The Resurgence Festival of Wellbeing will emphasise the need to shift society’s emphasis from economic growth to growth in wellbeing, as Satish Kumar, Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist, explains.  

“Over the past 50 years, governments, businesses, industrialists and economists have been stridently focused on economic growth, overlooking its fundamental purpose.

“The speakers and participants at the Festival of Wellbeing are coming together to question this notion of economic growth for its own sake and to address the ideal of growth in wellbeing.

“Economic growth is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. We cannot have unlimited economic growth on a finite planet. Our focus must shift from economic growth, to growth in wellbeing.

He added: “The present emphasis on economic growth at all costs is the cause of environmental pollution, resource depletion, climate change and waste, which puts huge stress on people and our planet Earth.

“The current system of economic growth doesn’t solve the problem of poverty, inequality, and social injustice. Therefore, instead of economic growth, we need growth in human health and planetary sustainability.”

The day’s exciting talk highlights include: Satish Kumar’s elucidation of the interdependence of personal and planetary wellbeing; James Thornton, founding CEO of environmental lawyers ClientEarth, extols the Earth as our natural teacher and guide for creating an ecological civilisation.

Also in attendance are: Siân Berry, Green Member of the London Assembly, explores solutions to the lack of safe, affordable housing in London; Paula Byrne, Chief Executive of ReLit (literature/mental health charity) promotes poetry as a bridge to wellbeing; James Sainsbury, Chairman of The Resurgence Trust, gives an overview of the charity’s work in support of wellbeing; and a talk by leading educationalist Sir Anthony Seldon explains the practical benefits of mindfulness.   

In lively conversation sessions, Satish Kumar and Professor Tim Jackson (Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity) discuss ‘Prosperity without Growth’; and Sharon Garfinkel (festival producer) talks to Ahmad Nawaz, a 16-year-old activist and survivor of a Taliban attack, about the role education can play in bringing peace to the world.  

Inspiring performances reflecting themes of the day include poetry by Imtiaz Dharker, Indian classical song and instrumentation by Jatinder Singh Durhaialy, a short play-reading by writer Maya Kumar Mitchell, and a stirring acoustic set from singer-songwriter Catty Pearson.

James Thornton, founding CEO of ClientEarth, says: “I’m delighted and excited to be involved in this year’s festival, because the time is ripe to begin doing things differently.

“With geo politics in turmoil and much more going on around the world and in the UK which is of serious concern to the environment, it is clear that the motives of some and the actions of others need to be countered if we are to preserve our planet for future generations. When we talk about the importance of wellbeing it is not just for people, but for the planet too.”

We invite you to join us for the Festival of Wellbeing on 23rd September 2017 at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL.

For further information/bookings, contact the Resurgence office on 01237441293 or visit www.resurgence.org/wellbeing

The Festival of Wellbeing is a fundraising event for The Resurgence Trust, an educational charity registered at Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, Devon EX39 6EE. Registered charity no. 1120414. Tel: 01237 441293. www.resurgence.org

It is a mysterious truth – and one the experts struggle to explain – that Britain has fewer woods than just about any other European country a nd yet it has vastly more ancient trees. We have destroyed our forests, while opting to spare a large number of individual trees, most frequently the oaks and the yews. Perhaps the two facts are connected. 

Over the centuries, there must have been thousands of moments when someone was eyeing up an ancient tree, axe in hand, and yet they decided – once again – to leave it alone, while their European counterparts just started swinging.

And this is why, when you walk in the bountiful broadleaf woods of Normandy or Lombardy, you will find you are looking at trees of an invariably uniform age and size, whereas, lurking in the last few woods of Britain – and not just in the woods, but in the fields, hedgerows and car parks – there are giants. 

This is something we have chosen to do. It can’t just be because we harbour trace memories of the time when trees were sacred. That’s important, for sure, but it’s also true of the rest of Europe. Perhaps what’s more significant is the British history of common land.

