“Essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds in the soil,” Wendell Berry once said. I once worked in Zambia, and lived on a farm. I heard many times how the region, and in particular Zimbabwe, was the ‘breadbasket’ of Southern Africa; it could feed all its citizens.

But political turbulence and western farming techniques have displaced earth-friendly farming practices and divided up communal land into smaller plots. Today, swathes of land lie dormant. People starve.

I also learned how farming and the environment could and should work together: chilli plants to deter elephants from trampling crops; multiple crop species planted together to naturally deter pests and nurture the soil; stories of respect for wildlife passed through the generations. Productive farming, human communities, and a thriving natural world can co-exist, and we need to highlight examples that cultivate this cooperation.  

Friends of the earth? 

Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union,  said recently that farmers were the original “friends of the earth”. Yet in recent a comment piece in my local paper, I read that when Britain creates its own farming policy outside of the EU it should recognise that agriculture is “first and foremost about feeding the nation.”

The implication was that this should take priority over environmental concerns from the “green movement”, with whom Michael Gove and Defra seem to be “playing along.” 

The word ‘farm’ comes from the Anglo-French ‘fermer’, meaning ‘to rent’. If, as Shirley Chishom, an American Politician and author, said: “Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth”, then farming, or renting, should be as much about service to the Earth as it is about feeding humans. 

I have encountered places and people for whom farming the land, creating income, and caring for the environment go together as if they were never separated – in the UK and elsewhere. The barrier between a healthy environment and profitable farming could be less pronounced that we’re led to believe.

If intersections between farming and the environment are not only possible but actually thriving, then it feels dangerous to amplify a false separateness or worse, an opposition, or even conflict between the two. 

Conservation and community

Not only does setting up this farmers vs. environment conflict encourage the two ‘sides’ to be understood only as over-simplified stereotypes – friendly Farmer Giles; angry environmental criminal; etc. It also isolates even further the people who already have a hard time getting people to understand and care about their world – farmers, ecologists, rural communities. 

Estimates suggest we have 60 years of farming left if soil degradation continues – though UK farmers are this year being given the first ever targets on soil health. Herbicides and pesticides are killing the countryside and the animals that inhabit it, just as financial pressures and other stresses are globally killing the farmers that work it. But when farming practices are well managed, they can help preserve and restore habitats, and improve soil and water quality. 

There are schemes like the UK’s Country Stewardship rural development programme, run by Natural England, that help famers and land managers look after the environment. I live near the East Devon AONB. Here, a group set up in 2016 called the East Devon Farmers Group (EDFG) comprises 54 farmers whose land covers over 3,900 hectares.

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

armers have even requested activities that go beyond the original environmental remit. One participant said: “Getting together helps identify common needs and problems and joint initiatives to solve them.” (And beyond conservation, these networks and dialogues must also be vital in wider farmer wellbeing – crucial when one farmer a week in the UK dies by suicide. The wellbeing of farmers feels deeply linked to the health of rural places and communities).

Conversations must start

I recently came across the term ‘sustainable intensification’, which describes the process of increasing yields without adversely impacting the environment. It feels like a convenient, greedy and greenwashy concept. So instead, how might we collaboratively restore our natural world, whilst supporting healthy and profitable food, farmers and communities? There are a few places we might start:  

1. Experimenting with practices like no-dig or no-till planting, which fans claim produces results that are equal to or even superior to traditional growing, and permaculture, which writer Emma Chapman describes as being “…often viewed as a set of gardening techniques, but it has in fact developed into a whole design philosophy, and for some people a philosophy for life. Its central theme is the creation of human systems which provide for human needs, but using many natural elements and drawing inspiration from natural ecosystems. Its goals and priorities coincide with what many people see as the core requirements for sustainability.”

If the Earth and its 4.5 billion-year long research and development phase knows what’s best for ecosystem nurturing and productivity, then what might be possible by bringing these earth-friendly practices into commercial farms? Or do they call for a move to smaller agriculture, with households and communities growing and producing only the food they need for themselves? 

2. Linked to that, urban and community farms, where farming sustains the hyper-local, or uses spaces not usually suited to agriculture, could help conserve or even initiate urban connection to the food we eat, as well as reduce air miles between production and plate. Imagine if hospitals, schools and prisons grew the food needed to sustain their users. 

3. Opening up conversations and understanding between farmers and conservationists; between pro-culling and anti-culling groups; between rural and urban realities. The big challenges – climate change, environmental degradation, a growing population – do and will impact everyone. This is the common ground from which these conversations must start. We need facilitators and visionaries who can hold this space and nurture the seeds of collaboration. 

4. We should also listen to rural (and urban) writers and voices who deeply know a place, and can tell us how it changes and what it tells us about ourselves. Voices like Wendell Berry, who farms in Kentucky, and also integrates ecological and agricultural reverence through his poetry and essays, or James Rebanks who describes the current and historic shapes of sheep farming in the Lake District, or Annie Dillard whose walking and looking habits in the Blue Ridge Mountains revealed worlds within worlds. 

It will not be farmers working in harmony with nature that threatens the ability to feed the world. It will be the amplification of the antagonism between farming and the environment. This, alongside big business and the power that looms and decrees from a distance.

