Members of campaign group Extinction Rebellion said “the rebellion has to continue” after a “disappointing” meeting with Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
Five members of the group met with Mr Gove and ministers from other departments, including the Treasury, in Westminster to discuss demands for change.
They include declaring a national emergency on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and establishing a Citizens Assembly for people to make decisions and suggest policies. However, they said they were left frustrated with Mr Gove.
Demands
Member of the youth branch Felix Ottaway O’Mahony, 14, from Lambeth, south London, said: “This meeting has been very disappointing, we’ve set no concrete demands, he hasn’t accepted any of our demands, he’s avoided our demands as a whole, he isn’t going to declare a national emergency.
“However, something has to be said for the fact he has recognised there is an issue.”
He added: “He is going to meet us again in a month’s time, which is a step forward that we will now be regularly meeting with political members.
“However, the rebellion has to continue because our demands have not been met.”
Farhana Yamin, 54, a prominent climate change lawyer who glued herself to Shell’s London headquarters during a week of protests, said: “I definitely think he could have taken the initiative to say Defra will show leadership that was necessary for the nation to come together, I was expecting a little bit more.”
Biodiversity
Earlier in the day, another meeting took place, with Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell at Portcullis House, which resulted in Extinction Rebellion being asked to address the shadow cabinet.
The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, concluded with claims some progress had been made.
Former Green Party county councillor for Stroud Sarah Lunnon, 54, who attended the meeting, said: “They gave us a concrete commitment to actually go and talk, McDonnell will ask for Extinction Rebellion to address the shadow cabinet, the shadow environment committee and also the Treasury Committee.
“I think it’s really fair to say the Labour Party are listening to Extinction Rebellion, I think they’ve heard the voices of all those people who got arrested on the streets.”
However, the MP for Hayes and Harlington did not agree to change the date in the Labour Party manifesto, which plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but would consider a new target of 2030.
This came after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that the party will force a House of Commons vote on whether to declare an environmental and climate emergency following mass protests in London.
This Author
Ted Hennessey is a reporter for the Press Association.
Members of campaign group Extinction Rebellion said “the rebellion has to continue” after a “disappointing” meeting with Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
Five members of the group met with Mr Gove and ministers from other departments, including the Treasury, in Westminster to discuss demands for change.
They include declaring a national emergency on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and establishing a Citizens Assembly for people to make decisions and suggest policies. However, they said they were left frustrated with Mr Gove.
Demands
Member of the youth branch Felix Ottaway O’Mahony, 14, from Lambeth, south London, said: “This meeting has been very disappointing, we’ve set no concrete demands, he hasn’t accepted any of our demands, he’s avoided our demands as a whole, he isn’t going to declare a national emergency.
“However, something has to be said for the fact he has recognised there is an issue.”
He added: “He is going to meet us again in a month’s time, which is a step forward that we will now be regularly meeting with political members.
“However, the rebellion has to continue because our demands have not been met.”
Farhana Yamin, 54, a prominent climate change lawyer who glued herself to Shell’s London headquarters during a week of protests, said: “I definitely think he could have taken the initiative to say Defra will show leadership that was necessary for the nation to come together, I was expecting a little bit more.”
Biodiversity
Earlier in the day, another meeting took place, with Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell at Portcullis House, which resulted in Extinction Rebellion being asked to address the shadow cabinet.
The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, concluded with claims some progress had been made.
Former Green Party county councillor for Stroud Sarah Lunnon, 54, who attended the meeting, said: “They gave us a concrete commitment to actually go and talk, McDonnell will ask for Extinction Rebellion to address the shadow cabinet, the shadow environment committee and also the Treasury Committee.
“I think it’s really fair to say the Labour Party are listening to Extinction Rebellion, I think they’ve heard the voices of all those people who got arrested on the streets.”
However, the MP for Hayes and Harlington did not agree to change the date in the Labour Party manifesto, which plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but would consider a new target of 2030.
This came after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that the party will force a House of Commons vote on whether to declare an environmental and climate emergency following mass protests in London.
This Author
Ted Hennessey is a reporter for the Press Association.
Polly Higgins, barrister turned environmental campaigner, was a woman with a mission. And one thing she can’t be accused of is not thinking big enough.
Her aim was simple: to create a new international crime of ecocide – the mass destruction of ecosystems – mirroring the existing international law against genocide – the mass destruction of peoples.
If you’re sceptical about her chances of success, or the impact such a law might have, there’s one person who is taking it all too seriously: John Bolton, US President Trump’s hawkish National Security Advisor, already known in the UK as President George W Bush’s front man, justifying the Iraq war on British TV and radio.
