This book is beautiful, dramatic and striking: symbolic of its content. It is wisdom-filled, appropriately weighty and akin to an ancient bible. It engenders visions of dust-filled books of past times and lost cultures. Endangered acts as a modern day Noah’s Ark of imagery whose subjects, if we’re not careful, could soon themselves become of the past, ‘dust’. 

Photographer Tim Flach is no stranger to making animals a focus for his work. But here, the pictures are presented to provoke and engage the reader emotionally. Attuned to how humans regard animals, he presents pictures that pull on the heartstrings. 

Perhaps our experiences and feelings are not so removed from the animal kingdom, much of which is perilously close to extinction. But the photographer suggests that looking at how we ‘feel’ (sometimes a dirty word in scientific circles), and how we relate, is surely the way forward. 

Science and art

On first seeing the book and its several stylised images – and as an anthropologist and artist – I noticed an anthropomorphic response and my scientist side screamed, ‘contrived’! But the ‘artist’ in me acknowledged hyper-realist images on an extravagant scale.

The portraiture is profound, sad, insightful and quirky. Flach presents protagonist and photographer: passive and active as inextricably linked. His photos are eye catching and thought provoking: from the beauty of butterflies in flight, to the ethereal Sea Angel and the last living Northern White Rhino. Their stories unfold.

Photos were shot over the course of 20 months, though the book was years in the making. Flach has worked with experts and naturalists worldwide.

Scientist and zoologist Jonathan Baillie provides accompanying text along with Sam Wells, substantiating the story of each species. Condensing material for the book must have been excruciating. The book’s power comes in succinctly supplying an account that packs a punch, whilst allowing the reader space for personal interpretation. 

Endangered uniquely differs from previous work as it presents a staged, artistic snapshot in captive confines alongside animals recorded in their natural habitat. The Giant Panda is seen looking upon a spectacular natural habitat. But on closer inspection, the reader notices a corner shadow: a window, suggesting that all is not what it seems. Conserving animals in confines such as zoos is far from ideal. 

Outsider animals

The book encompasses the obscure, the ‘non-cute’, and the odd in appearance. The time is now for the ‘outsider animal’. In a world driven by appearance (applicable in both human and animal kingdom), these images show that all species are important, and highlight how interrelated planet and inhabitant is. 

Flach posits, “the most important message is that it’s not simply images of animals but that every aspect of our being is influenced by the natural world around us.

With over seven hours a day spent on the Internet, it’s clear we don’t have the same sensibilities our predecessors had to their environment. I want to point to the ecological drivers of humanity through portrayals of animals and I chose some candidates to demonstrate that”. 

The 180 photos in the book highlight the plight of a variety of species and the threats they face from poachers, the pet trade, habitat destruction, palm oil production, climate change, cultural belief, and business and industry keen to cash in on their aesthetic properties. Skins, bones, pelts, meat and eggs all are targets.

Wildlife and ecosystems are consistently threatened from all angles, and biodiversity is in decline. But daily planet doom-mongery can negatively impact.

Sentient species

Admittedly some species’ situation is so acute it appears futile to aid. But this book offers a better understanding of the bigger picture, literally and figuratively.

It is no use sitting crying (note to self) or blaming. People hold the power, by lobbying government and business, cooperatively working with communities, finding alternatives to poaching, seeking sustainable solutions. There are possibilities. 

Flach has made it his place to capture not just animal imagery, but emotion, environment, and the essence of human-animal relationships. He intimately, painstakingly and devotedly pursues the animal story. The book is a beacon, and the pleasure in his work is apparent.

Endangered is the perfect enthusiast or collectors book. Animals are heralded and held on high – not as trophies of poachers and hunters, but in the pages of a book – elevated and respected as the sophisticated, sentient species with whom we share the planet.

And whom hopefully we regard with greater consideration and wonder. It is the conversational book on conservation.

Endangered by Tim Flach

Prologue and epilogue by Dr. Jonathan Baillie, body text by Sam Wells

Abrams, £50

This Author

Wendyrosie Scott is an anthropologist and journalist focusing on design and creative communities. She looks at the positive partnerships between lifestyle trends & the​​ natural world. 

The Environmental Justice Atlas or EJAtlas of the Autonomous University of Barcelona collected 2330 data sheets on ecological distribution conflicts from all over the world. On average, one more case is added per day.

The sheer size of our database makes new studies possible on the actors in such conflicts and their forms of mobilisation, on the deaths of activists in these conflicts or on the factors that lead to failure or success in achieving environmental justice.

Social studies can be done on the various cultural expressions such as banners, documentaries and songs used in the various struggles for environmental justice.  

Smelting and refining

What we see is that these conflicts are exposing value system contests. For instance, if a river is polluted or a forest destroyed by open cast mining, financial compensation may be a way out for the company responsible but other valuation languages (biodiversity, the “rights of nature”, the livelihood of local populations, indigenous territorial rights, sacredness) will then be sacrificed.

Money cannot compensate for all such loses. The language of economics (and of monetary cost-benefit analysis) is powerful but it is not always powerful enough. 

Why do so many “ecological distribution conflicts” (as recorded in the EJAtlas) arise? This is  because of the growth and changes of the flows of energy and materials in the economy.

