If you have detected a distinctly American flavour to the rampant lobbying in Westminster corridors over a Brexit deal, there is a good reason why.

A close look at the transatlantic connections of the London-based groups pushing for the most deregulated form of Brexit reveals strong ties to major US libertarian influencers.

These include fossil fuel magnates the Koch brothers — known for funding climate science denial around the world — and the man who bankrolled Donald Trump’s campaign, Robert Mercer.

Political activities

At the heart of this network lies a little-known power couple, Matthew and Sarah Elliott. Together, the husband and wife team connect senior members of the Leave campaign and groups pushing a libertarian free-market ideology from offices in Westminster’s Tufton Street to major US libertarian lobbyists and funders.

Collectively, the network aims to use Brexit as an opportunity to slash regulations in the UK, paving the way for a wide-ranging US-UK free-trade deal that could have disastrous consequences for the environment.

The current draft withdrawal agreement appears to try and provide some protection for the current level of environmental regulation — at least in principle. But politicians associated with this transatlantic network are lobbying hard for the draft deal to be scrapped, along with those protections.

This DeSmog UK investigation reveals the strength of the ties between Matthew and Sarah Elliott, UK lobbyists and politicians, and US groups with vested interests in fossil fuels keen to profit from deregulation.

It shows how organisations with strong ties to the Koch Brothers and Robert Mercer increased their political activities in the UK immediately before and after the Brexit referendum.

Lobby group

And it uncovers US libertarian spending patterns that show increased resources flowing into Europe prior to and around the time of the Brexit referendum, as pro-Brexit groups with ties to the Elliotts in the UK saw their budgets balloon.  

1. A Transatlatic Power Couple: Who are Matthew and Sarah Elliott?

2. Robert Mercer, Cambridge Analytica and Data Wars

3. The ‘Kochtopus’, US Libertarians, and Brexit

4. The End Game: Environmental Deregulation

Matthew Elliott has been credited for being “the brains behind Brexit” and “one of the most formidable political strategists in Westminster”. Sarah Elliott is a vocal Trump supporter, with a long history of working for US libertarian figureheads such as fossil fuel magnates, the Koch brothers.  

While Matthew Elliott has attracted public attention as the founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the chief executive of the Vote Leave campaign, his wife Sarah Elliott has only just started to make public appearances.

Together, they form a bridge between the UK’s pro-Brexit lobby groups based in and around offices in Tufton Street and major US libertarian influencers.

Low Tax

A long-standing libertarian, Matthew Elliott rose to prominence on the UK political stage through the Vote Leave campaign. Yet his campaign efforts advocating a small state and low regulation go back much further, and were largely influenced by American neo-conservative politics.

He was a member of the Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF), a controversial Tory party affiliate which made the news after one of its alumni, Mark Clarke, was accused of bullying young activist Elliott Johnson, who took his own life. Clarke denied the allegations.

The now-defunct group’s radical views earned it its reputation as a “Tory madrasa” used to teach young Conservatives political “dark arts”.

In 2004, Matthew Elliott founded the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a campaign group pushing for low tax and low regulation. He told DeSmog UK that he has “had no formal involvement with the TaxPayers’ Alliance” since he stepped down as a director in 2015.

Taxpayers’ Alliance was modelled on a similar campaign in the US —  Americans for Tax Reform.  In a 2017 speech to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a US right-wing think tank, Matthew Elliott told the Michigan audience he felt like he was “coming home”.

Political research

He revealed that he had been coming to the US “for over 14 years to learn my campaign techniques and to learn how to set up a new taxpayer group from Grover Norquist and the Americans for Tax Reform”.

Norquist is the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform. While the group does not disclose its donors, Norquist is known to have received money from a network of major Republican supporters including Koch Family Foundations, which are funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

The brothers are co-owners of one of the US’s largest energy companies, Koch Industries, and are known for funding climate science denial. Americans for Tax Reform has also repeatedly opposed a carbon tax and promoted climate science denial, arguing that the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was causing a “global cooling”.

During his time working with Americans for Tax Reform, Matthew Elliott met Sarah Smith, his future wife. Now known as Sarah Elliott, she is an American citizen who spent many years lobbying for hardline Republican values in Washington DC. The couple now lives in London.

Norquist introduced the pair when Sarah Elliott was managing political research at the Americans for Tax Reform between 2005 and 2008.

To the right

A Tea Party supporter from Virginia, Sarah Elliott is the current chairwoman of Republicans Overseas, a political organisation that aims to support and represent the interest of American citizens living in the UK.

She is an ardent defender of the Trump administration, a keen Brexit supporter, and an advocate for a US-UK free-trade deal. She told DeSmog UK that Republicans Overseas “has had nothing to do with Brexit”.

In 2005, Sarah Elliott worked for the Republican National Committee’s major donor programme — building relationships with some of the biggest funders of the Republican party in the US.

She later spent three years managing fundraising affairs for Americans for Prosperity, a US right-wing libertarian campaign group co-founded and funded by David Koch.

Americans for Prosperity has long been seen as the organisation at the heart of the Koch brothers’ political network, and has been widely credited with pushing American politics to the right.

Fascinating

Between July 2014 and July 2018, Sarah Elliott worked in London as the managing director of the American European Business Association (AEBA), which aims to “enhance commerce and transatlantic cooperation”. She told DeSmog UK that AEBA “did not take a position on Brexit, and that she did not work on Brexit as part of her work with AEBA”.

Describing her job to the Conservative Book Club, she said she would “bring together a select group of senior transatlantic executives over lunch to meet with global business leaders in an off-the-record setting eight to 10 times a year” — strengthening her connections on both sides of the Atlantic.

From an early stage, Matthew Elliott has been influenced by Republican lobbying strategies, learning political campaigning techniques from Norquist — one of Washington’s most successful lobbyists.

Speaking to the Guardian in 2010, Matthew Elliott said he was keen to replicate the far-right American Tea Party movement in the UK:

“You could say our time has come … We need to learn from our European colleagues and the Tea Party movement in the US… It will be fascinating to see whether it will transfer to the UK. Will there be the same sort of uprising?”

Right-ring organisation

During that time, Matthew Elliott founded and supported a number of organisations and campaign groups charged with advancing this ideology: Big Brother Watch, which campaigns against state surveillance; Business for Britain, a group of businesses pushing for the UK to leave the EU; and the Conservative Friends of Russia.

He also serves on the advisory board of the New Culture Forum, a right-wing think tank which aims to challenge contemporary cultural debates in the UK and was founded by Ukip Assembly Member Peter Whittle.

The New Culture Forum argues that the right has won the economic argument but that the liberal left still dominates the cultural space, with its website saying the group was created to “challenge the dogma and relativism of the establishment and redefine the parameters of the cultural and political debate”.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, Big Brother Watch, Business for Britain and the New Cultural Forum operate out of offices close to Westminster on Tufton Street. Desmog UK has repeatedly reported the networks of climate science deniers and opaquely-funded libertarian think tanks working in and around 55 Tufton Street.

Those Westminster offices have been a hub for right-ring organisations such at the Institute of Economics Affairs (IEA), the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, all of which work to shift mainstream Conservative ideology further to the right.

Environmental protection

Through Matthew Elliott and a host of other right-wing lobbyists, Tufton Street has more recently become a cradle for hard-Brexit political campaign groups such as Leave Means Leave, the Economists for Free Trade, and IFT (previously the Institute for Free Trade).

It is also the home of the climate science denying Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), set up by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.

Last week, the Taxpayers’ Alliance conceded that it had coordinated with eight other Tufton Street organisations, including the GWPF, to push a free-market ideology and for a hard Brexit in the media.

