.

“Once again, the indigenous movement took a step forward, demonstrating its strength as [Barros] backed all of our demands”, said Sônia Guajajara, coordinator of the National Indigenous Association (APIB). Thanking its Brazilian and international partners for supporting the struggle, APIB declared:

“We mobilized against the Temer government’s intention to revert and suppress the rights we fought hard to win over the last two decades. This experience demonstrates once again that we can only defend our achievements and the respect for our rights through collective struggle, organized response, and strong mobilization and pressure.”

Stopping an unacceptable candidate from assuming FUNAI’s presidency and defending the indigenous management of health services may appear to be small victories, but they are nonetheless significant against the backdrop of negativity and defeat currently hanging over Brazil’s progressive movement.

Important lessons for the whole world

Reeling from an impeachment led in part by an ultra-right wing political insurgency which ushered in a president with a glaringly absent popular mandate, the country’s progressives must rally around and replicate such victories for rights and democracy. Brazil’s indigenous movement thus provides important lessons for others countries experiencing their own setbacks.

As the United States endures an ultra-conservative regression that seeks to roll back decades of positive, progressive change, those of us who care about the environment, human rights, and dignity for all must look to indigenous peoples for determined and principled leadership, like that currently exemplified by the water protectors peacefully fighting to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.

Now more than ever, these stories of indigenous leadership must inspire and orient our resistance against the grim realities we collectively face. The stakes could not be higher.

Christian Poirier is a senior member of Amazon Watch’s team. He has coordinated the Brazil Program since 2009, and led the organization’s efforts to encourage a shift toward non-hydro energy alternatives in Brazil’s electricity matrix. Prior to joining Amazon Watch, he assisted Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, and managed rural development and micro enterprise projects in West Africa.

This article was originally published by Amazon Watch.

The election of Donald Trump was a rude awakening from which many people in the US have still not recovered.

Their shock is similar to that felt by UK progressives, Greens, and those on the Left following the Brexit referendum.

In both cases, the visceral reaction was heightened by the barely-disguised racist and xenophobic messaging underpinning these campaigns.

Before these sentiments grow even more extreme, it’s vital that we understand their root cause. If we simply react in horror and outrage, if we only protest and denounce, then we fail to grasp the deeper ramifications of their votes.

For the defeat of both the Clinton campaign in the US and the Remain campaign in the UK can be explained by their inability to address the pain endured by ordinary citizens in the era of globalisation.

By failing to focus on the reckless profiteers driving the global economy, they allowed their opponents to offer a less truthful and more hateful explanation for voters’ social and economic distress.

In order to move forward, we need to give those who voted for Trump and Brexit something better to believe in. And we can. Because in both countries, voters emphatically rejected the system that has inflicted so much social and economic insecurity: pro-corporate globalisation. And that is the silver lining to the dark storm clouds we see.

Late lessons from early warnings

Before the Brexit vote, we warned that the gigantist, pro-growth rhetoric of most of the Remain side was utterly alienating to many small-c conservatives and to people who have been harmed by the uncontrolled movement of capital, goods, services and workers.

And we pointed out that neither side was painting a big picture that corresponded to the brutal reality of successive trade treaties, including those within the EU itself, that have put ordinary people in permanent competition with each other. It was against that system – and against the elites that alone have benefitted from it – that many millions in Britain voted, in some desperation and anger, to Leave.

Much the same applies to the US election. While many voters saw Hillary Clinton as capable, they did not see her as an alternative to the neoliberal status quo. Bernie Sanders would probably have beaten Trump, precisely because he firmly and explicitly rejected the pro-free-trade, pro-corporate ‘consensus’.

We need to learn from the Brexit and Trump votes that the far-Right thrives because it has a populist answer to the vicious impacts of globalisation. Voters want fundamental change, and the ‘reforms’ sought by mainstream progressives, Greens and those on the Left – like job training programs for displaced workers or voluntary safety standards for Third World factories – are simply inadequate.

Instead, we need to offer an alternative to globalisation itself.

How globalisation drives racial tension

Globalisation and market-driven centralisation actually drive the increase in xenophobia and racism that we have seen, by forcing people from every part of the world to compete against each other in a vicious economic race that only a handful can win.

