A sweltering summer descended upon Southern Florida in 2018, bringing with it a toxic green plague – yet again. 

Expansive algae blooms have become a bi-annual occurrence in recent times marring both of Florida’s once pristine coasts, but there has never been a lost summer like 2018. It is now October and “red tide” still lingers on Florida’s West Coast, while simultaneously closing beaches on the East Coast. 

Florida’s ecosystems have been largely destroyed over the last hundred years due to haphazard development of the state, which disregarded (and continues to disregard) potential repercussions.

River of grass

In the twenty-first century, Floridians are left to attempt to reconnect and reanimate what was once congruous and alive through paradoxically managerial means similar to those employed by our forebearers. If we fail in this restorative endeavour, a slow but certain death awaits.

Florida’s natural topography was seen by industrial-age settlers as something that needed “improvement” by “reclaiming land from the mucky jaws of Florida’s natural landscape. 

At the turn of the 20th Century, Florida — from Lake Okeechobee south — was largely one contiguous plain of sawgrass, forest, rivers and marshy wetlands. When Henry Morrison Flagler’s railroad and droves of settlers arrived, it was determined by Flagler, Julia Tuttle, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward and other pioneering developers, that the land had to be made suitable to sustain modern industrial civilization. 

Unfortunately, this process entailed the diversion of the natural flow of water via dikes, dams and canals. In the center of the state from Lake Okeechobee south, the building of canals to drain water allowed agricultural fields to be created at the expense of the once great and continuous “river of grass.”

With obstinance, humans have demonstrated the folly of trying to “manage” an intricate ecosystem which we still do not fully understand. 

As a result, the drainage system created by the Army Corps of Engineers in the early 20th century, continues to wreak havoc on Florida in the present. 

Industrial interventions

This management system entailed and has led to the straightening of the Kissimmee River to make lands suitable for raising cattle, and has eliminated the natural filtration systems that the river once had; 

The building of the Herbert Hoover Dike after the Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928has cut off the natural flow of water from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades. The diking, damming and diversion of Florida’s natural watersheds by way of artificial canals designed to provide water to cities has further inhibited the natural flow of water from north to south, preventing it from replenishing the Everglades. 

Added to this, the construction of the Okeechobee Waterway was intended to artificially control lake water levels during the rainy season, but it pummels brackish coastal estuaries with billions of gallons of polluted freshwater during discharge events.

The alteration of Florida’s historical hydrology has also led to a number of indirect consequences. The lack of clean fresh water flowing into the Everglades has resulted in a lack of fresh water flow to Florida Bay, inciting hypersaline conditions which cause sea grass die offs in the bay.

The Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers were once expansive fresh water rivers, but are now polluted brackish waterways due to Lake Okeechobee discharges. 

Unforeseen consequences 

The nutrient-loaded waters of these two rivers fuel virulent algae blooms, which then destroy oyster beds, sea grass plains and coral reefs on the East coast, while fueling red tides on the West coast.

The water from Lake Okeechobee is not only freshwater entering a salt water environment, but it is also laced with toxic levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, blue-green algae and bacteria from agricultural and industrial operations. 

Over the years numerous actions have been taken to restore Florida’s natural river of grass to its former glory, the first of which was the establishment of Everglades National Park in 1947, to preserve the southern quarter of the original Everglades ecosystem. 

Subsequent legislation, including the Clean Water Act, has attempted to alleviate environmental issues facing the Everglades ecosystem by implementing certain water quality standards designed to reduce environmental degradation, though agricultural polluters have been able to circumvent the Clean Water Act requirements. 

State legislation of the 80s and 90s helped to pave the way for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Program(CERP), passed by the United States Congress in 2000. CERP, the largest environmental restoration project in the history of the United States, is estimated to cost $10.5 billion and take upwards of thirty-five years to complete. 

Potential solutions 

The essence of CERP is to restore as much of the historical hydrology as is possible in urbanized South Florida, remedying the dammed system of canals and pumps that exists today. 

To this end, CERP includes plans to build canals to redirect water from central and eastern Florida directly into Everglades National Park and Florida Bay. 

While CERP has made some progress, it has had trouble gaining traction due to its cost, scale and intervention by special interest groups, leading to additional legislation.

Faced with an algal pestilence nearly every year, Florida voters approved a Land Acquisition Fund in 2014 designed to allow the state of Florida to purchase land south of the lake in order to store, treat and release water south into the Everglades, rather than to the East and West coasts respectively. 

At the earliest, the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) reservoir — required to treat and store water before sending it south into the Everglades —will not be completed until 2021. While the seasonal discharges from Lake Okeechobee continue to ravish Florida’s coasts, no end is in sight as of yet.

Big sugar

While farming is a noble and timeless tradition, it is best not to confuse the yeoman farmer and provider of nourishment with large-scale industrial operations like U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals. 

Lest we forget that these sugar companies pollute with blatant disregard for the natural world and receive huge subsidies and benefit greatly from tariffs placed on imported sugar. Let us also remember that these companies do not produce something of sustenance that is necessary for life, but rather a substance that takes away from life and has been linked to every American ailment, including obesity, diabetes, stroke, heart disease and more. 

But we must refrain from solely placing the blame for our predicament on these two sugar companies — though they do bear a brunt of it. Similar environmental atrocities are occurring in the St. Lucie Waterway region, where theunabated and largely unregulated use of sewage sludge as fertilizer near the banks of the canal continues to fertilise a river stricken by regular algae blooms.

In the St. Lucie Waterway region — spanning the gamut from Port Mayaca in the West, to Stuart in the east — the unabated and largely unregulated use of sewage sludge as fertilizer near the banks of the canal, continues to fertilize the very river stricken by what are almost annual algae blooms. 

It is our job as citizens to use careful discernment to separate wheat from chaff and myth from reality. 

Lessons learned 

While CERP must be expedited to send water south to quench the parched Everglades and begin the restoration of Florida’s coastal estuaries, we should similarly be leery of governmental overreach, lest we may lose access to the lands some of us are fighting so dearly to protect.

Florida will never again be a prolific virgin wilderness, though it seems reasonable to assert it may be restored to reflect its former greatness and biotic productivity. 

Humankind should not seek to dominate, control, or “manage” nature, for as a whole we do not possess the knowledge or virtue necessary to successfully do so. Rather, humankind and nature should coexist as one: the former ceasing to abate the latter. 

