Jeremy Corbyn – who could become Britain’s first vegetarian prime minister – will launch a “radical” animal welfare policy programme on Valentine’s Day as the Labour party does everything it can to court the environmental voter.

The announcement comes days after the Labour leader promised to take the energy industry into democratic public control in order to reduce carbon emissions to fight climate change, and reduce bills for businesses and families.

READ: Vote Red, go green? Jeremy Corbyn calls for nationalisation of energy industry to stop climate change

Now he has promised to “look at” introducing a ban on the live export of animals for slaughter, which has been a campaign aim for animal welfare advocates for a generation.

Animal welfare

The Labour party has also committed itself to a wide range of animal welfare measures in a 50-point draft policy document called Animal Welfare For The Many, Not The Few. 

The failure of Theresa May and the Conservative party to win a convincing victory at the last general election was in part blamed on the prime minister’s promise to revisit the hunting ban, which was hugely unpopular with younger voters. Since then, Michael Gove as environment secretary has attempted to revive the Vote Blue, Go Green agenda. 

Sue Hayman MP, Labour’s shadow environment secretary, said: “Labour is the party of animal welfare. From bringing in the ban on fox hunting to tightening the rules on the transport of live animals, Labour has always been consistent in our leadership on matters of animal welfare.

“Today we’re making proposals for real, long-term progress. Our vision is one where no animal is made to suffer unnecessary pain and we continue to drive up standards and practice in line with the most recent advances and understanding.

“With new trade deals on the horizon and the UK no longer subject to EU-wide rules on animal welfare, we want to ensure there is a comprehensive legislative agenda in place so that the UK becomes a world leader on animal rights.”

Flouting the law

Labour has promised to “consult landlords on giving tenants the right to keep a pet, strengthen the Hunting Act, enshrine the principal of animal sentience in law, end the badger cull, implement a review of animal testing and expand affordable vet care for people on low incomes”.

Corbyn’s front bench will also consult the public on the appointment of a animal welfare commissioner “to ensure government policy across Whitehall is continually informed by the latest scientific evidence on animal sentience”.

Eduardo Gonçalves, chief executive at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “We warmly welcome Labour’s commitment to strengthening the Hunting Act 2004, and look forward to contributing to the consultation process.

“It’s clear that hunts are routinely flouting the law and continuing to kill wildlife across Britain, whether that be through so-called ‘trail hunting’ or by exploiting legal loopholes. This must stop.”

Emma Slawinski, director of campaigns at Compassion in World Farming, said: “We are thrilled by this announcement from the Labour party, which would revolutionise conditions for British farm animals.

Greater transparency

“We particularly welcome Labour’s commitments to end the cage age, stop live exports, empower consumers with mandatory meat labelling, stop routine preventative use of antibiotics and use post-Brexit subsidies to move away from intensive factory farming and bad environmental practices. This could be the beginning of the end of cruel factory farming.”

Ben Stafford, head of campaigns at WWF, said: “If we want our children and grandchildren to live in a world where elephants still roam and the oceans have more fish than plastic, we need a political race to the top on the environment.

“So it’s great to see Labour committing today to tackling the illegal wildlife trade and to strong protection for our seas. The UK must lead from the front on the environment, and that means all parties having ambitious plans for a more sustainable future.”

Michelle Thew, the chief executive of Cruelty Free International, said: “We wholeheartedly welcome the proposals in the animal welfare strategy announced today by Labour.

“In particular we are delighted to see a commitment to ending avoidable tests and experiments that cause severe suffering to animals, as well as the push for greater transparency. These are developments for which we have campaigned tirelessly for years.

Animal testing

“It shows tremendous progress that one of the major political parties is now committed to a positive plan for ending the suffering of animals in laboratories.

He added: “The public will be overjoyed that their call for an end to cruel and unnecessary animal testing is being taken seriously. We believe this is the very start of a journey that will finally put a stop to needless animal experiments in the UK.”

The proposals, as set out in the Labour party press release, include:

1

Enshrining the principle of animal sentience in law, ensuring it covers all policy areas to prevent practices that expose animals to cruel and degrading treatment

2

Strengthening the Hunting Act to close loopholes that allow illegal hunting

3

Consult landlords on giving tenants the default right to keep pets unless there is evidence the animal is causing a nuisance

4

Mandatory labelling of domestic and imported meat, including country of origin, method of production and slaughter (stun or non-stun)

5

Establishing an independent zoo inspectorate to draw up revised standards of animal welfare

6

Total ban on imports of Foie Gras

7

Ending the badger cull

8

Requiring motorists to report accidents where an animal has been injured

9

Banning live exports of animals for slaughter or fattening and introducing mandatory CCTV in all slaughterhouses

10

Designing post-Brexit farm subsidies to move away from intensive factory farming and bad environmental practices

11

Prohibiting the third party sale of puppies and tackling puppy smuggling by reintroducing rabies testing before entry into the UK

12

Working with organisations like the PDSA to expand accessibility to affordable vet care for pet owners on low incomes

13

A comprehensive review of animal testing with a view to improving practice, limiting animal suffering and increasing transparency

14

Introducing a ‘blue belt’ to protect and enhance the marine environment around the UK and our overseas territories

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. 

“Don’t poison us, let’s save Pristina,” was the cry of hundreds wearing white masks as they took to the streets of Kosovo’s capital at the end of January to protest pollution that has reached “hazardous” levels in recent weeks, according to air quality data published by the US embassy.

Read Michael Brune of Sierra Club warning in 2014 about the World Bank’s support of Kosovo’s love affair with ‘brown coal’.

The same week, in a widely praised move, the municipal government banned cars from the city centre. The ban has already increased quality of life for pedestrians in Pristina. But it is unlikely to make a real dent in pollution readings.

Ninety-seven percent of Kosovo’s electricity is generated by two lignite coal power stations on the outskirts of Pristina, according to a 2012 World Bank report. Lignite is one of the most environmentally unfriendly energy sources currently commercially in use.

Out of step

A 2013 study published in the Journal of the Academy of Medical Sciences in Bosnia and Herzegovina found that “[t]he largest air polluting source is the coal-burned power plant in Obiliq 5 km [from] Pristina.” The same study found a correlation between pollutants in the air and hospitalisations in the city.

