The race is on to deliver models of agricultural development that are viable and sustainable in a world of accelerated climate change.

The urgency derives from the fact that the food and agriculture sector is both a major contributor to climate change and especially vulnerable to its worst impacts.

Most studies estimate that between 20-35 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gases are associated with the food and agriculture sector, while some have it as high as 50 percent.

Industrial model

And as drought and extreme weather events associated with climate change increase, the livelihoods of a huge proportion of the world’s population – over 2.5 billion people – who make their living from the sector are on the line.  

Against this background the idea of ‘climate smart agriculture’ increasingly features in high level policy discussions.

Climate smart agriculture (CSA) describes interventions that generate ‘triple wins’: that make agriculture more resilient to the effects of climate change, in ways that reduce poverty and increase yields, while at the same time reducing the substantial emissions created by the agricultural sector.

These goals are widely accepted, but there are vastly different models on offer for how to achieve them, each vying to come out on top. The stakes are enormous, as the model that dominates will shape the future of agriculture for years to come. 

One view, already dominant in policy circles, seeks to apply ‘fixes’ to the existing industrial model of agriculture to make it more sustainable.

Questionable sustainabilty

This model employs a suite of modern technologies and practices including genetic engineering, biofuels, biochar, and increased use of fertilisers that will deliver a ‘sustainable intensification’ of production.

This approach is underpinned by Malthusian assumptions about growing populations and dwindling fertile land, asserting that ‘we’ need to extract more with less to sustainably ‘feed the world’. 

The main champions of this dominant approach are the World Bank, UN bodies such as Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD) and large agribusiness corporations.

They find it attractive because it requires only slight changes to business as usual, while providing new opportunities for profit.

CSA projects provide a convenient cover for attempts to introduce controversial technologies into new markets or gain access to growing markets for their products, with questionable sustainabilty impacts.

Food companies

‘Climate smart’ projects such as Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), for example, establish smallholder dependence on Monsanto’s specially developed proprietary hybrid seeds. 

Not surprisingly, this version of CSA is rapidly being adopted and promoted by transnational business interests, and endorsed by international agencies and initiatives.

Headline CSA programmes such as the GACSA (Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture) and EPIC (Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate-Smart Agriculture) focus explicitly on engaging commercial actors, and CSA is increasingly being mainstreamed into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Global firms such as McDonald’s and Kellogg’s, for example, have made commitments to ‘climate smart’ approaches as part of the GACSA.

Wal-Mart, meanwhile, has announced its own ‘Climate  Smart Agriculture Platform’ in partnership with its suppliers and well-known food companies like General Mills and PepsiCo, promising to drive the ‘adoption of best practices in agriculture’. 

Different perspective

Fertiliser companies such as Yara, Mosaic and Haifa Chemicals Ltd are also among the members of GASCA.

These companies are joined by a number of fertiliser lobby groups such as Fertilisers Europe and the Fertiliser Institute, as well as NGOs partnered with fertiliser companies such as Agriculture for Impact.

Their involvement reflects the fact that nitrogen fertilisers require an enormous amount of energy to produce; fertiliser production accounts for 1-2 percent of total global energy consumption and produces about the same share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Embracing CSA through such initiatives allows these firms to claim to be part of the solution, rather than a major source of the problem.

A fundamentally different perspective on what makes agriculture ‘climate smart’ comes from a mix of social movements, farmers’ organisations such as Via Campesina, small-scale fishers, NGO alliances and academic researchers.

Organic food

These groups are heavily critical of the mainstream CSA discourse, which they see as only further entrenching unsustainable and unjust practices.

For example, the civil society group ‘Climate Smart Agriculture Concerns’ first came together in late 2014 to reject the premise of CSA as a form of corporate greenwashing.

Among its members are La Vía Campesina, Greenpeace, ActionAid International in addition to a number of farmer organisations and human rights organisations.

These critics argue that since industrial agriculture is one of the key drivers of climate change, it is unlikely solutions to global warming will come from that system.

They advocate instead combinations of agroecology, permaculture, food sovereignty, and organic food production.

Climate resilient

For them, what is needed is a ‘farmer first’ rather than ‘corporate first’ approach to determining which technologies, inputs, institutions and land and ocean management strategies are most likely to deliver socially desirable and ecologically viable agriculture.

They have come together at strategic international events like COP21 to denounce mainstream Climate Smart Agriculture programs, while also putting forward new initiatives for the convergence of land and water struggles, finding common ground under the banner of food sovereignty, agroecology, gender equality and human rights.

Yet to date, judging by a suite of recent reports and the nature of debate at recent rounds of UN climate change—including the ‘Agriculture Action Day’ at the Bonn negotiations in November 2017 and the 2016 COP22 in Marrakesh, labelled the ‘Action for Agriculture CoP’—the dominant view is winning the race to define CSA.

Those who stand to gain from the mainstream CSA model are mobilising most vociferously in proposing only those ‘solutions’ that further reinforce their market and political power.

The problem is that the more that corporate-friendly models of CSA dominate the landscape, the more they undermine the ability of alternative models of climate resilient agriculture to flourish.

This is a critical moment to avoid the debate about climate smart agriculture being reduced to a set of techno-fixes that benefit agribusiness corporations and to make the case that the system of industrial agriculture itself has to be fundamentally transformed if we are to live sustainably. 

These Authors

Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. He is a member of both the ESRC STEPS centre on sustainability and the Centre for Global Political Economy at Sussex. Twitter @stepscentre.

Jennifer Clapp is a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability and Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Twitter: @envwaterloo
https://twitter.com/envwaterloo

Zoe W. Brent, works as a researcher for the Transnational Institute (TNI), Agrarian and Environmental Justice Team, while pursuing her PhD at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Twitter: @zoebrent

A new special issue on the Journal of Peasant Studies that has open access to the public has a series of articles on different aspects of Climate Smart Agriculture.
      