Nonetheless, we in the twenty-first century face a conundrum where we must allay the cavalier actions of our ancestors, who sought to drain the Great Swamp all those years ago.

Moving forward 

As we move forward, let us always remember that it is easier to do something than to fix the unintended repercussions afterwards. If our ancestors would have applied the aforementioned maxim, we would not be in the predicament we are in today. 

We have disrupted Florida’s natural rhythms and processes to such an extent that nature no longer regulates itself and it is no longer possible for us to sit back and let nature take its course. 

In the future, we must foresee the ramifications of our actions and consequently begin acting in a manner that demonstrates our reverence for the natural world, which is so uniquely beautiful.

This Author 

Drew Maglio is a writer and graduate student, currently studying at St. John’s College. Hailing from Palm Beach County, FL, Drew has a B.A. in history from Palm Beach Atlantic University, where he was a member of the Supper Honors Great Books Program.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States announced a proposed new rule, called a Significant New Use Rule (SNUR), regarding asbestos in June.

The EPA claimed that the rule would increase restrictions, while critics – including some current and former EPA employees – worried it could open up loopholes. Others say it doesn’t go far enough. The reality of what effect the law will have remains a little uncertain.

Asbestos is a type of naturally occurring mineral that was used widely in the United States and Europe until the 1970s, especially in the construction and automotive sectors.

Earlier rules

The material is resistant to fire and chemical corrosion and does not conduct electricity. It has been used in the production of cement, plastics, insulation, roofing shingles, floor tiles, paints and elsewhere.

Since the 1970s, however, the use of asbestos has declined significantly due to concerns about its health impacts. It is classified as a known human carcinogen and has been shown to cause mesothelioma and other forms of cancer.

The use of asbestos is banned in more than 60 countries, and the substance kills nearly 40,000 Americans a year, according to the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization. It seems strange then that the EPA is proposing a rule that, if its critics are right, could bring more asbestos into the US. Here’s the explanation.

There’s room for such a rule because although the use of asbestos is restricted in the United States, it is not entirely banned.

Between 1970 and 1989, the US banned several specific uses of asbestos. In 1989, the EPA attempted to ban all new applications, meaning those developed before 1989 were exempt from the ban, except for those singled out and prohibited by earlier rules.

Boost asbestos

However, the US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned most of this ban in 1991. As a result, the only applications of asbestos the 1989 rules bans are new uses and five that the court did not overturn, which were already obsolete.

The new SNUR would require that certain non-banned uses of asbestos are subject to review by the EPA. Under the rule, companies wanting to use asbestos for these applications would have to notify the EPA, and the agency could decide to allow, regulate or prohibit the usage.

Specifically, the rule applies to what the EPA calls “currently unregulated former uses”. These applications include those that had not been banned and were active at the time of the 1991 court ruling but are no longer in use.

Health concerns are the primary reasons these uses are no longer active. In the rule, the EPA lists 15 of these market uses. The EPA has noted that, without the new rule, companies could start using asbestos for these applications without notifying the EPA.

So, if the rule involves EPA reviews of asbestos uses, why do some believe it could boost asbestos use? The problems that critics point to include the language with which the agency wrote the SNUR and the way it plans to evaluate these applications. Some also believe that the proposal does not go far enough.

Stringent

According to internal EPA emails, some agency staff are worried that the language of the SNUR would allow some uses of asbestos to avoid review. Because the rule only lists 15 applications, currently unregulated uses that the EPA did not list could potentially avoid regulation.

Another concern is related to how the agency has indicated it will review the risks associated with asbestos. According to recently released EPA documents about how the agency plans to review potentially toxic chemicals, it will not consider the impacts of potential exposure due to a chemical’s presence in the air, ground or water. It will instead look at risks associated with direct contact.

Critics say that this severely limits the scope of the review and would exclude the impacts of things like improper disposal.

The documents also narrow the definition of asbestos, meaning the EPA will not assess some asbestos-like fibers. It also will not review existing uses of asbestos or the disposal of asbestos and products containing it.

This limited scope suggests that any potential reviews of unregulated uses of asbestos likely won’t be very stringent, according to critics.

Potentially harmful

The recent EPA actions, critics point out, represent a drastic change from the original intent of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a law directing the EPA to review potentially harmful chemicals including asbestos.

When Congress strengthened the TSCA in 2016, some lawmakers saw it as a chance to try again to ban asbestos broadly. The recent EPA actions do not seem to support this notion.

The impact of these actions, especially regarding asbestos, is somewhat uncertain. There’s reason to believe, though, they will change little for the average American.

The SNUR deals mostly with market uses of asbestos that are already obsolete, primarily due to their associated health concerns. These applications have been unregulated for decades, but businesses have still opted not to use them.

Using them is not only a health risk, it would also be a tremendous financial risk for the companies due to potential lawsuits. An estimated 100 companies have been forced into bankruptcy proceedings due to asbestos liabilities.

What’s really at stake is the larger role that the EPA will play in regulating chemicals, as the way that the agency handles asbestos may be an indication of how it will treat other potentially harmful substances.

This Author

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

Julian Morris, as president and founder of the International Policy Network (IPN), was leading the British charge against climate science and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2003.

The London-based free market think tank published Adapt or Die: The Science, Politics and Economics of Climate Change just in time for the climate negotiations at the Conference of the Parties (COP) summit held in Milan in December. The contributor list to Adapt or Die was a veritable directory of climate sceptics from both the UK and the US.

The foreword by University of London professor Philip Stott opens with: “This book is both important and timely because it confronts one of the most tenacious myths of the new millennium, namely the dangerously mistaken belief that the correct approach to climate change is to try and ‘manage’ climate itself.”

Beautiful, engaged

Morris contributed a chapter under the title Warming Aid, Chilling Trade, in which he made the rather hilarious claim that “The international establishment, including environmentalists… have bullied two of the world’s three largest oil producers into accepting the basic proposition that global control of energy resources is really necessary.”

The book was edited by Morris’s wife, Kendra Okonski, who was also working at the IPN.

The two met when Okonski was working as a research assistant for climate denier Fred Smith at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) – funded by Philip Morris, Dow Chemicals and ExxonMobil – after graduating from a free market college.

Okonski had gained a reputation, even among the free market zealots, as being “fiery” and determined.