Unfortunately for Kosovar asthmatics, their own government claims they are sitting on the fifth-largest deposit of lignite anywhere in the world. With more than a quarter of the workforce currently unemployed and the poverty rate sitting at around 80 percent, it is unlikely that policy makers in Pristina will turn their back on lignite any time soon.

In fact, late last year the government signed a deal with US engineering firm ContourGlobal for the construction of a $1.54 billion coal plant near the existing plants, which constitute two of the top-three most polluting coal plants in Europe, according to the Health and Environment Alliance. 

Despite issuing a moratorium on the financing of coal projects in all but “rare circumstances”, the World Bank has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for the project over the last decade and has even offered to stump up a partial risk guarantee for its costs. 

However, while it may not have turned its back on the project, Pippa Gallop, a regional researcher with NGO BankWatch, told The Ecologist the World Bank is aware how out of step with the times the project is.

Alternatives exist

“The World Bank has been pushing for this heavily from the start, and now they’re stuck with it,” Gallop said. “There is a clear level of embarrassment in the World Bank for being involved in this.”

And not without good cause. Kosovar political scientist Krenar Gashi was one of the first to sound the alarm on the project nearly 10 years ago while director of the Kosovo Institute for Policy Research and Development.

“I asked a World Bank representative whether there would be an environmental impact assessment and she said: ‘Yes, it’s going to be done by the American University of Kosovo [AUK]’,” he recalled. “AUK at the time didn’t even have a masters program. Things just started to smell very fishy.”

Things only got fishier the more Gashi and his colleagues investigated. So they enrolled Nobel Prize-winning energy scientist Daniel Kammen, who then led a team of researchers in a feasibility study.

“We find that a range of alternatives exists to meet present supply constraints all at a lower cost than constructing a proposed 600 MW coal plant. The options include energy efficiency measures, combinations of solar PV, wind, hydropower, and biomass, and the introduction of natural gas,” the study concluded.

Civil society

“The results indicate that financing a 600 MW coal plant is the most expensive pathway to meet future electricity demand.”

In 2016 the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) released a study of the project, finding that low-to-middle-income households will end up spending 18 percent of their annual incomes on electricity as bills increase to cover the cost of construction.

“IEEFA concludes that the World Bank, which has announced its support for a substantial financial subsidy for construction of the coal-fired plant, should invest instead in the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency in Kosovo,” the IEEFA concluded.

“[T]he US government, which has endorsed the project, should cease its support for the misguided introduction of a costly and outdated form of electricity generation.” 

But the US did not. Instead, on the day the contract between Kosovo’s government and ContourGlobal was signed, amid civil society objections, the US embassy issued a ringing endorsement of the project.

Four-lane highway

“We welcome yesterday’s agreement between the Government of Kosovo and Contour Global, which represents a huge step towards energy security in Kosovo,” the statement read.

It went on to claim that not only will the plant comply with European efficiency and emissions standards, but – seemingly paradoxically – “allow for more renewable energy sources to be integrated into the energy sector”.

But the last line of the press release is perhaps most telling: “Upon completion, Kosova e Re [the coal plant] will be the largest private foreign investment in Kosovo’s history.”

The US embassy in Pristina has a history of endorsing large infrastructure projects of questionable benefit to Kosovo but carrying significant financial reward for American contractors.

In 2010, Kosovo signed another billion-dollar contract with a US engineering firm. This time it was the Bechtel Corporation and the project was a four-lane highway to Kosovo’s southerly neighbour, Albania.

International diplomacy

At the time, Kosovo – which had just two years earlier declared independence – was being supervised by an institution known as the International Civilian Office (ICO).

The ICO’s most senior official, Pieter Feith, was dead set against the highway. The bill was equal to slightly over one-sixth of Kosovo’s GDP. He argued that it risked crippling the country’s finances while it was just beginning to get on its feet.

But Feith was overruled. Christopher Dell, then-US ambassador, lobbied hard in favour of the highway, going so far as to deny the ICO – which had executive authority in Kosovo – access to the terms of the deal.

Finally, in April 2010, Kosovo’s government decided to sign, against the counsel of its own lawyers. Less than a year after the project was completed, Dell controversially took a position with Bechtel.

Telling observation

Last December, half a decade after Dell left international diplomacy for the world of engineering, Kosovo signed yet another big-ticket contract with an American engineering firm in the face of numerous respected voices cautioning against it. 

Krenar Gashi, the political scientist, declined to speculate on what could have motivated his government to enter into such a seemingly unwise arrangement. He did, however, offer a telling observation.

“Whether there was a tit-for-tat or whether no one in the room had a better idea than to burn some coal, I don’t think it really matters,” he said. “The entire energy policy for the last 10 years has been built around it. The plant was not the means to the policy’s end, the policy was the means to the plant.”

These Authors

Jack Davies and Giovanni Vale are freelance journalists based in the Balkans. 

Jeremy Corbyn today called for the nationalisation of the energy industry in order to work towards preventing climate change and other environmental crises facing humanity.

The Labour leader this afternoon told a one day party conference on “alternative models of ownership” in Central London that “the challenge of climate change and the threat of climate catastrophe requires us to be at least as radical” as the Labour party that came to power after the Second World War in 1945 to establish the National Health Service.

He said: “The challenge of climate change requires us to radically shift the way we organise our economy. In 1945, elected to govern a country ravaged by six years of war, the great Attlee Labour government knew that the only way to rebuild our economy was through a decisive turn to collective action. Necessary action to help avert climate catastrophe requires us to be at least as radical.”

Take control

Corbyn told the conference that “to go green, we must take control of energy”. The comments echoed David Cameron’s 2010 general election campaign slogan, “Vote Blue, go green” which had been devised by his advisor Steve Hilton as the Conservatives fought the threat from the Green party.

However, Cameron was fiercely opposed by a faction in his own party which hated the prospect of environmental policies limiting industry – and later was instrumental in the Brexit vote that led to his resignation as prime minister. Corbyn dismissed Theresa May’s Tory government saying it was leaving a “trail of environmental destruction”.