The conservation of farming, nature and communities is connected. Pitting farming and the environment as enemies will only distract from the work to be done – namely:

1. learning from examples of thriving connections between the two,

2. handing leadership of conservation and farming over to the people who deeply understand the history, stories, strengths and needs of a place; and

3. realising that the kind of industrial-scale agriculture touted as the only way to feed the world will actually never be enough to feed either a rapidly growing population, or the bank accounts of the powers that stretch both farmers and wildlife to breaking point. 

This Author

Elizabeth Wainwright is a contributing editor to The Ecologist, with a special focus on thought leadership. She also co-leads community development charity Arukah Network. You can find her on Twitter @LizWainwright. 

The EU chemicals program (REACH) was hailed as the most complex legislation in the European Union’s history and the most important in 20 years when it was launched on 1st June 2007. It intended to “improve the protection of human health and environment through a better knowledge and risk management of chemical substances by industry”.

Indeed, the European Chemicals Agency continues to receive accolades from industry and from the European Commission for the implementation of REACH, whose final registration deadline was 31 May 2018. Now is an appropriate time to take a deep breath and to examine the achievements, missed opportunities and any failings of the EU chemicals program.

Profit before planet

In terms of raw numbers, REACH has assessed little over half of its intended target of 30,000 chemicals over the course of its 11 year program. This is perhaps not completely surprising given that each chemical may need to undergo up to 11 different toxicity tests in order to determine its level of hazard to health and to the environment.

As an example, one of the toxicity tests – the rodent lifetime bioassay for cancer – requires rats to be observed for a period of two years. The aim of this article is not to criticise the 600 people at the European Chemicals Agency diligently working for REACH. Rather, the aim is to highlight the cost – in terms of animal suffering and human health – of ignoring current science and of an economic paradigm that puts profit above the future of this planet.

The EU chemicals program is clearly at odds with the precautionary principle. It states that even if a substance presents a risk to human health or the environment, authorisation may be granted if the socio-economic benefits are proven to outweigh risks arising from its use and if there are no suitable alternatives.

The synthetic chemical bisphenol A is emblematic of the most serious failings of REACH. Its use as a starting material for the synthesis of plastics is widely known. Recognised as far back as 1936 as being an oestrogen mimic, BPA’s endocrine disrupting effects on wildlife and humans began to appear in the early 1990s.

The European Chemicals Agency finally recognised BPA as an endocrine disrupting chemical in 2017, and a “substance of very high concern” (SVHC). To date, the European Chemicals Agency recognises 181 SVHCs out of the several thousand chemicals that it has assessed so far. If this tiny figure appears too good to be true, that’s because it is. 

Limitations of testing

The traditional way to assess chemical toxicity is through animal experiments. This concept dates back to the era of the Nuremberg trials at the end of the Second World War. Our scientific knowledge has advanced since then in leaps and bounds, in particular the discovery of the human genome. Despite this, however, the need to provide animal data is still a legal requirement, which is good news for industry but bad news for everyone else.

Not only is animal data much easier and faster to obtain than human data, but regulatory authorities trust industry to select an appropriate species of animal in order to assess its hazardous properties. In the example of BPA, the chemicals industry chose the Sprague Dawley rat to demonstrate the innocuity of this substance. This particular strain of rat is highly resistant to the hormonal effects of BPA.

Had the regulatory authorities insisted that the CF1 strain of mouse be used instead of the rat, the results would have been very different as the mouse is several thousand times more sensitive to the hormonal effects of BPA than the rat. Are humans more like mice or rats when it comes to BPA? The answer is that animals cannot predict human response.

Unlike pharmaceutical drugs, there is no legal requirement for industrial chemicals to undergo “post marketing surveillance” (aka pharmacovigilance). When severe adverse drug reactions come to light, health authorities can withdraw a prescription drug from the market rapidly. However, with industrial chemicals there may be little or no human data available, which equates to looking for a needle in a haystack to try to establish a cause and effect relationship.  

The most reliable way to assess the effect of chemicals on human health is through the observation of human populations (epidemiology and biomonitoring) coupled with clinical and laboratory study of relevant human material – for example, analysis of blood and urine samples and the use of human cell cultures.

The way forward

REACH largely ignores human data in favour of animal data obtained through laboratory experiments. The ultimate responsibility for this state of affairs rests with the EU, whose agency, the European Chemicals Agency, oversees the implementation of this chemical program.

In the example of BPA, had the EU heeded the alarm bells of the 1990s, our health authorities would have had decades’ worth of stored human data – for example in the form of biomarkers – on which to base public health policy with respect to removing dangerous chemicals  – a biomarker is a naturally occurring molecule, gene, or characteristic by which a particular pathological process or disease, can be identified.

To continue to rely on animal data as a means of protecting human health and the environment is tantamount to criminal negligence in the light of current science. The available technology is still a work in progress, but it is evidence-based and far more relevant to people than animal data. 

“People, not chemicals, have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. People also have the right not to be experimented on without informed consent; no one has ever been given the opportunity to grant or deny their consent before being exposed to the [toxic] burden that now contaminates us all” – J Thornton. Pandora’s Poison: Chlorine, Health and a New Environmental Strategy.