One of the authors (Helena Norberg-Hodge) was a first-hand witness to this process in Ladakh, a region of India in the western Himalayas known as ‘Little Tibet’. For more than 600 years, Ladakhi Buddhists and Muslims lived side by side with no recorded instance of group conflict. They helped one another at harvest time, attended one another’s religious festivals, and sometimes intermarried.

But over a period of about 15 years starting in 1975, when the region was first opened to the global economy, tensions between Buddhists and Muslims escalated rapidly: by 1989 they were bombing each other’s homes. One mild-mannered Buddhist grandmother, who a decade earlier had been drinking tea and laughing with her Muslim neighbor, told me, “We have to kill all the Muslims or they will finish us off.”

How did relations between these two ethnic groups change so quickly and completely? The transformation is unfathomable, unless one understands the complex interrelated effects of globalisation on individuals and communities worldwide. These included

• the undermining of Ladakh’s local economy through the import of ‘cheap’ but heavily subsidized products;
• the centripetal pull of urban areas where jobs and political power became centralised;
• the consequent breakdown of village-scale cultural and governance structures;
• and the creation of unemployment and real poverty (problems that were preciously unknown in Ladakh).

In combination, these factors led to rising hostility against ‘the other’. (Norberg-Hodge has described these connections more fully in her book Ancient Futures, and in the documentary film The Economics of Happiness.)

Ladakh’s experience is not unique: all over the Global South, cultures have been impacted in a similar manner beginning with the era of conquest and colonialism; so have the UK and Europe starting with the Enclosures. But in recent decades, during the modern era of globalisation, the process has accelerated dramatically.

Destroying jobs, reducing wages, undermining conditions of work

By allowing corporations to move unfettered around the globe, ‘free trade’ treaties put workers throughout the industrialised world in competition with those who will accept a fraction of a dollar per hour.

For example, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) resulted in a net loss of 680,000 American jobs, and the Permanent Normal Trade Relations deal with China led to a net loss of another 2.7 million jobs. And it’s not only the disappearance of jobs that leads to impoverishment, but the threat that jobs can be easily taken elsewhere if workers don’t accept lower wages or fewer benefits.

At the same time, the infiltration of big business throughout the global South – most often with the support of national governments and backed by international financial institutions – has eliminated many of the livelihoods that local economies in those countries once provided.

With locally-adapted ways of life systematically undermined by economic policies geared towards the big and the global, millions of desperate people in the South find themselves with just two options: to accept minimal wages and appalling working conditions in industrial metropolises, or to migrate.

It is estimated that, as a direct result of heavily subsidized corn flooding the Mexican market under NAFTA, 2.4 million small farmers were displaced, and subsequently funneled into crowded urban centers or across the border to the US. So the loss of jobs in the North and the migrant crisis in the South are two sides of the same coin. But people have been steered away from looking at the flawed rules of the global economy that are behind both problems.

Although philosophically opposed to government regulation, the Right is now exploiting a situation – the cultural, economic, and psychological insecurity of vast swaths of the population – that is a product of the systematic deregulation of big business. Rather than allowing them to pull this sleight of hand, Left and Green voices must present a cogent critique of globalisation, and a coherent alternative.

We must show that it is not real progress to force every culture to commodify their commons, to subject every policy decision to the ‘discipline’ of monopolistic markets, to transform citizens into mindless consumers, and to lengthen supply-lines endlessly. The world has become dominated by a neoliberal ideology that makes all of this seem natural, desirable, unavoidable. It is none of those things.

In fact, voters are telling us that the age of David Cameron, Hillary Clinton and Francois Hollande is already over. The question now is: will it be succeeded by the age of Farage, Trump and le Pen. Or will we instead offer a viable green set of alternatives to globalization. If it is to be the latter, then our best option is localisation.

The solution: going local

Essentially, localisation means reducing the scale of economic activity – it’s about bringing the economy home. That doesn’t mean pulling up the drawbridges and retreating into isolationism. Nor does it mean an end to trade, even international trade.