The Labour leader argued that his plans for a “modern mixed economy” would be part of a “great wave of change across the world in favour of public, democratic ownership and control of our services and utilities.” This would be in response to what he characterised as the failure of privatisation and the demands of a modern economy.

The Labour leader also wanted to present nationalisation as modern, rather than a return to the past. He said: “A green energy system will look radically different to the one we have today. The past is a centralised system with a few large plants. The future is decentralised, flexible and diverse, with new sources of energy large and small, from tidal to solar.

“The greenest energy is usually the most local. But people have been queuing up for years to connect renewable energy to the national grid. With the national grid in public hands, we can put tackling climate change at the heart of our energy system. To go green, we must take control of our energy.”

Energy transition

He said the radical changes in the UK were part of an international transformation to a low carbon world.  “We can put Britain at the forefront of the wave of change across the world in favour of public, democratic ownership and control of our services and utilities. From India to Canada, countries across the world are waking up to the fact that privatisation has failed, and taking back control of their public services.

In order to shore up his base in the Labour party, Corbyn went on to argue that “it cannot be the workers who pay the price” for the transition to a low carbon economy. He promised a comprehensive programme of retraining and employment for any employees displaced by energy transition. 

He said: “The devastation wreaked when our coal mines were closed is a brutal reminder of what can happen when communities are silenced and disregarded in the process of change. Never again.

“Our energy system needs to change, but it cannot be workers who pay the price.” He looked to the historical precedent of the GI Bill in the United States which “gave education, housing and income support to every unemployed veteran returning from the Second World War.” 

He added: “[T]he next Labour government will guarantee that if anyone is displaced by energy transition they will be: offered retraining, a new job on equivalent terms and conditions, covered by collective agreements, and fully supported in their housing and income needs through transition.”

Ban fracking

Corbyn concluded his speech by rounding on the Conservative party. He said: “Nobody is fooled by Michael Gove’s reinvention of himself as an eco-warrior. Behind the rhetoric lies a trail of environmental destruction.

“This is a Government that has licensed fracking, declared a moratorium on renewable levies, while massively subsidising fossil fuels, dithered over tidal, held back onshore wind, u-turned on making all new homes zero carbon and is failing to take the necessary measures to meet our legal commitments to reduce CO2 emissions.”

A Labour party spokesperson added after the speech: “We will work with farmers and foresters to plant a million trees of native species to promote biodiversity and better flood management. Unlike the Conservatives who attempted to privatise our forests, Labour will keep them in public hands.

“We will safeguard habitats and species in the ‘blue belts’ of the seas and oceans surrounding our island. We will set guiding targets for plastic bottle deposit schemes, working with food manufacturers and retailers to reduce waste.”

The Labour party promised at the last election to ban fracking, insulate four million homes, invest in rail and bus networks to reduce traffic on our roads, invest in tidal and wind and deliver 60 percent of our energy from renewable sources by 2030.

The Labour manifesto, the spokesperson added, promised to “regain control of energy supply networks through the alteration of the National and Regional Network Operator license conditions, support the creation of publicly owned, locally accountable energy companies and co-operatives to rival existing private energy suppliers.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist and author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries. He tweets at @EcoMontague. 

Businesses, government and civil society should harness the opportunities from trends impacting global societies to improve sustainability, think tank Forum for the Future said.

Changes in consumerism and mobility, regenerative agriculture, action against plastic pollution, and blockchain technology can all bring benefits for the environment and society, the organisation believes.

In a report, it highlights the implications and opportunities to reshape current behaviour and practice which could result in a more sustainable world.

Decentralised ledger

For example, conventional agricultural models are putting increasing pressure on natural systems with significant implications for feeding growing populations and climate change.

In contrast, alternative approaches to agriculture, which give more to the environment than is taken out, could be scaled to create an entirely new farming system, it suggests.

Such regenerative agriculture uses techniques such as intercropping, where two or more crops are grown together, keeping living plant cover on soils, and using insect predators instead of chemical pesticides. It can be complemented by the use of data and even robots.

In Brazil, Leontino Balbo, the world’s largest sugar cane farmer, has boosted yield through new harvesting techniques that reduce soil compression and soil loss, while increasing wildlife and water retention. His company Agros Fortis is now developing a weed control robot.

The report considers the reality behind blockchain, technology that acts as a decentralised ledger that records transactions.

Infrastructure investment

While the initial application was for cryptocurrencies, new uses are being found. For example, food retailers and manufacturers Walmart, Unilever and Nestle have teamed up with tech giant IBM to explore how to use blockchain technology to maintain secure records of their supply chains for important products such as chicken, chocolate and bananas.

Similarly. Provenance, a blockchain start-up, is creating digital histories for products enabling businesses and consumers to trace and verify origins and ownership across a product’s lifespan.

In transport, Forum for the Future believes that a change as radical as that from horse to motor is underway. A wave of commitments to electric vehicles from manufacturers, nations and cities in 2017 coinciding with new business models and journey tracking apps means that the divide between public and private transportation looks set to collapse.

Mobility as a Service will take over, with a shift from private vehicle ownership towards subscription-based models. This could impact the design of vehicles, parking, roads and buildings, the think tank predicts.

However, a significant policy change and infrastructure investment is needed to avoid societal disruption due to job loss in the transport sector, congestion in poorly managed transitions, and urban sprawl if technology encourages longer commutes.

Better decisions

Good management on the other hand could be rewarded with breathable, liveable cities, significant reductions in carbon emissions and congestion, and major efficiency gains.

Another trend highlighted in the report is action to prevent plastic pollution, which has become mainstream following high-profile research by organisations such as the Ellen McArthur Foundation, and documentaries including Blue Planet II and A Plastic Ocean.

Efforts are now underway to find alternative materials to single-use plastic. For example, British company Polymateria is working with Imperial College London to develop a cost-effective method for producing plastic products which are 100% biodegradable, and do not release toxins in decomposition.

James Goodman, director of futures and projects at Forum for the Future, said: “We live in a world of great political, economic and environmental uncertainty, in which sudden and major changes have become the new normal.