We gaze at trees

Why would you want to destroy something of value and beauty that belongs to you? The ancient trees all show signs of having been lopped, pollarded and harvested: but they were not felled. So even when the land was enclosed, or some absentee landlord was vandalizing his own woods, it’s possible that the local people tried to save what they could. We can but dream.

There may be spiritual reasons. John Stewart Collis, writing in Down to Earth, thought that the love of Nature was embedded so deep in Britain because we sense there’s something hidden, waiting to be revealed.

This is true. We gaze at trees, we hug them, we lean our backs on their welcoming trunks, we lie on the ground above a busy mesh of roots, staring at the lulling branches – we are enfolded by the trees. Perhaps we are waiting for them to answer our questions. But can we really say this is an exclusively British trait?

Even so, there are something like 2,000 ancient yew trees growing in Britain, while there are only about 100 left in the whole of the rest of Europe. And oaks! There are well over 100 ‘great oaks’ in England (the ‘great’ means that the trees are over 800 years old); but you won’t find that number in a vast swathe of land stretching from Calais to Cadiz and Athens.

Shows us in a good light

What’s more, we are uncovering ancient trees in Britain all the time. Remember the 60 medieval oaks that were discovered last year in the grounds of Blenheim Palace? Where have they all been hiding? Do they think it’s now safe to come out? Of course, we shouldn’t get too carried away. Over 100 great oaks left in the whole of England – that’s compelling evidence of a massacre. But it is nonetheless something to celebrate. 

There is another possibility: in Britain, do we love the trees, but fear the woods? Have we cleared the undergrowth and thinned the trees, so we can stand back and admire a few mighty specimens free from the hidden menace of outlaws and boggarts? Is this what we’re really after? Pasture and parkland and a republic of sheep?

It’s possible, despite the enthusiasm of ‘rewilding’ devotees, that what most of us really want is more order; and perhaps we’d all secretly prefer something along the lines of a Sunday night BBC country estate, complete with grand trees, sweeping lawns, a table set for tea, a chewing of cows just beyond the ha-ha and Tom Hiddleston’s famous white buttocks humping rhythmically in the shrubbery. 

If I were to stretch for one final reason why Britain has more ancient trees than other countries, I’d say it’s because we like our history – especially (but not only) the history that shows us in a good light.

Of course, we are also famous for our world-class hypocrisy: we have saved these trees even as, at the same time, we have demolished the woods and forests that once surrounded them.

But the survival of these few ancient trees is thrilling. We have passed them through the generations with veneration and love and they are still here, our friendly giants, looming in the woods, cities, hedgerows, farms and parks. We should seek them out and give them the protection they need. They have a wisdom that we need. 

This Author

Peter Fiennes is the author of Oak and Ash and Thorn: the ancient woods and new forests of Britain, published by Oneworld Publications on 7th September 2017. This is an extract from the work. © Copyright Peter Fiennes 2017.  

As bovine TB spreads across the UK, it is no secret that the new government, like the previous is in turmoil over its response.

Chief Scientist Ian Boyd and now Chief Vet Nigel Gibbons are both leaving their roles.

Not specifically because spread of a disease that they have been unable to stop, but their time is up and they can slip away from the deteriorating situation. Both made it plain at the March 2017 London bTB conference that industry behaviour is holding progress back.

The background is not hard to work out.  From the Great Recession of 2007 and the European debt crisis, a decision was made to try to force growth in the UK beef, dairy and leather industries.

After the ravages of the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease on the National Herd, the plan was to attempt this without the necessary restraint and extreme caution on cattle movements that dealing with bovine TB (bTB) demands. 

Years of removing cows

Mission-impossible? It will not be the only area where around 2010, decision makers gambled heavily, knowing that judgement day on ‘hide-now-pay-later’ approach might somehow be avoided.

‘Save the economy at all cost’ may include ‘bankruptcy later’ with heavy collateral impacts on people’s lives, but hey, we live in a changing world and profit comes first.