This Author

Andre Menache holds degrees in zoology and veterinary medicine and is currently scientific advisor to several NGOs dealing with public health and environmental issues.

What is my purpose in life? I’m a mother of two amazing kids, but when my youngest turned two and was becoming more independent, I started looking outwards again, looking for connection.  

Since I’m not originally from Salford, there had been times I felt like an alien here, even if I only came from over the hill in Derbyshire. I started thinking more about the world our children will grow up in, the world they’ll inherit from us.
 
This was when I first learned what was happening up the road at the Barton Moss fracking site, where Igas were drilling an “exploratory” well. At the time I knew very little about fracking but it didn’t take much homework for me to grow concerned.

Energy war

I didn’t think of myself as an environmentalist back then. I had passionately opposed the war in Iraq and like millions of others joined in the demonstrations against it. The war broke my heart and for years after I fell out of activism.
 
Now it struck me that the anti-fracking movement was all part of the same story. The Iraq War was blood for oil, but what I now think of as ‘the Energy War’ encircles the globe.

It is a cycle of violence perpetrated against communities, territories and ecosystems for the sake of access to fossil fuels that can only open the door to yet more violence: by people against nature, by nature against people, by people against each other. 

This Energy War was now coming to my home soil. When I could make it, I started joining the slow walks that were happening daily on the lane to the fracking site.

The people I met there really opened my eyes to the threats: from toxic chemicals threatening our local health and ecosystems, to the terrifying global consequences of anything that holds back our possible and desperately needed transition to 100 percent renewable energy. 
 
Corporations like BP and Cuadrilla, now drilling nearby, say fracked gas is a ‘bridge fuel’ on the way to renewable energy. They say this while investment in renewables is slashed.

They say it as though they haven’t known for almost fifty years that their business model threatened us with extinction; as though they didn’t fight the Paris Climate Agreement – and every one of its predecessors – every step of the way. Putting energy companies in charge of the transition is like putting the fox in charge of the chickens.
 
BP is responsible for 2.5 percent of all global carbon emissions to date. No wonder CEO Bob Dudley admitted that BP won’t frack in the UK to avoid attracting “the wrong kind of attention.”

But in their eyes, some parts of the world are more expendable than others. Colombia is a prime example, where BP has presided over unprecedented environmental destruction and human rights abuses.
 
This attitude isn’t new. Getting to grips with fossil fuels and global warming – an economic system addicted to a resource made of ancient dead creatures – means you have to grapple with the past.
 
Global warming is a child of global inequality. The richest 10 percent of the global population has produced half of all emissions. Along with the slave trade, these emissions powered the Industrial Revolution, centred right here in Salford near Manchester, where our rural ancestors were forced to move to spin cotton imported from slaves forced to labour in the colonies.

Today, this area is Britain’s frontline against fracking, with people standing in the way of Ineos and Cuadrilla up at Preston New Road. But the fight is global.

Killings in Casanare 
 
It is a profound and historic injustice that people in countries like Colombia, countries least responsible for this crisis, are already paying the heaviest price.

At the protest, we were joined by a Colombian human rights defender from Casanare. There, during the past 30 years of BP operations, 3,000 trade union and community leaders – many of them vocal opponents of Big Oil – have been murdered. And 6,000 more have disappeared. That’s 9,000 grieving mothers. 
 
When BP withdrew from Colombia in 2010 it left behind a spectacular mess. In a country torn apart by poverty and civil war, 115 social and environmental conflicts have arisen from extractive oil and mining projects.

They’ve paid no reparations to affected communities or even disclosed their deal with the corrupt Colombian military for providing ‘security’ for their operations.
 
When images came to us of what was happening over at Standing Rock, where people were being sprayed with water cannons trying to protect their ancestral lands, people were outraged. But I know we must be more than witnesses. We must also take action at home.
 
There are many parallels that can be drawn between the Big Oil at home and abroad; how the corporations operate and how communities have organised and stood up to them, but in Latin America where whole villages have been displaced, defending your territory and human rights comes with terrifying risk. 
 
That is why we must use our voices to raise awareness of what is happening to those on the front line facing armed police, whose homes have been destroyed, whose water and food sources have been polluted, whose children are already dying.

For me, now, being a mother is about doing my part to leave my children a better world. I imagine the same is true for many mothers in Colombia. And whatever it claims, BP’s actions put it squarely in the way of that safe and sustainable future our children deserve and that far too many have already died for.

This Article

This article was published through a partnership between The Ecologist and War on Want. War on Want’s work supporting frontline defenders and shine a spotlight on BP’s abuses in Colombia is part of the Oil Justice Project. You can find out more about the project and what happened at the AGM on the War on Want website.  

Climate change, loss of habitat, pesticide use and road deaths are putting extreme pressure on Britain’s 58 terrestrial mammals, research has found. 

Populations of hedgehogs have plummeted by up to 66 percent in 20 years due to changes in agricultural practice and pesticide use, road accidents and loss of nesting habitat, the research found. 

Water vole numbers are estimated to be a tenth of the one million recorded in 1995, following changes in land management, including wetland drainage arable cultivation and watercourse canalisation. They are also eaten by American mink.

However, the research also found that five species of British mammal have increased in numbers in 20 years, while 18 species, including the otter, polecat, beaver and wild boar, have increased their geographical range. 