“We need a better understanding of the trends emerging today that will impact the future, how they are linked, and also how we are part of ongoing processes of change. Only then can leaders make better decisions that ensure that we survive and thrive in the future.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

If you listen carefully on a quiet day, you can hear the gasps of future generations. They are looking back into a distant past where the decisions are being made that will erode any fair or equitable future.

Read Our News TAP Coverage 

This gasp – shared even today by many of us – reverberated across Europe at 17:50 (CET) on Tuesday when the EIB approved a loan of £1.3 billion (€1.5 billion) of Europeans’ money to fund the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

The TAP will be one part of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC); a series of inter-connected gas pipelines that seeks to pump 120 billion cubic meters of Caspian gas from Azerbaijan, across six countries to Europe. The TAP itself is a planned 870km long pipeline running from Greece to Italy, through Albania and the Adriatic Sea, making it just as ambitious as it is controversial. 

Fossil fuel dependency

The EIB has succeeded in simultaneously undermining science, the Paris Accord, and democracy, by granting a loan irrespective of last week’s report that the SGC could be as emissions-intensive as coal power. The decision was taken in spite of widespread public resistance and and the contribution to catastrophic climate change. 

The TAP has faced a significant public backlash over the years, stalling the loan at many stages. Last year, 4,000 emails from concerned citizens were send during EIB discussions, and this year a viral campaign began to circulate with global citizens campaigning with the slogan, ‘not with my money’.

But beyond the keyboard, there has been resistance on the ground. In Italy, 94 mayors have spoken out against the pipeline. There is widespread concern about the impact of  TAP on water supplies. In Albania and Greece, the pipe will be built directly through farmland. 

However, rather than diplomatic discussion, this resistance has been met with militarisation and strong repression, with one Italian community being put on military lock-down. Within civil society, there is a deep feeling that TAP will undermine meaningful democracy. 

The decision is at odds with the EU 2030 and 2050 energy and climate objectives. As Colin Roche, extractive industries campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe argues: “The European Investment Bank is now shamelessly locking Europe into decades of fossil fuel dependency even as the window for fossil fuel use is slamming shut.

Corruption and torture

“The banks’s biggest ever investment in dangerous fossil fuels undermines the EU’s commitment to climate action when we urgently need to be transitioning to a fossil free future.” 

This loan comes after a wave of scientific warning against gas, for example a report released late last year which concluded categorically that if the EU is to deliver a mitigation programme of 2ºC then there can be no new gas infrastructure built. In short, gas is not a bridge to a clean energy future. It is a dead-end.

So why did the EIB grant such a contentious loan? The current line of the EU is that it will support ‘diversification of gas supply to meet future energy demands’. But perhaps we need to consider deeper political motives. 

Russia currently provides 30 percent of EU’s natural gas, which has been a source of unease since the country historically halted its gas supply to Ukraine in 2014.

Hence, the EU seeks to ensure its own energy security by diversifying its supply chain away from alleged authoritarian regimes. However, TAP will import gas from Azerbaijan, a country that has never had a free election and is marred by allegations of corruption and torture.

Planning for failure

On top of this, the Azerbaijani Laundromat scandal last year exposed a $2.9 billion fund that was used by Azerbaijan to curry influence, and pay lobbyists, apologists and European politicians. So if the EU wants to diversify its gas supply away from what they decree to be less stable regimes, then perhaps this TAP logic doesn’t quite add up? 

Perhaps switching from Russian gas is in fact a geopolitical move to undermine Russian influence? Or perhaps it is profit that is the puppet master of diplomacy? Or perhaps – as is so often the case – the lines between the two become further blurred.

The building of the pipe indicates the high levels of gas supply that Europe predicts for the future. With increased supply, price signals change and gas becomes cheaper. This in turn crowds out investment in gas’s future competitor – renewables.

Gas is not a companion to a renewable energy future, it is competition. The European Union now has €1.5 billion less to invest in renewable energy, pushing forward a decision that will lock us into a high-carbon future.

The the crux of TAP? Enormous sums of public money are being used to fund a programme that will be detrimental to both people and planet, meaning that the EU is actively planning for failure.

This Author     

Katie Hodgetts coordinates the UK Youth Climate Coalition’s 2018 campaign against gas, and works for Friends of the Earth Europe. More can be found at @ukycc or Katie tweets personally at @katiehodgettssx 

Name a well-known environmental organisation. The World Wildlife Fund? Sure, everyone knows the panda, it has royal support and we’ve all seen pictures of dead elephants with gaping wounds.

But as horrible as wildlife crime is, there’s one criminal activity ten times bigger than all other illegal wildlife crime combined. Try naming it, or any organisation that combats it. 

Sand mining has no bleeding elephants – but it is the elephant in the room of environmental issues. Illegal sand mining has ten times more value than all wildlife crime.

Had enough

Indeed, it’s bigger than all other environmental crimes combined, according to a study by Luis Fernando Ramadon, a police investigator and mining crimes professor at the National Police Academy in Brazil.

Professor Ramadan told The Ecologist: “It’s an easy form of enrichment with less risk and costs than trafficking of drugs, humans or organs.” He adds that aside from being so profitable, “it is maybe also the most harmful to the environment”. 

Asking Sumaira Abdulali how sand mining is harmful is like asking for a drizzle but receiving the full-blown Indian monsoon. “Soil erosion, landslides, water table loss, infertility of farmland, disturbances of ecosystems and marine life, beach disappearances, collapsing bridges…”.

One night in 2004, she had had enough of it. In what had become a nighttime routine, trucks came and went to the seafront near her house South from Mumbai. They stole the beach.

Abdulali called the police and drove to the beach. “Instead of rushing to the scene, the police tipped the illegal sand miners”, Abdulali told me.

Edgy grains

As she waited in her car for the police to arrive, the men came from the beach, pulled her out of her car and assaulted her. “During the beating, one guy asked: ‘Do you know who I am?’ He was the son of a local politician, but also owner of a large construction company.” His father later became the state’s environment Minister.

Abdulali sued the sand mafia and won. But fighting the sand mafia is a risky affair. Sandhya Ravishankar, a Chennai based journalist, was threatened for her reports on Tamil Nadu’s sand mafia.

