International shipping carries around 90 percent of world trade and produces about 2.3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. To put this into perspective; if the sector were a country, it would rank as the sixth biggest emitter of CO2 in the world – with a carbon footprint roughly the size of Germany’s.  

Given it is such a major source of pollution, it might be surprising that shipping industry emissions do not fall within the targets set by the Paris Agreement. An inherently global business, that stretches across the world’s oceans – territories not owned by any one country – the shipping industry was considered problematic to incorporate into nation-led climate negotiations.

Instead, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol gave responsibility for handling carbon emissions from marine fuels to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the branch of the UN responsible for regulating global shipping. In the 21 years since, the shipping sector has managed to dodge its responsibility. It remained the last sector of the economy with no regulation of carbon emissions in place. 

Disappointing target

The tide has started to turn. The IMO met in London in April to decide on a strategy to reduce carbon emissions from the shipping industry. It was a tense week of discussions. We supported the motion put forward by a number of countries – including the EU and some small island states – for a target to reduce emissions from the shipping industry by 70-100 percent by 2050.

Such rapid decarbonisation is entirely feasible using a mixture of operational changes, different fuels and various technologies. Other countries, including the US and Saudi Arabia, did not want a target at all.

In the end, a draft strategy was set, including a compromise target of a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. While this is positive progress, science tells us that it does not go far enough to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Under this target, and assuming a ‘well below 2 degrees’ scenario, the shipping sector would account for 10 percent of global emissions by 2050. In doing so, it threatens to derail the Paris Agreement and would undermine the strong progress in cutting emissions made by other sectors and governments. 

Nowhere to hide

However, the weakness of the current goal does not stop individual companies taking the lead and getting ahead of tougher targets which are likely to be set in the years to come. 

At CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), we work with over 100 global purchasing organisations, including household names like L’Oréal, McDonalds, Microsoft and Walmart.

All of them are, at some point in their supply chains, customers of shipping companies. These companies are increasingly demanding greater transparency and increased action on climate change, water security and deforestation from their suppliers.

And as they are all requesting their suppliers report their environmental impacts annually through CDP, the shipping companies they work with have nowhere to hide. 

One increasingly common reason for this request is that purchasing organisations have set science-based targets – emissions reduction targets aligned with the level of decarbonisation needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

These targets require companies to measure and reduce their emissions from both their direct operations and – if the emissions count for more than 40 percent of the total – their supply chain, putting further pressure on shippers.

Many organisations are also going a step further and asking their suppliers to set science-based targets of their own. With the Science Based Target initiative currently working on a methodology for the transport sector, we expect this request to soon be made of shipping companies. 

It can be done

By setting ambitious goals to reduce their emissions, and reporting them to their customers and investors, shipping companies can ensure their businesses are resilient and seize a competitive advantage. 

One company that sees this competitive advantage is Danish shipping company Maersk, the largest container ship and supply vessel operator in the world.

In its 2017 disclosure to CDP, Maersk stated: “For us, having a reputation of being a responsible company that manages climate change in a credible, transparent and efficient manner may be a significant opportunity to retain current customers and attract new customers in the future…

“Already, major players like Unilever, Nike and Walmart are exploring ways to reduce the environmental impact of their supply chains and the selection of sustainable business partners and suppliers is a key factor in this work.”

Cutting emissions can also result in additional benefits, including significant cost savings. A recent CDP report found that supplying companies disclosing to CDP saved US$14 billion collectively in 2016, as a result of carbon emissions reduction activities.

An example from the maritime industry comes from Norway’s all-electric ferry. Operational since 2015, it has cut costs by as much as 80 percent and emissions by a remarkable 95 percent, compared to fuel counterparts.

Importance of disclosure

The first step to gain a competitive advantage, and identify cost savings, is disclosure. Currently only around 30 percent of shipping companies requested to report to CDP respond, versus, say, 49 percent of auto companies.

Disclosure supports much-needed visibility through the supply chain, helping inform purchasing organisations’ procurement decisions, and supporting shipping companies in communicating their efforts to reduce their environmental impacts.  

As the largest source of corporate environmental data globally, we can see that businesses around the globe are well on their way to making the transition to a low-carbon economy, and are using it to their advantage.

IMO strategy aside, the momentum behind this transition is undeniable. It’s plain to see that reducing emissions in line with a 2-degree goal is ultimately the right thing to do for shipping companies now, and in our increasingly decarbonised future. 

This Author

Dexter Galvin is global director, corporations and supply chains at CDP. CDP is a global environmental impact non-profit helping investors, companies and cities assess their environmental impact and take urgent action to build a truly sustainable economy.  Find out more about CDP at www.cdp.net. Follow @CDP and @GalvinDex on Twitter.

The company INEOS – which has faced local opposition in the rest of the UK – is today trying to overturn a Scottish ban which doesn’t involve legislation but is an instruction to local authorities not to consent planning for any fracking-related activities.

Scottish ministers announced the prohibition in October 2017, which was subsequently endorsed by a vote of MSPs. This followed after a moratorium introduced in 2015 

The case comes soon after the Scottish Government successfully faced-down a lengthy legal challenge to their Minimum Pricing for Alcohol legislation from the Scotch Whisky Association. It raises significant issues about the nature of power in democracy, the role and status of science, and the power of corporate lobbying.

Oil and gas

There is also a constitutional aspect to this debate, as the INEOS claim is based on the idea that this ban is unlawful as the licences were originally issued by the Westminster government.

Not only does INEOS want the ban lifted, it is seeking compensation for their investment in fracking infrastructure in Scotland.

INEOS has a poor track record of pollution with multiple incidents reported at their Grangemouth petrochemical plant with gas leaks, flaring and unplanned sulphur discharges resulting in the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) giving it one of its lowest performance ratings. 

Documents released due to a freedom of information request revealed that workers from the plant had to be evacuated in 2016.

The company has also been accused of an assault on civil liberties after it took out a nation-wide injunction against protesters. The injunction applies more widely than injunctions sought by previous oil and gas companies before by covering routes to the proposed exploration sites and to activities undertaken by INEOS employees and members of its supply chain.

Fossil fuel reserves

This includes any depot, equipment, people and operations. The injunction significantly increases the risk of protesting against fracking.

Friends of the Earth Scotland have submitted a public interest intervention in INEOS and Reach Coal Seam Gas’ judicial review of the Scottish Government’s decision to ban fracking.