This was part of an employment tribunal case involving BeLeave whistleblower Shahmir Sanni. The Taxpayers’ Alliance said the concession had been made “on pragmatic grounds” but that it did not “denote any agreement or acceptance of any facts or allegations” made by Sanni.

These groups have called on the government to cut red tape for businesses, including environmental protection, to ensure a US-UK free-trade deal post-Brexit, with Matthew Elliott and Sarah Elliott playing a leading role.

Matthew and Sarah Elliott told DeSmog UK that they disagreed with the characterisation of them as central figures in this network.

Brexit Bridges

Over the past couple of years, the couple has acted as a bridge between the hard-Brexiters in the UK and the transatlantic network of US private interests eyeing lucrative deals resulting from a US-UK free-trade deal.

As chair of Republicans Overseas, Sarah Elliott has strong ties to senior politicians and officials in both countries.

In July this year, she invited invited International Trade Secretary Liam Fox to Republicans Overseas’ 4th of July party in London — praising Fox’s efforts to push for a US-UK free-trade deal.

In February 2017, Sarah Elliott also met with a Number 10 government relations team to see how Republicans Overseas could work to strengthen political and cultural ties between the UK and the US.

While Sarah Elliott was promoting the “special relationship” that she claims to be “living out every day” through her marriage, Matthew Elliott was working to make Brexit a reality — creating the circumstances in which a highly deregulated US-UK free-trade deal could be struck.

Refusing to collaborate

As a then-senior fellow at the Legatum Institute, Matthew Elliott worked with Shanker Singham — a dual British-American national, and an influential Westminster lobbyist — setting out what a trade deal with the US would look like well before the EU referendum in June 2016.

Singham joined the IEA earlier this year and helped turn the think tank into Tufton Street’s most prominent voice on Brexit. He was at the heart of allegations earlier this year that the IEA was offering access to pro-Brexit UK ministers in exchange for funding from the US.

The IEA has previously denied the allegations, and did not respond to a request to comment for this article.

Matthew Elliott went on to head the Vote Leave campaign and become editor-at-large of Brexit Central.

In July, the Vote Leave campaign was fined £61,000 and reported to the police by the Electoral Commission, which accused it of refusing to collaborate in its investigation into allegations the campaign breached electoral spending rules.  

Prove the contrary

Last month, openDemocracy reported that the Met Police still hadn’t launched any criminal investigation into Vote Leave and its youth arm BeLeave, citing “political sensitivities”.

The string of investigations into both Vote Leave and Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU’s activities during the EU referendum campaign led to a host of allegations over the way in which American billionaire and Trump benefactor Robert Mercer attempted to influence Brexit through the now-defunct data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

Extensive investigative work by journalist Carole Cadwalladr alleged that Cambridge Analytica worked for the Leave.EUcampaign by scraping masses of data from Facebook profiles to target voters with political advertising.

Cadwalladr wrote that the role Mercer and Cambridge Analytica played in British politics “reveals the elephant in the room: Britain tying its future to an America that is being remade — in a radical and alarming way — by Trump”.

Cambridge Analytica has repeatedly denied doing paid or unpaid work for Leave.EU. Instead, both parties told the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that only preliminary discussions took place. The ICO found no evidence to prove the contrary.

The Mercer family did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Legal entity

The Vote Leave campaign — of which Matthew Elliott was CEO — used the services of another small Canadian-based data analysis company known as Aggregate IQ (AIQ).

Following the referendum vote, AIQ’s website held a quote from Vote Leave campaign director Dominic Cummings, stating: “We couldn’t have done it without them”.

AIQ accounted for 40 percent of Vote Leave’s account budget, according to The Observer.

According to Cadwalladr, there is evidence of a strong working relationship between AIQ and Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Elections (SCLE), connecting both Vote Leave and Leave.EU’s data firm to Mercer.

A document obtained by the Observer shows that there was an “exclusive” agreement for all of AIQ’s intellectual property to be used by SCLE.

Misleading picture

In a report published earlier this month, the ICO found that “while there was clearly a close working relationship between the two entities” it said there was “no evidence that AIQ has been anything other than a separate legal entity”.

It concluded that it found “no evidence of unlawful activities in relation to the personal data of UK citizens and AIQ’s work with SCLE”.

“To date, we have no evidence that SCLE and CA were involved in any data analytics work with the EU referendum campaigns”, it added.

The Observer’s coverage of the involvement of Cambridge Analytica and SCLE in the EU referendum is subject to a legal complaint on behalf of both companies.

In a statement to The Observer, the companies’ lawyers said the stories contained significant inaccuracies and that the coverage was a “sustained campaign of vilification designed to paint a false and misleading picture of their clients”.

Both Vote Leave, led by Matthew Elliott, and Leave.EU focused much of their resources on online campaigning. This was a very deliberate strategy, according to Matthew Elliott.

Speaking to the Mackinac Center a year after the referendum, Matthew Elliott admitted that Vote Leave had been more successful online than on traditional media platforms. “Broadcast was terrible for us, print was better and online is where we pushed things out”, he said.

Matthew Elliott has shown a strong interest in using data in political campaigns both before and after the referendum.

In 2012, he was one of the founders of WESS Digital, a company that used data as a political campaign tool.  

Together with Guido Fawkes’ editor Paul Staines, former Labour digital strategist Jag Singh and digital specialist Andrew Whitehurst, they worked on a political campaigning tool which would use the Metis database to create social media profiles and targeted political ads.

Matthew Elliott remained a shareholder of WESS Digital until 2014. By 2015, all shares were transferred to Whitehurst.

Whitehurst worked as co-director with Thomas Borwick, Vote Leave’s former chief technology officer, who now runs Kanto Systems — a digital political consultancy that claims to “connect the dots between people, data and technology”.

Together with UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, Borwick also runs another campaign communication management company, Disruptive Analytica.

While it is unclear whether Kanto Systems and Disruptive Analytica work for the organisations based on Tufton Street, Carswell has ties to the groups that operate out of the offices.

In 2016, the IEA co-hosted the Atlas network’s Europe Liberty Forum – a free-market umbrella organisation based in Washington DC – less than a fortnight before the EU referendum.

Speaking at the event, Carswell said: “Think tanks should make life of all established political parties uncomfortable,” adding that the the digital revolution “is important in empowering consumers and promoting free markets”.

More recently, Matthew Elliott was involved in another digital campaign firm called Awareness Analytics Partners, known as A2P, which focused on US clients. He was the only British partner, and was listed on the company’s website until early 2018 when his name was removed.

A2P describes its expertise as “understanding and utilizing influence, enhancing online messaging and delivering groundbreaking social media advertising results”.

It is run by Sean Noble, who has strong ties to the Koch brothers, and Samantha Ravich, who was part of President Trump’s national security transition team.

According to Open Secrets, A2P’s clients are all based in the US and include the “No Tax on Jobs” campaign in Seattle; Arizona’s Republican candidate for Congress Steve Smith, who was repeatedly named a “friend of the taxpayer” by the Koch-funded group, Americans for Prosperity; and House Freedom Action, one of the most conservative groups in the US, which also receives funding from Koch Industries.

Matthew Elliott told DeSmog UK that neither WESS Digital nor A2P “worked on Brexit”.

The ‘Kochtopus’, US Libertarians, and Brexit

A2P isn’t the only Elliot-affiliated organisation with links to the Koch brothers.

In fact, many of the organisations involved in the network pushing for a deregulated post-Brexit US-UK free-trade deal are supported by Koch Family Foundations — one of the largest funders of libertarian causes and climate science denial in the world.

The Koch’s influence is so far-reaching that the network the brothers support has been dubbed the ‘Kochtopus’. Through its network, the Koch brothers have been accused of backing movements that have “undermined American democracy and have helped wealthy elites block progress on problems such as climate change and income inequality”.

