Monthly Archives: June 2017

How the South Australians who dumped a nuclear dump may soon have another fight on their hands

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Last November, two-thirds of the 350 members of a South Australian-government initiated Citizens’ Jury rejected “under any circumstances” the plan to import vast amounts of high-level nuclear waste from around the world as a money-making venture.

The following week, SA Liberal Party Opposition leader Steven Marshall said that “[Premier] Jay Weatherill’s dream of turning South Australia into a nuclear waste dump is now dead.” Business SA chief Nigel McBride said: “Between the Liberals and the citizens’ jury, the thing is dead.”

And after months of uncertainty, Premier Weatherill has said in the past fortnight that the plan is “dead”, there is “no foreseeable opportunity for this”, and it is “not something that will be progressed by the Labor Party in Government”.

So is the plan dead? The Premier left himself some wriggle room, but the plan is as dead as it ever can be. If there was some life in the plan, it would be loudly proclaimed by SA’s Murdoch tabloid, The Advertiser. But The Advertiser responded to the Premier’s recent comments, to the death of the dump, with a deafening, deathly silence.

Royal Commission

It has been quite a ride to get to this point. The debate began in February 2015, when the Premier announced that a Royal Commission would be established to investigate commercial options across the nuclear fuel cycle. He appointed a nuclear advocate, former Navy man Kevin Scarce, as Royal Commissioner. Scarce said he would run a “balanced” Royal Commission and appointed four nuclear advocates to his advisory panel, balanced by one critic.

The final report of the Royal Commission, released in May 2016, was surprisingly downbeat given the multiple levels of pro-nuclear bias. It rejected ‒ on economic grounds ‒ almost all of the proposals it considered: uranium conversion and enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, conventional and Generation IV nuclear power reactors, and spent fuel reprocessing.

Australia’s handful of self-styled ‘ecomodernists’ or ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ united behind a push to import spent fuel and to use some of it to fuel Generation IV fast neutron reactors. They would have expected to persuade the stridently pro-nuclear Royal Commission to endorse their ideas. But the Royal Commission completely rejected the proposal, stating in its final report:

“[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk. Although prototype and demonstration reactors are operating, there is no licensed, commercially proven design. Development to that point would require substantial capital investment.”

SA as the world’s nuclear waste dump

The only thing left standing (apart from the shrinking uranium mining industry) was the plan to import nuclear waste as a commercial venture. Based on commissioned research, the Royal Commission proposed importing 138,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (spent nuclear fuel from power reactors) and 390,000 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste.

The SA Labor government then established a ‘Know Nuclear’ statewide promotional campaign under the guide of ‘consultation’. The Government also initiated the Citizens’ Jury.

The first sign that things weren’t going to plan for the Government was on 15 October 2016, when 3,000 people participated in a protest against the nuclear dump at Parliament House in Adelaide.

A few weeks later, on November 6, the Citizens’ Jury rejected the nuclear dump plan. Journalist Daniel Wills wrote: “This “bold” idea looks to have just gone up in a giant mushroom cloud. When Premier Jay Weatherill formed the citizens’ jury to review the findings of a Royal Commission that recommended that SA set up a lucrative nuclear storage industry, he professed confidence that a well-informed cross-section of the state would make a wise judgment. Late Sunday, it handed down a stunning and overwhelming rejection of the proposal.

“Brutally, jurors cited a lack of trust even in what they had been asked to do and their concerns that consent was being manufactured. Others skewered the Government’s basic competency to get things done, doubting that it could pursue the industry safely and deliver the dump on-budget.”

In the immediate aftermath of the Citizens’ Jury, the SA Liberal Party and the Nick Xenophon Team announced that they would actively campaign against the dump in the lead-up to the March 2018 state election. The SA Greens were opposed from the start.

Premier Weatherill previously said that he established the Citizens’ Jury because he could sense that there is a “massive issue of trust in government”. It was expected that when he called a press conference on November 14, the Premier would accept the Jury’s verdict and dump the dump. But he announced that he wanted to hold a referendum on the issue, as well as giving affected Aboriginal communities a right of veto. Nuclear dumpsters went on an aggressive campaign to demonise the Citizens’ Jury though they surely knew that the bias in the Jury process was all in the pro-nuclear direction.

For the state government to initiate a referendum, enabling legislation would be required and non-government parties said they would block such legislation. The government didn’t push the matter ‒ perhaps because of the near-certainty that a referendum would be defeated. The statewide consultation process led by the government randomly surveyed over 6,000 South Australians and found 53% opposition to the proposal compared to 31% support.

Likewise, a November 2016 poll commissioned by the Sunday Mail found 35% support for the nuclear dump plan among 1,298 respondents. The newspaper’s report on its own poll was dishonest. Instead of noting that non-supporters outnumbered supporters by almost two to one, the Sunday Mail conflated responses to two different questions and claimed: “Majority support for creating a nuclear industry in South Australia is revealed in an extensive Sunday Mail survey of public opinion, in a rebuff to moves to shut down further study of a high-level waste dump.”

Then the Labor government announced on 15 November 2016 that it would not seek to repeal or amend the SA Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) Act 2000, legislation which imposes major constraints on the ability of the government to move forward with the nuclear waste import proposal. (The government also said that it would not encourage the federal government to repeal laws banning nuclear power, “recognising that in the short-to-medium term, nuclear power is not a cost-effective source of low-carbon electricity for South Australia”).

Economic claims exposed

Implausible claims about the potential economic benefits of importing nuclear waste had been discredited by this stage. The claims presented in the Royal Commission’s report were scrutinised by experts from the US-based Nuclear Economics Consulting Group (NECG), commissioned by a Joint Select Committee of the SA Parliament.

One of the many lies peddled by the Murdoch press was that the NECG report “backed Royal Commission findings that a nuclear dump could create $257 billion in revenue for South Australia.” In fact, the NECG report did no such thing. The kindest thing the report had to say was that the waste import project could be profitable under certain assumptions, but the report then raised serious questions about most of those assumptions.

The NECG report noted that the Royal Commission’s economic analysis failed to consider important issues which “have significant serious potential to adversely impact the project and its commercial outcomes”; that assumptions about price were “overly optimistic” in which case “project profitability is seriously at risk”; that the 25% cost contingency for delays and blowouts was likely to be a significant underestimate; and that the assumption the project would capture 50% of the available market had “little support or justification”.

The farcical and dishonest engineering of a positive economic case to proceed with the nuclear waste plan was exposed by ABC journalist Stephen Long on 8 November 2016: “Would you believe me if I told you the report that the commission has solely relied on was co-authored by the president and vice president of an advocacy group for the development of international nuclear waste facilities?”

No second opinion, no peer review … no wonder the Citizens’ Jury was unconvinced and unimpressed. The Jury’s report said: “It is impossible to provide an informed response to the issue of economics because the findings in the RCR [Royal Commission report] are based on unsubstantiated assumptions. This has caused the forecast estimates to provide inaccurate, optimistic, unrealistic economic projections.”

Professor Barbara Pocock, an economist at the University of South Australia, said: “All the economists who have replied to the analysis in that report have been critical of the fact that it is a ‘one quote’ situation. We haven’t got a critical analysis, we haven’t got a peer review of the analysis”.

Another South Australian economist, Prof. Richard Blandy from Adelaide University, said: “The forecast profitability of the proposed nuclear dump rests on highly optimistic assumptions. Such a dump could easily lose money instead of being a bonanza.”

The dump is finally dumped

To make its economic case, the Royal Commission assumed that tens of thousands of tonnes of high-level nuclear waste would be imported before work had even begun building a deep underground repository. The state government hosed down concerns about potential economic losses by raising the prospect of customer countries paying for the construction of waste storage and disposal infrastructure in SA.

But late last year, nuclear and energy utilities in Taiwan ‒ seen as one of the most promising potential customer countries ‒ made it clear that they would not pay one cent towards the establishment of storage and disposal infrastructure in SA and they would not consider sending nuclear waste overseas unless and until a repository was built and operational.

By the end of 2016, the nuclear dump plan was very nearly dead, and the Premier’s recent statement that it is “not something that will be progressed by the Labor Party in Government” was the final nail in the coffin. The dump has been dumped.

“Today’s news has come as a relief and is very much welcomed,” said Yankunytjatjara Native Title Aboriginal Corporation Chair and No Dump Alliance spokesperson Karina Lester. “We are glad that Jay has opened his ears and listened to the community of South Australia who have worked hard to be heard on this matter. We know nuclear is not the answer for our lands and people – we have always said NO.”

Narungga man and human rights activist Tauto Sansbury said: “We absolutely welcome Jay Weatherill’s courageous decision for looking after South Australia. It’s a great outcome for all involved.”

Lessons learned?

There is much to reflect on. The idea of Citizens’ Juries would seem, superficially, attractive. But bias is inevitable if the government establishing and funding the Jury process is strongly promoting (or opposing) the issue under question. In the case of the Jury investigating the nuclear waste plan, it backfired quite spectacularly on the government (Daniel Wills’ analysis in The Advertiser was arguably the most perceptive). Citizen Juries will be few and far between for the foreseeable future in Australia. A key lesson for political and corporate elites is that they shouldn’t let any semblance of democracy intrude on their plans.