But it does mean a fundamental change of emphasis: away from monoculture for export towards diversification for local needs. In a time of human-induced climate chaos and dwindling energy supplies, we need to reject out of hand the absurdities of the global marketplace, in which countries across the world routinely import and export identical products in almost identical quantities. The subsidies and other supports that currently make such practices ‘efficient’ and ‘profitable’ need to be reversed.

By reducing the scale of the economy, the environmental impacts of economic activity shrink as well. But the argument for localisation goes beyond the environment. Among other things, localisation allows us to live more ethically as citizens and consumers.

In the global economy, it’s as though our arms have grown so long that we can no longer see what our hands are doing. By contrast, when the economy operates on a smaller scale, everything is necessarily more transparent. We can see if the apples we are buying from the neighbouring farm are being sprayed with pesticides; we can see if workers’ rights are being abused.

We can already catch glimpses of localisation in action. Across the world, literally millions of initiatives are springing up-often in isolation one from another, but sharing the same underlying principles. The most important of these initiatives relate to food – which is important since food is the only thing humans produce that we all require every day.

From farmers’ markets to community supported agriculture, from ‘edible schoolyards’ to permaculture, a local food movement is sweeping the planet. But there are also projects underway to localise business, energy sources, banking and finance, and other needs.

Seeing the big picture

The UK decision to leave the EU is a risk, in that it might lead this country to seek to race even faster to the bottom, in particular by abandoning hard-won environmental protections. But it is also a great opportunity. We could choose, now, to disentangle ourselves from a fragile, resource-intensive and utterly-destructive global economy, in favour of re-embedding ourselves back into the Earth and our localities.

Similarly, President Trump is likely to serve up an incoherent mélange of protectionism on the one hand and deregulatory, pro-corporate policies on the other. Localisation, on the other hand, represents a coherent and comprehensive shift in direction – it protects not only our countries and workforces but also the Earth, future generations, and the poor.

Relocalising would radically reign in the invisible Right of corporate domination, and would reverse the rising tide of the more visible Far-Right. But this can only happen if we see the bigger picture. It isn’t enough to defend immigrants against bad treatment if we fail to act against the system that drives the breakdown of community and of civility, that pulls people out of their own cultures and economies.

If we do not relocalise – if we continue to throw people into ruthless competition with each other while making local communities unviable – then we are watering the seeds of further anti-immigrant sentiment, and worse. But if we embrace localisation, then we sow new seeds of cooperation and international understanding.

Relocalising won’t be easy. The forces that promote globalisation control most of the avenues of information to which people have access, and their propaganda saturates the media, including the Internet.

It is going to take a linking of hands internationally – among labour and environmental groups, small businesses and family farmers, educators and students, religious groups and peace activists – to put new political leaders in place who do not ratify treaties that devastate our present and our future.

Instead, they need to collaborate to create treaties that protect the local, everywhere. And it will take determined effort in localities everywhere to restore local food and energy systems, and to rebuild local knowledge and local democracy.

Perhaps you are already part of that determined effort. If you are not, we hope you decide to join us in this vital work.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is author of ‘Ancient Futures’ and a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award.

Rupert Read is co-author of ‘The post-growth project‘.

From North to South America and around the world, the ascendency of authoritarian leaders portends dangerous days ahead.

Such trends manifest starkly through Donald Trump’s election in the US and the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

Yet at the same time, remarkable stories continue to emerge of determined resistance to these brutal regressions, led by the continent’s indigenous peoples from the Amazon to Standing Rock.

Such imbalanced struggles are most striking because they inspire hope in times of crisis. Against the odds, the collective action of Brazil’s indigenous movement – like the resilient, water and land protectors at Standing Rock – is blazing new pathways toward justice and leading a vital, global movement from the grassroots.

Hard-fought victories from within Brazil’s embattled democracy help tell this story. Following the contentious and dubious impeachment of President Rousseff, the unelected regime of Michel Temer has gone about dismantling Brazil’s social and environmental order.

When the State turns against the People

Seeking to slash critical social spending and undermine fundamental ecological protections, his government wasted no time in implementing a wish list of budget-cutting and de-regulation ‘reforms’ long sought by a conservative political elite unable to win the last four presidential elections.