A growing number of ethical trekking companies in Vietnam’s northern Sapa region are reinvesting their profits back into the local community to help empower marginalised tribes.

Human trafficking, plastic pollution and severe poverty are among the serious problems affecting the Hmong and Red Dao ethnic minorities in the region.

Companies including Ethos – Spirit of the Community, Sapa Hope Centre and Sapa Sisters want to eradicate these problems by providing education and employment through a range of ethical trekking packages.

Marginalised from society

“A lot of the tribes are frowned upon”, explains Ethos cofounder Phil Hoolihan. “Partially because they are deemed to be uneducated but I think a lot of that stems from the fact that they fought with the Americans during the [Vietnam] war.

“They are also relatively new immigrants. The Hmong have only been in Vietnam for about 300 years and those two things combined means that there’s a lot of social animosity – albeit less now than there used to be.”

Phil set up Ethos with his wife Hoa in 2012. The organisation had been operating as a charity since 1999 but later turned into a social enterprise to provide more proactive support to community through generated profits.

Ethos estimates that poverty rates among the tribes exceed 80 percent, causing the groups to be marginalised from society, with little representation or voice in public and political debates.

Such high levels of poverty coupled with low levels of education have left the ethnic minority communities vulnerable to the likes of human trafficking.

Educate younger girls

In 2016, 11 girls from one small village alone were trafficked from the region. They were all under the age of 18 and belonged to regional tribes.

Part of Ethos’ educational programmes include basic advice for young girls on what to do if they are captured. For 22-year-old Hmong tribe member Giang Thi Ca, the workshops are vitally important for the community.

“My sister-in-law was kidnapped when she was 15 years old,” Ca explains. “She was sold from one family to another.”

Transported over the border to China, Ca details how her sister-in-law eventually managed to run away, after making a decoy from blankets and covering up in oversized clothes. “When she escaped, she tried to call her family but couldn’t because she didn’t know about international dialing codes.”

Such horrors spurred Ca to get involved with Ethos’ workshops to help educate younger girls on the realities of human trafficking. Sapa Sisters and Sapa Hope Centre are running similar initiatives.

Providing compensation

Peter Thuong, who founded the Hope Centre in 2010 is trying to get more Hmong high school-age children back into school, whilst creating new job opportunities for their parents.

Sapa Sisters, which was founded in 2009 by a group of six friends, focuses specifically on empowering women in the area, who the company believes are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.

Through trekking and guiding, the women are able to earn additional money with Sapa Sisters – a welcome financial boost to their more traditional farming income.

Ethos has also developed an innovative banded wage structure with the minority groups, which enables the families to earn more money depending on the trekking tour they work on that week, as well as providing compensation for any food bought for the tourists during the trek.

So far Ethos employs 22 people of which around 65 percent are Hmong and 20 percent are Red Dao but the benefits go beyond the small team.

Awareness among travellers

“Those 22 guides are eating in a number of different houses on different days which means the recipient families, purely from trekking, is at least 80 in this area,” explains Phil.

Financing and administrative support for medical care is also available through Ethos as well as additional environmental awareness programmes – the latter of which is boosted by Phil’s background in environmental science.

Most recently the organisation is looking at developing stoves that burn wood more efficiently in a move to use less forest resources and this year it will be working with an organisation called Plant for the Planet, with an aim to plant around 10,000 trees in 2018.

Beyond its work with the local community, Ethos has also developed an ethical trekking guide to be distributed to tourists throughout Sapa, regardless of whether they choose to tour with Ethos.

Crucially, the guide urges tourists to bring any non-biodegradable waste back to the main town rather than leaving it in a homestay bin. “The plastic issue is immense and it’s growing,” says Phil.

“If you look at the busier villages, we [the visitors] take the trash and put it in litter bins in the homestays but the homestays have got nowhere to put it so they put them in plastic bags, tie them up and throw them in the river. Awareness among travellers is so important for this reason.”

Such initiatives are going a long way to preserve, protect and empower this part of Vietnam which is fast becoming a tourist hotspot.

This Author

Robyn Wilson is a freelance journalist, currently writing and travelling across Asia. She is a former news editor at Construction News. She tweets at @RobynFWilson.

A report published by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit this week revealed that the six companies operating the electricity distribution network are paying their shareholders vast profits while adding pressure to household bills. New government regulations from Ofgem have failed to drive necessary investment in the electricity grid to make it fit for the future.

The electricity distribution network – the wires and substations delivering electricity to homes and businesses – is a natural monopoly, and so companies operating the network are able to work to relatively high profit margins.

These companies have their revenues regulated by government – ostensibly in order to keep them operating with a public service ethos – but that hasn’t stopped them paying out huge dividends to their shareholders. According to the report, network distribution costs form the second largest segment of domestic energy bills – accounting for 27 percent.

Lack of plans

Ofgem did impose a new set of regulations – ‘RIIO’ – which many were hoping would bring down profits and payouts to more reasonable levels. I’m sure that even some of the most ardent neoliberals would see that it would be wildly unpopular to simply hand over public assets to the profit motive without any kind of caveats.

This has failed, with profits shifting marginally from 32 percent to 30.4 percent over the course of the new regulations being brought in and giving an average payout dividend ratio of 13.3 percent.

Aside from arguments about profit and public goods, Theresa May, the prime minister, has just launched the Tories’ 25 Year Environment Plan, attempting to rebrand the party – which has been driven by pro-austerity, pro-privatisation ideologues – into a more compassionate party which cares about the environment.

The plan does include some excellent ideas, some of which had already started to be adopted voluntarily by the private sector, such as cardboard straws rather than plastic ones in some pub chains. Yet, even the BBC has been decrying the lack of plans for legislation.

With the electricity distribution network vital to national security and run using what has historically been publicly owned infrastructure, it is right that the government has a significant hand in steering the direction of the industries involved in profiting from it.