The role of Murdoch tabloids needs comment, particularly in regions where the only mass circulation newspaper is a Murdoch tabloid. No-one would dispute that the NT News has a dumbing-down effect on political and intellectual life in the Northern Territory. Few would doubt that the Courier Mail does the same in Queensland.

South Australians need to grapple with the sad truth that its Murdoch tabloids ‒ the Advertiser and the Sunday Mail ‒ are a blight on the state. Their grossly imbalanced and wildly inaccurate coverage of the nuclear dump debate was ‒ with some honourable exceptions ‒ disgraceful. And that disgraceful history goes back decades; for example, a significant plume of radiation dusted Adelaide after one of the British bombs tests in the 1950s but the Advertiser chose not to report it.

The main lesson from the dump debate is a positive one: people power can upset the dopey, dangerous ideas driven by political and corporate elites and the Murdoch press. Sometimes. It was particularly heartening that the voices of Traditional Owners were loud and clear and were given great respect by the Citizens’ Jury.

The Jury’s report said: “There is a lack of Aboriginal consent. We believe that the government should accept that the Elders have said NO and stop ignoring their opinions. … Jay Weatherill said that without the consent of traditional owners of the land “it wouldn’t happen”. It is unethical to backtrack on this statement without losing authenticity in the engagement process.”

Premier Weatherill said that one of valuable things that emerged from the Citizens’ Jury “is that there was an expression of solidarity by the wider community with the Aboriginal community”.

Conversely, the most disheartening aspect of the debate was the willingness of the Murdoch press and pro-nuclear lobbyists to ignore or trash Aboriginal people opposed to the dump.

Another dump debate

Traditional Owners, environmentalists, church groups, trade unionists and everyone else who contributed to dumping the dump can rest up and celebrate for a moment. But only for a moment. Another dump proposal is very much alive: the federal government’s plan to establish a national nuclear waste dump in SA, either in the Flinders Ranges or on farming land near Kimba, west of Port Augusta.

In May 2016, Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Regina McKenzie, who lives near the Flinders Ranges site, wrote:

“Last year I was awarded the SA Premier’s Natural Resource Management Award in the category of ‘Aboriginal Leadership – Female’ for working to protect land that is now being threatened with a nuclear waste dump. But Premier Jay Weatherill has been silent since the announcement of six short-listed dump sites last year, three of them in SA.

“Now the Flinders Ranges has been chosen as the preferred site and Mr Weatherill must speak up. The Premier can either support us ‒ just as the SA government supported the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta when their land was targeted for a national nuclear waste dump from 1998-2004 ‒ or he can support the federal government’s attack on us by maintaining his silence.”

Perhaps the Premier will find his voice on the federal government’s contentious proposal for a national nuclear waste dump in SA, now that his position on that debate is no longer complicated by the parallel debate about establishing a dump for foreign high-level nuclear waste.

This Author

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter.

 

 

GAWP! The Green Alphabet Writing Prize

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Flipside, the East Anglian literary and arts festival, is launching a writing competition for writers of all ages in a search for inspirational writing about the environment.

 Here’s what you do. Choose any letter of the alphabet and use it in any way you like in a piece of writing on a green theme. Your submission can be a poem or a piece of prose, and could include some visual art. Whatever it is, it should refer to the environment and how to care for it.

First prize: £500 adults (16+), £200 for under 16s and all entries will be considered for inclusion in an anthology.

The competition will be judged by Jackie Kay MBE, the Scots Makar (poet Laureate), an award-winning poet and the Chancellor of the University of Salford; Jon Canter, a novelist and playwright, his work is often heard on BBC Radio 4; and Blake Morrison, poet, Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

 Writing Tips

Be exciting and original, play around with the theme and think about what the environment means to you.

Remember that non-fiction doesn’t have to be a serious piece of informative writing; it can include all manner of things – memoir, reportage, polemic, satire or biography.

You’ve got a limit of 500 words, but you don’t have to use all of them!

 The great, late English novelist John Fowles once advised: “At heart, write always for yourself, not for family and friends, for admired teachers, for reviewers or publishers; but make sure you write from your real self, not that one besotted by vainglorious dreams of a future self. One day you will realize that the true rewards of writing lie inalienably in the writing itself.”

Deadline

The deadline for entries is 31st July 2017 and the entry fee is £3 per piece (under 16s free). Further information on terms and conditions and submission guidelines is available here. 

 

 

Ecologist Special Report: Environmental Activist Illegally Detained in Baja California Sur, Mexico

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On the morning of Friday, May 19th 2017, John Moreno, a lawyer and environmental activist, was arrested in Todos Santos, a small town at the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. Three agents in civilian clothes detained the 36-year-old father of three outside a coffee shop, and drove him to La Paz, the State Capital, in a brand new red pick up truck.

At first, Moreno was told only that he needed to appear in court to testify. Once he was inside the vehicle, he was informed that he was under arrest, and his cell phone was confiscated. He was only allowed one phone call at 5 PM – once all government offices were closed for the weekend – ensuring that he encountered a significant delay in preparing his defense strategy.

That same day, Joella Corado, a local 28-year-old health food storeowner and a former client of Moreno’s was also arrested and taken to La Paz. Both were accused of aggravated property theft and denied bail.

The Tres Santos Connection

For the past two years, John Moreno has acted as the pro-bono lawyer and spokesperson for a group of fishermen who oppose a touristic mega development called Tres Santos. Although slickly labelled as a sustainable and inclusive project that promises to create “an epicenter for well-being” for yoga and surf enthusiasts, the development has faced local opposition from the start.

With the construction of its beachfront hotel on the dunes of the Punta Lobos beach, Tres Santos jeopardizes a naturally protected ocean access point used by fishermen for generations. Locals also fear that the planned construction of almost 4,500 high end homes will lead to the dramatic and unsustainable growth of a town that today barely reaches 6,000 inhabitants, irreversibly straining an already imperiled water aquifer.

Alarmingly, this mega-project does not comply with the Todos Santos development plan (Plan de Desarrollo Urbano) approved in 2012, and yet the developers claim to have received all the necessary permits for construction. None of these permits have (to date) been published or made accessible to the public.

Ever since planning and construction began, Tres Santos skillfully combined a seductive media presence – featuring glowing write-ups in Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, and Vogue magazine – with old school repression. On February 2nd 2016, some 200 police in riot gear forcefully removed a camp that fishermen had set up to protest the construction of the beachfront hotel, as well as the illegally-built massive seawall that surrounded it, eroding the beach, destroying dunes and wetlands, damaging fishing equipment and costly skiff motors.

Tres Santos also filed lawsuits against six of the most visible activists who voiced opposition to their project, including John Moreno. In a move clearly meant as intimidation, the activists are accused of invasion of property and dispossession. As no evidence exists to back up Tres Santos’ claims, and despite yet another hearing last Friday, none of the lawsuits have moved forward in court.

Negotiations between the fishermen and the development company stalled in early 2016, after the latter refused to drop charges against the activists that supported the community’s struggle. The lengthy process of starting a class-action suit on environmental grounds began, while international capital continued to pour into the Tres Santos project.

On February 3rd 2017, Ambassador Alberto Szekely, an internationally-known environmental lawyer, jointly filed with John Moreno a Citizen’s Complaint against Tres Santos in the Federal Environmental Prosecution Office (PROFEPA), suing for environmental damage at Punta Lobos beach and for failure to comply with environmental and zoning laws. Many local residents signed the complaint and, after a long and difficult struggle to persuade the authorities to start enforcing the contravened laws, on April 17th PROFEPA inspectors finally carried out an inspection of the beachfront development. Results are still pending.

Yet the hotel nonchalantly began accepting reservations in April as if no social conflict had ever existed, and as if the legality of their project was never in question.

On May 12th, Carlos Mendoza Davis, the Governor of Baja California Sur, was photographed visiting the grounds of Tres Santos next to a beaming Javier Barrios, the CEO of Mira Companies (the Mexican subsidiary of the Colorado company Black Creek Group, financers of this development). He publicly declared his full support of investments such as Tres Santos, deeming them beneficial to the State as, he claimed, they opened the region to the world in an “environmentally and socially responsible manner”.

Local Authorities Intervene-in Support of Developers

John Moreno’s arrest came scarcely a week after the Governor’s visit to Tres Santos. He had been expecting it. Word had reached him that the Attorney General of Baja California Sur, Erasmo Palemon Alamilla, had met with Javier Barrios on the grounds of Tres Santos on March 8th. Moreno knew that the authorities were combing though some of his old cases to see if they could find one that could be used against him. He did not know that the case that would be brought up, through an illegal manipulation of the file and the falsification of documents, was one that he had won three years before.

The case involved his former client Joella Corado, a dual Mexican and American citizen who was never actively involved in the struggle against Tres Santos. In 2014, Moreno successfully evicted a squatter, Enrique Chávez Ugarte, who had illegally taken possession of a property in Todos Santos owned by Corado.

