Romania’s primeval forests – rich in biodiversity and essential to climate change mitigation – are in jeopardy due to government negligence and the activities of commercial interests.

The forests contain over half of all remaining tracts of pristine forest in the EU – and are home to wolf, brown bear, lynx and countless bird and plant species.

Yet Romania has no up-to-date  inventory of where these unique areas of wilderness are located, nor adequate systems in place to protect them.

Forest mapping

In 2005, a team of scientists from Holland conducted mapping of these primary forest tracts for the Pin Matra study. However, the inventory contained a number of errors and there were extensive omissions.

Environmentalists stressed the urgent need to conduct further identification and mapping and in 2016 the government initiated a new catalogue, setting out criteria for the identification of virgin and quasi-virgin forests.  

Yet – despite numerous studies being submitted by experts and NGOs such as Agent Green, Greenpeace and WWF – only a handful of new areas have been accepted and groups complain that forest authorities are stalling the process by failing to provide access to relevant forest management plans and maps.

One environmentalist close to project said: “My team has mapped thousands of hectares of virgin and quasi-virgin forests, but we are still waiting for most of these forests to be included in the catalogue.  There is great pressure from the logging industry for  them not to be designated protected sites. It’s very depressing.”

Big business

Forestry in Romania is big business, complicated by an opaque system of rights and ownership structures.  Traditionally, local communities exploited forests for firewood, local crafts and home-building, but over recent decades several foreign companies moved in on Romania, backed by the state and capitalising on lax regulations and a culture of corruption.  

There followed a wave of illegal logging, threatening to decimate the country’s forests, as factory processing capacities outstripped legal cutting quotas.

Impoverished local communities holding precious stakes in ancestral forest land sold wood to these big buyers, even as many referred to them as vampiric, sucking up timber and profits on the back of Romania’s resources.  

Environmentalists have worked hard to engage with local communities to expose the  tactics used by the timber mafia who operate unsustainably and launder massive amounts of illegal wood into the supply chain feeding mainly export markets.

Commercial exploitation

Campaigners did gain ground as the state introduced measures such as the Forest Inspector website which makes transportation data available to the public, along with a hotline for community-members to call if they suspect a truck to be carrying illegal timber.  

But corruption remains a huge problem and logging continues even in protected areas with many people afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals.  

In the case of virgin forests, the logging may be perfectly legal on paper, with experts suggesting that over 50 percent of relevant forests are not included in either the Pin Matra study or the new catalogue.  

Once any logging activity has taken place, however insignificant, the area no longer qualifies as virgin forest and can therefore be omitted from the catalogue and remain viable for commercial exploitation.  

Fighting back

In  2017, activists stopped a truck leaving an area of forest in the Fagaras mountains.  A subsequent investigation by the authorities found over-cutting of 4100 percent.  

These ancient forests were included in the Pin Matra inventory and fulfil the criteria for protection under Romanian law, but were being logged regardless.

A spokesman from Agent Green said: “The new ministry states that neither private forest authorities nor state forestry body Romsilva have the Pin Matra inventory anymore. It’s a strange and worrying statement, even a criminal one.”

Furthermore, the World Heritage Committee recently recognised 24,000 hectares of beech forests as of “outstanding universal value”, however activists have identified logging in buffer zones of numerous World Heritage areas, such as the Domogled National Park and Sinca Woods where Agent Green documented extensive cutting in areas of high ecological value.     

Yet direct action by activists seems to be having some effect.

World Heritage Site

This was evident in the recent Sarmisegetuza Regia case which has cultural, historical and environmental significance.  

The site is the ancient Dacian capital, a ruined citadel over two thousand years old. A UNESCO World Heritage site, it is surrounded by majestic old-growth forest that is also included in the Pin Matra study. One local activist  called it “Romania’s Machu Pichu.”

At the site, nature and culture are bound together as the trees protect the archaeology, the roots stabilising the soil and forming an integral part of the historic site and its ambience.  

However, the government approved initial logging of over a hundred trees, with plans for much wider deforestation.  

Global tragedy

Dr. Aurora Peţan, historian and president of the Dacica Foundation, said “They took large machines up to the fortress’s acropolis and the sacred area.  They left deep traces in the soil although they knew the archaeological layer was just a few inches deep.”

A spokesman from Agent Green added: “They took trees down right on the walls of the fortress and dragged them through the site with large forestry tractors under water-soaked soil conditions, leaving irreversible wounds in the site.” 

The authorities argue that the felling is to protect the site and visitors from falling trees, but during their investigation Agent Green found mainly high-value timber in the local depot rather than sick trees, and drone footage showed that most trees were extracted far from any tourist trails.  

The shocking drone footage has caused a stir in Romania, in particular as the logging company supplies one of the big exporting players.  

The NGO hopes to use the headlines to protect other tracts of ancient forest and biodiversity treasure-troves from being lost in remote places far from the public eye.  As per the damage to these Dacian ruins, the loss of Romania’s primeval forests would not just be a European tragedy but a global one.

This Author

Katy Jenkyns is a freelance journalist. 

I grew up in the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and true to its designation, it was outstandingly beautiful. And I think that beauty goes far beyond physical.   

Landscapes for Life defines an AONB as “an outstanding landscape whose distinctive character and natural beauty are so precious that it is safeguarded in the national interest”. It describes AONBs as being landscapes for nature, people, business and culture. 