Deliver electricity

Since the Tories were left to play on their own after the 2015 General Election – waving goodbye to the more environmentally concerned Liberal Democrats – they have been actively pushing back on policies to promote sustainable energy.

By blocking the development of onshore wind farms which are one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation, and attempting to force fracking on local communities, the Government has clearly been more concerned about a small section of their voter base going to UKIP, rather than acting in the interests of the people and planet.

If the May government really did care about the environment and tackling climate change, and wanted to support the country in moving towards a future powered by renewables, they’d take a serious look at our electricity grid.

The grid is currently tilted in favour of massive centralized power generation, like coal-fired and nuclear power stations. Everyone from off-grid hippies to liberal green Tories would benefit from the development of a ‘smart grid’.

If we took the grid back into public hands rather than leave it with 6 companies, doing their own things with various fragments of the grid, which was designed to deliver electricity to households generated by a small number of massive coal-fired power stations, rather than a diverse network of green energy sources, we could fundamentally restructure it into being a climate resilient network. This would drive down costs and help bring in more renewable generation as well as create space for energy storage.

Experiment of neoliberalism

While the government consistently mishandles firms in control of our public assets like the railways – letting them keep profits in good times, and bailing them out with taxpayer money in bad times, and like construction work on infrastructure vital for the functioning of the state carried out by the now liquidated Carillion – it’s important that they step up and reassess what is in the national interest.

This clearly raises the question of why we continue to allow public assets and taxpayers money to both give companies the means of production and go on to pay private shareholders profits which are propped up by household bills.

Why, when the cost of living is driving working families below the poverty line and into the tattered state welfare system, are we not taking action on this siphoning off of public money into the pockets of billionaires and corporations?

A huge majority of Britons would like to see institutions like the railways being brought back into public hands, so perhaps it’s time at last to recognise the experiment of neoliberalism for what it is.

This Author

Tom Pashby is a Communications Assistant at EIT Climate-KIC and an elected member of the Green party executive. Tom is writing in a personal capacity. They tweet at @TomPashby.

The sudden death of more than 200,000 saiga antelopes – more than 60 percent of the global population of this species – during a single event in Kazakhstan during May 2015 has ever since baffled the world.

Entire herds of tens of thousands of healthy animals died of haemorrhagic septicaemia across a landscape equivalent to the area of the British Isles in the Betpak-Dala region of Kazakhstan in just three weeks. It was soon understood that the deaths were caused by Pasteurella multocida bacteria.

But this pathogen was – most probably – living harmlessly in the saigas’ tonsils up to this point – so what caused this sudden, dramatic mass mortality event (MME)?

Food scarce

New research by an interdisciplinary, international research team has shown that many separate  – and independently harmless – factors contributed to this extraordinary phenomenon.

In particular, climatic factors such as increased humidity and raised air temperatures in the days before the deaths apparently triggered opportunistic bacterial invasion of the blood stream, causing septicaemia (blood poisoning).

By studying previous die-offs in saiga antelope populations, the researchers were able to uncover patterns and show that the probability of sudden die-offs increases when the weather is humid and warm, as was the case in 2015.

The research also shows that these very large mass mortalities, which have been observed in saiga antelopes before (including in 2015 and twice during the 1980s), are unprecedented in other large mammal species and tend to occur during calving.

This species invests a lot in reproduction, so that it can persist in such an extreme continental environment where temperatures plummet to below -40 celsius in winter or rise to above 40 celsius in summer, with food scarce and wolves prowling.

Mass die-off

In fact, it bears the largest calves of any ungulate species as this allows the calves to develop quickly and follow their mothers on their migrations, but also means that females are physiologically stressed during calving.

With this strategy, high levels of mortality are to be expected, but the species’ recent history suggests that die-offs are occurring more frequently, potentially making the species more vulnerable to extinction.

This includes, most recently, losses of 60 percent of the unique, endemic Mongolian saiga sub-species in 2017 from a virus infection spilling over from livestock.

High levels of poaching since the 1990s have also been a major factor in depleting the species, while increasing levels of infrastructure development (from railways, roads and fences) threaten to fragment their habitat and interfere with their migrations.  

With all these threats, it is possible that another mass die-off from disease could reduce numbers to a level where recovery is no longer possible. This needs to be countered by an integrated approach to tackling the threats facing the species, which is ongoing under the Convention on Migratory Species’ action plan for the species.

Risk factors

This research was conducted as part of a wide international collaboration, adopting a ‘One Health’ approach – looking at the wildlife, livestock, environmental and human impacts that have driven disease emergence in saiga populations.

Adopting such a holistic approach has enabled the research team to understand the wider significance of die-offs in saiga populations, beyond simply the proximate causes of the 2015 epidemic.

Professor Richard Kock, Professor in Emerging Diseases lead researcher at the Royal Veterinary College, said: “The recent die-offs among saiga populations are unprecedented in large terrestrial mammals.

“The 2015 mass mortality event provided the first opportunity for in-depth study, and a multidisciplinary approach has enabled great advances to be made.

“The use of data from vets, biologists, botanists, ecologists and laboratory scientists is helping improve our understanding of the risk factors leading to MMEs – which was beneficial when another MME occurred, this time in Mongolia in 2017. Improved knowledge of disease in saigas, in the context of climate change, livestock interactions and landscape changes, is vital to planning conservation measures for the species’ long-term survival”

Conservation charities

Professor EJ Milner-Gulland, Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at Oxford University, said: “This important research was possible due to a strong partnership between European universities, governmental and non-governmental Institutions in Kazakhstan, and international bodies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation and Convention on Migratory Species, as well as generous funding from the UK government and conservation charities worldwide.

“During the more recent saiga disease outbreak in Mongolia, this international partnership was useful for supporting in-country colleagues, for example by providing emergency response protocols.

“It’s excellent to see the real-world value of research partnerships of this kind, and the great advances we have made in understanding disease in saigas thanks to such a productive collaboration.”