The study was carried out by researchers at the Mammal Society, the University of Sussex, Queen Mary University of London, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and the University of Exeter. 

It was commissioned by the government’s nature conservation advisor, Natural England, working with counterpart organisations in Wales and Scotland. The data will be used to prioritise conservation actions and set the agenda for future research. 

Species being overlooked

The Mammal Society highlighted the urgent need for more research since very little information is available for some species. For example, the study found that rabbit populations are likely to have declined by around nine percent since 1995. However, other surveys have recorded larger slumps, of between 24 percent between 1995 and 2014, and 48 percent between 1995 and 2012. 

Last month, the organisation launched a “mammal mapper” app to enable members of the public to record sightings of local mammals using their smartphone.

Professor Mathews, lead author of the review, said: “The report highlights an urgent requirement for more research to assess population densities in key habitats because at present, uncertainty levels are unacceptably high. It is possible that declines in many species are being overlooked because a lack of robust evidence precludes assessment. 

“There is also an urgent need to quantify precisely the scale of declines in species such as the hedgehog, rabbit, water vole and grey long-eared bat. Effective and evidence-based strategies for mammal conservation and management must be developed before it is too late.”

“Ecological armageddon”

Meanwhile, naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham has warned of an “ecological Armageddon” in the UK. 

According to an interview with Packham in the Guardian, British people have normalised a “national catastrophe” and only see a wealth of wildlife in nature reserves, with the wider countryside bereft of life.

“Nature reserves are becoming natural art installations,” he said. “It’s just like looking at your favourite Constable or Rothko. We go there, muse over it, and feel good because we’ve seen a bittern or some avocets or orchids. But on the journey home there’s nothing – only wood pigeons and non-native pheasants and dead badgers on the side of the road.

“It’s catastrophic and that’s what we’ve forgotten – our generation is presiding over an ecological apocalypse and we’ve somehow or other normalised it.”

In July, Packham will be visiting 50 wildlife sites around the UK to assess the extent to which the nation’s wildlife is under threat. During the “bioblitz”, Packham and his team will record numbers of all forms of wildlife: from flies to fungi, mammals, moths, birds and butterflies. 

The data they record will create a benchmark to help measure the rise and fall in numbers of different species in the future. Packham will be livestreaming the bioblitz here. 

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.

Let’s face it, the basic aim of social media is to make us spend more. This means one effect of all our screen time is to make us more self-centred, more anxious and more materialistic.

All this erodes our capacity to be creative, to feel we have some power to shape our own lives and the world around us for the better. In my life, there’s a spiritual aspect to my creative energy, whereby I define ‘spiritual’ according to the following qualities it brings.

Meaning: our sense of meaning in our own life, and the world in general, is badly eroded by the power of fake news and social media. To find meaning, we have to use our intention and seek meaning at a higher, non-material level.

Spiritual aspect

Purpose: we’re constantly exposed to messages persuading us that our lives are pointless unless we buy Brand X. The best antidote is to find a higher purpose, one which inspires you and serves more than material needs. 

Connection: how have your ways of connecting changed in the past 10 years: probably more online, more information, but less connections with people, Nature, purpose and meaning? For me, a main part of spiritual life is feeling the connections between life of all kinds, a fellowship which I find very nourishing and meaningful.

I have also found nature to be a powerful stimulus for creativity. People have turned to nature as a way to find inspiration and connect with a bigger picture of life for centuries, which has been a key focus of the many workshops and groups I’ve been running at the Hazel Hill Wood retreat centre near Salisbury these last twenty five years.

One of the many benefits of being at this magical 70-acre woodland centre, which I founded thirty years ago, is that it’s easy to connect with an expansive community that includes not only people, but all the many forms of life that share this ecosystem.

And if you’ve read the book The Hidden Life of Trees, you’ll know that many people believe that trees themselves have wisdom and healing we can share in.

Spiritual wisdom

My spiritual path weaves many strands together, including Celtic, Christian, and Sufi. An approach called creation spirituality draws on the original teachings of Jesus in Aramaic, the native language of those times, and suggests that the creation of our universe is an ongoing story, in which our job description as humans is to find our creative part in this divine process. The books of Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme will tell you more.

Having worked with many people on creativity and resilience, a major issue which pulls them into despair and apathy is the state of our world, and the damage humanity is doing to our planet and each other. The spiritual wisdom of Thomas Berry can help with this: he believes that positive dreams, prayer, and feeling both our pain and our love for the Earth, can move us forward. 

A special feature of the Celtic spiritual tradition is the way that pagan and Christian approaches are included. Groups have been celebrating the eight Celtic seasonal festivals at Hazel Hill for many years, and our upcoming Creative Spirit weekend will include ways to mark the Summer Solstice and inspire our own creativity from the abundant growth in nature.

A spiritual path typically means aiming to serve some wider purpose than your own material needs, and there’s plenty of research to show that helping others is a great way to enhance our own wellbeing, which is something we often explore in the groups and workshops at Hazel Hill Wood. 

Our Creative Spirit weekend next month is a rare opportunity to drink deep from this enriching wellspring of creativity, spirituality and nature, in the magical oasis of Hazel Hill Wood. 

