The UK’s energy and climate minister, Claire Perry, told the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting last week that she would instruct the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to investigate how the UK could achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Meanwhile EU energy negotiations are set to take steps towards a European Climate Law.

However, the world’s climate will not be saved by lofty promises and moving speeches. It requires solid legislation to ensure countries keep the promises they made in the Paris agreement.

Beacon to the world

The EU’s current rules on climate action are comprehensive, but lack many of the necessary features of effective climate laws.

With the Trump administration ditching the Paris agreement altogether, Europe can and must become a beacon to the world on decisive action on climate change.

Several European countries, regions and cities have already introduced effective climate laws. The UK’s Climate Change Act was ground-breaking in this respect while Sweden recently passed legislation widely considered to be the most ambitious in the world – pledging that the country would become carbon neutral by 2045.

But legislation is also being passed at a regional level, in Catalonia – and even in Trump’s America, most notably California, where legislation imposes a state wide cap on CO2 emissions.

Net zero emissions

Indeed, there has been a 20-fold increase in the number of global climate change laws since 1997 and the number of climate laws continues to grow rapidly.

Given the level of progress at national and regional level, now is the right time for a comprehensive European approach and the most efficient method at our disposal is to introduce a European Climate Law.

In a landmark decision in January, the European Parliament adopted ambitious climate objectives together with planning and reporting mechanisms that could become a historic leap towards such law.

Together with ambitious renewables and energy efficiency objectives, these form the commission’s proposed regulation on the governance of the Energy Union. This aims to transpose the Paris agreement into EU law.

Clear political signal

So the ball is now firmly in the court of EU member states through the council and they must now show clear leadership and be on the right side of history.

One of the most important components of the European Parliament’s position is to develop long-term strategies at national and EU level to reach net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest and move into negative emissions soon afterwards.

Fixing a long-term goal sends a clear political signal to consumers, producers, investors and innovators on the direction in which we are heading. Some emission trajectories predict over 4 °C average rise in global temperatures.

This underlines the urgency of agreeing long term strategies and swift action. It appears the UK is now ready to join France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in welcoming a net zero emission target for 2050, but other countries need to follow suit.

Carbon budget

The parliament’s vote on the governance regulation also introduces for the first time in EU legislation the concept of a carbon budget, that specifies the amount of carbon dioxide we can emit to ensure we limit global temperature rise to 1.5 – 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

It is crucial that the commission reports on the remaining fair share for the EU and ensures that long-term strategies are consistent with the EU carbon budget.

The measures proposed by the European Parliament would significantly improve European climate legislation but can only be a first step towards a climate law for Europe that would address the whole economy including significant sectors such as transport and agriculture.

A true European climate law will send a clear message to the world that Europe is serious about reaching the goals of the Paris agreement.

More resilient economy

It would encourage higher performance from member states on climate change and set an ambitious direction for the EU as a whole.

Such a law would also need to close some of the gaps between the EU’s nationally determined contribution and what scientists say is needed to fulfil the commitments made in the Paris agreement.

In addition to the political vision, we need quantified carbon budgets for specific time periods, legally binding emission targets, and significantly strengthened review systems to ensure effective implementation.

Examples from around the world show that climate laws often lead to more green jobs and a more resilient economy. There is no reason why Europe should be any different.

Short window of opportunity

The world has a short window of opportunity to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. The UK and other EU member states are talking the talk on tackling climate change.

They must now show courage and breathe new life into the Paris agreement. The world has been abandoned by the Trump administration. It is now up to Europe to show leadership and act to prevent a climate crisis.

These Authors

Molly Scott Cato is a Green MEP for the South West of England. Jakob Dalunde is a Green MEP from Sweden.

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” – Arundhati Roy

In the first two articles of this series, we alluded to a new strategic vision that is emerging across many different movements, through which we can achieve a genuinely democratic, egalitarian, and ecological society. In this next installment, we sketch this vision of a transition out of capitalism through grassroots organising to build the new world in the shell of the old.

If we want real change, should we draw up a sketch of a just society and then simply march towards it? We think it’s better to look around and find the seeds of a better future—perhaps dormant—in the present, and nurture them into a viable alternative that can challenge and transform the world around us.

Even as we carry the dream of ecological utopia in our hearts, our visions of the future cannot be divorced from the process by which they could realistically come about. To bring about lasting change, we need to identify, build up, and bring together existing utopias in the present, creating actual power in the places we live and work.

How power works

To build power, we need to understand how it works. The German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that intolerable situations such as ours can be cast aside by the public’s withdrawal of support from its governing institutions. While not a leftist, Arendt was a prominent theorist of totalitarianism, political violence, and direct democracy who developed important concepts that can help us chart a path forward.

Power is conventionally understood as the ability to make others do things, often through violence or coercion. In On Violence, however, Arendt argues that power works quite differently. She defines “power” as people’s ability to act in concert—the capacity for collective action, and thus a property of groups, not individuals. Leaders possess their power only because their constituents have empowered them to direct the group’s collective action.

Arendt asserts that all power, in every political system from dictatorships to participatory democracies, emerges from public support. No dictator can carry out his or her will without obedience from subjects; nor can any project requiring collective action be achieved without the support, begrudging or enthusiastic, of the group.

When people begin to withdraw their support and refuse to obey, a government may turn to violence, but even that control lasts only as long as the army or police choose to obey. “Where commands are no longer obeyed,” Arendt writes, “the means of violence are of no use… Everything depends on the power behind the violence.” Power, for the rulers as well as those who would resist them, comes through collective action, rather than force.

As a basis for a revolutionary political strategy, Arendt’s theory of power has several important limitations—limitations which we think can be overcome by focusing our efforts into organising real democratic institutions in communities where we live, in our everyday lives.

First, outside of rare moments of political crisis, the public has no way to collectively withdraw its support from governing institutions without preexisting mass organization. Individuals acting alone have no impact on the state’s power—we need the organisational capacity for greater mass action first.

Furthermore, most people will never even consider retracting support for governing institutions if they don’t experience viable alternatives. As Antonio Gramsci explained a century ago, the ruling class’s cultural hegemony—society’s domination by ruling class ideas—can be only undermined by what he called a “war of position”.

This means developing a material and cultural base within the working class to craft an oppositional narrative and to organise oppositional institutions. The organisation of unions, worker-owned firms, and housing cooperatives is what makes socialism a real, lived possibility around which greater movement-building can occur.

Lastly, we cannot assume that overthrow of the current system will bring us a free and democratic new world, not without the preformation of the post-revolutionary society here in the present. We need to actively create the institutions that will replace capitalism so that the transition we want can actually take place.

The transfer of authority to the structures of radical democracy requires the preexistence of such participatory institutions, not a naïve faith that they will be conjured into being out of a general strike, mass retraction of public support, or insurrectionary upheaval.

Incubating new institutions

So what can we do instead? An effective political strategy for the present would combine the best of Arendt’s intuitions about the workings of power in society and possibilities for popular revolution, with an organising vision of community institution-building.