The intervention argues that not only is the ban on fracking lawful, but that the Scottish Government is arguably required to ban fracking in order to meet Scotland’s legally binding climate change commitments.

Analysts have shown most of the world’s fossil fuel reserves should remain in the ground in order to limit global warming to well below two degrees, as per the Paris Agreement.

Public interest interventions in the Court of Session are very rare, and this is the first time such an intervention has put forward arguments in defence of the environment.

Corporate power

As such it represents an important step forward for Scotland in terms of environmental rights and access to justice for the environment, enshrined in international law by the UNECE Aarhus Convention.

Mary Church, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said in a statement: “Our intervention argues that the Scottish Government is required to ban fracking so as to urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, in line with legally binding climate targets.”

“We are confident that the process to ban fracking was robust and fair, and we hope that the courts will find against INEOS. A two-year process looked at mountains of scientific evidence that spoke of the risks of the unconventional oil and gas industry to our environment, climate and people’s health.

“There is overwhelming support for the ban from communities on the frontline of this industry, people the length and breadth of Scotland, and almost all the parties at Holyrood.”

The case is being seen by campaigners as a landmark battle of corporate power versus democracy. At stake, they argue, is the ability to not only stop the most polluting forms of fossil fuel extraction, but also the Paris Agreement itself and the wider issue of the role of public consultations in the formation of government decisions.

Environmental rights

The Scottish Government announced an ‘effective ban’ on fracking on 3 October 2017 following a 33 month moratorium which included an extensive evidence gathering process and a public consultation to which 99 percent of the 60,000 respondents opposed fracking.

The Scottish Parliament voted to support and strengthen the Scottish Government’s ban on 24 October 2017, with Labour, the Greens and Liberal Democrats voting with the Scottish Government.

Friends of the Earth Scotland is represented by amongst others the Scottish law firm Balfour+Manson.

Sinai Mules, a Balfour+Manson solicitor, told DeSmog UK: “Over 60,000 people engaged in the consultation on fracking before Ministers implemented the ban, with 99 percent opposed to the industry, demonstrating the tremendous importance of this case.

“We are delighted to be involved in this intervention which puts forward important legal arguments on climate change, and trust it ensures a fuller picture of the context around the ban is put before the court.”

“Public interest interventions in the Court of Session are rare, and this is the first time such an intervention has put forward arguments in defence of the environment.

“As such it represents an important step forward for Scotland in terms of environmental rights and access to justice for the environment, enshrined in international law by the UNECEAarhus Convention.”

INEOS were yet to provide a comment at the time of publication. 

This author

Mike Small is deputy editor of DeSmog UK, an investigative journalism outlet dedicated to unveiling corporate wrongdoing on climate change and the environment. He tweets @MikeSmall2018. This article originally appeared on DeSmog UK.  Full disclosure: Brendan Montague, editor of The Ecologist, is a former editor of DeSmog UK.

Omega-3 fatty acids have for the first time been found in invertebrates inhabiting marine ecosystems, including corals, worms and molluscs.

The major discovery that could revolutionise the understanding of omega-3 production in the ocean was made by an international team of scientists led by the University of Stirling.

The breakthrough challenges the generally held principle that marine microbes – such as microalgae and bacteria – are responsible for virtually all primary production of omega-3.

Paradigm shift

Dr Oscar Monroig, from the Institute of Aquaculture, was the lead scientist on the report and said that the findings strongly suggest that aquatic invertebrates may make “a very significant contribution to global omega-3 production”.

He added: “Our study provides a significant paradigm shift, as it demonstrates that a large variety of invertebrate animals, including corals, rotifers, molluscs, polychaetes and crustaceans, possess enzymes called ‘desaturases’ of a type that enable them to produce omega-3, an ability thought to exist almost exclusively in marine microbes.”

Dr Naoki Kabeya, from Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology and the first author of the study, said: “Since invertebrates represent a major component of the biomass in aquatic ecosystems such as coral reefs, abyssal plains and hydrothermal vents, their contribution to the overall omega-3 production is likely to be remarkable.”

Professor Douglas Tocher from Stirling University also took part in the research. He said: “It was very surprising to us to see just how widespread these genes were, particularly in animals that are so common and abundant in the sea.

Horizontal gene transfer

“It is also intriguing that these genes seem to be jumping between very different organisms, such as from plants or fungi into an insect and a spring-tail, by a process of horizontal gene transfer.

“This has been a controversial idea, that genes can move around in this way, but our data looks rather convincing that these genes have done this in at least some of these species.”

Certain omega-3 fatty acids are considered essential for human health, particularly in western countries with high prevalence of cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases for which omega-3 oil supplements are commonly prescribed.

Therefore, the new research is not only likely to impact the scientific community, but also the general public and various industries involved in the production of supplements.

Dr Monroe added: “These findings can revolutionise our understanding of omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids production on a global scale.”

This Author

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

Climate change is no longer a topic strictly limited to the scientific community. A few decades ago, people didn’t talk about it as much because it wasn’t a concern, but now it’s affecting our present world and near future.

The warming climate is shifting normal weather patterns to create stronger and more frequent storms, and we see the effects of warming seawater in rising sea levels and dying oceanic populations like coral.

Now, there are campaigns raising awareness about global warming seemingly everywhere. People of all ages see ads on TV and via social media, so they learn not only how their habits hurt the earth, but also how they can reverse that damage and start to help. But are the efforts of individuals to decrease their carbon footprint enough change?

Global reach

Many people are arguing for governments to take more responsibility for the environment. While there’s always an opposing side, there are some good reasons to hold the government to higher levels of accountability regarding climate change. Read on for some reasons governments can make a bigger impact if they take more action to help the earth.

When an individual starts using less water or electricity, that does some good for the earth. Anyone who puts effort into living a greener life makes a difference, but a commercial about melting ice caps isn’t going to convince everyone they should drive less and walk more. There should be an authoritative figure pushing people to change: the governments of countries.

If governments get involved with fighting climate change, they can make a world of difference. British Columbia enacted a carbon tax shift on July 1, 2008, taxing $10 for each ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere.

Between 2007 and 2011, BC greenhouse gas emissions dropped six percent overall, proving the government successfully encouraged big businesses to change how they run, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Furthermore, the government can impact renewable energy in countries. In addition to establishing and meeting renewable energy goals, government tax incentives can make renewable energy installation for businesses and residential areas more affordable.

Earth is suffering

A person trying to be more environmentally friendly in their everyday life can make incremental changes, but have little way to see what kind of an impact they’re having. How much are they really helping the earth by composting or using the air conditioning less in the summer?