Mr Steffen Zuther, Project manager for Kazakhstan at the Frankfurt Zoological Society/Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, said: “This research is not only the first of its kind through its complexity and interdisciplinary approach, it also helps in capacity building inside Kazakhstan and shaping the public opinion towards a more evidence based thinking.

Disease outbreak

“MMEs are a major threat for the saiga antelope and can wipe out many years of conservation work and saiga population growth in just a few days. Therefore, understanding these MMEs, what triggers them and what can be done to combat them is extremely important to develop effective saiga conservation strategies.

“The triggering of such MMEs in saiga through weather conditions shows that not much can be done to prevent them occurring, and therefore how important it is to maintain saiga populations of sufficient size for the species to survive such catastrophes.”

Professor Mukhit Orynbayev,  Senior Researcher at the Research Institute for Biological Safety Problems, Kazakhstan, said: “Kazakhstan plays a crucial role for the conservation of saiga, and its government takes this very seriously.

“This research is an important component of the government’s strategy for the conservation of the species, and we as researchers are grateful for the support we have received during our work. Through several years of work on this subject, the team of the RIBPS has gained experience in fieldwork and laboratory tests. This allows us to react quickly to any disease outbreak and get a diagnosis for it.”

Research paper

Title:  Saigas on the brink: multi-disciplinary analysis of the factors influencing mass mortality events
Published by: Science Advances
Authors: Richard Kock, Mukhit Orynbayaev, Sarah Robinson, Steffen Zuther, Navinder Singh, Wendy Beauvais, Eric Morgan, Aslan Kerimbayev, Sergei Khomenko, Henny Martineau, Rashida Rystaeva, Zamira Omarova, Sara Wolfs, Florent Hawotte, Julien Radoux, E.J. Milner-Gulland

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This news story is based on a press release written by the Royal Veterinary College and sent out on behalf of PTES, who co-funded this research. 

The Theresa May government must ban live exports of animals for slaughter, clamp down on pet travel loopholes exploited by unscrupulous puppy farmers and ensure that future farming subsidies reward best animal welfare practices to meet its claim to support animal welfare, a consortium of 40 charities said today.

The UK Centre for Animal Law and Wildlife and Countryside Link has released a new report ‘Brexit – getting the best deal for animals’ calling on the UK Government to turn words into action for animals.

The report has now been supported by more than 40 of the UK’s best-known animal welfare charities, who have joined forces to make sure that animal protection is strengthened and not lost as Britain exits the EU.

Welfare protections

“The report recommends a suite of changes that would enable Ministers to realise their goal of being ‘a world leader on animal welfare’, a spokesperson said. 

The charities are calling for animal welfare to be put centre stage in relevant future legislative decisions, including through the Animal Welfare Bill currently under consultation.

The groups are urging the government to commit to tangible actions such as: banning live exports of animals for slaughter; clamping down on pet travel loopholes exploited by unscrupulous puppy farmers; and ensuring that any farming subsidies reward best animal welfare practices.

The report also calls on the UK Government to demonstrate strong global leadership on animal welfare, including by committing to ensure that protecting and enhancing animal welfare is a priority in new trade agreements.

There are still major gaps in welfare law and issues where legal protections need significant improvement, the charities add, even though there are many strong EU animal welfare protections have improved welfare standards.

Consumer choice

Claire Bass, from the Humane Society International UK and Chair of Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Animal Welfare Group, said: “Legal protections from the EU have helped raise animal welfare standards but as the Secretary of State has said, there is still substantial room for improvement.

“Animal welfare matters to voters, and it matters to British businesses; the government can satisfy both by taking the tangible steps in our report.  Animal protection NGOs are united in urging government to capitalise on Brexit as a once in a generation opportunity to protect and improve the lives of billions of animals.”

Alan Bates, of the UK Centre for Animal Law, said: “Fixing gaping animal law flaws is a big opportunity for post-Brexit Britain and should be a key objective for the UK Government.

“Not only would boosting animal welfare protections help prevent thousands of animals from unnecessary suffering and even death, it also makes economic sense. Consumers in the UK, EU and beyond are increasingly looking for welfare-responsible products.

Warm words

“Improving labelling and welfare standards not only gives greater consumer choice in the UK, it could give a valuable boost for our products being traded abroad.”

David Bowles, Head of Public Affairs at RSPCA: ‘Brexit offers huge opportunities to give animals a better deal in the UK.

“While the EU has given animal protections in many areas, it has also handcuffed our hands and stopped improvements to welfare in other areas like mandatory meat and milk labelling based on method of production, improving the slaughter of farm animals or stopping the sale of foie-gras, already banned in the UK.

“The Government has given lots of warm words on animal welfare, we now want to see cold hard action in the Animal Welfare Bill and post-Brexit legislation.’

The charities set out a top ten of animal welfare policies which they argue should be addressed during Brexit:

1. Close loopholes in the Pet Travel Scheme that allow the cruel trade in poorly bred pups from Central and Eastern European puppy-farms: If the UK raised standards by reintroducing blood testing requirements and improving border checks, it could help thousands of dogs affected.

2. Extend existing fur trade bans: Only the sale of cat, dog and seal fur is banned in the EU, despite some 90% of the British population wanting a stop to all fur sales.

3. Ban live exports for slaughter: Livestock legislation has remained the same for 12 years despite European scientists calling for improvements on conditions and journey times. Brexit gives an opportunity to ban cruel live exports for slaughter or fattening and strengthen journey times and standards.

4. Introduce strong welfare incentives in British farming: There is no meaningful animal welfare aspect in the existing Common Agricultural Policy, 80 percent of payments are essentially based on farm size. UK welfare incentives could help transform conditions for animals on British farms.

5. Introduce new animal product labelling laws: At present meat and milk don’t have to be labelled to identify how they were produced.  Mandatory egg labelling saw free-range sales soar and should be replicated into other areas to aid consumer choice.