Under the dubious rationale that such draconian measures are needed to streamline ‘cumbersome’ environmental licensing and boost global investor confidence in order to pull the country from its dire economic doldrums, the Temer government is sponsoring Constitutional Amendment (PEC) 241, which would constitutionally enshrine drastic cuts to government spending for 20 years.

Among the losers in this reallocation of funds from social services like health and education toward the servicing of the country’s growing debt, the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) would see its budget cut to the bone.

Today’s snowballing threats to the wellbeing of Brazil’s indigenous peoples, embodied by an belligerent agribusiness sector, dam-driven energy policies, and reckless industrial mining interests, demand a strong federal indigenous agency to act as a counterbalance and watchdog.

The gutting of FUNAI can therefore be seen as a deliberate effort to eviscerate indigenous resistance when it’s needed most to defend rights and territories. Similarly, Brazil’s Health Ministry recently attempted to undermine its indigenous healthcare system by issuing two sweeping ordinances.

The response – live, direct and effective

The response from indigenous organizations was swift and decisive: drawing off of the success of July’s ‘Occupy FUNAI’ movement, which denounced the current assault on indigenous rights and blocked the nomination of a military general to head the agency, the country’s indigenous movement just days ago assembled 600 community leaders in Brasilia to demand the immediate cancellation of the ordinances.

In a testament to the power of this grassroots movement, Health Minister Ricardo Barros immediately backtracked, revoking the ordinances and signing a statement guaranteeing strengthened indigenous participation in their healthcare system.

“Once again, the indigenous movement took a step forward, demonstrating its strength as [Barros] backed all of our demands”, said Sônia Guajajara, coordinator of the National Indigenous Association (APIB). Thanking its Brazilian and international partners for supporting the struggle, APIB declared:

“We mobilized against the Temer government’s intention to revert and suppress the rights we fought hard to win over the last two decades. This experience demonstrates once again that we can only defend our achievements and the respect for our rights through collective struggle, organized response, and strong mobilization and pressure.”

Stopping an unacceptable candidate from assuming FUNAI’s presidency and defending the indigenous management of health services may appear to be small victories, but they are nonetheless significant against the backdrop of negativity and defeat currently hanging over Brazil’s progressive movement.

Important lessons for the whole world

Reeling from an impeachment led in part by an ultra-right wing political insurgency which ushered in a president with a glaringly absent popular mandate, the country’s progressives must rally around and replicate such victories for rights and democracy. Brazil’s indigenous movement thus provides important lessons for others countries experiencing their own setbacks.

As the United States endures an ultra-conservative regression that seeks to roll back decades of positive, progressive change, those of us who care about the environment, human rights, and dignity for all must look to indigenous peoples for determined and principled leadership, like that currently exemplified by the water protectors peacefully fighting to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.

Now more than ever, these stories of indigenous leadership must inspire and orient our resistance against the grim realities we collectively face. The stakes could not be higher.

Christian Poirier is a senior member of Amazon Watch’s team. He has coordinated the Brazil Program since 2009, and led the organization’s efforts to encourage a shift toward non-hydro energy alternatives in Brazil’s electricity matrix. Prior to joining Amazon Watch, he assisted Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, and managed rural development and micro enterprise projects in West Africa.

This article was originally published by Amazon Watch.

From North to South America and around the world, the ascendency of authoritarian leaders portends dangerous days ahead.

Such trends manifest starkly through Donald Trump’s election in the US and the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

Yet at the same time, remarkable stories continue to emerge of determined resistance to these brutal regressions, led by the continent’s indigenous peoples from the Amazon to Standing Rock.

Such imbalanced struggles are most striking because they inspire hope in times of crisis. Against the odds, the collective action of Brazil’s indigenous movement – like the resilient, water and land protectors at Standing Rock – is blazing new pathways toward justice and leading a vital, global movement from the grassroots.

Hard-fought victories from within Brazil’s embattled democracy help tell this story. Following the contentious and dubious impeachment of President Rousseff, the unelected regime of Michel Temer has gone about dismantling Brazil’s social and environmental order.