Despite a ban in 2013, beach sand mining for minerals remained a lucrative business in Tamil Nadu. At one point police raided 15 locations simultaneously, finding 455,245 ton of illegally mined beach minerals. The evidence suggests that almost a million tons has been exported since the ban has come into force. 

Abdulali and Ravishankar are sand mafia challengers who survived. According to author and expert Vince Beiser, hundreds of people were killed over sand extraction, in India alone.

Contrary to our intuition, useful sand is scarce. Forget deserts. Desert winds make sand roll and therefore round. Edgy grains are needed for concrete, the main use of sand. Building booms have caused these sand mining booms – but there’s another reason why 75 to 90 percent of all beaches are disappearing.

Nuclear waste

Minerals such as rutile and ilmenite, found in beach sand, are in everything from titanium parts of consumer goods to paint to paper to plastics. India has 35 percent of all ilmenite. Going to Goa with sunscreen in your luggage? There is a good chance that the ilmenite in it came from a beach.

In Indonesia, Australia’s Indo Mines Limited is after the iron on one beach, which doubles as a barrier against salt intrusion from the ocean into coastal farms.

When they proposed a massive expanding to cover a 1.8km by 22km area – also the home of 20,000 people – the resistance went ballistic. Many community members were jailed and police brutalities left 41 people injured. 

In The Gambia, an 11-year old boy fell to his death in one of the massive holes left behind by a sand mining firm, a hole they should have filled. The beach is now flooded, attracting crocodiles that attacked women who tend nearby gardens.

In this conflict, 45 people were arrested and sued. Zircon, the mineral mined here, was exporting to China. Aside from being sold as gemstone, sand is used to store nuclear waste.

Enlightened CEOs

Camila Rolando, a Barcelona based researcher, maps environmental conflicts in Western Africa for the EnvJustice project. “The conflict in The Gambia left an impression across the Senegalese border.

“The villages around the Niafrang dune try to prevent that a new beach mine opens there. They depend on rice growing, market gardening, fishing, oyster farming and tourism – all of which would be negatively affected.”

An armed rebel group in Senegal, the MFDC, is also against the proposed project. In reaction, the Senegalese government deployed extra military forces in the area. This is how sand wars can start.

Will you ever walk into a shop and ask for a pot of Tamil-Nadu-free-paint? No. And there’s no tropical beach logo for this. Waiting for enlightened CEOs is equally naive.

Whether it is India, Indonesia, South Africa or Senegal: the battles for our beaches are “environmentalism of the poor”, a term coined by the award winning economist Joan Martinez-Alier. 

Rich places

Only 15 percent of the world’s population lives in North America or Europe but they consume about 50 percent of all titanium dioxide – whose production lines creates conflicts everywhere but in North America or Europe.

The Atlas of Environmental justice has the details of nine local sand conflicts relating to ilmenite and rutile alone – all in the Global South. So what can we do?

Martinez-Alier argues that humanity needs to dig, produce and trade a factor less. In his jargon, digging in The Gambia for production in China and selling in the US is all part of the social metabolism of the global economy, like blood that flows through a body. Based on planetary boundaries data, he argues the global economy suffers from too high blood pressure.

Martinez-Alier said: “Those calling for green growth fail to understand that the inputs of energy and materials into the economy grow to unsustainable levels.

“Whether it is sand, fossil fuel or timber: most materials flow from impoverished to rich places, whether across the oceans or inside large countries like China or India. Local environmental conflicts are born from the opposition to this.”

Unscrupulous companies

However, Martinez-Alier adds: “When a success is achieved against some dirty local extraction, the knowledge of how to win is quickly reinforcing a global movement for environmental justice.” It seems that the multinationals are becoming ever more powerful, but so are the multinational anti-extraction coalitions.

Sand conflicts rage on all continents, but the conflict level is so granular that we fail to see them. Especially in poorer countries, communities increasingly find themselves battling on frontlines opened by unscrupulous companies and complicit local politicians.

These communities need all the support we can give them. And it is they who deserve the credit for trying to throw some sand in the already overheated machine that we know as the global, industrialised economy.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

Name a well-known environmental organisation. The World Wildlife Fund? Sure, everyone knows the panda, it has royal support and we’ve all seen pictures of dead elephants with gaping wounds.

But as horrible as wildlife crime is, there’s one criminal activity ten times bigger than all other illegal wildlife crime combined. Try naming it, or any organisation that combats it. 

Sand mining has no bleeding elephants – but it is the elephant in the room of environmental issues. Illegal sand mining has ten times more value than all wildlife crime.

Had enough

Indeed, it’s bigger than all other environmental crimes combined, according to a study by Luis Fernando Ramadon, a mining crimes professor at the National Police Academy in Brazil.

Professor Ramadan told The Ecologist: “It’s an easy form of enrichment with less risk and costs than trafficking of drugs, humans or organs.” He adds that aside from being so profitable, “it is maybe also the most harmful to the environment. 

Asking Sumaira Abdulali how sand mining is harmful is like asking for a drizzle but receiving the full-blown Indian monsoon. “Soil erosion, landslides, water table loss, infertility of farmland, disturbances of ecosystems and marine life, beach disappearances, collapsing bridges…”.

One night in 2004, she had had enough of it. In what had become a nighttime routine, trucks came and went to the seafront near her house South from Mumbai. They stole the beach.

Abdulali called the police and drove to the beach. “Instead of rushing to the scene, the police tipped the illegal sand miners”, Abdulali told me.

Edgy grains

As she waited in her car for the police to arrive, the men came from the beach, pulled her out of her car and assaulted her. “During the beating, one guy asked: ‘Do you know who I am?’ He was the son of a local politician, but also owner of a large construction company.” His father later became the state’s environment Minister.

Abdulali sued the sand mafia and won. But fighting the sand mafia is a risky affair. Sandhya Ravishankar, a Chennai based journalist, was threatened for her reports on Tamil Nadu’s sand mafia.

Despite a ban in 2013, beach sand mining for minerals remained a lucrative business in Tamil Nadu. At one point police raided 15 locations simultaneously, finding 455,245 ton of illegally mined beach minerals. The evidence suggests that almost a million tons has been exported since the ban has come into force. 

Abdulali and Ravishankar are sand mafia challengers who survived. According to author and expert Vince Beiser, hundreds of people were killed over sand extraction, in India alone.

