There’s been a push amongst environmental commentators to eliminate everyday individuals from the ‘who’s causing climate change’ narrative. Environmental commentators have, in part, justified this reframing by claiming that a focus on individuals perpetuates neoliberal reasoning and, in turn, neoliberal policymaking. 

Neoliberals, who espouse individualism, typically believe that the attitudes and behaviours of individuals solve or break big problems. For example, in the UK the condition of the chronically unemployed is attributed to a poor attitude or work ethic, rather than the socio-economic structures that disempower and exclude certain social groups from the workplace. To remedy this, the state employs psycho-coercive behavioural and attitudinal correction programmes, intending to ‘fix’ unemployable characteristics.

In light of the neoliberal policy trend, many anti-capitalist environmental intellectuals reactively expunged ‘individual behaviour’ from the narratives they used to explain and, in turn, combat climate change. Instead, focus has shifted to big producers and corporations – corporations that grew fat off imperial capitalism, and who now rely on internationally liberalised markets to exploit socio-economically disempowered communities and countries.

False dichotomy

The accumulation of capital in the hands of a very few investors and financiers has massively skewed the trajectory of our socio-economic system, with a minority deciding what our industrial future will look like (e.g. big oil’s investment in plastic factories).  

Certainly there’s truth in these narratives. For example, the behaviour of energy producers and corporations, particularly Oil Majors, is uniquely destructive. They directly accelerate climate change through resource depletion, irresponsible waste management, catastrophic oil and gas spills, and the perpetuation of GHG emissions.

These corporations also leverage their positions as major players within energy oligopolies – who have access to technology, funds, political lobbies, research and expertise – to disproportionately influence the course of technological and policy developments. In relation to the energy sector, systemic overhaul is what we need. 

However, by exclusively focusing on the structural causes of climate change, we establish a false dichotomy between individual action and system change (the system being white-supremacist patriarchal neo-colonial capitalism, henceforth referred to as the capitalist system). This is flawed.

Economic systems

Firstly, “individual behaviour” is a Strawman. It is not just the behaviour of an individual that is being challenged when consumption choices are highlighted as problematic. Rather, archetypal materialistic and consumerist attitudes are in the firing line. It is these attitudes that undergird, perpetuate, sanitise and celebrate oppressive consumer behaviour. It is these attitudes that are being challenged.

Secondly and most importantly, the anti-capitalist environmental commentator uses a linear causal model to understand a (mostly) circular economic system. Simplistically, individuals collectively form the ‘consumer’ group, whilst corporations, industries, and oil-oriented governments collectively form the ‘producer’ group.

These two groups are intimately integrated and responsive to one another, such that they form a circular chain of causality. In this chain production induces consumption induces production induces consumption etc. 

In claiming that exclusively challenging the productive capitalist system will solve climate change issues, these commentators are implying that consumption has no bearing on the rate or nature of production.

This describes a linear causal model, where production induces consumption and zero consumer feedback occurs. This linear model defies basic macroeconomic principles and common sense, and fails to realise that the consumer group is not only produced by the capitalist system, but reproduces it through consumptive behaviours (and revolutionary inertia). 

Consumptive asymmetry

Thirdly, there lies a distinct asymmetry in both the consumption choices and in the rates of consumption between the Global North and the Global South. Comparatively, consumption in the Global North massively outstrips the Global South in terms of the production of emissions, land usage, waste creation and the devastation of ecosystems.

What’s more, the effects of this production/consumption disproportionately affect those in the Global South. As such, the consumptive behaviours of the Global North should be a primary target of those who want to tackle climate injustice (a state of affairs where the countries who have most caused climate change feel it the least).

When we include consumer behaviour in our understanding of the capitalist system’s relationship to climate change, addressing consumptive asymmetry by reducing and reshaping our own consumption becomes central in tackling climate injustice. 

For example, meat and dairy are predominately consumed by the richest countries and regions (China, Russia, the US, Europe, Brazil). Yet, animal agriculture causes 14.5 percent of global emissions, is the main driver of deforestation (cattle and soy production are the top two causes of deforestation with 90+ percent of soy being used in animal agriculture), and 60 percent of total biodiversity loss has occurred due to meat-based diets.

What’s more, cattle ranching and soy farming in Brazil spreads violence and causes the displacement of indigenous forest communities.  

Consciousness raising 

Fourthly, the freedom to consume environmentally harmful object X at the rate and price-point that we do has been/is enabled by neo-colonial trade channels. Trade channels that were and are being dug by powerful imperialist countries and international corporations that use extreme violence to secure natural resources, and that exert soft power to leverage cheap labour and lax regulation.

