The government has a “ramshackle, Dad’s Army” approach to making sure England can cope with the impacts of rising temperatures, its own climate advisers warn.

And UK action to slash the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate breakdown is lagging far behind what is needed, even before the Government set a tougher new target to cut pollution to zero overall by 2050.

In its annual progress report to Parliament, the advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said the government had to show it was serious about tackling the problem in the next 12 to 18 months.

Curb

And it warned that action to prepare homes, businesses and the countryside in England for a hotter world is “less ambitious” than it was a decade ago.

The committee assessed 33 areas where the risks of climate change needed to be addressed, from flood resilience of properties to impacts on farmland and supply chains, and found there was no good progress in any of them.

The UK is not prepared for 2C of warming, the level at which countries have pledged to curb temperature rises, let alone a 4C rise which is possible if greenhouse gases are not cut globally, the committee warned.

Committee chairman Lord Deben said: “The whole thing is really run by the government like a Dad’s Army.

“We can’t go on with this ramshackle system, which puts huge pressure on individuals, who are reacting well but the system is not fit for purpose, and doesn’t begin to face the issues.”

Embarrassed

More action is needed to prevent overheating in homes, hospitals and schools as the risk of heatwaves rises, to tackle flash flooding from heavy downpours, cut water consumption and protect soils and wildlife habitats in England.

There has also been little progress on many areas for cutting emissions, and the gap between what is being done and what needs to be done to meet existing targets to curb climate change is growing, the committee warned.

A new UK-wide legal target to cut emissions to “net zero” by 2050, which replaces the existing goal of an 80% reduction, has recently been passed by Parliament.

The Government is also set to host UN climate talks in late 2020, and will be “embarrassed” on the international stage if it has not pushed forward with a raft of policies by then, the committee’s chief executive Chris Stark warned.

He said that when they looked at the plans for dealing with climate change, there was a “tale of two governments”.

Citizens

There was “one government prepared to make the big and bold step to set the net zero target in 2050, and that’s a very welcome step”.

But there was “another government that has not yet increased the policy ambitions to match, and hasn’t got a plan for what the science tells us is coming in terms of the changing climate. This is a ‘get real’ moment for them.”

The government must back its net-zero emissions target with a coherent package of measures, including moving the sales ban on conventional cars forward, improving energy efficiency of homes, and planting trees.

Policies need to be business-friendly, as companies will deliver the net zero target, and ordinary people will need to be engaged with what is happening because many of the changes will affect lifestyles, the committee said.

And Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chairwoman of the CCC’s adaptation Committee, said “Citizens, homes, workplaces and critical infrastructure must be prepared for a future with unavoidable climate impacts.

Aviation

“The effects of climate change are already being felt in the UK.”

A government spokeswoman said: “As the CCC recognises, we are the first major economy to legislate for net zero emissions, have cleaned up our power sector, cut emissions faster than any G7 country while growing the economy, championed adaptation and set a strong example for other countries to follow.

“We know there is more to do and legislating for net zero will help to drive further action.

“We’ll set out plans in the coming months to tackle emissions from aviation, heat, energy, agriculture and transport as well further measures to protect the environment from extreme weather including flood protection and nature restoration.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

Pressure on the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) to drop its BP sponsorship has escalated with 78 leading artists – including Turner Prize winners Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Mark Wallinger, Gillian Wearing and Rachel Whiteread – backing a letter calling for an end to the controversial partnership.

The letter urges the NPG’s Director not to renew the contract with BP, to start looking for alternative funding for the Portrait Award and to immediately remove BP’s representative from the award’s judging panel.

The full letter and signatory list can be found here.

Growing controversy

The artists’ intervention is the latest development in the growing controversy around oil sponsorship of culture.

The letter has been spearheaded by artist Gary Hume who, as judge of this year’s BP Portrait Award, decided to speak out publicly against the oil sponsor in June because of his concerns about climate change.

He was joined by eight former winners and nominees of the BP Portrait Award who also voiced their concerns.

This new development comes just over a week after Oscar-winning actor Sir Mark Rylance resigned as an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company over its BP sponsorship deal.

Writing to the Gallery’s Director Nicholas Cullinan on 2 July 2019, the artists point to “BP’s role in furthering the climate crisis, and our collective responsibility to act”, and conclude that “the loss of BP as a source of funding is a cost worth bearing, until the company changes course and enables future generations to make art in a world that resembles our own.”