In AONBs, people and wildlife can flourish. They can contribute to the health and wellbeing of humans, and to the rest of the natural world. They are a place to explore the ‘common ground’ – literally, and metaphorically – that we all must enter into if we want people and planet to thrive. 

But how are AONBs different from National Parks? 

National playgrounds 

There are 15 National Parks in the UK, described as ‘Britain’s breathing spaces’. National Parks work to ‘conserve and enhance natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage’, and ‘foster the economic and social well-being of local communities within the national park’.

But – and though I personally feel a strong connection to and love for Dartmoor, my local national park – these ‘breathing spaces’ we are so drawn to are not always putting the natural world at their heart.

George Monbiot, in a recent column, declares national parks a farce. He says we need to reclaim them, rewild them. Whether from ‘swaling’ (burning), grazing, leisure, or hunting and shooting of birds of prey, foxes, badgers and other species, our parks are at risk of turning into managed playgrounds.

And yet the ‘Sandford Principle’ is supposed to be the overriding principle applied in decisions affecting the management of national parks: it says that where a conflict between conservation and other uses arises, the conservation interest should take priority. We need to rethink how and for whom we run our  national parks. 

Locally managed 

Though created by the same legislation in 1949 that also created the national parks, AONBs were created in mainly lowland, rural agricultural areas. And they are run differently.

AONBs are connected to local government, with meagre finances compared to the centrally funded and well-staffed national parks, which have their own authorities and planning powers.

AONBs have the same legal protection for their landscapes as national parks, but are looked after by partnerships between local communities and local authorities. And this is what excites me. 

I think AONBs could be a missing link in a chain that runs from human life, via local place, to the lives of other creatures and to the spaces they inhabit around the world.  

Collaborative projects

I’m thinking again of the AONB in which I grew up – East Devon. 

A group set up in 2016 called the East Devon Farmers Group (EDFG) comprises 54 farmers whose land covers over 3,900 hectares.

The group aims to increase the standard and scale of conservation management in the area by connecting land managers and individual farms, and supported by, amongst others, the AONB, farmers, the Devon Greater Horseshoe Bat project, and the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South West.

In its first year, the group supported 20 percent of members in applying agri-environment schemes which support biodiversity and soil and water quality. The group has also run workshops on the economic, woodfuel and wildlife potential of farm hedges; manure management; and grassland soil compaction, aimed at tackling water pollution and run-off.

It has initiated the farmer-led Nature Improvement Area. Farm walks have been popular, and farmers have requested activities that go beyond the original environmental remit. 

Citizen science

Moving North to another example of collaborative working: Nidderdale AONB is carrying out its biggest ever systematic survey of wildlife.

The Wild Watch – which is backed by Springwatch Unsprung’s Lindsey Chapman, who we recently interviewed – will bring together volunteers, families, naturalists, students and others to gather information about 50 species across the AONB, including threatened wildlife like curlews, great-crested newts and water voles.

Data collected will be analysed and used to help plan strategies to look after the land. This is grassroots ‘Citizen Science’, born out of curiosity and love of local place, that will go on to guide decision-makers. 

The importance of nurturing inter- and cross-sector relationships locally is clear. When I’m not thinking about nature, I co-lead a small community development charity, and we have learned the same thing there – that working to develop or amplify an initiative requires relationship and listening to come first, and for leadership to come from within. Plonking on policies or solutions from the outside is undermining and unsustainable. 

As one East Devon Farmers Group participant said: “Getting together helps identify common needs and problems and potential joint initiatives to solve them.” It sounds so simple – and yet it doesn’t happen enough, in conservation, in international development, and in many other fields. 

Humans are nature

And these fields and sectors are blurring. My work in international development feels increasingly and obviously part of my work in and love for nature and conservation. Talking about tackling inequality, education, food security, and other challenges without bringing conservationists and nature-lovers into the conversation feels like there is a piece missing. 

The concept of ‘wilderness’ is currently a popular one. It is grand, romantic; it can make us feel small, or brave, or peaceful. Our national parks are marketed as wilderness areas. The old English version of the word ‘wilderness’ means ‘wild, uncultivated places, inhabited only by wild animals’.

The ‘wilder’ part of the word comes from old English words for ‘wild’ and ‘deer’. As long as parts of our parks are being burned, managed, and plundered, they cannot be these uncultivated, animal-rich spaces. They need work to become wilderness areas once again. 

But AONBs, though they can be less dramatic than national parks (more ‘Hobbiton’ than ‘Into the Wild’), are the perfect places to cultivate relationships between human-and non-human life; to understand the balance point between human need and nature’s limits.

They are not so big as to seem daunting, and yet they encompass diverse landscapes, systems, and even historical learning about how our ancestors lived in a landscape. They show us that nature isn’t ‘out there’, disconnected from humans. Humans are nature; we are in relationship with all other forms of life. AONBs could be where we see, touch, realise what this means. 

On our doorstep

And AONBs are on our doorstep: over two thirds of people live within half an hour of an AONB, and 19,000km of footpaths and bridleways pass through AONBs.

AONBs store millions of tonnes of C02 each year, and they protect some of the UK’s most important habitats: back in East Devon AONB, the first colony of wild beavers to inhabit an English river for 400 years has had babies.

Seeing non-captive beavers or otters is inspiring a new generation, prompting a new love for old stories like Tarka the Otter, originally born from author Henry Williamson’s intimate study of and empathy with his north Devon home. 

Williamson once said: “It is all here in Devon, if you just happen to see and hear or smell it.” I think AONBs give us that chance to see, hear, smell and be a part of the alchemy between local communities and wildlife.