‘Entitlement’ to consume cheap products is predicated on exploitative politico-economic relations and, as the majority of this activity disproportionately impacts financially poor people of colour who live in industrialising economies, it reveals a racist, classist and Eurocentric attitude to social justice issues.

Lastly, challenging consumptive attitudes by highlighting the environmental and social impact of a productive sector, allows consumers to understand their consumption choices in terms of real-world impact.

If carried out persistently and by trusted public and private actors, the process of engaging with consumers on supply chains will raise eco-consciousness (in the way that European communist artists of the early 1900s raised class-consciousness by producing work that vividly depicted class relations). 

Raising the eco-consciousness of the public raises the eco-consciousness of the electorate, ensuring that the scrapping or capping of environmental policy incurs some political capital cost. A lack of eco-consciousness has previously allowed the Conservative party to obliterate UK environmental policy.

Political capital

To illustrate this, notice that the Tories are currently floating a raft of environmentally friendly policies and proposals through Parliament and into the gaze of the media. This is not because they have suddenly become environmentally conscious, but because they need to recruit the typically environmentally conscious young and woman voters (following the embarrassing June 2017 elections).

Raising the eco-consciousness of every social group will imbibe environmental issues with the political capital to become as pertinent a political issue as the economy (note: economic health is dependant upon a healthy environment). 

If the rate and nature of consumption remains unchanged, it’s hard to see that the structural nature of the productive sphere could be radically transformed. An unsustainable and oppressive consumer culture that fetishizes entertainment and status electronics, celebrates the consumption of meat and dairy, has a casual attitude to the use of disposable products, and normalises frequent flying does not resist capitalist structures. It supports them both financially and ideologically.

We need to accept that our collective current mode of existence is also contributing to the destruction of the planet and the violation of communities who live in production centres. 

By excluding the consumer group from our understanding of the capitalist system, we gain an incomplete understanding of the economic system and climate change, and, as such, incomplete solutions. 

We need to rebalance our narratives in a way that recognises the unabated behaviour of the consumer group as integral to the perpetuation of the capitalist system. In this sense, we may understand the consumer group as part of the problem. As such, challenging the productive capitalist system will need to occur in synchrony with the challenging of archetypal materialist and consumerist attitudes. 

This Author 

Samuel Hayward is the project officer of climate change campaigns at ShareAction. Image: Gary Denham, Flickr. 

Dolphins in the northern Adriatic contain high levels of PCBs – highly toxic chemicals banned in the 1970s and 1980s – and are passing the pollutant to their young, according to new research led by a marine scientist at the University of St Andrews.

An international team of researchers evaluated PCB and other organochlorine contaminants in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) living in the Gulf of Trieste (northern Adriatic Sea), the northernmost part of the Mediterranean Sea and one of the most human-impacted areas in the Mediterranean.

They found that, overall, 87.5 percent of dolphins had PCB concentrations above the toxicity threshold for the onset of physiological effects in marine mammals, while 65.6 percent had concentrations above the highest threshold published for marine mammals based on reproductive impairment in seals. Such high contaminant levels are of concern, particularly in combination with other threats to dolphins, including bycatch in fisheries, disturbance by boat traffic, and prey depletion.

Toxicological burden

The research, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, involved Morigenos – Slovenian Marine Mammal Society (Slovenia), the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews (UK), the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology (UK), the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS, UK) and the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Italian National Research Council (Italy).

Tilen Genov, lead author of the study and a PhD student at the University of St Andrews, said: “We have been studying these dolphins for over 16 years, so we know most of them well. Through long-term re-sighting histories of identified individuals, we were able to link PCB levels in individual dolphins to parameters such as sex, reproductive output and social group membership.

“The research showed that males have significantly higher pollutant concentrations than females. This is because females offload a substantial amount of their toxicological burden to their young through gestation and lactation.

“That is also why females that have not yet had calves had significantly higher concentrations than those that had previously produced at least one calf. Such results are expected based on our knowledge of mammal physiology, but it is not very common to demonstrate this phenomenon in wild whales and dolphins.”

Dr Paul Jepson, co-author of the study and specialist wildlife veterinarian at the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology, said: “This is another study showing high or very high levels of a very toxic and persistent pollutant – PCBs – in European dolphins. PCBs have the ability to cause diseases like cancer and can also suppress reproduction.”

This Article 

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

The national mining industry in the United Kingdom has been in decline for decades, but this is now rapidly changing as the country shifts its industrial strategy, in part to focus on the its own mineral potential – to make Britain a leader in the global technological revolution known popularly as ‘Industry 4.0’.