Last September Bolton denounced the prospective ecocide law in a keynote Washington speech, declaring: “In the years ahead, the court is likely only to further expand its jurisdiction to prosecute ambiguously defined crimes.
“In fact, a side event at the Assembly of States Parties recently included a panel discussion on the possibility of adding ‘ecocide’, environmental and climate-related crimes, to the list of offenses within the court’s jurisdiction.
“And here we come directly to the unspoken but powerful agenda of the ICC’s supporters: the hope that its essentially political nature, in defining crimes such as ‘aggression’, will intimidate US decision-makers and others in democratic societies.”
Polly acknowledged the pushback: “But it’s just part of the story about how we move forward. Bolton’s main thrust is anti-ICC. But the US has no standing at the ICC as they are not members. So it’s all just noise and threats. I’m flummoxed about why Bolton even mentioned it. It’s a distraction.”
Not that efforts to frustrate ecocide legislation at the UN have been limited to hostile speeches. There were also mysterious last minute room cancellations at the ICC’s December Assembly in New York, sending bewildered delegates and journalists running along UN corridors to hastily rearranged venues.
Gathering pace
Out now!
The most likely explanation of Bolton’s speech and the UN shenanigans is a simple one: that moves to create an ecocide law are gathering pace, presenting a growing threat to a world economic order founded on the wholesale destruction of nature.
Under the Rome Statute, a new international law is introduced once notified as an amendment to the UN Secretary General by a single state. Once supported by seven eighths of ICC member states, it becomes law. And support among UN states, Polly said, is strong if – so far at least – under wraps.
Not that there is anything easy about the task Polly set herself. Even getting a single state to file the required amendment is a long, hard slog, and specially when you are opposed by the full force of US diplomacy (and dirty tricks).
But she was confident that an ecocide law will be tabled soon. When we met in her home town of Stroud in Gloucestershire, she was about to head off to The Hague to meet ministers from several small island developing states who need an ecocide law as part of their own national self-defence against climate change and sea level rise.
Polly said: “There is a mountain of stuff happening internationally behind the scenes that I cannot go into.” She added that 2019 may prove to be a “watershed year”.
Ecocide law
But why exactly do we need an ecocide law? After all we already have a host of international environmental laws and treaties, for example the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), and the Biodiversity Convention.
“You need to understand the distinction between civil law and criminal law. All these treaties are effectively civil law among states. If one state has a dispute with another over a breach of treaty obligations, it’s a bit like a boundary dispute between neighbours.
“You have to go to court and seek your remedies at your own expense. Your neighbour won’t be prosecuted because there is no crime. That is, unless he takes a swing at you one day and gives you a black eye – then you can call the police because that is the crime of assault. They can be arrested and prosecuted by the state and if they are convicted they can be fined or sent to prison.
“When a crime is committed it ceases to be a purely personal matter. It becomes a responsibility of the state to enforce the law for the protection of society.
Fracking
“So take an activity like fracking. In 2017 I took a road trip through North Dakota and Northern Montana to see the fracked fields and communities. It was like driving into hell.
Huge tracts of land that were once in a natural state are now broken up with nodding donkeys, flares, pipelines, roads, trailer parks … The atmosphere is acrid with the toxic chemicals and combustion products. You can taste it in your mouth.
There was all this infrastructure to allow huge trucks to bring in hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals and water, but the roads were built to collapse the moment they had done their job with ruts and potholes almost big enough to swallow up our car.
It was so shocking it convinced me we must never do it here in Britain. People had to drink bottled water, almost everyone was ill, the doctors were overloaded, and most of them were unpaid volunteers as no one had the money to pay them.
“Indigenous communities have been displaced, forcibly removed from their land, unable to drink the water, with methane coming out of their taps. Signs by the roadside read ‘Help our children not to commit suicide’.
New wells
“Crime had escalated with countless rapes, robberies and burglaries. There were few jobs. Communities were ripped apart – anyone taking a job would be ostracised. Housing prices had collapsed. Flaring was going on day and night. It was truly horrific.
“And yet UK ministers have signed off on it. In the US there are 35,000 fracking wells. And our government announced four years ago that it has an ‘aggressive expansion policy’ to build 45,000 to 60,000 fracking wells in England alone!
“We just don’t have the land! We may not have the geological resource either – but the less oil and gas you find, the faster you have to sink new wells.
“Now those fractured communities may have some scope for civil litigation against the fracking companies. But they cannot stop the activity itself. Going to law is very expensive, if there’s a payout it always too little, too late, and the companies may have gone bust before they ever pay.
“And all the time the business carries on as usual. Civil litigation is not fit for purpose for environmental destruction.