Cultivating time at this interface allows us to encounter nature in all its wildness, and see what happens when we push too hard against its limits, including through light pollution or reckless housing development. We can get up close with species, habitats and landscapes that are all at once soothing, timeless, unique and complex. 

Protecting AONBs

AONBs can foster interconnectedness and care, which is the first step in conserving the natural world. To protect something, it helps if we know it, love it. As the imaginative theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once explained, names don’t constitute knowledge of the natural world. 

Knowing a place comes from immersing in it, from feeling how different components work and interact. Just as is true for human relationships, the relationships we form with the world around us can spur us on to understand and think deeply about how we love it, nurture it, protect it.

AONBs could be our invitation to do this, starting a chain reaction that could lead to love and care of many other places, near and far. You can find a list of the AONBs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland here. 

This Author

Elizabeth Wainwright is nature editor of The Ecologist and a former editor at Resurgence Magazine. She co-leads the community development charity, Arukah Network, and is based in Devon. Twitter: @LizWainwright

A new standard in sustainable production methods has been launched  by a group of  leading US businesses and organisations, including the outdoor company Patagonia and natural health and beauty brand Dr. Bronner’s.

Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) is a holistic agriculture certification encompassing robust, high-bar standards for ensuring soil health and ecological land management, pasture-based animal welfare, and fairness for farmers and workers.

It’s the brainchild of  The Regenerative Organic Alliance, a non-profit diverse coalition led by Rodale Institute, the global leader in regenerative organic agriculture and supported by a number of other businesses in the areas of farming, ranching, soil health, animal welfare, and farmer and worker fairness.

Stamp of sustainability

ROC was created to model an ecological and ethical system for agricultural production that addresses the problems of factory farming, climate change, and economic injustice, locally and globally.

Its objectives include, increase soil organic matter over time and sequester atmospheric carbon in soil, model high-bar pasture-based animal welfare, provide economic stability and fairness for farmers, ranchers and workers and create resilient regional ecosystems and communities.

The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) organic standard is the bedrock of the ROC. Only products that are certified under the USDA organic program are eligible to meet the Regenerative Organic Certified criteria.

With this as a baseline, the Regenerative Organic Certified standard addresses next-level soil health and also adds in requirements for animal welfare and farm labor.

With ROC, consumers will know they are buying a product that addresses the environmental impacts of agriculture, animal treatment and fair and safe working conditions for farmers and farm workers. Also, since regenerative farming practices will enhance carbon sequestration, they will also be supporting the fight to mitigate climate change.

New model

David Bronner, cosmic engagement officer ( CEO) of Dr. Bronner’s, said: “Industrial agriculture and the factory farming of animals are top contributors to climate change, but these are also two practices that we can comprehensively improve through specific ecological and ethical approaches to farming. And that model, regenerative organic agriculture will bring real, immediate results.

“It’s imperative we act now to mitigate climate change. We need to shift our food production system to make regenerative organic agriculture the new model, both locally and globally.”

Regenerative Organic Certification was created with the hope it would be adopted by companies and producers on a broad scale. Brands in the food, fibre and natural products industries have already shown an interest.

Pilot audits will launch in the coming months with a small group of certifiers and producers to understand how the ROC standards can be implemented at the farm and ranch level, with the goal of having Regenerative Organic Certified products appearing on shelves within the next two years.

Rose Marcario, CEO of Patagonia, said: “At Patagonia, we are no strangers to leading big shifts and marketing them to customers. We know what it takes to shift supply chains and launch new certifications.

“Today, we are determined to help lead another big shift with regenerative organic agriculture because the future of the planet is at stake. The new certification for regenerative organic agriculture will set a high bar for brands, provide guidance to consumers and take this urgently needed movement to the next level.”

Regenerative Organic Alliance

Jeff Moyer, executive director of the Rodale Institute added: “For 70 years, Rodale Institute has been using science and data to showcase organic agriculture’s ability to make positive change in the world.”

“Farming can either create some of the world’s greatest challenges or solve them. Regenerative organic agriculture is our opportunity to solve them. It’s farming like more than yields and profit matter. That healthy soil, clean air, and water are just as important. That people and communities matter. It’s farming like we don’t just need to feed people for the next 100 years, but forever.”

The Regenerative Organic Alliance was established to continuously review and update the certification guidelines. Other members include: Compassion in World Farming, Demeter, Fair World Project, Grain Place Foods, Maple Hill Creamery, and White Oak Pastures.

This Author

Catherine Harte is contributing editor of The Ecologist.  This story is based on a news release from Dr. Bronner’s. To learn more about the Regenerative Organic Certification standard, visit: https://regenorganic.org/.

Last autumn, I was tweeting about blackberrying. Not a political tweet, not a statement, just a “tweeting like a human being” moment. I got back in response the kind of sniping tweet you get from political opponents about sometimes the simplest things: “Shouldn’t you be leaving those for the birds?”

I had to laugh. For anyone who’s ever looked at a blackberry bush, who’s ever lunged deep into a tempting grouping within it and got the thorn scratches to prove it, knows that any bush will contain plenty of berries the birds can harvest that humans never will.

It was a simple, telling reminder of how many people, particularly younger people, in our society have never had the kind of basic contacts with nature, never developed the basic practical understanding you don’t get from a book or a screen, that older generations took as standard.