Now, three years later, the case has been mysteriously re-opened, but this time, John and Joella are no longer the plaintiffs. Instead, in a reversal of roles, they are now themselves accused of aggravated property theft by Mr Chávez Ugarte, the same person they had successfully evicted before. Like Moreno, Joella Corado was arrested and denied bail.

According to the case documentation, John Moreno was notified of his change of status from plaintiff to accused on April 5th, 2017 in Todos Santos, before police witnesses. However, that entire day he happened to be in court in La Paz, and he was able to provide documentation to back up his alibi. A forensic document examiner soon discovered that Moreno’s signature accepting the lawsuit notification was false, and that the accompanying witness statements had also been forged. The photocopies of the identifications included in the file clearly had been lifted from other cases, and the official stamp on the document was incompatible with the one from the town of Todos Santos.

In a May 24th press conference on John Moreno’s case, his defense lawyer Arturo Rubio Ruiz directly linked the blatant irregularities of this case to the Attorney General of the State of Baja California Sur, Erasmo Palemon Alamilla, asking: “What kind of criminal is in charge of our state’s justice system? This isn’t John Moreno versus a company, this is us against a man who utilizes his power to service personal, toxic and mysterious interests. I blame the State Attorney exclusively and specifically. No prosecutor would dare do something like this without orders from above.”

Despite the crude obviousness of the forgery, the acting judge, Rosalía Cota Domínguez, refused to even consider the forensic evidence and ordered both Moreno and Corado to prison without bail on May 25th. Since then, the court has repeatedly used every stalling technique at its disposal, alleging excess work when asked for case documents.

Yet the arrest warrants for John Moreno and Joella Corado were processed and executed in record time. In a state that in 2016 had some 55,000 unsolved cases, and that still today has more than 2,000 arrest warrants pending, this selective efficiency becomes all the more outrageous. It should be no surprise that in a 2015 study by CIDE (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica), Baja California Sur was ranked last nationally with regards to transparency and access to information.

The judicial system of Baja California Sur clearly has the uncanny ability to speed up and slow down its processes at will. The travesty of justice that is evidenced by Moreno and Corado’s illegal incarceration can only be traced to the undue influence of international capital in a country where the highest level of government defends large-scale development at all costs.

The fragility of Mexico’s driest state, and the dire long-term consequences of such an environmentally irresponsible policy, seem to matter little in the rush to monetize natural resources. The same can be said of the basic human rights of its citizens. Although John Moreno was granted special protection from the Mexican Federal Government as part of a mechanism designed to protect defenders of human rights and journalists from violence and the deprivation of freedom, this protected status has done nothing to ensure his release.

Local Protests Surge Against Corruption and Impunity

Since the illegal arrest of John Moreno and Joella Corado on May 19th, numerous protests and vigils have been held, both in the town of Todos Santos and in the state capital of La Paz. Many consider Moreno a political prisoner of the government, and see Corado as collateral damage in a political campaign to clamp down on community resistance to development.

In a state that has seen the influx of drug-related violence rise drastically in the last few years, with 55 murders reported in January 2017 alone, civil society demands a transparent end ethical leadership that truly defends the rights of its citizens to live in dignity, safety and peace. John Moreno and Joella Corado are now symbols of a broad struggle for justice and human rights in Baja California Sur.

This Author

Viviane Mahieux is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature at UC Irvine

 

 

 

 

 

Open letter to party leaders on climate change and the UK economy

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In the wake of the inconclusive general election result and bearing in mindthe forthcoming Brexit negotiations, we are writing to leaders of UKparliamentary parties to urge you to unite around a common cause – tackling climate change – as a way of helping to provide major economic, social and environmental benefits at this time of uncertainty.

Not only does there continue to be there very strong scientific evidence on the urgency of this global threat, but measures to tackle it offer major opportunities to exploit science and technology to create jobs, tackle fuel poverty, reduce local air pollution and provide many other co-benefits for British society.

The UK could now capitalise on the renewed international commitment to tackling climate change in the wake of the ill-informed decision of President Trump to withdraw the USA from the Paris Agreement.

We have noted the widespread commitment to tackling climate change in the party manifestos. While there is some diversity in the approaches, there are many common factors. Hence, as a priority, we urge strong support for:

  • Home energy conservation programmes. These will both reduce carbon emissions and help to tackle fuel poverty, which is estimated to be responsible for nearly 8,000 UK deaths a year. [1]

 

    • Renewable energy projects – especially wind, solar, marine and biogas technologies and community-led projects. With costs for many of these falling rapidly, the potential economic and employment benefits are very large [2] – and government opinion polling shows these technologies are especially popular. [3]

     

    • Energy storage technologies, including batteries, power-to-gas systems, and pumped hydro storage. Many of these technologies are already rapidly falling in cost, and they have enormous potential to complement the variable renewable energy sources. [4] Electric vehicles will play a key role here and their widespread adoption will help to reduce the number of UK deaths attributable to outdoor air pollution, currently estimated at 40,000 per year. [5]

      Additional Recommendations:

    We further recommend the following additional actions, which we strongly

    believe will complement those above:

    • End subsidies for fossil fuels, especially for unconventional sources like shale gas. The growth of a large-scale shale gas industry in this country is likely to seriously undermine Britain’s climate targets, as the Committee on Climate Change has warned. [6] Furthermore, the technique of hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’) is not popular with the British public, [7] partly as it creates significant risks for the local environment.

     

    • End new commitments to nuclear power stations. These create unique and unresolved economic, security, environmental and safety risks.

     

    Finally, we urge you to use any political influence you have in the USA to try to convince President Trump that climate change is a serious threat to his country as well as the world, and that his government needs to change course. Indeed, his failure to support cleaner industries in his own country is very likely to have a negative impact on the economy there.

    We would be interested to hear your thoughts on our recommendations.

    Yours sincerely

     

    These Authors

    Dr Stuart Parkinson is Executive Director and Dr Philip Webber

    is Chair of Scientists for Global Responsibility

     

    This open letter has been sent to the following politicians:

    Theresa May MP, Conservative Party

    Jeremy Corbyn MP, Labour Party

    Tim Farron MP, Liberal Democrats

    Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Scottish National Party

    Arlene Forster MLA, Democratic Unionist Party

    Michelle O’Brien MLA, Sinn Fein

    Leanne Wood AM, Plaid Cymru

    Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party

     

    References

    1. Energy Bill Revolution (2015). Fuel poverty.

    Energy Bill Revolution

    2. REN21 (2017). Renewables 2017 Global Status Report.

    Renewables Global Staus Report

    3. BEIS (2017). Energy and Climate Change Public Attitudes Tracker.

    Energy & Climate Change Public Attitudes

    4. Goodall C (2016). The Switch: How solar, storage and new tech means cheap

    power for all. Profile Books.

    5. Royal College of Physicians et al (2016). Every breath we take: the

    lifelong impact of air pollution.

    Impact of Air Pollution

    6. Committee on Climate Change (2016). The compatibility of UK onshore

    petroleum with meeting the UK’s carbon budgets.

    Meeting UK Carbon Budgets

     

     

Expressing environmental concerns through the artist’s pencil and paint

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Drawing is one of life’s intangible small pleasures. Like the slow process of uncorking a wine bottle or wet shaving with a bristle and razor, there’s very little to it, but the simple action is, well, just very satisfying. While sketching, the use of tried-and-tested, low-tech tools combined with the chance to stare at things a bit longer than we normally would, is what lifts us. Add the bonus of producing artwork that also gives happiness to others and it becomes clearer to see why drawing is coming back into fashion.

The Drawing Society is reflecting this surge in interest with an exhibition of beautiful work at the Bankside Gallery, London from 6-18 June. The Society of Graphic Fine Art, as the Drawing Society is now known, was set up in 1919 to promote the talents of draughtsmanship in all its forms. Its members’ latest work embraces this aim with artists skilfully and thoughtfully showing off their ability to draw, paint and create.

In its purist form, drawing is marking down the junctions of observed lines. The ecology movement does the same thing, joining up the dots of our under-strain, but interlinked environment to create forceful arguments. I believe the SGFA is the perfect home for expressing environmental concerns through pencil and paint. My works on show are studies of extinct, but now re-introduced Large Blue butterflies. The paintings explain the incredibly convoluted life cycle of one of our most alluring insects, now breeding again in pockets of chalky English countryside.

It’s not a surprise to see the natural world featuring so prominently on the South Bank. Many of the 85 artists aim to capture the environment on paper. Tamlyn Blasdale-Holmes’s hypnotic knot work draws you in to an intricate and intriguing world. He says “For a number of years I worked in conservation and this grew my interest in drawing pieces with strong animal and human rights subjects. Because of the gravity of some of the issues I tackle I often add a glint of wry humour in the hope that this will lighten but reinforce my message.”

Louisa Crispin creates delicately detailed studies of bees and plants. She is entranced by the cycle of growth and decay. She’s says “It’s quiet in my studio and distanced from the world. I try to look ever closer at plants, insects and birds.” Her work captures texture, shadows, silhouettes and movement with carefully-observed marks and tone.