With such dim prospects for sufficient progress through existing institutional channels, new democratic and cooperative institutions must be built from the ground up. These include structures for political democracy, such as neighborhood councils and assemblies, networked into grassroots confederations, and structures for economic democracy, such as housing cooperatives, worker-owned cooperatives, and community land trusts.

These new institutions should serve four fundamental purposes.

First, they can help us meet immediate human needs under conditions of deprivation and alienation. Amid a crumbling safety net and social atomisation in much of the industrialized world, new institutions of a cooperative economy can ensure that people are fed and sheltered, their human potential developed and their minds nourished, all while fostering the spirit of community and solidarity we so sorely need.

By meeting the needs of people in our communities, we can bring them into the movement. This way, we can reach everyone, including those most marginalised, and make it possible for them to participate in political struggle.

Second, such institutions can organize people for oppositional politics within the present system. Channeling popular power takes grassroots organising, which we can use to extract concessions from the state to improve our position for ever more transformative demands.

We can do this, for instance, through institutions like community councils and block associations that organise ordinary people neighborhood by neighborhood. When it is strategic, electoral campaigns may even emerge out of these organized communities. (We’ll discuss the thorny questions of electoralism in a later part of this series.)

Third, we can steadily erode public support for the institutions of the dominant society through the development and proliferation of viable alternatives. By growing a cooperative economy that provides for all, we can weaken our dependence on and steadily displace the capitalist economy.

By networking together institutions of genuinely democratic and participatory community governance, we can assemble a parallel political system that can challenge—and, in time, transform and replace—the various oligarchies of our day.

Fourth, this mosaic of community councils, cooperatives, land trusts, and more will form the institutional foundation of the liberated society. As hierarchical society gives way to genuine democracy, it is the institutions we organise and experiment with today that will become the replacements.

Dual power

What would this look like? We can adopt this four-pronged approach across multiple sites of struggle. In the workplace, workers can organise unions which challenge the absolute authority of the boss, win concessions to improve working conditions, and (more radically) take direct democratic control over the workplace through occupations or buy-outs to transition it to a cooperative.

In housing, tenants can organise tenant unions which can end landlord abuses through rent strikes, move towards tenant management and control over the building, and, with sufficiently resourced support, eventually aim to transition it into cooperatively owned social housing.

Organised workers and tenants can also leverage the power they built fighting bosses and landlords to change the rules of the game in the political arena and direct public resources into upscaling cooperative housing and worker ownership. And we can do this with the political system as a whole, through participatory democracy in our neighborhoods, networking together councils and assemblies as a new foundation of political authority.

This strategy is known as “dual power”. Murray Bookchin posited dual power as the creation of directly democratic and cooperative institutions that fortify each other, eventually challenging and replacing the legitimacy of the capitalist state.

The creation of these dual power institutions must grow out of people’s everyday experience and immediate needs—our needs for freedom from domination as well as for essential goods and services.

As Cornelius Castoriadis puts it: “Self-management will only be possible if people’s attitudes to social organisation alter radically. This, in turn, will only take place if social institutions become a meaningful part of their real daily life.”

By meeting basic community needs, such institutions rupture capitalism’s control over people’s lives, allowing oppressed people to carve out space within capitalism for economic democracy, defend it, and thus transform the world around them.

Beyond the local

But these initiatives must also be rooted in a strategy that transcends the local. Everywhere you look, there are examples of a different way of doing things: community gardens, food cooperatives, local currencies, strangers helping each other after a disaster.

They stand alone as individual projects, fine-tuned to solve local problems created by the current system’s failures. But when operating alone, they can’t create dual power. Without a wider unified base of support to network resources and share knowledge to sustain these alternatives, many just fizzle out over time.

Every city has its graveyard of nonprofits, cooperatives, social clubs, and community centers. Without the more complex infrastructure of a whole solidarity economy ecosystem, our local projects cannot possibly amount to a systemic alternative to capitalism.

Individual cooperatives and mutual aid projects are not a transformative strategy in themselves, but should be understood as components of a larger project to assemble a new municipal commons under participatory democratic control.

By linking the local to regional, working together, sharing resources, and mutually reinforcing each other’s initiatives, communities can cultivate a creative and communal spirit that would empower them to take control of their lives, connect to one another across cultural and geographic distances, and develop the egalitarian foundations of a new society.

By confederating their local democratic councils into a powerful network, we can qualitatively change the power relations of a city or neighborhood and lay the groundwork for new macro-structures of self-governance and civil society.

In this series, we’ll talk in depth about some of these institutions: community land trusts, tenant rights organisations, workers’ cooperatives, unions, neighborhood councils, popular education projects.

These are not new inventions; they’ve been developed through generations of popular struggle all over the world. We’ll discuss how movements past and present have made use of them and what place we see for them within our broader revolutionary vision, to synthesize them into a unified anti-capitalist strategy at every level of society.

The stakes are high: today, we’re faced with urgent threats of climate change, rising neo-fascism, and economic turmoil. Our challenge is to collect these quiet seeds of a new world, and plant them with care.

These Authors

The Symbiosis Research Collective is a network of organizers and activist-researchers across North America, assembling a confederation of community organizations that can build a democratic and ecological society from the ground up. We are fighting for a better world by creating institutions of participatory democracy and the solidarity economy through community organizing, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city. Twitter: @SymbiosisRev

This article was written by Mason Herson-Hord (@mason_h2), Aaron Vansintjan (@a_vansi), Jason Geils, and Katie Horvath (@katesville7).

The government’s 25-year environment plan, published earlier this year, addresses many pressing environmental issues, including the need to protect UK ‘natural assets’. 

The plan states that “the UK intends to use a ‘natural capital’ approach as a tool to help us make key choices and long-term decisions”. 

However, while the plan invokes the phrase ‘natural capital’ no less than 90 times, it exhibits a problematic lack of transparency around what a ‘natural capital’ approach to environmental protection means in practice. 

Environment vs economy 

Furthermore, the plan fails to address widespread concerns regarding the viability of this approach in itself. 

Happily, the prime minister’s speech launching the plan acknowledged the false dichotomy between the environment and the economy, correctly rejecting what Tony Juniper called the “apparent choice between looking after nature on the one hand or growing our economy on the other”.

However, while this is a positive step, it fails to recognise the relative importance of the environment as compared to the economy. 

The language of ‘capital’ and ‘assets’ as used to refer to nature, and modern ‘natural capital’ approaches to environmental protection, imply that it is possible to value natural phenomena in purely financial terms. 

Defining natural capital

This creates an entirely topsy-turvy approach in which the economy is viewed as more important than the environment, whereas in reality, the opposite is true.

So what is ‘natural capital’? The environment plan defines natural capital as “the sum of our ecosystems, species, freshwater, land, soils, minerals, our air and our seas… elements of nature that either directly or indirectly bring value to people and the country at large”. 

The definition encompasses everything necessary for human life to exist and for it to be worth living. In fact, the phrase has been used by ecologists for many years. 

It originally referred to the whole, intrinsic, and frequently unmeasurable value of ecological features, and has been incredibly useful for ecologists – such as Ecological Planning and Research ( EPR) – working at the interface between environmental protection and infrastructure development.  