‘Missing law’
Look at the case of Texaco / Chevron in Ecuador. The 30,000 indigenous people in the Amazon that had been poisoned by oil spills and illicit waste dumping actually won their case in Ecuador’s highest courts in 2011, with a $9.5 billion restitution order.
But Chevron never paid up and it looks like they never will. So what we have to do is to go one step above civil law and make fracking, or the impacts we know fracking imposes on communities and the environment, a crime! In a nutshell that is the rationale for an ecocide law.
“With ecocide recognised as a crime it is no longer down to individuals to try and enforce the law in civil courts. That becomes a responsibility of the state and the victims no longer have to pay.
This is what is known as ‘missing law’ – law that is obviously needed but is not there. And where you have missing law you get injustice.
With an ecocide law in effect, corporate offences could be prosecuted, with directors and officers held personally liable; governments would not be able to give out licences or ministers could be prosecuted; finance would not be forthcoming – no one will want to support criminal companies and the banks and financiers would also be liable to prosecution.
Superior responsibility
“In the first RBS meeting after the UK government bailed the bank out and took its 85 percent stake, there was a press conference and the CEO was asked, ‘why are you financing the exploitation of the Athabasca tar sands?’ And he just laughed and said, ‘it’s not a crime!’ That’s what we have to change.
“And we have to go for ‘superior responsibility’ – holding the senior officials, CEOs, heads of state, ministers, directors, to account where there has been a reckless disregard on climate and nature, or even deliberate misinformation.”
The idea for ecocide law first came to Polly at a side-event at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. After she had given her speech someone stood up and spoke of the need for something to stop the mass destruction of ecosystems.
“And I found myself thinking, ‘yes, it’s there for genocide, to stop the mass destruction of people, but not for ecocide.’ And that was the starting point. I spent three months going back to first legal principles, then I submitted a fully written up legal proposal to the UN law committee.
“I naively though they would do something with it. But they did nothing. And then the Guardian somehow heard of my work and asked me to write about it. They delayed publication for a week so I could put up a website, and then it got 28,000 hits that first weekend alone! Sometimes an idea whose time has come can land in a big way!”
Media coverage
On the back of the media coverage triggered by Polly’s Guardian article a journalist dug out a 1996 UN document that called for an ecocide law, that had been supported by over fifty countries.
“But it turned out that just four countries working behind the scenes had caused it to be removed: the US, the UK, France and Holland. The matter was taken up by Dr Damian Shaw and his students at the UCL School of Advanced Studies, who flew out to the UN in New York and found two huge files in the basement that told the full back story.
“We found that serious drafting of an ecocide law had been in progress for over ten years from 1985 to 1996 when it was scuppered. And the fascinating thing was that that my own drafting of an ecocide law actually covered all the same issues that had been identified in those documents, with the addition of ‘climate ecocide’.
“All it needed was a lawyer to put their mind to it, to reach the same conclusions.
“We also found that Russia had protested in powerful terms when the initiative was discarded – and it’s only because they insisted the documents all went on the record that we even know about it today. Also UN staffers wrote up their own accounts of it all in documents that they logged into the basement.
Long game
“Putting together all the pieces the UCL team found that the proposal was the victim of corporate lobbying from four sectors: fossil fuels, agro-industry, nuclear and big pharma, who were being represented by those four countries.”
As well as playing the ‘long game’ at the UN, Polly and her team are working to support environmental campaigners in the here and now.
“We have created our Mission Lifeforce website to build a network of Conscientious Protectors – thousands of people who are prepared to be arrested in defence of our planet against ecocidal activities like fracking.
“Most charges, like obstruction and trespass, attract minimal fines, but we have also seen more serious charges brought against activists – like Public Nuisance which can actually attract a life sentence!
“That makes it essential for protestors to have a strong support network, and to be in a position to defend themselves within the framework of human rights law.
Conscientious Protectors
“The way we see Conscientious Protectors is like Conscientious Objectors in war. They are attempting to protect society at large where the government is not giving that protection. People are becoming CPs as a matter of conscience, because they can’t just stand back and allow the mindless destruction of our air and water.
“Many COs went to prison to establish that principle which is now enshrined in European Convention on Human Rights Article 9, and UN Declaration on Human Rights Article 18. This is a universal right, that you can seek reliance on in a criminal court, to break the law to prevent a more serious crime.
“And there’s an additional purpose in setting up Mission Lifeforce, to raise funds so ministers from Small Island Developing States can make it to these UN and ICC meetings. The small fee people pay to register as CPs creates an international funding pot we can use towards the £50,000 a year cost of delegates’ travel.”