6. Ban imports of foie-gras: The UK has been unable to ban foie-gras imports because of the EU free movement of goods principle, despite a de facto UK ban on production already existing5 and 63% of the UK public supporting a ban on sales due to welfare concerns.

7. Work with UK fisheries to promote humane catches:  Encouraging the UK fishing fleet to invest in new stunning technology would improve the welfare of billions of fish during capture.

8. Introduce legal protection for crabs, lobsters, octopuses and squids in the Animal Welfare Bill: These animals aren’t protected by EU law outside of use in laboratories , despite being proven to experience pain and suffering, and being protected in countries like New Zealand and Norway.

9. Adopt world-leading measures aimed at combatting wildlife trafficking and domestic wildlife crime: Wild animals are being widely exploited and traded in the UK despite EU legal protection. UK legislation enforcement should be bolstered post-Brexit to protect wild animals in trade by adopting a stricter ‘positive list’ approach – anything on the list can come in, anything not can’t.

10. Commitment to ending ‘severe’ suffering’ in animal experiments, keep the cosmetics testing ban: The UK should; maintain the EU testing and marketing ban on animal-tested cosmetics, improve transparency around the use of animals in research, commit to eliminating experiments causing ‘severe’ suffering, and invest in humane non-animal technologies – 74 percent of us want more done to find alternatives.

This Author

Brendan Montague is the editor of The Ecologist and tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based substantially on a press release from the Wildlife and Countryside Link. 

Habitat fragmentation and the subdivision of large farms into smaller ones are the biggest threats facing the güiña wildcat in Chile, research by conservationists at the University of Kent has found.

The güiña has been in decline for many years, with its population estimated to be fewer than 10,000 individuals, and it has been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1996.

However, the forest living cat is surprisingly resilient when it comes to deforestation – and even direct killing by people as retaliation for lost livestock, according to findings published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Higher risk

The güiña has a reputation for attacking livestock and is therefore unpopular with rural inhabitants in the region. It had been assumed, therefore, that a major threat to the future of the güiña was human persecution, coupled with extensive farming and logging that has seen its habitat reduced by almost 70 percent since 1970.

But the researchers working on the latest study, led by Nicolás Gálvez studying at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), found that the güiña is remarkably adaptable to forest loss. This finding is based on a series of questionnaires, camera trap data and remote-sensed images. 

The team found that large, intensive agricultural areas are actually well suited for the güiña and should not be dismissed as poor quality habitat. This is because there are often unfarmed areas that provide refuge, food resources and suitable conditions for rearing young.

Dr Nicolás Gálvez, now a lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, said: “Land subdivision and fragmentation have a far bigger impact on güiña survival.

“This is because there is a higher risk of human interaction and persecution in areas where there are more farms, a greater pressure on natural resources through increased timber extraction and livestock grazing, and even competition for food from domestic animals kept as pets.”

Species survival

Professor Zoe Davies, from DICE at Kent, said: “Notably, though, while the risk of a güiña being killed by a human is higher in more densely populated farming areas, our questionnaires indicate that only 10 percent of the rural inhabitants have killed a güiña over the last decade. This suggests that persecution is much less of a threat to their survival than the subdivision of farms.”

The researchers have suggested that farmers with large properties are key stakeholders in the conservation of this species and should be at the centre of any conservation interventions that aim to protect existing land where the güiña is usually found.

The findings also highlight a framework that can be used to spatially match social and ecological data which could help with conservation efforts for other similar small to medium-sized carnivores in other parts of the world. The framework provides a clearer understanding of how habitat loss, land fragmentation and human interactions affect species survival.

Nicolás Gálvez, Gurutzeta Guillera-Arroita, Freya St John, Elke Schüttler, David Macdonald and Zoe Davies (2018). ‘A spatially integrated framework for assessing socio-ecological drivers of carnivore decline’, is published in Journal of Applied Ecology on 16 January 2018.

Other academic institutions involved in the research were: the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the university´s Centre for Local Development (CEDEL-UC), University of Melbourne, Bangor University, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany and the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (wildCRU) at University of Oxford.

This Author

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

The sudden death of more than 200,000 saiga antelopes – more than 60 percent of the global population of this species – during a single event in Kazakhstan during May 2015 has ever since baffled the world.

Entire herds of tens of thousands of healthy animals died of haemorrhagic septicaemia across a landscape equivalent to the area of the British Isles in the Betpak-Dala region of Kazakhstan in just three weeks. It was soon understood that the deaths were caused by Pasteurella multocida bacteria.

But this pathogen was – most probably – living harmlessly in the saigas’ tonsils up to this point – so what caused this sudden, dramatic mass mortality event (MME)?

Food scarce

New research by an interdisciplinary, international research team has shown that many separate  – and independently harmless – factors contributed to this extraordinary phenomenon.

In particular, climatic factors such as increased humidity and raised air temperatures in the days before the deaths apparently triggered opportunistic bacterial invasion of the blood stream, causing septicaemia (blood poisoning).

By studying previous die-offs in saiga antelope populations, the researchers were able to uncover patterns and show that the probability of sudden die-offs increases when the weather is humid and warm, as was the case in 2015.

The research also shows that these very large mass mortalities, which have been observed in saiga antelopes before (including in 2015 and twice during the 1980s), are unprecedented in other large mammal species and tend to occur during calving.

This species invests a lot in reproduction, so that it can persist in such an extreme continental environment where temperatures plummet to below -40 celsius in winter or rise to above 40 celsius in summer, with food scarce and wolves prowling.

Mass die-off

In fact, it bears the largest calves of any ungulate species as this allows the calves to develop quickly and follow their mothers on their migrations, but also means that females are physiologically stressed during calving.

With this strategy, high levels of mortality are to be expected, but the species’ recent history suggests that die-offs are occurring more frequently, potentially making the species more vulnerable to extinction.