We call those flows the “metabolism” of the global economy. For instance, coal mining leads to conflicts along the whole “commodity chain”, from mining to transport to burning in coal fired power plants producing pollutants and excessive amounts of carbon dioxide.

Another example is the increase in bauxite mining, that causes conflicts in mining, in smelting and refining of aluminum, in the process of creating electricity for that and when leaving “red mud” as waste.

Unsustainable economies

Some famous conflicts, such as in the Niyamgiri Hill in Odisha in India against the Vedanta company, exemplify the power of the value of sacredness and the power of indigenous territorial rights against the power of money.

In this particular case, the power of the local people turned out to be bigger than the power of a 7 billion dollar investment. 

Changes in the social metabolism lead to conflicts, which are then expressed in different valuation languages. Ecological and economic distribution conflicts are not the same.

Economists claim that all externalities just need to be internalised in the price, but reality shows that not everything has a price tag.

The circuit from changes in social metabolism to ecological distribution conflicts to environmental justice networks and movements, and to transitions to less unsustainable economies and societies, is depicted in Fig.1.

For instance, more coal for electricity production causes conflicts at different scales and may give rise to movements for “leaving coal in the hole”.

Monetary compensation

If such movements are successful, the economy will be more environmentally sustainable. More windmills or more dams might be built instead to substitute for coal fired power plants but this in turn sometimes gives rise to conflicts over land rights and water rights.

From the point of view of governments and business, economic growth and profits demand an expanding or changing “metabolism of the economy”.

As solution to the conflicts this creates, they propose improved Corporate Social Responsibility. This sometimes works in the West or in China, where “eco-compensation” is used to keep the population quiet despite damages from land grabbing and the extractive industries.

Less conflictivity is good for business and for economic growth, it allows more mining and more fossil fuel extraction to take place.

But in most places, no amount of monetary compensation will prevent a conflict from taking place, simply because people have non-monetary social values as well.

Value systems

That may be hard to believe in the boardrooms of companies traded on the stock market, or in the minds of  economists – but it’s the reality and it explains the rising number of ecological distribution conflicts, in parallel to the rising number of tonnes of materials extracted in the world.

From the point of view of the environmental movement, we take a positive view of ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability.

In the EJAtlas we find that almost 20 per cent of conflicts end with success for environmental justice, often meaning projects stopped.

More conflicts mean less mining, less plunder of biomass and less fossil fuel extraction. Networks are formed and new words invented to express the new fights, such as Blockadia.

The slogan that “water is more valuable than gold” is only untrue if we consider the value as the price per kilogram – but it is true in the sense that there are other value systems apart from money pricing.

So when a religious leader like Pope Francis accepted an invitation to hold up a t-shirt with that slogan, it was because he supported the view that some values of water are not counted in money. He and the vast majority in the world know that – it is the psychopaths steering our economy into the abyss who don’t get it. 

This Author

Joan Martinez Alier is an eminent and award wining professor in ecological economy and a globally recognised specialist on environmental justice. Martinez-Alier works at ICTA-UAB, Barcelona. He wrote this contribution in his capacity as the coordinator of the European Research Council funded EnvJustice Project.

This book is beautiful, dramatic and striking: symbolic of its content. It is wisdom-filled, appropriately weighty and akin to an ancient bible. It engenders visions of dust-filled books of past times and lost cultures. Endangered acts as a modern day Noah’s Ark of imagery whose subjects, if we’re not careful, could soon themselves become of the past, ‘dust’. 

Photographer Tim Flach is no stranger to making animals a focus for his work. But here, the pictures are presented to provoke and engage the reader emotionally. Attuned to how humans regard animals, he presents pictures that pull on the heartstrings. 

Perhaps our experiences and feelings are not so removed from the animal kingdom, much of which is perilously close to extinction. But the photographer suggests that looking at how we ‘feel’ (sometimes a dirty word in scientific circles), and how we relate, is surely the way forward. 

Science and art

On first seeing the book and its several stylised images – and as an anthropologist and artist – I noticed an anthropomorphic response and my scientist side screamed, ‘contrived’! But the ‘artist’ in me acknowledged hyper-realist images on an extravagant scale.

The portraiture is profound, sad, insightful and quirky. Flach presents protagonist and photographer: passive and active as inextricably linked. His photos are eye catching and thought provoking: from the beauty of butterflies in flight, to the ethereal Sea Angel and the last living Northern White Rhino. Their stories unfold.

Photos were shot over the course of 20 months, though the book was years in the making. Flach has worked with experts and naturalists worldwide.

Scientist and zoologist Jonathan Baillie provides accompanying text along with Sam Wells, substantiating the story of each species. Condensing material for the book must have been excruciating. The book’s power comes in succinctly supplying an account that packs a punch, whilst allowing the reader space for personal interpretation. 

Endangered uniquely differs from previous work as it presents a staged, artistic snapshot in captive confines alongside animals recorded in their natural habitat. The Giant Panda is seen looking upon a spectacular natural habitat. But on closer inspection, the reader notices a corner shadow: a window, suggesting that all is not what it seems. Conserving animals in confines such as zoos is far from ideal. 

Outsider animals

The book encompasses the obscure, the ‘non-cute’, and the odd in appearance. The time is now for the ‘outsider animal’. In a world driven by appearance (applicable in both human and animal kingdom), these images show that all species are important, and highlight how interrelated planet and inhabitant is. 

