Theresa May’s government finally confirmed its intention to end coal burning in power station in 2025 this January. This coal phaseout is long-overdue.

But the decision contains three dangerous loopholes: firstly, the government does not seek to end coal mining in the UK; secondly, it would allow plants to continue burning coal if large amounts of wood are cofired despite science showing that this is far from climate friendly and thirdly, the government is determined to compensate for the end of coal burning with a significant expansion in gas power station capacity.

Read our news story about the huge global slump in construction of new coal plants.

Amber Rudd, the then secretary of state for energy and climate change,  announced “proposals to close coal by 2025 – and restrict its use from 2023” on the eve of the 2015 UN Climate Conference in Paris.

Electricity bill

What the Government committed to at that time was nothing more than holding a consultation. Worryingly, the emphasis was firmly on replacing coal with gas.

Still, it was the first time that a government anywhere had announced plans to end coal burning in power stations – though it is worth remembering that only 78 out of 195 countries in the world were burning coal for electricity in 2014, and that several countries, from Zambia to Switzerland, had ended coal power before then.

It took the government until January this year to publish its actual decision. By then it had been overtaken by several other European countries, with the French president having announced an end to coal burning in power stations as early as 2021 or 2022.

Meantime, UK coal electricity continued its steep decline: between 2011 and 2016, coal electricity fell by 72 percent, thanks largely to a trebling of electricity generation from wind and solar power and a reduction in electricity use due to greater efficiency.

Although the Government’s full 2017 energy statistics are yet to be published, coal burning clearly declined further last year. Perversely, coal power stations are being kept open artificially until 2025 – with the help of subsidies – funded through a surcharge on everybody’s electricity bill. 

The very fact that the Government has confirmed its intention to end coal burning for electricity in 2025 is a great success, thanks to years of persistent campaigning by climate activists and environmental NGOs.

Burning coal

After all, this is a Government which has axed almost all new onshore wind and solar subsidies, cut support for energy efficiency by 58 percent since 2012, handed North Sea oil companies £1.2 billion in tax rebates in 2017/18 alone, and is endeavouring to open up large swathes of the country to fracking. 

Yet – while acknowledging an important milestone for climate campaigners – a critical assessment of what exactly has been decided is vital: Sadly, the coal phaseout announcement itself comes with several dangerous loopholes.

Firstly, the phaseout does not extend to mining coal. In Pont Valley, County Durham, Banks Group is set to open up a new opencast coal mine. Campaigners recently occupied the site.

The same company is trying to get planning permission for another such mine in Druridge Bay, Northumberland. The first new deep coal mine in three decades is proposed in Cumbria. Operations at existing opencast coal mines – the biggest of them at Ffos-y-Fran near Merthyr Tydfil – are continuing with no end in sight. 

Secondly, instead of mandating the closure of all coal power stations, the government wants to only close those coal-burning units whose CO2 emissions exceed 450 kg/MWh – which is less than half what burning coal for electricity emits.

Worst impacts

This matters because it allows energy companies to continue burning coal indefinitely provided they co-fire it with large amounts of wood – wrongly considered carbon neutral under flawed carbon accounting mechanisms. 

The UK is the world’s biggest importer of wood pellets, most of which come from the southern US, where carbon-rich forest ecosystems inside a global biodiversity hotspot are being clearcut, increasingly to make pellets which are then shipped across the Atlantic.

More than 800 scientists recently signed a letter which warns: “Even if forests are allowed to regrow, using wood deliberately harvested for burning will increase carbon in the atmosphere and warming for decades to centuries – as many studies have shown – even when wood replaces coal, oil or natural gas. The reasons are fundamental and occur regardless of whether forest management is ‘sustainable’.”

Yet the UK government – like others – continues to ignore the science. Cutting down trees and whole forests and burning the wood in power stations is classified as ‘low-carbon’, even though scientists have pointed out time and time again that it is commonly no better for the climate than burning coal, when considered over a generation or longer.

Climate science shows that we need to steeply reduce CO2 emissions now if we are to have any hope of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.

Coal phaseout

So far, Drax power station has converted three of its six units to biomass and is about to convert a fourth one, albeit only to operate at a low capacity. EPH is converting the previously mothballed Lynemouth power station to biomass. Those conversions depend on previously guaranteed ‘renewable electricity’ subsidies. Again, this is paid out of a surcharge on our electricity bills). This is £1.5 million per day in the case of Drax. 

Whether or not the ‘biomass loophole’ in the coal phaseout will lead to more biomass being burned in the UK depends on future subsidies decisions.