We will also offer chances to experience some Sufi practices, such as movement meditation, songs and poetry. I value the Sufi outlook, which sees divinity in all life, and meets life with a loving heart, more than a rational head. The poems of Rumi and Hafiz remind us that humour can also help our creative outlook!

This Author

Alan Heeks will be co-facilitating the Creative Spirit workshop at Hazel Hill Wood near Salisbury from Friday 22nd – Sunday 24th June, with musician and group leader, Cordelia Jilani Prescott. The workshop costs £180, including food and accommodation. For more information on this and other programmes with Alan Heeks, visit his website. 

The ability to produce food sustainably can be a powerful force for change. It can have a wide range of benefits, expanding beyond just the obvious ones, especially in developing countries.

Some farmers in these nations are working to improve the sustainability of their farming. Doing so in a developing country isn’t easy, though. Various groups, from small charities to large international organisations, are helping to provide them with the resources and education they need to produce food sustainably.

Despite the challenges, the people of these nations and those supporting them continue to work toward these goals. Perhaps that’s because they understand the many benefits it can provide. Here are five of the most impactful changes sustainable food production can have in developing countries.

Food Security

People that live in developing countries often can’t get enough to eat. Sustainable agriculture could help them increase their yields.

A study published in the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology found that sustainable farming practices could increase yields in these nations by around 80 percent in just four years. Harvests of some crops even improved by 100 percent.

Sustainable agriculture doesn’t just lead to short-term improvements. It helps enable food security over the long run.

By its very nature, sustainable agriculture helps ensure resources are available indefinitely, barring some unexpected event. This means these nations can feed their populations and become self-sustaining.

Having food security dramatically improves the well-being of a nation’s people and opens doors to a variety of other benefits.

Water Security

In addition to food security, sustainable food production also helps promote water security.

Sustainable agriculture involves various practices that help to conserve water. It uses techniques such as drip irrigation, which supplies water directly to crops’ roots. This technique drastically increases the efficiency of crop watering.

Farmers may also use recycled wastewater, which might otherwise have been discarded, to help conserve this vital resource. Doing so could also help improve sanitation management.

Implementing these irrigation techniques requires certain technologies, resources and expertise. Various groups are working with small farmers in developing nations to give them the tools they need to manage their water use sustainably.

The Global Agriculture & Food Security Program expects to help provide new, improved or rehabilitated irrigation and drainage services on 44,415 hectares of land in 12 countries.

American Near East Refugee Aid, or Anera, has helped to irrigate around 1,700 acres of farmland in Palestine with treated wastewater and also develops irrigation techniques.

Economic Opportunity

Deploying sustainable farming practices in a developing nation also increases economic opportunity for those that live there, both directly and indirectly.

Increased yields, of course, means farmers earn more. Because sustainable agriculture encourages resource conservation, sustainably operated farms may also require fewer inputs, meaning farmers have fewer expenses. Because they protect their resources, these farmers have a reliable income source for the future.

Efforts to share sustainable agriculture practices with farmers in developing nations can have widespread impact, especially since a substantial portion of the population in these countries is typically involved in the agriculture industry.

Improving farming practices can have broad indirect economic impacts as well. Food and water security also empower other citizens to pursue education and work.

When people do not have enough to eat, they might not feel well enough to attend school or work. Even if they do feel well enough, they might have to spend that time looking for food and water.

However, once people have sufficient access to consumables, they can focus on other things. This can lead to economic development and improved well-being.

Increased Stability

Food security, water security and economic development all lead to increased stability. When people have their basic needs met, their lives are much more stable, as is the nation as a whole.

Competition over resources can initiate or exacerbate conflicts between nations and groups. When resources are shared, such as when a body of water extends over two nation’s borders, tensions may be especially high.

People may also be forced to migrate to find food and water. This can put added pressure on the resources of other areas and increase tensions between groups.

No true wars have yet been waged over water, but it has contributed to many conflicts. Food and water scarcity may have played a role in wars and conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa.

These conflicts can disrupt people’s lives, preventing them from attending school or work. This can prolong water and food scarcity and economic hardship far into the future.

Environmental Protection

Sustainable food production also has environmental benefits, since it minimises ecological damage and ensures resources don’t become depleted.

Sustainable farming practices minimize the use of pesticides that could damage the environment. Instead, they use methods such as integrated pest management, which combines biological, cultural, mechanical and physical controls and use chemicals only as a last resort.

They also increase carbon sequestration, which could help slow rising global temperatures. Increasing the food supply sustainably will be crucial in the fight against climate change.

Additionally, it helps conserve natural resources such as water and healthy soil.

Sustainable agriculture also incorporates practices such as crop rotation, which ensures soil does not become depleted. If a previously fertile field becomes depleted, this hurts the farmer economically and decreases the country’s overall food supply.

Sustainable food production is key to building a better world for today and the future. It can help us feed the world’s growing population, spur economic development, fight climate change and promote stability and peace around the world. Farmers in developing countries need the resources to make their operations more sustainable.

This Author

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

Mention the human impact on the environment and people can get defensive. Whether eating a meal, driving to work or lighting our homes at night, there are environmental costs to everything we do.