Contrary to our intuition, useful sand is scarce. Forget deserts. Desert winds make sand roll and therefore round. Edgy grains are needed for concrete, the main use of sand. Building booms have caused these sand mining booms – but there’s another reason why 75 to 90 percent of all beaches are disappearing.

Nuclear waste

Minerals such as rutile and ilmenite, found in beach sand, are in everything from titanium parts of consumer goods to paint to paper to plastics. India has 35 percent of all ilmenite. Going to Goa with sunscreen in your luggage? There is a good chance that the ilmenite in it came from a beach.

In Indonesia, Australia’s Indo Mines Limited is after the iron on one beach, which doubles as a barrier against salt intrusion from the ocean into coastal farms.

When they proposed a massive expanding to cover a 1.8km by 22km area – also the home of 20,000 people – the resistance went ballistic. Many community members were jailed and police brutalities left 41 people injured. 

In The Gambia, an 11-year old boy fell to his death in one of the massive holes left behind by a sand mining firm, a hole they should have filled. The beach is now flooded, attracting crocodiles that attacked women who tend nearby gardens.

In this conflict, 45 people were arrested and sued. Zircon, the mineral mined here, was exporting to China. Aside from being sold as gemstone, sand is used to store nuclear waste.

Enlightened CEOs

Camila Rolando, a Barcelona based researcher, maps environmental conflicts in Western Africa for the EnvJustice project. “The conflict in The Gambia left an impression across the Senegalese border.

“The villages around the Niafrang dune try to prevent that a new beach mine opens there. They depend on rice growing, market gardening, fishing, oyster farming and tourism – all of which would be negatively affected.”

An armed rebel group in Senegal, the MFDC, is also against the proposed project. In reaction, the Senegalese government deployed extra military forces in the area. This is how sand wars can start.

Will you ever walk into a shop and ask for a pot of Tamil-Nadu-free-paint? No. And there’s no tropical beach logo for this. Waiting for enlightened CEOs is equally naive.

Whether it is India, Indonesia, South Africa or Senegal: the battles for our beaches are “environmentalism of the poor”, a term coined by the award winning economist Joan Martinez-Alier. 

Rich places

Only 15 percent of the world’s population lives in North America or Europe but they consume about 50 percent of all titanium dioxide – whose production lines creates conflicts everywhere but in North America or Europe.

The Atlas of Environmental justice has the details of nine local sand conflicts relating to ilmenite and rutile alone, – all in the Global South. So what can we do?

Martinez-Alier argues that humanity needs to dig, produce and trade a factor less. In his jargon, digging in The Gambia for production in China and selling in the US is all part of the social metabolism of the global economy, like blood that flows through a body. Based on planetary boundaries data, he argues the global economy suffers from too high blood pressure.

Martinez-Slier said: “Those calling for green growth fail to understand that the inputs of energy and materials into the economy grow to unsustainable levels.

“Whether it is sand, fossil fuel or timber: most materials flow from impoverished to rich places, whether across the oceans or inside large countries like China or India. Local environmental conflicts are born from the opposition to this.”

Unscrupulous companies

However, Martinez-Alier adds: “When a success is achieved against some dirty local extraction, the knowledge of how to win is quickly reinforcing a global movement for environmental justice.” It seems that the multinationals are becoming ever more powerful, but so are the multinational anti-extraction coalitions.

Sand conflicts rage on all continents, but the conflict level is so granular that we fail to see them. Especially in poorer countries, communities increasingly find themselves battling on frontlines opened by unscrupulous companies and complicit local politicians.

These communities need all the support we can give them. And it is they who deserve the credit for trying to throw some sand in the already overheated machine that we know as the global, industrialised economy.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

Name a well-known environmental organisation. The World Wildlife Fund? Sure, everyone knows the panda, it has royal support and we’ve all seen pictures of dead elephants with gaping wounds.

But as horrible as wildlife crime is, there’s one criminal activity ten times bigger than all other illegal wildlife crime combined. Try naming it, or any organisation that combats it. 

Sand mining has no bleeding elephants – but it is the elephant in the room of environmental issues. Illegal sand mining has ten times more value than all wildlife crime.

Had enough

Indeed, it’s bigger than all other environmental crimes combined, according to a study by Luis Fernando Ramadon, a mining crimes professor at the National Police Academy in Brazil.

Professor Ramadan told The Ecologist: “It’s an easy form of enrichment with less risk and costs than trafficking of drugs, humans or organs.” He adds that aside from being so profitable, “it is maybe also the most harmful to the environment. 

Asking Sumaira Abdulali how sand mining is harmful is like asking for a drizzle but receiving the full-blown Indian monsoon. “Soil erosion, landslides, water table loss, infertility of farmland, disturbances of ecosystems and marine life, beach disappearances, collapsing bridges…”.

One night in 2004, she had had enough of it. In what had become a nighttime routine, trucks came and went to the seafront near her house South from Mumbai. They stole the beach.

Abdulali called the police and drove to the beach. “Instead of rushing to the scene, the police tipped the illegal sand miners”, Abdulali told me.

Edgy grains

As she waited in her car for the police to arrive, the men came from the beach, pulled her out of her car and assaulted her. “During the beating, one guy asked: ‘Do you know who I am?’ He was the son of a local politician, but also owner of a large construction company.” His father later became the state’s environment Minister.

Abdulali sued the sand mafia and won. But fighting the sand mafia is a risky affair. Sandhya Ravishankar, a Chennai based journalist, was threatened for her reports on Tamil Nadu’s sand mafia.

Despite a ban in 2013, beach sand mining for minerals remained a lucrative business in Tamil Nadu. At one point police raided 15 locations simultaneously, finding 455,245 ton of illegally mined beach minerals. The evidence suggests that almost a million tons has been exported since the ban has come into force. 

Abdulali and Ravishankar are sand mafia challengers who survived. According to author and expert Vince Beiser, hundreds of people were killed over sand extraction, in India alone.

Contrary to our intuition, useful sand is scarce. Forget deserts. Desert winds make sand roll and therefore round. Edgy grains are needed for concrete, the main use of sand. Building booms have caused these sand mining booms – but there’s another reason why 75 to 90 percent of all beaches are disappearing.