Regardless of what happens in the UK, this loophole sends a dangerous message to governments around the world, especially those that signed up to the Powering Past Coal Alliance launched by the UK and Canada at the Bonn Climate Summit in 2017, which commits signatories to work towards a coal phaseout.

Worryingly, nine of the countries which signed up to that Alliance also committed themselves to greatly increasing biomass burning in a misguided Vision Statement called “Scaling-up the low carbon bioeconomy” – the UK being one of them.

The third problem is that the government is still making a coal phaseout contingent on new gas power stations being built.

Hands of frackers

The government’s expressed optimism about “energy security” being guaranteed should not distract from the fact that a get-out clause is proposed which would allow a coal phaseout to be suspended if not ‘enough’ new gas capacity is built.

The government has scaled back its “ambitions” for new gas power capacity from 26 GW envisioned by George Osborne in 2012 – to 5.5 GW now foreseen.

But any new gas power stations are incompatible with the aim of keeping global warming to within 1.5oC, set out in the Paris Agreement.

Furthermore, the hype around such a new gas demand will play into the hands of frackers. Drax is in the process of applying for planning permission to replace its two remaining coal units with what would be the UK’s largest gas power station by far.

RWE, Eggborouh Power Ltd – owned by the Czech company EPH – and SSE have put forward large gas power proposals, too. So far, just one new gas plant – far smaller than those now proposed – has been built since 2013.

Genuinely low-carbon

Now, however, energy companies are pushing for high subsidies for gas and the caveats contained in the coal-phaseout announcement may just give them enough leverage to obtain those. 

The UK’s coal phaseout thus serves as a case study for the importance of holistic energy campaigning: while we need to celebrate successes against one form of dirty energy, campaigners must be vigilant about false solutions pushed to replace it.

A meaningful response to the climate crisis does not just require an end to coal but a rapid transition towards genuinely low-carbon renewable energy that does not involve burning carbon, coupled with a shift towards much lower energy use. 

This Author

Almuth Ernsting helped to found Biofuelwatch in 2006 and has been researching and campaigning on a broad range of issues related to the impacts of different forms of bioenergy since then, including biofuels for transport and wood-bsased bioenergy. She lives in Edinburgh.

Inequality is growing to the point where just six people have the same amount of wealth as half the world’s population, says Jonathan Bartley, co-leader of the Green party in the UK.

Large transnational corporations have outgrown entire countries and in the UK real wages are actually declining, he observes in his talk for the Resurgence Trust in London.

Jonathon Porritt, the co-founder of Forum for the Future is an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development, will be giving the next Resurgence Talk in London on 28 March 2018. More details here. 

Jonathan argues neoliberalism – defined by deregulation, privatisation, weakened unions and atomised consumers – has brought us to this crisis point and its ideas are bankrupt, both morally and economically. 

Intrinsic value

This has been detrimental to the environment: “To neoliberals, the environment is an externality. It holds no intrinsic value: it’s somewhere to grab resources, dump waste and pump our green house gases and CO2 emissions. 

“But we know our economic prosperity depends on the health of the environment – it’s the ultimate source of everything we make and use from food and materials to the very air we breathe.

“We believe a thriving environment means a healthy future for all of us. Sadly this fact has disappeared from all political debate.”

He says the UK needs to restore community ties and build a green economy.

In countries like Germany he adds, they are already putting the transition to a low carbon economy at the heart of their industrial strategies not just for the good of the planet, but because it makes economic sense.

Yet, he concludes, these connections aren’t being made in the UK and we are tumbling down the list of places where green investors are choosing to come.

This speaker

Jonathan Bartley is co-leader of the Green party.

Construction of new coal-fired power plants has tumbled by 73 percent in just two years, according to new analysis which also predicts that the global fleet will start to shrink from 2022.

The rapid-moving trend of decline in coal plant development is spelled out in a report published today by Greenpeace, the Global Coal Plant Tracker and US environmental organisation the Sierra Club.

Almuth Ernsting argues that Britain’s coal phase out plan has “three dangerous loopholes”.

They found that the number of coal plants under development worldwide dropped for the second year in a row – largely due to changes in China and India – both of which have dominated coal plant development over the past decade.

Phase-out campaign

China has tightened restrictions on the development of coal plants following an oversupply of power as the country ramped up its renewable energy generation. This has led to the suspension of an estimated 444GW of coal-fired capacity under various stages of development in the country.

In India, a 50 percent fall in the cost of renewable energy in two years has led financiers to withdraw support for coal, leaving 17GW of coal plant halted mid-construction.