In Wales, more sensitive testing using the gamma interferon bTB test has made useful progress, with a 47 percent reduction in Bovine TB herd breakdown since 2008.

Elsewhere, including the High bTB Risk Area of England, the use of the old tuberculin skin test alone has not. This is also because cattle farming practises have changed and cattle breeds and health have also altered since bTB eradication in the 1960s.

It may be that 50 more years of removing cows that react most strongly to the skin test has selected those that react less to it. Failure to give a positive result may also be due to small amounts of bTB bacteria that may rest dormant or in a latent state, hidden in healthy looking calves and cows.

This uncomfortable truth

These animals escape the skin test and sometimes a proportion of the gamma tests by simply not being active enough to be detectable, but they are capable of emerging and leading to a new breakdown at any time.

Whatever has changed, it is quite clear that gamma interferon testing has helped reveal that even if an infected herd passes two final 60-day skin tests and is declared TB-free, there is a chance that in over a quarter of them, bovine TB ‘carriers’ remain.

They then may go on to become infectious, particularly following the process of small numbers being frequently traded to new farms on a very regular basis. This is the behaviour that senior European veterinary experts have been repeating for the last 10 years or more that we are crazy to be doing. In fact the view is that we are a joke.

All this is known and not really contested. If the skin test does not weed-out 90 percent of infected animals but 80 percent or sometimes just 50 percent then the millions and billions of pounds spent on testing and compensation are effectively wasted and the epidemic creeps more slowly across England and into Scotland and Wales or the countries still foolish enough to import English cattle under present circumstances. 

This uncomfortable truth comes with the acceptance that the cows that react to the skin test but are not found to have visible lesions at the slaughterhouse were in fact all, or all but a few, infected after all with bovine TB.

Immune response in animals

However, recent findings indicate that that those animals reacting to the test but with bumps not big enough to send to slaughter (the so called inconclusive reactors) are also almost all TB carriers and potentially provide an ongoing source of disease outwards to the National Herd.

This is a shock to the system for bTB modellers too, who looking back on years of bald assumptions may also resist the implications, due to the pile of papers now needing a revisit. Modellers thrive on death and uncertainty. They may think bTB is slow to spread and to become contagious rather than quick to spread and good at hiding and passing on. 

But now there is a new kid on the block. No longer a baby, it is up and walking but not as steadily as it might be. Phage RPA or the ‘phage test’ is a clever method, adapted from human TB diagnostic test.

It uses a virus made harmless, that finds, invades and multiplies only in TB bacteria, to become a marker confirming the presence of the bacteria itself. Why is this new? Because in the past, the skin and gamma tests have detected an immune response in animals – signals that they may be diseased and that the body is recognising infection.

They do not however overcome the problem when an infected animal suggests it is not infected, which can happen for a very wide range of reasons. 

An encumbrance

With Phage testing, for the first time it is possible to detect tiny amount of TB bacteria in tissue, blood and even milk. What’s more it is far quicker than the skin test, with results available in 6 hours. Governments around the world are excited about Phage testing, as a new dawn if not a magic bullet.

What’s not to like? Well the USA and Canadian government are giving awards to Phage research and rolling out application programmes to address many issues, as Phage can be used for different types of bacteria, not only bovine TB. It can also be used for a wide range of animals. 

There has been a pilot project here in Devon. But last year, Defra seemed to more than turn their nose up on investigations trying to determine the value of this new technology. You would think that the potential and need in the face of the current bTB emergency was so great that they would be funding and accelerating the potential. All very strange?

There is also a feel that senior scientists in government agencies, shovelling large amounts of public money into cattle vaccination projects in university departments for which they sometimes have a rather close interest, is becoming an encumbrance.

However, cattle vaccination requires a holy-cow; the ever illusive Divergence or DIVA test to distinguish between infected and vaccinated individuals. Otherwise all vaccinated animals will appear to be infected as they give a positive immune response. Amazingly Phage testing test now provides that breakthrough too. So why-oh-why, the hold-back?

