Re-wilding the Law might sound like an odd proposition, even a contradiction. Law is not meant to be wild.

It’s supposed to bring in a civilised, organised, orderly way of doing things. It sets out clear rules which govern our relationships with each other and the world around us.

So how can the law be wild?

Earth jurisprudence 

The problem is that the laws we have created often do not reflect the ecological reality we live in. They do not reflect the laws of the earth.

The wild law view is that this is a fundamental problem underlying not just individual laws, but our whole system of law and governance. It has led to the severe environmental crisis we now find ourselves in.

The term wild law was coined by the South African environmental lawyer and author Cormac Cullinan. He argues that we live in a human-centred, or anthropocentric, civilisation, a “homosphere” which is cut off from the natural world around us. We see ourselves as separate from, and superior to, the rest of nature, when in reality we are not.

Cullinan draws on principles of earth jurisprudence, a philosophy articulated by the late Catholic priest and eco-philosopher Thomas Berry.

Earth jurisprudence asks us to re-examine the assumptions underlying our systems of law and governance, and shift them from being human-centered to being earth-centred or ecocentric.

Radical shift

Moving to an earth-centred way of seeing the world means seeing ourselves as close to and inextricable from nature. This reflects the reality that we cannot live without water, oxygenated air and soil.

An ecocentric view also sees nature as having an inherent right to exist in the same way as humans do: we would no longer be superior. These ideas are not new, indeed, they are present in the philosophies of many indigenous peoples. They would also be familiar to ‘deep green’ or ‘dark green’ ecologists.

Wild law re-aligns our legal and governance systems in accordance with an ecocentric world view. It is more about creating laws that are in harmony with the earth, it natural processes and cycles,  than imposing laws on it.

The conventional legal approach is regulatory. It believes that the environmental crisis comes from simply do not have strong enough regulation and/or not adequately enforcing what we do have. Wild law therefore entails a radical, paradigm shift. 

One legal tool that can be used to give effect to wild law is extending legal rights to nature, both animate beings including animals and plants, and inanimate natural features such as mountains and rivers.

Legal personality

Currently, human beings can own nature and do what we like to it subject to certain regulations. It is essentially a relationship of property and “rights over”. Giving legal rights to nature makes it the subject, and not just the object, of rights.

In doing so, it recognises that nature has an inherent value, separate from its value to human beings. 

It is important to stress that this is not giving human rights to nature, though it does give legal personality. The rights would simply enable a mountain, river or bird to do what it naturally does. In Berry’s words, the rights to “exist, thrive and renew its natural cycles”. 

Making nature a “legal person” goes further than the legal protections is normally has.

Where does wild law and rights of nature already exist? The United Nations set up a Harmony with Nature programme in 2012, which promotes an ecocentric world view. The UN General Assembly has adopted a number of resolutions embracing this. These resolutions are part of international law, although they are not binding on countries.

Enforceable rights 

The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth was drafted at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights, held in Bolivia in 2010, and was incorporated into Bolivian law in the same year.

More famously, the 2008 constitution of Ecuador  gives legally enforceable rights to nature. Also in South America, the Supreme Court of Colombia only this year recognised that the Amazon rainforest has legal rights of its own, in a case that involved deforestation and climate change. It had previously recognised rights of the Atrato River. 

The first ‘rights of nature’ law was enacted in the USA in 2007. It was an ordinance, a local law passed in the borough of Tamaqhua, Pennsylvania, that gave rights to the local river ecosystem, due to concerns that high levels of contaminated sewage sludge were polluting it.

There are now thirty rights of nature ordinances in the USA. An application to pass a similar local law, a by-law in English town of Frome in Somerset, is currently in progress. If successful, it would be the first of its kind in the UK.

In New Zealand, legal personality has been granted to a river, a national park and most recently a mountain. Meanwhile, the High Court of Uttarakhand in India has recognised the rights of two major rivers, and in a groundbreaking judgement only last month, those of the whole of the animal kingdom. 

Get involved

The Wild Law Special Interest Group (SIG) of the UK Environmental Law Association (UKELA) was set up in 2005. It held a series of annual conferences on wild law.

These were later replaced with wild law weekends away every year, usually in Scotland or the Lake District, which continue to take place.

In addition, this year the SIG is organising a one day conference to be held on 21 September at Bristol University. The purpose of the conference is to provide a platform for the discussion of wild law generally.

There will be various presentations on rights of nature, both in theory and real life examples of it, as well as other aspects of wild law. The programme and booking information can be found here. 

This Author

Shehana Gomez is a co-convenor of the Wild Law special interest group of the UKELA.

For Friedrich Hayek and his friends at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) it was a vindication of everything they believed about the perils of Communism and the culmination of their efforts in promoting the free market as opposed to planned economies.

For the people of eastern Europe it would prove a pyrrhic victory as mafia capitalism would prove as hostile and vicious as any dictatorship and living standards would actually fall. And for Lord Lawson, having just resigned as chancellor, the newly opened markets were simply a business opportunity.

Nine days after Nigel – now Lord – Lawson resigned as chancellor protesters in East Berlin began tearing down the Berlin Wall, but a Lawson free from political restraints began forging his own doctrine in the newly available markets to the east, in his bid to remain in power and in the company of the world’s industrial leaders.

Lawson, having fallen from grace, hoped to land on his feet. He was inundated with offers. He became a non-executive director of Barclays Bank which the Independent newspaper claimed was “a $400,000 a year, two-days-a-week job on the board”.  

He took another job with Guinness Peat Aviation, an Irish aircraft leasing company, which paid about £50,000 a year to attend four board meetings, provide financial advice and act as chairman of its new financial arm.

Open theft

Public concerns about the revolving door between government and big business were dismissed by Lawson as “sanctimonious humbug,” and “the politics of envy and an awful lot of humbug.”

He said at the time: “I obviously am now earning a substantial amount, but I sacrificed far more financially during those 10 years with the Government”.