New exploration and mining projects focusing on minerals and metals used in renewables, electronics, industrial automation and military technology have garnered strong government support.  Existing projects include extensive gold exploration across Northern Ireland and the Scottish highlands, a proposed lithium extraction project in Cornwall and tin and tungsten mining in Devon and Cornwall.

However, the prospect of increasing mineral and metal mining activity in the UK and Northern Ireland looks set to compound and reproduce the social unrest and ecological damage that dog other extractive projects throughout these isles. This three part series for The Ecologist examines the issue.

Tech metals 

A project to explore for lithium in hot springs in Cornwall has received a £1m investment. This is being used for primary drilling in preparation for sampling and production. Government agency Innovate UK has also awarded a £850,000 grant to a project looking for a lithium ‘fingerprint’ in Cornwall from space.

These strategic investments reflect the skyrocketing global demand for lithium – used in batteries for mobile phones and cars – which is expected to triple in the next decade. Lithium mining across the globe has shown devastating environmental impacts.

Hemerdon in Devon has the fourth biggest reserve of tungsten in the world. However, it has been left untapped for more than sixty years.

In 2011, Australian-based mining company Wolf Minerals was granted planning permission and began work to get the Drakelands mine up and running again. The mine made a £43.5 million loss in its first year despite rising global prices for Tungsten ore.

Tin mining  in Cornwall may also be revived, as Canadian company Strongbow Exploration acquired the rights to the South Crofty tin mine in 2016, and plans to reopen in 2021.

Northern Ireland

Across the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland, where mineral resources are mostly state-owned, large areas are now covered by mineral prospecting licences given to global mining corporations. Communities across the nation are organising themselves to protect ecosystems and homes.

The Curraginhalt Gold Project in County Tyrone, owned by Canadian mineral exploration and development company Dalradian, has been publicly framed as “one of the best gold projects on the planet”, with the area holding a projected £3 billion worth of deposits.

Environmental and community-interest groups from the surrounding communities have been fighting against Dalradian’s application to mine, taking the government to court in a public enquiry and mustering over 10,000 letters rejecting the mine.

Local residents are worried that the 25 year project (which would involve unearthing 1,500 tonnes of rock a day) will rip apart their land and ruin the historic Sperrin Mountains. Dalradian plans to use cyanide solution to extract the gold from the crushed ore at a processing facility just one kilometre from the community of Greencastle.

Local people fear that mine waste could contaminate rivers and harm wildlife like otters, salmon and rare freshwater mussels.

High standards? 

In the context of Brexit, extractive industry players are increasingly pushing a narrative that mining in the UK- whether it be for coal or gold- represents a better option than importing minerals and metals from mines abroad, because of the UK’s high environmental, labour and human rights standards, and the employment the industry will create for UK citizens.

The experiences of communities across the UK resisting new coal and fracking operations tell a different story, however, and reveal how the UK is involved in a ‘double-movement’- promoting and perpetuating the extraction of both new fossil fuels and new minerals and metals used in renewable technologies.

The threat of opencast coal mining across Northeast England continues despite the UK government’s ‘Powering Past Coal’ initiative, which promises to close all coal-fired power stations in the UK by 2025. New open-cast coal projects that will offer little employment are opposed by a united front of local residents, campaigners and mining unions.

In Pont Valley, Northumberland, the Banks Mine Group plan to extract 500,000 tonnes of coal from Bradley opencast mine. Banks is also attempting to open another new coal mine in Druridge Bay, Northumberland. Both projects have faced long-term opposition from local communities and are embroiled in court cases and controversy. 

Meanwhile, fracking protesters across the UK have faced criminalisation while reforms of trespass laws and reversal of local authority decisions banning fracking cast a dark shadow over Government and industry claims to uphold and adhere to highest standards.

New mineral and metal mining operations are facing similar resistance, and that resistance is facing similar repression. A case in point is the Curraginhalt Project in Northern Ireland, where in January 2018 land defender Cormac McAleer of community group Save Our Sperrins was arrested for allegedly blocking a highway, before being swiftly released

Global boom

The common dynamics evolving at current UK extractive projects: local community concern, repression of local democracy, regulatory back-sliding and plans for expansion create a disturbing picture of how a future mining boom in Britain might unfold.

These dynamics are echoed in the expansion and acceleration of exploration and mining projects across Europe over the last five years. In Spain, France, Greece and beyond, plans to mine tech metals and rare earth minerals are being met with huge public opposition.