To make ourselves feel better, we might say that humans always despoil the natural world and grumble that ‘the planet will be better off without us’. We might argue that indigenous peoples live in harmony with nature, and modern humans have fallen from Eden. 

If we have money, we might say that only the wealthiest communities can afford to clean up the environment: if only everyone was rich, then we would all live sustainably.

Single species

Or if we lack a good income, we might say it is all the fault of over-consuming elites. All of these stories have both elements of truth and obvious blind spots.

But we ought to try to put these views aside and face reality – as we can best understand it – because the evidence is mounting that our impacts on the Earth are now so large that may scientists have declared that humans have become a force of nature. 

Combining the Greek words for ‘humans’ and ‘recent time’, scientists have named this new epoch when our impacts have become global and sustained, the Anthropocene.

It describes when Homo sapiens became a geological superpower, setting Earth on a new environmental and evolutionary path. So profound is this change that for the first time in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history a single species is increasingly dictating its future, including our own. 

The influence of human actions is more profound than many of us realise. Globally, human activities move more soil, rock and sediment each year than is transported by all other natural processes combined. The total amount of concrete ever produced by humans is enough to cover the entire 196.9 million square miles of the Earth’s surface with a layer two millimetres thick. 

A force of nature

Factories and farming remove as much nitrogen from the atmosphere as all Earth’s natural processes, and the climate is changing fast following carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use.

Populations of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals have declined by an average of 58 percent over the last forty years. Extinctions are commonplace, running at 1,000 times the typical rate seen before humans walked the Earth.

The Anthropocene marks a turning point in the history of humanity, the history of life, and the history of the Earth itself. It is a new chapter in the chronicle of life and a new chapter of the human story.

The modern world birthed this new epoch, starting some 500 years ago as global trade and new ideas swept the world. It was reinforced 200 years ago by the shift to fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution, and then accelerated following a new wave of high-production and consumption globalisation after the Second World War.

While there are technical debates amongst scientists to formally define the human epoch as beginning a few hundred years ago (we consider that it began in 1610) or a few decades ago (others have suggested 1950 or 1964), it is the emergence of a single global interconnected network of cultures powered by a vast use of energy and coordinated by the management of huge amounts of information that has led to humans becoming a force of nature.

Major transitions

Of course, there is no single entity called ‘humanity’ that drives the changes to our home planet: specific groups of people cause each impact. From a narrative perspective, beginning the Anthropocene with the birth of the modern world tells a story of a new powerful profit-driven society.

This new geological epoch is built from slavery and colonialism, enabled by a long-distance financial industry. The human epoch is a story of how people treat the environment and how people treat each other; of domination and resistance to that domination. 

However, looking forward the critical question is: will today’s interconnected mega-civilization that allows 7.5 billion people to lead physically healthier and longer lives than at any time in our history continue from strength to strength?

Or will we keep using available resources until human civilization collapses? To understand the future requires us first to understand how we got to where we are today. As scientists, we look at human history through the lens of Earth system science and the impact of humans on our planet, re-interpreting it in a new way.

As we trace the environmental impacts of human societies from our march out of Africa there are a series of major transitions in human societies that spread worldwide. These are familiar, but in this context allow us to see new relationships.

Information availability

After the beginning state of hunter-gatherer societies, there have been four broad types of human society: agricultural, mercantile capitalist, industrial capitalist and consumer capitalist modes of living. 

A careful analysis of each of these new modes of living shows us that each new form of human society is always reliant on greater energy use, greater information availability and more people, together resulting in an increase in collective human agency. 

This implies one of two futures for today’s globally interconnected network of cultures: one of today’s very large global economy doubling in size every 25 years leading to ever-more dramatic changes to society and the global environment, eventually resulting in societal collapse; or the emergence of a sixth new mode of living that replaces consumer capitalism. 

Seen in this way renewable energy for all takes on an importance beyond stopping climate breakdown; likewise free education and the internet for all has a significance beyond access to social media – as they empower women which helps stabilise the population.

While more energy and greater information availability appear to be the necessities for any new kind of society that could spread, alone they could increase our environmental problems, as in the past.

Profound idea

To usher in a new way of living today’s core dynamic of ever-greater production and consumption of goods and resources must be broken, coupled with a societal focus on environmental repair. Two increasingly discussed ideas do just this.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) could break the link between work and consumption. UBI is a policy whereby a financial payment is made to every citizen, unconditionally, without any obligation to work, set at a level above their subsistence needs.

Without UBI it makes little sense to forgo consumption when we know we have to work harder in the future whatever our choices. We say: I’m working hard, I deserve that fancy sandwich, new gizmo, or long-haul holiday.

Consumption is the pay-back for being ever-more productive at work. With UBI we could work less and consume less, meet our needs, and plan for the future – beyond the next pay cheque – as living in the Anthropocene demands. Small-scale trials of UBI suggest we would educate ourselves, do useful work, while caring for others and the wider environment.

Environmental repair could come from the simple but profound idea that we allocate half the Earth’s surface primarily for the benefit of other species. Humans can have one half and everything else can have the other.

Careful thought

This is less utopian than it first appears, because despite huge increase in human population we are already living in more concentrated populations. There are also promising shifts in discussions to eating more plant-based diets, which require much less farmland. 