Flach posits, “the most important message is that it’s not simply images of animals but that every aspect of our being is influenced by the natural world around us.

With over seven hours a day spent on the Internet, it’s clear we don’t have the same sensibilities our predecessors had to their environment. I want to point to the ecological drivers of humanity through portrayals of animals and I chose some candidates to demonstrate that”. 

The 180 photos in the book highlight the plight of a variety of species and the threats they face from poachers, the pet trade, habitat destruction, palm oil production, climate change, cultural belief, and business and industry keen to cash in on their aesthetic properties. Skins, bones, pelts, meat and eggs all are targets.

Wildlife and ecosystems are consistently threatened from all angles, and biodiversity is in decline. But daily planet doom-mongery can negatively impact.

Sentient species

Admittedly some species’ situation is so acute it appears futile to aid. But this book offers a better understanding of the bigger picture, literally and figuratively.

It is no use sitting crying (note to self) or blaming. People hold the power, by lobbying government and business, cooperatively working with communities, finding alternatives to poaching, seeking sustainable solutions. There are possibilities. 

Flach has made it his place to capture not just animal imagery, but emotion, environment, and the essence of human-animal relationships. He intimately, painstakingly and devotedly pursues the animal story. The book is a beacon, and the pleasure in his work is apparent.

Endangered is the perfect enthusiast or collectors book. Animals are heralded and held on high – not as trophies of poachers and hunters, but in the pages of a book – elevated and respected as the sophisticated, sentient species with whom we share the planet.

And whom hopefully we regard with greater consideration and wonder. It is the conversational book on conservation.

Endangered by Tim Flach

Prologue and epilogue by Dr. Jonathan Baillie, body text by Sam Wells

Abrams, £50

This Author

Wendyrosie Scott is an anthropologist and journalist focusing on design and creative communities. She looks at the positive partnerships between lifestyle trends & the​​ natural world. 

The Environmental Justice Atlas or EJAtlas of the Autonomous University of Barcelona collected 2330 data sheets on ecological distribution conflicts from all over the world. On average, one more case is added per day.

The sheer size of our database makes new studies possible on the actors in such conflicts and their forms of mobilisation, on the deaths of activists in these conflicts or on the factors that lead to failure or success in achieving environmental justice.

Social studies can be done on the various cultural expressions such as banners, documentaries and songs used in the various struggles for environmental justice.  

Smelting and refining

What we see is that these conflicts are exposing value system contests. For instance, if a river is polluted or a forest destroyed by open cast mining, financial compensation may be a way out for the company responsible but other valuation languages (biodiversity, the “rights of nature”, the livelihood of local populations, indigenous territorial rights, sacredness) will then be sacrificed.

Money cannot compensate for all such loses. The language of economics (and of monetary cost-benefit analysis) is powerful but it is not always powerful enough. 

Why do so many “ecological distribution conflicts” (as recorded in the EJAtlas) arise? This is  because of the growth and changes of the flows of energy and materials in the economy.

We call those flows the “metabolism” of the global economy. For instance, coal mining leads to conflicts along the whole “commodity chain”, from mining to transport to burning in coal fired power plants producing pollutants and excessive amounts of carbon dioxide.

Another example is the increase in bauxite mining, that causes conflicts in mining, in smelting and refining of aluminum, in the process of creating electricity for that and when leaving “red mud” as waste.

Unsustainable economies

Some famous conflicts, such as in the Niyamgiri Hill in Odisha in India against the Vedanta company, exemplify the power of the value of sacredness and the power of indigenous territorial rights against the power of money.

In this particular case, the power of the local people turned out to be bigger than the power of a 7 billion dollar investment. 

Changes in the social metabolism lead to conflicts, which are then expressed in different valuation languages. Ecological and economic distribution conflicts are not the same.

Economists claim that all externalities just need to be internalised in the price, but reality shows that not everything has a price tag.

The circuit from changes in social metabolism to ecological distribution conflicts to environmental justice networks and movements, and to transitions to less unsustainable economies and societies, is depicted in Fig.1.

For instance, more coal for electricity production causes conflicts at different scales and may give rise to movements for “leaving coal in the hole”.

Monetary compensation

If such movements are successful, the economy will be more environmentally sustainable. More windmills or more dams might be built instead to substitute for coal fired power plants but this in turn sometimes gives rise to conflicts over land rights and water rights.

From the point of view of governments and business, economic growth and profits demand an expanding or changing “metabolism of the economy”.

As solution to the conflicts this creates, they propose improved Corporate Social Responsibility. This sometimes works in the West or in China, where “eco-compensation” is used to keep the population quiet despite damages from land grabbing and the extractive industries.

Less conflictivity is good for business and for economic growth, it allows more mining and more fossil fuel extraction to take place.

But in most places, no amount of monetary compensation will prevent a conflict from taking place, simply because people have non-monetary social values as well.

Value systems

That may be hard to believe in the boardrooms of companies traded on the stock market, or in the minds of  economists – but it’s the reality and it explains the rising number of ecological distribution conflicts, in parallel to the rising number of tonnes of materials extracted in the world.

From the point of view of the environmental movement, we take a positive view of ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability.

In the EJAtlas we find that almost 20 per cent of conflicts end with success for environmental justice, often meaning projects stopped.