The growing footprint of mining in the UK reflects the Government’s new industrial strategy, which aims make Britain a leader in the global technological revolution. The new technologies necessary to advance the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, require massive amounts of minerals like lithium, cobalt, copper. This has triggered a staggering rise in the price of tech minerals and metals, and a global race for raw materials in which securing competitiveness through domestic supply has increasingly become a priority.

Another priority is to secure supplies of these critical minerals and metals from other nations through aggressive trade strategy. The extraction of minerals and metals from colonial and former-colonial territories has long provided a source of capital wealth and material development for the United Kingdom. With the UK having to develop extensive new trade agreements post-Brexit, the extent to which mining grows in Britain will likely pale in comparison to the expanding footprint of UK extractive activities and the impacts of UK demand in the Global South.

But what might the full ecological, social and climate cost of this industrial shift be? How will Brexit affect the rate of mining resurgence in the UK and beyond? And how does deepening this commitment to extractivism threaten both the speed and just-ness of a transition away from fossil fuels? We will explore these questions further in the second article of the series.

This Author 

Dawn Stevenson is a freelance journalist researching and writing about extractive industries, climate change and the fourth industrial revolution in collaboration with the Yes to Life, No to Mining Network. 

It is increasingly common to decouple the idea of gender from traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. Still, it may be the case that traditional masculinity helps to explain why only 40 percent of the UK’s vegans are men.

However, I think that veganism can in fact help people express their masculinity. It’s time to talk about veganism and men.

We know that these ideas are fraught: Gillette’s latest advert is ample reminder of that. But it’s hard to deny that identifying as a man has long been, and still is, attached to a lot of traditional ideas of masculinity.

Gendered traits

I won’t be arguing that by virtue of being a man, you should be masculine, and therefore vegan. I will instead be arguing that if you feel masculine, then this shouldn’t be a barrier to going vegan. I will be using such terms as “masculine” simply to refer to the traits that society currently sees as masculine, and will not be evaluating whether these traits are exclusively masculine or whether they should be embraced by men.

We have overlooked the many strong links between masculinity and veganism. Here are three.

1. Protecting others from harm

Veganism is arguably an attempt to minimise harm. Vegans are often motivated by the negative environmental impact of animal products, and the suffering animals are put through in now-widespread production methods. Obviously, protecting others from harm is in no way an essentially masculine trait. But from defensive war to stopping one’s son from being bullied at school, men have often seen it as part of their identity to protect others from harm. Veganism allows men to express this.

2. Standing up for a cause

In The Kite Runner, Amir’s father declares that “a boy who can’t stand up for himself turns into a man who can’t stand up for anything”. Whilst again not essentially masculine, historically masculinity has been linked to standing up for yourself, for others, and for the causes which advance their interests. “Speak truth to power” is another phrase which has echoes of masculinity ringing through its syllables.

Veganism is a multifaceted cause, and is championed by all sorts of different people with different concerns: climate change, land use, health, human rights, inequality, animal rights, or animal welfare. Virtually all men care about at least one of these issues. Switching to veganism can help men stand up for what they believe in.

3. Fitness

Veganism has been linked to many health benefits. Fitness is firmly part of the concept of masculinity used in the UK today. The World Health Organization’s classification of many meat products as cancer-causing or probably cancer-causing comes as many male athletes are turning to plant-based diets to offer fresh strength. Boxer David Haye, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, European powerlifting champions and whole football clubs are going vegan, saying that a fresher, plant-based diet is giving them the edge.

Not so fast

My critic – let’s call him Alan – might come back and say “look, there may be some links to masculinity, but what about the overriding masculinity of meat? Meat-eating is natural, strength-inducing, and morally acceptable once we get over our feminine emotions about animals.”

Alan says that “in the past, hunting was the man’s job. Men have hunted animals and eaten meat for millennia. Man’s past dealings with meat make it masculine”.

The first problem with Alan’s idea that meat is natural and therefore masculine is that practically no meat is sourced in a hunter-gatherer fashion. It is typically found, as we all know, in shiny plastic packaging, dissociated from its origin. Or perhaps it is served straight to the customer, dispensing with any risk of having to touch raw meat.

Second, on reflection society actually thinks of masculinity and naturalness as very separate. Society’s alpha male wears a suit. He sports a watch. He drives a car. Suits, watches, and cars are not natural objects. Very little “naturalness” seems required for society to view a man as masculine. If manliness required hunting, basically every symbol of masculinity from the red carpet, silver screen, or gleaming spacecraft is deeply emasculated. But they are not: Brad Pitt and co., whilst entirely divorced from the natural habitat of human beings, are enduring symbols of uber-masculinity.