Social responsibility

One of the signatories, Paul Benney who has painted portraits of the Queen and Mick Jagger, exhibited at eight BP Portrait Awards, been shortlisted twice and won the BP Public Choice award, said: “One of the functions of an artist is to shine a spotlight on society’s inequities and injustices.

“We do this mostly in our work but right now is the time for us to speak out against what and who is contributing to the undeniably critical global climate crisis. I have learnt more about social responsibility from my daughters than from any other source. They have always walked the walk.”

Last month’s announcement of the BP Portrait Award winner at a private reception was delayed when activist theatre group BP or not BP? temporarily blocked entrances to the NPG while artists painted portraits of frontline community activists resisting BP and of several BP bosses. The protest led to VIP guests having to climb over a wall in order to enter the building.

In March, the Gallery rejected a £1 million grant from the Sackler Trust over its ties to Purdue Pharma and the opioid crisis in the US, following a recommendation made by the Gallery’s newly created ‘Advisory Ethics Committee’.

On Monday 1st July, artist Nan Goldin led a protest at the Louvre in Paris calling on the museum to rename its ‘Sackler Wing’. In February, Goldin said publicly that she would not go ahead with a retrospective of her work at the NPG if it were to accept the Sackler Trust’s grant. The retrospective is now going ahead.

Ethical fundraising

The Gallery’s BP sponsorship has not faced similar scrutiny by the ethics committee.

In 2017, campaign group Culture Unstained, advised by law firm Leigh Day, submitted a formal complaint to the NPG alleging that a key clause on human rights in the Gallery’s ‘Ethical Fundraising Policy’ had been breached by the decision to renew its BP sponsorship deal.

The Gallery dismissed the complaint, and its Ethical Fundraising Policy was replaced last year with the human rights clause in question removed.

The Royal Opera House (ROH) also continues to come under pressure over its BP sponsorship deal, with members of Extinction Rebellion holding their second protest in a month on 2nd July.

Last month, over two hundred musicians – including percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, tenor Mark Padmore and composer Nigel Osborne – called on Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to withdraw permission for BP branding to be displayed in Trafalgar Square during ‘BP Big Screen’ broadcasts of ROH performances, arguing that it represented an unacceptable form of advertising.

Increasing pressure

BP has sponsored the Portrait Award for thirty years, taking over from the tobacco giant John Player.

The current five-year sponsorship deal was announced by BP in 2016 alongside deals with the British Museum (sponsoring special exhibitions); the Royal Opera House (to continue sponsoring the annual ‘BP Big Screens’) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (where BP currently sponsors ‘BP £5 tickets’ for 16-25 year olds). The oil firm also cut the amount it spends on cultural sponsorship by 25 percent.

All these institutions are now coming under increasing pressure to drop BP, with the British Museum in February facing the biggest protest in its 260-year history, by activist theatre group BP or not BP?, which opposed BP’s sponsorship of the Assyria exhibition and made the links between BP’s activities in modern day Iraq, climate change, war and colonialism.

A major BP-sponsored exhibition – ‘Troy: myth and reality’ – will open at the museum on the 21st November, and activists have vowed to target it. 

This Author

Brendan Montague is the editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Culture Unstained. 

Image: Dr Stephen Pritchard, Twitter. 

The exhibition Trees, 12 July – 10 November 2019, gives voice to numerous artists, botanists, and philosophers who, through their aesthetic or scientific journey, have developed a strong and intimate connection to trees. 

The ensemble of works reveals the beauty and biological wealth of these great protagonists of the living world, threatened today with large-scale deforestation.

Trees boast sensory and memory capacities, as well as communication skills, exist in symbiosis with other species, and exert a climatic influence. They are equipped with unexpected faculties, the discovery of which has given way to the fascinating hypothesis of “plant intelligence,” which could be the answer to many of today’s environmental problems.

Inquisitive exploration

The exhibition Trees merges the ideas of artists and researchers, thus prolonging the exploration of ecological issues and the question of humans’ relationship to nature, which has been a regular theme in the Fondation Cartier’s exhibition program, as was the case recently with The Great Animal Orchestra (2016).

The exhibit features drawings, paintings, photographs, films, and installations by artists from Latin America, Europe, the United States, Iran, and from indigenous communities such as the Nivaclé and Guaraní from Gran Chaco, Paraguay, as well as the Yanomami Indians who live in the heart of the Amazonian forest.