Loss of lucrative funding

Well the fact is that the measured use of vaccination could have been used for years to help strategically contain manage and reduce bTB, were it not for globalisation and the wish for the UK to maximise sale of beef and dairy exports at all costs despite the bTB crisis.

Also the Ministry always struggles with ‘strategic’ in its free market bubble and heavily cut-back offices. The constant pushing back of vaccination as the probable long term solution has gone from being almost forgotten, to suspicious, to yet another embarrassing research gravy train for friends and fence sitters.  

With Phage testing, however, vaccination is no longer a blind alley for UK and Ireland to sigh theatrically about, stating sadly with lowered voice that ‘it’s going to be another ten years at least you know’. The world has woken up to this even if most politicians have not.

Those in vaccination research might be eyeing Phage testing, with a ‘why didn’t we think if that first’ thought and realising that actually on its own, without vaccination, Phage-RPA may be the bigger part of the solution.

Is it the loss of lucrative funding by a small sector of the comfortable research bodies that has been holding back farmers rights to the best services they should have, to tackle the appalling TB crisis? Ruining farms, people’s lives and breeding stock? 

Financial-loss pendulum

As this becomes clearer and more widely known, Defra is enacting a slow volte-face in order to extract itself from its nasty risk profile. It knows all this and might be sweating about the implications.

It is quietly approving now, of the work in Devon on Phage testing and a few tentative further trials in Cornwall. Perhaps also some use in Wales that is stuck just using gamma (which in some countries is dogged by manufacturing glitches) and the skin test.

Wales is casting around for something else to make progress with, particularly the 65 TB persistent herds in and around Pembrokeshire. Adding badgers to a rather tired shopping list without the required ingredient.

But why still the slow-train on what Welsh Government officials describe as a war-zone? bTB is a massive eye-wateringly expensive countryside disease crisis.

And the financial-loss pendulum can swing back in favour of the public and farmers who, as in Ireland, have paid the billion pound bill for dud skin tests for decades and the hopeless, cruel badger decimation using snaring and shootings.  

Prevarication in the bTB war zone

No need to waste £100 million a year with a foolishly distant 2038 and (can you believe it?) 2065 strategy in Northern Ireland. Where are the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee?

It seems crazy that government did not pick up Phage last year or this year and run with accelerated trials that might take just a few months. Who exactly is holding it back?

So where now is the political hold up – the grit in the Vaseline? Well it is this. Defra can huff and puff about rules and regulations and setting precedents from bringing new solutions forward but that is all prevarication in the bTB war zone.

With its absorbed old MAFF component it has long known that the English High Risk Area, especially Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and beyond is riddled with TB.

Even the Edge Area and beyond has growing hidden TB time bombs as this year our current cattle movements system releases bTB into Cumbria and Scotland.

Blaming badgers 

The main political problem is that any serious attempt to tackle bovine TB will shrink the UK cattle business because in any realistic effort there are simply not enough ‘clean’ cattle to re-stock . The trade ‘volume’ – that horrible term that applies to machined goods as much as cows – would shrink, including exported powdered milk to Asia etc. 

The hold-up is the need, when routing out TB, to remove perhaps up to a third or more of cattle to clear a UK herd. It is also the need for establishing strict long-term quarantine capacity for all farms and between adjoining farms.

That may be a logistical headache and short-term one-off cost, but could be done in months and years not decades. And it is a case of the sooner we start the more we can save and the fewer farms suffer.

This is why since 2010, even gamma testing which catches many but not all of those left behind by the skin test has not been funded or properly promoted for use in the HRA.

For some time now, the existence of TB carriers in clear-testing herds has been known. So blaming badgers became the name-game. The ‘carrot’ alongside full compensation to help keep the NFU quiet.

