Nature’s ecology is a beautifully complex, interlocking network of species that depend on each other for survival. If one part disappears, it has a knock-on effect on the entire system.

We are in a period of mass extinction and biodiversity is reducing at an alarming rate both globally and here in the UK. It is a crisis. The culprit? Human activity.

The loss of biodiversity in the UK is particularly apparent on British farms, where it has fallen drastically. According to Defra’s own figures, farmland birds declined by 56 percent between 1970 and 2015.

Ancient woodland

It is estimated that this is a loss of at least 44 million individuals, particularly affecting the lapwing, cuckoo and turtle dove, as well as many types of once-common butterflies.

One of the reasons for this staggering drop in the number of wild species, from insects to birds, is due to the grassy monoculture that dominates large swathes of the British countryside, especially in upland areas.

There is field after field after field of grass, all identical and described by Guardian journalist, Michael McCarthy, as akin to ‘green concrete’. This is because these barren grasslands have a similar damaging effect to covering the land with concrete – a huge reduction in the number of species that can thrive there.

The idea that some areas of British countryside, especially upland areas, are only suitable for grazing livestock is simply untrue. These areas were once home to ancient woodland, teeming with life.

Rewilding projects could transform our uplands, helping to foster new life in these grassy deserts, whilst also sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and helping to prevent lowland flooding.

Heritage

The uplands are where most of our rain falls and increasing tree cover allows the water to penetrate the soil more easily. When land is kept bare for grazing, the water cannot permeate due to the loss of deep vegetation and compacted soil, caused by grazing livestock.

Research suggests that reforesting just 5 percent of the land reduces peak floods by around 29 percent, whilst full reforestation would halve them.

It is often claimed that these pasture lands are part of our British heritage, so should not be changed. Lake District poet, William Wordsworth, famously described England as a ‘green and pleasant land’, and many of John Constable’s paintings depict the quaint grassy hills of the uplands.

No good art, poetry or culture has ever come from trees, forests or woodland, you say? Nonsense – tell that to Rudyard Kipling (The Way through the Woods), A. A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh – The Hundred Acre Wood) or Romantic painter William Turner (Brook and trees).

Increasing woodland in the UK does not detract from our heritage, it enhances it. Woodland cover has decreased over the centuries for a variety of reasons, with agriculture playing a huge part.

Zero carbon

Today, woodland makes up just 13 percent of UK land, compared to a European average of 35 percent. This makes the UK one of the least wooded countries in Europe.

The fact is, we desperately need more trees. Not only to tear up the green concrete that has been spread all over our countryside, but to have any hope of meeting our climate emergency targets. This is supported by Harvard research, which indicates the necessity of large-scale rewilding of pasture land to meet the Paris Agreement global heating targets.

Modelling shows that if all current pastureland was repurposed for rewilding, UK agriculture could meet the necessary greenhouse gas emission cuts required to stay within 1.5 C degrees of heating.

Further modelling shows that if all the crops currently grown for animal feed were repurposed as crops for human consumption, we could also grow enough of a diverse array of crops here in the UK to meet all our nutritional needs.

Now that the UK government has committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, rewilding on this scale is essential.

Plant protein

This isn’t going to happen overnight, but it needs to start soon if we are to have any chance of averting the biodiversity and climate emergencies. Policy support and legislation will be key to this process, enabling it to happen in the tight timeframes we have left.

The draft Agriculture Bill is currently floating around Westminster in a Brexit limbo, along with many other progressive ideas. This draft legislation is encouraging, especially the principle of ‘public money for public goods.’

This marks a departure from previous policy (the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy), where financial support was linked to the amount of land owned.

Where the ‘public money for public goods’ approach differs, is that it offers subsidies linked to ‘public goods’, which include animal welfare and environmental protection.

Clearly, growing plant protein crops (like pulses) or planting trees, has much better environmental outcomes than grazing ruminant livestock, which produce very high levels of methane gas – a powerful greenhouse gas, approximately 25 times more powerful than CO2.

Disaster

You would think that this would be reflected in the legislation, however there is no mention of this in the Bill, and the Environmental Land Management Scheme – still in development in Defra currently – also doesn’t appear to factor this in.

The Vegan Society has been calling for agricultural subsidies to be weighted towards less environmentally damaging practices, like rewilding and plant protein crop production, to encourage these activities.

Our Grow Green campaign is also calling for policies that make it easier for animal farmers to transition towards more plant-based agriculture.

A package of support for current livestock farmers who wish to transition towards these more environmentally friendly practices would certainly make this easier. Support like this could be decided upon in consultation with farmers but should at least cover the initial capital start-up costs.

Much needs to be done to prevent ecological disaster in our green and pleasant land. Many areas need wholesale revolutions to stop the trend towards extinction. One thing is certain – we need to break up the green concrete paving the way to ecocide in our rural areas.

This Author

Mark Banahan is campaigns and policy officer at The Vegan Society. He tweets at @Mark Banahan. If you would like to learn more about veganism, sign up to the 7-day challenge here.

Wildlife conservation charities are teaming up to force the government to keep its pledge to ban imports of trophy hunting.

The UK allows body parts of animals killed by trophy hunters as long as the importer can show there has been no detrimental impact on the endangered species, and the trophy has been obtained from a “sustainable” hunting operation.

The Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting (CBTH) reports that trophy hunting has risen in popularity with British hunters since the shooting of Cecil the lion in 2015.

Momentum

For the three-year period before the killing of Cecil, the number of lion trophies taken by British hunters was 27, but this rose to 64 in the three years following the controversy, the organisation found.

In 2015, the government said that it would ban imports of lion trophies following international outcry over Cecil’s death.

However, it has not yet taken action, and in April, environment secretary Michael Gove told the BBC that the issue was a “delicate political balancing act”, and that he had been advised by wildlife charities to “be cautious” in following other countries such as France, the Netherlands and Australia in outlawing imports of animal bodies killed for sport.

Gove invited wildlife charities including the CBTH, Born Free and Lion Aid to a meeting in May to discuss the issue. Siobhan Mitchell, campaign director at the CBTH, said that they had been expecting a ban on imports of trophies from canned lion hunts, where the lion is bred in captivity specifically to be hunted, since even the pro-hunting groups attending the meeting opposed this form of hunting. However, they had heard nothing since, she said.

“We want to keep up the momentum on this,” she said, adding that Born Free, Four Paws, Lion Aid and Voice of Lions were some of the groups that CBTH was to collaborate with.

Further discussions

In a statement, the environment department (Defra) said that any policy decisions must be based on robust evidence, adding: “The recent roundtable showed the strong desire on all sides to ensure wildlife is conserved, but also underlined the many opinions on the best way to achieve this.

“The secretary of state will hold further discussions on this critical issue to ensure we find the right solutions.”

An Early Day Motion calling on the government to ban imports of hunting trophies has been signed by 170 MPs from all political parties. Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who tabled the motion, said that the idea of people wanting to kill wildlife for fun as the world goes through an “extinction event”, where populations of animals have plummeted by 60% on average since 1970, was “beyond belief”.

“The import of hunting trophies makes a mockery of the UK’s reputation as a nation of animal lovers,” he told guests at a Parliamentary event hosted by the CBTH.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

International Development Secretary Rory Stewart has pledged to put climate and the environment at the heart of efforts to improve lives around the world.

At a speech in London, Mr Stewart promised to double his department’s spending and efforts on tackling climate change and protecting the environment.

He announced that £193 million will be spent on research and innovation to reduce emissions and help communities in developing countries adapt to climate change.

Water

Funding will help poorer countries boost their economies in a climate-friendly way, for example piloting the use of small electric vehicles such as tuk tuks and motorcycle taxis known as boda boda in Kenya and Rwanda.

Along with the Met Office, the Department for International Development (DfID) will also be supporting research and technology innovation to improve modelling of African climate systems and weather to help countries, communities and farmers plan for future extremes.

And funding will help poor farmers withstand climate shocks and benefit from “climate smart” agriculture to allow them to grow crops that are more nutritious, resistant to disease and better able to withstand floods or drought.

Mr Stewart’s speech comes after the Government pledged that all UK aid spending would be in line with efforts agreed under the global Paris Agreement to tackle climate change and its impacts.

Weird

He pointed to a recent trip to Jordan where he found that in some places there is barely enough water for people to wash, new bore holes at refugee camps are already running dry and farmers cannot return to their land and crops because of a lack of water. He also saw a solar farm providing cheaper electricity than oil or gas alternatives.

“In one day I saw the immediate effects on people’s lives of climate change – farmers uprooted and refugees struggling – and the very real possibility of a carbon-free future, that is also good for people’s pockets.”

Mr Stewart said sustainable development was not about numbers but about values, and that DfID had a moral purpose to help communities tackle poverty and climate change and protect their local environment.

“If we can get it right we can imagine international development, climate and the environment as a single thing, not a series of weird trade-offs between pro-poor action on one hand and carbon neutral action on the other, but an integrated approach.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

The National Trust has announced an end to any investment in fossil fuel companies, as part of efforts to protect the natural environment.

The trust, which generates heat and power from renewable technology such as hydropower, wood fuel boilers and heat pumps, said it will also look for investments in green start-ups and portfolios that benefit the environment.

The charity has just over £1 billion invested in the stock markets and uses the returns on its investments to help look after the coastline, countryside, stately homes, castles and gardens in its care.

Insufficient

It had already moved to ensure that no investment was made in companies which get more than 10% of their turnover from extracting coal for power stations or oil from oil sands.

But now it is “divesting” the remaining 4% of its current portfolio which is invested in fossil fuels.

The National Trust is one of many organisations including charities, churches, pension funds, companies, governments and individuals who have sought to shift investment away from polluting fossil fuels to tackle climate change.

Globally, campaigners at the Divest Invest movement estimate that organisations with assets totalling £7 trillion have made the shift.

Many organisations have been working hard to persuade fossil fuel companies to invest in green alternatives but those firms have made “insufficient progress”, Peter Vermeulen, the charity’s chief financial officer, said.

Commitment

The majority of divestments will be made within 12 months, with the process completed within the next three years, he said. The charity does not expect the move will have a negative impact on financial returns.

National Trust director-general Hilary McGrady said: “Returns from our investments are vital for helping us protect and care for special places across the nation.

“They enable us to look after the natural environment and keep our membership fees affordable to the millions of people who are part of our organisation.