There’s no real way for a person to measure that, but governments have the resources to create and analyse positive environmental efforts.

To be able to examine global warming on a worldwide level, countries came together to form the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its focus is to make regular assessments of climate change, determine impacts and future risks and then provide some options for how to adapt to those needs.

These reports then go to the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, so world leaders can continue to improve global health. A single person — or even a group of people lacking the resources governments have at their disposal — wouldn’t be able to accomplish this goal.

Ultimately, people who want to help reverse the way the earth is suffering must come together to form one team. People can do that through blogs, social media and even local groups that meet regularly, but there’s no team without a leader.

Radical difference

As the leaders of their countries, it’s governments’ responsibility to stand up to face the battles their people are fighting. In the modern world, that means climate change.

The flip side of this coin is that when governments start getting involved and working to combat global warming, citizens need to realise the decisions they make won’t be perfect.

No one can provide perfection, but anyone concerned about the earth’s health should want to support a group of leaders with far-reaching influence in their efforts to make more change happen, in addition to the everyday efforts of individuals.

When it comes down to deciding what issues the government should have a hand in, everyone will answer differently. The fact of the matter is, climate change shouldn’t be a party political issue. It affects everyone and is going to continue hurting people all over the world.

Governments have shown they can make a radical difference if they get to lead the fight against global warming. Everyone can get behind something that makes such a powerful, positive change.

This Author

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

For more than a decade now, there have been strong advocates of the benefits for human wellbeing not only of slow food, but also of slow cities, slow travel, slow parenting and even slow sex.

We would like to add another snail’s pace to the menu: the value of slow reading.

The latest issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now!

The Welsh writer W.H. Davies (1871–1940) lost his father, was brought up by his grandparents, got into trouble at school, never found regular work, and spent his twenties as a drifter in North America, surviving the winters by getting himself arrested and jailed.

A slow manifesto

While he was trying to jump a freight train in Ontario, his foot was crushed beneath the wheels, causing his leg to be amputated below the knee.

He returned to England and lived in London dosshouses and Salvation Army shelters, until, through the good offices of George Bernard Shaw, he published his bestselling Autobiography of a Super-Tramp in 1908.

A few years earlier, he had met the writer Edward Thomas and, partly under his influence, he became a poet. His most famous poem, ‘Leisure’, published in 1911, might well be described as a slow manifesto:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare? –

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time

For Davies, modern man has relinquished his capacity to spend free time in the lap of Nature. The poem urges us not to rush, but to slow down, to stop. The words “no time” appear in each of the seven rhyming couplets.

The colon at the end of each stanza creates a pause, and then the repeated question forces the reader to mark time and to make time, to see simple things that we usually ignore (a squirrel storing food for winter, the star-like glint of the sun’s reflection in water). The “stare” overcomes our constant sense of “care” and makes us care in another sense – care for our precious, beautiful, vulnerable environment.

No time to stare, no time to see, no time, no time: it’s a phrase that we all, with our busy, busy lives, can understand. Especially in a world, unimagin­able to Davies, where texts, emails and messages on social media invade our headspace at every moment of the day.

Hardly a week passes in which there is not some new media report into the growing crisis of mental health among people, which seems to be linked to conflict with friends, fears about body image, and other pressures exacerbated by social media. The epidemic of self-harming among teenage girls; the millions of pounds spent by the National Health Service on stress, anxiety and related disorders; the cost of burnout to businesses, organisations and especially the NHS itself: the litany of adverse effects of the pace of modern life is depressingly familiar.

Slowing down

There are, of course, many ways of dealing with stress, and most of them involve the simple expedient of slowing down.

Obvious examples that come to mind are a walk in the park or the country, stroking a pet, and the pleasures of gardening. But one of the oldest remedies of all is the reading of poetry.

The great 18th-century reader and writer Samuel Johnson said that the only purpose of writing was to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it. He read the entire works of all the English poets, not least in order to redirect his spirits away from his own depression and physical ill health.

For centuries people have turned to poetry in dark times. John Stuart Mill claimed in his Autobiography that reading the poetry of William Wordsworth cured him after he suffered a severe nervous breakdown as a young man, and that thanks to poetry he was able to manage his depression for the rest of his life. Queen Victoria said that Tennyson’s In Memoriam was the only means other than the Bible through which she coped with the death of Prince Albert.

Power of poetry

What is the particular quality of poetry that gives it such power? The answer surely is that, of all kinds of writing, poetry is the form that most demands slow reading.

Poetry is language in concentrated form. Poems make you feel and they make you think. They take you out of yourself, transport you to other worlds, away from your present troubles. Because they use words with beauty and care, they demand to be read with attention and without rush.

The words must be savoured, because they are the linguistic equivalent of the best food and wine. Most of the time, we fill our minds with words that are the equivalent of fast food. Poetry is slow mind food, real nutrition for the soul.

Attentive reading slows the breath and empties the mind of other cares. The rhythms of a good poem may be inherently calming and therapeutic, regardless of the subject matter. The brevity of a poem can be a blessing for many people who, when stressed or depressed, lack concentration and sometimes are unable to read.

Mirror of our feelings

The subject matter of poetry – memory, love, the restorative power of Nature, confrontation with sorrow and death – often serves for attentive readers as a mirror of their own feelings, a welcome discovery that we are not alone.

Slow reading encourages us to stop. “Compose yourself” is a phrase that we might say to ourselves when we are stressed or flustered. The word ‘compose’ here comes from the Latin meaning of ‘putting things together’ – that is to say, creating order.

The chime of rhyme, the reassurance of repetition, the sense of balance in the pattern of a stanza or the fourteen lines of a sonnet: all of these are formal devices that poets use to bring order to the chaos of experience, and a sense of musical harmony, of resolution.

Poets, like those who write music, are composers. They take emotions and ideas and put them into harmonious, melodious order. There is no better example of this process than that special form of poetry known as the sonnet: fourteen lines, a regular five-beat rhythm, a pattern of rhymes, and sometimes a twist in the tail.

Be still

In his sonnet ‘Bright Field’, R.S. Thomas urges us to remember that life should not be rushed, that hurrying is an illusory quest for a “receding future”: instead, like W.H. Davies, we must make time for “turning aside”.

Similarly, one of Wordsworth’s most composed poems is that celebration of a moment of stillness at dawn before the start of a busy London day – ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’:

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Poetic moments such as this are typically characterised by solitariness.