And thirdly, virtually all men find a natural approach to manliness morally troubling, once they consider what it involves. In nature, things happen which would show a depraved character if performed by people. Men want a masculinity worth its salt in our era, not a form of it that is wedded to some pre-human time. Why think what is natural is always good?

Building strength 

“Alright”, says Alan, “but meat is a bringer of strength. It gives you protein. It is a necessity.”

However, the evidence shows that meat is not necessary for health, sport, strength, or muscle. Actually, if you lift, beans are a better bet than beef. There are diseases and cancers associated with animal protein. 

Sticking to plant-based protein ensures you can have the large amount of protein you want whilst avoiding the cancer risk many animal proteins carry. Beans, chickpeas, lentils, nuts, and peas are coming back, in new and better forms.

Alan still thinks, though, that “the view animals have rights or that their suffering matters gains its traction only from emotion, rather than any form of reasoned argument”.

This claim couldn’t be further from the truth. Veganism is seen as intellectually respectable among those whose job it is to think critically and logically about ethics. It is seen as the conclusion of reasonable argument, rather than something only emotion can produce.

Take a stand

Many people think that animals’ needs present no reason to modify Western diets that rely on factory farms, because pigs and cows don’t matter. At the same time, they think, along with everyone else, that dogs and cats do matter. But there is no logical consistency in the view that dogs must be treated well but pigs may be treated as mere resources.

Of course, veganism might be objectively masculine overall whilst being seen differently. How do we deal with that?

The answer is that such perceptions can be shaken off because they are baseless. They would say more about the insecurities of accuser than the masculinity of the man addressed.

Men can get behind veganism. For those to whom their masculine identities are cherished, masculinity can be expressed through veganism, rather than being hindered by it. Fellow men: take a stand. And if the stand that you decide to take is veganism, that goes hand in hand with the man you are.

This Author 

William Gildea is a campaigns and policy offer at The Vegan Society, whose environmental policy team tweets at @GrowGreenTeam.

Indonesia, the largest archipelago in the world, holds some stunning coastal and deep-water resources. With more than 17,500 islands straddling two oceans, the sea is not only a way of life, but also a source of it. 

Fisheries account for a significant part of Indonesia’s trillion-dollar economy – the largest in Southeast Asia. More than 30 percent of global maritime trade finds its way through the Strait of Malacca, which is among the busiest of international shipping lanes. Tourist havens are seemingly everywhere, from the palm-fringed beaches of Bali, to the abundant shallow-water reefs of the Coral Triangle. 

Managing marine ecosystems is therefore an unsurprising priority for the vast number of actors that have a stake in Indonesia’s coastal economy. At once unexplored and overexploited, the oceans represent neoliberal development’s final frontier. The twin processes of ocean acidification and global warming, and related international political responses further complicate matters. 

Blue economy 

New analysis was recently published in the journal Science, indicating that oceans are heating up 40 percent faster than a United Nation panel of experts predicted in a study carried out five years ago. 

The study further concluded that in 2018, seawater temperatures reached an all time high and were expected to escalate further in the coming years. Theses studies mirror those on land, where combined data from NASA and NOAA show that the five hottest years ever have occurred in the 2010s.  

For many, marine ecosystem management, fisheries management, and climate change mitigation strategy are embodied in a redoubled commitment to the blue economy – the idea that the financialisation of oceans can reap economic profit and save the environment at once. 

But what kind of development does the blue economy seek, and for whom? In Indonesia, small-scale fishers and their communities are holding fast to various manifestations of traditional knowledge that they see as key to ensuring the survival of the seas and of future generations.

Whose Oceans?

The Indonesian islands have long been at the forefront of oceanic policy and development circles, in large part because of their sheer numbers and strategic location. 

One such high-level process held recently was the Our Ocean conference, which took place in late October in Bali. The meeting brought together a large number of powerful actors to debate some of the most pressing oceanic issues: climate change, fisheries, the blue economy, pollution, maritime security, and marine protected areas. 

As is the case in many top decision-making spaces, representatives of governments, corporations, and intergovernmental institutions were given a seat at the table. Notably absent, however, were those closest to the sea – fishers. 

Marthin Hadiwinata, Chief Executive of the Indonesia Traditional Fisherfolk’s Union (KNTI), said: “Policies on marine issues cannot be addressed in the absence of fishing communities who have direct linkages to the ocean”. 

Hadiwinata explained that the issue of marine pollution, for instance, most deeply affects people living around the coastal areas and small islands: “Rather than inviting fishers to share their solutions,” he added, “companies who are involved in mining and other forms of extractive industry that dump their waste into the sea are regarded as corporate partners in cleaning up dirty waters”. 