Morris had been speaking at a conference called the Precautionary Principle held by American non-profit organisation Consumer Alert three years earlier, when Okonski was swept off her feet by his chiselled good looks and devotion to the free markets.

Smith recalls: “He was delivering a speech; he looked down at Kendra, with her big eyes, and thought: ‘scary’. It was a public policy marriage.”

Morris said: “Kendra is a beautiful, engaged and inspiring woman; she is the love of my life. We share a deep desire to improve the lot of humanity through the empowering institutions of a free society: property rights, markets and the rule of law. So far as I am aware, we came to those ideas independently, but I cannot speak for Kendra.”

Exxon Funding

At the time of Adapt or Die’s publication, the IPN was being heavily funded by ExxonMobil.

In 2003, the oil company donated $50,000 to Morris, his wife and their small team in Covent Garden. This would have nearly covered the entire £51,732 spent on their “climate change and sustainable development programme”.

The following year, this was increased to $115,000 in recognition of their excellent work in attacking climate science.

Martin Agerup, a contributor to Adapt or Die, was invited to London by Morris and Okonski to give a workshop on how to run a think tank. He saw no indication of generous funders behind the scenes.

“I even stayed at their private flat once, when they invited me over, and they were very cost-conscious. I think they were running on a very tight budget. I remember that they were very concerned… When I was invited over I had to fly Ryanair or something like that. A really, really cheap ticket.”

He added: “Climate was their pet issue, something they found really interesting but had difficulties finding funding for that, I think.”

Sceptic Think Tanks

Overall, ExxonMobil gave a total of £3.5 million to climate sceptic think tanks in the US during 2003.

The American Enterprise Institute was given $225,000, the Cato Institute $25,000 and the Marshall Institute $25,000. The oil giant donated a further $50,000 to the Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs the following year for “climate change issues”.

This was entirely unrelated to the fact that the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London had just published Climate Alarmism Reconsidered by Dr Robert Bradley.

In the book’s foreword, Philip Booth, the IEA’s Editorial and Programme Director, wrote: “scary climate scenarios are not supported by the balance of evidence. What is known with far more confidence is that a moderately warmer and wetter world has significant benefits to offset costs for many decades to come.”

The publication was written with the help of the Morris, CEI and Exxon-funded scientists Richard Lindzen and Pat Michaels.

Morris remained busy going into 2004. He gave a presentation at free marketeer Friedrich von Hayek’s old stomping ground, the Mont Pelerin Society – one of many neoliberal think tanks that Hayek set up – and told the assembled economists that it would be the free market rather than regulations that would solve the problem of climate change, if there were indeed a problem.

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.

Standing on the southern edge of our 3,500-acre rewilding project on a June day, on the brow of one of Knepp Estate’s few elevations, one would be forgiven for imagining oneself gazing on African savannah.

This does not look like West Sussex – or anywhere else in England, come to that. The rough grassland, a riot of anthills, is punctuated by fists of thorny scrub. Hedgerows have billowed out into swathes of unruly brush. Weaving between them, a filigree of dusty trails signals the wanderings of large herds of ungulates.

The air is thick with birdsong, many of them African in origin – swallows, house martins, swifts, lesser whitethroats, chiffchaffs, willow warblers, reed warblers, garden warblers, Cetti’s warblers. You can hear cuckoos, often several at once and, at night, competitive clusters of  nightingales send thrilling, unsettling arias into the darkness, interrupted by the occasional nightjar. This is perhaps the only place in the UK where numbers of turtle doves are rising.

Rare species

There is a wildness here, an untrammelled exuberance, pulsing with life, that is so unfamiliar, so essentially un-British, that visitors naturally seek comparisons with foreign parts – the scrublands of the Serengeti, or the Deccan in India, perhaps.

They expect you to turn a corner and see a herd of buffalo or a leopard up a tree. It feels as though anything could happen here, and sometimes it does.

The number of visitations from extremely rare species is rising – last year, a Montagu’s harrier and a black stork flew over, checking us out, a black tern settled on the lake, peregrine falcons nested in a Scots pine for the second time and, in the summer, a red-backed shrike struck up his territory on a hawthorn, impalingemperor dragonflies. 

In February this year, a pair of great white egrets paced the winter water-meadows and, in March, a black redstart appeared in the park. It is almost impossible to remember the time, only fifteen years or so ago, when this landscape was fields of maize, barley, wheat, as far as the eye could see, a  desert in terms of biodiversity.

Agri-chemical assault

We took the decision to come out of in-hand farming in 2000. For decades the farm – mixed arable and dairy – had run at a loss but in the 1990s  those losses became unsustainable. Categorised as grade 4, or grade 3 at best, our land has never lent itself to modern intensive production.

We are hampered by poor drainage, small, hedged fields and our heavy soil – 300 metres of Low Weald clay over a bedrock of limestone. It is like concrete in summer, and, in winter, unfathomable porridge, preventing any access to the land by heavy machinery after the first rains of autumn.

The idea to rewild came off the back of the restoration of the nineteenth-century Repton park around the house. Ploughed up in World War Two as part of Britain’s ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, the land had been in constant production ever since.

In 2001, however, we received funding from the Country Stewardship Scheme to restore the park, providing breathing space for, among other things, veteran oaks suffering from agri-chemical assault.

Returning these 140 hectares to permanent pasture, re-seeding with native Low Weald flowers and grasses, and introducing fallow deer as grazers, was a revelation.

Dynamic processes

The following summer we walked knee-deep through oxeye daisies, bird’s-foot trefoil, ragged robin, knapweed, red clover, ladies’ bedstraw, crested dog’s tail and sweet vernal grass, kicking up clouds of butterflies, our ears thrumming with the sound of bumble bees, hoverflies and grasshoppers – something we hadn’t even known we’d been missing.

The land itself seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. For us, it was the psychological breakthrough that allowed us to look at the Estate with fresh eyes, to dare to break with our farming tradition. It showed us the potential of working with the land, rather than constantly battling against it.

Our park restoration coincided with the publication, in 2000, of the ground-breaking publication Grazing Ecology and Forest History by the visionary Dutch ecologist Frans Vera, and a visit to his naturalistic grazing project, the Oostvaardersplassen in Holland, expanded our horizons exponentially.