The exhibit explores three main narrative threads. Firstly, our knowledge of trees, from botany to new plant biology; secondly, aesthetics, from naturalistic contemplation to dreamlike transposition; and lastly, trees’ current devastation recounted via documentary observations and pictorial testimonies.

Orchestrated with anthropologist Bruce Albert, who has accompanied the Fondation Cartier’s inquisitive exploration of such themes since the exhibition Yanomami, Spirit of the Forest (2003), the project revolves around a number of individuals who have developed a unique relationship with trees, whether intellectual, scientific or aesthetic.

For example, the botanist Stefano Mancuso, a pioneer of plant neurobiology and advocate of the concept of plant intelligence, has collaborated with Thijs Biersteker to create an installation that “gives voice” to trees, and through a series of sensors, reveals their reaction to the environment and pollution, as well as the phenomenon of photosynthesis, root communication, and the idea of plant memory, thus making the invisible visible.

Science and sensibility

Another of the great figures who has played a role in constructing the exhibition is traveling botanist Francis Hallé, whose notebooks display both the artist’s wonder at trees and the precision of an in-depth knowledge of plants.

His work is a testimony of the encounter between science and sensibility. At the heart of the exhibition lies a reflection on the relationship between humans and trees, which is also the subject of Raymond Depardon’s film.

It paints the portrait of the plane trees and oaks that shade village squares through the words of those who are familiar with them, and to which many memories, ranging from the highly personal to the his- torical, are connected.

Artist and sower, Fabrice Hyber has planted some 300,000 tree seeds in his valley in Vendée, and offers a poetic and personal observation of the plant world in his paintings, questioning the principles of rhizome growth, energy and mutation, mobility and metamorphosis.

Guided more by the aesthetics of an intuitive collection than by a search for scientific rigor, Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini, on the other hand, composes lush landscapes, organizing the imaginary meeting of trees, borrowed from tropical botanical gardens, and the markers of urban modernity.

Pictorial exuberance

The conceptual and systematic inventory elaborated by architect Cesare Leonardi responds to this pictorial exuberance, in collaboration with Franca Stagi. They have produced a typology of trees, in all their shades and chromatic variations, in a precious corpus compiled for the purposes of the design of urban parks.

The ghostly silhouettes of Johanna Calle’s tall trees evoke with poetry and delicacy, the fragility of these giants threatened by irreversible deforestation.

The drama of the destruction of the world’s great forests, conveyed in particular by the film EXIT by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, comes after the dreamlike world of Paraguayan film-makerPaz Encina who offers an internalized image of the tree as a refuge for memory and childhood.

The garden of the Fondation Cartier, a natural extension of the exhibition, was created in 1994 by artist Lothar Baumgarten. The public are invited to stroll through the trees which, like the majestic Lebanese cedar planted by Chateaubriand in 1823, inspired Jean Nouvel to create an architecture of reflections and transparency, playing on the dialogue between inside and outside, and giving rise to “fleeting emotions.”

Nestled in the vegetation, a discreet double of nature, retaining the trace of the artist’s hand on its trunk, Giuseppe Penone’s bronze tree sculpture finds its place in the garden of the Fondation Cartier.

Anthropocentrism 

Also on display is a sculpture by Agnès Varda, specially imagined for this project.

Finally, for a week in the fall, the Theatrum Botanicum will become the natural support of a video installation by Tony Oursler.

This exhibition restores the tree to the place from which it had been stripped by anthropocentrism.

It brings together the testimonies, both artistic and scientific, of those capable of looking at the vegetal world with wonder and who show us, to quote philosopher Emanuele Coccia: “There is nothing purely human, the vegetal exists in all that is human, and the tree is at the origin of all experience.”

This Author

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from Fondation Cartier, Paris. 

Image: Salim Karami, Sans titre, 2009. Courtesy of the Galerie Polysémie, Marseille, France. © Salim Karami.

The guards were carrying pistols and clubs and they looked ready to use them. They were barking out questions to the forestry service official that stood in front of them. What do you want? What are you doing here? Who are your companions?

I was standing a few feet behind the man from the forestry service and the guards kept looking in my direction. One of them had his hand on his gun. 

This is an edited excerpt of Stephen Davis’s new book, Truthteller.

We were on a remote road at the entrance to a mine in Jamari National Forest in the province of Rondonia, Brazil. My companions were forestry officials and I was there carrying out an undercover investigation.

Under cover

I was a member of the Insight team of The Sunday Times and investigating the involvement of governments and corporations in the destruction of the world’s rainforests. We had been tipped off that the oil giant BP owned a mining operation that was damaging the Amazon. 