Blue carbon 

Likewise, climate change mitigation and adaptation projects often turn to the problems that caused the environmental crisis in the first place as a way of responding to it. Take for example Blue Carbon, where, as with other carbon sequestration programs such as REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), polluters are allowed to continue their practices so long as they purchase ‘offsets’ in ecosystems elsewhere. 

Most often, the burden falls on the shoulders of peasant and indigenous rural working communities, converting their crops and gathering spaces into monocultures such as industrial tree plantations.

Blue Carbon applies this logic to mangrove, coral, and seagrass ecosystems, while small-scale fishers who work in these areas are treated as nuisances and prohibited from future access to their fishing grounds. 

Blue Carbon has been championed in high-level policy spaces such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes, as well as through ‘big green’ organisations like the Nature Conservancy. It is currently being pioneered in Indonesia.

People’s movements 

Indonesian social movements and grassroots organisations have long been in the business of carefully protecting the islands’ cornucopia of natural resources. In the rapidly evolving marine sector, fishers are forced to be quick on their feet when putting their solutions on the national agenda. 

KNTI, the small-scale fisher’s movement that is present in nearly all of Indonesia’s 34 provinces, is playing a leadership role in turning the tide of both discourse and policy towards justice and sovereignty for fishers. This task is done at scale, targeting national and transnational political dynamics. 

When word of the Our Ocean conference and its lack of grassroots representation reached KNTI’s members, they were quick to clap back by organising their own participatory meeting: the Ocean’s People Conference. Unlike its ‘official’ counterpart, the parallel meeting reflected the diversity of Indonesia’s small-scale fisheries sector.  

The gathering strategically took place in Jakarta – not just to make it more accessible, but also to shed light on marine mega-projects encroaching on the busy capital. The most notorious of these has been a land reclamation projectsupported by Indonesia’s former colonisers, the Dutch. 

This project has been centred on protecting Jakarta from floods by installing a network of fake islands and a giant seawall in Jakarta Bay. While the Governor of Jakarta finally revoked some of the permits necessary to complete the project – thanks, in large part, to a strategic battle fought at the hands of social movements like KNTI – much of the damage has been done.

Local activists 

Ipah Saripah, a fishworker from North Jakarta, explained that the reclamation issue has profoundly impacted her family’s livelihood: “Even though the reclamation stopped, they’ve already constructed four islands,” she said, “and that development is right in the middle of our fishing areas. 

“We have been bribed, intimidated, displaced, and even tortured to make way for this reclamation,” she added.  

Saripah and other activists from the fishing communities feel that big reclamation projects like the one stalled in Jakarta Bay serve as a blueprint for coastal development in Indonesia. Similar mega projects are being rolled out in other parts of the country, and they are woven together with the common thread of replacing traditional fishing practices with profit-seeking industries backed by big Asian and European capital. 

That’s what the Ocean’s People Conference and related gatherings of people’s movements are attempting to shut down. Ibu Rofi’ah, a representative of a peasant organization in East Nusa Tengarra, Indonesia’s southernmost province, said: “We are not looking for money, but for means to spread our knowledge.”

Ibu Rofi’ah travelled to Jakarta to explain how she played a leadership role when her community put an end to an iron-mining operation. Today she is working with fisheries cooperatives that find themselves in standoffs with corporations in the mining and tourism sectors. 

Movement building

Members of KNTI recognise that their struggles reflect those of fishing communities elsewhere. To this end, the movement is an active member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), a transnational social justice movement dedicated to serving the unique needs of fishers and fishworkers. 

Since the issues affecting fishers have become increasingly entangled – for instance, when climate change adaptation policies meet big capital – WFFP has doubled down on its attack strategies to protect the communities it represents. 

A key part of that is actively promoting the Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines, which is the only comprehensive global governance instrument intended to protect fishers and traditional fisheries. KNTI has been doing this work across Indonesia, and making its demands global through social movement gatherings and even United Nations processes. 

Marthin Hadiwinata said: “Here in Indonesia, we are pushing the government to immediately recognise and protect fishers’ rights. And at the same time, we are building the global movement to resist financialisation and privatisation of the world’s oceans.” 

This Author 

Salena Tramel is a journalist and PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, where her work is centered on the intersections of resource grabs, climate change mitigation, and the intertwining of (trans)national agrarian/social justice movements.

Our edible forest garden experiment in Budapest is part of a doctoral research project on urban agroforestry. It was constructed in partnership with Budapest’s 14th District Council and the social Degrowth cooperative Cargonomia.  

The garden opened with its first tree planting event last November. The event the result of a year’s of work in networking, cooperating with different partners and actors. 