Lawson took advantage of the housing price boom he created by selling his house at Newnham Lodge, Newnham, for £1,850,000.

But it was an offer from his old friend Charles Jonscher to become chairman of the Central Europe Trust (CET) that really captured his imagination. The company had been formed while Lawson was brooding about resigning.

This was the great wave of asset stripping, privatisation and sometimes open theft of the industry built under tyranny, sometimes with forced labour. Some would make billions. Millions of families would lose everything.

Ironically, it would land a subsidy from Lawson’s old department “to help Poland with its first privatisation studies”.

“The countries of Central and eastern Europe were suffering the pain and travails of making the transition, never before achieved, from the disasters of communism and the command economy to the complexities of capitalism and the market economy,” Lawson wrote at the time.

“Making a success of this…is the great European challenge of the 1990s.” The former Soviet bloc would needed “the know-how, the training, the management, and marketing skills, and the practical example of capitalism at work, that only Western private investment can provide.”

CET would in the coming years work to help British and European oil, tobacco, weapons and pharmaceutical monopolies ravage the newly opened eastern European markets before new domestic companies had a chance.

Tony Fekete, based in Germany, was hired by Lawson at the CET offices in Piccadilly to help start up the company. “We had to do lobbying – government level lobbying, which usually was the state privatisation of industry,” he told me.

“One of the companies that we were advising was Coca Cola who were desperate to get into eastern Europe.” Lawson was apparently keen to work with cigarette manufacturers.

“They were all interested in buying tobacco plants and all of the farms were bought by the big players, and I think they did come along to one or two lunches,” recalled Fekete. “We definitely had contact with all the tobacco companies.”

Sex line mogul

Patrick Sheehy at British American Tobacco wrote a private letter to Lawson in January 1991 declining an invitation to lunch: “Thank you for your letter of 23rd January inviting me to join one of the lunches you are hosting for businessmen to discuss business and economic conditions and prospects in Central Europe,” he said.

“I would very much like to join you for a lunch of this kind and will ask my secretary to contact your office to try and find a mutually convenient date.” Sheehy at that time was good friends with Lawson’s son, Dominic.

The tobacco boss was director of the Spectator when Dominic was editor. Lawson was wise enough to know the potential fortunes in buying up Russian grown tobacco but also shrewd enough to refuse an invitation to be publicly associated with the deadly industry, and declined the invitation from the Tobacco Alliance.

Fekete also recalls how CET went into business with an Amsterdam-based pornographer who was cashing in on sex lines and horoscopes. Lawson’s firm secured the first “value added” telephone licence in Hungary, the equivalent of the 0898 premium lines.

“We intended to set up horoscope lines as sex services were outlawed in Hungary,” Fekete told me: “It should have earned us a huge amount of money.”

But his business partner suddenly went bust and they were forced to work with a sex lines mogul who “offered sex, and horoscopes and things like that” in the Netherlands.

“People are excited to call the numbers, they weren’t aware of the rates,” he reflected. “That was not something you want to be most proud of – offering a very low value added product with a high price relying on people’s insensitivity to time.”

This Author

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

Paul Andrews, who is a member of the Ryedale District Council and Chair of Habton Parish Council, has said: “I am taking this legal action as a private individual as I consider it my duty to protect the interests of the communities I represent.

“Fracking will industrialise our beautiful countryside and destroy our rural economy and tourist businesses. Somebody has to stand up against the bullies in government and the greed of the oil and gas industry. This is about defending your property, your family’s health and your local democratic rights. Would you want full scale industrial fracking  only 300m of your home?”

The WMS, which was published on 17 May by Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, sets out changes in government policy on how local planning authorities should deal with fracking applications. 

Democratic control 

Councillor Andrews sought legal advice from Marc Willers QC, and was advised that the Minister’s Statement is unlawful. He has therefore instructed his solicitors to issue proceedings for Judicial Review.

Andrews added: “The Statement seeks to impose an unacceptable level of government control on regional planning authorities, and will significantly reduce the ability of democratically elected local councils to establish their own parameters for fracking in their area.

“It is also a direct challenge to the North Yorkshire Minerals Plan, which seeks to impose modest limits on fracking in an area celebrated for its world class natural environment, high quality food production and thriving rural tourist industry.”

An online crowdfunder to support Andrews’ private legal challenge has been set up on the Crowdjustice website, and has already raised over £5,500. You can donate to this appeal here.

Andrews added, “In particular, this Statement is clearly a direct challenge to the North Yorkshire Minerals and Waste Joint Plan. 

Direct challenge 

This Plan, which is the result of many thousands of hours work by local officials and numerous consultees over four years, seeks to find a compromise between the interests of the oil and gas industry and the concerns of local residents, businesses, parish councils, farmers, landowners and the rural tourist industry.”

One of these modest restrictions is a requirement to establish a 500m separation distance between fracking well sites and the nearest home, school or other dwelling. 

Another is that the Plan considers any drilling operation into shale rock to produce gas as ‘fracking’, while the industry argue that it is only fracking if more than 1,000 m3 of fluid is used (which is how the government defined fracking in the 2015 Infrastructure Act).

The plan also supported the government’s promise to keep fracking drill pads out of the National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.”

Andrews said, “These modest restrictions in the Plan did not please the fracking industry, who want unrestricted permission to do as they please wherever they hold a Petroleum Exploration and Development Licence (PEDL).

Modest restrictions

This is because they require grids of drill pads evenly spaced all over the fracking area at intervals of one and a half  to two miles in every direction, and think that the 500m buffer zone would “sterilise” their ability to frack.”

The WMS, which was published less than five weeks after the finalisation of the North Yorkshire Minerals Plan, includes the following directive to planning authorities:  “Plans should not set restrictions or thresholds across the plan area that limit shale gas development without proper justification”. 