I’d gotten in contact with Mauro Leonel at IAMA, a non-profit that investigates anthropological and environmental issues. He made contact with a group of forestry officials whose job it was to protect the forest and knew which mine was causing damage— the Santa Barbara mine in the Jamari National Forest, owned by a subsidiary of BP.

Some forestry service men agreed to take me there and try to talk their way in under the guise of an official inspection. Still, local people warned me that even the forestry service was often prevented from investigating the mines; the mining companies had the money, political power, and the guards and guns.

I was dressed as a forestry service official but spoke no Portuguese. At all costs I had to avoid answering questions.

My cover would be blown and if they searched me they would have found my hidden camera and notebook.

Opencast mines

To my surprise, after an initial objection, we were permitted to drive though. Once inside, I was astonished. What had once been lush rainforest had become a moonscape of cratered, opencast mines.

Trees lay felled while others were shriveled and coated in dust. Holes up to 100 feet deep had been dug and large amounts of soil were being dumped haphazardly, silting up one of the main rivers.

No attempt had been made to repair the damage by replacing topsoil or replanting. The forestry official couldn’t believe his eyes. Mauro explained that big companies had determined the region’s public policies for decades.

The country had been run by a military regime from 1964 to 1985, and the 1980s became known in Brazil as the lost decade. Brazil had to borrow money from the International Monetary Fund and the exploitation of natural resources through mining were used to offset the country’s huge debts. 

There was a bitter irony to what was happening to the forest. A multimillion-dollar advertising campaign was underway by those operating these mines to convince their western customers that conservation was their creed. BP was going green.

Burying the truth

Back at the London headquarters of BP, I sat across from an impressive line-up of executives: senior management, public relations personnel, a lawyer, and a geologist. The setup seemed designed to intimidate, six against one.

I had prepared for the meeting, organizing the notes based on what I’d actually seen and discussed with local officials first-hand. On their side of the table, surrounded by employees with impressive sounding titles, stood surveys, maps, studies they had commissioned, and other official-looking legal papers with an alternative interpretation of the facts.

It was a common tactic used by large corporations faced with awkward questions, burying the truth beneath the paperwork.

Since monitoring land use in the wilds of the Amazon was not an exact science, the amount of rainforest that had been destroyed was being disputed. The mining company claimed the total amount directly cleared for opencast mining was 13,500 acres, but a survey commissioned by the World Bank estimated that the damaged area amounted to 220,000 acres.

The executives, when questioned about whether the balance between commerce and conservation was being achieved in their mining operation, replied that they held the legal rights to exploit the area two years before forest protection was established. The argument amounted to this: we were there first and it is up to the Brazilian government to sort out any conflicts.

Consequences

Meanwhile, the Brazilian government reacted to our story. But they didn’t attack the mining company or The Sunday Times.

A letter from Mauro Leonel arrived two months after my story was published, reminding me that serious journalism has consequences —it is never just a story. The forestry service officials were being accused of incompetence by the government. Their jobs were under threat.

Whereas Western media companies will generally defend their journalists, sources on the ground do not have that level of support. When I tried to reach out to the men who had helped me, I got no response.

All I knew when I started the investigation was that BP owned a mine – under the name of an unknown subsidiary – somewhere in the Amazon.

It is highly unlikely that any major media organization would mount such an expensive investigation now based on such scant information.  But the damage is still being done. 

Truth suppression

Much of the blame for the current predicament lies with the increasingly successful use of truth suppression, made easier by our short attention spans. 

In the years after our groundbreaking investigation, the destruction of the rainforest became a major story, but governments and corporations know that if they just wait long enough, the media will move on.

All these years later, deforestation in Brazil is reaching a record high. In 2018, Brazil’s supreme court upheld a law reducing rainforest protections, enabling landowners to reduce the percentage of forested land while allowing cultivation closer to areas particularly subject to erosion.

The Amazon is still essential—and it still needs our help—but as long as it remains old news, money is the only green thing in sight.

This Author 

Stephen Davis worked for The Sunday Times in both London and Los Angeles and was news editor and foreign editor of The Independent on Sunday. He has been a war and foreign correspondent, a TV producer for 60 Minutes and 20/20, and a documentary film maker for the BBC and Discovery. 

Stephen’s latest book, Truthteller: An Investigative Reporter’s Journey Through the World of Truth Prevention, Fake News, and Conspiracy Theories is shedding light on news corruption worldwide and is available wherever good books are sold. 