More conflicts mean less mining, less plunder of biomass and less fossil fuel extraction. Networks are formed and new words invented to express the new fights, such as Blockadia.

The slogan that “water is more valuable than gold” is only untrue if we consider the value as the price per kilogram – but it is true in the sense that there are other value systems apart from money pricing.

So when a religious leader like Pope Francis accepted an invitation to hold up a t-shirt with that slogan, it was because he supported the view that some values of water are not counted in money. He and the vast majority in the world know that – it is the psychopaths steering our economy into the abyss who don’t get it. 

This Author

Joan Martinez Alier is an eminent and award wining professor in ecological economy and a globally recognised specialist on environmental justice. Martinez-Alier works at ICTA-UAB, Barcelona. He wrote this contribution in his capacity as the coordinator of the European Research Council funded EnvJustice Project.

The Environmental Justice Atlas or EJAtlas of the Autonomous University of Barcelona collected 2330 data sheets on ecological distribution conflicts from all over the world. On average, one more case is added per day.

The sheer size of our database makes new studies possible on the actors in such conflicts and their forms of mobilisation, on the deaths of activists in these conflicts or on the factors that lead to failure or success in achieving environmental justice.

Social studies can be done on the various cultural expressions such as banners, documentaries and songs used in the various struggles for environmental justice.  

Smelting and refining

What we see is that these conflicts are exposing value system contests. For instance, if a river is polluted or a forest destroyed by open cast mining, financial compensation may be a way out for the company responsible but other valuation languages (biodiversity, the “rights of nature”, the livelihood of local populations, indigenous territorial rights, sacredness) will then be sacrificed.

Money cannot compensate for all such loses. The language of economics (and of monetary cost-benefit analysis) is powerful but it is not always powerful enough. 

Why do so many “ecological distribution conflicts” (as recorded in the EJAtlas) arise? This is  because of the growth and changes of the flows of energy and materials in the economy.

We call those flows the “metabolism” of the global economy. For instance, coal mining leads to conflicts along the whole “commodity chain”, from mining to transport to burning in coal fired power plants producing pollutants and excessive amounts of carbon dioxide.

Another example is the increase in bauxite mining, that causes conflicts in mining, in smelting and refining of aluminum, in the process of creating electricity for that and when leaving “red mud” as waste.

Unsustainable economies

Some famous conflicts, such as in the Niyamgiri Hill in Odisha in India against the Vedanta company, exemplify the power of the value of sacredness and the power of indigenous territorial rights against the power of money.

In this particular case, the power of the local people turned out to be bigger than the power of a 7 billion dollar investment. 

Changes in the social metabolism lead to conflicts, which are then expressed in different valuation languages. Ecological and economic distribution conflicts are not the same.

Economists claim that all externalities just need to be internalised in the price, but reality shows that not everything has a price tag.

The circuit from changes in social metabolism to ecological distribution conflicts to environmental justice networks and movements, and to transitions to less unsustainable economies and societies, is depicted in Fig.1.

For instance, more coal for electricity production causes conflicts at different scales and may give rise to movements for “leaving coal in the hole”.

Monetary compensation

If such movements are successful, the economy will be more environmentally sustainable. More windmills or more dams might be built instead to substitute for coal fired power plants but this in turn sometimes gives rise to conflicts over land rights and water rights.

From the point of view of governments and business, economic growth and profits demand an expanding or changing “metabolism of the economy”.

As solution to the conflicts this creates, they propose improved Corporate Social Responsibility. This sometimes works in the West or in China, where “eco-compensation” is used to keep the population quiet despite damages from land grabbing and the extractive industries.

Less conflictivity is good for business and for economic growth, it allows more mining and more fossil fuel extraction to take place.

But in most places, no amount of monetary compensation will prevent a conflict from taking place, simply because people have non-monetary social values as well.

Value systems

That may be hard to believe in the boardrooms of companies traded on the stock market, or in the minds of  economists – but it’s the reality and it explains the rising number of ecological distribution conflicts, in parallel to the rising number of tonnes of materials extracted in the world.

From the point of view of the environmental movement, we take a positive view of ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability.

In the EJAtlas we find that almost 20 per cent of conflicts end with success for environmental justice, often meaning projects stopped.

More conflicts mean less mining, less plunder of biomass and less fossil fuel extraction. Networks are formed and new words invented to express the new fights, such as Blockadia.

The slogan that “water is more valuable than gold” is only untrue if we consider the value as the price per kilogram – but it is true in the sense that there are other value systems apart from money pricing.

So when a religious leader like Pope Francis accepted an invitation to hold up a t-shirt with that slogan, it was because he supported the view that some values of water are not counted in money. He and the vast majority in the world know that – it is the psychopaths steering our economy into the abyss who don’t get it. 

This Author

Joan Martinez Alier is an eminent and award wining professor in ecological economy and a globally recognised specialist on environmental justice. Martinez-Alier works at ICTA-UAB, Barcelona. He wrote this contribution in his capacity as the coordinator of the European Research Council funded EnvJustice Project.

The Master of the Dwyryd Hunt in north Wales faces prison having been convicted of badger baiting and six further animal welfare offences.

David Thomas, 51, was convicted last week at Llandudno Magistrates Court of causing unnecessary suffering to a badger by making it fight with dogs at his kennels at Cwm Bowydd Farm in Blaenau Ffestiniog – the hunt’s kennels.

