All progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility.

– Karl Marx, Capital vol 1

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and an economic shift in China it seemed that capitalism had become the only game in town. Karl Marx’s ideas could safely be relegated to the dustbin of history. However the global financial crash of 2008 and its aftermath sent many rushing back to the bin.

For good or ill, the German philosopher’s ideas have affected our world more profoundly than any other modern social or political thinker. Yet on Marx’s recent 200th birthday, discussion of his continuing relevance was still dominated by “traditional” understandings of Marxism. Commentators, whether hostile or sympathetic, focused on his critique of the exploitation and inequality of capitalism and imperialism, and the struggle to transform society in a socialist direction.

Sadly, there was little – far too little – on Marx’s thinking on the relations between humans and nature. [For an exception to this rule, Read The emergence of an ecological Karl Marx: 1818 – 2018 from The Ecologist].

Rethinking Marx’s legacy

After all, the steady but accelerating destruction by modern capitalism of the very conditions which sustain all life, including human life, is arguably the most fundamental challenge facing humanity today.

This is most widely recognised in the shape of one of its most devastating symptoms: climate change. But there is much more to it, including toxic pollution of the oceans, deforestation, soil degradation and, most dramatically, a loss of biodiversity on a geological scale.

Some will say that these are new problems, so why should we expect Marx, writing more than a century ago, to have had anything worthwhile to offer to us today?

In fact, recent scholarship has demonstrated that the problematic, often contradictory relationship between humans and the rest of nature was a central theme in Marx’s thinking throughout his life. His ideas on this remain of great value – even indispensable – but his legacy is also quite problematic and new thinking is needed.

Alienation from nature

Marx’s early philosophical manuscripts of 1844 are best known for developing his concept of “alienated labour” under capitalism, yet commentators hardly ever noticed that for Marx the fundamental source of alienation was our estrangement from nature.

This began with enclosure of common land, which left many rural people with no means of meeting their needs other than to sell their labour power to the new industrial class. But Marx also talked of spiritual needs, and the loss of a whole way of life in which people found meaning from their relationship to nature.

The theme running through his early manuscripts is a view of history in which exploitation of workers and of nature go hand-in-hand. For Marx, the future communist society will resolve the conflicts among humans and between humans and nature so that people can meet their needs in harmony with one another and with the rest of nature:

“Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”

In these writings Marx makes vital contributions to our understanding of the human-nature relationship: he overcomes a long philosophical tradition of viewing humans as separate from and above the rest of nature, and he asserts the necessity for both survival and spiritual well-being of a proper, active relationship with the rest of nature. At the same time he recognises this relationship has gone wrong in the capitalist epoch.

The problem is capitalism – not humanity

In his later writings Marx develops this analysis with his key concept of “mode of production”. For Marx, each of the different forms of human society that have existed historically and across the globe has its own specific way of organising human labour to meet subsistence needs through work on and with nature, and its own specific way of distributing the results of that labour.

For example, hunter-gatherer societies have usually been egalitarian and sustainable. However feudal or slave-owning societies involved deeply unequal and exploitative social relations, but lacked the limitlessly expansive and destructive dynamic of industrial capitalism.

This concept of “modes of production” immediately undermines any attempt to explain our ecological predicament in such abstract terms as “population”, “greed” or “human nature”. Each form of society has its own ecology. The ecological problems we face are those of capitalism – not human behaviour as such – and we need to understand how capitalism interacts with nature if we are to address them.

Marx himself made an important start on this. In the 1860s he wrote about soil degradation, a big concern at the time. His work showed how the division of town and country led to loss of soil fertility while at the same time imposing a great burden of pollution and disease in the urban centres.

Ecological marxists

Modern writers have developed these ideas further, including the late James O’Connor, the sociologist John Bellamy Foster, who identified an endemic tendency of capitalism to generate an “ecological rift” with nature, and those in the UK associated with the Red Green Study Group.

I suggested above that Marx’s ideas were indispensable but also problematic. There are places where he appears to celebrate the huge advances in productivity and control over the forces of nature achieved by capitalism, seeing socialism as necessary just to share the benefits of this to everyone.

Recent scholarship has challenged this interpretation of Marx, but historically it has been very influential. It is arguable that the disastrous consequences of the Stalinist drive for rapid industrialisation in Russia came from that interpretation.

But there is another point. The newer ecological marxists argue, rightly, that capitalism is ecologically unsustainable, and that socialism is necessary to establish a rational relationship to the rest of nature.

However, to build a movement capable of transforming society in this way, we need to recall Marx’s early emphasis on both the material and spiritual needs that can be met only by a fully rewarding and respectful relationship to the rest of nature: in short, we need a Marxism that is green, as well as ecological.

This Author

Ted Benton is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Essex. This article first appeared on The Conversation.

Male guppies exposed to predators have heavier brains than those living in relatively predator-free conditions, according to new research published in the journal Functional Ecology.

Behavioural ecologists from Liverpool John Moores University, UK and McGill University, Canada sampled guppies from two rivers in northern Trinidad.

In each river, guppies live above a waterfall, a location that only guppies and a few other small species of fish have managed to colonize, and below the fall, where many predators including pike cichlids live.

Predator threats

Dr Adam Reddon from Liverpool John Moores University’s School of Natural Sciences and Psychology said: “Guppies offer an excellent model for evolutionary research because they have colonised multiple independent rivers in Trinidad where they are exposed to a variety of different conditions.

“We were particularly interested in finding out how the brains of these widely-distributed fish have evolved for dealing with the challenges of living under predation threat.”

The researchers looked at whether there are differences in relative brain mass between wild guppies collected from high and low predation populations and found that, for their body size, males collected from high predation sites had on average 17% heavier brains compared to males from low predation sites in the same river.  Female guppies, by contrast, did not show this pattern.

To test the origins of these findings, the ecologists conducted a laboratory experiment in which they exposed young guppies to cues of predation risk.

Laura Chouinard-Thuly of McGill University and co-author of the paper said: “The brain is a highly malleable organ and experiences early in life can shape how it develops.

Courting females

“We wanted to see if the predation effect we detected in male guppies in the wild could be due to experiences in their early life stages.”

The fish were exposed to the sight of a predator living in an adjacent aquarium for five minutes at a time, five times a week during the first 45 days of their life. The researchers also added the scents of predators and an alarm cue released by guppies. Guppies in the control group were exposed to the sight and smells of a non-predatory fish.

Again, the researchers found that males exposed to predator cues during development had 21% heavier brains than the control group. They found no evidence that the exposure to predation cues influenced the relative brain mass of female guppies.