Beyond this, radical changes in society tend to change our views on nature.  In the West, our ideas about the natural world have been forged in response to the Industrial Revolution: separate National Parks in opposition to dirty industry.

As we increasingly recognise that humans are part of nature and our actions are taking over the very processes of Earth’s functioning, a new aesthetic is emerging.

Called rewilding, this is the idea that large areas should be managed to allow natural processes to run. In parallel to this, 43 countries have made commitments to restore 292 million hectares of degraded land to forest, ten times the area of the UK, showing that repair is increasingly on the agenda.

Clean energy, free education, and the Internet alongside Universal Basic Income and Half-Earth, are, of course, no panacea. Policies need public debate, careful thought, and detailed planning. It will take many initiatives to replace today’s unsustainable consumer capitalist mode of living. And the opportunity to do anything at a scale that takes power away from elites will have to be fought for. 

Acknowledging that we live in the Anthropocene is daunting, because what we do matters – for the only planet in the Universe known to harbour life.

Focusing this immense power on rapidly phasing out greenhouse gas emissions and clever investments to provide solar and wind energy to all plus policies to break the high-production high-consumption dynamic of consumer capitalism should give us the best chance to shift society towards greater equality so that people and the rest of life we share our home planet with can all flourish.

These Authors

Simon Lewis is professor of global change science at University College London. He also holds an equivalent position at the University of Leeds. Mark Maslin FRGS, FRSA is a professor of climatology at University College London. This article is adapted from their book, The Human Planet; How we created the Anthropocene. 

A global initiative will today put a spotlight on the importance of reducing our meat intake for the sake of our planet by encouraging people to make at least one meal meat free. This year’s World Meat Free Week runs until Sunday, 17 June 2018.

Already this year World Meat Free Week has garnered support from UK singer songwriter and Strictly Come Dancing winner Jay McGuiness, Joanna Lumley and John Bishop.

Jay said: “I am a passionate supporter of World Meat Free Week. It’s so important that we seriously look at the impact meat production is having on our precious planet. By simply swapping to a meat free meal just once a week really can make a difference – it’s so easy to do!”

Huge impact

The global population will reach 9.1 billion by 2050, according to some research. This larger public will require an extra 200 million tonnes of meat annually if we continue at our present rate of consumption.

Meat production is already responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all emissions from global transport combined. What’s more, the livestock sector uses 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface while 69 percent of global fresh water is attributed to the food system.

Appallingly, 80 percent of the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest is attributed to beef production. It is now widely accepted that to increase our output to meet the rising demand is neither sustainably nor ethically feasible.

According to the campaign, making just a simple swap to one meat free meal during World Meat Free Week can have a huge impact. It can also act as a ‘catalyst’ to further behaviour change to a “less and better approach to meat” for the sake of a healthier planet.

Carbon footprint

By skipping a meaty meal, each person can:

·         Save greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to enough electricity to charge your mobile phone for two years.

·         Reduce your carbon footprint by up to 50 percent for the day.

Globally, we would together save:

·         The carbon equivalent of boiling a kettle more than 1 trillion times – that’s a lot of tea and coffee!

·         More than 685 billion calories – that’s over 1.2 billion Big Macs.

Today, more than 3.5 million people across the UK describe themselves as vegan – with a whopping seven million switching to vegetarianism to help decrease their carbon footprint. This means more people than ever are now looking to reduce their meat intake.

Meat eaters are being encouraged to simply pledge their support online and swap at least one meal to meat free. You can also help promote the campaign on social media with @Meat_Free_Week and #WorldMeatFreeWeek.

World Meat Free Week is a registered charity that aims to encourage people around the globe to reduce their meat consumption. The campaign aims to reach 200 million people globally with support from Greenpeace Worldwide, Quorn Foods, Chris Darwin, John Bishop and Joanna Lumley.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from World Meat Free Week.

“Laws without enforcement is really just good advice,” Abraham Lincoln is once believed to have said. In other words, ‘good advice’ alone is meaningless when it comes from lawmakers who refuse to put it into action.

It’s a truism that has survived the test of time and, as Britain approaches Brexit, one which takes on extra meaning.

Despite the Government’s claim that the EU Withdrawal Bill would be the legislative means by which it transferred the full body of EU law on to the UK statute books post-Brexit, it, instead, rips the heart out of a raft of protections offered by EU membership.

Toxic air

Among the glaring omissions from the bill are the vital tenets of EU law – the precautionary and polluter pays principles. Together they act as a robust legal backstop against the destruction of our environment.

Based on the recognition that the environment is unowned, the precautionary principle forces developers and those who may do it harm, to prove, in law, that their plans will not damage the environment.

The polluter pays principle, meanwhile, ensures that preventative action should be taken to avert environmental damage and where that fails the cost burden for clearing up pollution falls on those responsible for creating it.

Moreover, there is no provision for an independent watchdog to replace the enforcement powers of European Commission (EC) and European Court of Justice (ECJ) which have the legal might to take the UK government to court should it fail to live up to its responsibilities.

These are powers the EC was forced to exercise when, just last month, it announced it was referring Britain to the ECJ for consistently breaching EU legal limits on toxic air.