The League Against Cruel Sports is now calling for him to step down as Master of the Hunt and for the Dwyryd Hunt to be disbanded and the hounds relocated elsewhere.

Deeply unsettling

Mike Nicholas, a spokesperson for the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Badger baiting is a cruel sport that we have long suspected is sometimes organised by those also engaged in illegal hunting.

“There was an artificial badger sett found at the kennels where the Master lives, together with what is believed to have been several badger and fox skulls. Violence against animals is abhorred by most people but sadly still goes on. Killing animals for sport has no place in our society.”

Thomas was also found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to two foxes by keeping them caged close to dogs which left them terrified and further animal welfare allegations, according to local newspaper reports.

Unnecessary suffering

Clive Rees, defending Thomas, argued that there had been an “institutionalised and systemic failure” and identification of his client was unsatisfactory. “There’s no real evidence these (caged) foxes were suffering any sort of trauma until approached by the police and RSPCA,” he added.

Jordan Houlston, 24, of Llandudno – an alleged hunt terrier man – was convicted in the same case of ill-treating a badger, and unnecessary suffering by causing a badger to fight with dogs at the farm. Houlston denied being present at the time of the animal fight.

Marc Wyn Morris, 26, of Blaenau Ffestiniog, pleaded guilty to wilfully injuring a badger, being present at an animal fight and causing unnecessary suffering to a badger by causing it to fight with a dog.

Sentencing will take place on Monday, 5 February 2018 at Llandudno Magistrates Court. 

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist and tweets at @EcoMontague.

Taking the mountain lift from the main promenade in Davos almost vertically upward, the commotion of the Open Forum falls steadily away, replaced by the majestic panorama of the Swiss Alps. 

It is here, not so far from the madding crowd, that a collaboration between Lancaster University, British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) have set-up their Arctic Basecamp, with the intention of reminding world leaders of the risks posed by drastic changes that are taking place in the polar Arctic.

But the question is, against the backdrop of the US President’s daft and misinformed commentary on climate change: is the agenda moving fast enough in the right direction to avoid global catastrophe?

All angles

Throughout the week the Arctic Basecamp have been posting videos from visitors that include Al Gore and Christiana Figueres. The night before, Dr Jennifer Francis dropped by. Francis is the scientist linking the loss of Arctic sea ice to changes in the jet stream, which is turn is driving extreme weather events. 

Professor Gail Whiteman from Lancaster University is holding fort when I arrive and is upbeat about the attention they have been getting in Davos.

“I think that is the interesting thing about Davos – both the informal and the organised events. Last night there was a lot of people walking passed the Basecamp who didn’t know very much about the Arctic or climate change. That gives us the chance to give them a bit of information and show them the data that we have.”

Whiteman adds that, just before I arrived, Benjamin Netanyahu had stopped by and was asking questions about their work. That is certainly high-profile but one imagines that his reasons for being in Davos have little to do with Arctic change.

When I ask Whiteman if the momentum for climate discussion is growing, she replies: “Well I think the World Economic Forum has seen the risks from climate change for the last few years.

“The global risk report has been listing climate change as an important risk to pay attention to. So for the forum staff that is not news. I think what is news is how climate change is increasingly part of the agenda discussions and that it is coming in from all angles.”

Raising the spectre

While that is true, the big driver of Arctic change is global emissions from our use of fossil fuels, and currently we still do not have a price on carbon pollution that can accelerate global environmental restoration on the scale required. 

It is well known here that many of the big institutional investors remain loath to drop their high carbon polluting investments, and governments are still very slow to stop giving subsidies to high polluting industries. 

President Trump’s arrival here in Davos, as reported in the US media, is an opportunity for him to gloat about his tax cuts given to the wealthiest people in the US, whilst signalling to foreign businesses that America is open for just about anything profit making.

These incumbent forces, including world leaders in business and politics, are still committed to their economic models of continuing growth at whatever cost. Earth systems, conversely, are strained and climate change is kicking in.

“These impacts raise the spectre of a global food crisis that could lead to a cascade through the World Economic Forum’s ‘global risk report’ list, that includes economic collapse, “profound social instability” and “large-scale involuntary migration”,  that we are not by any means prepared for.

Getting graphene

The promenade in Davos is lined with corporate giants, as well as national economic and commercial delegations, hosting all manner of meetings and panels. It is surreal and lively at the same time.

The CryptoHQ is a pop-up networking and event hub for the newly minted blockchain generation. These young trendier visitors are talking about decentralising payments systems, making them cheaper, faster and safer, as well as a myriad of other mind boggling projects.

I interviewed Juan Boluda Soler, CFO at Climate Coin, a new blockchain initiative that is gearing itself to be in step with the growth of global carbon markets, predicted to become a key mechanism for building trust in how carbon fees are collected and then delivered directly to environmental restoration projects around the world. Soler highlights the implementation of the Paris Agreement as a signal that carbon pricing is on the way.

In the ‘Ukrainian House Davos’, a panel of investors discuss the merits of investing in the Ukraine. Blockchain and clean energy storage seem to be on peoples minds.

One of the panelists says that “whoever cracks getting graphene cheaply will be the first trillion dollar company!” Although he doesn’t expand on this discussion it is a powerful statement when it comes to abundant clean energy storage.