This includes, most recently, losses of 60 percent of the unique, endemic Mongolian saiga sub-species in 2017 from a virus infection spilling over from livestock.

High levels of poaching since the 1990s have also been a major factor in depleting the species, while increasing levels of infrastructure development (from railways, roads and fences) threaten to fragment their habitat and interfere with their migrations.  

With all these threats, it is possible that another mass die-off from disease could reduce numbers to a level where recovery is no longer possible. This needs to be countered by an integrated approach to tackling the threats facing the species, which is ongoing under the Convention on Migratory Species’ action plan for the species.

Risk factors

This research was conducted as part of a wide international collaboration, adopting a ‘One Health’ approach – looking at the wildlife, livestock, environmental and human impacts that have driven disease emergence in saiga populations.

Adopting such a holistic approach has enabled the research team to understand the wider significance of die-offs in saiga populations, beyond simply the proximate causes of the 2015 epidemic.

Professor Richard Kock, Professor in Emerging Diseases lead researcher at the Royal Veterinary College, said: “The recent die-offs among saiga populations are unprecedented in large terrestrial mammals.

“The 2015 mass mortality event provided the first opportunity for in-depth study, and a multidisciplinary approach has enabled great advances to be made.

“The use of data from vets, biologists, botanists, ecologists and laboratory scientists is helping improve our understanding of the risk factors leading to MMEs – which was beneficial when another MME occurred, this time in Mongolia in 2017. Improved knowledge of disease in saigas, in the context of climate change, livestock interactions and landscape changes, is vital to planning conservation measures for the species’ long-term survival”

Conservation charities

Professor EJ Milner-Gulland, Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at Oxford University, said: “This important research was possible due to a strong partnership between European universities, governmental and non-governmental Institutions in Kazakhstan, and international bodies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation and Convention on Migratory Species, as well as generous funding from the UK government and conservation charities worldwide.

“During the more recent saiga disease outbreak in Mongolia, this international partnership was useful for supporting in-country colleagues, for example by providing emergency response protocols.

“It’s excellent to see the real-world value of research partnerships of this kind, and the great advances we have made in understanding disease in saigas thanks to such a productive collaboration.”

Mr Steffen Zuther, Project manager for Kazakhstan at the Frankfurt Zoological Society/Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, said: “This research is not only the first of its kind through its complexity and interdisciplinary approach, it also helps in capacity building inside Kazakhstan and shaping the public opinion towards a more evidence based thinking.

Disease outbreak

“MMEs are a major threat for the saiga antelope and can wipe out many years of conservation work and saiga population growth in just a few days. Therefore, understanding these MMEs, what triggers them and what can be done to combat them is extremely important to develop effective saiga conservation strategies.

“The triggering of such MMEs in saiga through weather conditions shows that not much can be done to prevent them occurring, and therefore how important it is to maintain saiga populations of sufficient size for the species to survive such catastrophes.”

Professor Mukhit Orynbayev,  Senior Researcher at the Research Institute for Biological Safety Problems, Kazakhstan, said: “Kazakhstan plays a crucial role for the conservation of saiga, and its government takes this very seriously.

“This research is an important component of the government’s strategy for the conservation of the species, and we as researchers are grateful for the support we have received during our work. Through several years of work on this subject, the team of the RIBPS has gained experience in fieldwork and laboratory tests. This allows us to react quickly to any disease outbreak and get a diagnosis for it.”

Research paper

Title:  Saigas on the brink: multi-disciplinary analysis of the factors influencing mass mortality events
Published by: Science Advances
Authors: Richard Kock, Mukhit Orynbayaev, Sarah Robinson, Steffen Zuther, Navinder Singh, Wendy Beauvais, Eric Morgan, Aslan Kerimbayev, Sergei Khomenko, Henny Martineau, Rashida Rystaeva, Zamira Omarova, Sara Wolfs, Florent Hawotte, Julien Radoux, E.J. Milner-Gulland

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This news story is based on a press release written by the Royal Veterinary College and sent out on behalf of PTES, who co-funded this research. 

The Theresa May government must ban live exports of animals for slaughter, clamp down on pet travel loopholes exploited by unscrupulous puppy farmers and ensure that future farming subsidies reward best animal welfare practices to meet its claim to support animal welfare, a consortium of 40 charities said today.

The UK Centre for Animal Law and Wildlife and Countryside Link has released a new report ‘Brexit – getting the best deal for animals’ calling on the UK Government to turn words into action for animals.

The report has now been supported by more than 40 of the UK’s best-known animal welfare charities, who have joined forces to make sure that animal protection is strengthened and not lost as Britain exits the EU.

Welfare protections

“The report recommends a suite of changes that would enable Ministers to realise their goal of being ‘a world leader on animal welfare’, a spokesperson said. 

The charities are calling for animal welfare to be put centre stage in relevant future legislative decisions, including through the Animal Welfare Bill currently under consultation.

The groups are urging the government to commit to tangible actions such as: banning live exports of animals for slaughter; clamping down on pet travel loopholes exploited by unscrupulous puppy farmers; and ensuring that any farming subsidies reward best animal welfare practices.

The report also calls on the UK Government to demonstrate strong global leadership on animal welfare, including by committing to ensure that protecting and enhancing animal welfare is a priority in new trade agreements.

There are still major gaps in welfare law and issues where legal protections need significant improvement, the charities add, even though there are many strong EU animal welfare protections have improved welfare standards.

Consumer choice

Claire Bass, from the Humane Society International UK and Chair of Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Animal Welfare Group, said: “Legal protections from the EU have helped raise animal welfare standards but as the Secretary of State has said, there is still substantial room for improvement.

“Animal welfare matters to voters, and it matters to British businesses; the government can satisfy both by taking the tangible steps in our report.  Animal protection NGOs are united in urging government to capitalise on Brexit as a once in a generation opportunity to protect and improve the lives of billions of animals.”