Measuring environmental assets

Because all development necessarily involves changing the environmental baseline of an area in some way, an ecologist’s job is to determine which environmental features have some significant ecological value that needs to be preserved through this change, and what opportunities there may be for improving the value of other features, in conjunction with the impending change in land use.

Contrary to popular opinion, development does not need to be harmful to the environment, and can be made to be beneficial.  

Priorities are often established by placing ecological features on a sliding scale of perceived value, with ‘constant natural assets’ at the lower end of the value scale and ‘critical natural capital’ at the higher end of the value scale. 

The former typically refers to common or abundant things and things that can be re-created in short timescales, while the latter refers to rare assets, or those which simply cannot be replaced in a meaningful human lifespan – such as ancient woodland or grassland. 

Embedding this thinking into environmental assessment can be effective in ensuring that ecologists prioritise the retention of things that cannot be replaced if lost, allowing the environment to remain resilient to future changes, and reducing the likelihood that outcomes will be irreversible if decisions are later determined to have been misguided. 

Monetising nature

However, more recently we have seen the term ‘natural capital’ more selectively repurposed to refer solely to the monetary value of ‘ecosystem goods and services’– these being the ‘free’ things we get from nature that contribute to the economy. 

This could be cleaner air or water, food, pharmaceuticals, fibres, improved physical and mental health, pollination of crops, flood attenuation, carbon sequestration or energy. 

All of these things have a monetary value that, in theory, society would have to pay for if nature wasn’t already providing them for free. 

To give an example of this finance-based modern ‘natural capital’ approach, the environment plan states that, “[I]f we look at England’s woods and forests… as a national asset, using a natural capital approach, the value of the services they deliver is an estimated £2.3bn”.

Economic vs ecological priorities

Proponents of measuring natural capital in financial terms make the persuasive argument that doing so will help ecological assets to have greater weight when compared against things with more obvious commercial or economic value. 

It will also help to influence decision-makers, who tend to place more importance on economic priorities than ecological or other intangible or unmeasurable priorities. 

Indeed, as the plan states: “When we give the environment its due regard as a natural asset – indeed a key contributor – to the overall economy, we will be more likely to give it the value it deserves to protect and enhance it.”

However, quantifying nature in this manner – while it may have useful applications –is inherently problematic. The government’s use of the phrase ’natural capital’, in the tradition of valuing environmental characteristics in terms of economics, implies that the economy is the umbrella under which all other concerns must be considered. 

Unsound economic rationale

This wider valuation of natural habitats and other forms of ’natural capital’ in financial terms – e.g. the food value of land or the cost of cleaning the air if trees weren’t doing so – is ultimately looking at the world through the wrong end of the telescope. 

The problem with this logic, specifically, is that the environment as a whole is priceless, because nothing else – including the economy, development and infrastructure – can exist without it, so intellectually dismantling a priceless system into component parts that are then each assigned a finite value, and then selling those parts off, isn’t sound economic rationale.  

Furthermore, this can effectively enable the piecemeal degradation of the environment. For example, assets at the ‘critical natural capital’ end of the value spectrum, although they may be ‘expensive’ when quantified in purely financial terms, ultimately still become saleable when seen through this metric. 

They could therefore potentially be dispensed with, once a sufficiently lucrative alternative comes into view. 

Offsetting biodiversity

Breaking down the environment into a series of component parts in this way enables developers and local authorities to quantify the ‘value’ of a natural ‘asset’, and to compensate for the destruction of it with the creation of another environmental ‘asset’ deemed to be of equal value or higher. 

However, poorly planned habitat replacement or ‘biodiversity offsetting’ can often fail to compensate adequately for the destruction of ecologically rich habitats, particularly when seen in spatial and temporal context. 

Planting a new area of woodland of equivalent size to that being lost may not, for example, provide all the functions that the original habitat had in the landscape, such as – for example – providing a corridor for wildlife between two other areas of adjoining habitat, or helping to support a population of a more wide-ranging species that utilises the original area.  

It is also unlikely – however carefully the new habitat is replicated – that the compensatory habitat will be anything other than an artificial facsimile; lacking some of the species, diversity and complexity that the original habitat area contained.  

Mitigation hierarchy

Even when completed well, biodiversity offsetting can never accurately replace the value of the original ‘asset’. 

This is why the so-called ‘mitigation hierarchy’ of ecology dictates that ecologists should prioritise impact avoidance first, then mitigation (impact reduction), then compensation, in that order.  

Compensating for the destruction of habitats or ‘assets’ by determining their monetary value – even if this is measured indirectly using a biodiversity offsetting ‘metric’ – and replacing them with new ‘assets’ of equal ‘value’ should never therefore be a default option, but always a last resort. 

There is a danger that the modern take on the ‘natural capital’ approach, which allows for the financial valuation and comparison of ‘assets’, overlooks this crucial thinking. 

Intangible value of nature

In our finance-driven culture, this approach of assessing natural ‘assets’ in terms of financial worth may prove effective as a tool for persuading decision-makers of the environment’s value. 

However, diminishing the wonder and complexity of the natural world into a mere sum of pounds and pence, even when carried out using the proxy measures of biodiversity offsetting ‘metrics’, can never be a true reflection of its real value.  

We must therefore ensure that this approach is used with caution. One scientific paper refers to a laughable situation in which a project for works to a major culvert attempted to quantify the ‘value’ of the trout that would be lost, by going to the supermarket and ascertaining the going rate for a trout.

Clearly, this approach quantified only the food value of trout and failed to take into account its wider and less easily measured values, such as suppressing insect pests that breed in waterways; cycling nitrogen and phosphorous; sport, amenity and other angling related boosts to the economy; human health, and so on.

This is not to mention the trout’s inherent value as a part of our natural world, and its related intangible values, such as beauty

True hierarchy of importance

Additionally, we must recognise that the implication of this modern ‘natural capital’ approach – that the environment can be valued accurately in economic terms because it is a simply collection of commodities that sit within the free market economy – is false.  

This perception needs to be reversed to reveal the true hierarchy of importance; rather than accepting that environmental assets are simply ingredients in a cake – the economy – that can be added or removed – bought, sold or replaced – our perception of the environment needs to shift to seeing it as the kitchen itself in which the cake is being made.  

No environment, no economy. No kitchen, no cake.

This Author

Ben Kite is the managing director of ecological consultancy EPR, where he leads the team in providing survey and assessment services for planned infrastructure and housing developments. Ben is a chartered ecologist and experienced expert witness.

The UK’s energy and climate minister, Claire Perry, told the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting last week that she would instruct the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to investigate how the UK could achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Meanwhile EU energy negotiations are set to take steps towards a European Climate Law.

However, the world’s climate will not be saved by lofty promises and moving speeches. It requires solid legislation to ensure countries keep the promises they made in the Paris agreement.

Beacon to the world

The EU’s current rules on climate action are comprehensive, but lack many of the necessary features of effective climate laws.