“The impacts of climate change pose the biggest long-term threat to the land and properties we care for and tackling this is a huge challenge for the whole nation.

“We know our members and supporters are eager to see us do everything we can to protect and nurture the natural environment for future generations. This change is part of our ongoing commitment.”

Plastics

New measures by the National Trust also include establishing a long-term goal to continue to reduce the carbon footprint of its investments,and increasing engagement with the companies it invests in to make them improve their environmental performance.

The Trust describes itself as Europe’s largest conservation charity, and looks after 780 miles (1,255km) of coastline, 613,000 acres (248,000 hectares) of land, and more than 500 historic houses, castles, monuments, gardens, parks and nature reserves across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Mr Vermeulen said: “We want to protect the environment by becoming more energy-efficient. In the last four years we’ve created our own green heat and power through the design and build of heat pumps, hydro schemes, solar PV and wood fuel boilers.

“We’re also exploring farming and land management methods that reduce flooding, help clean water supplies and restore wildlife, while at the same time offering innovative ways to deliver new revenues into farm businesses.”

The charity also plans to phase out single-use plastics from its shops and substantially reduce it in its cafes by 2022, Mr Vermeulen said.

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a direct action group organised on a global scale. The main target of their protests is are national governments who have demonstrated extreme inaction in the face of climate breakdown, despite stark warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

XR campaigners recently brought parts of London to a standstill for almost two weeks. Actions have included gluing themselves to trains and organising roadblocks, as part of a planned “Week of Rebellion” in April 2019.  

The Metropolitan Police Service arrested over 1,100 protesters and are aiming to refer their cases to prosecutors for conviction. Yesterday plans were announced for a “summer uprising”.

Domestic extremism

Tensions between climate campaigners and governments are rising across the world. The Polish Government banned members of the American group 350.org from entry, perceiving them to be a “threat to national security” . 

Meanwhile, in Australia, thirteen XR protesters were removed from a sit-in at the lower houses of Parliament, while forty animal rights activists who chained themselves to vehicles at a busy intersection were arrested. 

Australian PM Scott Morrison derided the activists as “green criminals” and “un-Australian”.

The choice of rhetoric in these two cases resonates with the nebulous term “domestic extremism”, used here in the UK. 

This article reflects on what role the police will play as this new wave of climate activism becomes more prominent and as climate breakdown progresses. Historical and contemporary criminology can help us predict this role. 

Policing order

The police are primarily conceived of as crime-fighters, but another core function is “order maintenance”. 

This means maintaining public order through minimising disruption in the daily life of a society in the broadest sense or in a more localised sense, such as making sure there is no unreasonable disruption on a city street. 

However, scholars like Mark Neocleous, Peter K. Manning or Jean-Paul Brodeur, deem the maintenance of order not merely as a sense of quietude or peaceful busyness of “law-abiding” citizens. It can also mean the maintenance of a certain politico-societal orthodoxy, either directly through political policing or indirectly through the management of localised protest against governmental policies. 

Brodeur points out this function of the police from its early incarnations in Tsarist Russia and Napoleonic France. It is an expression of the State’s Weberian capacity to maintain the monopoly on legitimate violence within its territorial boundaries. 

Even the inception of the British Police in 1829, with the Metropolitan Police Force Act, attracts radical accounts such as from Mike Brogden, who points out its role in regulating nineteenth Century industrial labour and working class movements, as well as intervening in labour disputes between employers and labourers. 

Colonialism and class

The expansion of the police force is an important co-development of the capitalist state, as it’s responsible for disciplining the expanding urban populace and workforce. 

Postcolonial accounts of policing argue that before the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829, prototype forces such as the Irish Peace Preservation Force or the private police force of the East India Trading Company point to colonial disciplining of the populations of the colonies as another influence on the policing of the working class of the metropoles. 

It is telling that in his history of the spread of policing to the Northern English provinces post-1829, historian Denis Storch quoted the contemporary moniker of the police officer as “domestic missionary”, who regulated and suppressed working class pastimes like cock-fighting, dog fighting and gambling. 

This ‘domestic missionary’ broughty ‘enlightenment’ and ‘order’ to the ‘uncivilised’ working class populationsm as with the local populace in Ireland, Africa and Asia.

We see this kind of policing of workers in revelations of undercover police sharing data on strikers with private building companies, and getting them blacklisted from the entire construction industry in the 80s. 

Undercover infiltration

Revelations have also emerged of undercover police officers engaging in relationships with environmental activists, fathering children with women campaigners before disappearing without a trace.

Famously, Mark Kennedy was working with the National Public Order Intelligence Unit when he infiltrated environmentalist direct action groups and formed sexual relationships with campaigners under false pretences. 

After the arrest of 114 activists in advance of a suspected sabotage of work at a Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, some of them suspected that Mark Kennedy had substantial involvement in planning the action. 

Suspicions were also raised over the Special Demonstration Squad in the 1980s and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit as to whether they functioned as agent provocateursduring the 1987 firebombing of a Debenhams. The bombing was tied to an SDS operative named Bob Lambert who was embedded with an animal rights group. 

The police also utilise direct enforcement of the law and overt restraint and arrest of campaigners. 

Physical violence

Environmental activists have often been on the sharp end of political policing. 