The same speaker observes that a generation ago the big players in Davos were the guys with assets in the ground. Today the big companies are those whose assets are in the cloud, in the form of data.

Joining the dots

As it stands, everyone knows that the Paris Agreement falls well short of safeguarding the world against climate impacts. The rhetoric now tends toward words like “ratcheting up ambition”, meaning that efforts to lower the rates of carbon emissions will need to be exponentially increased if we are to stay below 1.5ºC (itself reckoned to cause a very dangerous level of global warming).

Blockchain maybe the buzz of many tech-savvy young people, but these same people are having to design their future from the ground up. It’s a future they will inherit from my own and previous generations in very poor condition.

It is heartening to meet the people joining the dots on climate change and endeavouring to solve issues like linking carbon pricing to global restoration.

The climate change summit in California in September of this year should lay the foundation for setting a price on carbon that could make subsequent agreements at the UNFCCC’s COP24 in November, a much easier gambit. It will be at the COP that the ratchet mechanism for reducing carbon emissions is enacted and those blockchain experts with solutions at the ready could well be finding themselves in great demand for generations to come.

Tremendous support

Looking out from the Basecamp at the frozen rugged landscape, the trends that dominate political and commercial agendas also have enormous consequences for us as individuals, where ever we live in the world. 

The World Economic Forum needs an avalanche of youth contributing to the conversation that is defining their future. What does the world they want to live in look like? What are the steps to achieving it? 

Trump has just arrived and I ask Professor Gail Whiteman what she thinks the impact of his dismantling America’s climate polices will be. She doesn’t seem too disheartened.

“My experience is that globally there is a tremendous support for the low carbon economy and the transformation that we need amongst business leaders. I think that is unstoppable. While there is always going to be some who are behind the curve of change, even in the North American context, we are still in. You see how strong that is and it contains both governmental actors at the state level, or city level, or civil society, as well as business leaders.

So I think that fixing the problem is not dependent on one administrations actions. I think it is about the global movement forward and I think that that is continuing.”

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change reporter and interviewer and co-founder of the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series taking place at Trinity College, Cambridge starting on 12th February at 7:30. Lectures will be live streamed. Follow Nick on Twitter: @NickGBreeze

The rarest and most endangered butterfly in Britain – the High Brown Fritillary – has been thrown a lifeline for 2018 in a new conservation project by the National Trust and its partners.

The charity is embarking on ambitious plans to develop 60 hectares of lowland heath and wood pasture – the butterfly’s principle habitat – to give it a fighting chance for the future. The project has been made possible as part of a £750,000 award made to the Trust by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

Over the last 50 years, Britain’s population of High Brown Fritillaries has declined rapidly, due to changes in woodland management and, more recently, the abandonment of marginal hill land.

Natural landscape

Butterflies, including the High Brown Fritillary, need large areas of the countryside to survive in good numbers, and their populations have struggled where these habitats have been overwhelmed by pressures from agriculture and development.

Now, climate change and nitrogen deposition from the atmosphere are almost certainly contributing to the High Brown’s demise. Overall, the UK population has declined by 66% since the 1970s.

The exquisite Heddon Valley, on the Exmoor coast, is one of the few remaining strongholds where the Trust, with partners including Butterfly Conservation, has been working for years to save the species from extinction.

The £100k project will focus on restoring parts of the natural landscape along the Exmoor and North Devon coast to make it more suitable for the butterfly. Other wildlife including the Heath Fritillary, Nightjar and Dartford warbler will also benefit. High Brown Fritillaries can also be found on Dartmoor, in South Lakeland, Cumbria and at Morecambe Bay, Lancashire.

Matthew Oates, National Trust nature expert and butterfly enthusiast, said: “We’ve witnessed a catastrophic decline of many native butterfly populations in recent decades but initiatives like this can really help to turn the tide. Combined with increased recording and monitoring efforts, there is significant hope for some of our most threatened winged insects.

Reverse the declines

“The support we have from players of People’s Postcode Lottery for nature conservation, alongside continued support for Heritage Open Days, is a wonderful boost to our work in 2018.”

Clara Govier, Head of Charities at People’s Postcode Lottery, said: ‘We are thrilled that funding from players of  People’s Postcode Lottery to the National Trust has increased in 2018, supporting the charity’s nature programme for the first time, alongside continued support for Heritage Open Days.

“We are delighted to see players’ funding supporting significant conservation activity across England and Wales to improve a range of priority habitats, from coastal slopes and chalk grasslands, to woodland pasture, and to safeguard species that call these places home.”

Jenny Plackett, Butterfly Conservation’s Senior Regional Officer, said: “We’ve been working with the National Trust for many years to reverse the declines in the High Brown Fritillary on Exmoor, and I’m thrilled that players of People’s Postcode Lottery are supporting important management work in this landscape.

“Exmoor’s Heddon Valley supports the strongest population of High Brown Fritillary in England, but even here the butterfly remains at risk, and ongoing efforts to restore habitat and enable the butterfly to expand are crucial to its survival.”

As well as helping secure the future of High Brown Fritillaries, the £750k award from players of People’s Postcode Lottery will be used to fund several other National Trust conservation projects, along with continuing support for Heritage Open Days.

The National Trust is working with its tenants and partners to reverse the alarming decline in UK wildlife, aiming to restore 25,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat by 2025.