The whole operation still runs on a shoestring, but Polly never let that get her down. “Of course it would be nice to have more money, but then look what we have achieved with next to no money at all!
“We have largely (if not entirely) decoupled ourselves from the idea that money is necessary to make things happen. All our work is carried out pro-bono and these contributions have a cumulative value of millions of pounds!
Political mission
“But yes, there are difficulties. Our mission is a political one so we cannot be a registered charity under UK law, and this means many trusts and foundations won’t contribute.
“WWF have had me in their international HQ talking to their big funders, and they say what I’m doing is great. But no money was forthcoming.
“I have addressed the Greepeace International board of directors and I thought they loved what we were doing. But then it turned out that the grant we were hoping for was blocked by a single board member.”
So will this [2019] be the year when everything changes? “Watch this space. Every year there is an ICC Assembly, one year in New York, the other at The Hague, where the next takes place in 2019.
“If we manage to make a big splash at that meeting then we are on track!” Meanwhile Polly is looking forward to taking a break from it all: “I have my timeline. In a few years I want to be on a Harley Davidson travelling the world!”
Severe illness
This interview was conducted for Resurgence & Ecologist’s current May/June issue. News of Polly’s severe illness, a highly aggressive, fast moving form of lung cancer, reached me as a complete surprise barely a month ago.
When Polly and I had met at her campaign offices in Stroud in late 2018, she was full of life and positive energy, and had so much to look forward to with the growing international success of her campaign for an Ecocide Law.
Even at the time of her diagnosis she continued to feel generally well, troubled only by what seemed to be minor health difficulties. But by that time the cancer had already spread widely through her body and was beyond the reach of modern medical treatment.
That Polly should be struck down in this way at the age of just 50 seemed both inexplicable and profoundly wrong, almost itself a crime against nature.
It was incredibly sad for all who knew and loved Polly, and supported her in work, especially her family and close friends. The ‘good’ news is that she died smiling, on Easter Sunday, taking deep pleasure from news of the highly successful Extinction Rebellion protests in London.
Funeral arrangements
As one friend told me: “She was pragmatic to the end … as attention on her imminent demise made the campaign suddenly take off: ‘If this is what it takes’, she said, ‘let’s go for it!’
“She was tickled pink to see the Extinction Rebellion graffiti on the Shell Centre building last week saying ‘FOR POLLY 💚’… and she went with a mischievous smile on her lips (quite remarkable).”
Within an hour of her passing thousands of ER protestors were celebrating her life and achievements, determined to carry forward her campaign for an Ecocide Law – perhaps it will be known as ‘Polly’s Law’ – to completion.
Polly’s funeral will take place at 10 am on Friday 3rd May at St Laurence’s Church, Stroud GL5 1JL. It will be followed by a procession to the Slad village churchyard where Polly will rest on a beautiful hillside overlooking her favourite local pub, the Woolpack.
Funeral guests are welcome to adjourn there for lunch afterwards. Special instructions from Polly are: NO BLACK to be worn, and organic whisky to be served (her favourite will be available at the pub). Wear comfortable shoes – it’s an easy walk but a good half-hour to forty minutes from the church to the burial. All are welcome.
The government must be put on a “war footing” to tackle climate change, according to a cross-party group of politicians led by former Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Mr Miliband said the UK faced a “climate emergency” and called for a “revolution in political leadership” to tackle what he dubbed “climate appeasement”.
He is helping launch the new Environmental Justice Commission by the IPPR think tank, along with Green Party MP Caroline Lucas and former Conservative MP Laura Sandys.
Biggest threat
The commission proposes to set out “an ambitious and rigorous programme of reform capable of tackling the dual problems of climate change and wider economic and social injustice”.
It aims to focus on how the UK can deliver on pledges to limit global warming and cutting carbon emissions to net zero and is seeking the views of people around the country on the way forward.
This includes looking at a Green New Deal to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs by focusing the entire economy on environmental change, the social injustices involved in climate change, and the UK’s international responsibilities in tackling the crisis.
Mr Miliband said: “We face a climate emergency. Climate change is the biggest threat to our economic and social well-being, and to our national security.
“Politics needs to be on a war footing to deal with this enemy but too often it sends the message that business as usual will do.
Mobilisation
“We need a revolution in political leadership; the problem we face is not just climate denial but climate appeasement.
“This commission brings together people from all walks of life, generations and political parties to bring about the solutions we need.”
Ms Lucas added: “The climate movement has broken into the mainstream, and it’s here to stay. We must now focus on what is scientifically necessary, not what is seen as politically possible.
“Maintaining the status quo is to gamble with the fate of humanity and the prosperity of all who live in this country.