When the State turns against the People

Seeking to slash critical social spending and undermine fundamental ecological protections, his government wasted no time in implementing a wish list of budget-cutting and de-regulation ‘reforms’ long sought by a conservative political elite unable to win the last four presidential elections.

Under the dubious rationale that such draconian measures are needed to streamline ‘cumbersome’ environmental licensing and boost global investor confidence in order to pull the country from its dire economic doldrums, the Temer government is sponsoring Constitutional Amendment (PEC) 241, which would constitutionally enshrine drastic cuts to government spending for 20 years.

Among the losers in this reallocation of funds from social services like health and education toward the servicing of the country’s growing debt, the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) would see its budget cut to the bone.

Today’s snowballing threats to the wellbeing of Brazil’s indigenous peoples, embodied by an belligerent agribusiness sector, dam-driven energy policies, and reckless industrial mining interests, demand a strong federal indigenous agency to act as a counterbalance and watchdog.

The gutting of FUNAI can therefore be seen as a deliberate effort to eviscerate indigenous resistance when it’s needed most to defend rights and territories. Similarly, Brazil’s Health Ministry recently attempted to undermine its indigenous healthcare system by issuing two sweeping ordinances.

The response – live, direct and effective

The response from indigenous organizations was swift and decisive: drawing off of the success of July’s ‘Occupy FUNAI’ movement, which denounced the current assault on indigenous rights and blocked the nomination of a military general to head the agency, the country’s indigenous movement just days ago assembled 600 community leaders in Brasilia to demand the immediate cancellation of the ordinances.

In a testament to the power of this grassroots movement, Health Minister Ricardo Barros immediately backtracked, revoking the ordinances and signing a statement guaranteeing strengthened indigenous participation in their healthcare system.

“Once again, the indigenous movement took a step forward, demonstrating its strength as [Barros] backed all of our demands”, said Sônia Guajajara, coordinator of the National Indigenous Association (APIB). Thanking its Brazilian and international partners for supporting the struggle, APIB declared:

“We mobilized against the Temer government’s intention to revert and suppress the rights we fought hard to win over the last two decades. This experience demonstrates once again that we can only defend our achievements and the respect for our rights through collective struggle, organized response, and strong mobilization and pressure.”

Stopping an unacceptable candidate from assuming FUNAI’s presidency and defending the indigenous management of health services may appear to be small victories, but they are nonetheless significant against the backdrop of negativity and defeat currently hanging over Brazil’s progressive movement.

Important lessons for the whole world

Reeling from an impeachment led in part by an ultra-right wing political insurgency which ushered in a president with a glaringly absent popular mandate, the country’s progressives must rally around and replicate such victories for rights and democracy. Brazil’s indigenous movement thus provides important lessons for others countries experiencing their own setbacks.

As the United States endures an ultra-conservative regression that seeks to roll back decades of positive, progressive change, those of us who care about the environment, human rights, and dignity for all must look to indigenous peoples for determined and principled leadership, like that currently exemplified by the water protectors peacefully fighting to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.

Now more than ever, these stories of indigenous leadership must inspire and orient our resistance against the grim realities we collectively face. The stakes could not be higher.

Christian Poirier is a senior member of Amazon Watch’s team. He has coordinated the Brazil Program since 2009, and led the organization’s efforts to encourage a shift toward non-hydro energy alternatives in Brazil’s electricity matrix. Prior to joining Amazon Watch, he assisted Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, and managed rural development and micro enterprise projects in West Africa.

This article was originally published by Amazon Watch.

Setting out his order in court today (21st November, 2016), concluding ClientEarth’s case against the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Mr Justice Garnham gave the Government until 24 April 2017 to produce a draft plan and 31 July to deliver a final one.
 
The Judge rejected the Government’s suggested timetable which would have allowed it until September of next year to produce a final plan, saying it was “far too leisurely”.
 
In another important development, the Judge obliged the government to publish the technical data on which it was basing its plans. The original judgment in the case ruled that Defra had used over-optimistic estimates of future emissions from diesel cars.
 