Globally, the researchers found that between 2015 and 2017, newly completed coal plants fell by 41 percent, construction starts reduced by 73 percent, while permitting and planning was down by 59 percent.

The report also revealed that an all-time record of 97GW of coal plants retired in the past three years, led by the US (45GW), China (16GW) and UK (8GW). Retirements of old coal plants will surpass new coal power capacity by 2022, the researchers predicted.

A worldwide coal phase-out campaign is gaining momentum, with commitments from 34 countries and city or state authorities. In 2017, only seven countries initiated new coal power construction at more than one location.

The smokestack

However, the report warned that projected lifetime emissions from existing coal plant fleet will continue to exceed the carbon budget for coal needed to meet the 2015 Paris climate agreement. In order to keep coal emissions within that budget, further building must be ended and existing plants must be retired at an accelerated pace, the campaigners said.

“From a climate and health perspective, the trend toward a declining coal power fleet is encouraging, but not happening fast enough,” said Ted Nace, director of CoalSwarm. “Fortunately, mass production is cutting solar and wind costs much faster than expected, and both financial markets and power planners worldwide are taking notice.”

Meanwhile, the 200m smokestack of the former Kingsnorth coal plant in Kent is due to be demolished today. The chimney is all that remains of the coal power station, which a decade ago, became the focal point of a huge public campaign to stop new coal plants being built in Britain.

In 2007, six Greenpeace activists climbed to the top of the smokestack and painted the name of then prime minister Gordon Brown down the side. They were later cleared of causing criminal damage in a trial, after the jury recognised for the first time the potential damage to property from climate change as a reasonable ground for direct action. Energy firm E.ON shelved plans to build a new coal plant at Kingsnorth in 2010.

The government subsequently abandoned its proposals for a new fleet of coal plants. In 2007, coal generated 34 percent of the UK’s electricity. A decade later, this has plummeted to just seven percent, with the government now planning to close down the remaining 15.5GW of coal plant by 2025.

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.

It has been a heck of a few days in the spotlight for Cambridge Analytica — a ‘political consultancy’ that confesses it likes to operate in the shadows.

Revelations continue to emerge about its practices, including allegations of illegal use of Facebook data and corrupting foreign elections.

While the company denies any illegal behaviour, what we do know is that it has been behind seismic political shocks on both sides of the Atlantic: Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump.

Science denial

Tied to those major political upheavals is a climate science denial agenda that seeks to slash regulation, and line the pockets of those with a vested interest in fossil fuels.

The map below shows how Cambridge Analytica lies at the heart of a network of operatives pushing climate science denial in the name of Brexit and Trump.

From Cambridge Analytica to Trump, via the Mercers and a web of climate science denial

On the US side, Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer are the key links. The Mercers invested approximately $5 million in Cambridge Analytica.

The Mercers are also well known funders of climate science denial, and its current global posterboy Donald Trump.

Robert Mercer emerged as the “single most influential donor to Trump” ahead of his election, according to the Center for Public Integrity (CIP).  Robert Mercer’s super PAC, while not endorsing Donald Trump directly, would focus ‘”solely on attacking Clinton”, Bloomberg reported.

Chief strategist

Mercer’s strategists, super PACs, and other political organizations as well as his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, “emerged to play a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign”, according to The New York Times.

The Mercer Family Foundation also spent at least $3,824,000 between 2003 and 2010 directly funding groups opposing climate change action. That money went to organisations including The Heartland Institute, Manhattan Institute, Media Research Center, and Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM).

The Mercers are also linked to other major funders of climate science denial including the Koch brothers. In 2014, Robert Mercer made a $2.5 million contribution into the Koch’s Freedom Partners Action Fund.

The Koch’s have spent at least $100,343,292 on 84 groups denying climate change science between 1997 and 2011, according to Greenpeace — crucial years for international climate change talks.

Another of Cambridge Analytica’s funders (and co-founders) is Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for Trump. Prior to joining Trump, Bannon has been the figurehead of alt-right propaganda machine, Breitbart News. He returned to the organisation after his ignominious depature from the White House.

Both Bannon and Breitbart are well-known for their climate science denial. Bannon hired infamous UK climate science denier columnist James Delingpole as a Breitbart editor.

For more information, see DeSmog UK’s map of a transatlantic network politicians and lobbyists pushing for Trump and Brexit.

View the full interactive map on LittleSis. For more information and profiles of all the organisations and individuals, see DeSmog UK’s Disinformation Database.