There were major inquiries around the use of large-scale kettling in the middle of the London and the death of a member of the public, Ian Tomlinson, after he was struck with a police baton.

Jackson, Monk and Gilmore have written on the direct police repression of resistance to fracking in the North West of England. 

Fracking formed a key part of energy policy of the then Conservative-Liberal coalition, despite fears of impacts such carbon-intensive resource extraction presents for local people in terms of health and environment. 

The land was privatised and physically enclosed, which was met with resistance from social movements. 

Focusing on one enclosure in Barton Moss in Salford, Greater Manchester, the authors argue that the non-violent direct action of these groups were met with 200 arrests on the part of the Greater Manchester Police. Accordinly to Jackson, Monk and Gilmore, children, pregnant women, the elderly were among those arrested, and female protesters were assaulted and sexually harassed. 

Disruption and collapse

Maintaining ‘public order’ also involves regulating street-based protest. 

The police do this with the stated aim of ‘balancing’ the rights of democratic protest and the rights of the users of the city and to minimise disruption.

This is popular in terms of the everyday practicalities of living in and using a city, but it also maintains a status quo that inflicts on those more powerless sectors of society. 

Earlier radical accounts it focussed on class contradictions and social inequalities. Today the carbon intensive economies of the developed world present a danger to the global climate. 

The regulation of environmental protest will result in order being maintained in the name of upholding the hum-drum routines of urban transport, business, commuters and residents, but will be complicit in the disorders of anthropogenic climate breakdown. 

Imbalance

There are several different scenarios suggested for the near-future. These range from warning of the collapse of human civilisation in 50 years, to the more restrained analyses of the IPCC, to the suggestion that those who live in the Global South will need to flee increasingly deadly climate conditions. 

This latter scenario will result in the West further closing its gates and iron-fastening its walls to those fleeing imminent death. We see this already in ‘Fortress Europe, and the growth of far-right xenophobic movements in the US and Europe. 

Maintaining the status quo throws out of balance the conditions for necessary human life in vast swathes of the globe. These are not immediate considerations for the police, as they say: 

“Throughout the course of today, Thursday, 18 April, we will have had more than 1,000 officers on the streets policing the demonstrations. This is putting a strain on the Met and we have now asked officers on the boroughs to work 12-hour shifts; we have cancelled rest days and our Violent Crime Task Force (VCTF) have had their leave cancelled.

“This allows us to free up significant numbers of officers whilst responding to local policing…the protesters need to understand that their demonstration is meaning officers are being diverted away from their core local duties that help keep London safe and that this will have implications in the weeks and months beyond this protest as officers take back leave and the cost of overtime.”

Social character

While the police may be correct in their summary of the immediate disruption that is caused, Extinction Rebellion are correct in focussing on the imminence of climate overshoot. 

The twelve-year limit on avoiding climate collapse should be the utmost priority of political systems and may warrant severe civil disruption to force this on the agenda. The recent Parliamentary declaration of a climate emergency now needs action. 

Willing arrest for peaceful direct action is part of XR’s theory of change.

Extinction Rebellion are engaging in “crimes” or “disruption” but these hold what the historian Eric Hobsbawm called a “social character”, in that “….they expressed a conscious, almost political challenge to the prevailing social and political order and its values”. 

This approach has caused consternation on the part of other radical voices that point out the possibility of activist fatigue on its members, and the fact that potential ‘arrestables’ do not sit on a level playing field: there’s more at stake for a working class protester or person of colour in interacting with the police and carceral justice system. 

Social harm

The police cannot resolve the massive structural and civilizational changes that XR agitates for. 

In future protests the can rely on established tactics such as ‘dialogue policing’, innovated in the wake of anti-austerity protests and controversies over scenes of police enforcement. These tactics have also attracted suspicion from protest movements as an extension of intelligence gathering, especially in light of revelations from the Undercover Police Inquiry. 

A more fruitful path may lie in the discipline of criminology, where there is a move away from talking about “crime” and more focus on “harm”. 

This refers to the damaging actions of more powerful actors, who cause much more harm through their seemingly ‘orderly’ actions than those who are the regular targets of the police, courts and probation service. 

Likewise the petty criminality and disruption of groups like XR legitimately stresses the urgency of the real catastrophe facing us from climate breakdown. 

This Author 

Dr. Aidan O’Sullivan is a lecturer in criminology at Birmingham City University. His PhD focused on how the Metropolitan Police Service policed anti-austerity protests in London. He tweets @aidanosu. 

The Camp Fire was the most damaging wildfire in California’s history, ravaging infrastructure as well as human life.

The fire in 2018 coincided with several of the hottest years on record. But as scientists began drawing the connection between burning countrysides and global climate change, many were left wondering: what’s the reason for the connection — and what does it mean for us in the long term?

Given that we’re heading into “wildfire season” — although scientists are now saying wildfires have become a year-round problem — it’s worth taking a look ahead at what is in store for us. 

Climate assessments

As the average temperature across the globe climbs, trees and forests become drier, more brittle, and less able to withstand the conditions that give rise to wildfires.

It’s not a secret that the leadership in America right now wants little to do with climate action. Nevertheless, bodies within the present administration continue to release National Climate Assessments unabated.