Improve farm biosecurity

This is also is well realised by the senior government officials, veterinarians and industry reps and thinkers pulling the strings. They would rather talk up a broad range of anti-TB measures that may slow the spread, but not deal with stopping a disease that has to be stopped. Now no one now wants to possess the problem and its sour origin. 

Equally, no one saw Phage coming. Gove has only recently been briefed. The past strategy has been to hoodwink most farmers and the public into thinking there is a viable solution in place when there is not, that approaches are working when they are getting worse and to use taxpayers money to subsidise commercial intensive livestock export businesses and producers on the back of the public, while farmers and cow herds suffer. Scandalous?

Well, we all know it is a wicked world and that stuff happens. But actually Phage testing has come along to peel away the delusion and deception. It is now possible with the clever, not so new but un-promoted test to clear out all of this nonsense at last.

And yes, we do need to maintain and improve farm biosecurity. We do need to monitor TB in wildlife when TB in cattle comes down, to see how long it remains and to study that properly.

We could start immediately by using Phage tests for compulsory pre-movement testing of all cattle to start breaking the cycle. No conflict with the day- to day skin test testing, if that is what is wanted. But the skin test has had its day. It is now about the hand-over. And until that starts current funds are being sprayed into wind and against wall.

Warts and all

Any losers? Farmers and vets who do the tuberculin skin testing will have a less demanding routine compared with that for skin testing. Vets will work hard to destroy that regular workload and farmers the compensation pay-cheques.

They must surely now be the first to get behind the use of Phage – why wouldn’t they?

The British Veterinary Association and British Cattle Veterinary Association also have something to get really, really excited about and to embrace surely? Oh yes, and the media might cover it in full detail too – warts and all?

This Author

Tom Langton has been a consulting ecologist to government, business and industry and a voluntary sector volunteer, more recently working on assisting small pressure groups in their legal opposition to destruction of species and habitats in Europe.

Brexit gives the Conservatives “a golden opportunity to push for a new approach to our environment”, prominent party members said in a report published last week.

The report is authored by activists and Tory MPs and was launched in Parliament by Sajid Javit, the Local Government Secretary, in Parliament. It said Brexit was an “opportunity” that “cannot be missed”.

The report was co-published by the newly launched Conservative Environment Network. Mark Holmes, the group’s Interim Director, writes that we must involve the natural world in “every area of public life”.

A vaccuum in British law

The report comes after two Parliamentary committees warned Brexit risked degrading Britain’s environmental rules and standards. The Conservative MPs call for more strident green policies in areas such as cycling, air and water pollution, waste recycling and electric cars.

Rebecca Pow MP, the co-editor, suggests higher environmental standards could benefit the UK economy, since “sustainable, healthy food grown to the highest standards and welfare codes could pay dividends as we promote ‘Brand Britain’ in the post EU era.”

The Commons Environmental Audit Committee and Lords EU Energy and Environment Subcommittee warned Brexit risked leaving a vaccuum in British law once European institutions no longer shape UK environmental laws.

While several authors stress that gardening can help the vulnerable or needy, the report omits key environmental issues. Most praise the government’s environmental record, which green groups have attacked.

Green spaces and gardening

The report, a series of short essays by Tory MPs, includes no chapter on climate change, energy policy or biodiversity loss, and gives no significant space to these issues. Aviation, airport expansion and fracking it omits entirely.

The report emphasises contact with nature, casting it as a solution to social ills. It stresses that green spaces and gardening can help prisoners, the homeless, unemployed and mentally ill.

Pow writes that voluntary horticulture schemes help in “tackling deprivation”, and that “having pretty gardens” in part of her constituency, “encouraged the clearing of litter”.

Matthew Offord MP links “a clean and green environment and reduced crime levels”, while Holmes writes that some communities suffer “poor health, family breakdown, housing, low educational achievement”, and that green spaces can “have a profound impact” in preventing crime and improving life chances.