We realised we had the potential to do something much wilder and more exciting than a conventional park restoration in other areas of the Estate.

By introducing a suite of other herbivores – Exmoor ponies, Tamworth pigs and old English longhorn cattle – in addition to red deer  and fallow deer, and allowing them free-rein to trample, rootle, wallow, puddle, ring-bark, graze, browse and dung where they liked, we could kick-start dynamic natural processes on our land; we could use them to prevent the succession of species-poor closed canopy woods on our ex-arable fields, creating something much more interesting and diverse instead.

Financial constraints

In effect, they would be acting as proxies of the tarpan, wild boar and aurochs – some of the big-hitting megafauna that once roamed our countryside disturbing the soil and battling with vegetation succession, transferring seeds and nutrients across the landscape, driving habitat complexity.

In 2003, we managed to secure funding from Countryside Stewardship to roll a park restoration across just over half of the land, enabling us to reseed with a mix of native grasses, take up internal fencing and gates, ring-fence boundaries and release free-roaming animals to graze and disturb. 

But there was no such funding forthcoming for the rest of the Estate, known as the Southern Block – an area of 1,100 acres (450 hectares).

At a loss as to what to do, and with contract farming actually costing us money,  we had no alternative but to step back and leave the land to its own devices. We had begun taking the lowest yielding fields out of production in 2001, and continued in increments over the following five years.

Unable to pay for a boundary fence and with, therefore, no immediate prospect of introducing herbivores here, we decided to avoid the cost of re-seeding with a native grass mix. We simply left the fields as they were after the last harvest of maize, wheat, barley or whatever crop they happened to be growing.

Headline successes 

It was an uneasy and discomforting hiatus – it felt like we were literally turning our backs on the land, pressing pause on our naturalistic grazing experiment – but, ironically, it was rocket-fuel for rewilding. 

Our haphazard process of letting the land go, combined with no re-seeding of grass and a delay in introducing the heavy-hitting herbivores generated opportunities for wildlife that were far more exciting than anything we were doing elsewhere.

It wasn’t until 2009 that we received Higher Level Stewardship funding for the whole project, enabling us – at last – to introduce grazing animals into this final area in 2010. By then, thorny scrub had begun to take off here, providing a nursery for jay-planted oak saplings and the spontaneous germination of crab apples and wild service, as well as protective cover for invertebrates, birds and small mammals, and a cornucopia of berries for over-wintering birds.

Eruptions of sallow (hybrid willow) germinating in the damp, open soil, has given rise to the largest colony of purple emperor butterflies in the UK.

By the time free-roaming animals were introduced,plenty of browsing as well as grazing was available to them, providing a richer food supply. The ensuing battle between animal disturbance and vegetation succession has increased habitat complexity even further. This is now by far the wildest area of the rewilding project and source of most of our headline wildlife successes – the part that looks like Africa.

Valuable scrubland

It is also the area that has, understandably, proved most challenging for our neighbours. For many, the natural landscape of Southern England is a patchwork of neatly hedged fields and ditches, small copses and bare, rolling Downland. It is an idyll that has become lodged in our subconscious, invested with nostalgia, an image considered to be balanced and harmonious.

Scrubland does not feature anywhere in this idealised country. Demonised by farmers, landowners and gardeners alike it is considered ‘wasteland’ – messy, worthless, a waste of space, a sign of neglect or mismanagement. 

But it was not always so, as Knepp’s own field names suggest. Benton’s Gorse, Stub Mead, Faggot Stack Plat, Bramble Field, Broom Field, Cooper Reeds, Broomers Corner and numerous Furzefields (‘furze’ is an old Sussex name for gorse) point to a time when scrub was valued for myriad uses – for everything from tool handles  and basketry, animal fodder and, fuel, dyes, medicines and gunpowder, hurdles and charcoal. 

Time was – and not so long ago – when scrub was cherished. But almost all the purposes for which it was once used are now satisfied by plastic and mass-produced alternatives. Chainsaws and mechanised diggers have enabled us to eradicate it wherever it dares to appear.

One of the richest habitats for nature is now deemed ‘unnatural’. Even conservationists, bent on keeping areas designated for nature in stasis for the preservation of targeted species, often find the morphing, unpredictable, impenetrable character of scrubland hard to countenance. Fortunes are spent every year on its eradication, with scrub-bashing a staple activity of conservation volunteers.

Optimistic future

But the accidental reappearance of scrub at Knepp, and the astonishing resurgence of wildlife it has encouraged, in such a short space of time, shows extraordinary potential – and not just for the recovery of rare and declining species. The implications underlying the project are enormous.

Knepp shows how rewilding the land leads to other forms of provision vital for the public good – ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, water storage, air purification, ethical meat production, human health and recreation. It even demonstrates an alternative, low-cost, natural way of re-establishing woodland – without the need for carbon-intensive polypropylene cylinders, tanalized wooden stakes and high maintenance planting by human hand. 

But perhaps most important of all and, inevitably, connected to all the above, it addresses one of the most pressing concerns facing farming today – soil degradation.

Centuries of relentlessly ploughing without regard for soil structure, of applying chemicals to the land and destroying soil biota, have led to catastrophic levels of soil erosion. According to the National Farmers’ Union we have fewer than a hundred harvests left in the country before we have no topsoil left in which to plant crops.

At Knepp, the appearance of fruiting fungi such as Boletus mendax (a mycorrhizal mushroom associated with old oaks), and milkcaps and fly agaric in our sallow scrub, as well as common spotted, southern marsh and early purple orchids (plants that depend on subterranean mycorrhizal fungi) in our former arable fields, is a clear indication that our soils are reviving.

Soil restoration

In 2013 a study by Imperial College London found an exponential rise in the abundance and variety of earthworms compared with neighbouring farmland with the same soils and under the same conventional agriculture as previously at Knepp. In total, we have now found 19 species of earthworm – a diversity that, according to soil scientists, is extraordinarily high.  

So Knepp points the way to a low-cost system of soil restoration – a model that could be rolled out across marginal land likely to fall out of agriculture in the post-Brexit shake-up of farming subsidies, and that may prove vital even for Grade 1 agricultural land.

Scale, of course, is key in order to allow process-led systems to function but already we are seeing ‘farm clusters’ – groups of small farms – clubbing together to achieve landscape-scale restoration together. 