The most recent and most comprehensive assessment arrives at several conclusions and lays out several consequences: factories, automobiles and other sources of greenhouse gases cause climate change and make wildfires more likely, more frequent and more destructive; we will see a greater frequency of fires measuring 12,000 acres or more in the near future; wildfires, while once a quintessentially “western” problem in the US, will become a wider and more urgent concern.

The most recent National Climate Assessment drew on existing research to build its case, including a study that modelled wildfires under current conditions and under conditions without anthropogenic climate change.

In the “no human warming” model, fully half as much forested areas succumbed to wildfires than burned in the “human-caused warming” model.

Self-fulfilling prophecy 

Additionally, the annual season during which wildfires occur is growing ever longer. Certain areas of the country are now on fire watch well into November — a historically unheard-of month to watch for wildfires, when they tend to peter out in August or September.

Scientists point to warmer winters in much of the country, which reduces the amount of snowpack in mountainous areas. This is unfortunate, because it reduces the amount of available water in the area come spring and summertime.

That means a higher risk of wildfires in areas that previously experienced them only rarely, thanks to the abundance of snowpack in the mountains.

Unfortunately, the news gets even worse. The relationship between the warming of the planet and the frequency and geographical distribution of wildfires is a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.

As climate change makes wildfires more frequent across a greater area, extreme wildfires will precipitate climate change in turn.

Vicious cycle

Published research indicates that of all the carbon emitted by the state of California between 2001 and 2010, two-thirds of it came from just 6 percent of the land that burned during wildfire events in that period.

California’s ecosystems in fact became net emitters of carbon emissions, since some forested areas and grasslands released more greenhouse gases than they removed from the atmosphere.

Similar research suggests that, as a result of this vicious cycle, forests are having a harder time rebounding and restoring themselves after major wildfire incidents.

Scientists have witnessed a sharp decline in the number of forested ecosystems returning to full functionality between the 1990s and today. What this means for the nature and makeup of these ecosystems is something of an open question.

What happens to a forest when it can’t regenerate? The answer could be that it becomes shrubland, grasslands or something else, according to professor John Abatzoglou of Idaho University. The truth is, we don’t really know what happens when forests reach that point on a such massive scale.

Social awareness

What can we do about this perilous cycle through social campaigns and legislation?

Californians can voice their concern at the ballot box. A survey of California voters by Action for Wildfire Resiliency indicated that 80 percent of citizens want state laws to acknowledge and provide action plans for the increased risk of wildfires and how climate change influences that. 

As a result, Action for Wildfire Resiliency has organized a grassroots campaign to compel the state legislature and the governor to take action in the form of new laws.

These laws would hold utility companies to higher standards when trimming brush and accounting for other fire risks, build newer and higher-tech weather monitoring stations, increase state investments in emergency response services, improve worker training programs for frontline responders, form a wildfire recovery fund, create a cleaner electricity grid and much more.

It’s worth repeating that the situation in California could soon be the situation in much more of the country. The Californians who lost their homes and lives during the Camp Fire found themselves facing a situation most of us don’t want to imagine — but we all helped to create it. 

Now that we know the stakes, let’s make this one of the last annual reminders that wildfire season only stands to get worse the longer we leave the health of our planet to chance.

This Author

Kate Harveston is a vegan health and sustainability writer and the editor of women’s wellness blog, So Well, So Woman.

Climate activists Extinction Rebellion (XR) is urging supporters to sign up to action in five UK cities over the summer which will be “as large, if not larger” than its April protests in the capital.

Action will take place in Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds and London from 15 July. Each site will see different action, for a different amount of time, but all will demand that the government acts immediately to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025, XR said.

In June, the government signed a target to bring the UK economy to net zero by 2050 into law, following analysis by its advisors, the Committee on Climate Change, that the previous target of an 80% reduction could be beaten.

Weak commitments

The new action follows protests by the group in April, which bought parts of London to a standstill and led to Parliament declaring a climate emergency.

But an email from the organisation states that despite this, national and local governments were still not acting with the seriousness or urgency required. “Instead, they are making weak commitments, encouraging ecologically damaging projects and taxing sustainable alternatives.

“Britain’s own food security is at risk whilst marginalised communities within the UK are already paying the consequences and widespread water shortages, famine, extreme weather and conflicts caused by dwindling resources are becoming commonplace in the Global South,” it continued.

The summer action has been codenamed “project mushroom”. “Just as mushrooms spread their spores, we want to show the UK Government how we are growing and spreading after our London Rebellion,” the organisation stated.

XR is also planning to protest outside the French embassy in London on Friday, following use of pepper spray by the French police against its protestors in Paris last week.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76. To find out more about the summer action, click here.

Countries from across Asia are convening in Melbourne this week to negotiate the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a trade deal that would impact almost half of the world’s population, including Thailand, Indonesia, China, India, Japan, Korea and Australia.

Trade deals seem to be impenetrable and remote aspects of international legal systems that are disconnected from local and national realities. But in fact the opposite is true.

Trade and investment profoundly impacts local and national issues, and can undermine basic human and environmental rights and key principles of democracy.  

Corporate profit 

The RCEP focuses on trade and investment liberalization, intellectual property rights, services, competition policy – much like other trade agreements. 