Males are more brightly coloured and attractive to predators. The results suggest that a larger brain for their body size is advantageous under predation threat, perhaps allowing the fish to detect, learn about or react to predators better.

Reddon commented: “It is also possible that guppies with bigger brains are better at doing two things at once. For instance, males spend a lot of time courting females and it may be that those with a bigger brain can do this while keeping an eye out for predators.”

Steady strategy

Brains can use a lot of energy and are generally only as big as they need to be for animal survival and reproduction. Female guppies are 2-10 times the size of males and tend to live longer.

They play a slow and steady strategy to reproduction and so may consistently benefit from paying the high costs of building and maintaining larger brain tissue, whereas male guppies may only benefit under high predation risk.

This Author

Sabrina Weiss works for the British Ecological Society.  The full study is available here

Throughout this series, we’ve argued that the best way to address today’s ecological, social, and political crises is to get people together where they live and work to provide resources that people need – eventually building up an alternative political and economic system that can replace the present, failing system. We need to build a democratic, just, and ecological world in the shell of the old.

In the previous installment, we argued that organising on the level of the neighborhood, town, and city is the most strategic approach today.

The rise of loneliness worldwide, the centrality of real estate speculation for global economic growth, and the breakdown of traditional large-scale factories that helped to bring workers together mean that we have to rethink the ways we demand change.

Common criticisms

We can build community and force elites to listen to our demands at the same time. Radical municipalism is a project to take direct democratic control over the places where we live.

When we talk to people about this strategy, the same kinds of questions often come up. In this article, we highlight three common criticisms. Each one of them revolves around the complaint that radical municipalism is too local: it can’t deal with the ‘big stuff’.

1. Because of climate change, we don’t have time

Any call for a long-term vision for social change begs the response: the urgency of the present moment means we don’t have the time for the slow work of neighbourhood-level organising.

Impending climate disruption is a ticking time-bomb. Every year we delay will make the future worse. And as a global phenomenon, it takes immediate global action. Strategically, this argument goes, we might be better off pushing our leaders to take strong stances on climate change.

The situation is so dire that the progressive environmentalist website Grist and the socialist Jacobin are publishing pieces asking us to seriously consider geo-engineering and scaling up nuclear energy – all in a bid to give us more time.

For many, the problem of climate change can only be addressed with big stuff: international agreements, renewable and nuclear energy on a massive scale, geo-engineering schemes that involve changing planetary weather systems.

This kind of response is understandable, but puts the cart before the horse. Without a coherent counter-power to corporate control over government, we have no chance of forcing our leaders to listen. We’re relying on the assumption that leaders are kind enough to listen, and that they themselves have the power to implement needed reforms.

Feet to the fire

Even if we elect the most principled people to power, and even if all politicians were to somehow realise that it’s in their own interest to do everything they can to stop climate change through a ‘Green New Deal’, the system would still be dead against them. You can’t beg a system geared toward growth, endless extraction, and exploitation to change its ways.

What is clear is that those in power – the CEOs, the bankers, and the politicians that implement their laws – would suffer greatly from necessary action on climate change.

Government debts would need to be cancelled, the most powerful industries would need to be phased out. No matter what, we’d still need a kind of popular power that hasn’t been seen in generations to hold politician’s feet to the fire.

And even if we aren’t able to meet our goal of a fully democratised system of dual power, any step toward that goal is an improvement to where we are now. The more community organisations and local democracy we have, the better we’re placed to force the hands of the government.

There’s a second answer to this objection. The fight for the right to the city is the fight for climate justice. For example, research on São Paolo in Brazil shows that the fight for affordable housing is a fight against climate change, even if poor people’s movements don’t speak in those terms.

People power

Making the center of the city accessible for everyone to live in and building social and cooperative housing reduces carbon impact. By making the places where we live more democratic and less unequal, we’re also fighting for a greener future.

In fact, we’re already seeing that cities and towns with stronger social movements pushing for change are at the forefront of radical and innovative responses to climate change.

What’s more, they’re starting to work together to provide a common front to demand change on national and international scales—the Global Covenant for Mayors for Climate and Energy is already a force to be reckoned with in international climate talks. And cities globally are leading the fight to take the fossil fuel industry to task, even suing them for contributing to climate disasters.

All this comes down to the fact that we can’t actually make the necessarily large-scale changes without taking control over the places where we live and creating the alternatives necessary for a new system. It’s precisely these alternatives that force the hand of the state to act on climate change. They create people power and show how things could be done otherwise.

In other words, radical municipalism is the best investment against climate change: it buys us time and gives us the power we need to force our leaders to act.

2. Local activism can’t address global capitalism

A common response to those who work to mobilise their neighbours and create local democracy is that localism can’t scale up. It’s always just stuck back-pedaling, unable to actually change the big stuff like predatory trade deals, foreign takeovers, the capacity of finance to make or break whole countries—the stuff that really shapes national decision-making.

Often, these same people argue that, to break out of this pattern, we need to engage with the big players. So they form think tanks, lobby groups, NGOs, and new media platforms, showing up to climate negotiations year after year and putting pressure on politicians through endless petitions. For them, the most important agents of change are well-worded policy briefs, expensive conferences, powerpoint presentations, and 40-page reports.

The key actors of social change aren’t think-tanks or lobby groups: they’re people, and people live and work somewhere. This kind of critique often forgets the fact that all successful movements of the past were also intensely local.

For example, the labour movements of the 19th and 20th centuries were able to make demands of governments because they were so embedded in people’s day-to-day lives. Historically, unions weren’t just at the workplace; they ran dance halls, classes, cafeterias, and sports leagues.

It was only by broadening their reach to every aspect of life that unions were able to become indispensable to working class communities. This made it possible for them to organise effective strikes and, eventually, mount a significant challenge to the their bosses and the state.

Municipalist movements

It’s regular people that are the actors of world-historical changes. What some people deride as ‘localism’ is actually the very foundation of transformative change.

That said, we shouldn’t forget that, without a long-term vision, a coherent plan of action, and trans-local alliances, every local movement is doomed to become a relic in the town museum.

Keep in mind that capitalism works at scale. That’s the genius of it. Stop one development in your neighbourhood, and investors just move their money elsewhere. Take on giants like Amazon, and they’ll just move to another city. So, in that sense, we would agree that local action, on its own, will always fail.

This is why, for radical municipalism to be successful, it requires collaboration at different scales. This July, the Fearless Cities Summit in New York City will bring together municipalist movements around the world to share resources and action plans.