A pair of beavers introduced to a forest in North Yorkshire in a “revolutionary” trial to combat flooding have become parents.

The two kits have been captured on camera, swimming and interacting with their mother, at their home in the Forestry England site at Cropton Forest.

Their parents were moved from Scotland earlier this year as part of the five-year trial to assess how they will interact with man-made dams in the area.

Dams

Cath Bashforth, ecologist at Forestry England, said: “We are all very happy to see the arrival of two healthy kits.

“With beavers being very social animals, the family unit will live together. It is fascinating to watch them explore their surroundings and they are quickly learning from their parents. I’m really looking forward to watching them grow and bond as a family.”

The Eurasian beavers were once native to England but were hunted to extinction in the 16th century.

The mammals can bring huge benefits to people, wildlife and plants by building dams and digging canal systems, creating large areas of water-retaining wetlands, which reduce flooding downstream.

Benefits

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) licensed the original beaver pair to be moved from Scotland to Cropton Forest – where communities have suffered severe flooding in the last 20 years, including a flood in 2007 which caused around £7 million of damage to homes and businesses.

Forestry England described the move as “a revolutionary trial in natural flood management” and said it is hoped that the beavers will maintain existing man-made dams and create their own, potentially reducing the impact of flooding locally.

It is also expected that the beavers’ activity in Cropton Forest will improve biodiversity in their 10-hectare home.

The animals will be monitored throughout the five-year project to assess the benefits they bring to the ecosystem.

This Author

Amy Murphy is a reporter with PA.

Sir David Attenborough will appear before MPs to face questions about climate breakdown.

The naturalist, 93, is giving evidence to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee on Tuesday.

Sir David is expected to be questioned on a range of issues relating to climate breakdown and the country’s ambition to have net-zero emissions by 2050.

Disaster

The veteran broadcaster is expected to be asked about his views on public engagement and public perceptions of climate change, the ecological impact of global warming, and the benefits and costs of the transition to a low-carbon economy.

It comes after his surprise festival appearance on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage to introduce a trailer for the BBC’s new series Seven Worlds, One Planet.

Sir David’s views on climate change are well known.

In April, he warned of a “man-made disaster on a global scale” and a “devastating future” if action is not taken in the BBC documentary Climate Change: The Facts.

Annihilate

He said: “Right now, we are facing our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change.

“Scientists across the globe are in no doubt that at the current rate of warming we risk a devastating future. The science is now clear that urgent action is needed.”

Earlier this year he called on the international community to come up with a climate change plan at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Speaking alongside the Duke of Cambridge, he warned that humanity needed to act so that it did not “annihilate part of the natural world”.

This Author

Henry Vaughan is a reporter with PA.

Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP and the government’s Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference champion, released European eels into the Thames to highlight the plight of the endangered species.

The number of eels reaching Europe has declined by 90 percent since the 1970s and the species is now classified as critically endangered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

This population decline can be attributed to habitat destruction and man-made barriers, such as weirs and dams, with the vast illegal trade of European eels undermining species recovery.

Illicit trade

300 to 350 million European eels are illegally trafficked every year from Europe to Asia, accounting for almost one quarter of the total number of glass eels (juvenile eels) entering European waters every year, according to Europol. The illicit trade has been estimated to be worth approximately €3 billion every year

Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Richmond Park and Kingston North and a former editor of The Ecologist, commented: “It is shocking to hear that at least 300 million European eels are trafficked every year.

“It is the greatest wildlife crime on the planet by value, air miles and volume but the least well known. It is therefore vital that we speed up progress on tackling this illicit trade.

“I must praise Andrew and the Sustainable Eel Group on the work they are doing to help with the recovery of this precious species, most noticeably their collaborative approach to tackling this shocking wildlife crime.”

Andrew Kerr, Chairman of the Sustainable Eel Group, said: “The European eel has been declining for at least a century and very rapidly for the 30 years to 2010 – so much so that it was listed as critically endangered.

“However, at the 2019 SEG Conference it became clear that a turning point has been reached and conservation efforts are having a positive impact. This is the first sign of hope and we must now redouble our efforts to save the eel.”

Flagship operation

The eel release follows on from a world exclusive press conference held last week at SEG’s 10 Year Anniversary Event with Europol, UK National Wildlife Crime Unit and Spain’s Nature Protection Service (SEPRONA).