Practical skills

When I was a small child, five or so, I first went blackberrying in Australia. At the same time, I was taught to find yabbies (freshwater crayfish) in the streams around my grandparents’ house in a national park near Sydney with a piece of meat tied on a string. (A few years later all the yabbies’ disappeared – pesticides, it was said.)

I also collected the shed shells of cicadas, and learnt about metamorphosis. It was also where I learnt to use a crosscut saw, built childish dams across a muddy stream, and to shower under a waterfall.

These are the kinds of experiences that the Texas City of Austin – perhaps a politically unlikely location – has decided should be the right of every child. In 2016, its council, with not a Green Party member on it, unanimously adopted a Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights, guaranteeing its young people the right to many of those activities I so enjoyed as a child.

We’re increasingly understanding that these activities aren’t just fun, aren’t just educational, but are essential for human wellbeing – will develop skills, knowledge and expectations that will take people through a lifetime of better health and wellbeing.

And of course they’ll prepare people for physical activities – develop the practical skills that equip people to be active in a society where many are suffering from obesity, diabetes and other health issues arising from inactivity.

Already fighting

Lack of opportunities and exercise of these activities has been identified as “Nature Deficit Disorder”. It’s something that many children now suffer from. 

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has prepared a major report on children’s need for access to nature, pointing out that as well as the health, wellbeing and skills that time spent in nature provides, its essential that if we are to care for our natural world in the future, coming generations have knowledge of and love for it.

Acknowledging this research, and reality, Green Party members before its spring conference, held in Bournemouth, made a motion on the issue their top policy priority for conference.

In it the party backed the call for access to nature to be recognised as a human right, operating at the international level, but also acknowledged that this is something that cities and local government can implement at a local level.

In many parts of the country Green councillors are already fighting to save local parks and green spaces, from the Sefton Park Meadows and Rimrose Valley Park, to Sunderland and Stoneham.

But the framework of a children’s right to nature, something that’s particularly likely to be denied to those in the poorest communities, that acknowledges also that barriers can be lack of knowledge and opportunity as well as lack of access, is an important additional tool, that you can expect to see wielded for the benefit of our children, and our world.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is the former Green party leader, a member of Sheffield Green party and a regular contributor to The Ecologist.

Patagonia’s giant bumblebee is now considered endangered due to invasions of alien bee species, according to a new study.

Marcelo Aizen, from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Argentina, and colleagues from four other countries draw attention to the severe conservation, economic and political consequences of intentional species introductions supported by government policies in their paper, published today in Journal of Applied Ecology,

They illustrate these consequences based on the recent spread of invasive European bumblebees, especially the buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) from Chile to southern Argentina. 

Alien pollinators

Chile allowed continuous importation of alien bumblebees to pollinate agricultural crops. Since 1997, this policy has authorised the importation of more than a million bumblebee colonies. During 2015 alone, more than 200,000 colonies and queens were imported.  

Unfortunately, bumblebees are mobile and do not respect international boundaries, even those established along major geographic barriers. As a consequence, the alien species have spread widely into Chile and Argentina, and one species is on the verge of entering Bolivia and Perú. 

The invasion of Argentina’s bees across the Andes and its unintended consequences have occurred despite the country having now banned importation of non-native bumblebees. 

The most serious biological impact of this invasion is the decline of the Patagonian giant bumblebee (Bombus dahlbomii), the only native bumblebee in southern South America and one of the world’s largest bumblebees.  

Marcelo Aizen said:  “The alien invaders, Bombus ruderatus and especially Bombus terrestris, are potent competitors and carry foreign bee diseases.  As they spread, Bombus dahlbomii disappeared from much of Chile and Argentina.  The demise of Bombus dahlbomii is so severe that it is now recognised in Chile and internationally as an endangered species.” 

Nectar robbing

Aizen and her colleagues also document detrimental effects on native and crop plants by the invasive Bombus terrestris in NW Patagonia. To access nectar, this bee damages flowers of many plant species (nectar robbing), reducing nectar for other flower visitors, but often not pollinating flowers effectively.  

Nectar robbing and other flower damage caused by Bombus terrestris in commercial raspberry fields reduces fruit quality and might compromise honey production by honey bees.  

Invasion by Bombus terrestris also promotes the spread of alien plants, which compete with native species.  For example, in Argentina pollination by Bombus terrestris increases seed production and establishment of scotch broom, a pernicious plant invader.  The environmental costs of this invasion should alert governments about the convenience of importing alien bumblebees or any other pollinator.

A retrospective lesson of the Bombus terrestris case is that coordinated risk assessment and cautious implementation are essential components of regional policy development to avoid transnational invasions.  

Aizen added “a coordinated approach is urgently needed to reduce the potential for transnational species invasions.  In particular, policies concerning the importation of potentially invasive species must be established regionally among neighbouring countries with suitable habitat”.  

International coordination and cooperation are also needed if transnational invasions occur, despite best intentions. Unilateral investment and effort will be futile if the countries involved adopt conflicting policies.  

This Author

Catherine Harte is a contributing editor to The Ecologist. 

Executives at Royal Bank of Scotland can’t catch a break. Despite posting its first profit for a decade in its 2017 annual report last week, the bad press keeps coming for the bank, which has been under majority public ownership since 2008. A major fine by the US Department of Justice for mortgage mis-selling is expected this year.

Separately, RBS executives are currently embroiled in a Treasury Select Committee inquiry into mistreatment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the bank’s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) between 2008 and 2014.