From Cambridge Analytica to Brexit, via the UK government and anti-climate science lobbyists

Cambridge Analytica also has well-publicised ties to Brexit. It was involved with unofficial anti-EU campaign, Leave EU, having been hired by the group’s main funder, Arron Banks.

Arron Banks infamously shared a photo opp with Donald Trump and chief Brexiteer Nigel Farage in a golden lift. Farage has spoken at a number of events hosted by right-wing lobby groups in the US, including the anti-climate action Heritage Foundation.

Banks is also a political ally of Conservative politician and current Leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom. Leadsom, who has a slightly shaky grasp of climate science, was a committee member of the official Brexit campaign group, Vote Leave.

Fervently supported

Vote Leave was also supported by two fringe members of the Conservative party, North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson and hereditary peer Matt Ridley. Both are well-known allies of the the UK’s most prominent climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Cambridge Analytica also have ties to the party currently propping up Theresa May’s government, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The party didn’t have a single mention of “climate change” in its election manifesto, and has hindered climate action in Ireland.

Infighting between the Leave EU and Vote Leave groups in the run up to the referendum spawned campaign group Grassroots Out, which was fervently supported by DUP MP and renowned climate science denier, Sammy Wilson.

This author

Mat Hope is editor of DeSmog UK, an investigative journalism outlet dedicated to unveiling corporate wrongdoing on climate change and the environment. He tweets @matjhope. For more information, see DeSmog UK’s map of climate science deniers pushing for Brexit based out of 55 Tufton Street. Full disclosure: Brendan Montague, editor of The Ecologist, is a former editor of DeSmog UK.

Colourfest, the yoga- inspired festival, returns to Gaunts House in Dorset for its seventh year this summer promising a “unique opportunity for celebration and connection through yoga, dance and music.”

The organisers are offering a restorative alternative to the many hedonistic music festivals in the UK summer calendar – this will be an alcohol and drug-free event.

Yoga remains at the heart of the festival. The many workshops, performances and activities are infused with its spirit and ethos, bringing the chance for deep connection and nourishment, and generating a calm and uplifting ambience.

Colours of life

Robbie Newman, co-organiser of Colourfast told The Ecologist: “Colourfest blends inner rest with more active expressions and promises to be playful, enriching and insightful, celebrating the many colours of life. 

“The delicious blend of yoga, movement, music, creativity and spirited celebration leaves you feeling connected, in the flow, and full of the joy of being alive.” 

The atmosphere will be somewhat calmer than your average festival, but there will still be plenty of music including Glowglobes with their French-lilted mix of acoustic gypsy-jazz, folk and vocal harmonies, and jazz-band Skedaddle, blending jazz, klezmer and Balkan gypsy songs and dances.

Slower pace

Rowan Cobelli, co-organiser of Colourfest, said:  “Colourfest is a constantly evolving gem of a gathering created for people looking for a connecting and restorative festival experience – upbeat, nurturing and family friendly.

“Our programme caters for those just starting to explore themselves and life in a deeper way, as well as offering more intensive opportunities for those more experienced in transformative work.

“Alongside the uplifting workshops, keeping the event alcohol and drug free really charges the atmosphere in beautiful ways. We encourage you to come for the full four days as it takes time to drop into a slower pace and build sufficient resources to really open up to and benefit from the wellspring of natural treasures this festival offers.”

 This Author

Catherine Harte is contributing editor of The Ecologist.  Colourfest runs from Thursday 31 May to Monday 3 June . More information can be found at the Colourfest website.

There was much I can admire in Theresa May’s recent speech on housing, that heralded a revision of the planning rules. The prime minister called homelessness in our rich country “a source of national shame” – and she is right.

She pledged to increase house building, but to do so without “destroying the country we love”. And she attacked big developers for gaming the system and putting dividends and executive pay before building more homes.

As I read the speech, I mentally ticked off many of the arguments in my new book, How to build houses and save the countryside, which brings together many of the debates the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) had in my time as its chief executive.

Let builders build

As a country, the past few decades have seen us pull off the difficult trick of building too few homes while losing too much countryside.

Unfortunately, however, the policy changes announced by the PM are unlikely to change this. They are well-intentioned – and indeed, use much of CPRE’s language – but they do not go far enough.

For years, debates on housing and planning were largely shaped by free market think-tanks arguing for planning liberalisation: ‘Free up the Green Belt, let builders build, and the houses will come’ was the tone set. Planning was progressively weakened, but successive reforms had little impact on housing supply.

That is because the principal cause of our failure to build enough new homes was not planning restrictions, but the fact that the state more or less stopped building houses 40 years ago.