In our own work as Symbiosis, we hope to bring together radical municipalist movements from across North America to form a democratically run network of local movements.

Autonomous communes

In the short term, these kinds of movements are already proving to be a challenge to big corporations. In Seattle, the city council passed a law that would tax big companies like Amazon—money which would then go into subsidies for affordable housing.

In Barcelona, the city is turning AirBnB apartments into social housing. Only local, democratic, and people-based movements can force politicians to bring transnational corporations to task. What we need to do now is learn from each other’s victories and work together to scale them up.

In the long term, a system of dual power would transform into what we call communalism or democratic confederalism: an allied network of autonomous communes or regions that work together in a directly democratic way.

On the local level, the neighbourhood assembly makes the decisions and decides the course of action. On a bigger level, these organisations band together in what is called a confederation: a body of recallable delegates with imperative mandates and accountable to their communities.

This body would allow autonomous communes to exchange resources, support each other, and make democratic decisions. Without this kind of networking, collaboration, and interdependence, local movements are just that: local, isolated, and doomed to fail, again and again.

3. We can only make real change by taking over the state

For many, the state is the best vehicle for action to fight the major systemic problems of climate chaos, finance capital running amok, and global inequality.

Further, with the growing popularity of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, now seems like a bad time to encourage people not to get involved with national politics. After all, conservative movements thrive off of voter apathy. If you ignore elections, then you cede the ground to the welfare-bashing, poor-blaming, and racist right.

How should radical municipalist movements engage with the state? First, it’s important not to frame the debate in terms of the state (them) vs. social movements (us).

We’re trying to build democratic institutions that can, in the present, extract concessions from the state. These will inevitably exist within the current (statist) system and leverage available (state) institutions and resources toward that goal.

Eventually, these new institutions would form an ecosystem of dual power that can force a crisis within the state. This is not a contradiction, it’s just to acknowledge that the state has embedded itself into almost every aspect of our lives and that abolishing it can’t be done in one day.

Window of debate

If we want to get rid of the state, does that mean we want to get rid of institutions that the state provides, like welfare, health care, or disaster response?

On the contrary, it’s our position that whatever is good for the poor—whatever improves people’s quality of life, such as welfare or access to health insurance—is worth fighting for.

Dismantling the welfare state won’t help us dismantle the state, instead, it demobilizes movements and erodes people’s basic capacity to meet their needs and get involved in politics.

And how much energy should we really be spending on elections? Because of the way liberal democracies and mainstream media work, elections can broaden the window of debate.

Rewire its institutions

In that way, we see elections as a useful tool for propaganda, a platform to spread ideas. But we can’t depend on them for turning those ideas into practice; only vibrant social movements that hold elected representatives accountable can do that.

What kinds of policies would a radical municipalist movement put on their electoral platform, if they had one? In each case, it helps to ask: how does this policy build popular power? What institutions can be built to force the state to be held accountable?

No matter what the state does, however, it’s crucial that people practice doing politics themselves. In fact, building these kinds of institutions is the antidote to apathy and encourages civic engagement.

In other words, we propose to challenge the state in order to replace it by building democracy at the neighbourhood level. It’s only in this way that we can challenge the state and, at the same time, rewire its institutions—already running through every aspect of our lives—into something new.

Turning local action into global power

It’s easy to criticise everything under the sun as insufficient, not good enough. Organising in your own neighbourhood can sometimes feel distant from the important stuff happening around the world.

But while local action alone is insufficient, organising should still be a part of people’s everyday lives: it should be place-based. Fighting for affordable housing means fighting climate change.

Taking on AirBnB or Amazon in your city means struggling against corporate control over politics. Working with your neighbours doesn’t mean giving up on national electoral politics. It’s all part of the same strategy: building local democracy is the necessary ingredient for taking on the state.

How can we solidify these distant, local actions into an intentional power that can take on state, corporate, and global powers? Through learning from each other, networking, forming alliances, and, eventually, confederating. Without a democratic politics of scale, we’ll just stay stuck in the local.

In the next installment of this column, we’ll discuss another common objection—one that has become more and more pressing: can radical municipalism avoid what we call ‘dark municipalism’: the rise of a fascist, reactionary localist movement that seeks to protect only its own and expel anyone who doesn’t fit the norm.

These Authors

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

A secretive network of badger baiters in Wales has been exposed by a BBC Wales undercover investigation.

The BBC Wales Investigates programme infiltrated two gangs as part of a six-month investigation into a violent and brutal blood sport which, the programme found, is as popular as ever.

Watch it now: BBC Wales Investigates The Secret World of Badger Baiting.

It is the first time badger baiting gangs have been infiltrated in this way since the Protection of Badgers Act came into effect in 1992.

Illegal hunting hotspots

And BBC Wales Investigates also discovered that Wales and parts of the English borders are illegal hunting hotspots. In the programme Ian Briggs, who heads up the RSPCA’s special operations unit, tells reporter Wyre Davies: “I think certainly Wales has a particular problem because of its remoteness and the ease of which they can carry out their activities. 

“It is hugely prevalent across the whole of the UK. We know there are dozens, hundreds, of individuals – men – going out, every week, just to target badgers, foxes and whatever. They live and breathe taking their dogs out into the countryside to kill wildlife.”

The programme uncovers a dedicated network of illegal hunters from around South Wales and reveals the brutal reality of how wild animals – and the dogs used to kill them – are treated.

One of the network’s ringleaders is a convicted badger baiter who was banned for life from keeping dogs in 2011. He is secretly filmed digging a badger sett in Pembrokeshire with dogs he says are his. 

Horrific injuries

On the day, the badger escapes and the gang of four men leave empty-handed. But on a second dig, that was also secretly filmed, two men dig a badger cub out of the ground and set their dogs on it, before finally killing it with a spade.

The programme also reveals the horrific injuries inflicted on the dogs used by hunters to attack animals like badgers, boar and deer and what their fate can be when they refuse to work. One gang member is recorded claiming he has shot dogs he owned when they didn’t perform as he wanted.

Reporter Wyre Davies shows the undercover footage to vet Mike Jessop, who has been an expert witness for dozens of animal welfare prosecutions.

He said: “The dog is just another working tool. They’re just thrown down holes, they’ve got to do their job. If they’re not doing their job they become a useless commodity.

“They’re only useful to these people if they’re being pushed to the limit. This is the classic blood sport activity that we all thought had been brought under some sort of control – this is showing clearly it hasn’t.”

Social media networks

UK law prohibits killing or injuring badgers, or disturbing the setts in which they live and hunting most wild mammals with dogs is also illegal. 