Plant life also features in Beginnings Venetia Norris’s hand finished lithographic print. As part of the printing process Norris draws on limestone. She explains “Everything living has an individual shape and form, everything makes it’s presence felt in some way, leaves a mark, some trace. Using just the tip of my pencil, graphite and ink I try to reveal the intricate layers, the sensuous interiors, the infinite variety and texture of a leaf, a stem, or a petal.”

Susan Poole’s work is crafted from her academic fine art and archaeological background. In her work on show she says: “The form, colour and surface texture of animals I study embody particular personal meaning to me, layers of which might be uncovered like archaeological strata.”

After training as a painter in the 1960s Myrtle Pizzey’s printmaking now seems to her like an extension of the process of observing and recording. “The tactile task of cutting a relief block holds great appeal. It helps to clarify my own thoughts and responses to the process. Before I draw and record my surroundings in Somerset, I have observed the area at different times of day in various climatic conditions over a year or more. The process of creating a print from conception to realization may take three or four months.”

Next door to Bankside in Tate Modern, installations, film and sculpture may be the current darlings, but even the most challenging of contemporary art is born in a well-thumbed sketchbook. In our digital-saturated lives many yearn for more of the simple marking of pencil and paint on paper. As we’ve found all over the world, our ancestors 40,000 years ago liked to paint in caves. Drawing has never really gone away and I urge you to see some of the finest examples of the practice still going on, but in the more comfortable Bankside gallery

The free Bankside Biennial SGFA exhibition is open from 11am-6pm from 6-18 June. www.sgfa.org.uk www.banksidegallery.com

 

This Author

Gary Cook is a Conservation Artist and Arts Editor for the Ecologist. More on his work and how to contact him here:

My Antarctic diary published in The Ecologist

 Online: cookthepainter.com

Twitter: twitter.com/cookthepainter

Instagram: instagram.com/cookthepainter

Society of Graphic Fine Art: sgfa.org.uk/members/gary-cook/

Blog: cookthepainter.com/blog

The Ecologist: tinyurl.com/zpkefjc

 

 

 

Leading from Nature: Politics and Biomimicry

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 “When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Animals, plants and bacteria are engineers, and biomimicry (designing structures and systems modelled on natural processes) allows us to benefit from this. Last month in Zambia I saw complex termite mounds with advanced internal heating and cooling systems, enabling termites to thrive in desert environments. Architects have adopted these techniques in building design.

But could we go beyond biomimicry in design and engineering, and model leadership and politics on nature?

Learning from nature is no new thing. But I worry that this small, patient notion has been confused and overshadowed by the faceless behemoth that is ‘sustainability’. We have become obsessed with the notion of sustainability. But we bend and use it for our own benefit. The concept is suitably broad to be used by economists and international development agencies; conservationists and businesses; tourism agencies and farming bodies.

Sustainability is a big and clever-sounding word. It is helpful and necessary in long-term planning, but in the wrong hands, it becomes ingratiating and sycophantic. It can mean whatever you want it to mean or worse, it can mean nothing at all. Gift-wrapping for business as usual. It is human-centred, yet hard to make specific (the recent 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and corresponding 169 targets are aspirational and cross-cutting, but vast).

It is too broad to help us with our small dreams – our back garden, our neighbours, our seeds of ideas that need nurturing.

‘Sustainability’ convinces people and planet that their priorities have been addressed, whilst it slips out the back door and lets us get on with complex detail. Meanwhile species become extinct, oceans acidify, inequality rises, and we stop caring for strangers. Sustainability has big brains but little heart. Nature is brains and heart and soul. It has a wise but ever-changing sustainability built into it (change is part of ancient natural cycles).

In the recent UK election campaigning, words seemed hollow and leaders disoriented. They, and we, are facing crises from all sides (Michael Gove – the man who tried to get Climate Change removed from the curriculum when he was Education Secretary – is the new Environment Minister). But still we hear the well-trumpeted solution to everything: growth, at all costs.

Kate Raworth in her book Doughnut Economics proposes a new economic model – one that embeds the human economy within the natural world and within society, rather than being distinct from either. GDP is an okay measure of a nation’s economic growth (though still doesn’t reflect inequality), but it’s an unhelpful indicator of anything else. We do not grow as people, communities and leaders if our natural world declines. We are interconnected.

I’ve been in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Sierra Leone recently with the charity I co-lead. And I’ve been transforming my tiny balcony in Exeter from grey to green. I’ve been thinking beyond sustainability, and watching nature in all kinds of contexts. I’ve been wondering what biomimicry in politics might look like. Here are a few observations.

Partnership

The notion of a progressive alliance has gained momentum at a local level in the UK recently. Alliances are complex, but we do not need to ‘settle’ for traditional two-party politics because we can’t conceive of the unknown.

In Zambia last month, I saw two species of antelope (Impala and Puku) grazing together. One has strong vision and the other has strong hearing. They share their different strengths to more effectively look out for prey.

Alliance thinking does not mean acting like we’re the same species and agreeing on every issue. But it can be better than simply ‘tolerating’ each other. I don’t want to just ‘tolerate’ my neighbour – I want to know them, walk in their shoes, and hear their worldview.

Good alliances could be about creating common spaces in which understanding and trust is built, where communication is improved and where strengths are shared for the common good. One party and one leader cannot fix everything or please everyone.

Nature shows us that symbiosis works. I’d like to see us evolve alliance thinking towards symbiotic politics. I’m going to start using the Twitter hashtag #Symbipolitics to explore this more — please join in!

Community

Natural ecosystems are kaleidoscopes of order and chaos. Research shows how underground fungus connects trees to each other. When we see that trees are not individual entities that work alone, forests take on a new shape – a communicative network of supportive living things, collaborating to find water and nutrients, and fend off infection. The trend of ‘self-actualisation’ – apps and products and retreats that promise to help you find and develop yourself – is important, but nature shows us that the concept of self can only be defined when connected with a wider ecosystem.

As individuals, how do we thrive whilst existing in a ‘forest’ of other selves? What is our role, what are our strengths? How do we share and protect?

Political leaders could focus on supporting community (and therefore national) ecosystems to root and thrive, enabling local networks to share resources and support individuals. When good solutions to challenging issues are found in one place, they could be shared via connected community networks so that far away communities thrive too.

Innovation

Nature has gone through almost 4 billion years of research and development – the solutions it has found are well tested. When we look for solutions to our challenges, we might first look into nature. Where is this challenge mirrored in nature, be it housing shortage, or uncompassionate global corporations? What solutions can be found there? e.g. beehives that inspire supportive communal housing in return for work, or more effective organisational management inspired by self-organising natural systems.

More broadly, biomimicry in evolving politics must look beyond simply ‘taking’ the best ideas from nature and fitting them to our own human purposes. We must look beyond ‘sustainable’ solutions to purely human challenges. The world is more than just humans, and its story is ancient. We need to listen for that story, those songlines. We can hear them in nature.

Author, farmer and activist Wendell Berry seeks work compatible with nature, asking for patience and love, which lights everything (see his prayer below). Perhaps a call for ‘love-led’ political leadership, mentored by nature, is the bold new direction our politics could take.

Teach me work that honors Thy work,
the true economies of goods and words,
to make my arts compatible
with the songs of the local birds.

Teach me the patience beyond work
and, beyond patience, the blest
Sabbath of Thy unresting love
which lights all things and gives rest.

 

This Author

Elizabeth Wainwright is the Ecologist’s Nature Editor. She spends her time between Devon and London, and loves wild spaces. She also co-leads a global community development charity.

Twitter: @LizWainwright

Web: www.ElizabethJayneWainwright.com 

 

 

 

Solar Irrigation Pump is Winner of the 2017 Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy and Water

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For many economies, especially those of developing countries, agriculture can be an important engine of economic growth. But with polluting diesel engines powering more and more farm equipment, the need to find clean energy solutions in the sector is pressing.  In Asia and the Pacific for example, where more than 2 billion people rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, the region accounts for more than one third of the world’s total emissions from agricultural production. 

Low cost solar irrigation pumps for smallholder farmers are one way of helping to futureproof against unpredictable rainfall patterns and drought, and are much better for the environment.

Irrigating crops leads to more reliable harvests and provides the opportunity to grow and sell produce out of season.  This can bring huge financial benefits to the farmers, their families and the wider community. 

Access to affordable irrigation is a major limit to farm productivity. In Africa only around 5% of cultivated land is irrigated, compared to just over 40% in Asia.  In Kenya alone there are 7.5 million smallholder farmers and less than 2% of farmland is irrigated.  As rainfall patterns become more erratic, farmers are turning to manual or fossil-fuelled irrigation to save their crops.  However, manual irrigation is very labour intensive and fossil fuel pumps lock farmers into costly recurring fuel and maintenance payments.