Knepp shows how rewilding could, if we wish, bring about incalculable public benefits. But if we are to embrace it we need to re-educate our sensibilities. Knepp is a signal reminder of our need to embrace messy, exuberant scrubland once again, to allow it space in the landscape – and in our hearts.  

This Author 

Isabella Tree is an award-winning journalist and author of Wilding: the Return of Nature to a British Farm (2018). She will be giving a talk at the Tree Conference in Frome next weekend

Global carbon emissions will rise to a new record level in 2018 – making the chances of reaching a target to keep temperature increases to 1.5 or 2C “weaker and weaker every year, every month” – the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said.

Fatih Birol told a conference in Paris that data for the first nine months of the years was already pointing to a record increase in carbon emissions.

A United Nations report last week said society would have to make deep changes to how it consumes energy, travels and builds, to meet a lower global warming target.

Weaker and weaker

Global emissions would need to peak soon after 2020 and decline sharply afterwards in order to keep temperature rise within 1.5C or 2C, said a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Sorry, I have very bad news. My numbers are giving me some despair,” Birol told the conference at the Polish embassy in Paris on Wednesday.

Poland will host United Nations COP24 talks in December, which will lay out a “rule book” to implement a historic accord reached in Paris in 2015. That agreement set goals to phase out fossil fuel use this century, shift towards cleaner energies and help limit a rise in temperatures.

“Looking at data for the first nine months of this year, emissions this year will increase once again … global emissions will reach a record historical high,” Birol said.

“Therefore the chances of reaching such ambitious targets in my view, are becoming weaker and weaker every year, every month,” he said.

Aspirational limit

While renewables have been growing strongly, their growth isn’t large enough to reverse CO2 emissions trends, Birol said.

“We need more renewables in all end-uses – including more bioenergy – more energy efficiency and a range of other technologies and fuel sources to correct this course,” he said on Twitter.

Referring to the IPCC report released earlier this month, Birol underscored the “critical role of bioenergy to limit global temperature rises.”

The share of bioenergy in total renewables consumption globally is about 50% today – as much as hydro, wind, solar and all other renewables combined, the IEA said in a report published earlier this month.

In transport, the IPCC’s integrated assessment indicates that biofuels will need to rise 260% by 2030 and 750% by 2050 in order to keep global warming within the 1.5C aspirational limit of the Paris Agreement.

Bioenergy is “the overlooked giant of the renewable energy field,” Birol said.

This Article 

This article was originally published on Euractiv and also appeared on Climate Home.

Have you ever wondered how many toxins you’re exposed to every day in your city? A new guide reveals the hidden dangers that lurk in our cities – uncovering some shocking statistics.

Is Your House Killing You?, an interactive guide from Good Move, looks at the number of landfill sites, active power stations, CO2 emissions, air pollution rates and annual average daily flow of traffic, to reveal the most toxic cities across the UK.

Shockingly, Leeds is the most toxic city to live in. Statistics from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy reveal that Leeds has one of the highest rates of carbon emissions, producing an astonishing 4,000kt per year.

Carbon emissions

Cardiff is the most congested city, with the Department for Transport revealing an annual average daily traffic flow of 34,017 vehicles across major roads. However, statistics from SUEZ show that Cardiff also boasts the highest percentage of waste recycled, with an impressive 58.1 percent.

Newcastle is the least toxic city, with no active power stations, no sewage treatment plants and only one electrical substation and landfill site. The city also boasts a low rate of carbon emissions, producing only 1,335kt per year.

Birmingham recycles only 24.4 percent of waste, while Nottingham boasts the lowest carbon emissions with only 1,222 kt – almost nine times less than Central London.

The full top 10 cities in order of most toxic to least toxic can be viewed below:

1. Leeds

2. Glasgow

3. Birmingham

4. London & Manchester

6. Bristol

7. Cardiff

8. Nottingham & Liverpool

10. Newcastle

The comprehensive guide also looks at the chemicals that are concealed in common household furniture and products, revealing the most dangerous toxins hidden in your home.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from Blueclaw. You can view the guide here. 

Aid projects designed to help some of the poorest people in the world and mitigate climate change have been harmed by the dramatic fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit referendum.

Programmes aimed at alleviating poverty in the Congo Basin region and supporting refugees in Uganda have both had to be scaled back, according to UK government documents.

UK support for programmes mitigating climate change have also been hit. The World Bank’s Forest Investment Program, a fund to encourage reforestation, faced an “unrealised currency loss of $37.26million” last year due to the fluctuation of the pound.

Policy institutes

NGOs say they have had to balance their currency losses with income from other sources.

Claire Godfrey from Bond, the network that represents UK international development NGOs, told Unearthed that the current uncertainty “hits the most vulnerable and poorest people the hardest”.

She said: “Delivering aid and development programmes needs a level of predictability and currency volatility affects predictability, long-term planning and therefore sustainability…

“Donors and NGOs are going to have to do some contingency planning to ensure that the currency fluctuations we are seeing post-Brexit do not have such a harmful impact on programming.”

Pete Clutton-Brock, policy advisor with the environmental organisation E3G, said the uncertainty around Brexit posed a risk for UK development funding and climate finance. He urged the Department for International Development (Dfid) to “consider options for hedging against such volatility as a matter of urgency.”

The news comes as MPs on the International Development Committee heard evidence from policy institutes, including E3G, on ways UK aid money can be used to mitigate climate change.

Dramatic fall

For years, the relative strength of the pound meant organisations working with the Department for International Development budgeted in sterling. But fears about the impact of Brexit on the British economy have seen the value of the pound fall dramatically since the June 2016 referendum, leaving some aid projects under-funded.

Annual reviews of aid projects published by Dfid show that several programmes have been affected by the fluctuation of the pound since the referendum.

I fear Dfid will lose the ability to leverage the most out of the aid budget and contribute to UK soft power

A project aimed at reducing deforestation and “improving the livelihoods of forest dependent communities” in the Congo Basin region has had to “scale back on activities to align with the new value of sterling”.

Shortfalls or surplus

The latest review of a £45m programme providing “emergency life-saving assistance to the large influxes of refugees arriving in Uganda” warned that a “weaker pound would mean fewer beneficiaries will be reached and therefore less impact”.

An effort to “improve water security and climate resilience for poor people” around the world has also been caught out by the fall in the value of sterling, with the project’s annual review stating that partners on the programme may have to “reduce operational budgets” due to currency uncertainty.