The Atlas Network

Atlas is a Washington DC-based non-profit organisation that works to support more than 450 organisations in more than 90 countries promoting individual liberty and free-market ideals. The Charles Koch Foundation is a major donor.

Matthew Elliott is listed as one of Atlas Network’s mentors, with the task of helping others build free-market institutions all around the world. Many of the organisations in the UK pushing for a hard or no-deal Brexit are part of the Atlas Network, including the Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies, Civitas, Open Europe and the IEA as well as the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Big Brother Watch — with the latter two founded by Matthew Elliott.

Many of the network’s members have supported climate science denial and campaigned against efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Besides capacity-building, the Atlas network also acts as an influential funding stream with millions coming into Europe every year, with very little transparency over how the money is spent.

Atlas is registered as a 501(c)(3) organisation, which is exempt from federal income tax and is meant to act exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, or educational purposes — similar to organisations like the IEA in the UK, which is registered as an “educational charity”.

Atlas’ status also means it has to file public tax returns.

However, the tax returns do not provide much detail on precisely how organisations like Atlas spend their money outside the US. Instead, Atlas only has to declare how much money it spent across regions, such as Europe, without any specifics.

The records show that Atlas increased its spending in Europe fivefold between 2015 and 2016, the year of the EUreferendum — with spending increasing from $340k in 2015 to $1.7 million the following year.

Atlas did not respond to a request for comment regarding the details of its European spending, or the nature of the network’s interest in Brexit.

Atlas’ money comes largely from US mega-donors, including the Koch brothers. In 2016, the Charles Koch Foundation donated $101,658 to Atlas, up from $82,426 in 2015.

The Charles Koch Foundation did not respond to a request for comment regarding its interest in Brexit or its European spending.

The Donors Trust, a Koch grantmaking vehicle described by Mother Jones as the ‘dark money ATM of the conservative movement’, also gives significant sums to Atlas.

In 2016, the Donors Trust more than tripled its donations to Atlas giving the network $1,308,390 across 20 donations, including a single $990,000 donation — up from a total of $339,250 in 2015.

Donors Trust told DeSmog UK that it had no specific interest in Brexit, and retained no control or influence over how it’s grantees spent the funds. A spokesperson said:

“DonorsTrust does not take nor advocate for specific policy positions, and certainly we have not engaged in any policy work focused specifically on the Brexit referendum. We make grants at the request of our account holders, and we have no involvement with any of the activities of our grantees.”

“As far as we know, the only purpose with the $990k contribution in 2016 was to support Atlas programs focused on its partners in Chile.”

The Atlas network is a close partner of the UK’s IEA through its US fundraising arm, the American Friends of the IEA. The IEA is one of nine organisations reported to be coordinating a campaign to push for a hard Brexit in the media from the Tufton Street offices.

Public tax records and 990 Forms show that Atlas is listed as a “related tax exempt organisation” to the American Friends of the IEA, with both organisations registered under the same Washington address. In 2016, former Atlas director Alex Chafuen was the officer registered on the Americans Friends of the IEA’s financial records.

Donors Trust has also previously donated directly to the American Friends of the IEA, although there is no record of a donation since it gave $10,000 in 2014.

According to an Atlas network briefing form shared with DeSmog UK, the AFIEA works to “improve public understanding of the foundations of a free and harmonious society” sometimes in coalition with organisations such as the IEA.

The brief stated that an American donor wishing to support the work of the IEA would have to specify to the AFIEA that the money be given to the IEA. It added that the AFIEA is controlled by a board of directors independently from the IEA, “with grant decisions made at their sole discretion”.

Epicenter: The IEA’s European Outlet

One of Atlas’ key European assets is the European Policy Information Centre, known as Epicenter, which was launched in 2014 to “provide a free market perspective in the European policy debate”.

Comprising nine European libertarian think tanks that are all part of the Atlas network, Epicenter claims to be “an independent initiative” that is “politically independent”. However, Epicenter is in fact funded entirely by money, staff and resources from the IEA, according to the EU’s Transparency Register.

Epicenter’s funding address is registered at 2 Lord North Street in London, which is the IEA’s address. The IEA’s 2017 financial statement describes Epicenter as “our European network of think tanks” and was allocated a budget of £220,000.

Shanker Singham, director of the International Trade and Competition Unit at the IEA and an influential Brexit lobbyist, is a prominent Epicenter author. Epicenter’s CEO Christina Stewart-Lockhart also acts as the director of outreach, education and programmes for the IEA in London.

Online pictures of the network’s young interns appear to have been taken looking down Lord North Street in London rather than in Brussels, where Epicenter is registered.

Epicenter’s activity shows how the IEA helps to disseminate and push Atlas’ libertarian agenda across Europe.

A spokeswoman for the IEA told DeSmog UK that Epicenter was a network of nine think tanks from all over Europe, which was launched by the IEA and five other European think tanks in 2014. She did not respond to DeSmog UK’s questions about the IEA’s influence in Europe and its access to funding.

Cato Institute and Free-Trade Deals

Another prominent US think tank, the Cato Institute, also works as a bridge between US libertarians and the UK’s pro-Brexit lobby groups.

The Cato Institute has a mission to “originate, disseminate, and increase understanding of public policies” based on libertarian principles.  

The Cato Institute was the lead US author of an “alternative” plan for a post-Brexit US-UK trade deal. The IEA, Initiative for Free Trade (IFT), Adam Smith Institute and Centre for Policy Studies — all of which are also members of Atlas — were listed as the UK authors of the plan, published in September 2018.

In 2016, Cato more than doubled its donations to Europe to $329,417, up from $130,000 in 2015, despite its overall donations across the world decreasing by more than $200,000 in 2016.

In 2016, $75,417 was donated for stipends for senior fellows and adjunct scholars, $250,000 was given to a Danish winner of a prize for “advancing liberty”, and $4000 went to the winner of a video contest.

The Cato Institute was founded in January 1977 by three men, including Charles Koch. The Charles Koch Foundation remains a major donor to the Cato Institute, donating more than $2.5m in 2016. The Mercer Family Foundation also gave the institute $300,000 in both 2015 and 2016.

The Mercers also donated $2,250,000 to Donors Trust in 2016, having donated nothing to the organisation in 2015. The Donors Trust is a prominent Cato Institute funder.

When approached for comment about its interest in Brexit, the Cato Institute pointed to its previous work outlining its case for a new “genuinely liberal” US-UK trade deal.

Tufton Street Revenue Boost

These US organisations do not have to detail where their European grants go. And many of the UK organisations are registered as think tanks and private limited companies, which means they do not have to declare their funding sources.

But at the same time that US libertarians were increasing their European spending, a number of UK organisations within the Tufton Street network that are closely linked to Matthew Elliott saw their revenues increase.

The IEA saw a 22 percent increase in donations between 2016 and 2017, according to Charity Commission documents — up to £2 million in 2017, from £1.6m in 2016.

The IEA’s Brexit activity also notably increased in 2017 — setting up a Brexit Unit in 2017, and hiring Shanker Singham to lead its International Trade and Competition Unit.

Singham and his unit were responsible for publishing the IEA’s widely criticised “alternative” Brexit plan in September 2018, which recommended slashing regulations to encourage free trade.

Singham and the IEA’s Director General Mark Littlewood were approached by undercover reporters for Greenpeace’s Unearthed suggesting the organisation was willing to have some aspects of its research directed by funders and offering access to ministers in return for funds. The IEA has denied the allegations.

Other organisations with close ties to the Elliotts also saw their revenues increase significantly in 2016 and 2017, around the time of the Brexit referendum.