He also granted ClientEarth permission to go back to court if there were any further problems with the draft plan, which seeks to reduce levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) as quickly as possible.
 
Speaking outside the court, James Thornton, CEO of ClientEarth, said: “It is very clear that the Government must now act swiftly and decisively to protect British people from toxic and illegal air pollution.
 
“We are delighted with the ruling and the fact the Judge did not agree with the government’s timetable for tackling this public health crisis.
 
“The Government has said throughout this process that it takes air pollution seriously. Until now, it’s actions have not lived up to this claim. Now is the time for the Government to prove that it truly cares about people’s health and the environment and take decisive action to tackle illegal air pollution in this country.”
 
The current air quality plan, which the High Court ordered was unlawful because it was based on faulty projections and would not bring air pollution down to within legal limits as soon as possible, will remain until the new plan is put in place.
 
This original plan proposed six clean air zones in London, Birmingham, Derby, Southampton, Nottingham, and Leeds. During the hearing today, the judge suggested the Government might need to include Glasgow and the Government’s lawyer, Ian Rogers QC, also mentioned South Wales.
 
Alan Andrews, ClientEarth’s air quality lawyer added: “A total of 37 out of 43 zones in the UK have illegal levels of air pollution. The Government will now have to show it has the ambition necessary to tackle the problem.

“If they are at all serious about complying with the court order, a national network of clean air zones must be part of their plans, which means including the dirtiest diesel cars and creating far more than the current six which are planned. Otherwise, the risk is the problem will just be pushed elsewhere.

“We are confident that the Government will see the urgency of today’s ruling and that we won’t have to return to court. But we will be watching on behalf of everyone living in the UK, and will return to court if the Government is failing to adhere to the terms of this judgment.”

It’s not rainforests, mangroves, or even disappearing coral reefs, but rather seagrass beds that have rceently caught the attention of hundreds of scientists as the effects of pollution and development continue to take their toll on this little-known ecosystem.

A flowering plant, seagrass shouldn’t be confused with seaweed – it’s thought there are in fact some 60 different species of seagrass which make up large ‘meadows’ underwater. There they pollinate and live out their lifecycles all beneath the surface. Seagrass ‘meadows’ can be made up of one single species, or a mixture of many different varieties, but all offer important habitats for marine life.

Seagrass beds harbour thousands of fish, bird, and invertebrate species; and provide a major food source for endangered species across the planet such as dugong, manatee, green turtle, and seahorses.

But with no specific protection for these habitats, more than 100 scientists have now called on global governments to back the protection of seagrasses. The good news is that these experts remain optimistic that seagrass beds can thrive well into the future but only if the scientific community becomes more unified and joins forces to support a singular approach to tackle the ongoing environmental threats to these underwater grasses.

Seagrass is important for many forms of life, and has an ability to modify its physical environment, so it can trap and bind nutrient-enriched sediment, encouraging the deposit and suspension-feeding invertebrates.

The leaves of seagrasses provide shelter for bacteria, algae, protozoans, coelenterates, molluscs, bryozoans, and echinoderms, yet they are threatened by coastal development including tourism, aquaculture, energy projects, and from environmental changes and sea levels rising.

In a report by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) entitled Accelerating loss of seagrasses across the globe threatens coastal ecosystems, a global assessment of 215 studies found that seagrasses have been disappearing at a rate of 110 km² per year since 1980 and that 29% of the known areal extent has disappeared since seagrass areas were initially recorded in 1879.

Dr Richard Unsworth, fisheries ecologist based at Swansea University, specialises in researching seagrass ecosystems and is also the founding director of marine conservation charity Project Seagrass, and president of the World Seagrass Association. A statement from the World Seagrass Association calling for action to secure the future of seagrass has been backed by 122 scientists across 28 countries.

Dr Unsworth says there is clear global evidence of a widespread trajectory of seagrass loss in all areas of the world, driven mostly by poor water quality and coastal development. And having just led a widespread analysis of evidence (using expert witnesses and scientists) of seagrass loss at the heart of the Coral triangle in Indonesia, he has discovered that extensive seagrass loss has occurred at almost all the locations he investigated. This places the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in jeopardy.