With the Trump administration ditching the Paris agreement altogether, Europe can and must become a beacon to the world on decisive action on climate change.

Several European countries, regions and cities have already introduced effective climate laws. The UK’s Climate Change Act was ground-breaking in this respect while Sweden recently passed legislation widely considered to be the most ambitious in the world – pledging that the country would become carbon neutral by 2045.

But legislation is also being passed at a regional level, in Catalonia – and even in Trump’s America, most notably California, where legislation imposes a state wide cap on CO2 emissions.

Net zero emissions

Indeed, there has been a 20-fold increase in the number of global climate change laws since 1997 and the number of climate laws continues to grow rapidly.

Given the level of progress at national and regional level, now is the right time for a comprehensive European approach and the most efficient method at our disposal is to introduce a European Climate Law.

In a landmark decision in January, the European Parliament adopted ambitious climate objectives together with planning and reporting mechanisms that could become a historic leap towards such law.

Together with ambitious renewables and energy efficiency objectives, these form the commission’s proposed regulation on the governance of the Energy Union. This aims to transpose the Paris agreement into EU law.

Clear political signal

So the ball is now firmly in the court of EU member states through the council and they must now show clear leadership and be on the right side of history.

One of the most important components of the European Parliament’s position is to develop long-term strategies at national and EU level to reach net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest and move into negative emissions soon afterwards.

Fixing a long-term goal sends a clear political signal to consumers, producers, investors and innovators on the direction in which we are heading. Some emission trajectories predict over 4 °C average rise in global temperatures.

This underlines the urgency of agreeing long term strategies and swift action. It appears the UK is now ready to join France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in welcoming a net zero emission target for 2050, but other countries need to follow suit.

Carbon budget

The parliament’s vote on the governance regulation also introduces for the first time in EU legislation the concept of a carbon budget, that specifies the amount of carbon dioxide we can emit to ensure we limit global temperature rise to 1.5 – 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

It is crucial that the commission reports on the remaining fair share for the EU and ensures that long-term strategies are consistent with the EU carbon budget.

The measures proposed by the European Parliament would significantly improve European climate legislation but can only be a first step towards a climate law for Europe that would address the whole economy including significant sectors such as transport and agriculture.

A true European climate law will send a clear message to the world that Europe is serious about reaching the goals of the Paris agreement.

More resilient economy

It would encourage higher performance from member states on climate change and set an ambitious direction for the EU as a whole.

Such a law would also need to close some of the gaps between the EU’s nationally determined contribution and what scientists say is needed to fulfil the commitments made in the Paris agreement.

In addition to the political vision, we need quantified carbon budgets for specific time periods, legally binding emission targets, and significantly strengthened review systems to ensure effective implementation.

Examples from around the world show that climate laws often lead to more green jobs and a more resilient economy. There is no reason why Europe should be any different.

Short window of opportunity

The world has a short window of opportunity to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. The UK and other EU member states are talking the talk on tackling climate change.

They must now show courage and breathe new life into the Paris agreement. The world has been abandoned by the Trump administration. It is now up to Europe to show leadership and act to prevent a climate crisis.

These Authors

Molly Scott Cato is a Green MEP for the South West of England. Jakob Dalunde is a Green MEP from Sweden.

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” – Arundhati Roy

In the first two articles of this series, we alluded to a new strategic vision that is emerging across many different movements, through which we can achieve a genuinely democratic, egalitarian, and ecological society. In this next installment, we sketch this vision of a transition out of capitalism through grassroots organising to build the new world in the shell of the old.

If we want real change, should we draw up a sketch of a just society and then simply march towards it? We think it’s better to look around and find the seeds of a better future—perhaps dormant—in the present, and nurture them into a viable alternative that can challenge and transform the world around us.

Even as we carry the dream of ecological utopia in our hearts, our visions of the future cannot be divorced from the process by which they could realistically come about. To bring about lasting change, we need to identify, build up, and bring together existing utopias in the present, creating actual power in the places we live and work.

How power works

To build power, we need to understand how it works. The German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that intolerable situations such as ours can be cast aside by the public’s withdrawal of support from its governing institutions. While not a leftist, Arendt was a prominent theorist of totalitarianism, political violence, and direct democracy who developed important concepts that can help us chart a path forward.

Power is conventionally understood as the ability to make others do things, often through violence or coercion. In On Violence, however, Arendt argues that power works quite differently. She defines “power” as people’s ability to act in concert—the capacity for collective action, and thus a property of groups, not individuals. Leaders possess their power only because their constituents have empowered them to direct the group’s collective action.

Arendt asserts that all power, in every political system from dictatorships to participatory democracies, emerges from public support. No dictator can carry out his or her will without obedience from subjects; nor can any project requiring collective action be achieved without the support, begrudging or enthusiastic, of the group.

When people begin to withdraw their support and refuse to obey, a government may turn to violence, but even that control lasts only as long as the army or police choose to obey. “Where commands are no longer obeyed,” Arendt writes, “the means of violence are of no use… Everything depends on the power behind the violence.” Power, for the rulers as well as those who would resist them, comes through collective action, rather than force.

As a basis for a revolutionary political strategy, Arendt’s theory of power has several important limitations—limitations which we think can be overcome by focusing our efforts into organising real democratic institutions in communities where we live, in our everyday lives.

First, outside of rare moments of political crisis, the public has no way to collectively withdraw its support from governing institutions without preexisting mass organization. Individuals acting alone have no impact on the state’s power—we need the organisational capacity for greater mass action first.

Furthermore, most people will never even consider retracting support for governing institutions if they don’t experience viable alternatives. As Antonio Gramsci explained a century ago, the ruling class’s cultural hegemony—society’s domination by ruling class ideas—can be only undermined by what he called a “war of position”.

This means developing a material and cultural base within the working class to craft an oppositional narrative and to organise oppositional institutions. The organisation of unions, worker-owned firms, and housing cooperatives is what makes socialism a real, lived possibility around which greater movement-building can occur.

Lastly, we cannot assume that overthrow of the current system will bring us a free and democratic new world, not without the preformation of the post-revolutionary society here in the present. We need to actively create the institutions that will replace capitalism so that the transition we want can actually take place.

The transfer of authority to the structures of radical democracy requires the preexistence of such participatory institutions, not a naïve faith that they will be conjured into being out of a general strike, mass retraction of public support, or insurrectionary upheaval.

Incubating new institutions

So what can we do instead? An effective political strategy for the present would combine the best of Arendt’s intuitions about the workings of power in society and possibilities for popular revolution, with an organising vision of community institution-building.

With such dim prospects for sufficient progress through existing institutional channels, new democratic and cooperative institutions must be built from the ground up. These include structures for political democracy, such as neighborhood councils and assemblies, networked into grassroots confederations, and structures for economic democracy, such as housing cooperatives, worker-owned cooperatives, and community land trusts.

These new institutions should serve four fundamental purposes. First, they can help us meet immediate human needs under conditions of deprivation and alienation.

Amid a crumbling safety net and social atomisation in much of the industrialized world, new institutions of a cooperative economy can ensure that people are fed and sheltered, their human potential developed and their minds nourished, all while fostering the spirit of community and solidarity we so sorely need.