Business for Britain, founded by Matthew Elliott as a campaign group for business leaders supporting a referendum on the UK’s membership in the EU, saw its capital and reserves increase fourfold to reach £300,199 in 2017, up from £73,188 in 2016. A number of people who supported the group went on to lead the Vote Leave campaign, including Dominic Cummings, Stephen Parkinson and Daniel Hodson.

Matthew Elliott told DeSmog UK that Business for Britain received no funds from organisations outside of the UK, including the Atlas network and the Cato Institute.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, also founded by Matthew Elliott, saw its funds increase to £358,896 in 2017, up from £299,790 in 2016, and £260,437 in 2015.

The IFT, which was listed as the lead UK author on the alternative trade deal published with the Cato Institute, had £188,645 of assets on its first accounts, which were filed in January 2018. The IFT was set up after the Brexit referendum to promote free-trade deals between the UK and other countries.

Another organisation listed as an author on the alternative trade deal plan, the Centre for Policy Studies, had a turnover of £863,087 in 2017, up from £734,818 in 2016.

The End Game: Environmental Deregulation

What do these lobby groups and think tanks do with these resources? Brexit negotiations have created a policy vacuum at the very top of the UK government, leaving space for think tanks and other policy organisations on both sides of the debate to push their ideology and visions for a post-Brexit UK.

As a result, powerful private lobbies have strived to fill that vacuum and advocated to slash regulation and environmental protection post-Brexit in order to strike trade deals. This includes the Koch brothers, the Mercer family and the Atlas network which, as shown above, have strong ties to Matthew and Sarah Elliott.

If these groups have their way, there could be significant consequences for the environment.

The Koch family has spent more than ExxonMobil to fund organisations and projects questioning mainstream climate science. Greenpeace estimates the Kochs have given over $88 million to 80 groups denying climate change since 1997.

In 2015, DeSmog UK revealed that the Kochs had officially begun to lobby European regulators on issues as diverse as energy, climate action, environment, agriculture and rural development, competition, customs, and taxation.

A DeSmog analysis found that, collectively, the Mercers have also given at least $22 million to organisations that promote climate science denial while blocking moves to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  

Meanwhile, the Mercers back the far-right media organisation Breitbart, which regularly makes false claims about climate change, often through the work of infamous climate science denier James Delingpole.

While climate science denial might not be as blatant in the UK as it is in the US, the push for deregulation has become the battleground to roll back environmental protection.  

The prospect of a looming Brexit deal has done nothing to slow down lobbying efforts.

Two days after the cabinet reluctantly agreed to press ahead with the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement, three hard-Brexiters, including former Brexit minister David Davis MP, climate science denier Owen Paterson MP and IEA lobbyist Shanker Singham shared their views on the prospect of a US-UK free-trade deal at the libertarian think tank the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC.

In its alternative “Plan A+” Brexit plan, Shanker Singham — Matthew Elliott’s former colleague at the Legatum Institute — wrote that if the UK continued to strengthen its regulatory environment after Brexit, it would lead to “wealth destruction” and “push people into poverty”.

The plan singles out environmental protection rules as one of the areas where EU regulation is “moving in an anti-competitive direction” — a claim that has long been rebuked by environmental campaigners who argue that environmental protection can lead to investment, job creation and growth.

But the authors of the plan add that while environmental regulations are “sometimes valid attempts to deal with real environmental problems”, “frequently they are disguised methods of protectionism”.

The IEA — the Tufton group with the strongest ties to the US’s Atlas network, and which has become the most prominent voice for deregulation for the Tufton Street network — has repeatedly made the case for cutting red tape to allow for a US-UK free-trade deal post Brexit.

Writing for The Times, IEA Director General Mark Littlewood called for a “bonfire of regulation and red tape” and urged the government to align the UK’s regulatory environment with countries that may have lower standards in order to strike trade deals.

In his words: “To over-simplify, trade talks essentially come down to sitting across a table, brandishing your regulatory rulebook and then seeing what you can agree to alter, remove or align to have a smoother trading relationship with the other side before you leave the room.”

Undercover reporting by Greenpeace’s Unearthed revealed how big American agribusiness interests were keen to shape the UK’s Brexit debate, lobbying the IEA for a weakening of the regulatory framework that could open the UK to American exports. Unearthed’s investigation also confirmed the extent of influence this Tufton Street network has with some cabinet members, including environment minister Michael Gove.

The threat Brexit poses to the UK’s environmental regulation has not gone unnoticed in parliament.

MPs from the Environmental Audit Committee warned that the UK could be left with gaping holes in environmental laws, allowing polluters to go unpunished and depriving wildlife of vital protection after Brexit.

The committee report found that the government had still not committed to replacing around a third of all environmental rules governing air, water, chemicals and waste disposal that cannot be copied over into UK law from the EU. It added that the lack of clarity about a large chunk of environmental regulation was “deeply worrying”.

That UK-based think tanks are not compelled to reveal their funders has cast a veil of opacity over the Brexit policy debate, with huge private interests being presented as the defenders of free-market ideology.

But the US libertarian influence on Brexit is not only a battle of ideas and ideology but is backed by millionaires and billionaires with fossil fuel interests who saw the referendum as an opportunity to open up the UK market to US exports.

These mega-donors’ influence has been channeled to the UK through networks such as Atlas and individuals such as Matthew and Sarah Elliott, who wield power through their connections — all in the name of pushing for deregulation post-Brexit, which would put profits before the environment.

This Article

Mat Hope is editor of Desmog.uk where this article first appeared.

Poland’s energy ministry has come out fighting for the coal sector, ahead of UN climate talks in Katowice next month.

Krzysztof Tchórzewski’s ministry defended the country’s heavy reliance on the polluting fuel, in a statement published on Monday. In 2017, coal generated 78% of electricity.

Yet a spokesperson for the Cop24 presidency, which sits in the environment ministry, said in a terse email that did not represent the Polish government position.

National economies

The conservative Tchórzewski is already locked in dispute with the prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki over the government’s “war on smog”.

Morawiecki and technology minister Jadwiga Emilewicz are promoting tougher quality standards on coal used in home heating, to clean up polluted air. But Tchórzewski has frustrated their efforts, watering down the proposals and delaying action.

The energy minister is also a strong advocate for Ostrołęka C, a controversial new coal plant proposed in northeastern Poland.

In the latest statement, Tchórzewski’s ministry declared its opposition to raising EU ambition on climate change, arguing this would harm the Polish economy.

At an international level, it said the fight against climate change should “preserve the competitiveness of national economies and their sovereignty in shaping energy mixes”.

Coal to renewables

While noting the potential of renewables, electric vehicles and nuclear, the statement maintained “clean coal” and “low-carbon” natural gas had a continued role.

“The minister of energy is in favour of the evolutionary transformation of the power sector, instead of drastic restrictions on the use of fossil fuels,” it said, citing energy security and affordability concerns.

Others see a greener future for Poland’s energy. Think-tank Forum Energii has mapped out four scenarios, ranging from maintaining coal dominance to 73% renewable power by 2050.

Over the period studied, the whole-system costs were similar, with renewables delivering slightly cheaper electricity. Diversifying into renewables would also reduce reliance on fuel imports, the study found.

A poll commissioned by Greenpeace Poland last year showed clean energy was popular, with 74 percent supporting a shift from coal to renewables. 

Host city

“Investing in renewables is the only way to keep energy bills low for Poles,” said campaigner Paweł Szypulski. “Staying with coal is absolutely not in line with the Paris Agreement and not in line with scientific knowledge and not in line with what Polish people would like to see.”

The EU needs to phase out coal power by 2030 to meet the temperature goal in the Paris Agreement, according to Climate Analytics.