It is extraordinary that clever people could look at our failure to build enough homes and conclude that planning, rather than the collapse in public house building, must be to blame.

Cost of land

The advocates of planning liberalisation ignored the fact that for 30 years after the Second World War, when more than 200,000 homes were built every year in the UK, local authorities built at least 100,000 of them.

Between 1951 and 1979, 48 percent of new homes were built for social rent. After 1979, local authorities virtually ceased to build and neither the private nor housing association sectors increased their output enough to make up the shortfall. Thus the housing crisis.

Where the planning system can be blamed for our failure to build enough houses is in its failure to control rising land prices. Planning has not been too restrictive – it has been too weak.

The 1947 planning settlement had two sides. Its role in constraining development is well known and explains why it is under attack in some quarters. But it also ensured a plentiful supply of development land at reasonable prices.

Between 1946 and 1970, work started on 32 new towns, which are now home to 2.76 million people – 4.3 percent of UK households.  New town development corporations bought land at agricultural prices and used the uplift in value that came with planning permission to fund the development.

When work started on developing Milton Keynes, land contributed only around 1 percent of the cost of a new home. It now accounts for over half the cost of most new homes.

Brownfield sites

The same principle of capturing the uplift in land value can, of course, be used for sustainable urban extensions and brownfield urban developments.

There is enough suitable brownfield land in England to build at least a million new homes, as CPRE has repeatedly demonstrated – and the supply is constantly replenished. We should use it to save countryside, improve urban areas and save carbon.

But developers prefer to build on virgin greenfield sites as they are easier to develop and more lucrative, and the current system allows them to do so.

Sajid Javid, the housing minister, has promised a more ‘muscular’ state, but he appears to be more eager to take on ‘nimby’ protestors than to foster serious competition to the few volume house builders who currently dominate the market.

What is needed is new housing providers, and the state – what Green Alliance trustee Mariana Mazzucato calls the entrepreneurial state – should be fostering them.

New housing providers

Regardless of how much the government pokes and cajoles them, the big builders have neither the means nor desire to build on the scale needed. We need new private sector providers – SMEs, custom builders, factory built homes – and fostering them will take concerted government action.

The government should also support a serious programme of council house building – many Conservative councils are calling for the right to build – and fund housing associations to build social housing.

There is nothing un-Tory about this programme: Conservative governments built plenty of houses before 1979. If we could combine Harold Macmillan’s commitment to quantity and Nye Bevan’s concern about quality and place we would go a long way to solving the housing crisis and taking the sting out of development battles. 

As for those fighting to protect the countryside from more executive homes and anodyne, anywhere-housing estates, they have nothing to be ashamed of.

My book makes the case for some new housing on greenfield sites, but if we are to lose countryside, let’s make sure we lose it to beautiful, well-thought out, energy efficient developments that do something to help those in housing need. That should not be too much to ask, should it?

This Author

Shaun Spiers is the executive director of Green Alliance.  He is former chief executive of the CPRE and author of  How to build houses and save the countryside.

More than half of major home appliances purchases are now made online. We expect to be able to compare brands and models easily and accurately  when we’re looking to the internet for our new fridge, washing machine or cooker. That is one of the reasons we shop online, after all.

For any savvy and ethically-minded consumer, the energy efficiency ratings of these goods are a crucial comparison tool. We want to save money on our energy bills and reduce our carbon footprint – but this might not be as easy as we think. 

What are energy labels and why are they important?

Energy labels were first introduced in 1995 as a way of helping consumers to choose more energy efficient products. This is no small ambition – the European Commission claims that 175Mtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalent) will be saved thanks to energy labelling, by 2020, an average of 16 percent per product.

Providing access to this information means that consumers can make educated decisions about their appliances, decrease their running costs and reduce their environmental impact. In turn, through their collective buying power, consumers can push manufacturers to design more efficient products.

This is working. Particularly in the case of fridge-freezers and washing machines, huge advances have been made in terms of improving energy efficiency. A modern A-rated fridge-freezer today could have a quarter of the running costs of a 20-year old machine – that’s a 75 percent carbon reduction too. 

Energy labels provide a simple A+++ to G energy rating for a easy comparison between products, as well as more detailed information such actual energy consumption in kWh per year, water consumption and noise levels.

Since 1995, shop retailers have had to provide these labels to the consumer at the point of sale. Thanks to strong campaigning by several consumer groups, including Ethical Consumer, it has been law, since 2015, for online retailers to provide these energy labels too.

Online retailers – by European law – must provide the full energy label to the consumer before they purchase. Simple, right? Perhaps not. It seems many online retailers are struggling to provide this most basic level of information to their customers.