Digging foxes can be legal under strict conditions, including that the fox must only be flushed out of its earth, but not attacked, by dogs.

This kind of legal hunting is called ‘terrierwork’ – and the people who do it around the world call themselves ‘terriermen’.

As part of their investigation, the programme team found dozens of sites on social media networks dedicated to this type of legal hunting.

On one closed Facebook group dedicated to Patterdale Terriers – a popular dog breed used for terrierwork – the team find the convicted badger baiter boasting about the digs he has recently been on and about puppies he is breeding – despite his ban. 

The discovery raises questions about the effectiveness of sentencing and how easily bans on owning dogs can be flouted.

A wildlife crime priority

Badger baiting is one of six wildlife crime priorities in the UK. But police forces don’t have to report incidents and their outcomes to the Home Office. This means the true scale of the crime is unknown – something Labour also wants to change.

In 2016 13 people across England and Wales were convicted in the courts with offences under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, according to the Ministry of Justice. In Wales, that figure was four.

But reporting of badger offences also appears to be low. Police aren’t required to record figures, but information compiled by charities suggests there were 18 reports of badger baiting in Wales over a 17-month period ending in 2017, and just four reports of dug badger setts.

In the programme Ian Briggs urges members of the public to report sightings of possible badger baiters to the RSPCA. He says:  “They’re hidden away from public view, so it relies on us getting that information from friends, family, neighbours, who are aware of what these people are doing.”

The convicted badger baiter denied all the allegations, including that he owns dogs and that he hunts for badgers in the UK.

This Author

Catherine Harte is a contributing editor to The Ecologist. This story is based on a news release from BBC Wales.

The human race needs to master itself – as Rachel Carson said. If we cannot do that, then all of our technological mastery will only make us more dangerous to ourselves, to all of life and to our planet home.

It is the role of Resurgence Trust to help us to move positively in that direction of mastery and understanding. To help us to create a calm, conscious, peaceful present for ourselves and therefore for all around us. 

To help us to see clearly that we are not principally individuals, but rather part of the totality of life. We must drop the illusion of separation if we are to find peace and if we are to have a chance of ending our destruction and pollution of the planet.

Misery and destruction

So the role of Resurgence is also to help us to be connected – connected to nature, to each other, to our community, to true values and to ancient wisdom.

We need to connect to the knowledge common to all the primal religions of the world – that there is no significant separation between the human and the animal worlds, between the human and natural worlds or between matter and spirit.

Resurgence can also give us a stronger sense of passion, persistence and partnership in relation to serving each other and the planet and in relation to finding a new understanding of ethics, economics and politics.

This will enable us to confront and – let us hope – overcome the immeasurably vast environmental crisis which is unfolding in our lifetimes and is clearly the greatest challenge of our day, by our response to which we will be measured by future generations.

In terms of our connection to nature, we know that – as we continue to jeopardise our own future and that of the entire, fragile biosphere – the numerous crises we face have the potential to cause misery and destruction on an historic scale and tragically are already beginning to do so.

Wildflowers and birds

At the same time, the long-standing political consensus around prioritising economic growth is undermining wellbeing and sanity in numerous equally well-documented ways. We chase this growth partly to service debt, partly to try to conceal the underlying structural deficiencies and inequalities of our societies. But it is tragically accelerating that planetary crisis.

Thus, in a way that is central to our being, we feel uprooted, alienated and dispirited, because we have forgotten how to care for the land, to value it, protect it, respect it, adore it, belong to it and worship it.

Meanwhile, in terms of connection to each other and to a sense of community, the dominance of urban, technological, dualistic values, much discussed in Resurgence over the years, promotes and values the wrong kinds of connections.

Specifically, these values are transactional and economic, rather than personal and direct ones based on empathy, trust and experience.

It is no surprise, then, that most of lowland Britain, along with so many parts of our planet, has been turned tragically and avoidably into an agricultural desert, largely devoid of wildlife, especially of insects, wildflowers and birds.

Positive gains

On a broader scale, the same values have led to the destruction of vast areas of precious wilderness and are bringing the whole planet towards the brink of disaster.

Indeed, Pope Francis has described humanity’s destruction of the environment as a sin and accused mankind of turning the planet into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”.

So, in order to strengthen the human spirit and roll back this unfolding disaster, we must hold fast to the values and the wisdom which Resurgence has itself upheld for the last half century – including, not least, interconnectedness, non-violence, gratitude, responsiveness and community.

Happily, Resurgence is by no means alone in trying to promote those values and the greater wellbeing that follows surely from them. It is constantly remarked upon that there is an intense hunger and need for new political thinking.

Many people – while acknowledging the positive gains – are acutely aware of what we have lost in our obsession with growth and see also what we need to retrieve.

Understand and appreciate

It is often the most simple and basic things: clean, fresh water; healthy soils; biodiversity; authentic, healthy, unadulterated food; clean breathable air; open spaces readily accessible to everyone; nature respected and protected everywhere; a strong sense of community, of belonging and of place; jobs which provide meaning, purpose, pride, pleasure and companionship –  livelihoods not just employment.

There is still much to do. Supporters of business as usual are in charge, setting the agenda and making those simple things harder to achieve, because they are thought to stand in the way of growth and progress.

It sometimes seems that as a species we are almost incapable of acting in our own genuine long-term interest, and all the more so when entrenched systems of vested interests stand in our way.

Resurgence, however, remains optimistic about the true essence and capacity of the individual and collective human spirit.

There is therefore an urgent need for many more people to understand and appreciate that the environment is just as important as the economy – in fact more so, for without a healthy environment there can ultimately be no economy at all.

Vibrantly animate

In the words of Peter Abbs, Resurgence & Ecologist poetry editor: “The appalling predicament we have thoughtlessly placed ourselves in requires nothing less than a dramatic change of consciousness in which we envisage ourselves as a creative and responsible part of nature, not as exploiters and profiteers, but conservers, guardians and witnesses”.  

Resurgence stands wholeheartedly for the belief that such a change of consciousness is both possible and urgent.

The green movement itself is far broader and larger than Resurgence, but Resurgence is uniquely well placed to develop, bring together and spread the sort of new narratives, which are needed to bring about the wide scale, global change of heart and outlook, which alone will provide the momentum and motivation to pull us and our planet back from the brink.

There is a unifying narrative that emerges from the insights of the green movement and which Resurgence seeks to strengthen and to spread.