By meeting the needs of people in our communities, we can bring them into the movement. This way, we can reach everyone, including those most marginalised, and make it possible for them to participate in political struggle.

Second, such institutions can organize people for oppositional politics within the present system. Channeling popular power takes grassroots organising, which we can use to extract concessions from the state to improve our position for ever more transformative demands.

We can do this, for instance, through institutions like community councils and block associations that organise ordinary people neighborhood by neighborhood. When it is strategic, electoral campaigns may even emerge out of these organized communities. (We’ll discuss the thorny questions of electoralism in a later part of this series.)

Third, we can steadily erode public support for the institutions of the dominant society through the development and proliferation of viable alternatives. By growing a cooperative economy that provides for all, we can weaken our dependence on and steadily displace the capitalist economy.

By networking together institutions of genuinely democratic and participatory community governance, we can assemble a parallel political system that can challenge – and, in time, transform and replace – the various oligarchies of our day.

Fourth, this mosaic of community councils, cooperatives, land trusts, and more will form the institutional foundation of the liberated society. As hierarchical society gives way to genuine democracy, it is the institutions we organise and experiment with today that will become the replacements.

Dual power

What would this look like? We can adopt this four-pronged approach across multiple sites of struggle. In the workplace, workers can organise unions which challenge the absolute authority of the boss, win concessions to improve working conditions, and (more radically) take direct democratic control over the workplace through occupations or buy-outs to transition it to a cooperative.

In housing, tenants can organise tenant unions which can end landlord abuses through rent strikes, move towards tenant management and control over the building, and, with sufficiently resourced support, eventually aim to transition it into cooperatively owned social housing.

Organised workers and tenants can also leverage the power they built fighting bosses and landlords to change the rules of the game in the political arena and direct public resources into upscaling cooperative housing and worker ownership. And we can do this with the political system as a whole, through participatory democracy in our neighborhoods, networking together councils and assemblies as a new foundation of political authority.

This strategy is known as “dual power”. Murray Bookchin posited dual power as the creation of directly democratic and cooperative institutions that fortify each other, eventually challenging and replacing the legitimacy of the capitalist state.

The creation of these dual power institutions must grow out of people’s everyday experience and immediate needs—our needs for freedom from domination as well as for essential goods and services.

As Cornelius Castoriadis puts it: “Self-management will only be possible if people’s attitudes to social organisation alter radically. This, in turn, will only take place if social institutions become a meaningful part of their real daily life.”

By meeting basic community needs, such institutions rupture capitalism’s control over people’s lives, allowing oppressed people to carve out space within capitalism for economic democracy, defend it, and thus transform the world around them.

Beyond the local

But these initiatives must also be rooted in a strategy that transcends the local. Everywhere you look, there are examples of a different way of doing things: community gardens, food cooperatives, local currencies, strangers helping each other after a disaster.

They stand alone as individual projects, fine-tuned to solve local problems created by the current system’s failures. But when operating alone, they can’t create dual power. Without a wider unified base of support to network resources and share knowledge to sustain these alternatives, many just fizzle out over time.

Every city has its graveyard of nonprofits, cooperatives, social clubs, and community centers. Without the more complex infrastructure of a whole solidarity economy ecosystem, our local projects cannot possibly amount to a systemic alternative to capitalism.

Individual cooperatives and mutual aid projects are not a transformative strategy in themselves, but should be understood as components of a larger project to assemble a new municipal commons under participatory democratic control.

By linking the local to regional, working together, sharing resources, and mutually reinforcing each other’s initiatives, communities can cultivate a creative and communal spirit that would empower them to take control of their lives, connect to one another across cultural and geographic distances, and develop the egalitarian foundations of a new society.

By confederating their local democratic councils into a powerful network, we can qualitatively change the power relations of a city or neighborhood and lay the groundwork for new macro-structures of self-governance and civil society.

In this series, we’ll talk in depth about some of these institutions: community land trusts, tenant rights organisations, workers’ cooperatives, unions, neighborhood councils, popular education projects.

These are not new inventions; they’ve been developed through generations of popular struggle all over the world. We’ll discuss how movements past and present have made use of them and what place we see for them within our broader revolutionary vision, to synthesize them into a unified anti-capitalist strategy at every level of society.

The stakes are high: today, we’re faced with urgent threats of climate change, rising neo-fascism, and economic turmoil. Our challenge is to collect these quiet seeds of a new world, and plant them with care.

These Authors

The Symbiosis Research Collective is a network of organizers and activist-researchers across North America, assembling a confederation of community organizations that can build a democratic and ecological society from the ground up. We are fighting for a better world by creating institutions of participatory democracy and the solidarity economy through community organizing, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city. Twitter: @SymbiosisRev

This article was written by Mason Herson-Ford (@mason_h2), Aaron Vansintjan (@a_vansi), Jason Geils, and Katie Horvath (@katesville7).

The government’s 25-year environment plan, published earlier this year, addresses many pressing environmental issues, including the need to protect UK ‘natural assets’. 

The plan states that “the UK intends to use a ‘natural capital’ approach as a tool to help us make key choices and long-term decisions”. 

However, while the plan invokes the phrase ‘natural capital’ no less than 90 times, it exhibits a problematic lack of transparency around what a ‘natural capital’ approach to environmental protection means in practice. 

Environment vs economy 

Furthermore, the plan fails to address widespread concerns regarding the viability of this approach in itself. 

Happily, the prime minister’s speech launching the plan acknowledged the false dichotomy between the environment and the economy, correctly rejecting what Tony Juniper called the “apparent choice between looking after nature on the one hand or growing our economy on the other”.

However, while this is a positive step, it fails to recognise the relative importance of the environment as compared to the economy. 

The language of ‘capital’ and ‘assets’ as used to refer to nature, and modern ‘natural capital’ approaches to environmental protection, imply that it is possible to value natural phenomena in purely financial terms. 

Defining natural capital

This creates an entirely topsy-turvy approach in which the economy is viewed as more important than the environment, whereas in reality, the opposite is true.

So what is ‘natural capital’? The environment plan defines natural capital as “the sum of our ecosystems, species, freshwater, land, soils, minerals, our air and our seas… elements of nature that either directly or indirectly bring value to people and the country at large”. 

The definition encompasses everything necessary for human life to exist and for it to be worth living. In fact, the phrase has been used by ecologists for many years. 

It originally referred to the whole, intrinsic, and frequently unmeasurable value of ecological features, and has been incredibly useful for ecologists – such as Ecological Planning and Research ( EPR) – working at the interface between environmental protection and infrastructure development.  

Measuring environmental assets

Because all development necessarily involves changing the environmental baseline of an area in some way, an ecologist’s job is to determine which environmental features have some significant ecological value that needs to be preserved through this change, and what opportunities there may be for improving the value of other features, in conjunction with the impending change in land use.

Contrary to popular opinion, development does not need to be harmful to the environment, and can be made to be beneficial.  