Unearthed approached several major aid organisations receiving Dfid funding to ask if their projects had been affected by the fluctuation of the pound. These included the German organisation GIZ, which works on the Water Security Programme, and Rainforest Foundation UK, which works on the Congo Basin project.

All said they had found ways of insulating themselves from such uncertainty, by diversifying their donors and getting funding in a mix of currencies. But such options aren’t open to smaller NGOs, which carry out work on the ground.

Joseph English, a communications officer with Unicef, which receives Dfid funding, told Unearthed: “Any fluctuation in currency markets can cause revaluations of funds held by Unicef country offices or funds in support of Unicef programmes, and can lead to resource shortfalls or surplus.

“Unicef works to monitor currency fluctuations and assess their possible impact on local programme costs, and broaden funding pools and consider changes to programmes to mitigate any possible disruption due to revaluations and fluctuations.”

0.7% commitment

David Hulme, executive director of the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester, told Unearthed he feared Brexit could reduce the ‘soft power’ derived from the UK’s aid programme.

“In the short term, any fall in the value of the pound will affect many aid programmes, but the longer term consequences of our declining global influence could be even more profound.

“With Brexit likely to further erode both the value of the pound and reduce the UK’s credentials for international cooperation, I fear that Dfid will lose the ability to leverage the most out of the aid budget and to contribute to UK soft power.  This could have very real consequences for millions of people still living in poverty.”

In March 2015, David Cameron’s government passed a bill to enshrine in law the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid.

At the time of publication, Dfid were yet to provide a comment.  

The World Bank did not respond to a request for comment.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

Hundreds of thousands of marine creatures are killed every year after becoming accidentally tangled in fishing lines and nets.

Unlike fish, marine mammals need to surface to breathe, so if they get entangled they drown. ‘Bycatch’, as it is known, is one of the most disturbing issues associated with commercial fishing and one of the biggest threats to a number of iconic species. 

Modern fishing gear, which is extremely strong and often can’t be seen, is very efficient at catching pretty much anything in its path. As the WWF puts it, ‘where there is fishing, there is bycatch’.

Slow progress

At least 300,000 dolphins, porpoises, and whales, 300,000 seabirds and 250,000 turtles fall victim to bycatch every year. It is the single largest immediate threat to cetaceans and some marine species are now in such a precarious position they could face extinction unless things change quickly. However, bycatch is largely avoidable.

There are at least 130 bycatch reduction agreements, regulations and legislations worldwide. But progress has been far too slow, and many fishermen are less than enthusiastic about embracing them.

A major hurdle to reducing bycatch to date has been the quality of available technology. Devices such as the acoustic ‘pinger’ – which can reduce the number of dolphins, whales and porpoises caught in nets by up to 95 percent – have existed for decades, but until recently the majority were expensive and impractical.

After 25 years working in the fishing industry and feeling appalled by the state of our oceans, I set out to find a solution. 

In 2016, I set up Fishtek Marine with my brother, Ben – an environmental engineer. Our mission is to pioneer new marine conservation technology and rapidly improve conservation efforts as a result. We knew we needed to develop products that would work for fishermen and the environment in order to stand any chance of making a difference. 

Expanding reach 

After rapid growth over the last two years, the multi-award winning Fishtek Marine is now crowdfunding, via Triodos Bank, to raise £900,000 of new investment.

Our aim is to expand the reach of the products we have already developed and to invest in developing new ones that could have even more of a positive conservation impact (e.g. SharkGuard, OrcaGuard, Turtle NetLights and Ropeless fishing).

Initially we developed the Banana Pinger, designed to be both effective and affordable. It is robust (able to withstand the harsh conditions of offshore fishing), and easy to attach to the net.

The devices can be fitted to gillnets – a wall or curtain of netting that hangs in the water  and can be four or five meters high and run for tens of kilometres. When porpoises or dolphins are foraging on the seabed they can’t see these nets and so they swim into them, get tangled up and die.

Dolphins and porpoises use echolocation to communicate and detect prey so pingers work by sending out a “randomised frequency sound sweep” every five seconds, which alerts them to the net’s presence, enabling them to avoid it.

Rapid expansion  

By providing a good quality, effective device, our aim is to make it attractive for fishermen to use pingers and to encourage legislators to pick up the pace on strengthening enforcement and implement new laws.

In January 2022, a new law under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) will require any country exporting fish to the US to have marine mammal protections equivalent to those in the US — including measures against bycatch. The law could influence fishing standards in exporting countries including Canada, Chile, China, Japan, and Mexico, with the potential to significantly shake up the industry. 

In many fisheries, we believe our technology offers the most effective way for fishers to comply with the new law, taking us from a relatively niche market to a potentially massive global market in couple of years, with the added advantage of huge conservation gain.

By raising £900,000 of equity through Triodos Bank’s crowdfunding platform, our ambition is to grow the business to £10 million turnover within five years, while making a significant difference to marine conservation. 

The money will be invested in the sales and marketing of existing products, as well as funding the development, testing and marketing of four new products that will be launched over the next three years.

Shark bycatch

While pingers help protect animals that use echolocation, a different solution is needed to deter sharks. 

A quarter of chondrichthyans (shark, ray and chimaeras species) are threatened, according to the Red List criteria of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Bycatch is a major cause of this threat, with many shark populations declining dramatically as a result of being caught on hooks in the high value tuna and bill fish longline fishery. 

Our team used the striking difference between sharks and tuna and bill fish: their acute sensitivity to electrical fields. We set about designing and trialling the SharkGuard, a device that creates an electric field which temporarily deters the sharks from the baited hooks. It is powered by a single AA battery and can be mass produced. The SharkGuard when fully commercialised could potentially save hundreds of thousands of sharks every year.

We’re working to make commercial fishing more sustainable, but if we’re going to make a real conservation gain we have to have more than just a few hundred devices out there.

By definition anything that is successful in terms of global marine conservation has to be effective, practical, have significant commercial uptake, and be produced and distributed in large quantities. Fishtek Marine is stepping up to the mark!

This Author 

Pete Kibel did a first degree at Oxford University and a Masters in Fisheries at Plymouth. He has worked for over 20 years in fisheries in the UK, Australia, Southern Africa and India. Pete is co-founder and MD of Fishtek Marine.