The European Commission is due to release its proposal for a long-term climate strategy next week. Ten member states have called for this to include a pathway to net zero emissions by 2050. There is also a live debate over whether to strengthen the 2030 emissions target in the coming year.

Warsaw has long been the most vocal opponent of climate regulations in Brussels, backed by the Visegrad Group of central European countries. However its traditional ally Hungary has signalled plans to shut its last coal plant by 2030 and replace it with a clean energy hub.

Michał Kurtyka, a junior energy minister appointed to preside over Cop24, has highlighted the transition already under way in host city Katowice. The region is home to two coal mines, down from 14 in the industry’s 1980s peak.

He has a mammoth technical task to oversee at Cop24: the completion of detailed rules to implement the Paris Agreement.

Kurtyka is also expected to promote three political statements. These will focus on the role of forests and electric vehicles in tackling climate change, and call for “a decent future” for fossil fuel workers affected by the shift to a low carbon economy.

This Article

This Article first appeared on Climate Home News.

Inhabitants of the Anosy region of Madagascar say they no longer know their rights in relation to Rio Tinto’s Qit Minerals Madagascar (QMM) ilmenite mine along the island’s southeast coastline.

Villagers living in Ampasy Nahampoana fear the mine will soon approach their food production zone. Neighbours in Andrakaraka believe the mine has extended beyond its permitted limits and now comes within 20 to 30 metres of the nearby lake.

But indigenous communities face enormous challenges to protect their rights and hold the company to account. “QMM does what it wants,” they claim.

Under scrutiny

The Andrew Lees Trust (ALT UK) has asked Rio Tinto to be transparent about the encroachment of the QMM mine beyond its legal limits and is working in solidarity with local people to address their concerns.

The primary issue for locals is the risk of radionuclide-enriched water from the mine tailings leaching into adjacent lakes and waterways where people fish and use the water. These are  meant to be protected by the environmental buffer zone, which has been breached by QMM.

ALT UK first brought these issues to public attention in The Ecologist. The charity challenged the company about the breach at the Rio Tinto annual general meeting last year (2017).

The charity was immediately invited into a dialogue with Rio Tinto’s executive. The charity advised shareholders and the Rio Tinto board that any exchange with the company would require transparency and open disclosure.

ALT UK was assured publicly by Rio Tinto’s chair that the company was committed to transparency, and the CEO appeared ready to open a route where concerns would be addressed, evidence provided, and questions answered.

In reality, the dialogue has taken almost a year and a half to date, and the majority of questions have still not been answered. The process has been eye wateringly protracted and challenging; data release has been slow, requiring persistent requests, or has not materialised at all.

A dialogue process of this kind would be impossibly onerous for the majority of the affected communities in Anosy, who are living on less than $2 a day and struggling to put one meal on the table.

Transparency

The Ecologist published a story about the QMM buffer zone violation in September 2018. The company said at the time: “Contrary to allegations that we have not shared information, QMM have been very transparent, working with the Andrew Lees Trust in an unprecedented way over the past 15 months.”

In fact, ALT UK never alleged that information has not been shared. Indeed, ALT UK has received numerous documents and emails, from or via the London HQ, as well as multiple verbal exchanges.

However, these have not addressed in a substantive way any of the detailed technical questions posed to Rio Tinto about the buffer zone violation or how QMM evidences its claimed compliance with national laws and permissions.

ALT UK commissioned an independent report by Dr Steven Emerman of Malach Consulting on the buffer violation and shared it with Rio Tinto. After five months, and despite repeated prompting, the charity is still waiting for a meaningful response.

The charity’s submissions to Rio Tinto on this subject since June 2018 include two reports and four letters that contain multiple technical questions, but these have not been answered.

QMM continued to deny the buffer zone violation in its latest correspondence, received in September this year (2018).

QMM has told ALT UK to address half its technical questions “to the regulator”, and therefore refused to directly answer detailed enquiries. This is simply pushing responsibility for the mine’s actions and impacts onto the Malagasy regulator.

Transparency re-distributed

The regulator in this case is the National Office for the Environment (ONE) in Madagascar, which is tasked with monitoring extractive activity and the QMM mine’s compliance with environmental regulations.

Rio Tinto/QMM claims ONE has recently validated QMM’s compliance with permissions granted against its approved Social and Environmental Management Plan (SEMP) 2014-2018.

ALT UK questions how ONE has reached its conclusions when, in over five months, Rio Tinto has been unable to explain, in writing, how its violation of the buffer zone complies with the SEMP; and when both Rio Tinto’s study by Ozius and ALT UK’s by Dr Emerman clearly demonstrate encroachment of the buffer zone onto the lake bed of Lake Besaroy, in breach of national laws.

ONE’s report is not yet publicly available. Local people in Anosy claim there was no consultation for this latest report, as would normally be expected.

ONE’s failure to consult has raised serious concerns locally, some of which have been voiced all the way to ministerial level. The word on the ground is that the relationship between QMM and ONE is “compromised”.

Far from allaying fears, the role of the regulator in verifying QMM’s “compliance” has deepened concerns to a whole new level; most specifically to the nature of the relationship between QMM and ONE, and the mechanisms for transparency and accountability available for local citizens.

ALT UK understands that ONE recently received financial support from QMM.

Extractives like QMM are allowed – if not actively expected – to contribute financially to ONE under the state’s decree 99-954/99 “Relative to the Compatibility of Investments with the Environment” (MECIE).

Such payments to government bodies are meant to be transparent – a statement from the company about what was paid by QMM to ONE, and when, would be welcome.

Expert consensus

ALT UK’s push for transparency has been framed by repeatedly requiring the company to respond to Dr Emerman’s findings on the buffer zone violation and all related questions in writing.

The company has insisted that questions would best be resolved if ALT UK would place its expert in a room with Rio Tinto’s, so they can “reach consensus”.

Firstly, ALT UK believes there is already consensus between Rio Tinto’s external expert provider, Ozius, and ALT UK’s expert, Dr Emerman, since both clearly define encroachment by the QMM mine beyond the approved buffer zone limitation in their separate technical studies.

Secondly, ALT UK has questioned where Rio Tinto’s internal expert/s have been hiding all these months since they have failed to produce any substantive answers to the questions sent to date.

Rio Tinto has instead forwarded on to ALT UK memos from their external consultants and internal memoranda, some of which have not been dated or lacked provenance. These have generated new concerns and yet more questions, all of which remain on the table, unanswered.

Seeking Answers

It is ALT UK who has urgently and repeatedly sought to engage Rio Tinto about its incongruent “interpretations” of the scientific data.

An urgent request to meet was sent to Rio Tinto immediately following the submission of Dr Emerman’s findings at the end of May 2018.

This was followed up with further, repeated, verbal and emailed requests. ALT UK was finally told it would have to wait until late September in order to re-engage the executive with whom it began the buffer zone discussion seventeen months earlier.

Nobody from Rio Tinto attempted to move the meeting forward following The Ecologist article in September. ALT UK also reached out to the newly formed Rio Tinto/QMM biodiversity panel in the hope they might review the ALT UK/Emerman report during their planned visit to the mine, in early October.

Independent oversight

Rio Tinto has two new panels in place for ‘oversight’ on the QMM mine in the Anosy region. The three member Biodiversity and Natural Resources Committee, with a secretariat provided by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has just been created and has met twice.

QMM’s previous biodiversity committee collapsed two years ago when the entire membership resigned, stating that Rio Tinto’s stance towards biodiversity presented a “reputational risk” for the committee members.

If the new committee is simply advisory, as has been the case in the past, then it remains to be seen whether it has teeth to rigorously question and effect meaningful changes to QMM’s performance and practices on the ground.