Priorities are often established by placing ecological features on a sliding scale of perceived value, with ‘constant natural assets’ at the lower end of the value scale and ‘critical natural capital’ at the higher end of the value scale. 

The former typically refers to common or abundant things and things that can be re-created in short timescales, while the latter refers to rare assets, or those which simply cannot be replaced in a meaningful human lifespan – such as ancient woodland or grassland. 

Embedding this thinking into environmental assessment can be effective in ensuring that ecologists prioritise the retention of things that cannot be replaced if lost, allowing the environment to remain resilient to future changes, and reducing the likelihood that outcomes will be irreversible if decisions are later determined to have been misguided. 

Monetising nature

However, more recently we have seen the term ‘natural capital’ more selectively repurposed to refer solely to the monetary value of ‘ecosystem goods and services’– these being the ‘free’ things we get from nature that contribute to the economy. 

This could be cleaner air or water, food, pharmaceuticals, fibres, improved physical and mental health, pollination of crops, flood attenuation, carbon sequestration or energy. 

All of these things have a monetary value that, in theory, society would have to pay for if nature wasn’t already providing them for free. 

To give an example of this finance-based modern ‘natural capital’ approach, the environment plan states that, “[I]f we look at England’s woods and forests… as a national asset, using a natural capital approach, the value of the services they deliver is an estimated £2.3bn”.

Economic vs ecological priorities

Proponents of measuring natural capital in financial terms make the persuasive argument that doing so will help ecological assets to have greater weight when compared against things with more obvious commercial or economic value. 

It will also help to influence decision-makers, who tend to place more importance on economic priorities than ecological or other intangible or unmeasurable priorities. 

Indeed, as the plan states: “When we give the environment its due regard as a natural asset – indeed a key contributor – to the overall economy, we will be more likely to give it the value it deserves to protect and enhance it.”

However, quantifying nature in this manner – while it may have useful applications –is inherently problematic. The government’s use of the phrase ’natural capital’, in the tradition of valuing environmental characteristics in terms of economics, implies that the economy is the umbrella under which all other concerns must be considered. 

Unsound economic rationale

This wider valuation of natural habitats and other forms of ’natural capital’ in financial terms – e.g. the food value of land or the cost of cleaning the air if trees weren’t doing so – is ultimately looking at the world through the wrong end of the telescope. 

The problem with this logic, specifically, is that the environment as a whole is priceless, because nothing else – including the economy, development and infrastructure – can exist without it, so intellectually dismantling a priceless system into component parts that are then each assigned a finite value, and then selling those parts off, isn’t sound economic rationale.  

Furthermore, this can effectively enable the piecemeal degradation of the environment. For example, assets at the ‘critical natural capital’ end of the value spectrum, although they may be ‘expensive’ when quantified in purely financial terms, ultimately still become saleable when seen through this metric. 

They could therefore potentially be dispensed with, once a sufficiently lucrative alternative comes into view. 

Offsetting biodiversity

Breaking down the environment into a series of component parts in this way enables developers and local authorities to quantify the ‘value’ of a natural ‘asset’, and to compensate for the destruction of it with the creation of another environmental ‘asset’ deemed to be of equal value or higher. 

However, poorly planned habitat replacement or ‘biodiversity offsetting’ can often fail to compensate adequately for the destruction of ecologically rich habitats, particularly when seen in spatial and temporal context. 

Planting a new area of woodland of equivalent size to that being lost may not, for example, provide all the functions that the original habitat had in the landscape, such as – for example – providing a corridor for wildlife between two other areas of adjoining habitat, or helping to support a population of a more wide-ranging species that utilises the original area.  

It is also unlikely – however carefully the new habitat is replicated – that the compensatory habitat will be anything other than an artificial facsimile; lacking some of the species, diversity and complexity that the original habitat area contained.  

Mitigation hierarchy

Even when completed well, biodiversity offsetting can never accurately replace the value of the original ‘asset’. 

This is why the so-called ‘mitigation hierarchy’ of ecology dictates that ecologists should prioritise impact avoidance first, then mitigation (impact reduction), then compensation, in that order.  

Compensating for the destruction of habitats or ‘assets’ by determining their monetary value – even if this is measured indirectly using a biodiversity offsetting ‘metric’ – and replacing them with new ‘assets’ of equal ‘value’ should never therefore be a default option, but always a last resort. 

There is a danger that the modern take on the ‘natural capital’ approach, which allows for the financial valuation and comparison of ‘assets’, overlooks this crucial thinking. 

Intangible value of nature

In our finance-driven culture, this approach of assessing natural ‘assets’ in terms of financial worth may prove effective as a tool for persuading decision-makers of the environment’s value. 

However, diminishing the wonder and complexity of the natural world into a mere sum of pounds and pence, even when carried out using the proxy measures of biodiversity offsetting ‘metrics’, can never be a true reflection of its real value.  

We must therefore ensure that this approach is used with caution. One scientific paper refers to a laughable situation in which a project for works to a major culvert attempted to quantify the ‘value’ of the trout that would be lost, by going to the supermarket and ascertaining the going rate for a trout.

Clearly, this approach quantified only the food value of trout and failed to take into account its wider and less easily measured values, such as suppressing insect pests that breed in waterways; cycling nitrogen and phosphorous; sport, amenity and other angling related boosts to the economy; human health, and so on.

This is not to mention the trout’s inherent value as a part of our natural world, and its related intangible values, such as beauty

True hierarchy of importance

Additionally, we must recognise that the implication of this modern ‘natural capital’ approach – that the environment can be valued accurately in economic terms because it is a simply collection of commodities that sit within the free market economy – is false.  

This perception needs to be reversed to reveal the true hierarchy of importance; rather than accepting that environmental assets are simply ingredients in a cake – the economy – that can be added or removed – bought, sold or replaced – our perception of the environment needs to shift to seeing it as the kitchen itself in which the cake is being made.  

No environment, no economy. No kitchen, no cake.

This Author

Ben Kite is the managing director of ecological consultancy EPR, where he leads the team in providing survey and assessment services for planned infrastructure and housing developments. Ben is a chartered ecologist and experienced expert witness.

Some older generations view millennials through a less-than-favourable lens. They might consider them self-centred, obsessed with technology, unwilling to conform to societal norms — or maybe all of the above.

But this view of millennials isn’t necessarily accurate or fair. Take, for example, the steps millennials have taken to ensure the environment remains healthy for many years to come.

It’s hard to argue current eco-friendly trends — see: tiny houses and thrift store shopping — stem largely from 20- and 30-somethings. But does that outweigh some of the potentially harmful habits of millennials?

Sustainable Living

If you stack up the facts, it does. People in this age group are making great strides to reclaim the earth and keep it healthy for future generations. Read on to learn how millennials are saving the environment.

Just check out the Instagram feed of any 20-something, and it’ll quickly become clear millennials love to travel the world. Perhaps that’s why they want to preserve it. Unlike previous generations, which largely preferred to stay close to home, millennials understand how far-reaching their actions are on the globe because they’ve seen and appreciated more of it.

Many advances in modes of transportation have made it easier than ever for millennials to both explore and appreciate the world, which leads them toward focusing more on eco-tourism.