This week, the inquiry revealed that three-quarters of the staff at a new restructuring department were formerly employed at GRG. Chairman Howard Davies delicately calls these enduring problems ‘legacy issues’.

Full-scale privatisation 

So one might forgive a dash of blue sky thinking and a fixation on distant goals. In a cautiously optimistic foreword to the annual report, reflecting on a share price that climbed 20 per cent over the year, Davies welcomed government plans to relaunch the privatisation process in March 2019.

But privatisation would be no triumph. Instead, selling the public stake in RBS would be a wasted opportunity for meaningful change. 

Full-scale privatisation is the stated endgame of a process of reform first announced, by the then chancellor George Osborne, in 2013. It is implausible that a hasty return to private shareholders’ hands will align with Osborne’s other two stated objectives: to support the British economy and secure the maximum value for money for the public.

When the March 2019 plans were announced in Philip Hammond’s Autumn Budget, they looked set to land taxpayers with a £26 billion loss.

And the current chancellor and Treasury owe the British public more than a return to the same defective banking system we had before the 2008 crisis. 

Government bailout

When the financial tidal wave hit London in 2008 following the Lehman Brothers collapse, RBS was in hot water. Its chief executive at the time, Fred Goodwin, repeatedly denied that the bank was insolvent. His deception came unstuck. RBS received a bailout from the Treasury to the tune of more than £45 billion and the government wound up with an 81 per cent stake in the bank. 

Some might have expected the bailout to call time on years of recklessness. In 2011 the Financial Conduct Authority published a report examining the reasons for the failure. Among them were ‘concerns and uncertainties over RBS’ underlying asset quality’, a botched takeover of ABN Amro; overly risky short-term funding and credit trading; and ‘an inadequate global regulatory capital framework’.

To cap things off, and in an attempt to explain so many counts of imprudence, the report also probed ‘underlying deficiencies in RBS management, governance and culture.’

Yet these concerns skate over the basic defect inherent in the banking sector. Commercial banks, for which profit is the raison d’être, lend primarily to unproductive activities like mortgages on existing homes and speculation on financial derivatives, on which they can generate the highest return.

Much less goes to the real economy, and in particular to SMEs. This incentive problem distorts the economy, produces financial instability, and perpetuates inequality. 

Banking casualties

The real economy is not the only casualty. Our present banking system is endemically destructive for the environment.

Bank lending is also influential in shifting funds towards fossil fuel and energy-intensive industries. Admittedly, RBS is less culpable here than other UK banks, especially Barclays and HSBC.

The 2017 Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card, published by a coalition including Banktrack and Rainforest Action Network, found a dramatic fall in its lending to ‘extreme fossil fuel’ activities since 2014. 

But on climate more broadly, RBS is a laggard. A 2016 report by Christian Aid found that RBS, like all other major banks in the UK, had no timeline for a transition to a low-carbon economy.

Neither did it engage with client firms on their own transition strategies. More recently, a survey of 15 European banks conducted by ShareAction placed RBS only 11th in the list. Lloyds, the other UK bank to come partly under public ownership in 2008, before being privatised early last year, is ranked last.

Instead of bringing needed change to a sclerotic banking sector, the bailout process has simply reset a broken model.

Introducing diversity 

There are alternatives. Britain has an unusually high proportion of its banking services provided by a very small number of privately owned organisations, as opposed to public savings or co-operative models.

Moreover, these giant firms operate at the national level, while other countries have far more regional or local banks.

The New Economics Foundation used international data to show that banks organised on a ‘stakeholder’ model, rather than seeking to maximise shareholder value as commercial banks do, contribute more to financial stability and local prosperity. They also lend more to businesses and promote financial inclusion. 

Public ownership of RBS is an opportunity for major, structural reform. Its assets still represent a significant chunk of the UK total.

The rewards of introducing diversity into the banking ecosystem, by dissolving RBS into a series of public, regional banks, would be substantial. The costs of returning to the old model are potentially greater still. 

This Author

Rob Macquarie is an economist for  Positive Money.

‘Theory’ might sound drily intellectual, but actually the systems perspective is a holistic way of reflecting on the world, which involves the whole of our being: in recent research, the mind is not separate from the body, nor from feelings.   

My own pathway into systems thinking came from two angles. I’ve taught at university about international political systems. I’m also a food-grower, practising agroecology (a way of food-growing which respects and mimics nature). Initially these two strands were dislocated from each other; however bit-by-bit I began to understand the commonalities.

The fundamental proposition of systems theory is that there are certain similarities in the way all systems work. If we understand this we will – to quote the title of an interesting book on systems theory –  feel “at home in the universe”.  The great practical relevance  of this idea is that, if we apply a common set of principles to nature and to society, this may heal the rift or alienation between them.

The heart of systems theory is perhaps the notion of complexity and self-organisation – a perspective closely related to feeling.  We will explore this in subequent articles; and for some key readings, see below. But here, as an introduction, I’ll just pick up on one term from the system vocabulary: feedback.  

Feedback

Colloquially, ‘positive feedback’ sounds like something nice, but in systems terminology it can have distressing implications: it describes any situation where the output is also an input. Thus, in acoustics, microphones produce a screech when placed too close to the speakers because their output becomes an input to the mic, which in turn feeds into the speakers, and it escalates.

This can be used creatively. At a historic performance in 1969, legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix gave a great example of the artistic use of feedback. It’s a mixture of science, art – and social commentary. The tune he plays is the Star-Spangled Banner, commenting on the Vietnam war, its blowback into US society, the feedback loops between different registers of violence and alienation.