Matthew Oates added: “We are dedicated to protecting struggling wildlife like the High Brown Fritillary, and saving our beautiful countryside for future generations. Policy-makers and supporters have key roles in helping us to achieve that ambition.”

This Author

Harry Shepherd is a spokesperson for the National Trust. 

Lake Ypacarai in southern Paraguay was immortalised by the Spanish singer Julio Iglesias. His 1976 ballad Memories of Ypacarai told the story of him meeting a woman next to the blue lake.

History does not relate what happened to the romance, but the lake where they met is no longer blue. In 2013 it made headlines around the world after toxic algal blooms turned it into a vivid green.

As dead fish washed up on its shores, the local ABC newspaper declared that the lake had surrendered after decades of human mistreatment.

Deforested hills

Urbanisation, pollution, deforestation, and poor water management combined with disastrous effect. Some years on, the lake has started to recover following intervention by the national government.

The green has been replaced by a less-alarming murky brown, yet it remains highly polluted. And the lake’s long-term recovery is jeopardised by climate change and continuing human activity along its shores.

Recognising it had a public relations nightmare on its hands which threatened tourism, the government responded to the pollution and algal blooms with a range of measures, including using plants and fish to improve water quality (known as bioremediation), and tougher penalties for polluters.

Monitoring stations were installed, electric canoes and boats were donated to local communities, and dredging the lake was also considered. The algae thrived in the shallow and slow-moving waters of the lake, but its aggressive growth was aided by human activity.

Highly-nutrient fertiliser was washed off surrounding deforested hills and farm land and fed the algae, while unchecked urbanisation along the shore resulted in the washing of sewage and pollution into the lake.

Holiday homes

Tourism is the least of the problems now. It represents a major health crisis for the 800,000 people that live within the lake’s catchment area. As well as dangers posed by human waste and pollutants in the water, the algae itself is toxic.

Studies suggest significant exposure to it increases the likelihood of developing motor neurone disease. Yet, it remains common for local children to swim and play in the lake.

During the summer months of December and January tourists flock to the lake, escaping the stale heat of the capital, Asuncion. The town of San Bernardino on the lake’s eastern shoreline is the primary destination for many of these visitors.

Among the bars and shops that line the main approach to its beach, there is a government-funded information centre about the pollution and the clean-up. But it receives few visitors, even in the height of summer.

Parcels of land across San Bernardino are sold for new holiday homes, while on the outskirts developments of gated holiday villages are appearing.

Torrents of water

The town sits in a 2-km wide strip, hemmed in by the lake to the west and a ridge of hills to the east, meaning it is sprawling northwards and encroaching on wetlands and fields. Tracts of land here are criss-crossed by roads that have been cut through ahead of future development.  

While urbanisation continues to threaten the lake, inadequate sewage infrastructure also means discharges are common during heavy rain. Local hotels ask guests to avoid flushing toilet paper, as it blocks antiquated pipes and often ends up in the lake.  

Climate change is also a culprit in the continued damage to Ypacarai. The temperature of the water is rising, making it more susceptible to algal blooms, while more frequent rain storms in the region are increasing surface runoff and pollution.

A project at the Catholic University of Asuncion analysing changing weather patterns in Paraguay has found the number of severe rain storms at the start of the rainy season in October increased from three in 2013 to twelve in 2017.

During these storms, the distinctive red clay upon which the capital Asuncion sits washes down the streets, choking up what little drainage exists. Some roads have signs advising drivers of a ‘danger zone on rainy days’ where no drainage exists, with torrents of water submerging the carriageway.

Government intervention

This regularly results in the flooding of the poor neighbourhoods and slums that are clustered in the low-lying areas near the city’s Paraguay River.

Although measures locally have begun to improve the water quality of Ypacarai, inadequate investment in infrastructure is a big issue nationally. Paraguay has the second smallest GDP in South America, and fourth lowest levels of foreign direct investment. Its public sector is ranked as the second most corrupt in the region, ahead of only Venezuela. 

Its limited ability to invest in environmental protection and infrastructure, along with its economic dependence on agriculture, livestock, and commodities, makes Paraguay particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. It has been estimated that Paraguay could lose 2% of its GDP annually by 2100 because of climate change.

For the foreseeable future the urbanisation of Ypacarai’s shoreline will increase, its surrounding hills will continue to be deforested, and local children will still swim in the polluted waters.

Short of another public outcry if the lake once again returns to a green swamp-like state, it seems unlikely the unrelenting damage inflicted upon it by human activity will cease. And even with the modest success of government intervention, it is unlikely Sr. Iglesias will get to see those magnificent blue waters again.

This Author

Joseph Dutton is a policy advisor for the global climate change think tank E3G. He tweets at @JDuttonUK.

Taking the mountain lift from the main promenade in Davos almost vertically upward, the commotion of the Open Forum falls steadily away, replaced by the majestic panorama of the Swiss Alps. 

It is here, not so far from the madding crowd, that a collaboration between Lancaster University, British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) have set-up their Arctic Basecamp, with the intention of reminding world leaders of the risks posed by drastic changes that are taking place in the polar Arctic.

But the question is, against the backdrop of the US President’s daft and misinformed commentary on climate change: is the agenda moving fast enough in the right direction to avoid global catastrophe?