A breathtaking series of attacks

The report’s authors repeatedly praise the government and defends the Conservatives’ environmental record. CEN’s co-directors quote Environment Secretary Michael Gove and praise “the positive environmental track record of conservative governments around the world.” Mark Holmes adds that the “Conservatives have a sound track record on the environment of which we can be proud.”

Pow writes that she is “pleased to say, the Conservatives are already leading the way” on sustainability, while Richard Benyon MP claims ground-breaking green policies “are being implemented and we are starting to see the benefits”.

But environmental campaigner Tony Juniper has called the Conservatives’ term in office the worst period for UK environmental policy in 30 years, after the party banned onshore wind, cut renewables subsidies and abandoned home insulation schemes. It also dumped electric car incentives along with green tax targets, reversed a ban on bee-killing pesticides and reneged on a pledge to block Heathrow expansion.

Liz Hutchins of Friends of the Earth accused the Tories of “a breathtaking series of attacks on environment policies”. Theresa May would later abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change shortly after becoming Prime Minister. Defra figures released last month show the government cut biodiversity spending by a third since 2008-9, even as three quarters of priority species have suffered long-term decline.

Action needs to be taken

Other parts of the report do criticise the government’s record. Alex Chalk MP notes that just 2 percent of journeys were made by bike in Britain in 2015, compared with 27 percent in the Netherlands.

Banning petrol and diesel cars by 2040 is “a laudable aim,” writes Andrew Selous MP, “but this should be a baseline expectation, not a target.”

And Matthew Offord MP notes that “many of our rivers are facing unprecedented pollution for many years to come and action needs to be taken to relieve this problem now.”

This Author

Tim Holmes is an ‘active bystander’ and also researcher, writer and editor. He tweets at @timbird84.

Brexit gives the Conservatives “a golden opportunity to push for a new approach to our environment”, prominent party members said in a report published last week.

The report is authored by activists and Tory MPs and was launched in Parliament by Sajid Javit, the Local Government Secretary, in Parliament. It said Brexit was an “opportunity” that “cannot be missed”.

The report was co-published by the newly launched Conservative Environment Network. Mark Holmes, the group’s Interim Director, writes that we must involve the natural world in “every area of public life”.

A vaccuum in British law

The report comes after two Parliamentary committees warned Brexit risked degrading Britain’s environmental rules and standards. The Conservative MPs call for more strident green policies in areas such as cycling, air and water pollution, waste recycling and electric cars.

Rebecca Pow MP, the co-editor, suggests higher environmental standards could benefit the UK economy, since “sustainable, healthy food grown to the highest standards and welfare codes could pay dividends as we promote ‘Brand Britain’ in the post EU era.”

The Commons Environmental Audit Committee and Lords EU Energy and Environment Subcommittee warned Brexit risked leaving a vaccuum in British law once European institutions no longer shape UK environmental laws.

While several authors stress that gardening can help the vulnerable or needy, the report omits key environmental issues. Most praise the government’s environmental record, which green groups have attacked.

Green spaces and gardening

The report, a series of short essays by Tory MPs, includes no chapter on climate change, energy policy or biodiversity loss, and gives no significant space to these issues. Aviation, airport expansion and fracking it omits entirely.

The report emphasises contact with nature, casting it as a solution to social ills. It stresses that green spaces and gardening can help prisoners, the homeless, unemployed and mentally ill.

Pow writes that voluntary horticulture schemes help in “tackling deprivation”, and that “having pretty gardens” in part of her constituency, “encouraged the clearing of litter”.

Matthew Offord MP links “a clean and green environment and reduced crime levels”, while Holmes writes that some communities suffer “poor health, family breakdown, housing, low educational achievement”, and that green spaces can “have a profound impact” in preventing crime and improving life chances.

A breathtaking series of attacks

The report’s authors repeatedly praise the government and defends the Conservatives’ environmental record. CEN’s co-directors quote Environment Secretary Michael Gove and praise “the positive environmental track record of conservative governments around the world.” Mark Holmes adds that the “Conservatives have a sound track record on the environment of which we can be proud.”