Helping smallholder farmers to diversify

 The winner of the 2017 Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy and Water, Futurepump, manufactures an affordable, highly efficient and portable solar irrigation pump aimed at the millions of smallholder farmers in Kenya and around the world. It’s a cleaner and more sustainable alternative to costly and polluting petrol or diesel pumps, and instead of spending hours carrying water, farmers can increase their income, growing more crops, all year round. To date the company has sold around 1300 pumps in 29 countries.

Futurepump’s customers farm rural, semi-commercial farms of less than one hectare – cultivating seasonal vegetables and crops like onions, cabbages and passionfruit – and often combine farming with other income-generating activities. The farmers have access to water sources at or near the surface. Installation of the solar pumps is carried out with trained technicians who also provide end-user training. 

Their own brand SF1 pump comes with 24 months labour and spare parts warranty, which ensures that the product is a good investment for smallholder farmers. The SF1 is sold for 65,000 KES (about £485). To date, just under half of Kenyan customers have paid upfront with the rest paying on credit.  An initial payment plan requires a down payment of $200 and then monthly payments of $25, meaning that the pump is owned outright in less than two years. 

Its piston design makes it easy to maintain and fix.  It can pump water from six metres and is therefore suitable for shallow wells, or lifting water directly from rivers, ponds and channels.  It has a manual back-up and has been designed to be robust and can cope with some mud or particulates such as those in river water.  The pump works well with tank, drip and sprinkler irrigation and is lightweight so can be carried by one person for short distances or be transported in a wheel barrow. 

The pumps also allow farmers to grow high-value water-intensive crops such as tomato, watermelon and kale during more of the year. Swapping from a fuel pump results in a significant change in water flow rates. The slower, gentler flow of water from a solar pump is easier on the soil than that of fuel pumps, causing less plant root erosion and soil wash away.

Solar power and drip irrigation

The runner up for the 2017 Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy and Water, Nairobi-based SunCulture, is combining the energy efficiency of solar power with drip irrigation to make it cheaper and easier for farmers to grow higher quality crops and significantly increase their yields. 

Their AgroSolar irrigation system can pull water from any water source – lake, river, stream, well, borehole, water harvester – using solar power from the panels providing the pump’s power directly without the need for expensive batteries or inverters.  Water is pumped into a raised water storage tank during the day.  When irrigation takes place during the evening, the farmer just has to open a valve on the water tank so that water flows down through a filtration system and onto crop root zones via drip irrigation tape.

Sunculture estimate that around 50% of their customers were using fuel pumps before switching to solar, and they calculate that farmers using their full kit will benefit on average by $14,000 a year compared to those using a fuel pump with furrow irrigation.  The company provides agricultural advice to customers to help them make maximum productive use of the kits and are launching a “Pay-As-You-Grow” programme to help address the $150 billion global shortfall in agriculture finance.

 Making sustainable farming in Asia easier

In Myanmar, Proximity Designs – the winner of the 2014 Ashden Award for Energy and Agriculture – has developed a ‘radically affordable’ solar irrigation pump, the Lotus, which includes a pump, 260W of solar panels and a stand, all for just $345.  The Lotus can yield more than 15,000 litres of water per day and it generally takes farmers about 11 months to pay back the cost of the pump, with fuel and labour savings when converting from a diesel pump.  Farmers in dry zones of the country can expect this return to be even quicker.

It was a challenge for designers to create a pump that fit neatly into the 2-inch tube well found throughout Myanmar but worked for farmers everywhere as, in the Mandalay region for example, water levels are low, making it really important to have an alternative to increasingly expensive diesel pumps.

Proximity Designs is now starting to explore precision agriculture technologies such as irrigation sensors which can help farmers determine the optimum level of irrigation which will reduce costs and the risk of disease.

 This Author

Chhavi Sharma is International Programme Manager with Ashden, a charity that rewards, supports and promotes sustainable energy leaders around the world. Since the Ashden Awards were founded in 2001, Ashden has rewarded more than 200 enterprises in the UK and around the world which so far have collectively improved the lives of some 80 million people, saving more than 10 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.

 

 

Australian Government and UNESCO are Oceans Apart on Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef

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UNESCO is expecting the Australian governments to meet both the intermediate and long-term targets of the 2050 Reef Plan which are essentially targets relating to overall resilience, particularly with regard to water quality. In fact both Australian and Queensland governments are now being strongly encouraged to “accelerate efforts” to meet these targets.

In 2013 and 2014 the Federal and Queensland Governments were put on notice to make sure development projects will not impact the Barrier Reef but over the last four years, the mega mine has seen port expansion at nearby Abbot Point Port and there are plans to expand ports further up the coast.

UNESCO’s warning over the Barrier Reef coincided this month with the United Nations’ recent celebrations of World Environment Day (June 5th) and World Oceans Day (June 8th). World Ocean Day which first started nearly 10 years ago (2008), declares the necessity for international organizations and relevant institutions to increase national, regional and international efforts to address levels of ocean acidity and the projected negative impact of such acidity on vulnerable marine ecosystems, particularly coral reefs.

Back to Back Bleaching Causing Concern.

UNESCO’s latest draft report notes the impact of coral bleaching and high mortality rates for some of the 3000 reefs making up the worlds’ largest living structure.  

Marine and climate scientists believe higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases ocean temperatures. Warmer oceans lead to oceanacidification – a key factor in the recent back-to-back bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.

Increasing carbon dioxide emissions from coal are not the only destructive force putting pressure on our oceans. Over fishing and other illegal fishing practices, unsustainable aquaculture practices for food, pollution, and climate change are all taking their toll on our oceans ability to bounce back. Without healthy oceans we have a collapsing ecosystem, and the biggest ecosystem on the planet is the Great Barrier Reef.

Favouritisms and Financial Questions Remain over Mine Viability.

The Australian Government’s support for the Adani mine has come under fire with objections to offers of royalty deals and billion dollar loans. The Queensland Government, for example, was recently accused of allowing Adani ‘a royalties holiday’ which would have meant Adani paid $2 million a year in royalties instead of the $320 billion dollars Queensland government should have received.

Pressure from within the sitting Labor party and from environmental activists saw the Queensland Premier U-turn on any royalty breaks, as she announced that “every cent of royalties will be paid and any deferred royalties will be paid with interest,” adding that “This is about delivering jobs and getting those royalties so we can continue to invest in frontline services, infrastructure and renewables.”

The Prime Minister’s office is also under fire for offering a $1.3 billion dollar loan to Adani for a train line to take coal from the mine out to ports along the Great Barrier Reef. The billion dollar loan offer comes after Queensland’s Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk (Queensland Labor) promised no taxpayer funds would go towards the rail line linking the Carmichael mine to the Abbot Point Port. Even with the loan, Adani still need £12,8286 billion ($2.2 bn AUD) pounds to fully fund the controversial mine. With 23 international and domestic banks withdrawing or refusing support, the financial viability of the project remains in doubt.

Mining seen as the solution to economic development.

Adani and the Queensland government believe the mine will create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs – a claim disproved in the courts.  The mega mine covers a region of Australia still struggling to recover from the last mining boom collapse in 2013/14.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the Government’s resource policy for the Galilee and Surat Basins and North West Minerals Province put strict requirements on project proponents. Premier Palaszczuk added that “Opening up these three regions for development has the potential to support thousands of new jobs that are needed in regional centres along the coast as well as in outback Queensland”.

Australia has until 1st December,  2019 to show UNESCO its stewardship of the Great Barrier Reef means retaining the ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ and that the targets set for 2050 will be meet.

 

This Author

Maxine Newlands is a regular contributor to the Ecologist

 

 

Diners want the food industry to ‘clean up’ its act and tell the truth about GMO ingredients

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While many restaurants and fast food outlets claim to care about sustainability and authenticity in truth it’s the bottom line that more often than not informs sourcing and the selection of ingredients.

As new types of genetically modified foods and ingredients find their their way into the restaurant food chain in the UK the issue of ‘provenance’ becomes more complex.

For this reason, Beyond GM conducted a survey to find out more about UK customers’ attitudes to GMOs in restaurants and the results reveal a sharp message for chefs, caterers and everyone else in the food service industry.

In total 556 people responded, and 82% said they believed that GMOs deserved greater consideration as part of traceability, sustainability and provenance issues in the food chain.

The majority (97%) believed that chefs and caterers should include information about GMO ingredients – including GM fed livestock products – on menus and websites.

This kind of transparency, of course, has consequences.

When asked what they would do if a restaurant menu indicated the presence of GMO ingredients, the majority (56%) said they would find somewhere else to eat. Another large group (34%) said they would consider eating in that restaurant if guaranteed GMO-free options were available.

Similar proportions (5% and 5% respectively) said they would either find somewhere else to eat, or that they had no problem eating GMOs.

Significantly, 84% said they would consider paying more for a meal that was guaranteed GMO-free.

Eating out

Another stand-out fact was that, in spite of a common notion that those who have concerns about GMOs tend to avoid eating out, this was not the case.