Nuclear waste

Minerals such as rutile and ilmenite, found in beach sand, are in everything from titanium parts of consumer goods to paint to paper to plastics. India has 35 percent of all ilmenite. Going to Goa with sunscreen in your luggage? There is a good chance that the ilmenite in it came from a beach.

In Indonesia, Australia’s Indo Mines Limited is after the iron on one beach, which doubles as a barrier against salt intrusion from the ocean into coastal farms.

When they proposed a massive expanding to cover a 1.8km by 22km area – also the home of 20,000 people – the resistance went ballistic. Many community members were jailed and police brutalities left 41 people injured. 

In The Gambia, an 11-year old boy fell to his death in one of the massive holes left behind by a sand mining firm, a hole they should have filled. The beach is now flooded, attracting crocodiles that attacked women who tend nearby gardens.

In this conflict, 45 people were arrested and sued. Zircon, the mineral mined here, was exporting to China. Aside from being sold as gemstone, sand is used to store nuclear waste.

Enlightened CEOs

Camila Rolando, a Barcelona based researcher, maps environmental conflicts in Western Africa for the EnvJustice project. “The conflict in The Gambia left an impression across the Senegalese border.

“The villages around the Niafrang dune try to prevent that a new beach mine opens there. They depend on rice growing, market gardening, fishing, oyster farming and tourism – all of which would be negatively affected.”

An armed rebel group in Senegal, the MFDC, is also against the proposed project. In reaction, the Senegalese government deployed extra military forces in the area. This is how sand wars can start.

Will you ever walk into a shop and ask for a pot of Tamil-Nadu-free-paint? No. And there’s no tropical beach logo for this. Waiting for enlightened CEOs is equally naive.

Whether it is India, Indonesia, South Africa or Senegal: the battles for our beaches are “environmentalism of the poor”, a term coined by the award winning economist Joan Martinez-Alier. 

Rich places

Only 15 percent of the world’s population lives in North America or Europe but they consume about 50 percent of all titanium dioxide – whose production lines creates conflicts everywhere but in North America or Europe.

The Atlas of Environmental justice has the details of nine local sand conflicts relating to ilmenite and rutile alone, – all in the Global South. So what can we do?

Martinez-Alier argues that humanity needs to dig, produce and trade a factor less. In his jargon, digging in The Gambia for production in China and selling in the US is all part of the social metabolism of the global economy, like blood that flows through a body. Based on planetary boundaries data, he argues the global economy suffers from too high blood pressure.

Martinez-Slier said: “Those calling for green growth fail to understand that the inputs of energy and materials into the economy grow to unsustainable levels.

“Whether it is sand, fossil fuel or timber: most materials flow from impoverished to rich places, whether across the oceans or inside large countries like China or India. Local environmental conflicts are born from the opposition to this.”

Unscrupulous companies

However, Martinez-Alier adds: “When a success is achieved against some dirty local extraction, the knowledge of how to win is quickly reinforcing a global movement for environmental justice.” It seems that the multinationals are becoming ever more powerful, but so are the multinational anti-extraction coalitions.

Sand conflicts rage on all continents, but the conflict level is so granular that we fail to see them. Especially in poorer countries, communities increasingly find themselves battling on frontlines opened by unscrupulous companies and complicit local politicians.

These communities need all the support we can give them. And it is they who deserve the credit for trying to throw some sand in the already overheated machine that we know as the global, industrialised economy.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

Name a well-known environmental organisation. The World Wildlife Fund? Sure, everyone knows the panda, it has royal support and we’ve all seen pictures of dead elephants with gaping wounds.

But as horrible as wildlife crime is, there’s one criminal activity ten times bigger than all other illegal wildlife crime combined. Try naming it, or any organisation that combats it. 

Sand mining has no bleeding elephants – but it is the elephant in the room of environmental issues. Illegal sand mining has ten times more value than all wildlife crime.

Had enough

Indeed, it’s bigger than all other environmental crimes combined, according to a study by Luis Fernando Ramadon, a mining crimes professor at the National Police Academy in Brazil.

Professor Ramadan told The Ecologist: “It’s an easy form of enrichment with less risk and costs than trafficking of drugs, humans or organs.” He adds that aside from being so profitable, “it is maybe also the most harmful to the environment. 

Asking Sumaira Abdulali how sand mining is harmful is like asking for a drizzle but receiving the full-blown Indian monsoon. “Soil erosion, landslides, water table loss, infertility of farmland, disturbances of ecosystems and marine life, beach disappearances, collapsing bridges…”.

One night in 2004, she had had enough of it. In what had become a nighttime routine, trucks came and went to the seafront near her house South from Mumbai. They stole the beach.

Abdulali called the police and drove to the beach. “Instead of rushing to the scene, the police tipped the illegal sand miners”, Abdulali told me.

Edgy grains

As she waited in her car for the police to arrive, the men came from the beach, pulled her out of her car and assaulted her. “During the beating, one guy asked: ‘Do you know who I am?’ He was the son of a local politician, but also owner of a large construction company.” His father later became the state’s environment Minister.

Abdulali sued the sand mafia and won. But fighting the sand mafia is a risky affair. Sandhya Ravishankar, a Chennai based journalist, was threatened for her reports on Tamil Nadu’s sand mafia.

Despite a ban in 2013, beach sand mining for minerals remained a lucrative business in Tamil Nadu. At one point police raided 15 locations simultaneously, finding 455,245 ton of illegally mined beach minerals. The evidence suggests that almost a million tons has been exported since the ban has come into force. 

Abdulali and Ravishankar are sand mafia challengers who survived. According to author and expert Vince Beiser, hundreds of people were killed over sand extraction, in India alone.

Contrary to our intuition, useful sand is scarce. Forget deserts. Desert winds make sand roll and therefore round. Edgy grains are needed for concrete, the main use of sand. Building booms have caused these sand mining booms – but there’s another reason why 75 to 90 percent of all beaches are disappearing.

Nuclear waste

Minerals such as rutile and ilmenite, found in beach sand, are in everything from titanium parts of consumer goods to paint to paper to plastics. India has 35 percent of all ilmenite. Going to Goa with sunscreen in your luggage? There is a good chance that the ilmenite in it came from a beach.