Enforcement agency

The UK Government has been steadfastly apathetic in the face of the public health crisis linked to the premature deaths of more than 40,000 Brits every year.

The EC’s announcement came just days after the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, unveiled his plans for a so-called post-Brexit ‘environment watchdog’ that would have no legal enforcement powers.

Less a watchdog, the proposed body would be most generously described as a ‘lapdog’; a lapdog that allows the Government to escape exactly the kind of scrutiny and accountability ensured by the EC and ECJ.

Despite the overwhelming majority of British citizens, leave and remain voters alike, being clear that they don’t want to see Brexit exploited as a chance to erode vital environmental protections, the Government has indicated its desire to do just that.

This is a Tory Government that, for all its warm words, cannot be trusted with protecting our environment. The enforcement agency conceived by Gove would have neither the power to take the Government nor corporations to court nor issue fines or sanctions.

Cowed nor intimidated

Greens, environmental NGOs, conservation charities, the UN, and the British public have been vocal in their criticism of the proposals.

At the same time, in the House of Lords, the Conservative Government has been defeated by Peers no less than fifteen times on the EU Withdrawal Bill.

One of the amendments Peers passed calls on Ministers to give a post-Brexit environment watchdog some real teeth to ensure that “the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures that contribute to the protection and improvement of the environment” are not reduced.

It was nothing less than a clear and stinging rejection of the Government’s lapdog proposals that would inconvenience neither Ministers nor big corporations.

For the sake of the health of our environment post-Brexit, it now falls on MPs to ensure that when the EU Withdrawal Bill returns to the House of Commons, they support Lords’ amendment.

MPs must not be cowed nor intimidated by the rabid right-wing press who, they must have the courage to vote in the best interests of the British people, Britain and her environment.

I’ve teamed up with my Lib Dem colleague Catherine Bearder to write to MPs across my South East England constituency calling on them to do just that.

Ultimately, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘you cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

This Author

Keith Taylor is a Green party MEP for South East.

“Laws without enforcement is really just good advice,” Abraham Lincoln is once believed to have said. In other words, ‘good advice’ alone is meaningless when it comes from lawmakers who refuse to put it into action.

It’s a truism that has survived the test of time and, as Britain approaches Brexit, one which takes on extra meaning.

Despite the Government’s claim that the EU Withdrawal Bill would be the legislative means by which it transferred the full body of EU law on to the UK statute books post-Brexit, it, instead, rips the heart out of a raft of protections offered by EU membership.

Toxic air

Among the glaring omissions from the bill are the vital tenets of EU law – the precautionary and polluter pays principles. Together they act as a robust legal backstop against the destruction of our environment.

Based on the recognition that the environment is unowned, the precautionary principle forces developers and those who may do it harm, to prove, in law, that their plans will not damage the environment.

The polluter pays principle, meanwhile, ensures that preventative action should be taken to avert environmental damage and where that fails the cost burden for clearing up pollution falls on those responsible for creating it.

Moreover, there is no provision for an independent watchdog to replace the enforcement powers of European Commission (EC) and European Court of Justice (ECJ) which have the legal might to take the UK government to court should it fail to live up to its responsibilities.

These are powers the EC was forced to exercise when, just last month, it announced it was referring Britain to the ECJ for consistently breaching EU legal limits on toxic air.

Enforcement agency

The UK Government has been steadfastly apathetic in the face of the public health crisis linked to the premature deaths of more than 40,000 Brits every year.

The EC’s announcement came just days after the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, unveiled his plans for a so-called post-Brexit ‘environment watchdog’ that would have no legal enforcement powers.

Less a watchdog, the proposed body would be most generously described as a ‘lapdog’; a lapdog that allows the Government to escape exactly the kind of scrutiny and accountability ensured by the EC and ECJ.

Despite the overwhelming majority of British citizens, leave and remain voters alike, being clear that they don’t want to see Brexit exploited as a chance to erode vital environmental protections, the Government has indicated its desire to do just that.

This is a Tory Government that, for all its warm words, cannot be trusted with protecting our environment. The enforcement agency conceived by Gove would have neither the power to take the Government nor corporations to court nor issue fines or sanctions.

Cowed nor intimidated

Greens, environmental NGOs, conservation charities, the UN, and the British public have been vocal in their criticism of the proposals.

At the same time, in the House of Lords, the Conservative Government has been defeated by Peers no less than fifteen times on the EU Withdrawal Bill.

One of the amendments Peers passed calls on Ministers to give a post-Brexit environment watchdog some real teeth to ensure that “the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures that contribute to the protection and improvement of the environment” are not reduced.

It was nothing less than a clear and stinging rejection of the Government’s lapdog proposals that would inconvenience neither Ministers nor big corporations.

For the sake of the health of our environment post-Brexit, it now falls on MPs to ensure that when the EU Withdrawal Bill returns to the House of Commons, they support Lords’ amendment.

MPs must not be cowed nor intimidated by the rabid right-wing press who, they must have the courage to vote in the best interests of the British people, Britain and her environment.

I’ve teamed up with my Lib Dem colleague Catherine Bearder to write to MPs across my South East England constituency calling on them to do just that.

Ultimately, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘you cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

This Author

Keith Taylor is a Green party MEP for South East.