It instructs planning authorities to recognise the government’s definition of fracking as stated in the Infrastructure Act. The Statement also said that ‘policies should avoid undue sterilisation of mineral resources (including shale gas).’

Andrews added, “This Statement was issued unilaterally without public consultation at the whim of the government and its friends in the oil and gas industry, and has no democratic legitimacy whatsoever.

Andrews continued: “It was also issued in such haste that Secretary of State failed to carry out a Strategic Environmental Assessment on the proposals, as required by law.

“The Statement has already been heavily criticised by the Communities and Government Select Committee, who condemned its publication only a few days before the Committee published its own report on planning guidance for fracking.” 

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Frack Free United. 

We have witnessed a movement, in Britain as elsewhere, to ‘decolonise’ our public spaces. From the taking down of statues, to the renaming of sites named after slave traders, to student campaigns to decolonise universities, the global movement to decolonise our minds is growing.

Campaigners are calling for the removal of the legacies of colonialism, which include a dominance of European writers on university curriculums, and statues, plaques and sites commemorating European men who gained wealth and fame through the brutalisation of people from the colonies. 

Intellectually, this movement began in the late 1940s, gathering momentum in the 1950s and 1960s as Asian and African countries gained independence from the British and other European colonial powers. As well as the physical removal of imperial power, the concept includes a rejection of the colonisers’ ideas that led to the colonised being oppressed and feeling inferior.

“Germs of rot”

Frantz Fanon, the influential author on decolonisation who supported the Algerian independence revolt against the French in the 1950s and defended the use of violence in such circumstances, wrote: “Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

Decolonisation is about the present as well as the past: it is important that descendants of the colonised do not have to live in societies that honour those who oppressed their ancestors. It is about eradicating racism, a direct legacy of colonialism.

It can be viewed as part of a wider movement to dismantle old, oppressive systems and tell a wide range of counter-stories – those of working-class people, women, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities – that enable us to challenge racist and other discriminatory beliefs that have resurfaced in the current political environment. 

A great deal of mainstream media attention has been given to campaigns at universities – most recently in March, when an online article in the Telegraph covered activities by the Cambridge University students’ decolonisation campaign, reporting that it had “spread to Classics, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering”.

Decolonised curriculum

The campaign posted a response on Facebook that includes the following:“The purpose of decolonising knowledge is not merely to tack on a few authors of colour to the reading list to reach a tokenistic diversity quota. Change does not come through such gestures. Instead, a decolonised curriculum places knowledge in the context of colonialism to recognise how knowledge has been used to oppress, as well as to learn about the knowledge of the oppressed.

A decolonised curriculum recognises that Europe does not exist in isolation, that its own knowledge has been produced through centuries of exchange with (and often erasure of) Others. Finally, a decolonised university cares where university funds are invested and how this contributes to the continued subjugation of the global south, particularly through the arms and fossil fuel industries.”

Last year, students at the School of Oriental and Asian studies in London made headlines when they launched a campaign to decolonise the curriculum. The Decolonising Our Minds Society “seeks to challenge the political, intellectual and structural legacies of colonialism and racism both within and outside the university”.

A media debate followed in which the students stated that they wanted not, as the media suggested, to drop white, European thinkers such as Plato from the syllabus, but to stop them from being seen as unquestionable. They argued that the curriculum is too deeply rooted in colonial worldviews, and excludes non-white thinkers. 

“Rhodes Must Fall”

Other university campaigns include the Rhodes Must Fall movement, which calls for the removal of statues of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. As well as, like other students, reforming the Euro-centric curriculum, Rhodes Must Fall Oxford aims to address the underrepresentation of BAME students and staff in universities. 

Decolonisation campaigns have also taken place beyond the academic community. In Bristol the Countering Colston campaign fought successfully for the renaming of the concert venue named after the slave trader Edward Colston, who became deputy governor of the Royal African Company. Colston Hall is to be renamed when it reopens in 2020.

Media discussions are often simplified to the rights and wrongs of keeping or removing statues or European thinkers from university curriculums. Some decolonisation campaigners have been criticised for wanting to ‘whitewash’ Empire out of history.

Some, like the historian and TV presenter David Olusoga, are opposed to the toppling of statues, and in favour of contextualisation. In an opinion piece in the Guardian Olusoga wrote that he would like to see, for instance, a new plaque under the statue of Cecil Rhodes outlining who Rhodes was and what he did. “I’m after more history, not less, and not just for Rhodes,” Olusoga wrote. “Let’s not pull statues down,” he continued, “let’s brand them, as the Royal Africa[n] Company branded enslaved Africans, with the truth about who these men really were.” This is the argument behind the student movement too – diversify voices, yes, but also examine the history of European colonisers more critically. 

What constitutes national history?

Sumita Mukherjee, historian at the University of Bristol, says that we need to think carefully about how we decolonise: “If we simply replace an elite, imperialist white man with an equally elite black man then we are failing to really decolonise anything, unless it dismantles and challenges systems of hierarchy such as the patriarchy, class-based hierarchies, and sexuality.” 

She agrees with the point that we need to contextualise these histories, such as that of Colston, and not relegate them to the dustbin, but she does not believe that removing a name or a statue is whitewashing history, because ‘history’ is not straightforward. “A lot of history is based upon certain perspectives.

I think what is happening is that certain groups of people are realising they are excluded from myths about what constitutes national history or identity. They’re realising that imperialist/patriarchal systems still exist, and that some people’s stories and perspectives are privileged over others.”

Through the removal or re-presentation of colonisers, decolonisation is attempting the mountainous task of undoing centuries of emotional and physical damage inflicted on individuals and communities from African and Asian diasporas. If we achieve this we will free ourselves of limiting, divisive and damaging beliefs. It’s not going to happen overnight – ideas of white supremacy are deeply embedded in our collective consciousness – but I am hopeful that we can get there. 

More than one truth

Now that decolonisation – which can be seen as part of a wider ethical living movement that calls for respect for all living beings and the planet – has spread into the mainstream, we can begin to decolonise every aspect of society: employment, the criminal justice and healthcare systems, the media, the arts and the family.