This narrative – and I quote from a Resurgence & Ecologist article by Jonathan Dawson, a teacher at Schumacher College –  speaks of “interdependence in place of isolation, within a vibrantly animate Earth, whose health and wellbeing arise out of myriad relationships in a dizzyingly rich web of life”.

Source of consciousness

In other words, we need to construct a new narrative for all of us – to replace the one in which economic growth, technological progress and human scientific brilliance are the focus of our actions and beliefs. We must do this before our current story leads us through pride and hubris to the brink of disaster and beyond.

In the new narrative, on the other hand, all creation is connected. Humans are not, never can be, and could never sanely wish to be, separate from the rest of nature. Our true essence is best expressed through compassion and co-operation, not through competition and misguided individualism.

A resurgence of the human spirit is by definition desirable and a good thing in itself – who could not wish for an increase of joie de vivre, of purpose and of meaning?

But it is also an essential precondition for addressing the multiple challenges facing the planet and the human race.  Moreover, these challenges can only be confronted co-operatively, by nations working together and through a clear appreciation of what constitutes true wealth and true wellbeing – something which has always been at the core of the Resurgence message.

Let us believe, in the optimistic spirit of Resurgence, that it is still not too late to change direction and to restore those simple, natural and precious things, which are our greatest treasures, to their proper place in the world.

We also surely need a return to a sense of wonder and mystery – and a move away from the dangerous and dispiriting idea that humans should be seen as the sole source of consciousness in an otherwise meaningless and inanimate universe, when in fact our own finite egos are infinitesimally small and insignificant compared to the great wonders of creation and the infinity of time.

This Author

James Sainsbury is chair of the Resurgence Trust, the owner and publisher of The Ecologist online and the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. You can become a member of Resurgence online. This article is an edited version of a speech written for the Resurgence Summer Camp. 

The human race needs to master itself – as Rachel Carson said. If we cannot do that, then all of our technological mastery will only make us more dangerous to ourselves, to all of life and to our planet home.

It is the role of Resurgence Trust to help us to move positively in that direction of mastery and understanding. To help us to create a calm, conscious, peaceful present for ourselves and therefore for all around us. 

To help us to see clearly that we are not principally individuals, but rather part of the totality of life. We must drop the illusion of separation if we are to find peace and if we are to have a chance of ending our destruction and pollution of the planet.

Misery and destruction

So the role of Resurgence is also to help us to be connected – connected to nature, to each other, to our community, to true values and to ancient wisdom.

We need to connect to the knowledge common to all the primal religions of the world – that there is no significant separation between the human and the animal worlds, between the human and natural worlds or between matter and spirit.

Resurgence can also give us a stronger sense of passion, persistence and partnership in relation to serving each other and the planet and in relation to finding a new understanding of ethics, economics and politics.

This will enable us to confront and – let us hope – overcome the immeasurably vast environmental crisis which is unfolding in our lifetimes and is clearly the greatest challenge of our day, by our response to which we will be measured by future generations.

In terms of our connection to nature, we know that – as we continue to jeopardise our own future and that of the entire, fragile biosphere – the numerous crises we face have the potential to cause misery and destruction on an historic scale and tragically are already beginning to do so.

Wildflowers and birds

At the same time, the long-standing political consensus around prioritising economic growth is undermining wellbeing and sanity in numerous equally well-documented ways. We chase this growth partly to service debt, partly to try to conceal the underlying structural deficiencies and inequalities of our societies. But it is tragically accelerating that planetary crisis.

Thus, in a way that is central to our being, we feel uprooted, alienated and dispirited, because we have forgotten how to care for the land, to value it, protect it, respect it, adore it, belong to it and worship it.

Meanwhile, in terms of connection to each other and to a sense of community, the dominance of urban, technological, dualistic values, much discussed in Resurgence over the years, promotes and values the wrong kinds of connections.

Specifically, these values are transactional and economic, rather than personal and direct ones based on empathy, trust and experience.

It is no surprise, then, that most of lowland Britain, along with so many parts of our planet, has been turned tragically and avoidably into an agricultural desert, largely devoid of wildlife, especially of insects, wildflowers and birds.

Positive gains

On a broader scale, the same values have led to the destruction of vast areas of precious wilderness and are bringing the whole planet towards the brink of disaster.

Indeed, Pope Francis has described humanity’s destruction of the environment as a sin and accused mankind of turning the planet into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”.

So, in order to strengthen the human spirit and roll back this unfolding disaster, we must hold fast to the values and the wisdom which Resurgence has itself upheld for the last half century – including, not least, interconnectedness, non-violence, gratitude, responsiveness and community.

Happily, Resurgence is by no means alone in trying to promote those values and the greater wellbeing that follows surely from them. It is constantly remarked upon that there is an intense hunger and need for new political thinking.

Many people – while acknowledging the positive gains – are acutely aware of what we have lost in our obsession with growth and see also what we need to retrieve.

Understand and appreciate

It is often the most simple and basic things: clean, fresh water; healthy soils; biodiversity; authentic, healthy, unadulterated food; clean breathable air; open spaces readily accessible to everyone; nature respected and protected everywhere; a strong sense of community, of belonging and of place; jobs which provide meaning, purpose, pride, pleasure and companionship –  livelihoods not just employment.

There is still much to do. Supporters of business as usual are in charge, setting the agenda and making those simple things harder to achieve, because they are thought to stand in the way of growth and progress.

It sometimes seems that as a species we are almost incapable of acting in our own genuine long-term interest, and all the more so when entrenched systems of vested interests stand in our way.

Resurgence, however, remains optimistic about the true essence and capacity of the individual and collective human spirit.

There is therefore an urgent need for many more people to understand and appreciate that the environment is just as important as the economy – in fact more so, for without a healthy environment there can ultimately be no economy at all.

Vibrantly animate

In the words of Peter Abbs, Resurgence & Ecologist poetry editor: “The appalling predicament we have thoughtlessly placed ourselves in requires nothing less than a dramatic change of consciousness in which we envisage ourselves as a creative and responsible part of nature, not as exploiters and profiteers, but conservers, guardians and witnesses”.  

Resurgence stands wholeheartedly for the belief that such a change of consciousness is both possible and urgent.

The green movement itself is far broader and larger than Resurgence, but Resurgence is uniquely well placed to develop, bring together and spread the sort of new narratives, which are needed to bring about the wide scale, global change of heart and outlook, which alone will provide the momentum and motivation to pull us and our planet back from the brink.

There is a unifying narrative that emerges from the insights of the green movement and which Resurgence seeks to strengthen and to spread.