In Indonesia, Australia’s Indo Mines Limited is after the iron on one beach, which doubles as a barrier against salt intrusion from the ocean into coastal farms.

When they proposed a massive expanding to cover a 1.8km by 22km area – also the home of 20,000 people – the resistance went ballistic. Many community members were jailed and police brutalities left 41 people injured. 

In The Gambia, an 11-year old boy fell to his death in one of the massive holes left behind by a sand mining firm, a hole they should have filled. The beach is now flooded, attracting crocodiles that attacked women who tend nearby gardens.

In this conflict, 45 people were arrested and sued. Zircon, the mineral mined here, was exporting to China. Aside from being sold as gemstone, sand is used to store nuclear waste.

Enlightened CEOs

Camila Rolando, a Barcelona based researcher, maps environmental conflicts in Western Africa for the EnvJustice project. “The conflict in The Gambia left an impression across the Senegalese border.

“The villages around the Niafrang dune try to prevent that a new beach mine opens there. They depend on rice growing, market gardening, fishing, oyster farming and tourism – all of which would be negatively affected.”

An armed rebel group in Senegal, the MFDC, is also against the proposed project. In reaction, the Senegalese government deployed extra military forces in the area. This is how sand wars can start.

Will you ever walk into a shop and ask for a pot of Tamil-Nadu-free-paint? No. And there’s no tropical beach logo for this. Waiting for enlightened CEOs is equally naive.

Whether it is India, Indonesia, South Africa or Senegal: the battles for our beaches are “environmentalism of the poor”, a term coined by the award winning economist Joan Martinez-Alier. 

Rich places

Only 15 percent of the world’s population lives in North America or Europe but they consume about 50 percent of all titanium dioxide – whose production lines creates conflicts everywhere but in North America or Europe.

The Atlas of Environmental justice has the details of nine local sand conflicts relating to ilmenite and rutile alone, – all in the Global South. So what can we do?

Martinez-Alier argues that humanity needs to dig, produce and trade a factor less. In his jargon, digging in The Gambia for production in China and selling in the US is all part of the social metabolism of the global economy, like blood that flows through a body. Based on planetary boundaries data, he argues the global economy suffers from too high blood pressure.

Martinez-Slier said: “Those calling for green growth fail to understand that the inputs of energy and materials into the economy grow to unsustainable levels.

“Whether it is sand, fossil fuel or timber: most materials flow from impoverished to rich places, whether across the oceans or inside large countries like China or India. Local environmental conflicts are born from the opposition to this.”

Unscrupulous companies

However, Martinez-Alier adds: “When a success is achieved against some dirty local extraction, the knowledge of how to win is quickly reinforcing a global movement for environmental justice.” It seems that the multinationals are becoming ever more powerful, but so are the multinational anti-extraction coalitions.

Sand conflicts rage on all continents, but the conflict level is so granular that we fail to see them. Especially in poorer countries, communities increasingly find themselves battling on frontlines opened by unscrupulous companies and complicit local politicians.

These communities need all the support we can give them. And it is they who deserve the credit for trying to throw some sand in the already overheated machine that we know as the global, industrialised economy.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

The Soil Association’s 2018 Organic Market Report launched today (7 February 2018) reveals the UK organic market is now worth more than ever at £2.2 billion, growing six percent last year.

The market has now had six years of steady growth, with organic accounting for 1.5 percent of the total UK food and drink market.

Supermarket sales of organic grew by 4.2 percent, while independent retailers increased sales of organic by 9.7 percent and sales of organic  for home delivery, including box schemes, grew by 9.5 percent and now account for almost 13 percent of the organic market.

Rising demand

Clare McDermott, Business Development Director at Soil Association Certification, said: “We know shoppers are putting increasing value on trust, transparency and traceability when making their purchasing decisions.

“Organic delivers on those values and is also increasingly seen as the healthy and ethical choice thanks to mounting evidence of the difference between organic and non-organic, both in terms of nutrition and environmental impact.

“This stamp of assurance will only become more important as understanding of organic increases and we look toward the formation of new trade deals post-Brexit. Encouragingly, shoppers are remaining loyal to UK organic in the face of this, lifted by the assurance and benefits the organic label and Soil Association symbol brings, and we expect the market to continue growing at pace in coming years.”

The rate of growth in independent retail and home delivery has overtaken supermarket sales, and almost 30 percent of all organic sales now take place online or on the high street.

Rose Price, head buyer at Ocado, said: “We know how important organic is to our customers, and that’s why we’ve spent the last year expanding our ranges of organic to meet rising demand.

One million meals

“As a result of a recent Meet the Buyer event, we are hoping to launch over 100 new products during 2018. We see no end to the strong growth in organic, as the market has been buoyed by a new generation of shoppers looking to spend their earnings on food and drink that is not only better for them, but also for animal welfare and the environment.”

The rise of consumer demand is driving increased availability of organic in the foodservice and eating out sector, with sales in 2017 rising 10.2 percent and reaching £84.4 million. The 2017 Out to Lunch report found organic on the menu in twelve of the twenty five restaurant chains visited.

This is double the results from the 2015 study – with Wetherspoons, Strada, Jamie’s Italian and Beefeater among those using organic ingredients.

Spend through the Food for Life Served Here scheme increased by 20 percent to £18 million in 2017, doubling in just two years across schools, hospitals, care homes and visitor attractions.

Beauty products

This is reflected in the growing number of silver and gold Food for Life Served Here awards, requiring a minimum spend on organic. There are currently 187 award holders at silver or gold level, serving more than one million meals every day across the UK.

The Soil Association’s Organic Beauty & Wellbeing Market Report also launches today, revealing that the organic and natural beauty market was worth £75.9 million in 2017, up 24 percent on the previous year, alongside a 25 percent growth for organic textiles.

This growth is driven by rising consumer demand for transparency and trust alongside an increasing interest in wellness which spans food and beauty.  The significance and need for certification for beauty products is becoming ever clearer and COSMOS-certified brands (the Soil Association standard) now number more than 5,000.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This news article is based on a press release from the Soil Association.