We can teach our children that there is more than one truth. We might not agree on the best ways to interpret or implement decolonisation, but the important thing is to have these conversations, respectfully, and to move forward together to leave the legacy of a new world understanding for future generations. 

This Author

Louisa Adjoa Parker is a writer with a particular focus on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic history. Her collection of poems Blinking in the Light is published by Cinnamon Press. www.louisaadjoaparker.com

It was still dark when we arrived at the shores of the Xingu River. Artificial lights were shining on the man-made beach built during the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant. The wooden canoes were moored side by side; most of them seemed to have had a long life in partnership with their Indigenous and riverside owners.

Headlamps were on and backpacks were being bagged in order to keep them dry. There were reporters and cameras at the beach. And so we embarked, carrying our handmade wooden paddles. Thirteen canoes were leaving that day, carrying a collection of scientists, local Indigenous people, researchers, journalists, activists, and other Brazilians who live by the riverside.

Mr Manoel (a riverside resident) and Aré (a member of the Yudjá ethnic group located at Tuba-Tuba village in Mato Grosso) were our local guides, teaching us some of the secrets of a good canoeist – how to place our arms and how to avoid hurting our hands… Even so, as we left the beach behind, our muscles were soon sore. 

“Xingu River alive forever”

The sun was slowly announcing its appearance on the river’s horizon. We felt a jumble of sensations: the rhythm of our paddling, the moment of facing the unknown, the feeling of openness towards what was to come. The yearning, longing, the beating of the heart for the Earth, for the Amazon, for the whole of that group of people, and in particular for the ones paddling with us: “Xingu River alive forever!” we all cried together.

Sunlight was revealing the contrasts of that land. Some forest areas were flooded, trees and other beings drowned since the hydroelectric plant was built. When a tree’s roots and trunk are submersed but its branches are out of the water, it dies slowly; its branches dry out and the landscape loses its dark green, vibrant and humid identity. Under water, the dead and dying trees decompose, producing a great quantity of greenhouse gases. The quality of the riverbank forest is smudged by a morbid grey. 

During the first day of canoeing we travelled the length of the Belo Monte reservoir, and the flooded forest, the turbidity of water, the silence of birds, the daily challenges of Mr Manoel, and the absence of movement within the Xingu had a marked effect on our enthusiasm. Those first hours were the most challenging of the whole 110-kilometre route.

The expedition was organised by Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), which is a Brazilian civil society organisation aimed at defending the rights of Indigenous and traditional people and focused on environmental and social issues, in partnership with AYMIX, an Indigenous association of the Yudjá Mïratu people of the Big Bend of the Xingu River. It was open to the public, and researchers from universities around Brazil were also invited. It is hoped that this will stimulate more studies within the territory affected by the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant.

Responsibility

The expedition had no pre-planned outcome other than to engage with and get to know that bittersweet part of the Amazon, and its people. Escola Schumacher Brasil was invited by ISA to participate and to contribute to the group reflection processes, while potentially creating possibilities for partnership between the two organisations. The way in which the expedition was organised through a complex network of interactions, encouraging a kind of soft activism that was simultaneously engaged and spontaneous in offering experiences and observing what emerged from them, echoes the way of Schumacher College and Escola Schumacher Brasil. 

A sense of responsibility towards our direct environment was evident in each one of our camps: waste was managed, potentially harmful chemical products such as shampoo were not used in the river, and compost loos were built and taken away. The cooks and their food were very special. Healthy, local and even vegan food was encouraged, although fish couldn’t be missing from the daily diet of these river people. Every day the kitchen crew went exploring the surrounding area to bring us delicious fruits and roots. 

The act of paddling was our daily meditation, bringing about introspection, a sort of absorption state, and integration with water and forest. There is a rhythm, there is the collective and the individual, there is the flow of water and Nature all around. Sometimes we travelled in silence; at other moments we chanted in protest for the pulsing life in that wounded river. 

By the end of the first day we had arrived at the main Belo Monte barrier plant, and the canoes were transported by a small tractor to the other side of the river. From then on, although the river’s flow was reduced (because most of the water was diverted to produce electricity), the landscape was far more pleasant. As we canoed down the river, Nature was showing itself as more and more vibrant (or less and less hurt compared to the first part of the route). That beautiful landscape was also giving us a taste of loss related to the harmed areas we had seen earlier. 

Ancient traditions

From time to time Aré, sitting at the very front of our canoe, would put down his paddle, take his handmade bamboo flute out of his bag, and begin playing beautifully for the forest that we felt was silently listening. He also coloured our days with his knowledge about the river and lessons from his elders. His presence deepened our embodied understanding of Indigenous wisdom.

Aré had been invited by ISA to participate in the expedition and had travelled from Tuba-Tuba by boat and car, a journey of three days. His ancestors had moved out of the area when the land began to be threatened by non-Indigenous people in the 20th century.

At Tuba-Tuba they were able to cultivate more of their ancient traditions and language. Nowadays there is a constant exchange between Tuba-Tuba and the village of Mïratu, two communities that call each other family. Two young women from Mïratu had been sent to live in Aré’s village for a year to learn the language and ways of living. They came with Aré to visit their parents, and joined the expedition.

We arrived towards evening at the island that would be our first base camp. As we all went to pitch our tents and bathe in the river before dinner, the sun was setting on one side of the river, and the moon was rising, full and red, on the other. We were warned about the fierce mosquitoes that would soon arrive. We had travelled 50 kilometres that day, so we opted for an early night, sleeping under the brightness of the moon.

Land under threat

On the second day, the ride was smoother and we had fewer kilometres to cover. Nevertheless, we paddled the whole day to get to Mïratu, where we were to stay for the next two days. Halfway there we made a remarkable stop at the island of Fazenda, home to many of the riverside people who were travelling with us, including Mr Manoel.