This narrative – and I quote from a Resurgence & Ecologist article by Jonathan Dawson, a teacher at Schumacher College –  speaks of “interdependence in place of isolation, within a vibrantly animate Earth, whose health and wellbeing arise out of myriad relationships in a dizzyingly rich web of life”.

Source of consciousness

In other words, we need to construct a new narrative for all of us – to replace the one in which economic growth, technological progress and human scientific brilliance are the focus of our actions and beliefs. We must do this before our current story leads us through pride and hubris to the brink of disaster and beyond.

In the new narrative, on the other hand, all creation is connected. Humans are not, never can be, and could never sanely wish to be, separate from the rest of nature. Our true essence is best expressed through compassion and co-operation, not through competition and misguided individualism.

A resurgence of the human spirit is by definition desirable and a good thing in itself – who could not wish for an increase of joie de vivre, of purpose and of meaning?

But it is also an essential precondition for addressing the multiple challenges facing the planet and the human race.  Moreover, these challenges can only be confronted co-operatively, by nations working together and through a clear appreciation of what constitutes true wealth and true wellbeing – something which has always been at the core of the Resurgence message.

Let us believe, in the optimistic spirit of Resurgence, that it is still not too late to change direction and to restore those simple, natural and precious things, which are our greatest treasures, to their proper place in the world.

We also surely need a return to a sense of wonder and mystery – and a move away from the dangerous and dispiriting idea that humans should be seen as the sole source of consciousness in an otherwise meaningless and inanimate universe, when in fact our own finite egos are infinitesimally small and insignificant compared to the great wonders of creation and the infinity of time.

This Author

James Sainsbury is chair of the Resurgence Trust, the owner and publisher of The Ecologist online and the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. You can become a member of Resurgence online. This article is an edited version of a speech written for the Resurgence Summer Camp. 

The human race needs to master itself – as Rachel Carson said. If we cannot do that, then all of our technological mastery will only make us more dangerous to ourselves, to all of life and to our planet home.

It is the role of Resurgence Trust to help us to move positively in that direction of mastery and understanding. To help us to create a calm, conscious, peaceful present for ourselves and therefore for all around us. 

To help us to see clearly that we are not principally individuals, but rather part of the totality of life. We must drop the illusion of separation if we are to find peace and if we are to have a chance of ending our destruction and pollution of the planet.

Misery and destruction

So the role of Resurgence is also to help us to be connected – connected to nature, to each other, to our community, to true values and to ancient wisdom.

We need to connect to the knowledge common to all the primal religions of the world – that there is no significant separation between the human and the animal worlds, between the human and natural worlds or between matter and spirit.

Resurgence can also give us a stronger sense of passion, persistence and partnership in relation to serving each other and the planet and in relation to finding a new understanding of ethics, economics and politics.

This will enable us to confront and – let us hope – overcome the immeasurably vast environmental crisis which is unfolding in our lifetimes and is clearly the greatest challenge of our day, by our response to which we will be measured by future generations.

In terms of our connection to nature, we know that – as we continue to jeopardise our own future and that of the entire, fragile biosphere – the numerous crises we face have the potential to cause misery and destruction on an historic scale and tragically are already beginning to do so.

Wildflowers and birds

At the same time, the long-standing political consensus around prioritising economic growth is undermining wellbeing and sanity in numerous equally well-documented ways. We chase this growth partly to service debt, partly to try to conceal the underlying structural deficiencies and inequalities of our societies. But it is tragically accelerating that planetary crisis.

Thus, in a way that is central to our being, we feel uprooted, alienated and dispirited, because we have forgotten how to care for the land, to value it, protect it, respect it, adore it, belong to it and worship it.

Meanwhile, in terms of connection to each other and to a sense of community, the dominance of urban, technological, dualistic values, much discussed in Resurgence over the years, promotes and values the wrong kinds of connections.

Specifically, these values are transactional and economic, rather than personal and direct ones based on empathy, trust and experience.

It is no surprise, then, that most of lowland Britain, along with so many parts of our planet, has been turned tragically and avoidably into an agricultural desert, largely devoid of wildlife, especially of insects, wildflowers and birds.

Positive gains

On a broader scale, the same values have led to the destruction of vast areas of precious wilderness and are bringing the whole planet towards the brink of disaster.

Indeed, Pope Francis has described humanity’s destruction of the environment as a sin and accused mankind of turning the planet into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”.

So, in order to strengthen the human spirit and roll back this unfolding disaster, we must hold fast to the values and the wisdom which Resurgence has itself upheld for the last half century – including, not least, interconnectedness, non-violence, gratitude, responsiveness and community.

Happily, Resurgence is by no means alone in trying to promote those values and the greater wellbeing that follows surely from them. It is constantly remarked upon that there is an intense hunger and need for new political thinking.

Many people – while acknowledging the positive gains – are acutely aware of what we have lost in our obsession with growth and see also what we need to retrieve.

Understand and appreciate

It is often the most simple and basic things: clean, fresh water; healthy soils; biodiversity; authentic, healthy, unadulterated food; clean breathable air; open spaces readily accessible to everyone; nature respected and protected everywhere; a strong sense of community, of belonging and of place; jobs which provide meaning, purpose, pride, pleasure and companionship –  livelihoods not just employment.

There is still much to do. Supporters of business as usual are in charge, setting the agenda and making those simple things harder to achieve, because they are thought to stand in the way of growth and progress.

It sometimes seems that as a species we are almost incapable of acting in our own genuine long-term interest, and all the more so when entrenched systems of vested interests stand in our way.

Resurgence, however, remains optimistic about the true essence and capacity of the individual and collective human spirit.

There is therefore an urgent need for many more people to understand and appreciate that the environment is just as important as the economy – in fact more so, for without a healthy environment there can ultimately be no economy at all.

Vibrantly animate

In the words of Peter Abbs, Resurgence & Ecologist poetry editor: “The appalling predicament we have thoughtlessly placed ourselves in requires nothing less than a dramatic change of consciousness in which we envisage ourselves as a creative and responsible part of nature, not as exploiters and profiteers, but conservers, guardians and witnesses”.  

Resurgence stands wholeheartedly for the belief that such a change of consciousness is both possible and urgent.

The green movement itself is far broader and larger than Resurgence, but Resurgence is uniquely well placed to develop, bring together and spread the sort of new narratives, which are needed to bring about the wide scale, global change of heart and outlook, which alone will provide the momentum and motivation to pull us and our planet back from the brink.

There is a unifying narrative that emerges from the insights of the green movement and which Resurgence seeks to strengthen and to spread.