Our goal is to bring together planners, decision makers and experts in agroforestry and permaculture to rethink the use of public spaces in the city and democratise urban agriculture through citizens initiatives and involvement.

Dynamic network 

We met with several researchers in agroforestry, and exchanged ideas with local NGOs whose work focuses on environment and permaculture in Budapest and with local farmers. We also connected our project with a dynamic network of community gardens in Budapest.

In October 2017 we presented the project to local authorities and decision makers and found support for implementing agroforestry in the city of Budapest. 

Agroforestry is an ancestral practice that is being re-introduced in the European rural areas. The practice is based on the ecological interactions between woody perennials and annual plants and breaks with monocultural practice.

The benefits of this practice go beyond performance and yields. The plot is structured to create a resilient and autonomous ecosystem. By valuing biodiversity, the risk of epidemics is lower, diversity of seeds is preserved, water management is more economical and ecological, and the use of pesticides is unnecessary and avoided.

Agroforestry respects the seasons, the cycles of plants and the soil. Food production is then better integrated within the rural landscape and the existing ecosystems. The benefits are also social because this reconversion of land has potential to create new job opportunities and a new era of experimentation.

Overcoming skepticism 

The public forest garden project in Budapest was inspired by several Tropical countries that have maintained a strong agroforestry practice in urban areas and forest garden practices in their homegardens.

In temperate countries, the concept of forest garden was introduced by the English botanist Robert Hart in the 1960s. Inspired by this model, we created a plantation plan with a diversity of endemic plant strata: wide canopy trees, fruit trees, berries, shrubs and vines.

The project was built in consultation with the partners, in particular the municipality. The use of visuals helped in understanding the purposes of agroforestry and presenting a vision. It was useful to overcome skepticism around growing edibles in an open public space: it felt necessary to explain the choice in species, their function in the land, the reasons behind the choice of agroecology principles, the benefits for the users and the prevalent support of the people mobilized behind the project.

The project is also about enhancing the local culture and adapting to the context by including a convivial dimension.

The land allocated by the district was a dried-out wetland in a residential area. It was mainly used by residents to walk their dogs and as an illegal parking lot. Thanks to an in-depth study of the terrain and the context, we chose plants adapted to the micro-environment, which are resilient to urban pollution and to drought, in order to limit the pressure on the ecosystems.

Public space

The garden will host a large variety of species, with free plantation areas for the people. Based on the principles of permaculture, other plants will be chosen according to their benefits for pollinators, their repellent characteristic, and their contribution to airing the soil, the nutrient supply and the retention of water. The project will evolve throughout a number of years.

Another challenge is to renew the ecosystem by planting edibles directly into the ground, without the need for materials, bins or planters, which can be very expensive.

The project was established on a low budget and relies on the networks of know-how and mutual aid, in lines with the philosophy of Cargonomia and based on the principles of degrowth. Accordingly, we did not apply for a grant. Instead, the tools and basic materials are shared between our partners and the neighbors.

With a long-term contract, the project leads to a new appropriation of the public space and another form of governance by the commons.

Ecological transition 

Frequent visitors to the garden felt the space gradually change. We began the plantation with four fruit trees. The mayor and members of his team along with neighbors and local media participated in this first day.

The management of the edible forest is based on spontaneous initiatives and self-management. On the first day the neighborhood participants showed interest in the practice and attachment to the new trees. They brought water to the trees, and a volunteer gave out leaflets that we had prepared about the project.

The next day, one of the neighbors prepared and installed stakes by himself with pride. 

We must adapt and understand the changes of ecosystems, limit loss in biodiversity and prepare for extreme periods in order to balance our climate. Decision makers, planners and landscape architects have the power to allocate public lands as common property. Reducing the consumption of urban spaces to open green and edible spaces reduces our vulnerability to climate change.

Botanists, ecologists, biologists, landscape architects and gardeners have a role to play in ecological transition and environmental education.

City planning 

Through educational programs and consultations with horticultural experts it is possible to plan the city on the basis of natural ecosystems and to support individuals in developing their resources and depending less on market products.

We must rethink cities with a variety of vegetation and public green spaces, and enhance exchanges between the cities and the countryside to reduce the pressures on organic farms and rural agriculture.

Food industrialization should only be used in times of crisis because it consumes more energy and damages biodiversity. This raises the question of the conversion and conviviality of public spaces otherwise used to house parked cars. 

Creating a public edible space enables social emancipation. Gardening creates a spontaneous relationship between individuals: people gather together and meet; the gardens create a space to initiate communication and exchange ideas.