As we approached the island, all the canoes grouped together. We chanted “Xingu River alive forever” as we slowly got closer and closer. There on the beach the community was waiting for us, welcoming us with signs and smiles. Children, teachers, mothers, elders and fishermen were there, ready for a strong, heartfelt and memorable encounter. 

Imagine being a resident of that island, in the midst of that wilderness, picturing those canoes approaching filled with enthusiastic people shouting for the significance of your land, your river – your home that’s been under threat for so long. This set us thinking that perhaps one of the more powerful effects of the expedition was at the psychological level, strengthening everyone’s self-reliance (including ours) and contributing to empower, at a subtle level, the villagers we met, in defending what is true for them.

The moon was rising on the horizon as we approached Mïratu, reminding us that life pulses in cycles, even though, on that part of the river, the Belo Monte project had deprived its human and other-than-human inhabitants of the oscillatory quality of river flow. Slowly the sky was uncovering a multitude of stars. We were keen to get together with our hosts, and some researchers and Indigenous people presented their work at the meeting house built by the villagers at the base camp. Later, as every day, we would go to sleep and wake up to the blissful, almost dreamlike sound of Aré’s flute.

Nature’s dialogue

There is a lot of insensitivity (or ignorance) around what water is. Water is movement, flow. It is water that gives shape to the landscape, that gave form to the river. That specific trajectory of the river was carved by water itself, during millions of years. Water, soil and rocks are in dialogue, influencing each other since times with no beginning. 

But today, beings that emerged from those communions, and that are part of the river’s life, find themselves unable to continue their course, blocked by the hydroelectric plant. Fruit trees once on the shores of the river, whose fruits used to feed the fish, are now located 50 metres away from the water: connections that took millions of years to form have suddenly been broken.

To block this flow is to alter the consolidated movement that is the gesture of water in that particular place, forming what we call the Big Bend of the Xingu River. Nature is in itself so marvellous and wise, with all its diversity and richness, that the violence against it made us profoundly sad. 

There are also many consequences for the Indigenous and riverside communities who live there. Mrs Raimunda, a riverside resident and local leader gifted with great communicative capacity, coloured our expedition with her words, filled with strong and eloquent images: “The more bark is torn off me, the more I renew” (a reference to what happens to trees); “Money is paper, soil is life, richness is health”; “I had no voice in saying how much my land is worth. I, the one who knows how valuable my land is, was not heard in expressing its richness”; “[The enterprise] has taken out my legs and given me crutches in exchange”; “My husband and other people are dead, but they are still walking” (referring to the suffering of those around her).

Despair and downheartedness

There is despair, downheartedness and a high rate of suicide here. Children and young people have been deeply harmed by crime, drugs, violence against women, and prostitution. The health and quality – and hence the price – of fish have fallen as a consequence of the environmental impacts since the river’s regime was changed.

The turbidity of the water, noise pollution, and artificial lighting at night are only a few of the impacts we heard of from residents of the area. The blockage of piracema – the natural movement of fish who swim upstream to find specific places for reproduction – caused millions of fish to die near the dam. Various remediation or other programmes were offered by the construction company, but they are vague regarding the enormous vulnerability that the project created. Nevertheless, “We must show that we have survived,” Mrs Raimunda insists. 

This last sentence from Mrs Raimunda reinforces something we saw in many instances of our journey: the importance of showing the world what is happening to her people, who, despite all their vulnerability, are firmly and resiliently staying there. For the most incredible thing is that, despite such profound violation – destruction of the land, aggression towards their communities, the damage to aquatic ecosystems – what we encountered there was life pulsing among all that suffering. 

Our feeling is that such great challenges are strengthening cohesion, especially within the Indigenous community, stimulating them to recover and preserve their values and knowledge. In some way, like the river that has had its course interrupted and altered, they are finding new paths to live in, to let flow and to grow roots. Every adversity seems to be animating these courageous people to redeem their origins and rebuild their identity with great strength. We are not saying that the great harm caused by Belo Monte is, therefore, a good thing in any way, but that despite all the destruction, there is still life and hope and determination in that land and its people. 

Engaging with people and planet

This was the fourth such canoe expedition along the Xingu and – besides the important work of developing independent research and monitoring fauna and flora in the harmed area and surroundings – we noticed more subtle things that cannot be disregarded: for example, the kind of food that was being prepared and its influence among the kitchen crew, considering a diet free from industrialised ingredients and valuing local products. 

We would like to highlight some significant aspects of getting Indigenous and riverside people and visitors from all over Brazil together, sharing conversations, canoeing and organising daily activities. We noticed that we were returning stronger than when we had arrived, as if we were carrying with us some of the strength and integrity of those with whom we shared the journey.

A sense of readiness was growing among us to solve issues quickly and collectively – for instance, when a canoe began taking on water in one of the river rapids and was about to sink, it was rescued by the hands and help of many. Some quickly went into the water after equipment and bags, others helped save the canoe, and a third group gave support to crew members who needed it. A sense of group engagement was deepening, not only on a personal and immediate level, but also with regard to our beautiful and chaotic planet. 

Paddling, camping and having the Xingu River as our home for the week was a profound experience in which such intense exchange (between people, cultures, Nature and civilisation) dissolves, with water from the river, the boundaries between teaching and learning, right and wrong, and many other polarities we can so easily create. We all came together to savour the delights and pains of being who we are – and then to act together in responsive and responsible ways in a world where respect and integrity can flow more powerfully than a violent vision of development at all costs.

These Authors

Elisa Hornett is a teacher working with children. She has recently concluded an MSc degree at Schumacher College. Rita Mendonça is a biologist and sociologist and has dedicated her life to facilitate learning processes with Nature. She teaches Holistic Science at Escola Schumacher Brasil.