“The environmental crises can only be tackled through a transformation of our whole economy.
“A Green New Deal would mean a mobilisation of resources unprecedented in peacetime to create a fairer, more equal country.”
This Author
Alain Tolhurst is a parliamentary reporter for the Press Association.
The PSOE clinched 29 percent of the vote and 123 seats in the 350-seat congress after campaigning on a sweeping platform of ecological transition
It will need to form a coalition with populist left-wing party Unidos Podemos (UP), which has also called for a decarbonization of the economy. Even then, it will also require the help of regional parties, or the centre-right Ciudadanos, in order to govern.
Commenting on the results, political analyst Pepe Fernández-Albertos pointed to PSOE’s gain of 6.1 percent as “something quite exceptional for a party in government.” At 75.8 percent, attendance was also 9 percent higher than the previous election in 2016.
In October, the government agreed with unions and the industry that €220m will be injected into mining regions over the next decade, boosting retirement schemes and retraining.
Local media described the results as a “triumph” with Socialist vote share nearing 50% in many mining towns.
The pledge to spearhead “a just and sustainable economy” was the first of seven pledges in the PSOE’s manifesto.
The manifesto called for a “Green New Deal”, which it describes as “a new social contract, a new pact between capital, work and the planet”. That means a “maximum efficiency in the use of natural resources” and the development of “technologies that are less polluting and with less impact on biodiversity, especially renewables and the creation of ‘green jobs’ in every sector”
PSOE proposed to overhaul the Spanish constitution to include the “consideration of planetary limits as conditions for economic progress,” along with the precautionary principles and the principle of no-return – in legal jargon, a guarantee not to amend environmental law if this lowers standards.
Renewable energy
Prior to the election, the PSOE had proposed one of the world’s most aggressive climate laws. The legislation committed the government to slash greenhouse emissions to 90 percent of 1990 levels by 2050, ban fracking and end subsidies for fossil fuels.
Since winning a razor-thin majority in June, the PSOE has buoyed a previously embattled renewables sector by scrapping an emblematic levy on solar energy and committing to install 6,000-7,000MW of renewable power every year until 2030.
The conservative People’s Party, which shredded the country’s renewable energy industry during eight years in power, suffered a huge defeat. It’s seat count fell from 137 to 66.
This Author
Natalie Sauer reports for Climate Home News. She has contributed to a variety of international outlets, including Politico Europe, AFP and The Ecologist. This article was first published on Climate Home.
Image: Spain’s finance minister Maria Jesus Montero, industry, commerce and tourism minister Reyes Maroto, justice minister Dolores Delgado García and minister for the ecological transition Teresa Ribera, celebrating Sunday’s election win. Teresa Ribera, Twitter (via Climate Home).
The Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting (CBTH) has called on the UK government to ban the import of lion hunting trophies immediately following the Mail on Sunday’s front-page lead story about Lord Ashcroft’s ‘Operation Simba’.
The group revealed that Britain came 12th equal in an international ‘league table’ of trophy hunters travelling to South Africa to shoot ‘factory-farmed’ lions.
It also said that lion shooting had become more popular with British big game hunters since the killing of Cecil, and that the majority of lions killed by UK hunters are now shot in enclosures in South African ‘canned hunting’ facilities.
Disgraceful industry
Eduardo Gonçalves, founder of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, said: “Britain should hang its head in shame over its role in this disgraceful industry. The government promised to ban lion trophies after the Cecil scandal in 2015 but then reneged on its pledge.
“Lion hunting is increasingly popular with British trophy hunters. More than half the lion trophies imported into the UK over the past decade have come in since 2015 – the year Cecil was killed in Zimbabwe.
“It’s time Michael Gove and the government took action to stop trophy imports and help bring an end to this vile industry.
“Killing lions for fun isn’t just despicable, it’s disastrous for their survival. A staggering 10,000 lions have been killed by trophy hunters over the past decade – about half today’s total remaining population. Lion poaching is on the up throughout southern Africa thanks to the lion bone trade.
“Many people assume lion trophy hunting died out with colonialism when in fact it has been growing in popularity. Lion trophy numbers went up 14% globally between 2006 to 2016.”
Criminal network
Gonçalves continued: “The lion factory-farming and canned hunting industry is the most despicable aspect of an unconscionable industry. Lions are exploited from the very beginning, being taken away from their mothers as cubs when just a few hours old so as to make their owners money from tourists through cub-petting.
“Members of crime syndicates involved in the rhino horn trade are now dealing in lion bones too, and South Africa’s government is happy to do business with them.