Pow writes that she is “pleased to say, the Conservatives are already leading the way” on sustainability, while Richard Benyon MP claims ground-breaking green policies “are being implemented and we are starting to see the benefits”.

But environmental campaigner Tony Juniper has called the Conservatives’ term in office the worst period for UK environmental policy in 30 years, after the party banned onshore wind, cut renewables subsidies and abandoned home insulation schemes. It also dumped electric car incentives along with green tax targets, reversed a ban on bee-killing pesticides and reneged on a pledge to block Heathrow expansion.

Liz Hutchins of Friends of the Earth accused the Tories of “a breathtaking series of attacks on environment policies”. Theresa May would later abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change shortly after becoming Prime Minister. Defra figures released last month show the government cut biodiversity spending by a third since 2008-9, even as three quarters of priority species have suffered long-term decline.

Action needs to be taken

Other parts of the report do criticise the government’s record. Alex Chalk MP notes that just 2 percent of journeys were made by bike in Britain in 2015, compared with 27 percent in the Netherlands.

Banning petrol and diesel cars by 2040 is “a laudable aim,” writes Andrew Selous MP, “but this should be a baseline expectation, not a target.”

And Matthew Offord MP notes that “many of our rivers are facing unprecedented pollution for many years to come and action needs to be taken to relieve this problem now.”

This Author

Tim Holmes is an ‘active bystander’ and also researcher, writer and editor. He tweets at @timbird84.

Brexit gives the Conservatives “a golden opportunity to push for a new approach to our environment”, prominent party members said in a report published last week.

The report is authored by activists and Tory MPs and was launched in Parliament by Sajid Javit, the Local Government Secretary, in Parliament. It said Brexit was an “opportunity” that “cannot be missed”.

The report was co-published by the newly launched Conservative Environment Network. Mark Holmes, the group’s Interim Director, writes that we must involve the natural world in “every area of public life”.

A vaccuum in British law

The report comes after two Parliamentary committees warned Brexit risked degrading Britain’s environmental rules and standards. The Conservative MPs call for more strident green policies in areas such as cycling, air and water pollution, waste recycling and electric cars.

Rebecca Pow MP, the co-editor, suggests higher environmental standards could benefit the UK economy, since “sustainable, healthy food grown to the highest standards and welfare codes could pay dividends as we promote ‘Brand Britain’ in the post EU era.”

The Commons Environmental Audit Committee and Lords EU Energy and Environment Subcommittee warned Brexit risked leaving a vaccuum in British law once European institutions no longer shape UK environmental laws.

While several authors stress that gardening can help the vulnerable or needy, the report omits key environmental issues. Most praise the government’s environmental record, which green groups have attacked.

Green spaces and gardening

The report, a series of short essays by Tory MPs, includes no chapter on climate change, energy policy or biodiversity loss, and gives no significant space to these issues. Aviation, airport expansion and fracking it omits entirely.

The report emphasises contact with nature, casting it as a solution to social ills. It stresses that green spaces and gardening can help prisoners, the homeless, unemployed and mentally ill.

Pow writes that voluntary horticulture schemes help in “tackling deprivation”, and that “having pretty gardens” in part of her constituency, “encouraged the clearing of litter”.

Matthew Offord MP links “a clean and green environment and reduced crime levels”, while Holmes writes that some communities suffer “poor health, family breakdown, housing, low educational achievement”, and that green spaces can “have a profound impact” in preventing crime and improving life chances.

A breathtaking series of attacks

The report’s authors repeatedly praise the government and defends the Conservatives’ environmental record. CEN’s co-directors quote Environment Secretary Michael Gove and praise “the positive environmental track record of conservative governments around the world.” Mark Holmes adds that the “Conservatives have a sound track record on the environment of which we can be proud.”

Pow writes that she is “pleased to say, the Conservatives are already leading the way” on sustainability, while Richard Benyon MP claims ground-breaking green policies “are being implemented and we are starting to see the benefits”.