Connected to the world

W.H. Davies, R.S. Thomas and Wordsworth connect in stillness with Nature because they are alone. But, for us as readers, there is a sense that we are not alone: by slowly reading their words, reanimating their vision in our imagination, we feel connected to their world and thus to our world.

The slow poem performs two sorts of work at the same time – an easing of pressure is combined with a sense of community: “Others have felt the same as me. Ah, that’s it – that’s exactly how I feel.”

John Keats beautifully articulated two “axioms” for poetry in a letter to his publisher, John Taylor:

1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

2nd. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight.A spiritual luxury, that is – not the relentless quest for material luxury that Wordsworth condemned when he spoke in another sonnet (‘The World Is Too Much With Us’) of how, “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

Nutritious literature

It was our belief in these ideas that led us to establish ReLit, a charitable foundation devoted to the proposition that slow reading of nutritious literature, especially in the compacted form of poetry, may work as a form of stress relief and combating loneliness.

Reading is cheap and, in contrast to pharmaceuticals, has no deleterious side effects. Whether by the bedside of the insomniac, in a hospice or in the anxious environment of a doctor’s waiting room, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by having a volume of poetry to hand.

That was the motivation behind our publication in 2016 of the anthology Stressed Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind and now The Shepherd’s Hut, a collection of original poems and free translations of lyrics from several different poetic traditions.

Among the new poems is one that tries very simply to catch the spirit of slow reading, by asking the reader to stop and make time for words, for images, and even for the pause that comes at the end of a line of verse and the stress-free white space that surrounds the thoughts:

SLOW READING

Take time for each word,

Give room to white space,

Listen for the beat,

Tune to the weather,

Rekindle memory,

Life-scape and heart-leap.

Know that poetry

Is not of the world:

It is in the worth

Of the words to you,

Patient reader, open

To the spirit of slow.

About these authors

Paula Byrne is an author and biographer, as well as chief executive of ReLit. Jonathan Bate is Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. The Shepherd’s Hut by Jonathan Bate is published by Unbound with all author royalties devoted to the charitable work of ReLit. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist.

Activists from Greenpeace climbed the entrance gate of KBC bank in Brussels during the early hours of Thursday and rolled out a banner to ask visitors to choose either a ‘coal’ or a ‘renewables’ entrance.

Greenpeace argues that while the two other big banks in Belgium stopped coal investments, KBC ran behind in the divestment drive. The organisation pointed to both the climate and financial risks of coal investments.

A number of Czechs also descended on Brussels, to talk in KBC’s annual shareholder meeting about the destruction of their village by a massive open pit coal mine – paid for with KBC money.

Clean air

The European Beyond Coal coalition of NGOs may state with confidence that Europe will be coal-free by 2030 – in the Czech Republic coal is still king.

The heating of 40 percent of the Czechs comes from coal-fired power plants. In order to supply them with coal, mining in the North of the Czech Republic already annihilated 82 villages, says Vladimir Burt, the mayor of Horni Jiretin. KBC finances this through its banking arm in the Czech Republic: CSOB. CSOB invested hundreds of millions to the open coal mines.

Jan Rovensky is a member of the environmental council in neighboring Litvinov. His main worry now is that “when their plans succeed we will be surrounded and shut off from the outside world by mines on one side and the mountainous border behind us”.

Vladimir gives the historical context of their struggle: “The Soviets continued the rapid expansion of the mines during the Nazi occupation. From the sixties onwards, entire villages were swallowed whole.

“The resistance against the open mine and against the Soviet regime melted together. It is in our region that the 1989 resistance wave that brought about the end of the Soviet era began, with a call for clean air.”

Immediately and positively

Today, it is private investors and the banks that finance the mines that Vladimir and Jan are up against. The mines have also recently started to received support from abroad.

But Horni Jiretin grew into an international meeting place and resistance hub, under the slogan “We are the limits”. Last year, people from all over Europe came together here to occupy the mine for a day and thus paralyze production.

Jan Rovensky thinks that they are now really at a turning point: “If they do not expand in the five years that their license still remains, its game over for Czech Coal.

“The Czech government recently allowed a limited expansion of one mine, allowing the massive 150 meters long and 60 meters high digging machine to come as close as 300 meters from the houses of Litvinov. But Czech Coal looks at CSOB for money and CSOB looks at KBC for approval.”

The good news is that KBC reacted immediately and positively to the Greenpeace ‘hijack’ of their shareholder meeting. It is likely they had seen the storm brewing on the horizon – as the demand to divest from all coal investments is not new.

Beginning of the end

KBC suddenly indicated that it had already decided not to allow new financing of coal-fired power plants and coal mines from June 2018, but was planning to announce that later.

The bank still makes one exception for existing coal-fired plants for centrally controlled heating. According to KBC, that’s a question of not suddenly leaving 40 percent of Czech people out in the cold.

By denouncing all new investments in coal mining and coal power in the Czech Republic, the bank comes a major step closer to a statement that Thomas Leysen, the chairman of the executive board of KBC, already did in 2015: “Coal has to go”.

The delegation from the Czech Republic who fielded questions during the shareholder meeting will return home with a huge sigh of relief.

KBC is by far the main player for financing the energy sector in the Czech Republic and today’s decision is likely to mark the beginning of the end of decades of struggle to stop the machines that ate a whole region.

This Author

Nick Meynen is policy officer for Environmental and Economic Justice at the European Environmental Bureau. He authored several books on the environment and he comments on global environmental and economic issues on Facebook and Twitter. For more details, visit the Atlas of Environmental Justice.

The frantic hum of bees surrounds the Barro Vermelho community in rural North East Brazil. This sound represents something far greater than just a money-making business – it is these bees which have allowed the people here so much freedom.

This is a community descended from enslaved people, and artefacts born of that painful history still remain. It is difficult to forget those indignities, when the old houses where their ancestors were taken to be beaten and punished still stand.

Eusebio De Carvalho is the leader of this community. He talks openly about the distressing history his ancestors have suffered at the hands of the white men and women who enslaved them. He speaks of his ancestors being dominated and beaten by those who held more power. “All of that ended when slavery was abolished, and enslaved people were given their freedom,” Eusebio says.

Gaining recognition 

This community fought long and hard to be nationally and internationally recognised as a Quilombola community – and on 29 March 2013 they were finally successful. After a lengthy process, they are now officially acknowledged as descendants of enslaved people in Brazil, and as such, eligible for support from the state.