Are online retailers hanging energy efficiency out to dry?

From 19-22 January 2018, Ethical Consumer analysed major online retailers to check their compliance with these important rules. Shockingly, we found that seven: Amazon, AO.com, Argos, Curry’s, Euronics, Hughes Electrical and John Lewis were not in full compliance with the rules.

Hughes Electrical had no energy labels at all on its site – and when notified by Ethical Consumer gave no response and made no visible changes to its site at all.

Amazon had missing labels on some products and there were energy labels that had been tampered with on other products so that vital energy usage information was missing. Although they responded and made some efforts to remove the offending products, there were are still products without labels on the website when we checked.

Although AO.com and John Lewis also responded and removed pages, there are still errors on multiple product pages. Curry’s and Euronics failed to respond to our messages and continue selling products in contravention of the EU laws regarding energy labelling.

Retailers have had three years since the rules were first introduced to make the changes to their websites but they still refuse to comply with EU law.

It’s time to use our consumer power

Sadly, there has been some severe cost-cutting when it comes to regulating this legislation: Consumer Direct closed in 2012 and local Trading Standards offices have been shutting down all over the UK. Without enforcement the online retailers are continuing unchecked.

As consumers, we spend an average of £3.4billion a year on electricity for washing and drying clothing, cleaning dishes and cooling food. 20 percent of our electricity bill goes to power our fridge-freezer alone.

These appliances cost us a lot of money to run. We deserve to have some control over that cost, particularly when we are buying new white goods in the hope to save money in the future. We don’t have to let retailers get away with this and we can use our consumer power to change things.

Put pressure on the retailers

In five easy steps we can push the retailers to change their ways:
    1. Demand to have the energy labels when you are making an online purchase. Make sure you are given the correct and full information so that you can make an informed decision.
    2. Share this article and spread the word to get other ethically-conscious consumers to do the same.
    3. Check out our guides to choosing ethical and efficient appliances, from kettles and microwaves to cookers and washing machines.
    4. We’ll continue to campaign on behalf of all consumers to ensure that we all have the information we need to make good informed decisions but we’d love you to join the journey with us. Find out more about Ethical Consumer and our monthly bi-monthly magazine.
    5. And, of course, we need to remember that changing our habits can often make the biggest impact…

These Authors

Josie Wexler and Clare Carlile are journalists with Ethical Consumer. This article is the first published in partnership between The Ecologist and Ethical Consumer.

Do we care more about people or forests? This seems to be the question implicit in much of the current debate that pits forest protection and nature conservation against food production.

A debate that involves much political hand wringing over the limited supply of land to do both. But this is a false conundrum.

Yes, the fates of our remaining forests and our food system are intimately linked. But it is the combination of industrial farming and industrial forest plantation systems that is wreaking havoc.

Collapse of biodiversity

There are solutions out there, as our new report explains, if we transform the way we view and manage our farmlands, forests and natural commons towards agroecology and community forest management.

This week governments, UN Institutions, academics and small scale food producers will meet in Rome to map out how to ‘scale up’ – provide institutional and policy support – and ‘scale out’ – increase geographical reach – agroecology.

In order to succeed, it is crucial that decision makers understand that agroecology is about changing the social, economic and political system of food production not just about technical changes to farming practices.

It is also key that we expand our perspectives on agroecology, including its link to ways of increasing the power and control of local communities over their resources, such as community forest management.    

Today, there is little doubt that agroecology offers us a path away from the well documented ravages of the industrial food system – which include climate change, the collapse of biodiversity, diet related diseases, pesticide poisoning, land grabbing and evictions, abuse of workers, farmers’ debt and a failure to feed the world, especially the most marginalised communities.

Involved in struggle

There is little doubt even from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (UN FAO). This is a major step forward. 

But we need more. Friends of the Earth International and social movements of small scale food producers – the pioneers of agroecology and its main protagonists – recognise that in order for the agroecology movement to achieve its full potential it must address questions of power, control, autonomy and the very purpose of our food system. 

Who do we produce for? The industrial system is focussed on producing agrocommodities – palm oil, soy, corn and meat traded in global commodity and financial markets whose sole aim is to extract the highest profit possible for food and finance corporations. These same agrocommodities are responsible for the majority of global deforestation. 

Who controls the system? Currently the industrial food system is controlled by global food and finance corporations. This means in order to scale up agroecology, peasants and small scale food producers are continuously involved in struggle.