This year’s Xingu canoeing expedition takes place from 3 to 8 September 2018 and the programme will enjoy the collaboration of Escola Schumacher Brasil. Pre-registration is open at www.aymix.org/canoada

Margaret Thatcher took to the stage at the United Nations and outlined her apparent mission to save the world.

“It is life itself – human life, the innumerable species of our planet – that we wantonly destroy. It is life itself that we must battle to preserve,” she told the world’s political leaders.

“It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.”

The darling of the free market would directly address the apparent conflict between ecological conservation and economic growth: “We must have continued economic growth in order to generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment. But it must be growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow.”

Industry, she argued, has a positive role to play. “The multinationals have to take the long view,” she insisted. “There will be no profit or satisfaction for anyone if pollution continues to destroy our planet. The market itself acts as a corrective, the new products sell and those which caused environmental damage are disappearing from the shelves.”

Humility and Respect

She qualified this statement by adding: “We should always remember that free markets are a means to an end. They would defeat their object if by their output they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the well-being they achieve by the production of goods and services.”

Thatcher wanted action, not words. She demanded that both the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) – parent organisations to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – were strengthened.

Thatcher wanted to see a binding international framework convention on climate change in time for the World Conference on Environment and Development, which was due to be held in just over two years.

“But a framework is not enough,” she warned. “It will need to be filled out with specific undertakings, or protocols in diplomatic language, on the different aspects of climate change.

“These protocols must be binding and there must be effective regimes to supervise and monitor their application. Otherwise those nations which accept and abide by environmental agreements, thus adding to their industrial costs, will lose out competitively to those who do not.”

The IPCC must meet its targets: “We must not allow ourselves to be diverted into fruitless and divisive argument,” she continued. “Time is too short for that.”

Her conclusion could not have contrasted more starkly with economist Friedrich Hayek’s attack on reason the previous year.

She argued: “Today, we have learned rather more humility and respect for the balance of nature. But another of the beliefs of Charles Darwin’s era should help to see us through – the belief in reason and the scientific method.

“Reason is humanity’s special gift…Now we must use our reason to find a way in which we can live with nature, and not dominate nature.”

She then ended on a religious note: “We are not the lords, we are the Lord’s creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself–preserving life with all its mystery and all its wonder – may we all be equal to that task.”

Creative Solutions

The prime minister was as good as her word and on returning from the United Nations she established and secured funding for the Hadley Centre for Climate Protection and Research at the Met Office.

The IPCC submitted its first “assessment review” to to the UN general assembly in October 1990.

A framework convention on climate change was scheduled for the UN Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED), scheduled for Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.

The then US president George Bush confirmed that “the United States is strongly committed to the IPCC process of international co-operation on global climate change,” adding: “Well informed free markets yield the most creative solutions.”  

Towards the end of the year his Secretary of State James Baker resigned because he owned shares in oil companies.

The international campaign to muster the political will to save the world from catastrophic climate change was launched by the podium of the United Nations in November 1989.

It was launched by the champion of the free market, Margaret Thatcher. In the coming decade the market, and its most powerful constituents, the major oil companies, would respond with equal certainty and resolve.

Lawson Boom

She spoke again at the Second World Climate Conference held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva on 6 November 1990: “The need for more research should not be an excuse for delaying much needed action now,” she demanded. “There is already a clear case for precautionary action at an international level.”

Then 16 days later she would resign as prime minister.

Thatcher had been mortally wounded by her chancellor Nigel Lawson’s resignation. The election results of June that year had been “an unmitigated disaster for the government”.

The drubbing at the ballot box was due mainly to the steep rise in interest rates Lawson had imposed at the end of his chancellorship in a desperate attempt to stem inflation and control what became known as the Lawson Boom.

The market appeared not only to be free but wildly and damagingly out of control.

The government was rocked by a series of disasters and scandals, culminating in the Poll Tax riots in Trafalgar Square and Geoffrey Howe resigning as deputy prime minister in November 1990.

He was the last remaining member of Thatcher’s first cabinet and had been considered among her closest allies at the beginning of her political career.

His resignation made it impossible for the prime minister to continue. The member of the Mont Pelerin Society and close associate of the Institute of Economic Affairs had, in many ways, made Thatcher and now he chose to break her.

Thatcher announced her intention to resign after 11 years in power. The following week she was photographed leaving 10 Downing Street in a government Jaguar, attempting to suppress tears of fury and betrayal.

Years later she would mysteriously reverse her principled stance on climate change in what would be a vital and exhilarating coup for the sceptics.

This Author

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

The forests are burning, the temperatures are soaring and people are dying. And this is just the beginning. The silence on the climate crisis has become deafening this summer, despite record temperatures around the globe.

In complexity theory, when a system comes under increasing pressure there is often a period of calm before a “phase transition” – when the system breaks down into new state. This calm is about to break.

The conventional campaigning has, yet again, revealed its failure to influence the political establishment. Thirty years since scientists told us that we are heading for ecological collapse, a majority of Labour and Tory MPs voted through the UK’s biggest carbon intensive infrastructure project – the third runway at Heathrow Airport.

Rebellious struggle 

Once completed, the expanded Heathrow will produce more carbon emissions than the entire country of Portugal. No act confirms more clearly the pathological criminality of our political class. 

So it has come to this: rebellion! 

This November we will rebel. We will go to London and block transport and government infrastructure. We will be arrested. Once released we will do it again.

To stop us they will have to imprison us. We will appeal to people to rise up and join us. But whether they do so is not important. What is important now is for us to make a stand – to engage in a direct political struggle that is appropriate to the crisis we face.

Climate catastrophe 

We must speak the blunt truth – we are heading for extinction.

Finally after decades of emailing, donating, marching; after years of growing depression, desperation, and despair, we have reached this point.

We will no longer tolerate the destruction of this beautiful planet. The humiliation of seeing this crime of all crimes take place year in and year out throughout our whole lives. We have decided that crying alone in the dark is no way to deal with our piercing grief at this horror.