The Barro Vermelho Quilombola community now has legal support through a legal entity called Palmares. This, Eusebio says, makes them feel well represented and strong within Brazil, making them ready to fight against any further injustice.

Becoming recognised as a Quilombola was a victory – but it was only one part of the story. In the past, Eusebio says, the community lacked structure.

There was no organisation, and no freedom. They relied on growing corn and beans to provide an income, and it was nowhere near enough.

Becoming beekeepers

Today, the story is very different. This is down to one thing – beekeeping. The idea first emerged when an Italian beekeeper visited the community in 1999, and shared some of his knowledge.

“He gave us a lot of encouragement. Those that had the will to pursue beekeeping as a way to make a living didn’t turn back,” Eusebio explains.

There, at the beginning, was a lot to learn. The new beekeepers made the most of basic training opportunities offered by SEBRAE, a government institution. And soon, they had forged partnerships with other beekeepers in the region.

Eusebio took up more courses, and spent time with expert beekeepers in the Picos region, then brought his new skills home to the community. The beekeepers in Barro Vermelho eventually formed an Association, so that they could work better together.

“Today, I feel happy. We are super organised, developed, and a very popular community, and everyone that lives here is happy to belong here. It’s a community that is growing everyday,” Eusebio says.

Bee welfare

Honey farming is not always a pretty picture, and industrial beekeeping can include harsh conditions. Bees face being overworked, moved constantly, and crammed into small enclosed spaces. To stop Queen bees from swarming and leading the bees to a different hive, it is common practice to clip their wings. Finally, as autumn draws to a close and the last of the honey has been collected, bees are often culled.

At Barro Vermelho, they do things very differently. Bee welfare standards are high, and intervention is kept to a minimum. The beekeepers rear their own Queens through natural succession, and do not stop the colonies from swarming. The Queens are free to follow their natural instinct – wings intact.

The bees’ welfare is at the centre of everything – even when it comes to collecting honey. Anything in the lower hives, where the brood chambers are – and where the Queen lives and lays her eggs – is left for the bees. Only surplus honey is collected for human consumption. The people never take more than the bees can spare.

The Fair Trade organic honey is sold to a collective, Casa Apis, which was founded in 2005 by a beekeeper, Antonio “Sitonho” Dantas, who wanted to make a contribution to the social fabric of the State. He decided it was time that beekeepers started working together, instead of against each other.

Casa Apis is now the umbrella organisation for five large cooperatives in the Picos municipality, representing over 1,000 beekeepers. The honey makes its way to North America and Europe, and Lush is one of its customers.

Living the dream

When Eusebio started on his journey as a beekeeper, he had one dream – he wanted a better house. The financial benefits that have come alongside beekeeping have turned around the prospects of the community, and living conditions have improved hugely.

So much so that Eusebio got his wish, and has moved into his dream home.

When someone wants to become a beekeeper, Eusebio and his team help them make a plan. He asks them how they want to change their lives? While everyone has their own dreams, beekeeping at Barro Vermelho is a collective project, where everyone works together towards the same goal.

At Barro Vermelho, humans and nature are working in harmony, which means the humans respect the bees. But this is a community that goes beyond sustainability. It is actively regenerating the land, economy, and bee population. Beekeeping, Eusebio says, is the star of the community.

Bringing back the forest

Aside from the impact on human lives, there is another benefit to beekeeping in the Barro Vermelho community. It has taught people to care for the environment.

This is a region that should be home to about 40 native plant species. It should have a balance between hot, dry, long winters and short blasts of rain throughout the summer, which help the native flora come into bloom – essential for bees.

But thanks to the impact of climate change and ongoing deforestation in the region, this is no longer the case.

Tough climatic conditions mean that rainfall has dropped dramatically, from about 600mm to 200mm per year. For these beekeepers, following the weather forecast is about more than deciding whether to step out with an umbrella.

This is about whether they can expect a bountiful crop, and therefore better economic security. Without the rain, the flora may not bloom, which has a huge impact on the bees. When this happens, swarms may leave the area in search of nectar elsewhere.

“The biggest factor in causing this lack of rain is the reckless deforestation caused by humans,” Eusebio says. He says this whilst acknowledging the part he played himself in the problem since, historically, he was one of those who used to clear land for agriculture.

‘Guardians’ of the land

But things have changed. Caring for bees means caring for their habitat, and the people of Barro Vermelho have learnt the importance of nature, and the widespread damage to the ecosystem that deforestation causes.

“In the past there was this reckless deforestation taking place. Now the focus is to reforest and protect, whereas once we did the opposite,” Eusebio explains.

The families in the community are becoming true ‘Guardians’ of the land. Together with Casa Apis, Barro Vermelho is now working on a new reforestation project which involves families being given native species to plant and care for.

As native vegetation returns, the bee population is given a fighting chance of survival.

This community, which has its roots in such a painful history, has found strength from beekeeping. The people have taken control of their story, and changed it for the better. But what is so important, is that they have worked in harmony with nature, and rejected the idea that humans and nature are seperate.

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. Find out more about Eusebio De Carvalho in his interview with Lush Life, or watch the Lush Summit 2018 panel on bees and honey.

I have just been given three very useful tips: “One, never run out of water. Two, take sunscreen. And three, stand still, suck it in – it’s the most life affirming thing you’ll ever do.”

As author and walker Raynor Winn offers her advice to me about long-distance walking, I am reminded of Mary Schmich’s 1997 life-affirming and life-assuring essay ‘Wear Sunscreen’ – made famous by Baz Luhrmann’s spoken word song.

And having read her book, The Salt Path, I’m adding a few extra tips myself. Four, take alternatives to noodles and fudge bars – they are not fun food for very long. Five, don’t walk through coastal towns when hungry and near-penniless – self-will is no match for pasties and cream teas. 

Solace in walking 

Raynor and I both have a connection to the South West Coast Path – a 630-mile trail that runs from Minehead in north Somerset to Poole in Dorset, traversing both coasts of Devon and Cornwall in-between.

I have lived and worked in places along the path and will be walking stretches of it in June of this year. But Raynor’s connection is altogether more visceral and affecting. In the space of one week, she and her husband Moth lost their home in the Welsh countryside, and with it their holiday rental business. On top of that, a doctor told Moth he had a rare neurodegenerative disease and would die. 

And so – running out of options after a period of sofa surfing – they started walking the path. “Walking initially was just a reason to get up every day, to put one foot in front of the other,” she told The Ecologist. “But slowly, the wildness of nature and the landscape became the reason to go on. It released our thoughts, we could be in the moment. We could let go of our despair and anxiety.” 