Respondents to our survey frequented a wide variety of establishments including: table service restaurants (87%); pubs (56%); coffeehouses (51%); take away restaurants (50%); hotel restaurants (33%); street food outlets (32%); and home delivery services (27%). A smaller proportion of respondents (13% and 7% respectively) frequently ate at workplace or school cafeterias.

This is important information and in line with the findings of much larger surveys. For example, one 2015 survey of US diners, found that those who are concerned about sustainability are, in fact, more likely to dine out than the general population; on average 18 times a month in 6 different restaurant types (compared to others who eat out, on average, 14 times a month).

What is more, as noted in a survey by the Sustainable Restaurant Association, The Discerning Diner, concern for sustainability and provenance are not just the preserve of those with lots of money to spend on food.

When the SRA asked customers what their top concerns about restaurant food were, customer health and nutrition was the joint top concern (along with food waste) of diners (53%). Issues such as local sourcing, animal welfare and seasonality also registered as prominent concerns.

Not using genetically modified food was an expectation of significant numbers of diners in a range of restaurant types: 56% of diners where a meal costs £30 or more, 40% of diners where a meal costs between £10 and £20, and notably, 29% where a meal costs less than £10.

What it all this means is that people who have concerns about the quality and authenticity of their food have a significant stake – both personally but also financially – in wanting the restaurant food chain to be sustainable and free from GMO contamination.

A range of concerns

Respondents expressed a number of reasons why they would not want to eat GMOs. These included the ideas that GMOs:

  • Encourage corporate control of the food system (91%)
  • Support unsustainable industrial and factory farming (87%)
  • Cause environmental damage (85%)
  • Carry too many scientific unknowns (82%)
  • Raise concerns for animal welfare (74%)
  • Conflict with religious or personal beliefs (33%)
  • Other issues (27%)

Among the ‘Other’ concerns listed by respondents were issues like the risks it poses to non-GM and organic crops particularly from cross pollination, loss of knowledge of traditional ways of growing food/managing pests, loss of crop diversity and loss of consumer choice.

Concern over the higher use of herbicides and insecticides on GMOs crops also came through as a theme not just for the environmental damage they cause but also for health risks.

Some questioned the social need for GMOs, given that they are not designed to be more nutritious. Several other respondents also felt that the totality of problems associated with GMOs made them a crime against nature or ‘ecocide’ which they felt should be punishable by law.

It was interesting to us that while opponents of agricultural GMOs are often portrayed as having an irrational or moral objection to GMOs – as opposed to an evidence-based one – very few indicated that they objected to GMOs because they conflicted with their one religious or personal beliefs.

Although only about a third of respondents (34%) said that GMOs conflicted with personal or religious beliefs, in a multi-cultural society – and with large number of customers seeking kosher or halal food – this is an issue to watch.

Lack of trust

Our survey findings make a powerful case for food service to take a lead in cleaning up its act.

Customer trust is an extremely valuable commodity for any business. Those in the food service industry should be aware that, apart from concrete concerns about issues like health and safety, surveys on GMOs consistently show that the general public does not trust genetically modified food and that this food technology provokes in them a sense of genuine unease.

Indeed, in our survey 83% of respondent said they did not believe GMOs were safe to eat; 12% said they did not know and only 5% said they thought GMOs were safe to eat.

This is reflective of an unease around GMOs, which has always been there but which is growing steadily as newer and more complex biotechnology looks for a marketplace in the foods we eat every day.

Our findings, again, are in line with those of other surveys, for instance the 2010 Eurobarometer opinion poll.

This most recent large scale independent survey of public attitudes towards genetic engineering technology is now several years old, but its findings remain valid and relevant.

It found that nearly 60% of Europeans believe that GM food is not safe for their health and that of their family or for future generations. An even larger majority (70%) said that genetically modifying foods is “fundamentally unnatural”, and 61% said that GMOs made them “feel uneasy”.

Overall it found that as many as 95% of European respondents rated GMO foods as potentially unsafe and lacking real benefits.

The Eurobarometer survey also revealed equally strong opposition to animal cloning for food, with only 18% of people in favour.

The survey highlighted that there was widespread awareness about GM food (84%).

A key finding related to this was that, contrary to what proponents of GM crops claim, Europeans understand the difference between biotechnology and genetic engineering of food, and strongly reject only the latter.

More recently, in 2013, these sentiments were echoed in the UK, when the Food Standards Agency published the second wave of its Food and You survey.

Asked about awareness of new food technologies used in food production, respondents reported being most aware of genetic modification (80%); 64% of people were aware of animal cloning, 34% of irradiation and 20% of nanotechnology.

A majority of people felt uneasy about the use of these technologies in food: 66% being uneasy about animal cloning, 52% about genetic modification, and 51% about irradiation. 34% of people expressed concern about nanotechnology even though it is relatively new and not widely known.

Almost since the advent of genetic engineering the food industry, the research establishment and parts of the media have been saying that the public is becoming more accepting of the technology.  However, with no credible independent evidence to support this view it remains little more than wishful thinking.

The most recent independent survey was a 2014 YouGov poll which investigated whether people’s attitudes to GMOs were becoming more favourable. Only 6% of the public reported their views towards GM foods becoming “more positive” over the last 12 months, virtually identical to the 5% who said their views had become more negative.

As for those whose views hadn’t changed at all, they remained decisively negative: 41% negative to 17% positive. A large proportion (31%) also responded “don’t know” when asked how their views on GM have evolved.

In addition 40% believed that the government should not be promoting the adoption of GM, while just 22% believed that they should.

Messages to chefs

Respondents to our survey were asked what their personal message about GMOs to chefs, caterers, hoteliers and others in the food service industry was.

Some of these comments include pleas for those in food service to lead:

  • Educate yourselves…it’s important to us!
  • “I’m shocked that more chefs etc. don’t take the time to understand the issues & stand up for a really sustainable food system.”
  • “Think about how our choices now affect the future.”
  • “You are at the forefront and should demand the best and purest ingredients.”
  • “Try and get a truly balanced view on GMOs. Err on the side of caution. Most people seem to have a natural distrust of them. They are your customers.”
  • “You can be leaders and heroes of a culture, of good husbandry and farming, and real love of good food. Or we can all end up not knowing what we are eating, because GM will get everywhere.”

We also saw a desire for clear labelling:

  • “Clearly state whether or not you use GM ingredients. I would much prefer to eat animals that have been treated well and organic produce, so am much more likely to patronise restaurants that care about these things too.”
  • “Ensure you provide clear choices to your customers so they can make informed choices about what they eat.”
  • “Customers have a right to know…and will no doubt prove that, given a choice, they would prefer to avoid GMOs.”
  • “I am sick of finding empty GM oil cans outside restaurants & cafes that are not labelling this on their menus – as required by law!”
  • “Consider emulating San Carlo in Birmingham whose window message is that their suppliers assure them that their ingredients are GM free.”
  • “Let us know what we are eating!”

And of course a desire to simplify everyone’s lives by just keeping GMOs out of the food chain:

  • “Leave it out!”
  • “Get ahead of the game in supporting non-GMO food before it’s you or the company you work for losing out in the long-term as awareness increases.”
  • “Change the way you purchase your food.”
  • “Keep that gunk out of my food!!”
  • “Don’t! Not enough is known about the effects and food shouldn’t be mucked about with. Stick to fresh, natural and local produce.”
  • “Keep GMOs out of the food chain! I don’t want to encourage the cultivation of GM crops by eating dairy and meat products fed GMOs.”
  • “I do not want GMOs on my plate. I will gladly pay more for ‘clean’ food.”
  • “If you want my business, offer me non-GMO meals.”
  • “I will be seeking out places to eat where non GM food is guaranteed. I hope you will be among those who supply it.”

 

Where are we now?

Although we like to think of the UK as GMO free, this is not really the case. There is a slow creep of GMO products in to our shops and of GMO ingredients into our food and drink – and the landscape is rapidly changing.

Britain does not grow GM crops but it has an open door policy to imports of GM feed and foods and to ingredients that can be used without the need for labelling.

Foods for human consumption and animal feed can contain up to 0.9% GM ingredients (as long as the GM content is accidental or technically unavoidable) and not require labelling. Similarly, foods made with GM processing agents may not be labelled as such. These can include soy-based ingredients such as lecithin, soy protein, soy sauce and soy flour, corn-based ingredients including modified food starch, corn syrup, maltodextrin, and corn flour, artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and trehalose, and increasingly cane sugar.

You will find these things in products like ready-made salad dressings, marinades and sauces, breads and crackers, vegetarian meat substitutes and deserts.

The most common GMO products in UK restaurants, however, are GMO oils derived from maize, soya, rapeseed and sometimes cottonseed.

Restaurants and other establishments are legally obliged to indicate on the menu – including online menus – if they are using such oils. However, Trading Standards reports show that most don’t.

Nearly all conventionally reared meat in the UK is reared on GM feed. While the feed itself must, according to the law, be labelled, the eventually food products meat, milk and eggs – do not require labelling at point of sale. We know from our contact with the public that this is seen as unacceptable and a restriction of consumer choice.

Wines produced using genetically modified yeasts do not need to be labelled and beers and spirits made using GMO ingredients also do not need to state this on the label as it is considered proprietary.