While the US Dept of State offers rewards of up to $1m for information leading to the dismantling of crime syndicates involved in the rhino horn and lion bone trade, South Africa has issued Lion bone export permits to people known to be involved in the rhino horn trade.
“South Africa, Vietnam and Lao PDR have become the hub of a murky new international criminal network that rivals drugs, arms and human trafficking.”
South Africa’s lion bone industry – which grew out of demand for a substitute for dwindling tiger bones – is now fanning illegal trade in both lion and tiger bones. Tigers and ‘ligers’, as well as lions, are being quietly bred in South Africa, and without any legal protections.
Political support
Gonçalves added: “Lion skeletons are sold to Chinese dealers in Durban or Johannesburg, then shipped to Asia where the product, once boiled down and bottled, can fetch a market value exceeding US $20,000.
“The South African government says it believes there are over 300 lion captive breeding facilities, but even it doesn’t know. There is simply no oversight or controls. The government there has simply ignored calls by its MPs to close down the industry.
“There are slaughterhouses in South Africa’s Free State Province that exist solely to kill lions for their skeletons in order to sell into the tiger and lion bone trade in SE Asia. At least 400 lions were killed in Free State slaughterhouses in the last year.”
In December 2018, the Campaign to Ban trophy Hunting published an open letter signed by Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and a number of major public figures and conservationists calling for a ban on trophy imports.
Over 160 MPs of all parties have signed an Early Day Motion supporting a ban and calling for an end to trophy hunting.
This Article
This article is based on a press release from the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting.
The Congo Basin in Central Africa is home to millions of different endemic species. It’s the world’s second largest rainforest after the Amazon, with more than 220 million hectares of tropical rainforest.
The Congo Basic is still recognized as an important hotspot for biodiversity, and widely considered as the planet’s second lung. But its forests, like many others, face increasingly important threats: the conversion of forests to industrial agriculture, pressure on wood resources to meet energy needs, unsustainable infrastructure development, rapid population growth, widespread poverty, as well as illegal, unsustainable logging.
Sustainable forest management is our best shot at preventing extinction of local wildlife.
Sustainable solutions
Consumers know very little about the sustainable solutions that exist for tropical wood management and instead think any form of logging is detrimental to the wellbeing of the planet.
Megabiodiversity refers to the number and variety of animal species native to an area. The Congo Basin, specifically, is home to 11,000 species of tropical plants, over 1200 species of birds, 450 mammal species, 700 species of fish, and about 280 reptile species.
The endangered Western lowland gorilla, for instance, is a good example of a species native to the Congo Basin and also a large seed-dispersing mammal, as well as a pollinator. Pollinator animals play a key role in the rainforest – they move plant pollen and seeds, bringing about plant fertilisation and thus insuring the longevity of the forest.
Gorillas specifically need the hot, moist, stable environment of the rainforest to thrive, but its species is seriously threatened. In fact, large apes are often the victims of illegal commercial hunting, which results in their slaughter and shipping around the world as bushmeat and hunting trophies.
But why is forest management so important for the protection of local wildlife?
Synergistic action
Some parks are run by foundations, such as African Parks, with considerable resources. We want to emphasize here the importance of strengthening the synergistic action between national parks and certified forest companies, because they share the same fauna and share the same objective: to maintain wildlife and the forest.
Indeed, animals are very well protected in managed and certified forests (i.e. FSC or PEFC). In the Republic of the Congo, the FSC-certified IFO concession harbours 70,000 gorillas and 4,000 elephants, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
These figures far outweigh those of the neighbouring Odzala-Kokoua National Park, a reserve of similar size.
Each year, IFO takes a rigorously selective approach to harvesting tropical trees in a well-defined area, based on a forest management plan, before returning 30 years later. IFO has put 27 percent of the forest it manages under permanent conservation and protection; in the remaining 73 percent, from which trees are selected, the limited, temporary impact of harvesting continues to allow forest regeneration.
Thus, most of the concession serves as a breeding ground and food reserve for endangered species.
Fair&Precious
Fair&Precious is an umbrella brand for a communication campaign created at the initiative of the ATIBT with support of France and Germany development agencies. It aims to promote forest certification in tropical regions.
By highlighting the virtues of FSC and PEFC-PAFC certifications, ATIBT aims to educate and inform both local communities and key market players.
It is indeed fundamental that everyone is aware of the virtues of these certifications, particularly in terms of regulating poaching and harvesting trees.
Today, if approximately five million hectares of forests are certified as sustainable management in the Congo Basin, we are convinced that this area can be significantly increased thanks to the Fair&Precious communication campaign and the enhancement of FSC and PAFC-PEFC certifications.