The second panel, also newly appointed, reported from its first trip in 2017 that QMM is “one of the cleanest mines in the world”. It is unclear on what basis such a conclusion was reached since environmental considerations were beyond the purview of their first mission.

The panel also reported it was “unable to consult directly with people living in the areas affected by QMM operations”. Instead, its members spent three days on the ground mostly examining issues around the port traffic, as “commended to our attention by QMM”.

Co-option and power asymmetry

It is almost impossible for local citizens to engage international evaluators, or enter into a protracted process of discovery when they are living hand to mouth.

So who can they rely upon to independently evaluate and transparently monitor how QMM goes about its operations? Who will hold QMM to account if it transgresses local peoples’ rights and environment?

This question assumes that local people’s complaints and concerns are taken seriously. This is a risky assumption. One QMM staff was overheard complaining that local people “just don’t want the gifts of development we can offer”.

In reality no one asked the locals what they wanted and whether the narrative pushed on them through externally driven development by private, corporate interests meets their needs, or resembles any of their aspirations.

Rural existence – and the survival of the poorest in Madagascar – is wholly dependent on access to land and forest. Such lives inevitably fall into conflict with externally driven, western-styled development when it prohibits their access to these vital natural resources – as the QMM mine has done.

This is even more true because QMM has co-opted most of the state and non-state actors, including NGOs. There are almost no agencies in the Anosy region that are not implicated – funded or involved in some way – in the development paradigm created by Rio Tinto’s QMM mine under the World Bank’s Integrated Growth Pole (PIC) programme.

QMM has become the only game in town and enjoys quasi-state power in the region, and can act with apparent impunity.

The resultant power asymmetry has shrunk the space for alternative views and respect for traditional visions of life and well-being.

The space to discuss whose vision is important has been controlled by QMM since the Anosy regional development plan was created, led by QMM’s paid Canadian consultant almost twenty years ago, and has diminished ever since.

Road to transparency

Rio Tinto HQ needs to honestly address QMM’s failings and rebalance the disproportionate levels of power it exercises in advancing and protecting its agenda in the Anosy region.

In this, Rio Tinto has a way to travel before it can convince local people and many international observers that it is transparent in its dealings, robustly monitored by independent bodies, and ready to act with integrity when caught failing to meet its obligations to local people, their rights and well-being.

ALT UK is still waiting for a written explanation for how the buffer zone violation can be characterised as “compliant”.

Eighteen months after ALT UK first raised the issue, Rio Tinto says that a team will be dispatched to Anosy and that a substantive written response will be forthcoming.

It is hoped this exercise will enable the company to finally acknowledge what it already knows: QMM has violated the environmental buffer zone in southern Madagascar.

All of which means three big questions come to the fore, namely: What will the Malagasy government do to hold the company to account for breaking national laws? How will the company remediate its unacceptable environmental violation? And how can local communities be made aware of and protected from the ensuing risks?

No one said the road to transparency would be easy but, as Andrew Lees loved to quote, “the truth will set you free.”

Right to Reply

Rio Tinto and QMM take their responsibilities to the communities and environment around the Fort Dauphin operations very seriously and have done so since the project’s inception in 2006.

We continue to engage openly and transparently with the author of this article, Ms Orengo, and the Andrew Lees Trust UK, most recently in October 2018. We have invited them on repeated occasions to come to Madagascar to see first-hand the conditions on the ground in and around the mine.

We are disappointed that they have declined every invitation. We also estimate that over the last two years, we have provided ALT UK with more than 120 pages of detailed information on a wide range of topics they have raised. They have also met with our senior executives on a number of occasions.

Many of the questions posed by ALT are very specific and technical so they require time to research before we can respond to them.  We have however never failed to acknowledge any requests and ultimately respond.

Further to this engagement, we are currently undertaking a technical study into a number of their allegations and we have committed to making this report public when it is completed. It will be translated into Malagasy for the benefit of all our local stakeholders.

Monitoring activities

QMM fully respects the oversight rights, capacity and prerogatives of the Malagasy regulator and laws, and has always followed due process in applying for its permits. Our code of business conduct, The way we work, sets out how we follow both local laws and our own international standards wherever we operate.

We have always taken a proactive, rights-based and collaborative approach to discussions with communities surrounding the Mandena mine and in establishing agreements with those impacted by the mine’s operations. This includes ensuring continued access to resources, pasture land and walking pathways within the mining concession.

QMM worked with government to ensure that the rights of all traditional land owners within the mining concession were recognised. This was done through an open process and resulted in a signed tri-partite agreement in Malagasy between all parties – communities, local authorities and QMM.

Building strong and enduring partnerships based on trust, proactive dialogue and mutual benefits is a key element in QMM’s ongoing approach with communities and stakeholders. Since the project’s inception in 2006, QMM has worked with local communities to improve the economic conditions of the area and wellbeing of the population. It continues to provide jobs, local procurement, economic growth opportunities, youth development and power locally.

As per Malagasy law, QMM is required to fund certain monitoring activities conducted by the regulator as per our Social & Environmental Management Plan. There are examples of similar practices in a number of jurisdictions around the world. This is set out in a formal signed protocol between ONE and QMM.

This Author

Yvonne Orengo is an independent communications practitioner and director of the Andrew Lees Trust, a British charity set up following the death of its namesake in Madagascar in 1994. Yvonne was based in Madagascar for more than six years, and developed the ALT UK’s strategic programme; she has followed the evolution of Rio Tinto’s QMM project for more than two decades.

The World Bank has abandoned the last coal project on its books – with its president publicly dumping the Kosova e Re plant.

Jim Yong Kim was asked by civil society representatives from Kosovo whether the bank was still considering guaranteeing loans to the plant at a town hall event in Bali.

“On the Balkans, yes, we have made a very firm decision not to go forward with the coal power plant,” he said.

Proven right

Climate Home News reported in June that World Bank officials had met minister of economic development Valdrin Lluka, amid rumours that a bank review had rejected the project on the grounds that there were cheaper options to solve Kosovo’s energy crisis.

Kim has now said: “We are required by our by-laws to go with the lowest cost option and renewables have now come below the cost of coal. So without question, we are not going to (support the plant).’

In 2015, the Kosovo government announced that it had signed an agreementwith the World Bank and US company ContourGlobal to build the new station.

It is unclear what the withdrawal of the bank’s guarantee means for the financing of the project, which has long been a centrepiece infrastructure project for the Kosovo government.

In a statement last month, Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj said construction was likely to begin early next year. Lluka and ContourGlobal did not immediately return requests for comment.

Energy supply

Dajana Berisha, founding member of the Kosovo Civil Society Consortium for Sustainable Development (Kosid) said: “We’re happy that our efforts, work has been proven to be right.

“But now another battle will probably begin, because we don’t know whether the government will continue searching for other investors to come and support the project.”

In 2013 World Bank revised its lending policies to rule out new coal projects, except in “exceptional circumstances”. Kosova e Re has been the only coal project for which the bank has been considering support.

Years of war and slow reconstruction have left Kosovo with a power sector based entirely on the tiny country’s abundant lignite resource. Two Tito-era power stations, just outside the capital Prishtina, are notorious for breakdowns, black outs and air pollution.

In September, Joseph Brandt, founder and CEO of ContourGlobal, announced several bids for contracts to build and operate the plant. He said it was “crucial to the future of Kosovo’s energy supply”.

The World Bank’s involvement in the coal sector in Kosovo has been controversial. In 2016, CHN reported on leaked internal documents that found the bank had breached its own rules when villagers were forced from their homes to make way for a coal mine expansion.

This Article

This Article first appeared on Climate Home News.