There is some evidence that beers imported from the US and Mexico do contain GMO ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup (mainly in the US), caramel colouring, and some genetically modified organisms (GMO) like dextrose and corn syrup.

US Distillers Brown Forman – whose brands include Jack Daniels, Canadian Whiskey, Woodford Reserve and Old Forester – announced in 2014 that, due to supply chain issues in the US it spirits would now be made using GM ingredients.

The same is now starting to happen in the UK. Factory style spirit distillers are creating multiple brands – including vodkas, gins, jenevers, liquors, pastis and cream liquors – using cheap imported GMO derived neutral grains and potable alcohols. None of it is labelled.

Importantly, new biotechnology methods and biotech ingredients, such as cocoa, vanilla, stevia, saffron and coconut produced using synthetic biology and ‘fake foods’ such as chicken-less chicken, milk-less milk and egg-less eggs, some of which require GM starter cultures, are being aimed squarely at the food service industry and cynically framed as sustainable and ethical alternatives to conventional foods.

Food service must rise to the challenge of understanding these issues and challenging assumptions around them.

Context and conclusions

The immediate purpose of the survey was to help inform discussion at a Supply Chain Roundtable hosted by TV Chef Cyrus Todiwala and Hospitality and Catering News. However, results will also be used as part of Beyond GM’s Stir the Pot initiative to engage with professionals in food service about the encroachment of GMOs into the food chain.

The survey was conducted online over 6 weeks March and April 2017 and was disseminated through a variety of channels including our own newsletter and social media and via other supportive organisations such as Sustain, The Sustainable Restaurant Association, Sustainable Food Cities and Slow Food. It was also flagged up in an article in Hospitality and Catering News as well as in the Ecologistand Natural Products News.

Our survey does not claim to be comprehensive and does have some limitations. The survey numbers are relatively small and the male female split showed a bias towards women. The demographics of the UK as a whole are 49% men and 51% women. In our survey 37% were men and 63% women.

The distribution of age ranges leans towards a greater number of aged 45+ individuals that would be found in the UK as a whole 72% compared to 34%.

In addition, the population surveyed was taken largely from a population of people who are more aware and potentially better informed about GMOs than the average individual.

However, studies such as the previously mentioned Eurobarometer survey, show that concern about the safety of eating GMOs generally rises in those who are better informed about genetic modification

In spite of these considerations, we are confident that our results are broadly in line with the findings of other public surveys.

For instance, in 2012 BBC Countryfile Magazine launched an open poll which posed the question: Should GM crop trials be allowed to go ahead?. The online surrey returned 7824 responses, 79% (6144) of whom said no and 21% (1680) sad yes.

An open poll in the Guardian newspaper online reported in 2013 that 72% of readers said they do not believe GM food is either safe or beneficial. Six months later the Guardian ran another online open poll – Should restrictions on GM crops be relaxed? In this poll 71% said no.

Moving forward

Beyond GM is very much a people’s campaign. Everything we do gives space and voice to the majority in the UK who have real concerns about GMOs and the direction of travel they represent in food and farming. Our work helps amplify those concerns and represent them to those in power.

By and large the consumer, or more correctly citizen, continues to be missing in the public debate. It is shunned and even derided by media outlets such as the BBC (which has a firm bias towards the promotion of GMOs) our major newspapers, the National Farmers Union, the British Government and even supermarkets.

The food service industry claims to take sustainability seriously as part of a commitment to provenance. It’s clear from our survey, and others, that customers believe that GMOs are absolutely a part of this picture and that the strength of feeling is such that the industry will not get away with ignoring the issue or greenwashing it.

We are ready, able and willing to help the food service industry understand the issues, keep GMOs out of the restaurant food chain and take them out where they already exist.

 

 

 

 

Diners want the food industry to ‘clean up’ its act and tell the truth about GMO ingredients

Leave a reply

While many restaurants and fast food outlets claim to care about sustainability and authenticity in truth it’s the bottom line that more often than not informs sourcing and the selection of ingredients.

As new types of genetically modified foods and ingredients find their their way into the restaurant food chain in the UK the issue of ‘provenance’ becomes more complex.

For this reason, Beyond GM conducted a survey to find out more about UK customers’ attitudes to GMOs in restaurants and the results reveal a sharp message for chefs, caterers and everyone else in the food service industry.

In total 556 people responded, and 82% said they believed that GMOs deserved greater consideration as part of traceability, sustainability and provenance issues in the food chain.

The majority (97%) believed that chefs and caterers should include information about GMO ingredients – including GM fed livestock products – on menus and websites.

This kind of transparency, of course, has consequences.

When asked what they would do if a restaurant menu indicated the presence of GMO ingredients, the majority (56%) said they would find somewhere else to eat. Another large group (34%) said they would consider eating in that restaurant if guaranteed GMO-free options were available.

Similar proportions (5% and 5% respectively) said they would either find somewhere else to eat, or that they had no problem eating GMOs.

Significantly, 84% said they would consider paying more for a meal that was guaranteed GMO-free.

Eating out

Another stand-out fact was that, in spite of a common notion that those who have concerns about GMOs tend to avoid eating out, this was not the case.

Respondents to our survey frequented a wide variety of establishments including: table service restaurants (87%); pubs (56%); coffeehouses (51%); take away restaurants (50%); hotel restaurants (33%); street food outlets (32%); and home delivery services (27%). A smaller proportion of respondents (13% and 7% respectively) frequently ate at workplace or school cafeterias.

This is important information and in line with the findings of much larger surveys. For example, one 2015 survey of US diners, found that those who are concerned about sustainability are, in fact, more likely to dine out than the general population; on average 18 times a month in 6 different restaurant types (compared to others who eat out, on average, 14 times a month).

What is more, as noted in a survey by the Sustainable Restaurant Association, The Discerning Diner, concern for sustainability and provenance are not just the preserve of those with lots of money to spend on food.

When the SRA asked customers what their top concerns about restaurant food were, customer health and nutrition was the joint top concern (along with food waste) of diners (53%). Issues such as local sourcing, animal welfare and seasonality also registered as prominent concerns.

Not using genetically modified food was an expectation of significant numbers of diners in a range of restaurant types: 56% of diners where a meal costs £30 or more, 40% of diners where a meal costs between £10 and £20, and notably, 29% where a meal costs less than £10.

What it all this means is that people who have concerns about the quality and authenticity of their food have a significant stake – both personally but also financially – in wanting the restaurant food chain to be sustainable and free from GMO contamination.

A range of concerns

Respondents expressed a number of reasons why they would not want to eat GMOs. These included the ideas that GMOs:

  • Encourage corporate control of the food system (91%)
  • Support unsustainable industrial and factory farming (87%)
  • Cause environmental damage (85%)
  • Carry too many scientific unknowns (82%)
  • Raise concerns for animal welfare (74%)
  • Conflict with religious or personal beliefs (33%)
  • Other issues (27%)

Among the ‘Other’ concerns listed by respondents were issues like the risks it poses to non-GM and organic crops particularly from cross pollination, loss of knowledge of traditional ways of growing food/managing pests, loss of crop diversity and loss of consumer choice.

Concern over the higher use of herbicides and insecticides on GMOs crops also came through as a theme not just for the environmental damage they cause but also for health risks.

Some questioned the social need for GMOs, given that they are not designed to be more nutritious. Several other respondents also felt that the totality of problems associated with GMOs made them a crime against nature or ‘ecocide’ which they felt should be punishable by law.

It was interesting to us that while opponents of agricultural GMOs are often portrayed as having an irrational or moral objection to GMOs – as opposed to an evidence-based one – very few indicated that they objected to GMOs because they conflicted with their one religious or personal beliefs.

Although only about a third of respondents (34%) said that GMOs conflicted with personal or religious beliefs, in a multi-cultural society – and with large number of customers seeking kosher or halal food – this is an issue to watch.

Lack of trust

Our survey findings make a powerful case for food service to take a lead in cleaning up its act.

Customer trust is an extremely valuable commodity for any business. Those in the food service industry should be aware that, apart from concrete concerns about issues like health and safety, surveys on GMOs consistently show that the general public does not trust genetically modified food and that this food technology provokes in them a sense of genuine unease.

Indeed, in our survey 83% of respondent said they did not believe GMOs were safe to eat; 12% said they did not know and only 5% said they thought GMOs were safe to eat.

This is reflective of an unease around GMOs, which has always been there but which is growing steadily as newer and more complex biotechnology looks for a marketplace in the foods we eat every day.

Our findings, again, are in line with those of other surveys, for instance the 2010 Eurobarometer opinion poll.

This most recent large scale independent survey of public attitudes towards genetic engineering technology is now several years old, but its findings remain valid and relevant.

It found that nearly 60% of Europeans believe that GM food is not safe for their health and that of their family or for future generations. An even larger majority (70%) said that genetically modifying foods is “fundamentally unnatural”, and 61% said that GMOs made them “feel uneasy”.