Moth’s illness made days on the path unbearable at first. His consultant had advised gentle strolls and avoiding stairs. The Coast Path takes in ascension equivalent to climbing Mount Everest almost four times. But with no home to go to, and no long-term options with friends and relatives, they kept walking. 

Positive impact

“As we continued though, Moth improved. Getting out of the tent in the morning became easier. He had less stiffness and pain.”

There is a moment in the book where Raynor and Moth run away from an incoming tide. Moth runs, carrying the tent above his head. “In that moment, I realised how far he’d come. Doctors had told us that he eventually wouldn’t be able to move.”

Since the walk, Raynor has been researching the connection between being in nature, endurance activity, and the impact on the body and on Moth’s condition.

“It seems to positively impact the build-up of a faulty protein in the brain. There are so many benefits to being in nature. Whatever the physiological reasons – we have experienced it.” 

Perceptions and belonging 

There is comfort in familiarity, in routines and habits that bring stability. “We lost everything that represented home,” explains Raynor. “I thought home was contained within our four walls. But the roots of home vanished overnight.

“Then, walking, we gradually met people who made us think about what home really was.”

Communities living in horse boxes, in tents, in barns, in the woods: these are the hidden homeless, “but their lives were here; the wood was their home. They didn’t want to be alone in the city, they wanted to be in community, in nature.” 

Our perceptions are powerful lenses through which we see the world. When asked about what brought them to the path, Raynor and Moth had two stories: first, that they had sold their house and were going on an adventure. And second, the truth: that they were homeless and didn’t know what they were going to do next.

The first story provoked inspiration, the second repulsion. “Our perception of ourselves was unchanged, but other’s perceptions were so varied. We hadn’t expected that.”

In one story, as Raynor stands counting their last few coins outside a shop, she’s knocked by an over-enthusiastic dog. Coins flying and rolling into a drain, she falls to the ground. The middle aged, middle class owner of the dog comes around the corner and says: ‘What are you, drunk I expect?’, proceeding to castigate Raynor for being homeless.

“People’s perceptions changed us as much as living wild did. I now find it hard to listen to people’s views when they’re based solely on perceptions.” 

Realities of rural homelessness

The hidden realities of rural homelessness can jar against the rural idyll. Tourist spots desperate for seasonal income would rather rough sleepers were out of sight – holidays should be free from problems like poverty and homelessness.

“But if the beautiful British countryside is to have any integrity, we must open our eyes to the desperate need of people who are not on our doorsteps, but in our hedgerows,” Raynor said in the original Big Issue article that led to her book deal.

One report puts Cornwall as having the third highest rate of homelessness in the country. But homeless haunts can be hard to spot in the countryside, which may explain why rural homelessness is often overlooked compared to rough sleepers and people asking for money in cities. 

The walls we build and the things we own can enclose us, make us protective. “We noticed that generally, the people that could help us didn’t help, and those that couldn’t help us, who had nothing, did help us.”

Like Colin in Plymouth who – homeless himself – still shared his one can of birthday beer with them. 

A gift 

They reached the Lizard – the most south westerly point of the country – in September. “We saw the swallows massing, waiting for their moment to leave. In that moment, I knew I belonged there, on the path,” she tells me.

“Home was watching Moth’s footprints ahead of me.

“Going into nature has always been my safe space. So losing our house, I thought I’d also lost my connection to the land. But a storm on the north Cornwall coast reinvigorated my sense of being a part of nature. This is how I re-found myself.” 

The Salt Path is part memoir, part nature writing – “though I didn’t need to write about nature, as the story was nature,” she says. It is a valuable lesson in how we cannot spend our lives planning the future.

“We can only live now. We were experiencing the moment – not many of us do that, but nature helps you to. It’s a gift. The path was a gift to us.”  

Re-formed by the elements

Raynor and Moth now live in Cornwall with the coast path on their doorstep, after a chance encounter at the end of their walk with someone who offered them a space to live.

They have a dog called Monty who they walk with, every day, on the path. Moth is studying for a degree at Plymouth University, defying his consultant’s predictions. 

The Salt Path pommelled me like Atlantic winds. It carried me along on a rain-soaked, sun-burnt, despair-infused, hope-driven walk. The writing is at times raw, poetic, funny, shocking. It is consistently honest, vulnerable, clear.

I finished the book reminded of the importance of really hearing people’s stories, of the healing power of the natural world, and of our individual and collective now. 

“Our journey had drained us of every emotion, sapped our strength and our will. But then, like the windblown trees along our route, we had been re-formed by the elements into a new shape that could ride out whatever storms came over the bright new sea.” 

About this author: 

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

The Salt Path is published by Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Humans may be Earth’s apex predator, but the fleeting shadow of a vulture or the glimpse of a big cat can cause instinctive fear and disdain.

Now new evidence suggests that predators and scavengers are much more beneficial to humans than commonly believed – and their loss may have greater consequences than we have imagined.

Conflict between these species and people, coupled with dramatic habitat loss, is causing unprecedented predator and scavenger declines. Nearly three-fourths of all vulture species are on a downward spiral. African lions are projected to lose half of their range in the coming decades and leopards have lost upwards of 75 percent of their historic range. Many bat species are facing extinction.

Friend not foe

In a recent paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution, we summarised recent studies across the globe looking at the services predators and scavengers can provide, from waste disposal to reducing car crashes.

Animals that eat meat play vital roles in our ecosystems. One of the most outstanding examples we found was that of agricultural services by flying predators, such as insectivorous birds and bats.

We found studies that showed bats saving US corn farmers over US$1 billion in pest control because they consume pest moths and beetles. Similarly, we found that without birds and bats in coffee plantations of Sulawesi, coffee profits are reduced by US$730 per hectare.

It’s not just birds and bats that help farmers. In Australia, dingoes increase cattle productivity by reducing kangaroo populations that compete for rangeland grasses (even when accounting for dingoes eating cattle calves).

Not just vermin

This challenges the notion that dingoes are solely vermin. Rather, they provide a mixture of both costs and benefits, and in some cases their benefits outweigh the costs. This is particularly important as dingoes have been a source of conflict for decades.

Predators and scavengers also significantly reduce waste in and around human habitation. This keeps down waste control costs and even reduces disease risk.