Revealing the latest update on the counter trafficking of the endangered European eel, Europol enforcers announced that 15 million endangered European eels have been seized so far this 2018/2019 season, with 153 arrests across the EU. This is a 50 percent increase in arrests for this illegal wildlife crime since last season. 

Jose Antonio Alfaro Moreno from EUROPOL said: “This is our flagship operation in terms of environmental crime. All the arrests mentioned are in Europe with the majority from Spain, France and Portugal.

“The main actions have been taken from SEPRONA, they have led the way in Europe along with the Portuguese and French authorities. However, there are also 5 ongoing criminal cases in the USA carried out by the US Fish and Wildlife Service involving the illegal import of eel meat coming from Asia containing DNA of the European Eel. 

“Glass eels are trafficked out of the EU, put into eel farms in Asia and then sent back to the US, Canada and the EU which is how we can track the DNA. The development of this technology being used in monitoring the DNA of the eel has allowed us to prove that the European eel is coming from Asia. We have also collaborated with the EU Enforcement Group and the EU Food Fraud Network.

Criminal networks

Jose continued: “The people arrested in Europe are poachers, mules and members from other criminal networks. We have focused not just looking at trafficking glass eels as a single issue, but the wider criminal networks.

“Year after year, more countries are joining our actions. For example, this year we are carrying out more work in Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland and Macedonia.

“For the next season, we want to follow the line of the inquiry into eel meat production in Asia and DNA traces. With this, we expect more countries to get involved with high ambition for action.

“The criminal groups learn and develop their methods, so Europol need to stay one step ahead.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the Sustainable Eel Group. 

Image: Isabella Gornall, Twitter. 

Lush showcases the impact of direct ingredient sourcing on suppliers and their environment by pursuing sustainable approaches along Lush products’ manufacturing and shipping cycles.

These approaches seek to significantly reduce carbon emissions and now include the use of a traditional sailing ship to deliver cork pots on a four-week journey from Portugal to Poole, Dorset in the UK.

Their new cork pot is sourced from Portugal and can be used to store a packaging-free shampoo bar. The solid shampoo bar is equivalent to three 250ml plastic bottles of liquid shampoo and represents a zero-waste option in each one daily hair care routine.

Regenerative solutions

With around 25,000 species, the cork oak biotopes in the Mediterranean area are one of the most diverse in Europe.

In Portugal, cork trees absorb up to 5 percent of the country’s CO2 emissions. The bark can be harvested by hand every nine years after a thirty-year growth period.

No machine is able to handle this job, and it is therefore an important source of traditional employment to 100,000 people in the region. The number one export bestseller around the world is the traditional cork used for bottles. A short video about the harvesting and production process can be found here. 

In 2016, Lush’s buying team was searching for a regenerative solution to store its shampoo bars and contacted the non-profit group Eco Intervention. The group teaches locals how to preserve these native forests.

Eco Intervention created the company Cork Connections and began to supply Lush with Cork Pots from Portugal’s Alentejo region. Lush pays five Euros for each sold cork pot to support local suppliers in preserving local wildlife.

Traditional method

After selecting the cork supplier in Portugal, Lush wanted to go a step further and also reduce the product’s carbon footprint along its entire production cycle and especially during its shipping phase.

Lush commissioned a sailing boat in 2018, which brought one tonne of salt from Portugal to Dorset after a four-week journey. This traditional shipping method is still one of the most sustainable, which encouraged Lush to use it for the second time in 2019.

Agnes Gendry from the Lush Ethical Buying Team worked closely with her colleague Nick Gumery, Creative Buyer for Lush Packaging, on the project.

Agnes has more than 20 years of experience in various fields of international Buying. She said: “The message is quite simple: there is no time to waste, we absolutely all have to address the current environmental situation. We all have to be conscious, determined and imaginative and constantly looking for ways to reduce our impact.” 

Two years ago she came across an experimental business involved in reviving sailing as a means to transport goods. From this, she then contacted a Dutch ship and organised the transport of one tonne of salt from Portugal to the UK in 2018.

Non-motorised shipping

Agnes continued: “Obviously it is faster and much easier logistically to use a conventional ship rather than a sailboat. However, in an era of increasing environmental degradation  it is crucial to look at all possible solutions to reduce our environmental footprint.

“More than simply being a beautiful and nostalgic way to transport goods, sailing could be an emission-free alternative well worth revisiting. We hope to be able to have more sail ship deliveries over the next twelve months, and to start integrating this positive handling of freight into our regular practices.”