Millennials also love anything that’s trending. And right now, all things eco-friendly are bang on-trend. Reusable grocery bags, upcycled home décor and thrifted clothing are all trending topics that have made a tremendous impact on the way millennials live.

Positive habits like these can become a seismic shift when an entire generation starts to practice them, and that’s the direction millennials are starting to head.

More and more millennials have made substantial changes to their lifestyles to create and sustain a healthier earth. For instance, many 20-somethings have embraced a vegan lifestyle. By eliminating animal products from their diet, vegan eaters help reduce their negative impact on the earth.

The cultivation of plant-based food uses less fuel and creates less carbon than animal products — by a long shot. This shift in lifestyle is indicative of a larger change in millennials’ point of view in general.

Social Outreach

Millennials aren’t afraid to stand up to fight for what they believe in. They’re willing to march against an initiative they don’t believe in, environmentally related or otherwise.

They’re committed not only to voting, but also to voting consciously for politicians who share their belief that the earth is a precious asset. This willingness to go up against longstanding systems makes millennials the perfect advocate for nature, and certainly a vocal one, particularly on social platforms.

Although older generations may see the Internet as something that gets in the way of real human interaction, millennials have a much different outlook. They rally around issues using platforms like Facebook, Instagram and even Snapchat.

The ever-increasing reach of social media has spawned a new era of online activism that includes a movement toward sustainable, eco-friendly living. It’s easy for millennials to share the ways they’re living sustainably and get new ideas from fellow eco-minded friends.

If you’re still not convinced that millennials are moving toward real, measurable change, just look at what the generation has already accomplished. Consider projects like Reforest Sri Lanka, led by young MBA students.

Food to fashion

It took them only 10 months to plant more than 26,000 trees in Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, in the US, online platform iMatterNow has been spurring change. It encourages young people to take action regarding environmental policy or, at the very least, to get informed.

These are just a few of the collective ways millennials have started pushing for a lasting shift in the way the world operates. There are also some movements that aren’t formally organized, and therefore fly under the radar.

For instance, millennials tend to spend their dollars on products from environmentally conscious companies. This trend is directly affecting the way big companies market their goods and services. Many have even added pages to their websites that lay out their policies on sustainability.

With millennials making so many moves to help nature not only survive, but thrive, it’s clear this generation has no ill will toward the environment.

To the contrary, they’re seizing the opportunity to be the generation that makes a real long-lasting change in terms of eco-friendly living. As trends continue to move toward sustainability, in everything from food to fashion, you can expect millennials to only grow in their collective strength.

Watch out for ways young people will change the world in years to come!

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

The rough, shallow Pont Valley in North West County Durham makes for a wild walk even on a benign spring day. The damp, tussocked grass may bend an ankle, but its texture lends biodiversity to a mosaic of habitats. Stout trees stoop to the westerly wind as miners’ backs once bent to work rich seams underground here.

But this was never a site for heavy industry. The mining here was basic, with coal tubs pushed by miner or pony. Seams too narrow or awkward to be dug by hand were left alone. Until now.

Opencast mining was first proposed for this site in the year of my birth, 1978. Every single planning application was refused at local level. During three intense public enquiries, triggered by appeal after appeal from mining companies, it has fallen to local people to stand up and protect this land; to convince planning inspectors that the value of this place, its habitats and wildlife outweigh the need for coal.

Outdoor education

In 2014, we failed to do so. Local rulings were quashed, permission to mine was granted.

With the site’s developer, UK Coal, in financial difficulty, it was doubtful that the mine would go ahead. But when Banks Group bought the rights from the dying company, they pressed ahead to meet a deadline of 3 June 2018 to start work before the planning permission runs out. All other methods had failed. It was time to act.

The Pont Valley is my home. It is the place where I first discovered my love for the outdoors. As a child I would explore the ponds, woods and fields. I learned to spot the dip of a curlew’s beak and recognise the trill of the skylark.

I’d marvel at the pockmarked fields – imagining bomb craters where in fact old bell pits and collapses attest to a shallow coalfield with a deep history.

My love for this place led to a career in outdoor education, latterly fixing bikes and leading rides on the famous C2C cycle route which passes within metres of the site.

Protecting Pont Valley

Most recently, my love for this place led to me spending all of my free time at a roadside, during blizzards, in a tent.

In February, the Coal Action Network set up a skill share to equip campaigners to enter the final stage of the effort to protect Pont Valley.

Community buildings were opened, local people were engaged. We trudged through snow to walk on the site – literally finding common ground. We shared food and stories. We sang together.

But those who came brought more than skills. They brought integrity. They showed the importance of consensus. They gave their creativity, vibrancy and care. It was less that they had arrived in my home, but more my home came to me.

Something priceless

The stakes increased when we found, at the end of that hopeful week, that trees had been felled and hedgerows hacked in the path of the proposed access road. The decision was swift, simple, inspiring and strong. We would stay through the snow and protect our land. So stay we have.

Banks Group think they have got this under control. They got their permissions, bought from a bankrupt UK Coal.

They bought their lawyers, to scare us off with claims for costs. And they think they’ve bought off this community for 10p a ton. But we’re the people of the Pont Valley, residents all, not villagers and visitors. We have something priceless here. And we are not about to let it go.

It still seems strange that a group of global activists would choose our village as the next to protect. But there is good reason. Coal is a diminishing fraction of our energy mix, down to nine percent and due to hit zero in 2025.

Demand is at an all-time low. This mine could be the last we fight in the UK. The prize is no less than this: to end coal in this country now.

This Author:

Patrick Carr is a resident of Dipton, County Durham, and of Pont Valley Protection Camp. He has actively campaigned against opencast coal mining in the area for ten years.

Protesters are being evicted from a camp set up to block a mining company from beginning work on a new open cast coal mine in the Pont Valley, County Durham.

The camp was set up in March by local residents and anti-coal protesters to block Banks Mining from beginning work on the mine.

The company has taken on an existing planning permission for the mine, granted to UK Coal in June 2015. It plans to mine around 50,000 tonnes of coal from the site, with operations ending in 2021. Following the mining, it says it will restore the land, creating a nature reserve and parkland area.  

Injured or killed

The company has until 3 June this year to complete construction of an access road to the site. The protesters were forced to move their original camp at the end of March after the landowner obtained a court order against them, but set up instead on the land where Banks needs to build the access road.

Around a dozen protesters have taken up position in treehouses, tunnels, and a caravan, locking themselves to structures to prevent their removal. The tunnels are unsupported, raising fears that people in them could be injured or even killed during the eviction.

Anne Harris, from Pont Valley Protection Camp, said: “There are people in tunnels under this camp and entrance to the site. Any attempt to bring on machinery to evict could result in the collapse of the tunnels and people being killed.”

She added: “The police and bailiffs have moved both camps. Two people have been arrested – the person on the tripod and one of the people on ‘a lock on’ [a technique used by protesters to make it difficult to remove them from their place of protest]. The police haven’t cleared the tunnels or the treehouse yet.”