This narrative – and I quote from a Resurgence & Ecologist article by Jonathan Dawson, a teacher at Schumacher College –  speaks of “interdependence in place of isolation, within a vibrantly animate Earth, whose health and wellbeing arise out of myriad relationships in a dizzyingly rich web of life”.

Source of consciousness

In other words, we need to construct a new narrative for all of us – to replace the one in which economic growth, technological progress and human scientific brilliance are the focus of our actions and beliefs. We must do this before our current story leads us through pride and hubris to the brink of disaster and beyond.

In the new narrative, on the other hand, all creation is connected. Humans are not, never can be, and could never sanely wish to be, separate from the rest of nature. Our true essence is best expressed through compassion and co-operation, not through competition and misguided individualism.

A resurgence of the human spirit is by definition desirable and a good thing in itself – who could not wish for an increase of joie de vivre, of purpose and of meaning?

But it is also an essential precondition for addressing the multiple challenges facing the planet and the human race.  Moreover, these challenges can only be confronted co-operatively, by nations working together and through a clear appreciation of what constitutes true wealth and true wellbeing – something which has always been at the core of the Resurgence message.

Let us believe, in the optimistic spirit of Resurgence, that it is still not too late to change direction and to restore those simple, natural and precious things, which are our greatest treasures, to their proper place in the world.

We also surely need a return to a sense of wonder and mystery – and a move away from the dangerous and dispiriting idea that humans should be seen as the sole source of consciousness in an otherwise meaningless and inanimate universe, when in fact our own finite egos are infinitesimally small and insignificant compared to the great wonders of creation and the infinity of time.

This Author

James Sainsbury is chair of the Resurgence Trust, the owner and publisher of The Ecologist online and the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. You can become a member of Resurgence online. This article is an edited version of a speech written for the Resurgence Summer Camp. 

The human race needs to master itself – as Rachel Carson said. If we cannot do that, then all of our technological mastery will only make us more dangerous to ourselves, to all of life and to our planet home.

It is the role of Resurgence Trust to help us to move positively in that direction of mastery and understanding. To help us to create a calm, conscious, peaceful present for ourselves and therefore for all around us. 

To help us to see clearly that we are not principally individuals, but rather part of the totality of life. We must drop the illusion of separation if we are to find peace and if we are to have a chance of ending our destruction and pollution of the planet.

Misery and destruction

So the role of Resurgence is also to help us to be connected – connected to nature, to each other, to our community, to true values and to ancient wisdom.

We need to connect to the knowledge common to all the primal religions of the world – that there is no significant separation between the human and the animal worlds, between the human and natural worlds or between matter and spirit.

Resurgence can also give us a stronger sense of passion, persistence and partnership in relation to serving each other and the planet and in relation to finding a new understanding of ethics, economics and politics.

This will enable us to confront and – let us hope – overcome the immeasurably vast environmental crisis which is unfolding in our lifetimes and is clearly the greatest challenge of our day, by our response to which we will be measured by future generations.

In terms of our connection to nature, we know that – as we continue to jeopardise our own future and that of the entire, fragile biosphere – the numerous crises we face have the potential to cause misery and destruction on an historic scale and tragically are already beginning to do so.

Wildflowers and birds

At the same time, the long-standing political consensus around prioritising economic growth is undermining wellbeing and sanity in numerous equally well-documented ways. We chase this growth partly to service debt, partly to try to conceal the underlying structural deficiencies and inequalities of our societies. But it is tragically accelerating that planetary crisis.

Thus, in a way that is central to our being, we feel uprooted, alienated and dispirited, because we have forgotten how to care for the land, to value it, protect it, respect it, adore it, belong to it and worship it.

Meanwhile, in terms of connection to each other and to a sense of community, the dominance of urban, technological, dualistic values, much discussed in Resurgence over the years, promotes and values the wrong kinds of connections.

Specifically, these values are transactional and economic, rather than personal and direct ones based on empathy, trust and experience.

It is no surprise, then, that most of lowland Britain, along with so many parts of our planet, has been turned tragically and avoidably into an agricultural desert, largely devoid of wildlife, especially of insects, wildflowers and birds.

Positive gains

On a broader scale, the same values have led to the destruction of vast areas of precious wilderness and are bringing the whole planet towards the brink of disaster.

Indeed, Pope Francis has described humanity’s destruction of the environment as a sin and accused mankind of turning the planet into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”.

So, in order to strengthen the human spirit and roll back this unfolding disaster, we must hold fast to the values and the wisdom which Resurgence has itself upheld for the last half century – including, not least, interconnectedness, non-violence, gratitude, responsiveness and community.

Happily, Resurgence is by no means alone in trying to promote those values and the greater wellbeing that follows surely from them. It is constantly remarked upon that there is an intense hunger and need for new political thinking.

Many people – while acknowledging the positive gains – are acutely aware of what we have lost in our obsession with growth and see also what we need to retrieve.

Understand and appreciate

It is often the most simple and basic things: clean, fresh water; healthy soils; biodiversity; authentic, healthy, unadulterated food; clean breathable air; open spaces readily accessible to everyone; nature respected and protected everywhere; a strong sense of community, of belonging and of place; jobs which provide meaning, purpose, pride, pleasure and companionship –  livelihoods not just employment.

There is still much to do. Supporters of business as usual are in charge, setting the agenda and making those simple things harder to achieve, because they are thought to stand in the way of growth and progress.

It sometimes seems that as a species we are almost incapable of acting in our own genuine long-term interest, and all the more so when entrenched systems of vested interests stand in our way.

Resurgence, however, remains optimistic about the true essence and capacity of the individual and collective human spirit.

There is therefore an urgent need for many more people to understand and appreciate that the environment is just as important as the economy – in fact more so, for without a healthy environment there can ultimately be no economy at all.

Vibrantly animate

In the words of Peter Abbs, Resurgence & Ecologist poetry editor: “The appalling predicament we have thoughtlessly placed ourselves in requires nothing less than a dramatic change of consciousness in which we envisage ourselves as a creative and responsible part of nature, not as exploiters and profiteers, but conservers, guardians and witnesses”.  

Resurgence stands wholeheartedly for the belief that such a change of consciousness is both possible and urgent.

The green movement itself is far broader and larger than Resurgence, but Resurgence is uniquely well placed to develop, bring together and spread the sort of new narratives, which are needed to bring about the wide scale, global change of heart and outlook, which alone will provide the momentum and motivation to pull us and our planet back from the brink.

There is a unifying narrative that emerges from the insights of the green movement and which Resurgence seeks to strengthen and to spread.