This initiative encourages a new way of appropriating public space. We use simple tools which are better for the soil and the environment but also for the intellect. Manual work stimulates reflection and gives us time to feel and observe, just as hand-drawing allows the artist to discover and create.

We can imagine the public space differently and create another form of occupation; encourage change in land use for an ecological city and social well-being. 

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By supporting the re-appropriation and self-management of spaces, we can open or reconvert spaces and allow users to rebuild their environment, bring services closer and reduce expenses.

We must diversify the functions of public green spaces and vegetation and connect them with greenways and corridors. The connection between these places allows the exchange of resources and services. This pilot project is an experiment that aims to influence city policy. 

The latest and most alarming IPCC report called for an end to deforestation. We think that this also concerns the city, or how to rethink a fertile, organic, autonomous and friendly city. This is vital as we face the collapse of our thermo-industrial civilization, but also we develop new means for living together peacefully, empowering democracy, and supporting relationships between people and the commons.

These Authors

Paloma de Linares is coordinator of the agroforestry project. Vincent Liegey is co-author of “Degrowth Project” (Utopia, 2013) and a Cargonomia coordinator.

The Conservative-controlled Scarborough council has formally declared a climate emergency. It’s the eleventh council in England to do so and joins an international movement that began with the Australian council of Darebin in suburban Melbourne. Bradford recently became the biggest council in England to yet follow suit, just as nearby Kirklees did the same.

At the same time as Tory councillors – following the lead of two Greens – were backing the motion in Scarborough, locals outside a little village called Mission, near Doncaster, were joined by people from across the North and Midlands to show their opposition to a fracking operation that started right beside a Site of Special Scientific interest. 

A little to the east, the people of another tiny community – Biscathorpe, in Lincolnshire – were being arrested. I’m told one of the protestors was a local man in his 70s who’s just had a pacemaker fitted – he had been opposing the proposed extreme oil drilling beside another natural wonder, a rare pristine chalk stream. 

Local government

This week I joined protest groups as Cheshire West and Chester Council and a local campaign group fought to defend a decision, made partly on climate change grounds, to reject iGas’s plan to test a gas well at Ellesmere Port.

Together, these events highlighted the way in which Britain is following the pattern of the US, Australia and Brazil, where local authorities are joining the global push for climate action, while their national government fiddles as the planet burns.

At the climate talks in Katowice last month, Sydney and Melbourne joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance (as did Scottish Power), despite having a national government seeking to push ahead with a scheme for expansion that could wreck the Great Barrier Reef. At the Oxford Real Farming Conference, I heard about how the Welsh government scheme for One Planet Developments is starting to be put into effect.

The demonstrators in Mission Springs, Biscathorpe, and at many other sites around England, demonstrate a key difference between the UK and other parts of the world where local governments have real power and resources. Even the actions of the Welsh (and Scottish) governments can have only limited effects.

In Britain, the powers of local government and devolved national governments are limited, even in the case of the London Assembly, where Green member Caroline Russell led the successful push to declare a climate emergency (the Tories abstained). 

Taking back control 

In Scarborough, the council agreed to aim to be carbon-neutral by 2030, and to bid for £80,000 to fund a sustainability officer work towards that ambition, but that’s about the total of action the council could agree.

Most councils now are so severely stretched by austerity that their ability to take any action beyond their basic statutory responsibilities (decided in Westminster) are severely limited.

The Welsh government was backing the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project, but Westminster effectively blocked it. As the slogan goes, “Lancashire Said No” (to fracking), but distant Westminster casually overrode it. 

That’s a contrast to the US and many parts of continental Europe, where local, regional and other sub-sovereign governments have real power of decision and resources to act on those decisions.*

The powerlessness of local government is one of the reasons why people are right to want to “take back control” in our non-democracy. 

Wider reform

Local communities are clearly committed to action on climate change and just need to be allowed (or to take) the power and resources to act.

That’s also an argument for wider reform. It is noticeable that two of the world’s most climate-destructive national governments – in Washington and Canberra – are two of the countries in the world with the most archaic, non-proportional electoral systems (much like the UK’s) 

Countries with fairer (proportional) voting systems – where the views of parliament reflect those of the people and everyone’s vote counts – are, not coincidentally, those with significantly lower carbon emissions than majoritarian systems.

So if you’re campaigning with Extinction Rebellion, or on the gate at Biscathorpe or Mission Springs, it is worth sparing a little time and effort to back Make Votes Matter.

With a government in Westminster that reflects our views, and truly devolved power in local communities, we can stop having to do battle with faraway MPs, and work together to tackle our environmental, social, economic and educational emergencies together, democratically, cooperatively.

This Author 

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.