A great applications of systems thinking is the work of James Lovelock, and here too, feedback is a central theme. For example, global cooling could trigger the expansion of polar ice-caps, making the earth whiter and hence reflecting more heat and making it colder still. But the earth-system, like Hendrix, can play creatively with its feedback, maintaining some equilibrium and regulation. This is what we risk losing today, if there’s a tipping-point leading to global warming feedback. 

This brings us to a fundamental question: how does social deprivation relate to the ecological problem?

Tackling disempowerment

One might argue that the climate situation is so serious, we should prioritise it over everything; if we don’t get this right there’s no room for any human society, equitable or otherwise.  But then, I would say, the changeover to sustainability is an enormous undertaking, requiring the energies of society as a whole: hence we must therefore address the disempowerment of the vast majority.  This is why I proceed from a ‘red-green’ perspective, which is socially radical as well as environmentally conscious.  

From this perspective, the exploitation of resources, and of people, are closely linked. To understand this, let’s consider an issue which has always preoccupied environmentalists: growth.  

What permits any system (the earth-system, an individual animal, or a society) to flourish (i.e. to generate complexity) is the existence of a flow: energy/matter enters in, and a degraded form (technically known as entropy) is excreted. 

In nature, that degradation is okay because there’s a larger flow through the system as a whole: the entropy excreted by an animal is welcomed back as fertiliser, facilitating a new cycle of life. 

The problem with capitalist/industrial society is that the flow is linear: scarce resources are drawn in, and an unabsorbable form of entropy excreted, i.e. garbage and greenhouse gas.  

But what’s the imperative for this system to keep growing? Here, I would draw upon a contribution from Karl Marx and view growth through the lens of accumulation.

Accumulation is in essence a feedback loop: grabbing portions of nature (land, resources) permits a minority to accumulate wealth, which in turn becomes an entitlement to accumulate more wealth.

The tendency of this feedback loop is both to deplete resources (increasing pollution in the process), and to concentrate the control of wealth/resources in an ever-narrowing stratum of society – typically 0.1%.  

This suggests a way systems theory can explain linkages between environmental and social problems; and not just problems, but hopefully also solutions. In later articles, I will consider how self-organisation may provide a connecting principle in a mixed ecological/social sustainability.

SOME KEY READING ON THE SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE

De Rosnay, J. The Macroscope, New York (Harper and Row) 1979

Goodwin, Brian, Interview, GenEthics News, Issue 11, March/April 1996 

von Bertalanffy, Ludwig General System Theory, extracts, 1968

Montuori, Alfonso. Complex Thought: An Overview of Edgar Morin’s Intellectual Journey, Conference paper, Integral Theory, 2013

Holling C. S. Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems Ecosystems  4: 390-405. 2001

Heylighen, Francis. ‘Complexity and Self-organization’ in Bates, Marcia J. and Mary Niles Maack, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences.  London: Taylor & Francis 2008

Prigogine, Ilya and Isabel Stengers. Order out of Chaos – Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. Toronto (Bantam) 1984

This Author

Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

Executives at Royal Bank of Scotland can’t catch a break. Despite posting its first profit for a decade in its 2017 annual report last week, the bad press keeps coming for the bank, which has been under majority public ownership since 2008. A major fine by the US Department of Justice for mortgage mis-selling is expected this year.

Separately, RBS executives are currently embroiled in a Treasury Select Committee inquiry into mistreatment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the bank’s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) between 2008 and 2014.

This week, the inquiry revealed that three-quarters of the staff at a new restructuring department were formerly employed at GRG. Chairman Howard Davies delicately calls these enduring problems ‘legacy issues’.

Full-scale privatisation 

So one might forgive a dash of blue sky thinking and a fixation on distant goals. In a cautiously optimistic foreword to the annual report, reflecting on a share price that climbed 20 per cent over the year, Davies welcomed government plans to relaunch the privatisation process in March 2019.

But privatisation would be no triumph. Instead, selling the public stake in RBS would be a wasted opportunity for meaningful change. 

Full-scale privatisation is the stated endgame of a process of reform first announced, by the then chancellor George Osborne, in 2013. It is implausible that a hasty return to private shareholders’ hands will align with Osborne’s other two stated objectives: to support the British economy and secure the maximum value for money for the public.

When the March 2019 plans were announced in Philip Hammond’s Autumn Budget, they looked set to land taxpayers with a £26 billion loss.

And the current chancellor and Treasury owe the British public more than a return to the same defective banking system we had before the 2008 crisis. 

Government bailout

When the financial tidal wave hit London in 2008 following the Lehman Brothers collapse, RBS was in hot water. Its chief executive at the time, Fred Goodwin, repeatedly denied that the bank was insolvent. His deception came unstuck. RBS received a bailout from the Treasury to the tune of more than £45 billion and the government wound up with an 81 per cent stake in the bank. 

Some might have expected the bailout to call time on years of recklessness. In 2011 the Financial Conduct Authority published a report examining the reasons for the failure. Among them were ‘concerns and uncertainties over RBS’ underlying asset quality’, a botched takeover of ABN Amro; overly risky short-term funding and credit trading; and ‘an inadequate global regulatory capital framework’.

To cap things off, and in an attempt to explain so many counts of imprudence, the report also probed ‘underlying deficiencies in RBS management, governance and culture.’