In the UK, Dr Unsworth suggests that at least six hectacres of seagrass in the UK has been lost due to static boat moorings, however he stresses the need to to remain optimistic: “At our recent conference in North Wales, I ran a workshop with Profuessor Carlos Duarte (KAUST) entitled ‘finding #oceanoptimism for seagrass‘. This workshop was aimed at finding those poorly reported examples of where seagrass conservation is working. All too easily we report the stories of conservation doom and gloom rather than stories of hope – as conservationists we need to inspire people to change things and take real actions to save our natural environment.

“That workshop presented examples of how communities, government and NGOs are making those changes around the world and showed that although we still have many problems there is light beginning to glimmer at the end of the tunnel.”

The EU Water Framework Directive has established the first EU-wide monitoring of seagrasses as ‘canaries of the sea’. This is leading to both governments and regulators responding to the condition and plight of seagrass ecosystems. Dr Unsworth says although it has its flaws, the very creation of this programme means things can improve, telling the Ecologist: “We see this as a very progressive step.”

There is also increasing knowledge of how to successfully restore seagrass meadows around the world and, according to Dr Unsworth, decades of work carried out in Denmark to improve coastal water quality (namely to reduce nitrates) has led to a significant and widespread expansion of seagrasses around that country.

Dr Unsworth adds: “Protection of seagrasses requires that people develop a better understanding of what it is and why it’s so important so that the necessary measures can then be taken with support of the general public.

“This means better management of our riverine catchments, more effective and targeted Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and better consideration of seagrass during coastal development planning.

“To help improve people’s understanding of the issues, we’ve set up Project Seagrass (www.projectseagrass.org) and developed a web portal and phone app (www.seagrassspotter.org) designed to get communities learning more about seagrasses and helping scientists to collect much-needed further data on where these habitats are.”

Laura Briggs is the Ecologist’s UK news reporter.

Follow her here @WordsbyBriggs

NuGen, a consortium of Toshiba and Engie (formerly GDF Suez), is proposing to build three AP1000 reactors at Moorside in Cumbria – a site adjacent to Sellafield.

The AP1000 reactor is a pressurised water reactor (PWR) designed and sold by Westinghouse Electric Company, now majority owned by Toshiba. But unlike other PWR designs it is what is called an advanced passive design.

The idea behind advanced passive design is that it shouldn’t require operator actions or electronic feedback in order to shut it down safely in the event of a loss of coolant accident (LOCA). Such reactors rely more on natural processes such as natural convection for cooling and gravity rather than motor-driven pumps to provide a backup water supply.

Westinghouse claims that AP1000 plant safety systems are able to automatically establish and maintain cooling of the reactor core and maintain the integrity of the containment which holds in the radioactive contents indefinitely following design-basis accidents.

The AP1000 design is a curious choice. Construction has so far commenced on ten AP1000s, six in the US and four in China, and another three are scheduled to begin soon. However two of the ten have been suspended, presumed abandoned, and the other eight are all running several years late and hugely over cost. Not one has ever been completed.

But a new report published today highlights a completely separate problem: the design is intrinsically unsafe.

‘Weaker containment, less redundancy in safety systems, fewer safety features’

A design objective of the AP1000 was also to be less expensive than other designs, by using less equipment than competing designs. The design decreases the number of components, including pipes, wires, and valves. The AP1000 has:

• fewer safety-related valves

• fewer pumps

• less safety-related piping

• less control cable

• less seismic building volume

Westinghouse claims that this enhances safety because there are fewer active components to go wrong. In contrast the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says that “the Westinghouse AP1000 has a weaker containment, less redundancy in safety systems, and fewer safety features than current reactors.”

There is a great deal of uncertainty about how these passive approaches would actually work in practice, and since, like the EPR reactor proposed for Hinkley Point C, there are no operating AP1000s anywhere in the world, there is no operating experience to draw from.

Conventional reactors rely on ‘defence-in-depth’ made up of layers of redundancy and diversity – this is where, say, two valves are fitted instead of one (redundancy) or where the function may be achieved by one of two entirely different means (diversity). In contrast ‘advanced passive’ designs rely much more on natural processes such as natural convection for cooling and gravity rather than motor-driven pumps to provide a backup water supply.