It would influence how governments regulate our economy. The talks go on behind closed doors and lack democratic oversight, so the resulting deal is likely to put corporate profit before public interest. 

Leaked documents show that the proposed RCEP trade deal includes a mechanism called the Investor-State Disputes Settlement (ISDS).

ISDS is, in essence, a corporate court system in which companies can sue countries when they consider that government decisions or national court rulings impact on their profits. 

New research from Friends of the Earth International/Europe, Transnational Institute and Corporate Europe Observatory has uncovered the human impact of these corporate courts, in which governments have been sued for US$623 billion in almost 1000 ISDS cases. This is equivalent to more than four years of the combined global spending on Overseas Development Assistance for poverty reduction.

Environmental protection

In the rice paddy fields of Thailand, local farmers accused a gold mine of leaking toxic waste, causing serious health problems and ruining crops. The Thai government responded by suspending the mine, and later halting all gold mining in the country, while a new mineral law was developed.

But in 2017, instead of compensating the local communities for the harm caused, the Australian mine owners, Kingsgate, sued the Thai government for millions of dollars in compensation. They used the ISDS mechanism that was included in the Free Trade Agreement between Australia and Thailand.

The dispute between Kingsgate, environmentalists and local peoples, who say they had been negatively impacted by the mine, stretches back many years.

In 2010, villagers took the company to court for failing to mitigate damages and for obtaining mining permits illegally. The court ruled that the mine had indeed breached environmental protection laws, and ordered the company to submit an Environmental Health Impact Assessment.

Operations were later suspended at the Kingsgate mine in 2015 for several months, amidst ongoing environmental protests and medical tests which found that hundreds of people living near the mine had high levels of toxic substances in their blood. The company itself acknowledged problems with dust, contaminated water, noise, and cyanide management in its own reports, and researcherscriticised its “lack of true community consultation”.

Democratic procedures

Environmental problems at Kingsgate’s mine occurred after violence had erupted at another controversial mine in the country, the Loei Gold Mine, when over 300 armed, masked men attacked and beat up villagers who were blocking access to the mine.

These problems in the gold sector led the military junta who were ruling the country to halt all gold mines nationwide in 2017 “due to their impact on locals and the environment”. While human rights groups welcomed the closure, the law used in the process has also been criticised, as they empower the Prime Minister to issue any order arbitrarily without following legal and other democratic procedures.

Kingsgate hit back with threats of a multimillion-dollar international arbitration lawsuit. This threat seemed to have paid off. In 2017 the Thai government agreed to lift the suspension on the mine’s operation, which in turn led to a steep rise in the company’s share price.

Yet Kingsgate has not re-opened the mine. Instead it filed the ISDS case under the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement claiming expropriation and seeking damages of an undisclosed amount. According to the national media, the ISDS claim could be worth US$900 million, a figure the government has denied.

Toxic water

While the Australian government views ISDS cases like this one as defending the national interest abroad, it is, rather, a way for corporations to entrench their power at the expense of local communities.

Rather than engaging with national research institutes, the precautionary principle or the local community’s knowledge, the case will be decided by three investment arbitrators, applying narrow investment law in a secret back room process.

The arbitrators’ decision could impact the entire country through the precedent it sets for regulation in Thailand. And while the ISDS case is ongoing, the company has reportedly not rehabilitated the mine that was leaking toxic substances into water sources.

This is not an isolated example. New research has uncovered how afterColombia’s Constitutional Court banned mining activities in a sensitive ecosystem which provides drinking water for millions of Colombians, Canadian mining company Eco Oro sued the country for US$764 million in damages.

When Croatian courts cancelled illegal permits issued for a luxury golf resort in the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia was hit with a US$500 million compensation claim. Romania is defending itself from a shocking US$5.7 billion claim by Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources, after the country’s courts declared the company’s proposed toxic Roşia Montana gold mine illegal.

Accountability

The growing number of corporate lawsuits has raised a global storm of opposition to ISDS and the corporate trade agenda more broadly from across the political spectrum. Two countries party to the RCEP trade negotiations, Indonesia and India, have started to reform ISDS by cancelling Bilateral Investment Treaties.

Yet, as the RCEP is a regional trade deal, if ISDS corporate courts are finally pushed through in exchange for increased market access, it will likely be locked in for years to come.

Given the current global trade wars, governments seem fixated on rushing headlong into new agreements.

Rather than more of the same failed corporate trade models, we need a new trade policy that enables communities and states to hold investors and corporations accountable for their damaging environmental impacts and human rights violations.

The RECP negotiations in Melbourne will test governments’ capacity to look after the environment and their citizens. 

This Author 

Sam Cossar is a campaigner for economic justice at Friends of the Earth International and a co-author of the new report ‘Red Carpet Courts: How the Rich and Powerful Hijacked Justice’. He tweets from @samcossar.

Image: Roengrit Kongmuang. 

Countries from across Asia are convening in Melbourne this week to negotiate the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a trade deal that would impact almost half of the world’s population, including Thailand, Indonesia, China, India, Japan, Korea and Australia.

Trade deals seem to be impenetrable and remote aspects of international legal systems that are disconnected from local and national realities. But in fact the opposite is true.

Trade and investment profoundly impacts local and national issues, and can undermine basic human and environmental rights and key principles of democracy.  