This is the struggle to access, control, use, and shape or configure land and physical territory – consisting of communities, infrastructure, soil, water, biodiversity, air, mountains, valleys, plains, rivers and coasts.

Practicing agroecology

In areas where agroecology has successfully spread to hundreds of thousands of food producers, it has been a method for peasants to gain control over their productive resources and territories in order to feed themselves and their communities with agroecological methods. 

What social, political and cultural values is the system based on? The industrial system is geared towards gaining unprecedented market power and profits for oligopolistic agrifood corporations.

It views the natural world and people as a source of extractive profit. The agroecology system has the potential to prioritise peoples’ wellbeing over profit – feeding the world with healthy local food, providing good stewardship of the rural environment, preserving cultural heritage and the peasant or family farm way of life, and promoting resilience to climate change. 

Is this hoping for too much? No. There are approximately 500 million family farmers in the world who already produce 80 percent of the world’s food .

These farms are already feeding about 70 – 80 percent of the world and – contrary to popular belief – their numbers are increasing. While not all of these farms are practicing agroecology or food sovereignty, many of them are already engaged in a battle with agribusiness over the future of our food system. 

Body of evidence

What’s more, peasants are not alone. The FAO estimates that there are about 1.2 billion people dependent on forests, many of whom also practice some form of agroecology in their day to day lives.

Many of these communities – such as those of indigenous peoples – already manage their forests and territories for collective benefit. Numerous studies show that community managed forests are richer in biodiversity than those that are conserved under other forms of conservation.

Agroecology and community forest management are intimately connected. Both strengthen community control of the territory, promote the rights of people over profits for market economies, recognise the role and autonomy of women, promote social and solidarity economies and local markets, defend and manage traditional knowledge, community heritage and common goods and promote and strengthen a vision that is not centred solely on humans use of nature but also on the value of nature itself.

As our report shows, there is a rich body of evidence and examples of people putting these values into practice. Our challenge is to create the institutional and societal mechanisms that will enable these solutions to flourish.

This Author

Kirtana Chandrasekaran is Food Sovereignty coordinator for Friends of the Earth International. She has spent over a decade fighting for food sovereignty and against the injustice of the industrial food system in India, the UK and Europe.

Dieting is a national obsession – but many diets have a negative impact on health and people’s sense of well being. A new approach is showing people how they can eat to benefit their own health – and make planet-friendly choices at the same time.

The Wildevore approach embodies some of the philosophies of veganism, vegetarianism, flexitarianism, ethical omnivorism, and clean eating – but looks more closely at the pressures on the environment and the impact that has on human health.

This new way of eating looks at how to make the best choices both nutritionally and ethically and aims at educating followers about where their food originates from.

Health problems

Think foraging, eating from the veggie patch, buying locally and from regenerative farming methods, and you’ll be some way to becoming a fully-fledged Wildevore.

Caroline Grindrod, an environmental conservationist, writer, and Wildevore coach, and  Georgia Winfield-Hayes, a nutritionist, are both leading this way of thinking. They both agree that this new diet is not for the faint-hearted, requiring some serious homework and a desire to change habits.

The system can work for vegans and meat-eaters, but there is an underlying need to understand the consequences of food choices. In the Wildevore approach, meat reared on regenerative farms and fed on natural diets is allowed for its human health benefits.  

Georgia has written extensively on human nutrition, and says a vegan diet doesn’t always provide the best results. “From a health perspective a vegan diet, in the short term is an amazing way to cleanse the body and this feels great.

“However, long term it can create serious health problems. Soya, a main protein source for many vegans, is a hormone disrupting food and can cause our own reproductive systems to stop working correctly.

Sustainable choices

“Other issue with not eating animals are omega 3 deficiency, and certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies, all combined with the problems created by soya can cause premature degradation of bone tissue.”

Relying on our supermarket staples has led to a decrease in nutrition levels, argues Georgia. “The minerals in food have reduced by up to 60 percent. These deficiencies compound our craving for the taste of nutrient dense foods. But if we don’t understand this we end up eating all the wrong things.”

The Wildevore approach is about “rewilding” our palate to make healthier food choices and move away from the fast-food nature of most diets. Georgia and Caroline claim the Wildevore approach can help with health and imbalances in weight.

Another key aim with this innovative diet is to break down barriers. There has long been segregation between meat-eaters and non-meat eaters – with hostility coming from both sides against the other’s alternative choices.

Caroline believes breaking down categorisation is key. “We want everyone to realise they eat life forms from a cycle of birth, life, death and decay. You can make local and sustainable choices when eating meat and you can make local and sustainable choices when eating plants – we all need to take responsibility for doing better.”