Alan Bates, of the UK Centre for Animal Law, said: “Fixing gaping animal law flaws is a big opportunity for post-Brexit Britain and should be a key objective for the UK Government.

“Not only would boosting animal welfare protections help prevent thousands of animals from unnecessary suffering and even death, it also makes economic sense. Consumers in the UK, EU and beyond are increasingly looking for welfare-responsible products.

Warm words

“Improving labelling and welfare standards not only gives greater consumer choice in the UK, it could give a valuable boost for our products being traded abroad.”

David Bowles, Head of Public Affairs at RSPCA: ‘Brexit offers huge opportunities to give animals a better deal in the UK.

“While the EU has given animal protections in many areas, it has also handcuffed our hands and stopped improvements to welfare in other areas like mandatory meat and milk labelling based on method of production, improving the slaughter of farm animals or stopping the sale of foie-gras, already banned in the UK.

“The Government has given lots of warm words on animal welfare, we now want to see cold hard action in the Animal Welfare Bill and post-Brexit legislation.’

The charities set out a top ten of animal welfare policies which they argue should be addressed during Brexit:

1. Close loopholes in the Pet Travel Scheme that allow the cruel trade in poorly bred pups from Central and Eastern European puppy-farms: If the UK raised standards by reintroducing blood testing requirements and improving border checks, it could help thousands of dogs affected.

2. Extend existing fur trade bans: Only the sale of cat, dog and seal fur is banned in the EU, despite some 90% of the British population wanting a stop to all fur sales.

3. Ban live exports for slaughter: Livestock legislation has remained the same for 12 years despite European scientists calling for improvements on conditions and journey times. Brexit gives an opportunity to ban cruel live exports for slaughter or fattening and strengthen journey times and standards.

4. Introduce strong welfare incentives in British farming: There is no meaningful animal welfare aspect in the existing Common Agricultural Policy, 80 percent of payments are essentially based on farm size. UK welfare incentives could help transform conditions for animals on British farms.

5. Introduce new animal product labelling laws: At present meat and milk don’t have to be labelled to identify how they were produced.  Mandatory egg labelling saw free-range sales soar and should be replicated into other areas to aid consumer choice.

6. Ban imports of foie-gras: The UK has been unable to ban foie-gras imports because of the EU free movement of goods principle, despite a de facto UK ban on production already existing5 and 63% of the UK public supporting a ban on sales due to welfare concerns.

7. Work with UK fisheries to promote humane catches:  Encouraging the UK fishing fleet to invest in new stunning technology would improve the welfare of billions of fish during capture.

8. Introduce legal protection for crabs, lobsters, octopuses and squids in the Animal Welfare Bill: These animals aren’t protected by EU law outside of use in laboratories , despite being proven to experience pain and suffering, and being protected in countries like New Zealand and Norway.

9. Adopt world-leading measures aimed at combatting wildlife trafficking and domestic wildlife crime: Wild animals are being widely exploited and traded in the UK despite EU legal protection. UK legislation enforcement should be bolstered post-Brexit to protect wild animals in trade by adopting a stricter ‘positive list’ approach – anything on the list can come in, anything not can’t.

10. Commitment to ending ‘severe’ suffering’ in animal experiments, keep the cosmetics testing ban: The UK should; maintain the EU testing and marketing ban on animal-tested cosmetics, improve transparency around the use of animals in research, commit to eliminating experiments causing ‘severe’ suffering, and invest in humane non-animal technologies – 74 percent of us want more done to find alternatives.

This Author

Brendan Montague is the editor of The Ecologist and tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based substantially on a press release from the Wildlife and Countryside Link. 

Habitat fragmentation and the subdivision of large farms into smaller ones are the biggest threats facing the güiña wildcat in Chile, research by conservationists at the University of Kent has found.

The güiña has been in decline for many years, with its population estimated to be fewer than 10,000 individuals, and it has been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1996.

However, the forest living cat is surprisingly resilient when it comes to deforestation – and even direct killing by people as retaliation for lost livestock, according to findings published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Higher risk

The güiña has a reputation for attacking livestock and is therefore unpopular with rural inhabitants in the region. It had been assumed, therefore, that a major threat to the future of the güiña was human persecution, coupled with extensive farming and logging that has seen its habitat reduced by almost 70 percent since 1970.

But the researchers working on the latest study, led by Nicolás Gálvez studying at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), found that the güiña is remarkably adaptable to forest loss. This finding is based on a series of questionnaires, camera trap data and remote-sensed images. 

The team found that large, intensive agricultural areas are actually well suited for the güiña and should not be dismissed as poor quality habitat. This is because there are often unfarmed areas that provide refuge, food resources and suitable conditions for rearing young.

Dr Nicolás Gálvez, now a lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, said: “Land subdivision and fragmentation have a far bigger impact on güiña survival.

“This is because there is a higher risk of human interaction and persecution in areas where there are more farms, a greater pressure on natural resources through increased timber extraction and livestock grazing, and even competition for food from domestic animals kept as pets.”

Species survival

Professor Zoe Davies, from DICE at Kent, said: “Notably, though, while the risk of a güiña being killed by a human is higher in more densely populated farming areas, our questionnaires indicate that only 10 percent of the rural inhabitants have killed a güiña over the last decade. This suggests that persecution is much less of a threat to their survival than the subdivision of farms.”

The researchers have suggested that farmers with large properties are key stakeholders in the conservation of this species and should be at the centre of any conservation interventions that aim to protect existing land where the güiña is usually found.

The findings also highlight a framework that can be used to spatially match social and ecological data which could help with conservation efforts for other similar small to medium-sized carnivores in other parts of the world. The framework provides a clearer understanding of how habitat loss, land fragmentation and human interactions affect species survival.