For example, golden jackals reduce nearly 4,000 tons of domestic animal waste per year in Serbia and over 13,000 tons across urban areas in Europe. Vultures can reduce over 20 percent of organic waste in areas of the Middle East. In India, vultures have been implicated in reducing rabies risk by reducing the carcasses that sustain the stray dog population.

One piece of research showed that if mountain lions were recolonised in the eastern United States, they would prey on enough deer to reduce deer-vehicle collisions by 22 percent a year. This would save 150 lives and more than US$2 billion in damages.

Change the conversation

Although these species provide clear benefits, there are well known costs associated with predators and scavengers as well. Many predators and scavengers are a source of conflict, whether it is perceived or real; particularly pertinent in Australia is the ongoing debate over the risk of shark attacks.

These drastic costs of predators and scavengers are rare, yet they attract rapt media attention. Nevertheless, many predators and scavengers are rapidly declining due to their poor reputation, habitat loss and a changing climate.

It’s time for a change in the conservation conversation to move from simply discussing the societal costs of predators and scavengers to a serious discussion of the important services that these animals provide in areas we share. Even though we may rightly or wrongly fear these species, there’s no doubt that we need them.

These Authors

Christopher O’Bryan works at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland. Eve McDonald-Madden is a senior lecturer at The University of Queensland. James Watson is a professor at The University of Queensland and Neil Carter is an assistant professor at the College of Innovation and Design, Boise State University.

This story first appeared in The Conversation. The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Hawthorne Beyer and Alexander Braczkowski.

‘Remove’, ‘sequester’, ‘lock-up’. Call it how you like, but to stabilise our climate and surpass the Paris Agreement, we really need to be thinking about storing hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon. I don’t think anybody on Earth can visualise what numbers like these really look like. Yet, our future depends on us lowering the quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to safe levels before, so-called self-amplifying feedbacks take over – if they haven’t already.

There is a clue emerging as to how we might accomplish such a feat – in the image of the Blue Marble NASA image of Earth. Namely that over 70 percent of the planet is ocean and the fate of life on Earth is intrinsically tied to that of the oceans.

Currently – and it is no secret – the oceans are in a terminal decline, acidifying, heating, losing their biomass and, the worse bit, flipping from carbon sink to carbon source. Fish stocks are also depleted, as ocean ecosystems fall under the sad blanket of degradation. But what if, by a process of biomimicry, we could reverse these processes and restore the life in the oceans?

Nick Breeze (NB): In the context of climate change and carbon sinks, can we talk a little bit about the role the oceans play in photosynthesis?

Russ George (RG): This blue planet is 28 percent land, of which half is rock and ice. So 14 percent of this planet has soil that might sustain green plants, but 72 percent of this planet is the ocean, all of which can sustain green photosynthesis.

So the green photosynthetic productivity in the ocean is down by 40-50 percent. That is the conservative data backed numbers for the collapse of phytoplankton in the worlds ocean. We are terrestrial beings so we think about forests. So everybody on the planet knows about the plight of the Amazon rainforest, and it is a global cause celeb. Tens of millions of dollars are being focussed on trying to save the remaining rainforests because 20 percent of the rainforest has been cut down. 

But in every five year period of time since 1950, there has been a loss of green plant life equal to an entire Amazon in the worlds oceans. So here we are. A dozen Amazons have gone missing from the world. 

NB: That is absolutely enormous in terms of scale. What state are they in, I mean how much of this impact can they absorb?

RG: Well, we know that since 1950 if we have lost 12 entire Amazon’s worth of biomass in the oceans, if we merely restore it to that state, we’ll capture that much sustainable living biomass in the oceans. 

That is more forestry potential than exists than in all the lands on the planet. So we can grow plants in the ocean that will harvest many times the amount of CO2 than if we were to reforest all available land on the planet.

NB: The oceans have recently been described as a vast desert. Are you talking about turning them into a rich biodiverse environment?

RG: I describe the oceans as being a vast oceanscape, like a landscape. Scattered around on that oceanscape are pastures that come and go, like pastures on land. So the ocean pastures of the world come into being when the necessary nutrients arrive. The most critical nutrient for photosynthesis is iron. It is the rarest substance in the ocean. 

The background level of iron in the open ocean, far from land, is only 3 parts per trillion. So when iron arrives, say in a dust fall from the Gobi Desert, or from the Sahara, the concentration of iron in the surface water rises from 3 parts per trillion to, say, 100 parts per trillion, or 1 part per billion. 

When it does that, the ocean turns from blue to green immediately because iron empowers photosynthesis. So the potential is there to restore the ocean pastures of the planet. The ocean is not one single pasture; it is a collection of pastures.

NB: Can we talk about your method for doing this and its connection to the Earth’s method for doing the same thing?

RG: John Martin worked out, back in the 1970’s and 80’s that when dust falls in the ocean, the ocean blooms. He looked at the ice ages and the sedimentary records in the ocean. He concluded that if we look at what the condition was just before the ice age, we see in the sedimentary record, a sudden arrival of a lot of dust. The planet got dry and dusty, the dust blew in the wind and landed in the ocean, and we see in the sedimentary record, blooms of plankton.

As soon as the plankton bloomed, we observe that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere declines. It repurposes the CO2 into ocean life which pulled the greenhouse gas blanket off the Earth. The Earth got cold and went into an ice age.

Martin said “How much dust would be required?” He did the science and said, “a mere ship load of iron dust would be more than sufficient to restore the ocean to its historic most abundant productive state of life.” 

That would be sufficient to pull all of humanities anthropogenic CO2 out of the atmosphere and repurpose it into new ocean life, and the ocean has the capacity to do that.

NB: We are talking about between 600 billion and 1 trillion tonnes of CO2?

RG: Yeah, yesterday’s CO2 that is in the atmosphere; I use the term a trillion tonnes. All of the CO2 that has been emitted and caused to be emitted into the air in the industrial age, is about a trillion tonnes. Demonstrably, that is a lethal dose for life on the planet, as we know and like it.

NB: There are claims that we are overfishing the mean but you are implying something different?

RG: I am a terrestrial plant ecologist by profession and on land we have been doing pasture management for 10,000 years. Nobody questions that if the pasture is healthy you can have a large herd of livestock and when the pasture has turned to a desert, you can’t sustain a herd of livestock.

But in the ocean people say the condition of the pasture has nothing to do with the amount of livestock on the pasture. It is all about the harvest. This is just a preposterous idea that overfishing  is the singular issue in the ocean when we clearly have a far more devastating problem in the collapse of ocean pastures into clear blue desert.