Air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels by vehicles and industry reduces lives by two years on average, according to research from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

In India and China – and other worst effected regions – people’s lives are being cut by six years. This makes air pollution the single biggest threat to human health, more than smoking and Aids.

Michael Greenstone, the director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, who led the work, said: “While people can stop smoking and take steps to protect themselves from diseases, there is little they can individually do to protect themselves from the air they breathe.”

Fossil fuel

Air pollution is also at the top of the agenda of the World Health Organisation. “We’re here to talk about both the problems as well as the solutions to this global health issue,” declared director general of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as he opened the first global summit to tackle the issue of air pollution.

More than 600 government representatives and health experts from at least 89 different countries have gathered to discuss what the head of WHO has labeled “the new tobacco”.

Worldwide, the WHO estimated that seven million premature deaths are linked to air pollution every year, of which nearly 600,000 are children.

Children are uniquely vulnerable to the damaging health effects of air pollution, the new WHO report finds. An estimated 93% of all children in the world under five years are exposed to levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that are higher than the WHO air quality guideline levels.

In regions such as Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, this goes up to 100 percent of all children under 5 years.

The air pollution that affects our health is primarily derived from fossil fuel combustion, industrial processes, waste incineration, agricultural practices,states the report, entitled Air Pollution and Child Health.

Solutions Abound

“It is an unfortunate fact that breathing clean air, the most basic of human needs, has become a luxury in many parts of the world. But there are numerous tried and tested solutions that we can put in place now to solve this problem,” declared Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment, during the first day of the conference.

In a solutions report to be launched at the Summit, entitled Air Pollution in Asia and the Pacific: Science-based Solutions, a series of 25 measures will be proposed that could drastically help reduce the rampant air pollution across much of Asia and the Pacific.

Many of the proposed solutions to tackle global air pollution require a strong control of emission that lead to the formation of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). This includes activities such as increasing emission standards and controls on vehicles, power plants, and large- and small-scale industry.

Further air pollution measures should also include reducing the burning of agricultural and municipal solid waste, preventing forest and peatland fires, and proper management of livestock manure.

Reducing air pollution also has direct benefits for tackling climate change: Implementing the 25 measures proposed at the summit would result in a 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide and a 45 percent reduction in methane emissions, preventing up to a third of a degree Celsius in global warming.

“[It is] clear that there are big “cobenefits” of the actions that we need to stay below 1.5C warming.  The faster we cut emissions of carbon into the atmosphere, the more lives we can save from reducing air pollution, which currently causes 1 in 9 deaths globally,” explained Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, the climate change lead at WHO.

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a tropical biologist and science journalist who writes about climate change, environment and migration. He reports from the UN negotiations and is the program manager of Climate Tracker, an organisation supporting environmental journalists worldwide to bring climate change into their national debates. Arthur tweets from @ArthurWyns

Surfers Against Sewage’s intrepid army of volunteers descended on the beaches and waterways across the UK for the biggest Autumn Beach and River Clean ever in their history.

As the weather changed, and the nights began to draw in, this mass community mobilisation answered the call issued by SAS in light of the plastic pollution found on our shorelines. The pollution had been worsened by recent storms. 

Over 21,200 volunteers of all ages took part in cleans at over 487 beaches, river banks and lakes across the UK to remove a staggering 35.9 tonnes of marine plastic pollution, the equivalent of 8,991 full bin bags.

Community network 

SAS’s director of campaigns and projects, Ben Hewitt said: “We can make sure we don’t choke our streets, parks and playgrounds with plastic pollution. If it’s on our street today, then it’s in our rivers tomorrow, and our beaches and oceans forever.

“We can make sure each of us understands that we can change this, whoever we are and wherever we live. But we can only do all of this together.

“We’re part of a community network across the UK that’s tackling single-use plastic from the beach, all the way back to the brands and businesses who create it.

“Thanks to the surge in awareness around plastic pollution, we were able to call on communities across the UK and were absolutely blown away by the response.

“These Citizen Scientists donated more than 73,454 volunteer hours. They also helped us collect a data set that will form an integral part of our campaign for new plastic bottle Deposit Return Scheme in the UK”

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Surfers Against Sewage. The beach clean series was organised by Surfers against Sewage and supported by partners; Greggs, The Environment Agency, British Canoeing, Ecover, Parley For The Oceans, REN Skincare, Surfing England and WSL Pure.

I met Egam Basar – assistant director at the Department of Horticulture – in Itanagar, the disappointingly dusty capital of Arunachal Pradesh, the erstwhile North-East Frontier of India. 

My wife and I were there to meet some people studying glaciers through satellite images and remote sensing techniques. We were hoping to connect our work on the Sikkim glaciers with theirs on the glaciers of Arunachal Pradesh.

Basar told us about his initiatives to discourage hunting and restore the forests in and around his native village of Basar. Listening to him, I was reminded that stories hold the power to shape our reality and guide our actions within that construct.

Local action

I wonder whether Basar was aware of this when narrating the stories that he told us.

Arunachal Pradesh has some of the last and the largest contiguous patches of forests remaining in the whole of India. Basar talked passionately of the need for local action, and was acutely aware of how rapidly his state is losing its wildlife and its forest cover.

This year, the organisation that Basar and his friends founded back in 2011 is planting saplings of native species back into the forest. But it was the stories leading up to this initiative that really caught my attention.

I wouldn’t have known what to make of his stories had I not seen Ajay Bhardwaj’s documentary on the narratives about the partition of Punjab – the fertile plains of the five braided rivers in India’s northwest – and of its aftermath.

Sometimes, like birds hidden in a tree, you need someone to point these things out before you see them for yourself. Bhardwaj’s documentary features eyewitnesses recounting their memories of the partition, one of the largest forced migration of people anywhere in the world, marked by terrible violence. 

Reinforcing belief

Basar started with the story of a huge flash flood in his village a couple of years ago: “There had been floods before, but no one had ever seen anything like this. Even climate change can’t explain what happened.”

He wasn’t there, but eyewitnesses had told him about water gushing in a torrent from the sheer mountainside and washing away everything that stood in its path.

“Such natural calamities are linked in people’s minds to their beliefs”, he explained, while scanning our expression to see if we understood.

He explained: “The elders would warn us against cutting trees. And then more recently, there was this big, ancient Peepal tree (a fig tree, Ficus religiosa) that people believed was the abode of spirits. Some people chopped it down.

“In the following year the flash flood inundated the rice fields of all those involved in chopping the tree and rendered them uncultivable.”

Inviolable landscapes

Basar’s story brought to mind something that I’d read in Mike Shanahan’s book about figs, Ladders to Heaven. It was a quote from the Ramayana, where Ravana says, “I have not cut down any fig tree … why then does calamity befall me?

I’d heard similar stories other places and in other forms as well. For instance, in the folklore surrounding the sacred groves of the Khasi hills in Meghalaya.

The Khasis perform annual rituals that offer the sacred groves to the spirits, who must then stay within these designated areas. The sanctity of the grove is inviolable, no one willing to risk taking so much as a fallen leaf from it.

In fact, one finds this kind of injunction in most ancient religions. In her book about Hinduism and Nature, Nanditha Krishna writes: “There was a popular belief that the cutting of trees would bring about the destruction of the woodcutter and his family”.

There are also the more contemporary narratives from the edges, where Arunachal Pradesh meets Assam. Here, large pockets of what used to be good Reserve Forest – a habitat for elephants and hornbills – have been cleared in a matter of years. Nowadays these places look like haphazard villages submerged in a sea of weeds.

Cursed money

A friend of mine who lives in Arunachal Pradesh summed up the situation: “The money that comes from forest trees is cursed. One can never digest it.”