Overall it found that as many as 95% of European respondents rated GMO foods as potentially unsafe and lacking real benefits.

The Eurobarometer survey also revealed equally strong opposition to animal cloning for food, with only 18% of people in favour.

The survey highlighted that there was widespread awareness about GM food (84%).

A key finding related to this was that, contrary to what proponents of GM crops claim, Europeans understand the difference between biotechnology and genetic engineering of food, and strongly reject only the latter.

More recently, in 2013, these sentiments were echoed in the UK, when the Food Standards Agency published the second wave of its Food and You survey.

Asked about awareness of new food technologies used in food production, respondents reported being most aware of genetic modification (80%); 64% of people were aware of animal cloning, 34% of irradiation and 20% of nanotechnology.

A majority of people felt uneasy about the use of these technologies in food: 66% being uneasy about animal cloning, 52% about genetic modification, and 51% about irradiation. 34% of people expressed concern about nanotechnology even though it is relatively new and not widely known.

Almost since the advent of genetic engineering the food industry, the research establishment and parts of the media have been saying that the public is becoming more accepting of the technology.  However, with no credible independent evidence to support this view it remains little more than wishful thinking.

The most recent independent survey was a 2014 YouGov poll which investigated whether people’s attitudes to GMOs were becoming more favourable. Only 6% of the public reported their views towards GM foods becoming “more positive” over the last 12 months, virtually identical to the 5% who said their views had become more negative.

As for those whose views hadn’t changed at all, they remained decisively negative: 41% negative to 17% positive. A large proportion (31%) also responded “don’t know” when asked how their views on GM have evolved.

In addition 40% believed that the government should not be promoting the adoption of GM, while just 22% believed that they should.

Messages to chefs

Respondents to our survey were asked what their personal message about GMOs to chefs, caterers, hoteliers and others in the food service industry was.

Some of these comments include pleas for those in food service to lead:

  • Educate yourselves…it’s important to us!
  • “I’m shocked that more chefs etc. don’t take the time to understand the issues & stand up for a really sustainable food system.”
  • “Think about how our choices now affect the future.”
  • “You are at the forefront and should demand the best and purest ingredients.”
  • “Try and get a truly balanced view on GMOs. Err on the side of caution. Most people seem to have a natural distrust of them. They are your customers.”
  • “You can be leaders and heroes of a culture, of good husbandry and farming, and real love of good food. Or we can all end up not knowing what we are eating, because GM will get everywhere.”

We also saw a desire for clear labelling:

  • “Clearly state whether or not you use GM ingredients. I would much prefer to eat animals that have been treated well and organic produce, so am much more likely to patronise restaurants that care about these things too.”
  • “Ensure you provide clear choices to your customers so they can make informed choices about what they eat.”
  • “Customers have a right to know…and will no doubt prove that, given a choice, they would prefer to avoid GMOs.”
  • “I am sick of finding empty GM oil cans outside restaurants & cafes that are not labelling this on their menus – as required by law!”
  • “Consider emulating San Carlo in Birmingham whose window message is that their suppliers assure them that their ingredients are GM free.”
  • “Let us know what we are eating!”

And of course a desire to simplify everyone’s lives by just keeping GMOs out of the food chain:

  • “Leave it out!”
  • “Get ahead of the game in supporting non-GMO food before it’s you or the company you work for losing out in the long-term as awareness increases.”
  • “Change the way you purchase your food.”
  • “Keep that gunk out of my food!!”
  • “Don’t! Not enough is known about the effects and food shouldn’t be mucked about with. Stick to fresh, natural and local produce.”
  • “Keep GMOs out of the food chain! I don’t want to encourage the cultivation of GM crops by eating dairy and meat products fed GMOs.”
  • “I do not want GMOs on my plate. I will gladly pay more for ‘clean’ food.”
  • “If you want my business, offer me non-GMO meals.”
  • “I will be seeking out places to eat where non GM food is guaranteed. I hope you will be among those who supply it.”

 

Where are we now?

Although we like to think of the UK as GMO free, this is not really the case. There is a slow creep of GMO products in to our shops and of GMO ingredients into our food and drink – and the landscape is rapidly changing.

Britain does not grow GM crops but it has an open door policy to imports of GM feed and foods and to ingredients that can be used without the need for labelling.

Foods for human consumption and animal feed can contain up to 0.9% GM ingredients (as long as the GM content is accidental or technically unavoidable) and not require labelling. Similarly, foods made with GM processing agents may not be labelled as such. These can include soy-based ingredients such as lecithin, soy protein, soy sauce and soy flour, corn-based ingredients including modified food starch, corn syrup, maltodextrin, and corn flour, artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and trehalose, and increasingly cane sugar.

You will find these things in products like ready-made salad dressings, marinades and sauces, breads and crackers, vegetarian meat substitutes and deserts.

The most common GMO products in UK restaurants, however, are GMO oils derived from maize, soya, rapeseed and sometimes cottonseed.

Restaurants and other establishments are legally obliged to indicate on the menu – including online menus – if they are using such oils. However, Trading Standards reports show that most don’t.

Nearly all conventionally reared meat in the UK is reared on GM feed. While the feed itself must, according to the law, be labelled, the eventually food products meat, milk and eggs – do not require labelling at point of sale. We know from our contact with the public that this is seen as unacceptable and a restriction of consumer choice.

Wines produced using genetically modified yeasts do not need to be labelled and beers and spirits made using GMO ingredients also do not need to state this on the label as it is considered proprietary.

There is some evidence that beers imported from the US and Mexico do contain GMO ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup (mainly in the US), caramel colouring, and some genetically modified organisms (GMO) like dextrose and corn syrup.

US Distillers Brown Forman – whose brands include Jack Daniels, Canadian Whiskey, Woodford Reserve and Old Forester – announced in 2014 that, due to supply chain issues in the US it spirits would now be made using GM ingredients.

The same is now starting to happen in the UK. Factory style spirit distillers are creating multiple brands – including vodkas, gins, jenevers, liquors, pastis and cream liquors – using cheap imported GMO derived neutral grains and potable alcohols. None of it is labelled.

Importantly, new biotechnology methods and biotech ingredients, such as cocoa, vanilla, stevia, saffron and coconut produced using synthetic biology and ‘fake foods’ such as chicken-less chicken, milk-less milk and egg-less eggs, some of which require GM starter cultures, are being aimed squarely at the food service industry and cynically framed as sustainable and ethical alternatives to conventional foods.

Food service must rise to the challenge of understanding these issues and challenging assumptions around them.

Context and conclusions

The immediate purpose of the survey was to help inform discussion at a Supply Chain Roundtable hosted by TV Chef Cyrus Todiwala and Hospitality and Catering News. However, results will also be used as part of Beyond GM’s Stir the Pot initiative to engage with professionals in food service about the encroachment of GMOs into the food chain.

The survey was conducted online over 6 weeks March and April 2017 and was disseminated through a variety of channels including our own newsletter and social media and via other supportive organisations such as Sustain, The Sustainable Restaurant Association, Sustainable Food Cities and Slow Food. It was also flagged up in an article in Hospitality and Catering News as well as in the Ecologistand Natural Products News.

Our survey does not claim to be comprehensive and does have some limitations. The survey numbers are relatively small and the male female split showed a bias towards women. The demographics of the UK as a whole are 49% men and 51% women. In our survey 37% were men and 63% women.

The distribution of age ranges leans towards a greater number of aged 45+ individuals that would be found in the UK as a whole 72% compared to 34%.

In addition, the population surveyed was taken largely from a population of people who are more aware and potentially better informed about GMOs than the average individual.

However, studies such as the previously mentioned Eurobarometer survey, show that concern about the safety of eating GMOs generally rises in those who are better informed about genetic modification

In spite of these considerations, we are confident that our results are broadly in line with the findings of other public surveys.

For instance, in 2012 BBC Countryfile Magazine launched an open poll which posed the question: Should GM crop trials be allowed to go ahead?. The online surrey returned 7824 responses, 79% (6144) of whom said no and 21% (1680) sad yes.

An open poll in the Guardian newspaper online reported in 2013 that 72% of readers said they do not believe GM food is either safe or beneficial. Six months later the Guardian ran another online open poll – Should restrictions on GM crops be relaxed? In this poll 71% said no.

Moving forward

Beyond GM is very much a people’s campaign. Everything we do gives space and voice to the majority in the UK who have real concerns about GMOs and the direction of travel they represent in food and farming. Our work helps amplify those concerns and represent them to those in power.

By and large the consumer, or more correctly citizen, continues to be missing in the public debate. It is shunned and even derided by media outlets such as the BBC (which has a firm bias towards the promotion of GMOs) our major newspapers, the National Farmers Union, the British Government and even supermarkets.

The food service industry claims to take sustainability seriously as part of a commitment to provenance. It’s clear from our survey, and others, that customers believe that GMOs are absolutely a part of this picture and that the strength of feeling is such that the industry will not get away with ignoring the issue or greenwashing it.

We are ready, able and willing to help the food service industry understand the issues, keep GMOs out of the restaurant food chain and take them out where they already exist.