This Author
Benoit Jobbé Duval is Executive Director of ATIBT (International Tropical Timber Technical Association), founded in 1951 at the request of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
MPs will vote on Wednesday whether to declare an environmental and climate emergency following mass protests over political inaction in addressing the crisis.
Labour will force a commons vote on the issue, one of the key demands of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement, whose activists paralysed parts of London in previous weeks.
Jeremy Corbyn said he hoped other countries would follow if the UK parliament became the first in the world to declare a climate emergency.
Emergency
The move was backed by 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, who has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for her campaign to tackle climate change.
XR is calling for Government to “tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency” setting out the need for urgent change.
Mr Corbyn praised “the inspiring climate activism we’ve seen in recent weeks” and said it was a “massive and necessary wake up call for rapid and dramatic action”.
As part of their protest, which saw key parts of central London occupied by activists, a small group of XR activists targeted Mr Corbyn’s home by using a bike lock on a fence and then gluing themselves together.
Mr Corbyn said: “For young people, the climate emergency is the cause of their generation. And we in older generations must face up to this seriously.
Net zero
“We have to have a much more focused and serious approach towards climate change and the damage we’re doing to our planet. We want a world for those in countries worst affected by and least to blame for climate change and our young people.
“On Wednesday, the UK parliament will have the chance to be the first in the world to declare an environment and climate emergency, which we hope will trigger a wave of action from parliaments and governments around the world.”
Labour’s policy is for the UK to achieve net zero emissions before 2050, an ambition which falls far short of Extinction Rebellion’s call for a 2025 deadline.
The opposition pointed to official figures showing a two percent reduction in emissions last year, suggesting that a level compatible with net zero emissions would not be reached until 2100.
Andrew Gwynne, the shadow communities secretary, was challenged about the party’s environmental credentials after the Labour-led council in Cumbria backed a new coal mine.
Sparked
On BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show he said “there are technologies to capture the carbon” but added: “We need to make sure there is proper investment in those green technologies going forward.”
“So now I think that yes, dirty forms of energy, it’s a retrograde step,” he said.
XR welcomed Labour’s move and said it hoped the party would “demand the creation of citizens’ assemblies, ending biodiversity loss and reaching net-zero green house gas emissions by 2025”.
The group added: “We ask all MPs and the UK Government to listen to the young people, mums, granddads and scientists who put themselves on the line over the last two weeks to fight for our future and our planet. Now is the time for each and everyone of us to decide which side of history we are on.”
Labour’s actions were praised by Miss Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who has sparked a wave of youth climate protests around the world.
Mass rollout
She said: “It is very hopeful that a major European political party has woken up to propose a declaration of a national climate emergency.
“It is a great first step because it sends a clear signal that we are in a crisis and that the ongoing climate and ecological crises must be our first priority. We cannot solve an emergency without treating it like an emergency.
“I hope that the other UK political parties join in and together pass this motion in Parliament – and that political parties in other countries will follow their example.”
Labour will use an opposition motion to push Parliament to act with urgency to avoid more than 1.5C of global warming, which requires worldwide emissions to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero before 2050.
The motion will call for targets for the mass rollout of renewable and low-carbon energy and transport, properly-funded environmental protection measures to reverse the trend in species decline and plans to move towards a zero-waste economy.
This Author
David Hughes is the chief political correspondent at the Press Association.
The government’s fracking tsar has quit the post after just six months claiming policy around the controversial process means there is “no purpose” to her job.
Natascha Engel told Greg Clark, the secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, developing the industry will be “an impossible task” despite its “enormous potential”.
In a resignation letter to Mr Clark, she said environmental activists has been “highly successful” at encouraging the government to curb fracking.
Energy revolution
Ms Engel penned the letter following two weeks of protests by the Extinction Rebellion group, which brought parts of London to a standstill with demands to cut emissions to zero by 2025.
She wrote: “A perfectly viable and exciting new industry…is in danger of withering on the vine – not for any technical or safety reasons, but because of a political decision.”
Ms Engel complained that a traffic light system which halts fracking when a tremor with a magnitude of 0.5 is recorded “amounts to a de facto ban”.
Critics say the amount of water needed for fracking is bad for the environment and claim it releases dangerous chemicals. They also say Governments should focus on renewable energy.
This Author
Lewis Pennock is a reporter for the Press Association.
The lesser-known plight of endangered Asian elephants is gradually unravelling.
Out-shadowed by their African cousins, the Asian elephant’s fate has been shielded from widespread attention, despite only five percent of their habitat remaining and their numbers dwindling to a measly 10 percent of the population of African elephants.