Wildlife crime

Great crested newts, which are protected by law, were found at the site earlier this week, confirming the results of surveys previously carried out by UK Coal. “A wildlife crime will happen if this site goes ahead,” Harris said.

Another campaigner, June Davison, who lives in nearby Dipton village, said: “My community have been fighting the threat of opencast coal extraction for over 30 years. In that time, we’ve won three public inquiries, and three inspectors have agreed that protecting the Pont Valley is important.”

A spokesman from Banks Mining declined to comment on the protest, saying it was a matter for the police.

The police temporarily closed the A692 by the camp during the eviction, which they said was to ensure the safety of the protesters, the contractors and the police while carrying out the eviction.

In a video posted on Twitter, acting inspector Dave Clark of Durham Police, said: “We’re here to remove the protesters and allow them to protest at another site further down the road.”

New circumstances

Protesters from Coal Action Network want the government to revoke planning permission for the mine, arguing that circumstances have changed since it was granted. In November 2015, the government pledged to phase out coal-fired generation of electricity by 2025.

Last month, communities secretary Sajid Javid refused another project proposed by Banks Mining, for an open-cast coal mine near Druridge Bay in Northumberland. He overturned the recommendations of the planning inspector to grant approval, saying that the project’s impact on climate change was too severe.

However, on Wednesday this week, Banks Mining announced that it would challenge the government’s decision at the High Court, calling it “perverse”, and questioning its interpretation of planning policy for coal mines. The company argues that domestically-mined coal is still needed to prevent the UK being reliant on importing it from countries such as Russia.  

Meanwhile, the UK has experienced 55 consecutive hours this week without coal producing any electricity, according to energy company Drax’s “Electric insights” website, beating the previous coal-free period of 40 hours, set last October.

James Thornton, chief executive of legal campaigners ClientEarth, said: “As if we needed any more proof, the UK has moved beyond coal. The more coal-free days we see, the better it is for people’s health and for the climate. The UK has promised to be a world-leading example – it needs to continue powering past coal, investing in the right strategies and technologies to make the transition as easy as it can be.”

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.

Boswellia carterii trees are in trouble. The frankincense they produce is a vital source of income in Somaliland, and over-harvesting is putting the trees’ survival at risk.

Dr Anjanette DeCarlo, an environmental sustainability expert, has immersed herself in the subject to find a solution that will safeguard their future. He is working with buyers on the ground to develop ways to make frankincense harvesting more sustainable.

Dr DeCarlo recommends sustainable harvesting practices and is currently undertaking research to discover whether or not the quality of frankincense is affected by the way in which it is harvested.

Mountainous terrain

She believes that trees in a state of distress – due to over-harvesting – could have a signature chemical compound. Cutting the trees does create some small level of stress even with more traditional harvesting practices. Over-harvesting, however, heightens that stress.

If the chemical profile does exist, it could be used to test whether the resin has been collected sustainably. Dr DeCarlo said: “Too much stress – that’s where we want to start verifying if that has a chemical profile.”

The rocky terrain in Somaliland makes testing resin in the field difficult, so lab testing is being considered as a practical solution. All the science involved is open source, encouraging others to adopt the same practice. If her theory proves correct, and well-managed Boswellia carterii produces higher quality frankincense, sustainability could become a very attractive quality to buyers.

Tree nurseries have also proven a rich source of information. By examining orchards in other countries, information has been collected and applied to reforesting trees in the wild.

Boswellia carterii grow amid a rocky, mountainous terrain in Somaliland. Using traditional practices, the trees are harvested with care and well-looked after. Tapped once a year for two years and then rested for a year, they are given the time to recover and continue a healthy life.

Over-harvesting

Yet economic pressures mean that some farmers are now changing the way they harvest frankincense. Multiple wounds are being made in the trees, and they are not given a resting period.

The trees cannot repair themselves, and so their immune defences are weakened and they become susceptible to pests. Ultimately, they dehydrate and become unable to produce the resin needed for frankincense. The mortality rate is high.

An even greater concern is the fertility of the trees, which decreases when they are under stress. Harvesting immature trees also prevents them from growing to a full, productive size. The impact on the tree population could be huge.

Somaliland – which is not officially recognised as a country – is restricted in what international mechanisms it can use. With little economic diversity in the region, frankincense is a vital source of income. Higher demand coupled with a rise in the price per kilo has led to more pressure to harvest. Over-harvesting is a short-term solution, but could be devastating in the long run.

Dr DeCarlo recently visited some extremely remote areas in Somaliland, home to some of the last Boswellia carterii forests. While she described some areas as “gorgeous, well-managed, forested zones,” many forests were suffering.

No enforcement

After carrying out ground analysis at ten different locations across the growing region, she reported an alarming trend of over-harvesting. She said: “If people in the region are over-relying on carterii trees, that of course leads to over-harvesting.”

As human-driven climate change sends the planet’s weather patterns spiraling in new directions, the region has also seen a change in rainfall. If the rainy seasons do not arrive, Dr DeCarlo says that harvesting may happen all year round.

In the past, the country’s government has had limited resources for promoting sustainable harvesting, with problems such as land degradation, deforestation and other environmental issues taking the main focus.

Dr DeCarlo said: “There’s no government regulation or enforcement of harvesting practices. The situation where there’s no enforcement, coupled with a higher price, can really cause over-harvesting.”

However, she said the Somaliland government is now taking a keen interest in the issue, and the Minister of Environment has even visited the area.

Rotational management

Influencing the government plays an important role in driving change, but so too does raising awareness within those communities who are harvesting Boswellia carterii, and who are directly impacted by its survival.

Dr DeCarlo said: “Right now, there is an incentive to overharvest, because the more you bring in, the more money you make. Over time, people will start to see the impact of that.”

She is now developing incentives for farmers to harvest sustainably. An important part of this is looking at the price per kilo that farmers are paid. Something at the root of the problem however, is the lack of economic diversity in the region. Eco-tourism, other biological resources and cultivation are all possible avenues that could be explored to diversify income.

The communities have been receptive to her work, and have welcomed her help in maintaining their economic and cultural sustainability. The younger harvesters in particular are willing to ask for help, and she was met at first with questions of: “Doc, what do we do?”

Major step

Dr DeCarlo is adamant that “the harvesters and the landowners are not the enemy.”

She wants to be clear that she does not want the harvesting of frankincense to be banned, but wants to encourage best practice of rotational management, where trees are rested for a year after two years of harvesting. She will soon be releasing guidelines to help put this into action.

According to the sustainability expert, the key to saving Boswellia carterii is to find international buyers that care about the problem. She wants companies to be accountable for their use of frankincense, and to work with communities to ensure sustainability.

She said: “We have to have an attitude change amongst everyone on the supply chain.”

This spring, the verification process will have its first trials. Two or three locations, some sustainably managed and some not, will take part in the pilot for what could be a major step in securing the future of the Frankincense forests.

This Author

Katie Dancey-Downs is a writer for the The Lush Times. This article is part of a new content-sharing arrangement with the environmental, animal rights, and social justice news channel The Lush Times.