American agrochemical giant Monsanto paid a public-affairs consultancy up to €200,000 to set up a ‘grassroots farmers’ operation across Europe to oppose a prospective EU ban on glyphosate, Unearthed has learned. Glyphosate is a key ingredient in Monsanto’s signature Roundup weedkiller.

Dublin-based political firm Red Flag Consulting led the pro-glyphosate campaign, quietly launching a wide-reaching PR operation and enlisting the support of thousands of farmers from stands at agricultural fairs in “the eight most important EU countries.”

In contemporaneous reviews seen by Unearthed, sales representatives working at the booths said that their job involved distributing “truth-clarification materials” about glyphosate, and gathering contact information and signatures.

Extremely active

In recent promotional literature Red Flag describes how it “won the single-biggest regulatory and public affairs campaign in the European Union,” using “non-traditional allies” in an attempt to change the positions of eight countries in the EU.

“Red Flag leveraged these efforts on identified targets through media and direct engagement to ultimately change votes in a key committee in Brussels to bring about a win for our client,” one brochure says. The firm would not confirm whether these claims referred to the Monsanto work.

The firm’s campaign was run in tandem with a US consultancy, Lincoln Strategy, that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

While Monsanto mostly uses Fleishman Hillard for its PR work in Brussels, Unearthed has established that they accepted an approach from Red Flag to orchestrate the influence drive, which was run at arm’s length from the firm.

Red Flag’s other big spending clients include US biotech company Anitox, which has been described as “extremely active” in its support of glyphosate in the EU, and British American Tobacco, according to the EU transparency register.

Voices heard

“Monsanto must have been desperate to use these methods,” Green Belgium MEP Bart Staes told Unearthed.

“If you know your product is safe, you don’t have to use such methods. It really is a scandal. Sadly, this is fully in line with Monsanto’s behaviour throughout the whole glyphosate [relicensing] campaign.”

A spokesperson for Monsanto confirmed to Unearthed that it –  along with a ”coalition of users and manufacturers of glyphosate and other plant protection products” – supported the Red Flag project.

“Thousands of farmers across Europe have supported this initiative and made their voices heard in support of maintaining access to this vital for modern and sustainable agriculture,” the spokesperson added.

Agriculture et Liberte

Red Flag’s contribution to the campaign involved setting up operations such as Agriculture et Liberte in France, described by industry insiders as “a grassroots farming coalition.”

The firm’s CEO, Karl Brophy, said this was not a lobbying exercise.

Instead he told Unearthed Red Flag provided “factual information about the science on glyphosate” to farmers and other individuals who “elected to be educated” and who then “made their concerns known in their own voices and by their own volition.”

Reference to Agriculture et Liberte’s industry support can be found in a bulletin point at the bottom of their website.

But there is no mention of Red Flag – or its industry funding – on the group’s twitter account, which describes itself as “a group of French farmers who have come together to protect our way of life and livelihoods,” nor in its press coverage.

Spin agents

Unearthed has identified similar entities in six other EU countries that appear to be the localised branding in Red Flag’s ‘freedom to farm’ campaign. 

It includes the names Free to Farm in the UK, Liberta di coltivare in Italy, Raum für Landwirtschaft in Germany, Libertad para consultar in Spain, Wolsnosc Dla Farm in Poland and Vrijheid om te Boeren in the Netherlands.

These outfits – which are often registered to Red Flag’s Dublin address and an email account belonging to a Lincoln Strategy staffer – have appeared or are due to appear at 33 events since the start of 2017.

Brophy told Unearthed he does “not recognise a number of the groups you appear to be referring to,” but declined to elaborate. There had been no attempt to conceal the involvement of Red Flag or Lincoln Strategy, he said.

“Monsanto wants it to appear as though farmers are independently speaking out to support continued use of this chemical, when in reality these ‘farmer’ groups are actually little more than pawns in a public relations campaign drawn up by its hired spin agents,” said Carey Gillam, investigative journalist and author of Whitewash, which details Monsanto’s history and the rise of glyphosate herbicides.

Genuine citizens

“It has used these tactics in countries around the world to try to sway public opinion in support of its products, to downplay risks to human health and the environment, and to pressure and harass scientists and lawmakers who Monsanto perceives as a threat. It is well past time that these secrets are exposed.”

Red Flag ran the campaigns with assistance from Lincoln Strategy, whose northern Europe director Daisy Odabasi was quoted as representing Agriculture et Liberte in one newspaper article.

Unlike Red Flag, Lincoln does not have an EU transparency listing. Lincoln’s staff email accounts were used in Red Flag’s campaign as part of its role “providing logistical and operational support to the project.”

A Lincoln spokesperson said all of the firm’s campaigns – including its work in support of clean coal –  “rely solely on sharing information with genuine citizens and encouraging them to make their voices heard on topics that are important to them.”

Health concerns

The effects of glyphosate on farmers and gardeners who come into contact with it have been contentious ever since the World Health Organisation’s agency on cancer labelled the substance “probably carcinogenic” in 2015.

In August, a US court ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to a groundskeeper who claimed he contracted Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from using Roundup, a landmark decision that could trigger an avalanche of similar verdicts in further cases.

Health concerns were at the heart of the EU’s apparent reticence to reauthorise glyphosate, although reports from regulatory agencies claimed that the chemical was safe.

Ultimately while the pesticides industry did not succeed in renewing glyphosate’s 15-year license in Europe – it was cut down to five years – a complete ban was averted.

In a lengthy statement supplied to UK news outlet The Independent, Brophy said: “Red Flag is an agency with a number of clients in the food and agriculture sectors and a wide network of contacts in the agricultural community.

Ban glyphosate

“We worked to bring a number of our clients and contacts together in order to help those people who would be most affected by a potential glyphosate ban – the  farmers who produce Europe’s food.”

He added: “We are grateful to several clients for supporting the project.  But it was the farmers who stood to lose most if an activist-led campaign to ban glyphosate – flying in the face of science, the position of all relevant EU regulatory agencies and the position of the European Commission – was successful.  And it was the farmers who responded to the threat.

“Last November, a very large majority of European Union countries voted to re-authorise glyphosate.