In three generations, 50 percent of the Asian elephant population has been lost. And now, electrocutions can be added to the exhaustive list of threats contributing to the demise of the Asian elephant.
Numerous victims
Unprecedented deforestation rates wreck forest habitats, box elephants into confined spaces, and force them to encroach upon human territory for food and water.
Coupling this with the illegal trade of their tusks, meat and even their skin, Asia is a treacherous place for an elephant.
India has seen greatest loss from electrocution of these beautiful behemoths…
In September 2015, Kaziranga national park lost a large tusker to sagging power lines; September 2o17, two elephants fell victim to electrocution inside Satkosia Tiger Reserve; October 2018, drooping live wires in Nagaland killed two wandering elephants; October 2018, a group of 13 wild elephants passing through a paddy field in Orissa came in contact with the power line, seven of them were tragically killed – the biggest casualty of elephants in a single incident.
Most recently, in November 2018, a tusker lost his life in the Nambar Nadi tea estate, and another tusker was killed in Sansarasposi village.
These are a small part of a gathering chorus of incidents in which elephants are massacred at the hand of human negligence.
Unnatural death
At last count in 2017, 27,000 wild Asian elephants roamed India; a 10 percent decline from the 2012 census.
High-power, low-hanging cables that barbarically dissect India’s forests and wildlife corridors played a notable part in this decline.
11KV lines have been seen as low as 4ft from the ground and can instantly wipe out these 11ft tall gentle giants.
Biswajit Mohanty, secretary of the Wildlife Society of Orissa, India, said: “Electrocutions have become the second leading cause of unnatural elephant deaths in Odisha.”
A shocking 461 elephant electrocutions occurred between 2009 and 2017, of which over a hundred deaths occurred in Odisha.
Karnataka is another Indian state where electrocutions have overtaken poaching as a leading cause of unnatural death among elephants, with 30 deaths counted in 18 months from 2015.
Deliberate traps
These figures do not solely represent unsuspecting wandering elephants falling victim to sagging power lines alone.
Rather, poachers have harnessed this force by setting up live wire poaching traps – electrocution tripwires – to kill elephants.
Vengeful villagers, whose crops had been destroyed by the pachyderms, have deliberately redirected live wires to fall in the paths of sauntering herds.
It has been estimated that half of all elephant electrocutions are deliberate.
To make matters worse, electrocution often kills in its plenty. Whole herds can be wiped out simply because of their intricate social behaviour patterns.
Encountering a threat, an elephant will alert the group with a distinct distress call, initiating a family huddle in the hope to protect them from any impending danger. Instead, the entire dynasty become fatalities of one single hanging powerline.
Criminal neglect
Authorities are aware, but action is not being taken. Wildlife conservation and energy department officials are at odds.
The energy officials permit the low hanging lines, shrugging off the responsibility that they are the root cause of elephant electrocution. Wildlife conservation teams are powerless.
Despite suggesting several remedies, the pleas are lost in the deluge of other social, political and economic issues that shroud the forests. Ample letters have been written to Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation officials in the last two years over the severity of the issue, but no action has been taken.
The Forest Department of Dhenkanal has been notified repeatedly about 200 spots in the forest that are endangering elephants with sagging power lines. Again, to no avail.
On paper, there are stringent laws protecting India’s heritage animal. Under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, persecuting an elephant carries a prison sentence up to seven years. But in reality, the system is defective. It’s criminal neglect.
Mitigation
These deaths could be easily prevented. Improved regulations for maintaining cables is a must.
Addressing low hanging wires, insulating live wires and investing in stronger, taller poles is required. Shankar Raman, from the National Board for Wildlife, recommends achievable guidelines for a minimum of “6.6 metres above ground on level terrain and minimum 9.1 metres above ground on steeper terrain.”
Monumental pressure from the public needs to be imposed on energy companies.
Sagging wires have played a pivotal role in the Asian elephant’s demise. With their numbers frighteningly low, every individual counts.
If electrocution persists unabated, deliberate or accidental, we will have to say goodbye to these majestic creatures.
Elephant Family
Elephant Family are working to stop the wanton slaughter of these animals.
Through fundraising for various projects in India, such as ‘Human-Elephant Conflict Management’ in the Karbi foothills, local communities are becoming more sensitised to these issues and the prevalence of subsequent violent retaliations against intruding herds is being reduced.
What’s more, the wildlife protection society of India and the wildlife society of Orissa are working with Elephant Family to invest in a database of all low-hanging wires across the state of Orissa so that they can then be rectified.
Sophie Pierce is a creative content producer at Elephant Family. She also has her own website and Instagram @conservation.soph where she regularly likes to post about Rewilding or African wildlife.