Corporate profit 

The RCEP focuses on trade and investment liberalization, intellectual property rights, services, competition policy – much like other trade agreements. 

It would influence how governments regulate our economy. The talks go on behind closed doors and lack democratic oversight, so the resulting deal is likely to put corporate profit before public interest. 

Leaked documents show that the proposed RCEP trade deal includes a mechanism called the Investor-State Disputes Settlement (ISDS).

ISDS is, in essence, a corporate court system in which companies can sue countries when they consider that government decisions or national court rulings impact on their profits. 

New research from Friends of the Earth International/Europe, Transnational Institute and Corporate Europe Observatory has uncovered the human impact of these corporate courts, in which governments have been sued for US$623 billion in almost 1000 ISDS cases. This is equivalent to more than four years of the combined global spending on Overseas Development Assistance for poverty reduction.

Environmental protection

In the rice paddy fields of Thailand, local farmers accused a gold mine of leaking toxic waste, causing serious health problems and ruining crops. The Thai government responded by suspending the mine, and later halting all gold mining in the country, while a new mineral law was developed.

But in 2017, instead of compensating the local communities for the harm caused, the Australian mine owners, Kingsgate, sued the Thai government for millions of dollars in compensation. They used the ISDS mechanism that was included in the Free Trade Agreement between Australia and Thailand.

The dispute between Kingsgate, environmentalists and local peoples, who say they had been negatively impacted by the mine, stretches back many years.

In 2010, villagers took the company to court for failing to mitigate damages and for obtaining mining permits illegally. The court ruled that the mine had indeed breached environmental protection laws, and ordered the company to submit an Environmental Health Impact Assessment.

Operations were later suspended at the Kingsgate mine in 2015 for several months, amidst ongoing environmental protests and medical tests which found that hundreds of people living near the mine had high levels of toxic substances in their blood. The company itself acknowledged problems with dust, contaminated water, noise, and cyanide management in its own reports, and researcherscriticised its “lack of true community consultation”.

Democratic procedures

Environmental problems at Kingsgate’s mine occurred after violence had erupted at another controversial mine in the country, the Loei Gold Mine, when over 300 armed, masked men attacked and beat up villagers who were blocking access to the mine.

These problems in the gold sector led the military junta who were ruling the country to halt all gold mines nationwide in 2017 “due to their impact on locals and the environment”. While human rights groups welcomed the closure, the law used in the process has also been criticised, as they empower the Prime Minister to issue any order arbitrarily without following legal and other democratic procedures.

Kingsgate hit back with threats of a multimillion-dollar international arbitration lawsuit. This threat seemed to have paid off. In 2017 the Thai government agreed to lift the suspension on the mine’s operation, which in turn led to a steep rise in the company’s share price.

Yet Kingsgate has not re-opened the mine. Instead it filed the ISDS case under the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement claiming expropriation and seeking damages of an undisclosed amount. According to the national media, the ISDS claim could be worth US$900 million, a figure the government has denied.

Toxic water

While the Australian government views ISDS cases like this one as defending the national interest abroad, it is, rather, a way for corporations to entrench their power at the expense of local communities.

Rather than engaging with national research institutes, the precautionary principle or the local community’s knowledge, the case will be decided by three investment arbitrators, applying narrow investment law in a secret back room process.

The arbitrators’ decision could impact the entire country through the precedent it sets for regulation in Thailand. And while the ISDS case is ongoing, the company has reportedly not rehabilitated the mine that was leaking toxic substances into water sources.

This is not an isolated example. New research has uncovered how afterColombia’s Constitutional Court banned mining activities in a sensitive ecosystem which provides drinking water for millions of Colombians, Canadian mining company Eco Oro sued the country for US$764 million in damages.

When Croatian courts cancelled illegal permits issued for a luxury golf resort in the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia was hit with a US$500 million compensation claim. Romania is defending itself from a shocking US$5.7 billion claim by Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources, after the country’s courts declared the company’s proposed toxic Roşia Montana gold mine illegal.

Accountability

The growing number of corporate lawsuits has raised a global storm of opposition to ISDS and the corporate trade agenda more broadly from across the political spectrum. Two countries party to the RCEP trade negotiations, Indonesia and India, have started to reform ISDS by cancelling Bilateral Investment Treaties.

Yet, as the RCEP is a regional trade deal, if ISDS corporate courts are finally pushed through in exchange for increased market access, it will likely be locked in for years to come.

Given the current global trade wars, governments seem fixated on rushing headlong into new agreements.

Rather than more of the same failed corporate trade models, we need a new trade policy that enables communities and states to hold investors and corporations accountable for their damaging environmental impacts and human rights violations.

The RECP negotiations in Melbourne will test governments’ capacity to look after the environment and their citizens. 

This Author 

Sam Cossar is a campaigner for economic justice at Friends of the Earth International and a co-author of the new report ‘Red Carpet Courts: How the Rich and Powerful Hijacked Justice’. He tweets from @samcossar.

Image: Roengrit Kongmuang. 

Countries from across Asia are convening in Melbourne this week to negotiate the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a trade deal that would impact almost half of the world’s population, including Thailand, Indonesia, China, India, Japan, Korea and Australia.