But environmental campaigner Tony Juniper has called the Conservatives’ term in office the worst period for UK environmental policy in 30 years, after the party banned onshore wind, cut renewables subsidies and abandoned home insulation schemes. It also dumped electric car incentives along with green tax targets, reversed a ban on bee-killing pesticides and reneged on a pledge to block Heathrow expansion.

Liz Hutchins of Friends of the Earth accused the Tories of “a breathtaking series of attacks on environment policies”. Theresa May would later abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change shortly after becoming Prime Minister. Defra figures released last month show the government cut biodiversity spending by a third since 2008-9, even as three quarters of priority species have suffered long-term decline.

Action needs to be taken

Other parts of the report do criticise the government’s record. Alex Chalk MP notes that just 2 percent of journeys were made by bike in Britain in 2015, compared with 27 percent in the Netherlands.

Banning petrol and diesel cars by 2040 is “a laudable aim,” writes Andrew Selous MP, “but this should be a baseline expectation, not a target.”

And Matthew Offord MP notes that “many of our rivers are facing unprecedented pollution for many years to come and action needs to be taken to relieve this problem now.”

This Author

Tim Holmes is an ‘active bystander’ and also researcher, writer and editor. He tweets at @timbird84.

A controversial planning application to build 5,000 houses on one of the UK’s last strongholds for nightingales has been dropped just months before a Public Inquiry was due to take a closer look at the issue. 

Wildlife lovers and conservationists are welcoming news that the planning application has been withdrawn that would have destroyed an important wildlife haven at Lodge Hill in Kent. It is an area that is home to the rare and declining nightingale and is also important for a wide range of other declining wildlife and habitats, including bats, and rare grassland flowers and ancient woodland.

People that love our wildlife

Lodge Hill is recognised as one of the last strongholds for nightingales in the UK, an enigmatic bird that has seen its population in England drop to less than 5,500 singing males from over 60,000 a few decades ago. The decline of the species is so alarming that nightingales are listed among our most threatened birds and included on the UK Red List for birds.

The area is nationally protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest for nightingales, holding up to 85 singing males. The development would have destroyed most of the nightingales’ habitat, and would have set a terrible precedent for protected sites everywhere.

More than 12,000 people objected to the planning application when it was approved by Medway Council in 2014, promoting the Government to ‘call in’ the decision. A Public Inquiry was due to be held in March 2018

Chris Corrigan, the RSPB’s director for England said: “Thousands of people joined the RSPB and Kent Wildlife Trust in expressing their shock and dismay at plans to build on Lodge Hill. The withdrawal of the plans is a clear sign that the voices of people that love our wildlife have been heard. It is concerning that these proposals were approved in the first place, and this concern is something we believe the Planning Inquiry would have shared.

Still under threat

“Lodge Hill was declared a SSSI by the Government because it is the best place for nightingales in the UK, a species that has declined by around 90% in the last half century leaving fewer and fewer to bring their beautiful  song to the English countryside. Areas as important as Lodge Hill should be protected and celebrated and not threatened with housing.”

John Bennett, Chief Executive of Kent Wildlife Trust, said “After a huge amount of work over many years to protect Lodge Hill, alongside RSPB and other conservation partners, we welcome the common sense shown by the withdrawal of this damaging development application. We look forward, optimistically, to a positive future for the area and its wildlife, which is important for Kent and the country as a whole.”

The future of Lodge Hill is still under threat as it has been earmarked for development by Medway Council in their draft Local Plan, released earlier this year. And again, over 12,000 people also responded to that proposal, pointing out how this was at total odds with national planning guidance, and asking the Council to remove Lodge Hill from their final plan due in 2018.

This Author

Brendan Montague is acting editor of The Ecologistwebsite. He tweets at @EcoMontague. 

To find out more about the concerns being raised by conservation groups, and get involved in saving Lodge Hill from development visit: www.rspb.org.uk/savelodgehill