That may sound like a good idea in principle, however the AP1000 ‘advanced passive’ nuclear reactor design has a weaker secondary containment, and fewer back-up safety systems than current reactor designs.

Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, of US-based Fairewinds Associates, has repeatedly warned that the AP1000 design suffers from a design flaw which makes it vulnerable to a very large release of radioactivity following an accident if there were just a small failure in the steel containment vessel.

In that event gases released from the reactor would be sucked through existing ‘pinhole’ containment flaws in the AP1000 Shield Building due to the ‘chimney effect’, potentially leading to the rapid venting huge amounts of radioactivity to the environment.

Recent experience with existing reactors, collated by Fairewinds, suggests that containment corrosion, cracking, and leakage is more common than previously thought, and AP1000s are more vulnerable to containment corrosion than conventional reactors.

In addition the AP1000 shield building lacks flexibility and so could crack in the event of an earthquake or aircraft impact.

The AP1000 reactor design should be rejected!

Although the Fukushima reactors were not AP1000s Fairewinds has reviewed the design in the light of the Japanese accident to see if there are lessons which can be learnt which might apply to all reactor types and AP1000s in particular. Its report concluded that:

• Ongoing nuclear fission after a reactor has supposedly been shutdown continues to be the source of significant pressure inside the containment. The AP1000 containment is extraordinarily close to exceeding its peak post accident design pressure which means post accident pressure increases could easily lead to a breach of the containment.

• At least seven ways in which an AP1000 reactor design might lose the ability to cool the reactors in an emergency have been identified. These include damage to the water tank which sits on top of the shield building and some sort of disruption to the air flow around the steel containment.

• The accidents at Fukushima, especially the overheating and the hydrogen explosions in the Unit 4 Spent Fuel Pool showed that the calculations and assumptions about the AP1000 Spent Fuel Pond design were wholly inadequate.

• Fukushima showed that when several reactors share a site an accident at one reactor could damage other reactors. In the AP1000 the water tank on top of the reactor, and the shield building could be vulnerable to damage.

• Westinghouse assumes that there is zero probability of an AP1000 containment breach. But the accidents at Fukushima have shown that there is a high probability of Containment System failure resulting in significant releases of radioactivity directly into the environment.

The nuclear regulators – the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and Environment Agency – have been carrying out a new process called ‘Generic Design Assessment‘ (GDA), which looks at the safety, security and environmental implications of new reactor designs before an application is made to build that design at a particular site.

Initially the GDA for the AP1000 was expected to be completed around spring 2011, when the regulators would have issued a statement about the acceptability of the design. In December 2011 the Regulators issued only an interim approval. At that point Westinghouse decided to request a pause in the process. The process has now resumed and is expected to be completed by March 2017.

The GDA process is being carried out in what is described as ‘an open and transparent manner’, designed to facilitate the involvement of the public, who are able to view and comment on design information published on the web.

That gives us all the chance to ‘blow the whistle’ on a reactor design with serious built-in flaws – one that should never be approved for use in the UK or any other country.

Make your views known: Questions and comments can be submitted electronically via the Westinghouse website, or direct to the UK regulators. The deadline for making a comment on the AP1000 plant, as part of the GDA process is 30th November 2016. The Office of Nuclear Regulation’s comments process document describes the process in more detail.

The report: ‘The AP1000 Nuclear Reactor Design‘ is written by Peter Roche, November 2016, and commissioned by Radiation Free Lakeland. 

Peter Roche is an energy consultant based in Edinburgh and policy adviser to the  Nuclear Free Local Authorities. Until April 2004 he was a nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace UK for thirteen years. He has an honours degree in Ecological Sciences from Edinburgh University. He was co-founder of the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM) in 1976, which organised some of the largest anti-nuclear power demonstrations in the UK at the Torness nuclear station outside Edinburgh in the 1970s and 80s.

No2nuclear power: Peter Roche also edits the no2nuclearpower website which produces a daily nuclear news update – essential reading for all working or campaigning in the nuclear field.