Trade deals seem to be impenetrable and remote aspects of international legal systems that are disconnected from local and national realities. But in fact the opposite is true.

Trade and investment profoundly impacts local and national issues, and can undermine basic human and environmental rights and key principles of democracy.  

Corporate profit 

The RCEP focuses on trade and investment liberalization, intellectual property rights, services, competition policy – much like other trade agreements. 

It would influence how governments regulate our economy. The talks go on behind closed doors and lack democratic oversight, so the resulting deal is likely to put corporate profit before public interest. 

Leaked documents show that the proposed RCEP trade deal includes a mechanism called the Investor-State Disputes Settlement (ISDS).

ISDS is, in essence, a corporate court system in which companies can sue countries when they consider that government decisions or national court rulings impact on their profits. 

New research from Friends of the Earth International/Europe, Transnational Institute and Corporate Europe Observatory has uncovered the human impact of these corporate courts, in which governments have been sued for US$623 billion in almost 1000 ISDS cases. This is equivalent to more than four years of the combined global spending on Overseas Development Assistance for poverty reduction.

Environmental protection

In the rice paddy fields of Thailand, local farmers accused a gold mine of leaking toxic waste, causing serious health problems and ruining crops. The Thai government responded by suspending the mine, and later halting all gold mining in the country, while a new mineral law was developed.

But in 2017, instead of compensating the local communities for the harm caused, the Australian mine owners, Kingsgate, sued the Thai government for millions of dollars in compensation. They used the ISDS mechanism that was included in the Free Trade Agreement between Australia and Thailand.

The dispute between Kingsgate, environmentalists and local peoples, who say they had been negatively impacted by the mine, stretches back many years.

In 2010, villagers took the company to court for failing to mitigate damages and for obtaining mining permits illegally. The court ruled that the mine had indeed breached environmental protection laws, and ordered the company to submit an Environmental Health Impact Assessment.

Operations were later suspended at the Kingsgate mine in 2015 for several months, amidst ongoing environmental protests and medical tests which found that hundreds of people living near the mine had high levels of toxic substances in their blood. The company itself acknowledged problems with dust, contaminated water, noise, and cyanide management in its own reports, and researcherscriticised its “lack of true community consultation”.

Democratic procedures

Environmental problems at Kingsgate’s mine occurred after violence had erupted at another controversial mine in the country, the Loei Gold Mine, when over 300 armed, masked men attacked and beat up villagers who were blocking access to the mine.

These problems in the gold sector led the military junta who were ruling the country to halt all gold mines nationwide in 2017 “due to their impact on locals and the environment”. While human rights groups welcomed the closure, the law used in the process has also been criticised, as they empower the Prime Minister to issue any order arbitrarily without following legal and other democratic procedures.

Kingsgate hit back with threats of a multimillion-dollar international arbitration lawsuit. This threat seemed to have paid off. In 2017 the Thai government agreed to lift the suspension on the mine’s operation, which in turn led to a steep rise in the company’s share price.

Yet Kingsgate has not re-opened the mine. Instead it filed the ISDS case under the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement claiming expropriation and seeking damages of an undisclosed amount. According to the national media, the ISDS claim could be worth US$900 million, a figure the government has denied.

Toxic water

While the Australian government views ISDS cases like this one as defending the national interest abroad, it is, rather, a way for corporations to entrench their power at the expense of local communities.

Rather than engaging with national research institutes, the precautionary principle or the local community’s knowledge, the case will be decided by three investment arbitrators, applying narrow investment law in a secret back room process.

The arbitrators’ decision could impact the entire country through the precedent it sets for regulation in Thailand. And while the ISDS case is ongoing, the company has reportedly not rehabilitated the mine that was leaking toxic substances into water sources.

This is not an isolated example. New research has uncovered how afterColombia’s Constitutional Court banned mining activities in a sensitive ecosystem which provides drinking water for millions of Colombians, Canadian mining company Eco Oro sued the country for US$764 million in damages.

When Croatian courts cancelled illegal permits issued for a luxury golf resort in the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia was hit with a US$500 million compensation claim. Romania is defending itself from a shocking US$5.7 billion claim by Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources, after the country’s courts declared the company’s proposed toxic Roşia Montana gold mine illegal.

Accountability

The growing number of corporate lawsuits has raised a global storm of opposition to ISDS and the corporate trade agenda more broadly from across the political spectrum. Two countries party to the RCEP trade negotiations, Indonesia and India, have started to reform ISDS by cancelling Bilateral Investment Treaties.

Yet, as the RCEP is a regional trade deal, if ISDS corporate courts are finally pushed through in exchange for increased market access, it will likely be locked in for years to come.

Given the current global trade wars, governments seem fixated on rushing headlong into new agreements.

Rather than more of the same failed corporate trade models, we need a new trade policy that enables communities and states to hold investors and corporations accountable for their damaging environmental impacts and human rights violations.

The RECP negotiations in Melbourne will test governments’ capacity to look after the environment and their citizens. 

This Author 

Sam Cossar is a campaigner for economic justice at Friends of the Earth International and a co-author of the new report ‘Red Carpet Courts: How the Rich and Powerful Hijacked Justice’. He tweets from @samcossar.

Image: Roengrit Kongmuang.