We are going act and action is the antidote to despair. This is our choice today.

Not so long ago we were told by scientists in no uncertain terms that if we exceed 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere we would face catastrophe. We are now at 410.

Rights and duties

The increase used to be 1ppm a year, then it rose to 2ppm, we are now approaching 3ppm. In a decade or so we will be crossing 450ppm – the equivalent of the Paris limit of 2C.

In the words of Professor Peter Ward, at 500ppm “all bets our off”. He means that we will have triggered the geophysical feedbacks that will lead to our extinction.

After years of denial we finally have to accept the terrible truth – those in authority are going to kill us – the infliction of unimaginable suffering on billions of innocent people. This is what is planned – openly and wilfully. There is no greater crime. 

So the time for facts and figures is over – the speculations, the distractions – the talks that lead to more talks. We are adults and no longer children.

Already, around the country, hundreds are answering our call. We started our presence in London, Bristol, and Stroud. We now have groups in Frome and Exeter. The rebellion is spreading.

Get involved

Extinction Rebellion (XR) needs you! We are calling for a national mobilisation on the biggest scale ever.  We demand that carbon emissions be reduced to zero by 2025.

This aim is in line with The Climate Mobilisation (TCM) in the USA. We can do this, but we need your help.

Please ‘like’ our Facebook page, follow @ExtinctionRebellion on Twitter,  and message us to offer support.

As well as the civil disobedience on the frontline, we seek media specialists, writers, editors, public speakers, software designers, performers and artists of all kinds to help spread the XR campaign.

This Author

Rogar Hallam is an organic farmer, public speaker and carbon divestment campaigner.

I planted my first grape tomato bush when my son William was three. I didn’t think much of it, other than I’d get to eat a few vine-fresh tomatoes here and there. When the flavor of that first ripe tomato crossed my taste buds I knew I had been doing fruits and vegetables wrong for decades.

For the rest of that season my wife and I explored different farms in the area for fresh local produce. That summer we discovered that zucchini wasn’t actually a flavorless vegetable, radishes have quite a zing to them, and that kale was still gross no matter where it came from.

The next season we started our own modest garden and I was impressed by how easy it was to grow a few of my favorites. I was eating my own zucchini and peas by late June.

Enjoying food

I was hooked on gardening and I wanted to do my best to make sure William was hooked too. But he wasn’t terribly interested in pulling weeds and picking cutworms from the bottom of tomato plants.

I set out to make gardening fun for him so that we could work on the garden and enjoy the food together. After a couple seasons I have some advice for would-be gardeners with children:

You’ll find that letting them have their own garden instead of helping you in yours will be much more fun for you and the kids. Having their own garden is a very exciting idea for them and it helps to keep them from getting in the way when you’re sweating buckets while pulling weeds out of yours.

Clearly define their space with a little hardscaping like stacked stones or a small vinyl fence. Painting the border a fun color will make it feel more at home.

They probably have their favorites, so as long as they grow well in your region there’s no reason to stear them towards other plants. If you haven’t already sprouted your seeds indoors I would start with seedlings bought from the store.

Craft activities 

Kids can be a bit impatient and they aren’t going to want to wait a couple weeks for the seeds to sprout.  Let them feel like gardeners right away with some plants and you have a better chance of capturing and keeping their interest all season long.

Kids aren’t going to want to be gardeners all of the time. They love doing other crafts too. A perfect way to keep them interested in growing their own food is to do a craft that relates to their garden.

One of the easiest and most fun activities is to make a sign that lets everyone know that this is their garden. A wood board on a stake is all you need. Paint it their favorite color and write their name on it. 

You can take this a step further and make markers for the individual plants too. All you need to do is glue a few popsicle sticks together and paint them up. Write the names of the plants on them and press them in the ground. It doesn’t take long to make these signs but they leave a big impression on the kids.

Plant a sunflower: when you’re three feet tall a six foot tall plant with an enormous bright yellow flower on top is fascinating. They’re easy to grow and it’s fun to show them how the flower turns to face the sun as it moves across the sky.

Laying foundations

Buy tools that will last. I would get a few of the basics from your local gardening center and paint the handles or even just write their name on the handle in permanent marker.

William has grown into a teenager and isn’t interested in gardening right now, but the foundations for being a locavore and gardener has been laid.

He understands and appreciates the difference between store bought and locally grown, and I’m sure that when he has a home of his own he will have a garden with some of his favorites in it. 

Maybe he’ll even set aside a small piece of his garden for me to grow sunflowers and raspberries in.

This Author

Scott Jenkins is a gardening father of two living in Connecticut. He is the editor of Architypes.net, a home improvement website that his wife owns and operates. Find him on Twitter @scottjenkins

Systematic watches from both land and sea have been undertaken at locations all around our coasts and inshore waters from Shetland in the north to the Isles of Scilly and Channel Islands in the south. 

The 2018 National Whale and Dolphin Watch was organised by the Sea Watch Foundation, Britain’s oldest marine mammal research and education charity, and conducted between 28 July 2018 and 5 August 2018.

Over a nine-day period, more than five hundred sightings of thirteen different species were reported, and more records are still coming in. 

In Scotland

The Northern Isles of Shetland and Orkney remained the stronghold for killer whales in the UK. 

During the National Whale and Dolphin Watch, pods of up to five animals were seen around Orkney, and daily at multiple locations in Shetland. One sighting recorded over 80 individuals fast swimming off Lerwick. 

The bottlenose dolphin was the most commonly sighted species in the Moray Firth, but particularly in the outer Firth southwards as far as Angus and Fife. Minke whales and harbour porpoise were also regularly seen. A humpback whale was sighted off Torry Battery in the City of Aberdeen, feeding in the area and performing a barrel roll in the water with its pectoral fin. 

Over on the West Coast, harbour porpoises were seen at widespread locations. This is currently one of the strongholds of the species in Britain. The second most commonly seen species was the minke whale, also widespread but recorded particularly around the Inner and Outer Hebrides. 