Yet these concerns skate over the basic defect inherent in the banking sector. Commercial banks, for which profit is the raison d’être, lend primarily to unproductive activities like mortgages on existing homes and speculation on financial derivatives, on which they can generate the highest return.

Much less goes to the real economy, and in particular to SMEs. This incentive problem distorts the economy, produces financial instability, and perpetuates inequality. 

Banking casualties

The real economy is not the only casualty. Our present banking system is endemically destructive for the environment.

Bank lending is also influential in shifting funds towards fossil fuel and energy-intensive industries. Admittedly, RBS is less culpable here than other UK banks, especially Barclays and HSBC.

The 2017 Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card, published by a coalition including Banktrack and Rainforest Action Network, found a dramatic fall in its lending to ‘extreme fossil fuel’ activities since 2014. 

But on climate more broadly, RBS is a laggard. A 2016 report by Christian Aid found that RBS, like all other major banks in the UK, had no timeline for a transition to a low-carbon economy.

Neither did it engage with client firms on their own transition strategies. More recently, a survey of 15 European banks conducted by ShareAction placed RBS only 11th in the list. Lloyds, the other UK bank to come partly under public ownership in 2008, before being privatised early last year, is ranked last.

Instead of bringing needed change to a sclerotic banking sector, the bailout process has simply reset a broken model.

Introducing diversity 

There are alternatives. Britain has an unusually high proportion of its banking services provided by a very small number of privately owned organisations, as opposed to public savings or co-operative models.

Moreover, these giant firms operate at the national level, while other countries have far more regional or local banks.

The New Economics Foundation used international data to show that banks organised on a ‘stakeholder’ model, rather than seeking to maximise shareholder value as commercial banks do, contribute more to financial stability and local prosperity. They also lend more to businesses and promote financial inclusion. 

Public ownership of RBS is an opportunity for major, structural reform. Its assets still represent a significant chunk of the UK total.

The rewards of introducing diversity into the banking ecosystem, by dissolving RBS into a series of public, regional banks, would be substantial. The costs of returning to the old model are potentially greater still. 

This Author

Rob Macquarie is an economist for  Positive Money.

Executives at Royal Bank of Scotland can’t catch a break. Despite posting its first profit for a decade in its 2017 annual report last week, the bad press keeps coming for the bank, which has been under majority public ownership since 2008. A major fine by the US Department of Justice for mortgage mis-selling is expected this year.

Separately, RBS executives are currently embroiled in a Treasury Select Committee inquiry into mistreatment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the bank’s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) between 2008 and 2014.

This week, the inquiry revealed that three-quarters of the staff at a new restructuring department were formerly employed at GRG. Chairman Howard Davies delicately calls these enduring problems ‘legacy issues’.

Full-scale privatisation 

So one might forgive a dash of blue sky thinking and a fixation on distant goals. In a cautiously optimistic foreword to the annual report, reflecting on a share price that climbed 20 per cent over the year, Davies welcomed government plans to relaunch the privatisation process in March 2019.

But privatisation would be no triumph. Instead, selling the public stake in RBS would be a wasted opportunity for meaningful change. 

Full-scale privatisation is the stated endgame of a process of reform first announced, by the then chancellor George Osborne, in 2013. It is implausible that a hasty return to private shareholders’ hands will align with Osborne’s other two stated objectives: to support the British economy and secure the maximum value for money for the public.

When the March 2019 plans were announced in Philip Hammond’s Autumn Budget, they looked set to land taxpayers with a £26 billion loss.

And the current chancellor and Treasury owe the British public more than a return to the same defective banking system we had before the 2008 crisis. 

Government bailout

When the financial tidal wave hit London in 2008 following the Lehman Brothers collapse, RBS was in hot water. Its chief executive at the time, Fred Goodwin, repeatedly denied that the bank was insolvent. His deception came unstuck. RBS received a bailout from the Treasury to the tune of more than £45 billion and the government wound up with an 81 per cent stake in the bank. 

Some might have expected the bailout to call time on years of recklessness. In 2011 the Financial Conduct Authority published a report examining the reasons for the failure. Among them were ‘concerns and uncertainties over RBS’ underlying asset quality’, a botched takeover of ABN Amro; overly risky short-term funding and credit trading; and ‘an inadequate global regulatory capital framework’.

To cap things off, and in an attempt to explain so many counts of imprudence, the report also probed ‘underlying deficiencies in RBS management, governance and culture.’

Yet these concerns skate over the basic defect inherent in the banking sector. Commercial banks, for which profit is the raison d’être, lend primarily to unproductive activities like mortgages on existing homes and speculation on financial derivatives, on which they can generate the highest return.

Much less goes to the real economy, and in particular to SMEs. This incentive problem distorts the economy, produces financial instability, and perpetuates inequality. 

Banking casualties

The real economy is not the only casualty. Our present banking system is endemically destructive for the environment.

Bank lending is also influential in shifting funds towards fossil fuel and energy-intensive industries. Admittedly, RBS is less culpable here than other UK banks, especially Barclays and HSBC.

The 2017 Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card, published by a coalition including Banktrack and Rainforest Action Network, found a dramatic fall in its lending to ‘extreme fossil fuel’ activities since 2014. 

But on climate more broadly, RBS is a laggard. A 2016 report by Christian Aid found that RBS, like all other major banks in the UK, had no timeline for a transition to a low-carbon economy.