But Basar’s stories differed in some crucial aspect. I was still struggling to see why they seemed so familiar, turning and twisting them in my head to see where they fit. Then he related one last incident and it all fell into place.

Basar told us: “There used to be this man who started a saw mill by the river in our village. The elders warned him against making money from the forest, but he wouldn’t listen.” Eventually the man was diagnosed with cancer and died a horrible, drawn out death, losing his mind towards the end.

Basar said: “Only god knows if his suffering was due to a curse for felling trees, his food habit or just his fate. His workers, however, died in the devastating flash flood which uprooted the entire mill complex – vehicles, machinery, everything washed away – as if nature had exacted vengeance.”

Losing one’s mind; a long drawn out death – I’d heard of a similar fate that someone else met with, and I’d heard about it in Ajay Bhardwaj’s documentary.

Collective guilt

Only those who have lived through the partition know what it was like. The trauma of being pulled up from the roots and flung towards a foreign land across a sieve of unimaginable violence leaves scars that never heal.

But what drove Ajay to make the documentary was a remarkable feature that emerged from the first few interviews with people who had lived through those times. He discovered that the chief emotion that coloured their memories wasn’t hatred, but remorse.

People would time and again describe atrocities etched indelibly in their minds, atrocities that they’d seen committed not by strangers, but by people that they knew, people that they’d lived amongst, seen every day and spoken to.

And these would be followed inevitably by the awful fate that the perpetrators eventually met with: of the awful deaths they died, the terrible fates their family suffered, of insanity and derangement that wiped out the entire lineage.

What Ajay calls “informal tales, almost like folklore … strewn across the memory-scape of Punjab’s countryside” is their way of dealing with the collective guilt for a crime that they felt a certain complicity in; a crime against their neighbours, and a crime against their shared heritage.

Local history

This was exactly what I thought I saw in Basar’s stories about his own community. They were incidents from a local history slowly taking on the garb of local folklore, and they seemed like attempts to deal with a collective guilt for wrongs committed against nature.

Stories like the ones that Basar told us record the attitudes of people who witnessed the events and what they think of them with the wisdom of hindsight. These accounts are indispensible in shaping our attitudes and those of generations to come.

We need more narratives like these: whether of forests being cleared to make way for plantations in Arunachal Pradesh or for roads in Meghalaya, or stories of the land consolidation in east Punjab (chackbandi) that saw the indiscriminate felling of trees.

It is important that we know what the people who did that then think of their actions now, so that it can inform our decisions about the future.

Numbed and befuddled by a world where money is equated to happiness – and faster money to greater happiness – we’ve lost our moral bearings.

Alternative narratives

Governments that have little regard for the environment cannot be expected to formulate policies that will prioritise ecology over some shiny, near-sighted idea of development.

But away from the limelight of media and the billboards selling you a better life, there are streams of alternative narratives that have recorded the real impacts of everything upon people and upon interpersonal relations – from the advent of electricity to the influx of easy income.

It’s time we dipped into them – these narratives that account for human emotions and wellbeing – to piece together a moral framework that will make our lives as individuals more meaningful.

This Author 

Sartaj Ghuman is a freelance biologist, writer and artist based in India. 

All male humpback whales in the eastern Australia population sing the same song at any one time, according to new research from the University of St Andrews and the University of Queensland.

Research into song patterns studied over 13 years found that the song gradually changed each year – but that every few years their song is completely replaced in cultural ‘revolution’ events. When revolution events occurred, the new song was always simpler than the one it replaced.

The study, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that gradual song changes may be embellishments by individual singers, and that songs sung after revolutions are simpler because singers may have limited ability to learn new material.

Singing revolutions

The research was led by Dr Jenny Allen at the University of Queensland and Dr Ellen Garland at St Andrews. Dr Allen said: “Much evidence for non-human culture comes from vocally learned displays, such as the vocal dialects and song displays of birds and cetaceans. 

“While many oscine birds use song complexity to assess male fitness, the role of complexity in humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) song is uncertain due to population-wide conformity to one song pattern. 

“We examined two measures of song structure, complexity and entropy, in the eastern Australian population over 13 consecutive years.  These measures aimed to identify the role of complexity and information content in the vocal learning processes of humpback whales.

Complexity and entropy 

“Complexity was quantified at two hierarchical levels: the entire sequence of individual sound units and the stereotyped arrangements of units which comprise a theme. Complexity increased as songs evolved over time but decreased when revolutions occurred.

“No correlation between complexity and entropy estimates suggests that changes to complexity may represent embellishment to the song which could allow males to stand out amidst population-wide conformity. 

“The consistent reduction in complexity during song revolutions suggests a potential limit to the social learning capacity of novel material in humpback whales.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

All male humpback whales in the eastern Australia population sing the same song at any one time, according to new research from the University of St Andrews and the University of Queensland.

Research into song patterns studied over 13 years found that the song gradually changed each year – but that every few years their song is completely replaced in cultural ‘revolution’ events. When revolution events occurred, the new song was always simpler than the one it replaced.

The study, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that gradual song changes may be embellishments by individual singers, and that songs sung after revolutions are simpler because singers may have limited ability to learn new material.

Singing revolutions

The research was led by Dr Jenny Allen at the University of Queensland and Dr Ellen Garland at St Andrews. Dr Allen said: “Much evidence for non-human culture comes from vocally learned displays, such as the vocal dialects and song displays of birds and cetaceans. 

“While many oscine birds use song complexity to assess male fitness, the role of complexity in humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) song is uncertain due to population-wide conformity to one song pattern. 

“We examined two measures of song structure, complexity and entropy, in the eastern Australian population over 13 consecutive years.  These measures aimed to identify the role of complexity and information content in the vocal learning processes of humpback whales.

Complexity and entropy 

“Complexity was quantified at two hierarchical levels: the entire sequence of individual sound units and the stereotyped arrangements of units which comprise a theme. Complexity increased as songs evolved over time but decreased when revolutions occurred.

“No correlation between complexity and entropy estimates suggests that changes to complexity may represent embellishment to the song which could allow males to stand out amidst population-wide conformity. 

“The consistent reduction in complexity during song revolutions suggests a potential limit to the social learning capacity of novel material in humpback whales.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

All male humpback whales in the eastern Australia population sing the same song at any one time, according to new research from the University of St Andrews and the University of Queensland.

Research into song patterns studied over 13 years found that the song gradually changed each year – but that every few years their song is completely replaced in cultural ‘revolution’ events. When revolution events occurred, the new song was always simpler than the one it replaced.

The study, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that gradual song changes may be embellishments by individual singers, and that songs sung after revolutions are simpler because singers may have limited ability to learn new material.

Singing revolutions

The research was led by Dr Jenny Allen at the University of Queensland and Dr Ellen Garland at St Andrews. Dr Allen said: “Much evidence for non-human culture comes from vocally learned displays, such as the vocal dialects and song displays of birds and cetaceans. 

“While many oscine birds use song complexity to assess male fitness, the role of complexity in humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) song is uncertain due to population-wide conformity to one song pattern. 

“We examined two measures of song structure, complexity and entropy, in the eastern Australian population over 13 consecutive years.  These measures aimed to identify the role of complexity and information content in the vocal learning processes of humpback whales.

Complexity and entropy 

“Complexity was quantified at two hierarchical levels: the entire sequence of individual sound units and the stereotyped arrangements of units which comprise a theme. Complexity increased as songs evolved over time but decreased when revolutions occurred.

“No correlation between complexity and entropy estimates suggests that changes to complexity may represent embellishment to the song which could allow males to stand out amidst population-wide conformity. 

“The consistent reduction in complexity during song revolutions suggests a potential limit to the social learning capacity of novel material in humpback whales.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews.