The Eiffel Tower lit up in celebration of the world agreeing to limit global warming to 2C in 2016. It was an historic agreement that has been accepted by every country in the UN except the United States. 

But more than a year later, are we any closer to achieving this planet-saving goal and what could it mean for ordinary people around the world?

At the Edinburgh Science Festival a panel of scientists, academics, journalists, doctors and meteorologists will discuss how the Paris Agreement could impact on daily life. 

Improving efficiency

Dame Julia Slingo, the former Chief Scientist at the Met Office, points out that if the world continues business as usual, then global warming could go beyond 2C, leading to possible droughts in Africa and floods in parts of Asia. This will lead to climate change refugees and pressure on food security across the world. 

If warming is limited to 1.5C – which is the ultimate goal of the Paris Agreement – it could save smaller islands such as Kiribati in the Pacific as well as flooding in low lying coastal areas. 

Closer to home, Dame Julia has suggested that climate change could be a factor in some of the floods the UK has already experienced. She suggests that limiting global warming could save lives and billions of pounds.

Dr Matthew Brander is a lecturer on the world’s first MSc in carbon finance at the University of Edinburgh. He argues that ‘carbon accounting’ or measuring the greenhouse gases emitted by a company will be key to any successful business in the future.

Cutting carbon has many benefits including reducing the electricity bill by improving efficiency and minimising waste. It could also see companies rewarded by the government through taxation. Whether those benefits will be passed on to the consumer is another thing… 

Migration movements

Dr Kris Murray, a medical doctor at Imperial College London, highlights the very real health risks of climate change. He points out that heat waves will be dangerous for the elderly and vulnerable. Warmer climates also make it easier for diseases – such as malaria – to spread.

On the other hand, measures to reduce climate change could also help improve health. For instance, eating less meat because the livestock emits greenhouse gases could also reduce cardiovascular disease in the west, and the spread of zoonotic diseases from intensive farms. At the same time cutting pollution from coal-fired plants and cars could reduce lung disease. 

Dr Murray also looks at the benefits to health from living forests that absorb carbon dioxide and provide a home for biodiversity, and ultimately the benefit to mental health of saving species from extinction and maintaining our shared environment. 

As a journalist, my job is to translate the complex issues around climate change into something the public can understand. In the past that has focused on scare-mongering. 

The public has been repeatedly warned of the consequences of runaway climate change, from more extreme weather events, to mass migration movements and the end of affordable chocolate. But this is not really working.

The answer, I believe, is to promote a positive message. What about the benefits of acting on climate change? The cleaner air? Lower electricity bills? Jobs in new industries? The greening of cities? The healthier diet?  Perhaps it is time to highlight the positives. Starting here.

This Author

Louise Gray is a journalist and the author of The Ethical Carnivore. She is speaking at the Edinburgh International Science Festival as part of the show The Paris Agreement: Today and Tomorrow at 3pm on Saturday 7 April in The National Museum of Scotland. Full details and tickets can be found online. 

Le Corbusier – the Swiss-French architect, designer, painter and urban planner – imagined houses as ‘machines for living’ which provide support for the daily activities of modern lifestyles.

Yet today the negative legacy of industrialisation’s global-scale consumption of fossil fuels and natural resources requires alternative technologies incorporated into our living spaces that are capable of meeting our needs, but that also have qualitatively different environmental impacts.

The Living Architecture project is an example of a convergent technological platform that combines traditional building approaches, with ‘living’ systems and digital technology.

Organic catalysts

The first Living Architecture prototype – the ‘living brick’ – was launched during the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016.

For the first time, it brought together the structural integrity of a traditional building block and material and conferred it with the metabolic capacity of a microbial fuel cell, which can turn waste organic material into electricity, water and oxygen.

This prototype prompts the next steps for an integrated bioreactor design and raises broader questions about units of design for the 21st century that are capable of exceeding the impacts of traditional design and construction methods.

Subsequent iterations were presented at the Venice Art Biennale (2017), the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (2017) and as part of a “Living Brick” exhibition at the Great North Museum, Newcastle, March – June 2018.

The long-term vision is to provide a means of performing biological and mechanical work within buildings by replacing the ‘dead’ metabolisms of fossil fuels – which lack natural organic catalysts like enzymes and therefore have high activation thresholds to release energy.

Biological control

They will be replaced with the ‘living’ metabolisms of active microorganisms – which are rich in assistive biomolecules.

Currently, this takes the form of a freestanding, next-generation, selectively programmable series of bioreactors that are installed in an interior space of a building – such as an office – as a ‘living wall’.

This wall is composed of three different kinds of ‘living’ building blocks – microbial fuel cell, algae bioreactor and genetically modified processors. These are separated by semi permeable membranes.

The whole structure is ‘fed’ with grey water which carries as a supply of nutrients, and also provides a growth medium for the respective microbial consortia that produce a range of substrates such as biomass.

The outputs of these consortia are orchestrated by digital and biological control systems.

Living spaces

The integrated metabolic components under development are ‘workhorse’ bacteria that are assembled in new-to-nature microbial communities and are genetically programmed for performing distributed and programmable biocatalytic processes.

The flexibility of the overall system is achieved by integrating customisable metabolic ‘labour’ modules into flexible, modular structures that can be differently combined to produce specific ranges of outputs – e.g. reclaiming inorganic phosphate.

The ‘programmable’ units of Living Architecture are ‘metabolic applications’, which can be altered using variables within the building infrastructure.

Through the integration of these feedback systems, the ‘living wall’ becomes a metabolic ‘programming’ interface that can sense changes within the system and external environment and respond through their respective material transformations.

This can be further modulated by digital and biological actuators that are able configure the outputs of living spaces according to the needs of users.

Microbial communities

The Living Architecture approach requires building infrastructures that are capable of supporting life – rather than machines.

For example, circulations rather than drains are needed within buildings where the presence of circulating water opens up new possibilities of designing and programming microbial biofilms within our homes and cities.

Working beyond the performance of a single microbe also helps address the challenges of scaling these platforms to architectural dimensions.

The Living Architecture project remains at prototype stage, and it may be decades before the technology is more widely available to architectural practices.

However, precedents of buildings with facades that harbour microbial communities already exist – like the BIQ House in Hamburg – which is a residential apartment block built by Arup that opened to the public in November 2014.

Incorporating active metabolic processes within the performance of buildings is a step change in the concept of sustainability where the inhabitation of our homes and cities does not just save energy and natural resources, but may recycle substrates and minimise pollution.

Ultimately, we may reach a point where the impacts of ‘living’ buildings actually remediate, or augment the environment as the main side effect of human development.

This Author

Rachel Armstrong is Professor of Experimental Architecture, Rising Waters II Fellow for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (April-May 2016), TWOTY futurist 2015, Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and a 2010 Senior TED Fellow. She is also the author of Vibrant Architecture, Star Ark, Origamy and the forthcoming titles Soft Living Architecture: An Alternative View of Bio-informed Design Practice and Liquid Life: On non-linear materiality.  

She will be speaking at this year’s Edinburgh International Science Festival as part of the show, Can Science Fiction Save Us? The show is on Thursday 12 April at the Summer Hall in Edinburgh. More information and tickets can be found online.

Female brown bears have learnt to protect themselves from hunters by keeping their cubs closer for longer, according to a new study. In Sweden it is legal to hunt Scandinavian brown bears, but bears in family groups are protected by law.

Professor Jon Swenson, from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and co-author of the report, said: “A single female in Sweden is four times more likely to be shot as one with a cub.”

The findings come from one of the world’s longest-running research projects on bears.  Swenson has been working on the survey for more than 30 years. He said: “Generally, the cubs followed their mother for one-and-a-half years.”

Keeping close

But over the course of the study the researchers have found that some female bears began to change their mothering strategies to increase their chances of survival.

Between 2005 and 2015, the number of females keeping their cubs with them for an extra year rose from seven percent to 36 percent.

But although these new tactics improve the life expectancy of those females who keep their young for longer, they also reproduce less often and reduce their total number of offspring.

The researchers note this might not be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective. Swenson added: “The animals with the most offspring ‘win’ nature’s race.”

But the results also show that the increased life of the females largely counteracts the reduced birth rate.

Swenson concludes: “This is especially true in areas of high hunting pressure. There the females that keep their cubs the extra year have the greatest advantage.”

This Author

Catherine Harte is a contributing editor to The Ecologist. This story is based on a news release from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. The full report is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth Netherlands announced today that it will take the oil and gas company Shell to court if the firm does not act on demands to stop its destruction of the climate. 

The legal challenge would be unique because it would be the first climate lawsuit demanding that a fossil fuel company acts on climate change – rather than simply seeking compensation for any damage caused, according to the charity.

Karin Nansen, chair of Friends of the Earth International, said: “This would be a ground-breaking case and – if successful – would significantly limit Shell’s investments in oil and gas globally by requiring them to comply with climate-targets.

Global movement

“Shell is doing enormous damage worldwide – climate change and dirty energy have devastating impacts around the world, but especially in the global South. With this lawsuit we have a chance to hold Shell to account.”

The case will be supported by Friends of the Earth International – which has 75 member groups around the world, many of which are working to stop Shell from extracting fossil fuels in each country.

Donald Pols, director of Friends of the Earth Netherlands, said: “Shell is among the ten biggest climate polluters worldwide. It has known for over 30 years that it is causing dangerous climate change, but continues to extract oil and gas and invests billions in the search and development of new fossil fuels.”

The threat of legal action from Friends of the Earth Netherlands is part of a growing global movement to hold fossil fuel companies to account for their contribution to dangerous climate change.

In January, the city of New York went to court to claim compensation from the five largest oil companies – including Shell, – for the consequences of climate change. The cities of San Francisco and Oakland as well as several other counties in California are doing the same.

Quality of life

A Peruvian farmer is suing the German energy company RWE for its contribution to glaciers melting above his village caused by climate change.

Nansen added: “If we win this case, it has major consequences for other fossil companies, and opens the door for further legal action against other climate polluters.

“Friends of the Earth International wants to see binding rules for corporations like Shell who so often regard themselves as being above the law, including when it comes to climate goals.”

A spokesperson for Shell said in a statement: “The Shell Group has long recognised the climate challenge and the role of energy in enabling a decent quality of life.

“We strongly support the agreement in Paris to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius or less, but we believe climate change is a complex societal challenge that should be addressed through sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers, not by the courts.”

This Author

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

The number of fly-tipping incidents recorded by councils in England has gone up every year since April 2012.  In 2017, the total number of fly-tips exceeded a million for the first time or almost a decade.

Around two thirds of incidents are classed as involving household waste – the number of such cases has increased by around 41 percent since 2013, so it’s natural to ask what changes might underlie this dramatic rise. 

As the numbers have gone up, the issue has regularly made headlines. The conclusion generally drawn by journalists is that an increase in fly-tips of household waste is probably something to do with councils offering less frequent residual waste collections.

Public land

It seems obvious – faced with more waste than they can fit in the bin, people go off and dump the excess in an alley or lane. But does the data back this idea up? 

In this article I focus on just two classes of fly-tip: “household black bag” and “other household”, as these are the ones likely to be affected by household waste collections.

Before trying to draw any conclusions from the data, it’s worth noting that it comes thickly hedged with disclaimers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The department’s report on the latest stats notes a number of important limitations. For example, the statistics generally relate only to fly-tips on public land, as these are the incidents that local authorities are responsible for clearing. Most fly-tips on private land go unreported.

So – it is possible that a change in the figures has nothing to do with any real change in fly-tipping. It’s also worth noting that, despite recent rises, the number of recorded incidents is still less than it was a decade ago, when weekly residual waste collections were more prevalent than they are now. But for the sake of argument, let’s take the stats at face value, and see what they tell us.

Weekly collections

While most areas of England have seen an increase in incidents, not all have. London reports the greatest number of incidents, and has seen the greatest increase since 2013, both in absolute terms – 102,000 additional incidents – and in percentage terms – a 67 percent increase.

The South West has seen only a 9.5 percent increase, while the North East has registered a 23 percent (9,500 incidents) decline. While the North East was the region with the third highest number of incidents in 2013, it had the lowest number in 2017.

So, what’s different about the North East? Well, one third of the twelve local authorities in the area had retained weekly residual bin collections as of 1 April 2016, the second highest proportion of any region.

But the greatest proportion of weekly bin collections councils is in London, where the biggest rise in incidents occurred.

Of course, London can be seen as a special case – but in the South East, where almost 33 percent of councils retained weekly bin collections, the number of incidents rose by 22 percent (8,639).

Reduced collections

I’ve not been able to find any other policies or waste measures that explain why the North East should be performing better than the rest of the country.

So far, we have been looking at just the absolute numbers, and ignoring the number of people in each area.

To remove differences in population between regions and local authority areas, I have divided the number of incidents by the adult population – assuming that children don’t fly-tip – to allow comparisons to be made.

This reveals a good deal of up and down variation each year, but shows the same overall pattern of increase from 2013 to 2016, with London showing the greatest increase and only the North East showing a decrease – although incidents per capita have risen there since a low point in 2014.

Is there evidence here to support the idea that there’s a correlation between increased incidence of fly-tipping and reduced waste collection frequency?

Excess waste

One place we might look would be the few English local authorities that had moved to three weekly residual waste collections well before the end of 2017: Bury, Rochdale and Oldham. 

Sure enough, the number of incidents per thousand adults has risen in each since they went three weekly. It would appear that both Bury and Rochdale have seen an increase in household waste fly-tips per 1,000 adults of more than 100 percent, while Oldham is well on the way to a similar increase.

That said, Bury’s figure dropped a good deal in the second full year of reporting; and Rochdale’s 2014 figure seems to have been unusually low, perhaps exaggerating the increase that followed the introduction of three weekly collections in 2015.

I haven’t been able to establish whether these authorities introduced new reporting policies at the same time as they changed their collection frequencies, or what the increase means.

Some authorities class waste that householders leave next to their bin as a fly-tip, so it’s plausible that, while three weekly collections are bedding in, such cases might increase temporarily. Or it may be that people were dumping excess waste in other locations – the figures just don’t tell us.

Less deprived

It’s important also to set the figures for the three-weekly authorities in context. Surprisingly, the increase reported by the small number of three weekly authorities is little different from that found in the ~85 that collect weekly, while the 200+ fortnightly authorities have seen a much smaller increase. 

The biggest change by far was seen in the 20 or so authorities that Eunomia’s records indicate operate a mixture of weekly and fortnightly collections for different property types.

So, whatever we conclude about the impact of three weekly collections, it does not appear that collection frequency is the driver for an increase in reported fly-tips. 

If collection frequency isn’t the reason, what other factors could be in play? I looked at the increase in the number of fly-tipping incidents over the last five years and divided it between local authorities classified by whether they are rural, urban or mixed; and whether they rank higher or lower in terms of deprivation.

The results are striking: 59 percent of the increase has taken place in more deprived urban areas, and a further 18 percent in less deprived urban areas. 

Common definitions

The cities were already where the greatest number of fly-tips were reported, the gap has increased over the last five years. However, we cannot be sure whether this is because more fly-tips in rural and mixed areas are on private land and go unrecorded.

Leaving that to one side, if we disaggregate the issues of “deprivation” and “predominantly urban”, both are associated with a 35 percent increase in reported incidents over the last five years, although the number of fly-tips recorded per 1,000 adults is higher in urban areas than in higher deprivation areas.

Most striking of all is that the figure for London authorities went up by far more than that for urban areas generally, and to a far higher absolute level. Perhaps that helps explain why it’s an issue that exercises the minds of national journalists! But even this intuitively appealing result masks a huge variation. 

• Enfield Council, for example, reported 256 incidents per 1,000 adults in 2016/17 – a five year increase of over 270 percent. 
• Wandsworth, by contrast, reported just 2.7 incidents per 1,000 adults, an increase of only 4 percent, and 
• Barking and Dagenham, both urban and deprived, recorded just 4.8 incidents per 1,000 adults, a decrease of 65 percent over five years.  

In truth, the more closely I have looked at these figures, the more convinced I have become that anyone who claims to be able to use them to draw conclusions about what’s really going on simply hasn’t looked hard enough.

That’s pretty unsatisfactory for a national data set, especially one that people have a real interest in understanding. But unless guidance is tightened to give greater assurance that councils use common definitions – or at least explain when an apparent change is due to a new local policy – that seems to be the most reasonable conclusion to draw. 

This Author

Peter Jones is an expert on waste legislation, strategy development and waste services procurement at Bristol-based, independent environmental consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting. He is also the editor of Eunomia’s environmental blog Isonomia.

It’s not just parents of millennials who have to put up with adult offspring at home for longer, according to new research from the University of British Columbia (UBC). Scientists are closer to understanding why some animal species are slow to fly the nest.

A study of the wild southern pied babblers – native to the Kalahari Desert – showed that they also tend to stick around the nest until they’re sure of better prospects elsewhere.

Family dynamics between brothers and stepfathers also play a big part in determining when offspring disperse, according to research published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

To fly or not to fly

Martha Nelson-Flower, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC, used 11 years of data to investigate how the dispersal of male and female babblers was affected by their position in the group social hierarchy, conditions in the environment, and the benefits of staying in their group.

She discovered large distinctions between the sexes. Female birds were more independent, but tended to remain at home when in a larger – and therefore safer – group. In contrast, males left only when they had improved chances of leading a group of their own elsewhere.

Nelson Flower says: “Males often leave when there’s more rain, which probably means there’s more food in the environment. 

“They also leave when there are more breeding vacancies for males, and they leave when the distance between groups is small.  We think that’s because they’re more likely to encounter other groups, and they can check to see if there are any breeding vacancies in those groups.”

However, a male’s position in the group social hierarchy made a big difference to their decision to disperse.

Dominant female

Brothers queue for an opportunity to inherit the leadership of their group, or that of a neighbouring group – by leaving early, younger brothers could boost their queue position and improve their prospects.

Intriguingly, males with step-fathers also left early, likely because step-fathers prioritise their own, younger sons in the queue.

In contrast, females lower in the pecking order did not leave early but bided their time, waiting for opportunities to overthrow dominant females in other groups.

Nelson-Flower suggests this may be because they sometimes achieve dominance through extreme aggression.

“A large, subordinate strong female would go to a group with a dominant female, and attack that female until she left. Sometimes sisters would come in pairs, and they would work together.”

This Author

Catherine Harte is a contributing editor of The Ecologist. This story is based on a news release from the University of British Columbia. 

Pesticide use in the UK is rising, according to an analysis of government data – and contrary to the claims of pro-pesticide lobby groups such as the National Farmers Union (NFU) and Crop Protection Association (CPA).

These organisations frequently claim that the amount of pesticides used in the UK has halved since 1990 when defending pesticide use, Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) has claimed.

But the statistic is meaningless, since it refers to the weight of the pesticides used and ignores the strength of toxicity, which is significantly higher than that used in the 1990s, the campaign group has argued.

New chemicals

PAN UK has scrutinised data from the environment department (Defra), which is hosted on the website of Fera Science. A briefing of its findings states that modern neonicotinoids – which remain the second most widely used insecticide in the UK in terms of land treated, are more than 10,000 times more potent than DDT – the pesticide banned globally in 2001 due to concerns about harm to the environment and human health.   

Between 1990 and 2016, the area of land treated with all pesticides rose by 63 percent while the area treated with fungicides increased by 69 percent and herbicides by 60 percent, it said.

The number of times crops are treated has also risen, it found. In 1990, a hectare of agricultural land was treated with pesticides an average of 2.5 times in a growing season. But by 2016, this had almost doubled to 4.2 times a season. Similarly, a hectare of potatoes went from being sprayed an average of 12.4 times in 1990, to 32 times in 2016, it found.

PAN UK’s research also revealed that farmers tended to add new chemicals to their arsenal, rather than use them to replace older ones.

For example, neonicotinoids were designed in part to replace pyrethroid insecticides due to concerns over their impact on the environment. But the research found that farmers are now using both.

Plant science

The campaign group wants the government to move to a more holistic way of measuring pesticide use, such as treatment frequency index (FTI), and number of doses (NODU). Both of these are used in a number of European countries, including France and Denmark, it points out.

Josie Cohen, head of policy and campaigns at PAN UK, said: “The UK urgently needs to adopt a new system for meaningfully monitoring pesticide use.

“Without accurate data, it’s impossible to ensure that our regulatory system is fit-for-purpose and able to protect human health and environment from the toxic effects of pesticides.”

However, the CPA stood by its claims on pesticide use. Sarah Mukherjee, the association’s chief executive,  said: “Advances in product development, formulation and application ensure that modern pesticides are safer and more precisely targeted, meaning farmers need to use less active ingredient.”

She went on to claim that “cutting edge” research and development by plant science companies had brought this about while the area being treated has almost doubled.

Hyperactivity in children

“On average it takes 11 years of research and development, costing over £200m, to bring a crop protection product to market. It is this process, backed by effective and independent regulatory scrutiny at both UK and EU level, that ensures the public can have absolute confidence in the safety of our products for human health and the environment,” she added.

This view was supported by Dr Chris Hartfield, the senior regulatory affairs adviser at the NFU, who said that pesticides had to pass strict regulations before their use was allowed, including providing evidence that they pose no unacceptable risk to people, animals or the environment.

Meanwhile, the CHEM Trust – a chemicals campaign group – has published a report outlining how the industry is replacing hormone disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) with similar chemicals that could also be harmful.

BPA is a chemical used in till receipts, polycarbonate water bottles and food can linings. It mimics the female hormone, increasing the risk of breast cancer, impairs sperm counts, impacts on diabetes and obesity, and hyperactivity in children.

Many manufacturers have replaced BPA with bisphenol S, but researchers are now finding that these are also potential hormone disruptors.

The risk assessment committee of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) states that BPS “may have a toxicological profile similar to BPA”. Use of these similar chemicals have not yet been controlled by regulators.

CHEM Trust has written to ECHA, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Commission’s health commissioner to ask them to restrict use of similar chemicals unless industry has good data to show that the chemical they wish to use does not have the same properties as those of the chemical being restricted.

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.

People tend to think a sustainable existence can only be achieved in the countryside and that the big cities of the world – London, New York, Mumbai – are obstacles to achieving this, argues conservationist Satish Kumar. 

Mr Kumar – chair of trustees at the Resurgence Trust, which publishes The Ecologist online – argued that we have to think creatively about how metropolises can be used to make more of a positive contribution to the wellbeing of their citizens, especially now we have half of the world’s populations living in cities.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist and author of more than 85 scientific papers and 12 books, speaks on ‘Science and Spiritual Practices’ for the next Resurgence Talk in London on 25 April 2018.

Revitalise economies

He asked his audience to think of the acres of available space on a city’s rooftops and walls. These spaces have the potential for growing food, harvesting energy and and collecting water. He argues the possibilities are endless as long as the imagination and willingness is there.

He argues we’d all be more contented citizens if we lived and worked locally, and were to walk or cycle to our place of work instead of enduring a chaotic, crowded and stressful daily commuting.

Mr Kumar argued that Brexit could be an opportunity to bring back local industry and revitalise local economies. He said the ‘Leave’ campaign’s promise of ‘taking control back from Brussels’ was all well and good, but asked where the control would then go. Would it be Washington, Sydney or Delhi?

He said that if the UK wanted to take control back from the EU then bring it needs to bring it back to Leeds, to Lincoln, to Sheffield and Stoke on Trent where industry once thrived and craftsmanship and skilled labour were prized.

But far from taking a narrow, nationalistic view, Mr Kumar concludes we still need to think globally whilst acting locally to ensure a sustainable future for our country.

This Speaker

Satish Kumar is editor emeritus of Resurgence and Ecologist magazine and chair of trustees of the Resurgence Trust. Mr Kumar is an author, teacher and speaker. He is also a long-term peace and environment activist.

The ban on ivory introduced by the government in the UK will be one of the toughest in the world, Michael Gove, the environment secretary, said today.

Campaigners say around 20,000 elephants are killed each year for their tusks. The annoucment by the government comes after a consultation in which more than 60,000 people supported the introduction of a complete ban.

The ban will cover ivory items of all ages, not only those produced after a certain date , and the only exemptions will be for museums, antique miniature paintings, musical instruments and items of significant historical importance.

Abhorrent trade

Mr Gove said: “The ban on ivory sales we will bring into law will reaffirm the UK’s global leadership on this critical issue, demonstrating our belief that the abhorrent ivory trade should become a thing of the past.”

Elephant populations are at an all-time low with the species facing extinction due to the ivory poaching crisis. Today’s announcement has been welcomed by a number of animal welfare charities.

David Cowdrey, head of policy and campaigns at the International Fund For Animal Welfare (IFAW) said: “Today’s announcement shows the Government is serious in introducing one of the toughest ivory bans in the world.

“This ban will send a clear and unequivocal message that ivory trade is over and rightly being consigned to the history books.

Tough ban

“It has long been acknowledged that the legal ivory trade often provides a smokescreen for more illegal killing of elephants.

He added: “Time is really running out for elephants and as a nation of animal lovers, most people in the UK have already rejected ivory as something they wish to own and will be pleased to see their views recognised with this ban.”

An IFAW report on the illegal ivory trade across Europe, titled Ivory seizures in Europe, 2006-2015, found that the European Union is still a destination for illegal ivory, a major transit route between countries and a key exporter of antique ivory to South East Asian markets.

This Author

Catherine Harte is a contributing editor to The Ecologist. This story is based on a news release from the International Fund For Animal Welfare (IFAW).

The UK government has refused to make public its strategy to bring down illegal levels of air pollution, according to environmental lawyers ClientEarth.

The lawyers group says it sent a letter together with the European Enviornmental Bureau (EEB) to the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) on 20 February 2018 requesting that the secretary of states shares the information he submitted to the European Commission explaining their prolonged failure to tackle illegal pollution and suggested solutions.

It followed a meeting in Brussels where the UK and eight other EU countries were given a final chance to present their planned measures to improve air quality before facing court action.

Public interest

The UK government recognised that there is a public interest in disclosing the information as it would help the public understand the issue at hand when responding to ClientEarth and EEB’s request.

But ClientEarth has stated that the UK government refused to release the information as it would “adversely affect international relations” in the context of the legal proceedings against the UK.

 The news comes as reports claim the UK will be referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) next month. 

Ugo Taddei, a lawyer for  ClientEarth, said: “There is overwhelming interest from the public when it comes to solving the UK’s air pollution crisis. There is no doubt they would want to know what additional action plans, if any, the UK government submitted to the European Commission.

 “Instead of hiding behind legal technicalities, the UK government should be completely transparent and follow the example of many other countries facing referrals to the Court of Justice.”

Legal warning

France, Germany, Italy and Slovakia have made their discussions with the commission public. However, Spain and Romania have also refused to publicise their exchange with the commission. Responses are still pending for Hungary and the Czech Republic.

 All nine countries could be referred to the ECJ in April, having already received a last legal warning from the commission in February.

 Taddei added: “This matter concerns the lives of people right across the UK currently living day in, day out, with poor air quality and its impacts on their health. Our success in the UK High Court confirmed that the government is failing to comply with air quality laws.

“People in the UK have a clear right to know what action the government is taking to protect their health and their right to breathe clean air.”

EU Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella announced this week that he will propose the commission refers “a number of” the countries facing infringement proceedings to the ECJ. The list will be announced at the end of April.

This Author

Catherine Harte is a contributing editor of The Ecologist. This story is based on a news release from ClientEarth.