Harvested and killed

If you choose to eat meat using the Wildevore approach, then you’ll have to be incredibly choosy. Intensive farming, GMOs, antibiotics and mistreatment of animals have absolutely no place in the world of the Wildevore.

Meat that is allowed on the diet is from farms that restore ecology. Georgia said: “Animals can be used to regenerate land or degrade it. And in fact much land requires herbivores to help regenerate the ecosystem, it’s just most farming systems don’t function this way and the animals are degrading the land.

So we choose animals that are helping restore the ecology. These meats, which include wild meats, are far more nutritious as they are not fed any concentrates, they have a varied diet and a natural life.”

The Wildevore approach promotes restoration of grasslands and preservation of our precious soils and forests. It means eating less, but better foods.

It many ways, this is harking back to when humans had a strong relationship with the food they harvested and killed.

Ecological diversity

Caroline said: “The process of degrading our soils though ploughing and fencing in livestock has depleted the nutrients in our food and reduced the variety and quality of our diet with disastrous effects.

“Our food is a shadow of what true hunter gathers eat. There’s of course no way we can all live or eat from the ‘wild’ anymore – we’ve destroyed most of it.

“But we can take steps to build healthy ecosystems in all the land that grows food for humans. This is the only sustainable way we can live on this planet.

“Farms should be like nature reserves, building an ecological bank account which can generate ‘biological bank interest’ in the form of food for homo sapiens – the ‘conscious’ keystone predator.

“Wildlife, livestock and humans will all benefit from this increased bank account which must never again be spent like the savings account we once inherited and subsequently robbed in the form of soil fertility and ecological diversity.”

Many of the foods that are enjoyed by both vegans and meat-eaters, such as soya, avocados and coconut oil, have led to vast plantations of monocultures which put extraordinary pressures on land. The felling of rainforests for monocultures – including animal feeds – is something we are all responsible for. Buying from small organic farms reduces this pressure.

The Wildevore approach itself isn’t a three-month quick fix – that simply won’t do. This is a way of life, and one that Georgia and Caroline believe can help restore our fragile planet.

This Author

Laura Briggs is a regular contributor to The Ecologist and can be found Tweeting at @WordsbyBriggs. Georgia and Caroline run a course for dedicated planet-loving foodies. With a couple of hours learning a week you can understand the Wildevore approach and find out if it’s right for you. Find out more at www.wildevore.com. 

Shooters should be extra vigilant when shooting woodcock during the current cold snap – and allow the birds a suitable recovery period to keep their energy levels up, a new study states.

Research has revealed that once frozen conditions set in, there is the potential for woodcock to starve to death within a week. In the event of a cold spell in Britain, woodcock could, on average, make escape flights of 860 km or withstand frozen conditions without feeding for six days.

For the past eight years, woodcock experts Andrew Hoodless, Carlos Sánchez and Owen Williams have been examining the energy reserves of Eurasian woodcock, which is a popular quarry species found across Europe.

Trade-off

As in many other birds, the woodcock faces a daily trade-off in winter: carry too little fat and it risks starving, carry too much fat and it reduces its ability to escape from predators.

A sample of 221 birds from shoots in Britain in winter were dissected to examine individual variation in fat stores and the relationship between fat levels and body weight.

This was followed by the use of weights from birds captured at ringing sites – with 1,689 captures during 2010/11-2015/16 – to assess changes in mobilizable energy in relation to season and during cold spells.

The findings, published in the  Journal of Applied Ecology, show that woodcock are able to store large amounts of energy as fat in mid-winter and increase energy reserves as night air temperature drops below 0°C.

This suggests that, as indicated by previous research, woodcock are able to compensate for difficult feeding conditions at night by increasing the time spent feeding during the day.  And to reduce the effects of cold weather on woodcock, shooting should be restricted before energy reserves are depleted

Recovery time

Dr Hoodless, head of wetland research at the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, said: “We suggest that shooters across Europe should adopt a more cautious approach to shooting woodcock in cold weather.

“They should stop after four days of frozen conditions and allow the birds at least seven days to recover after the end of the cold period before shooting recommences.

“We think statutory authorities across Europe should adopt a consistent approach and consider a regional system for an alert advising cessation of woodcock shooting after four days of frozen conditions across an appropriate range of inland sites.”

He added: “Shooting organisations and hunters’ clubs could play an active role – especially through social media – in quickly raising awareness of adverse conditions and promoting good practice.”

This Author

Catherine Harte is contributing editor of The Ecologist.  This article is based on a news release from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.