This narrative – and I quote from a Resurgence & Ecologist article by Jonathan Dawson, a teacher at Schumacher College –  speaks of “interdependence in place of isolation, within a vibrantly animate Earth, whose health and wellbeing arise out of myriad relationships in a dizzyingly rich web of life”.

Source of consciousness

In other words, we need to construct a new narrative for all of us – to replace the one in which economic growth, technological progress and human scientific brilliance are the focus of our actions and beliefs. We must do this before our current story leads us through pride and hubris to the brink of disaster and beyond.

In the new narrative, on the other hand, all creation is connected. Humans are not, never can be, and could never sanely wish to be, separate from the rest of nature. Our true essence is best expressed through compassion and co-operation, not through competition and misguided individualism.

A resurgence of the human spirit is by definition desirable and a good thing in itself – who could not wish for an increase of joie de vivre, of purpose and of meaning?

But it is also an essential precondition for addressing the multiple challenges facing the planet and the human race.  Moreover, these challenges can only be confronted co-operatively, by nations working together and through a clear appreciation of what constitutes true wealth and true wellbeing – something which has always been at the core of the Resurgence message.

Let us believe, in the optimistic spirit of Resurgence, that it is still not too late to change direction and to restore those simple, natural and precious things, which are our greatest treasures, to their proper place in the world.

We also surely need a return to a sense of wonder and mystery – and a move away from the dangerous and dispiriting idea that humans should be seen as the sole source of consciousness in an otherwise meaningless and inanimate universe, when in fact our own finite egos are infinitesimally small and insignificant compared to the great wonders of creation and the infinity of time.

This Author

James Sainsbury is chair of the Resurgence Trust, the owner and publisher of The Ecologist online and the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. You can become a member of Resurgence online. This article is an edited version of a speech written for the Resurgence Summer Camp. 

Meat and fish companies worth $152 billion have been labelled “high risk” due to their poor performance in managing risk from climate change, antibiotics risk and worker safety.

The research aimed to produce the world’s first comprehensive assessment of how some of the world’s biggest suppliers of meat and fish are managing risks of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and biodiversity loss, water scarcity and use, waste and pollution, antibiotics, animal welfare, working conditions and food safety. Scores were based on a company’s commitments, policies and disclosure. 

Failing to manage

A total of 36 out of 60 listed companies – including suppliers to fast food chains McDonalds and KFC – were categorised as “high risk”. The third largest poultry producer in the US, Sanderson farms, was also given a bottom-tier ranking.

Almost half of the firms analysed (46) were ranked “high risk” on antibiotics stewardship, after they were found to have few or no measures in place to reduce excessive use of antibiotics, despite emerging regulation on the issue, including in the US.

The research was carried out by the investor network FAIRR, whose members include Aviva Investors and Schroders. The index produced from the results aimed to improve corporate disclosure in sustainability issues by all major livestock and fisheries companies, and bridge the knowledge gap for investors in this sector.

On climate change, 72 percent of the sector is failing to manage climate risk, despite being responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Potential stranded assets

Jeremy Coller is the founder of the FAIRR Initiative and chief investment officer of Coller Capital which manages $17 billion of assets.

He said: “Investors need environment, social and governance (ESG) data and transparency to make better investment decisions, yet this information is lacking in the meat, fish and dairy sector. This is the first index to help investors bridge that knowledge gap.”
 
“As megatrends like climate change, antibiotic resistance and food technology radically reshape the way we produce and consume meat, fish and dairy, the Coller FAIRR index will help institutional capital identify both best in class companies and potential stranded assets in the food sector.”

The index also highlights best practice, including Norwegian aquaculture business Marine Harvest.

This top ranked firm was praised for tracking its use of antibiotics and quantifying it on the basis of a gram of active substance per tonne of product. The company only uses antibiotics when fish are at risk, and says it aims to have “minimal” use of antibiotics by 2022.

Good food

Meanwhile, in Scotland, campaigners have gathered outside the Scottish Parliament to call for legislation on improving the sustainability of food.

The Scottish Government pledged to publish a consultation on how to make the country “a good food nation”, where everyone has access to nutritious food and dietary-related diseases and the environmental impact of food are in decline.

In January, cabinet secretary for the rural economy Fergus Ewing told MSPs that ministers had been considering the recommendations of a commission set up to develop policies to implement the good food nation.

But campaigners from the Scottish Food Coalition and Obesity Action Scotland said that the consultation was overdue.

Amabel Crowe, coordinator at the Scottish Food Coalition, said: “Never has there been a timelier moment to introduce law – food sits at the heart of Scotland’s biggest challenges, from food insecurity to poor health, from worker rights to our warming climate.

“The public consultation can’t just be about business as usual, it has to listen to the families relying on food banks, the people with chronic health conditions, the workers and the farmers who feed Scotland,” she said.

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.

Anti-fracking network Reclaim the Power has announced it will take “unprecedented” disruptive action against Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road fracking site this summer.

It will begin with a fortnight of action disrupting companies across the UK supplying services and materials to Cuadrilla and the fracking industry and culminate in a so-called ‘Block Around the Clock’ for 48 hours at the site.

Kate Robertson, member of Reclaim the Power (London), said: “This summer we’re going all out to stop fracking. Fracking is a major threat to the health of local communities and does not offer meaningful secure jobs like a thriving renewables industry would.

United resistance

“Westminster continues to force this on communities despite overwhelming opposition. Fracking needs access to our natural resources, vehicles, finance and politicians to survive. We will break those links in the fracking supply chain.

“The fracking industry is on the ropes – plans are behind schedule and the companies responsible are losing money. Meanwhile our movement is stronger than ever. We have a commitment to the people of Lancashire and won’t rest until it’s defeated.”

The plans come as part of United Resistance: three months of action between April and June, called for by local campaigns Frack Free Lancashire and the anti-fracking Nanas.

Banned in England

The United Resistance began with a 100-woman march last week, highlighting the increased risks of breast cancer near fracking sites. Block Around the Clock will conclude the United Resistance and feed into a summer of continued disruption.

Tina Rothery, from Nanas against fracking, said: “The support of Reclaim the Power as well as others since Cuadrilla arrived in January 2017  has been so welcomed and necessary.

“Our energy wavers as we continue for more than a year of unending campaigning, to turn up daily. The surge of support, energy and power that returns with Reclaim the Power, is a light in an often dark tunnel.

“We know we can succeed because Scotland, Ireland and Wales have halted the industry as have others globally. It can be done and we’re not going anywhere until  it is banned in England too.”

This Author

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