Nicolás Gálvez, Gurutzeta Guillera-Arroita, Freya St John, Elke Schüttler, David Macdonald and Zoe Davies (2018). ‘A spatially integrated framework for assessing socio-ecological drivers of carnivore decline’, is published in Journal of Applied Ecology on 16 January 2018.

Other academic institutions involved in the research were: the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the university´s Centre for Local Development (CEDEL-UC), University of Melbourne, Bangor University, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany and the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (wildCRU) at University of Oxford.

This Author

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

The Theresa May government must ban live exports of animals for slaughter, clamp down on pet travel loopholes exploited by unscrupulous puppy farmers and ensure that future farming subsidies reward best animal welfare practices to meet its claim to support animal welfare, a consortium of 40 charities said today.

The UK Centre for Animal Law and Wildlife and Countryside Link has released a new report ‘Brexit – getting the best deal for animals’ calling on the UK Government to turn words into action for animals.

The report has now been supported by more than 40 of the UK’s best-known animal welfare charities, who have joined forces to make sure that animal protection is strengthened and not lost as Britain exits the EU.

Welfare protections

“The report recommends a suite of changes that would enable Ministers to realise their goal of being ‘a world leader on animal welfare’, a spokesperson said. 

The charities are calling for animal welfare to be put centre stage in relevant future legislative decisions, including through the Animal Welfare Bill currently under consultation.

The groups are urging the government to commit to tangible actions such as: banning live exports of animals for slaughter; clamping down on pet travel loopholes exploited by unscrupulous puppy farmers; and ensuring that any farming subsidies reward best animal welfare practices.

The report also calls on the UK Government to demonstrate strong global leadership on animal welfare, including by committing to ensure that protecting and enhancing animal welfare is a priority in new trade agreements.

There are still major gaps in welfare law and issues where legal protections need significant improvement, the charities add, even though there are many strong EU animal welfare protections have improved welfare standards.

Consumer choice

Claire Bass, from the Humane Society International UK and Chair of Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Animal Welfare Group, said: “Legal protections from the EU have helped raise animal welfare standards but as the Secretary of State has said, there is still substantial room for improvement.

“Animal welfare matters to voters, and it matters to British businesses; the government can satisfy both by taking the tangible steps in our report.  Animal protection NGOs are united in urging government to capitalise on Brexit as a once in a generation opportunity to protect and improve the lives of billions of animals.”

Alan Bates, of the UK Centre for Animal Law, said: “Fixing gaping animal law flaws is a big opportunity for post-Brexit Britain and should be a key objective for the UK Government.

“Not only would boosting animal welfare protections help prevent thousands of animals from unnecessary suffering and even death, it also makes economic sense. Consumers in the UK, EU and beyond are increasingly looking for welfare-responsible products.

Warm words

“Improving labelling and welfare standards not only gives greater consumer choice in the UK, it could give a valuable boost for our products being traded abroad.”

David Bowles, Head of Public Affairs at RSPCA: ‘Brexit offers huge opportunities to give animals a better deal in the UK.

“While the EU has given animal protections in many areas, it has also handcuffed our hands and stopped improvements to welfare in other areas like mandatory meat and milk labelling based on method of production, improving the slaughter of farm animals or stopping the sale of foie-gras, already banned in the UK.

“The Government has given lots of warm words on animal welfare, we now want to see cold hard action in the Animal Welfare Bill and post-Brexit legislation.’

The charities set out a top ten of animal welfare policies which they argue should be addressed during Brexit:

1. Close loopholes in the Pet Travel Scheme that allow the cruel trade in poorly bred pups from Central and Eastern European puppy-farms: If the UK raised standards by reintroducing blood testing requirements and improving border checks, it could help thousands of dogs affected.

2. Extend existing fur trade bans: Only the sale of cat, dog and seal fur is banned in the EU, despite some 90% of the British population wanting a stop to all fur sales.

3. Ban live exports for slaughter: Livestock legislation has remained the same for 12 years despite European scientists calling for improvements on conditions and journey times. Brexit gives an opportunity to ban cruel live exports for slaughter or fattening and strengthen journey times and standards.

4. Introduce strong welfare incentives in British farming: There is no meaningful animal welfare aspect in the existing Common Agricultural Policy, 80 percent of payments are essentially based on farm size. UK welfare incentives could help transform conditions for animals on British farms.

5. Introduce new animal product labelling laws: At present meat and milk don’t have to be labelled to identify how they were produced.  Mandatory egg labelling saw free-range sales soar and should be replicated into other areas to aid consumer choice.

6. Ban imports of foie-gras: The UK has been unable to ban foie-gras imports because of the EU free movement of goods principle, despite a de facto UK ban on production already existing5 and 63% of the UK public supporting a ban on sales due to welfare concerns.

7. Work with UK fisheries to promote humane catches:  Encouraging the UK fishing fleet to invest in new stunning technology would improve the welfare of billions of fish during capture.

8. Introduce legal protection for crabs, lobsters, octopuses and squids in the Animal Welfare Bill: These animals aren’t protected by EU law outside of use in laboratories , despite being proven to experience pain and suffering, and being protected in countries like New Zealand and Norway.

9. Adopt world-leading measures aimed at combatting wildlife trafficking and domestic wildlife crime: Wild animals are being widely exploited and traded in the UK despite EU legal protection. UK legislation enforcement should be bolstered post-Brexit to protect wild animals in trade by adopting a stricter ‘positive list’ approach – anything on the list can come in, anything not can’t.

10. Commitment to ending ‘severe’ suffering’ in animal experiments, keep the cosmetics testing ban: The UK should; maintain the EU testing and marketing ban on animal-tested cosmetics, improve transparency around the use of animals in research, commit to eliminating experiments causing ‘severe’ suffering, and invest in humane non-animal technologies – 74 percent of us want more done to find alternatives.

This Author

Brendan Montague is the editor of The Ecologist and tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based substantially on a press release from the Wildlife and Countryside Link.