Neither did it engage with client firms on their own transition strategies. More recently, a survey of 15 European banks conducted by ShareAction placed RBS only 11th in the list. Lloyds, the other UK bank to come partly under public ownership in 2008, before being privatised early last year, is ranked last.

Instead of bringing needed change to a sclerotic banking sector, the bailout process has simply reset a broken model.

Introducing diversity 

There are alternatives. Britain has an unusually high proportion of its banking services provided by a very small number of privately owned organisations, as opposed to public savings or co-operative models.

Moreover, these giant firms operate at the national level, while other countries have far more regional or local banks.

The New Economics Foundation used international data to show that banks organised on a ‘stakeholder’ model, rather than seeking to maximise shareholder value as commercial banks do, contribute more to financial stability and local prosperity. They also lend more to businesses and promote financial inclusion. 

Public ownership of RBS is an opportunity for major, structural reform. Its assets still represent a significant chunk of the UK total.

The rewards of introducing diversity into the banking ecosystem, by dissolving RBS into a series of public, regional banks, would be substantial. The costs of returning to the old model are potentially greater still. 

This Author

Rob Macquarie is an economist for  Positive Money.

Executives at Royal Bank of Scotland can’t catch a break. Despite posting its first profit for a decade in its 2017 annual report last week, the bad press keeps coming for the bank, which has been under majority public ownership since 2008. A major fine by the US Department of Justice for mortgage mis-selling is expected this year.

Separately, RBS executives are currently embroiled in a Treasury Select Committee inquiry into mistreatment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the bank’s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) between 2008 and 2014.

This week, the inquiry revealed that three-quarters of the staff at a new restructuring department were formerly employed at GRG. Chairman Howard Davies delicately calls these enduring problems ‘legacy issues’.

Full-scale privatisation 

So one might forgive a dash of blue sky thinking and a fixation on distant goals. In a cautiously optimistic foreword to the annual report, reflecting on a share price that climbed 20 per cent over the year, Davies welcomed government plans to relaunch the privatisation process in March 2019.

But privatisation would be no triumph. Instead, selling the public stake in RBS would be a wasted opportunity for meaningful change. 

Full-scale privatisation is the stated endgame of a process of reform first announced, by the then chancellor George Osborne, in 2013. It is implausible that a hasty return to private shareholders’ hands will align with Osborne’s other two stated objectives: to support the British economy and secure the maximum value for money for the public.

When the March 2019 plans were announced in Philip Hammond’s Autumn Budget, they looked set to land taxpayers with a £26 billion loss.

And the current chancellor and Treasury owe the British public more than a return to the same defective banking system we had before the 2008 crisis. 

Government bailout

When the financial tidal wave hit London in 2008 following the Lehman Brothers collapse, RBS was in hot water. Its chief executive at the time, Fred Goodwin, repeatedly denied that the bank was insolvent. His deception came unstuck. RBS received a bailout from the Treasury to the tune of more than £45 billion and the government wound up with an 81 per cent stake in the bank. 

Some might have expected the bailout to call time on years of recklessness. In 2011 the Financial Conduct Authority published a report examining the reasons for the failure. Among them were ‘concerns and uncertainties over RBS’ underlying asset quality’, a botched takeover of ABN Amro; overly risky short-term funding and credit trading; and ‘an inadequate global regulatory capital framework’.

To cap things off, and in an attempt to explain so many counts of imprudence, the report also probed ‘underlying deficiencies in RBS management, governance and culture.’

Yet these concerns skate over the basic defect inherent in the banking sector. Commercial banks, for which profit is the raison d’être, lend primarily to unproductive activities like mortgages on existing homes and speculation on financial derivatives, on which they can generate the highest return.

Much less goes to the real economy, and in particular to SMEs. This incentive problem distorts the economy, produces financial instability, and perpetuates inequality. 

Banking casualties

The real economy is not the only casualty. Our present banking system is endemically destructive for the environment.

Bank lending is also influential in shifting funds towards fossil fuel and energy-intensive industries. Admittedly, RBS is less culpable here than other UK banks, especially Barclays and HSBC.

The 2017 Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card, published by a coalition including Banktrack and Rainforest Action Network, found a dramatic fall in its lending to ‘extreme fossil fuel’ activities since 2014. 

But on climate more broadly, RBS is a laggard. A 2016 report by Christian Aid found that RBS, like all other major banks in the UK, had no timeline for a transition to a low-carbon economy.

Neither did it engage with client firms on their own transition strategies. More recently, a survey of 15 European banks conducted by ShareAction placed RBS only 11th in the list. Lloyds, the other UK bank to come partly under public ownership in 2008, before being privatised early last year, is ranked last.

Instead of bringing needed change to a sclerotic banking sector, the bailout process has simply reset a broken model.

Introducing diversity 

There are alternatives. Britain has an unusually high proportion of its banking services provided by a very small number of privately owned organisations, as opposed to public savings or co-operative models.

Moreover, these giant firms operate at the national level, while other countries have far more regional or local banks.

The New Economics Foundation used international data to show that banks organised on a ‘stakeholder’ model, rather than seeking to maximise shareholder value as commercial banks do, contribute more to financial stability and local prosperity. They also lend more to businesses and promote financial inclusion. 

Public ownership of RBS is an opportunity for major, structural reform. Its assets still represent a significant chunk of the UK total.

The rewards of introducing diversity into the banking ecosystem, by dissolving RBS into a series of public, regional banks, would be substantial. The costs of returning to the old model are potentially greater still. 

This Author

Rob Macquarie is an economist for  Positive Money.