Nick Gumery, has worked for seven years as a creative buyer, specialising in 100 percent Recycled Plastic, Glass, Aluminium and Cork. He believes in Cork as one of the best regenerative materials: “The Cork Pot is a great working example of Regenerative Packaging. A piece of worry free packaging for our customers, who can use it again and again and at the end of its life, place it in their garden or compost heap and nature will recycle it and in doing so add nourishment back into the soil.

“The message I would most like to convey with this action is the Carbon Message – making our customers aware of the importance of a product’s Carbon Status and Life Cycle Assessment.”

Restoring landscapes

Lush engages on many fronts in its efforts to boost greater environmental awareness. Since 2016, the yearly Lush Spring Prize supports regenerative projects, awarding over £200,000 to grassroots projects.

A winning project of the latest Spring Prize (May 2019) is also located in Portugal. Verdegaia is based in Vigo, Galicia’s largest city. In late 2017, a catastrophic wave of forest fires desolated Galicia and Portugal, killing over 120 people and burning over half a million hectares.

The Brigadas deseucaliptizadoras (or ‘De-eucalyptization Brigades’) is a grass-roots, environmental activism project that emerged after this.

Eucalyptus is a highly invasive and pyrophile species that has been encouraged for decades by the pulp industry. Eucalyptus monocultures create a ‘green desert’ with extremely reduced biodiversity, pushing back native forests to small fragmented patches.

After the fires it was clear that direct action needed to be taken instead of waiting for the government to lead change. Over 400 volunteers have signed up as brigade members, participating in more than 25 interventions since April 2018.

The Brigadas show how people working together can bring about change in restoring landscapes and natural habitats and have transformed general pessimism regarding change into engaged participation.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from Lush. 

Environmental campaigning is a product of internal strategy and tactics, the careful use of limited resources, the strength of political will, the characteristics of the individuals and organisations involved and, in turn, their willingness and ability to co-operate for shared aims.

As if balancing that recipe wasn’t challenging enough, activists must also deal with the accidental and random events that are derived from the broader social context of their work.

These broad and interrelated factors combine and interact to shape a totality that plays out as a victory or a defeat, and can be seen as constituent parts of the ‘ecology’ of campaigning. Lessons can and should be learned from all elements of a campaign’s ecosystem, but where a victory is achieved and morale is raised there are even more reasons to highlight and share the experience.   

Destructive project

On the southern fringes of my home county of Gwent, there is an artificial landscape that borders the Severn Estuary. This area, reclaimed from the salt flats by the Romans initially, is like no other in Wales – the Gwent Levels is dominated by over 800 miles of slow-moving water bodies (locally known as ‘reens’) that fizz with life, ancient grazing marshes and meadows, rare species like water voles and otters, and big, big skies.  

For a generation, this amazing landscape with its unique wildlife, human communities and archaeology, has been threatened by a motorway plan designed to circumvent Newport and speed the flow of traffic along the M4 corridor (by 10 minutes!).

The first attempts at delivering this destructive project were knocked back by economic and political factors, but like all such ‘zombie’ schemes, the motorway kept coming back to life.

In its latest iteration – the Black Route – the level of political, economic and media support for the motorway plans were greater than ever. And yet, despite a Planning Inspector’s report in favour of the motorway and in spite of Welsh Government spending £114million on preparations and legal work, the Black Route M4 was dismissed by the Welsh Government First Minister, Mark Drakeford, on 4 June 2019.  

How was such a victory achieved against the well-resourced advocates of the ‘business-as-usual’ pro-road lobby, and what lessons can we learn? Plans are afoot to draw together the detailed lessons from the campaign and these will no doubt appear soon. But four major issues punctuate the general ecology of this victory, and these are transferrable to all campaigns for ecological sanity.

Principled resistance

In the first instance, the campaign demonstrated the importance of principled resistance.

Campaigners and organisations faced criticism from pro-road parties, including some consultant ecologists, for rejecting pragmatic collusion with Welsh Government on schemes for habitat mitigation and so-called biodiversity offsetting.

The ecological stakes for the Gwent Levels were simply too high for that discourse to be undertaken with any credibility. In many instances developers and governments are already required to produce ecological impact assessments and mitigation plans, and employ legions of private ecological consultants to assist in that process.

Where the threats to biodiversity are severe – a growing trend as with the Gwent Levels – it is surely incumbent on environmentalists to resist rather than adapt to unnecessary developments of contestable economic or social benefit.