“We’re proud to have played a small part in providing the information that was used by many committed individuals to stand up for their livelihoods, their communities and for the future of Europe’s food supply.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

American agrochemical giant Monsanto paid a public-affairs consultancy up to €200,000 to set up a ‘grassroots farmers’ operation across Europe to oppose a prospective EU ban on glyphosate, Unearthed has learned. Glyphosate is a key ingredient in Monsanto’s signature Roundup weedkiller.

Dublin-based political firm Red Flag Consulting led the pro-glyphosate campaign, quietly launching a wide-reaching PR operation and enlisting the support of thousands of farmers from stands at agricultural fairs in “the eight most important EU countries.”

In contemporaneous reviews seen by Unearthed, sales representatives working at the booths said that their job involved distributing “truth-clarification materials” about glyphosate, and gathering contact information and signatures.

Extremely active

In recent promotional literature Red Flag describes how it “won the single-biggest regulatory and public affairs campaign in the European Union,” using “non-traditional allies” in an attempt to change the positions of eight countries in the EU.

“Red Flag leveraged these efforts on identified targets through media and direct engagement to ultimately change votes in a key committee in Brussels to bring about a win for our client,” one brochure says. The firm would not confirm whether these claims referred to the Monsanto work.

The firm’s campaign was run in tandem with a US consultancy, Lincoln Strategy, that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

While Monsanto mostly uses Fleishman Hillard for its PR work in Brussels, Unearthed has established that they accepted an approach from Red Flag to orchestrate the influence drive, which was run at arm’s length from the firm.

Red Flag’s other big spending clients include US biotech company Anitox, which has been described as “extremely active” in its support of glyphosate in the EU, and British American Tobacco, according to the EU transparency register.

Voices heard

“Monsanto must have been desperate to use these methods,” Green Belgium MEP Bart Staes told Unearthed.

“If you know your product is safe, you don’t have to use such methods. It really is a scandal. Sadly, this is fully in line with Monsanto’s behaviour throughout the whole glyphosate [relicensing] campaign.”

A spokesperson for Monsanto confirmed to Unearthed that it –  along with a ”coalition of users and manufacturers of glyphosate and other plant protection products” – supported the Red Flag project.

“Thousands of farmers across Europe have supported this initiative and made their voices heard in support of maintaining access to this vital for modern and sustainable agriculture,” the spokesperson added.

Agriculture et Liberte

Red Flag’s contribution to the campaign involved setting up operations such as Agriculture et Liberte in France, described by industry insiders as “a grassroots farming coalition.”

The firm’s CEO, Karl Brophy, said this was not a lobbying exercise.

Instead he told Unearthed Red Flag provided “factual information about the science on glyphosate” to farmers and other individuals who “elected to be educated” and who then “made their concerns known in their own voices and by their own volition.”

Reference to Agriculture et Liberte’s industry support can be found in a bulletin point at the bottom of their website.

But there is no mention of Red Flag – or its industry funding – on the group’s twitter account, which describes itself as “a group of French farmers who have come together to protect our way of life and livelihoods,” nor in its press coverage.

Spin agents

Unearthed has identified similar entities in six other EU countries that appear to be the localised branding in Red Flag’s ‘freedom to farm’ campaign. 

It includes the names Free to Farm in the UK, Liberta di coltivare in Italy, Raum für Landwirtschaft in Germany, Libertad para consultar in Spain, Wolsnosc Dla Farm in Poland and Vrijheid om te Boeren in the Netherlands.

These outfits – which are often registered to Red Flag’s Dublin address and an email account belonging to a Lincoln Strategy staffer – have appeared or are due to appear at 33 events since the start of 2017.

Brophy told Unearthed he does “not recognise a number of the groups you appear to be referring to,” but declined to elaborate. There had been no attempt to conceal the involvement of Red Flag or Lincoln Strategy, he said.

“Monsanto wants it to appear as though farmers are independently speaking out to support continued use of this chemical, when in reality these ‘farmer’ groups are actually little more than pawns in a public relations campaign drawn up by its hired spin agents,” said Carey Gillam, investigative journalist and author of Whitewash, which details Monsanto’s history and the rise of glyphosate herbicides.

Genuine citizens

“It has used these tactics in countries around the world to try to sway public opinion in support of its products, to downplay risks to human health and the environment, and to pressure and harass scientists and lawmakers who Monsanto perceives as a threat. It is well past time that these secrets are exposed.”

Red Flag ran the campaigns with assistance from Lincoln Strategy, whose northern Europe director Daisy Odabasi was quoted as representing Agriculture et Liberte in one newspaper article.

Unlike Red Flag, Lincoln does not have an EU transparency listing. Lincoln’s staff email accounts were used in Red Flag’s campaign as part of its role “providing logistical and operational support to the project.”

A Lincoln spokesperson said all of the firm’s campaigns – including its work in support of clean coal –  “rely solely on sharing information with genuine citizens and encouraging them to make their voices heard on topics that are important to them.”

Health concerns

The effects of glyphosate on farmers and gardeners who come into contact with it have been contentious ever since the World Health Organisation’s agency on cancer labelled the substance “probably carcinogenic” in 2015.

In August, a US court ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to a groundskeeper who claimed he contracted Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from using Roundup, a landmark decision that could trigger an avalanche of similar verdicts in further cases.

Health concerns were at the heart of the EU’s apparent reticence to reauthorise glyphosate, although reports from regulatory agencies claimed that the chemical was safe.

Ultimately while the pesticides industry did not succeed in renewing glyphosate’s 15-year license in Europe – it was cut down to five years – a complete ban was averted.

In a lengthy statement supplied to UK news outlet The Independent, Brophy said: “Red Flag is an agency with a number of clients in the food and agriculture sectors and a wide network of contacts in the agricultural community.

Ban glyphosate

“We worked to bring a number of our clients and contacts together in order to help those people who would be most affected by a potential glyphosate ban – the  farmers who produce Europe’s food.”

He added: “We are grateful to several clients for supporting the project.  But it was the farmers who stood to lose most if an activist-led campaign to ban glyphosate – flying in the face of science, the position of all relevant EU regulatory agencies and the position of the European Commission – was successful.  And it was the farmers who responded to the threat.

“Last November, a very large majority of European Union countries voted to re-authorise glyphosate.

“We’re proud to have played a small part in providing the information that was used by many committed individuals to stand up for their livelihoods, their communities and for the future of Europe’s food supply.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.