All angles

Throughout the week the Arctic Basecamp have been posting videos from visitors that include Al Gore and Christiana Figueres. The night before, Dr Jennifer Francis dropped by. Francis is the scientist linking the loss of Arctic sea ice to changes in the jet stream, which is turn is driving extreme weather events. 

Professor Gail Whiteman from Lancaster University is holding fort when I arrive and is upbeat about the attention they have been getting in Davos.

“I think that is the interesting thing about Davos – both the informal and the organised events. Last night there was a lot of people walking passed the Basecamp who didn’t know very much about the Arctic or climate change. That gives us the chance to give them a bit of information and show them the data that we have.”

Whiteman adds that, just before I arrived, Benjamin Netanyahu had stopped by and was asking questions about their work. That is certainly high-profile but one imagines that his reasons for being in Davos have little to do with Arctic change.

When I ask Whiteman if the momentum for climate discussion is growing, she replies: “Well I think the World Economic Forum has seen the risks from climate change for the last few years.

“The global risk report has been listing climate change as an important risk to pay attention to. So for the forum staff that is not news. I think what is news is how climate change is increasingly part of the agenda discussions and that it is coming in from all angles.”

Raising the spectre

While that is true, the big driver of Arctic change is global emissions from our use of fossil fuels, and currently we still do not have a price on carbon pollution that can accelerate global environmental restoration on the scale required. 

It is well known here that many of the big institutional investors remain loath to drop their high carbon polluting investments, and governments are still very slow to stop giving subsidies to high polluting industries. 

President Trump’s arrival here in Davos, as reported in the US media, is an opportunity for him to gloat about his tax cuts given to the wealthiest people in the US, whilst signalling to foreign businesses that America is open for just about anything profit making.

These incumbent forces, including world leaders in business and politics, are still committed to their economic models of continuing growth at whatever cost. Earth systems, conversely, are strained and climate change is kicking in.

“These impacts raise the spectre of a global food crisis that could lead to a cascade through the World Economic Forum’s ‘global risk report’ list, that includes economic collapse, “profound social instability” and “large-scale involuntary migration”,  that we are not by any means prepared for.

Getting graphene

The promenade in Davos is lined with corporate giants, as well as national economic and commercial delegations, hosting all manner of meetings and panels. It is surreal and lively at the same time.

The CryptoHQ is a pop-up networking and event hub for the newly minted blockchain generation. These young trendier visitors are talking about decentralising payments systems, making them cheaper, faster and safer, as well as a myriad of other mind boggling projects.

I interviewed Juan Boluda Soler, CFO at Climate Coin, a new blockchain initiative that is gearing itself to be in step with the growth of global carbon markets, predicted to become a key mechanism for building trust in how carbon fees are collected and then delivered directly to environmental restoration projects around the world. Soler highlights the implementation of the Paris Agreement as a signal that carbon pricing is on the way.

In the ‘Ukrainian House Davos’, a panel of investors discuss the merits of investing in the Ukraine. Blockchain and clean energy storage seem to be on peoples minds.

One of the panelists says that “whoever cracks getting graphene cheaply will be the first trillion dollar company!” Although he doesn’t expand on this discussion it is a powerful statement when it comes to abundant clean energy storage.

The same speaker observes that a generation ago the big players in Davos were the guys with assets in the ground. Today the big companies are those whose assets are in the cloud, in the form of data.

Joining the dots

As it stands, everyone knows that the Paris Agreement falls well short of safeguarding the world against climate impacts. The rhetoric now tends toward words like “ratcheting up ambition”, meaning that efforts to lower the rates of carbon emissions will need to be exponentially increased if we are to stay below 1.5ºC (itself reckoned to cause a very dangerous level of global warming).

Blockchain maybe the buzz of many tech-savvy young people, but these same people are having to design their future from the ground up. It’s a future they will inherit from my own and previous generations in very poor condition.

It is heartening to meet the people joining the dots on climate change and endeavouring to solve issues like linking carbon pricing to global restoration.

The climate change summit in California in September of this year should lay the foundation for setting a price on carbon that could make subsequent agreements at the UNFCCC’s COP24 in November, a much easier gambit. It will be at the COP that the ratchet mechanism for reducing carbon emissions is enacted and those blockchain experts with solutions at the ready could well be finding themselves in great demand for generations to come.

Tremendous support

Looking out from the Basecamp at the frozen rugged landscape, the trends that dominate political and commercial agendas also have enormous consequences for us as individuals, where ever we live in the world. 

The World Economic Forum needs an avalanche of youth contributing to the conversation that is defining their future. What does the world they want to live in look like? What are the steps to achieving it? 

Trump has just arrived and I ask Professor Gail Whiteman what she thinks the impact of his dismantling America’s climate polices will be. She doesn’t seem too disheartened.

“My experience is that globally there is a tremendous support for the low carbon economy and the transformation that we need amongst business leaders. I think that is unstoppable. While there is always going to be some who are behind the curve of change, even in the North American context, we are still in. You see how strong that is and it contains both governmental actors at the state level, or city level, or civil society, as well as business leaders.

So I think that fixing the problem is not dependent on one administrations actions. I think it is about the global movement forward and I think that that is continuing.”

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change reporter and interviewer and co-founder of the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series taking place at Trinity College, Cambridge starting on 12th February at 7:30. Lectures will be live streamed. Follow Nick on Twitter: @NickGBreeze