So if there is nothing for the fish to eat, you cannot sustain the school of fish.

NB: Can you talk about the now infamous ocean pasture restoration work that you did with the Haida People of British Columbia?

RG: They had come to me from a village of less than 800 people, who said that in all of history, they have known themselves as the People of the Salmon. But the salmon had disappeared and so in 2007, they’d come to me and they said, “can you please try it in our ocean to see if it will bring our salmon back, because today our people cannot catch enough salmon to survive!”

I worked for years with the village and we were funded by the Canadian Federal Government. Every 90 days we wrote a report, and ultimately in 2012, with the support of the Canadian National Research Foundation, who was paying for 50% of the science costs, the village had managed to raise over $2 million from their village trust fund money. 

We set out to sea, myself and a crew of eleven people. We loaded by hand, four thousand 50lb bags of iron dust material onto the ship. We went into the Haida Ocean. The Haida nation is recognised as a sovereign nation that lives as a protectorate within Canada, with all the rights of being Canadians. But they do have absolute sovereignty over their lands and their ocean. 

So the Haida nation passed within their national laws the legislation to approve the project. It was vetted by the Canadian Federal Government every step of the way. The project was all lined up to be monitored and verified and certified as a result.

We dusted a 100 by 100 kilometre patch of ocean in the summer of 2012. The reason we chose the patch of ocean is that there is a gigantic ocean eddy that forms off the Haida Islands, called the Haida Eddy, which is legendary in ocean science. 

We decided we add the dust to the Haida Eddy which is also the nursery pasture for the baby salmon that go to sea. So the hypothesis was: if we can restore this nursery pasture to historic health and abundance, the baby fish when they swim out to sea, instead of mostly starving, will be treated to a feast and survive.

So we did that and the ocean immediately turned from blue to green. We had a lot of scientific hardware aboard, including two Slocum Glider’s, which are state of the art ocean robots, that autonomously swim in the ocean for 3 weeks at a time, surfacing every 2 hours and sending satellite reports back as to what they have seen.

So we collected 164 thousand electronic datapoint from the gliders and data points that we lowered over the side and more than 10 thousand wet ocean plankton samples to measure it. The goal was to bring the fish back.

The village came to me and said “how should we do this?” I said we should create a company to do this under so that we can apply for research grants and funding from different groups. So the company was called the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation. So the goal from the beginning was to restore the salmon.

It worked. The ocean turned from blue to green. We had the data analysis but the real data that we were hoping and praying would come, would be the fish. The species of salmon that we were targeting was the pink salmon, which is the most abundant of all the Pacific Salmon, that has a 2 year life cycle. 

We knew that, in 2012, the baby salmon would have swam out to sea that Spring, and were either going to live or die based on what they could find to eat. In a year and a half they would come back and by the numbers of fish and the condition of the fish we would know our success: whether we had brought the Haida Salmon back.

So the very next year, 2013, alas in neighbouring Alaska, and we were right on the border with Alaska in Canadian waters, the pink salmon catch was predicted to be 50 million fish. The past year, only 14 million were caught, which is a more normal figure, so 50 million would be a good number.

But by the time the Alaskan pink salmon season finally came to halt in the fall of 2013, 226 million fish had been caught and brought to shore. They only stopped at 226 million because there was no longer any capacity to accept another fish into any other freezing plants or canaries, anywhere in the Pacific north-west. All of the fish handling facilities were just completely over stocked and they had to stop fishing.

We received reports steadily from villages and communities that pink salmon were filling every river and stream, even every rivulet. Probably more than half a billion pink salmon came back. The salmon were the best science result, right?

George’s collected scientific data was destroyed under Canadian federal warrant before the experiment could be completed for review. But despite the raid, the fish had returned to shore, demonstrating that what he, and John Martin before him, had hypothesised was correct. 

NB: Was that the last experiment that you did?

RG: That was the last large experiment that I did. I have been doing small experiments in laboratories, or on small vessels.

NB: Can you now talk about the level of criticism that has been levelled by quite a few others against your method for restoring ocean biomass?

RG: There’s a plethora of criticisms but I am yet to hear one that doesn’t defy the history of ocean science. So people have said, “this is an unnatural event”, or, “It is an intervention by mankind with unnatural products”.

Well absolutely not. Our [collective] intervention is that we have denied the ocean her mineral dust. When the village and I took the the four thousand 50lb bags of mineral dust back to their ocean pasture, their fish came back in the largest numbers in all history. Four times the expected numbers and ten times the average!

We did that in the same location that a few years earlier it had been dusted by an Alaskan volcano, Kasatochi. When the volcano Kasatochi erupted in mid-August 2008, the ash carrying minerals, including iron, landed in the same patch of ocean that we put dust in. Two years later the largest amount of stock-eye salmon landed in the Fraser river.

NB: What about the claims that adding iron to the ocean can cause toxic blooms?

RG: The fact of the matter is that there is 100 years of ocean science studying natural plankton blooms that have resulted from natural upwellings of water. The Galapagos Islands are a source of iron-rich water that produces a bloom known as the Galapagos Bloom. There are hundreds of natural plankton blooms hat have been studied for a hundred years by ocean scientists and never has a report ever surfaced about deleterious effect of plankton in the open ocean. 

Near-shore, there are lots of reports about problems with plankton blooms, but away from shore it is a completely different ecosystem.

The collapse of ocean life due to the high carbon dioxide is today cataclysmic. The fish populations are down to a fraction of their historic numbers. In the north Pacific, the giant blue fin tuna is less than 3% of its historic numbers.

The blame is overfishing but of course that is preposterous because the ocean pastures have died. You could never overfish the last 10% of a population because they are so few and far between you can’t find them! 

So if we restore the ocean pasture of the north pacific the giant blue fin tuna will come back in a matter of 3-5 years. Perhaps in as few as ten years they’ll increase by tenfold or fiftyfold. If we feed them, they’ll come back.

I was in Portugal last year meeting with the Portuguese government talking to them about restoring the sardine pastures off the coast of Portugal, just before they announced there will be a moratorium where they will forbid all sardine fishing for the next 15 years.

The human cry in Portugal says that this will completely destroy the nation because if you go to Portugal you see that sardines are the icon of Portugal. Portugal’s sardines are not dying from overfishing, they are starving to death. 

Can we bring them back? Certainly.

This Author

Nick Breeze blogs at Envisionation and can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze

Russ George will be speaking about restoring ocean pastures on the 24th May as part of Green Culture Week in Montenegro.