Apart from anything else meaningful alliance with local communities requires transparency and consistency if the impression of ‘back room’ dealing is to avoided. 

Broadening campaigns

The campaign also revealed an important central lesson for environmental campaigns at all scales, from the local to the international.

Namely, that they should join forces and forge alliances along united fronts for sustainability in order to maximise their impact and share their skills and resources. If the M4 campaign had focused on separate sectional interests such as wildlife impact or public transport, then its effectiveness would have been undermined.

By broadening the campaign along the general lines of sustainability, important links were forged between issues such as climate change, sustainable transport and biodiversity loss. 

The benefits of this broader approach meant that campaigners were able to pull-in a wider range of organisations and, especially, expert witnesses into the Public Inquiry and extend its duration to eighteen months (the longest in Welsh history).

But it also meant that campaigners could point out the contradictions between motorway building and the declaration of Climate Emergency by Welsh Government that followed weeks of street activism by Extinction Rebellion across the country. 

Progressive legislation

In the post-2015 phase of this battle, campaigners were heartened by the introduction in Wales of a Well Being of Future Generations Act, and its associated Environment Act. This legislation carries at its heart the most environmentally-aware definition of sustainability, as laid down by the 1988 Bruntland ‘Our Common Future’ Report.

Whilst the inclusion of ‘economic sustainability’ has introduced ambiguity into international discussions on sustainability since the late 1980s, we were still able to highlight the contradictions between ecological damage from motorway building and the spirit, if not the legal interpretation, of the new legislation.

This argument was made even sharper when Welsh Government’s own Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe, gave detailed counter arguments against the motorway.

The development of progressive environmental legislation should be seen as vitally important for campaigners but it is not enough in itself. Words are cheap, and ambiguous concepts such as sustainability can be watered down in action.

But the lobbying that produced such in Wales, coupled with energetic campaigning within the Welsh Parliament/Senedd (by people like James Byrne) meant that the campaign was able to hold legislators under the spotlight and help the First Minister and other progressive politicians support the courageous decision to cancel the M4 Black Route.    

Intrinsic value

The collapse of the M4 Black Route plan is a clear and extraordinary victory for biodiversity conservation because of a crucial and profound clause in Mark Drakeford’s First Minister’s Report:

“… I attach very significant weight to the fact that the [M4 Black Route] Project would have a substantial adverse impact on the Gwent Levels SSSIs, and their reen network and wildlife, and on other species and a permanent adverse impact on the historic landscape of the Gwent Levels”.

So, irrespective of the ‘economic case’ – the affordability or otherwise of a £1.6billion road scheme under ‘austerity’, or the merits of the Planning Inspector’s Report – the Gwent Levels has been saved because of the intrinsic value of its landscape, wildlife and human community associations.

On reflection, the campaign was at times scrappy and imperfect, but we must see this victory for what it is. Every single UK road atlas published in 2019 featured the dotted line of the M4 Black Route and, in some cases, its estimated completion date – such was the confidence of the road lobby.

Radical hopefulness

The CBI and their political allies tried everything to force through their fallacious argument that more roads means more jobs. In direct monetary terms the Welsh Government spent £114million on preparations for the scheme and the Public Inquiry, and the campaign spent about £50,000.

That divergence of resources, that inequality of arms, means that campaigners spent roughly 0.044 percent of Welsh Government’s expenditure (although we received many thousands in legal pro-bono time too).

In other arenas of life such glaring inequality in a struggle would paint our campaign as akin to insurgency– proof, if proof were needed, that those whose causes are existential punch well above their weight and their ‘radical hopefulness’ can shape the ecology of struggle in ways that make up for their meagre resources.

This victory for ecology has inspired many, many people – from the beleaguered staff of Wales’ statutory environmental body (Natural Resources Wales), to the many naturalists and environmental campaigners across the UK and beyond who face similar struggles and just presumed from history that we would lose.

Whilst the establishment will be left with only two lessons to consider (did they spend enough, and did they have enough political power over government), we campaigners and activists have the advantage of democratic partnership, and we can use victories such as the Gwent Levels campaign to explore lessons and improve ourselves for whatever ecocidal iterations of neoliberal ‘development’ come next.

As Aimé Césaire, the Francophone poet from Martinique, pointed out, “There is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory”.

This Author

Ian Rappel is a conservation ecologist. He is also a member of the Beyond Extinction Economics (BEE) network. You can read the first article in this series here.