Most excitingly, a fin whale and a pod of five long-finned pilot whales were spotted in deep waters near the isolated Outer Hebridean island of North Rona last week.

In England

Porpoises have become less common in recent years in the northern North Sea around Shetland and Orkney, but further south off eastern England the species has increased. 

This summer has seen a good number of white-beaked dolphin sightings in Northumberland, andhumpback whale sightings all around the UK, with one individual popping up this last week off Flamborough Head in Yorkshire. 

This summer only one harbour porpoise sighting has been reported so far during National Whale and Dolphin Watch in south-eastern England. The bad weather at the beginning of the week combined with local environmental conditions that do not favour concentrations of fish prey. This region of England also receives the greatest amount of shipping of anywhere in the British Isles. 

This has been a great summer for cetacean sightings in Devon and Cornwall, which are normally seen at many locations around the Southwest Peninsula. The other species regularly seen is the common dolphin, and there were many sightings of groups of up to one hundred at scattered locations from Berry Head in Devon to Falmouth in Cornwall. 

Minke whales were also seen in Falmouth Bay, Cornwall, and in Labrador Bay, Torquay, South Devon. 

Wales

Cardigan Bay in West Wales holds the largest coastal population of bottlenose dolphins in Britain. Around New Quay Harbour, dolphins have been seen almost daily. Bottlenose dolphins were also sighted off the north coast of Anglesey at Point Lynas. 

The most common and widely distributed marine mammal in Wales, however, is the harbour porpoise, with sightings daily during this year’s event from New Quay and Llangrannog in Ceredigion, and several locations in Anglesey with highest numbers at Point Lynas – one of the best spots to see the species in the whole of Britain. 

Schools of common dolphins numbering up to fifty individuals were seen at several sites from St Anne’s Head around Pembrokeshire to Puffin Island in Anglesey.  

A rare visitor of this year’s National Whale and Dolphin Watch event was a striped dolphin, which live stranded at Pendine in South Wales on July 31st.

Isle of Man

Increasingly, sightings of bottlenose dolphins are being made in northwest England during summer, and this year, the National Whale and Dolphin Watch resulted in the species being seen from Bispham in Lancashire.

Large aggregations of common dolphins (with a pod of 150 individuals), a mixed group of bottlenose dolphin and Risso’s dolphins (with a pod of 60 individuals), harbour porpoises, and two other sightings of Risso’s dolphins were seen from eat and west side of the Isle of Man. 

Risso’s dolphins have become regular visitors here, particularly in summer.

Dr Chiara Giulia Bertulli, Sightings Officer for Sea Watch Foundation praised the event: “What an incredible variety of cetacean species sighted this year during National Whale and Dolphin Watch, despite the unsettled weather at the beginning of the week. 

“It is thanks to volunteer observers who provide us with sightings data from all around the British Isles that we are able to continuously monitor and protect local whale, dolphin and porpoise species. 

“It is also thanks to this long-lasting collaboration that we have built up the largest and longest running sightings scheme in the world” says Dr Chiara Giulia Bertulli, Sightings Officer for Sea Watch Foundation.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article was based on a press release from the Sea Watch Foundation. All the verified sightings so far can be viewed on line (http://www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/nwdw-2018/) where they are updated as more reports come in.

Bert Bolin, the founder of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was the first scientist to detect signals from the coal and oil industry that there would be serious resistance to climate science and its policy implications. 

As soon as governments began taking the issue seriously, the energy industry mobilised its greatest assets in order to combat organised opposition to its climate-damaging activities.

The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) was formed as soon as the IPCC came into being and, as the name suggests, this was an industry-funded powerhouse designed to undermine any global coalition to prevent climate change.

Bolin notes: “The strategy pursued was primarily to minimise the significance of the possible impacts of climate change and to address procedural and legal issues.”

The majors would engage with the issue more quickly than some of the environmental campaign groups.

The British and American oil industry, including British Petroleum, Shell, Exxon and Esso, were already members of the American Petroleum Institute, which in turn formed the GCC in 1989.

The new alliance included the Edison Electric Institute association of American energy companies, alongside national associations representing farming, paper production, iron manufacture, lorry drivers, rail companies and mining associations.

Energy Heavyweights

Glen Kelly, the executive director, would write to the US government introducing the industry group: “The GCC was formed in 1989 to [facilitate] the participation of US business and industry in the domestic and international policy debates.”

“We are accredited as an NGO to the UK Framework Convention on Climate Change and actively have been involved in every stage of the international negotiations over climate policy since the very beginning of the debate.”

The coalition would, through its member associations, represent more than six million American companies, making it “the largest and longest-serving American business coalition in the debate”.

The most energy-intensive industries based in the world’s most dominant economic nations would directly and openly use their weight to influence the climate debate.

The GCC was purpose-built to negotiate with the US government, but it was less well suited to convincing the American public that global warming did not need urgent action, because it was made up of oil majors and heavy industry polluters.

William O’Keefe of the American Petroleum Institute was instrumental in creating the GCC. He also worked with Hayek-inspired free market think tanks, including serving as chief executive of the George C Marshall Institute.

Rising Tide

According to professor Naomi Oreskes, an American historian of Science, the institute had previously focused on defending Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, but with the end of the Cold War it needed a new enemy and decided to target “environmental alarmists”.

William Nierenberg, who founded the Marshall Institute, was given the opportunity to present its first report on climate change, called Global Warming: What Does The Science Tell Us, to White House staff as early as 1989.

Stephen Schneider, the eminent Stanford University climate scientist said: “Sununu is holding up the report like a cross to a vampire, fending off greenhouse warming.”

Big Oil was making billions in profits from the extraction and sale of fossil fuels and would not go down without an almighty fight.

The most obvious and significant obstacle was the British and American public, who had little sympathy for multinational companies who were already the villains in a rising tide of environmentalism.

This Author

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