The identity of a group of nine killer whales off Scotland’s west coast remains a mystery – despite extensive research and a flurry of sightings of killer whales in the Hebrides over recent weeks. The pod was encountered during the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust’s annual marine research expeditions last year.

The Trust now hopes to encounter the mystery pod again during its surveys this summer. It says that the unexplained killer whale pod sighting highlights how much there is still to learn about the remarkable marine life in Hebridean waters, and the need for long-term monitoring of cetaceans – the collective name for whales, dolphins and porpoises – and basking sharks.

The unidentified killer whales – which included two large males and two juveniles – were seen just 300 metres away from the charity’s research yacht Silurian after it left an anchorage at Vatersay last June. The animals were observed for some 30 minutes, with one of the males even swimming over to Silurian to have a closer look at the boat and crew.

Collating sightings

Dr Lauren Hartny-Mills, the Trust’s Science and Policy Manager, said: “Securing good photographs of these killer whales has allowed us to carry out some detective work using photo-identification techniques. This involves matching identifying features on individual animals to database records to see if they have been seen before.

“But despite our collaboration with other organisations and experts to identify the animals, the pod remains an enigma. It shows there is still a lot to discover about the cetaceans visiting Scottish waters.

“We’re hoping to encounter these killer whales again during our 2019 expeditions, and with help from our colleagues across Scotland and beyond, we really hope to find a match and learn more about this group.” 

Andrew Scullion, who runs Orca Survey Scotland, said: “I’ve been collating killer whale sightings from across Scotland since 2017 and it was fascinating to see these pictures of individuals I’ve not come across before.

“As more people share their sightings, and with surveys out there like the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust’s, I’m hopeful we can put pieces of the puzzle together and discover more about this so far mysterious group.”

Extinction risk 

It has not been possible to find a match with any known individuals for the mystery killer whales, so researchers have suggested these animals may belong to part of a wider offshore population of killer whales that roam Scottish seas. 

Globally, killer whales – also known as orcas – are one of the most widespread cetaceans, and they range from warm tropical waters to the polar regions. 

There are two well-known communities of killer whales found in Scottish waters, and there have been several sightings of animals from both of these groups in recent weeks. 

The wide-ranging West Coast Community can be seen along the whole west coast of the UK, with most sightings in the Hebrides. This group – the most frequently seen or reported to the Trust, and which consists of eight individuals at most – is at imminent risk of extinction, as the Trust has recorded no calves in 25 years of monitoring. There have only been confirmed sightings of two individuals – the males John Coe and Aquarius – in recent years.

On 8 July, Hebridean Whale Cruises spotted two members of the West Coast Community out of Gairloch. There was another reported sighting of the animals on 14 July, off County Clare in Ireland.

Dream come true 

Scotland’s other group of killer whales, the Northern Isles Community, is mainly seen around Orkney, Shetland and the north coast of Scotland. Five of its members – including a well-known and highly recognisable male called Busta, and a female called Razor – were spotted on the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust’s most recent research expedition, as Silurian made her way into Loch Laxford, just north of Handa Island on 30 June.

The Trust’s Marine Biodiversity Officer, Rebecca Dudley, said: “Seeing killer whales from Silurian twice in just over a year has been a dream come true. There is nothing like seeing the two metre-high dorsal fin of a male killer whale emerging from beneath the waves.

“On both occasions, it seemed as though they were just as curious as we were – coming right over for a closer look. The encounters were unforgettable for everyone on board.”

Each year Silurian travels thousands of nautical miles to survey the seas off Scotland’s west coast for cetaceans and basking sharks. The latest sightings show how exciting the surveys can be. Whether it’s spotting a mystery group of killer whales or seeing resident or regular visitors, each of the Trust’s surveys is different, with the opportunity to learn something new.

These surveys rely on volunteers who work alongside researchers as citizen scientists to record sightings of marine animals and seabirds, assess human impacts such as marine debris, and monitor sounds using an underwater microphone. The crew spends the days scanning the seas for wildlife, and the evenings exploring some of the most remote and beautiful anchorages on the west coast.

Get involved 

With marine mammals at risk from human activities including climate change, entanglement, pollution, underwater noise and habitat degradation, ongoing and long-term research is crucial to improve understanding of the impacts on cetaceans, and how to protect them.

The Trust is looking for volunteers to join its team onboard Silurian for one to two week surveys running between now and October 2020. Anyone can take part, with some trips held specifically for 16 to 17 year olds.

Participation costs cover boat expenses, accommodation, training, food and insurance, and support the charity’s research. For details, contact the volunteer coordinator, call 01688 302620, or visit the website.

The Hebrides is one of Europe’s most important areas for cetaceans, with 23 of the world’s estimated 92 species recorded – including many species of national and international conservation importance.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust. 

Reclaim the Power’s upcoming camp – Power Beyond Borders – manifests an ambitious, dual resistance to the UK’s broken energy policy and brutal border controls. 

The camp will amplify the demands set out by World Without Borders, which include an end to detention, an end to deportation and an end to destitution. In the same deep breath, the camp will demand a halt to the conversion and expansion of Drax power station, a move that would lock Britain into fossil fuel dependency for years to come.  

Campaigners fighting for migrant rights and climate justice will unite at Power Beyond Borders for a weekend of workshops, skill-shares and conversations, then undertake direct actions and demonstrations together in the following days. 

Human rights 

The stakes are high. Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights,  recently warned that we risk full scale ‘climate apartheid’. This language is stark: the impacts of collapse will not be generalised, but will fall heavily on the shoulders of people of colour and the poor. The climate crisis is a racist crisis.

Before we can begin to fight this, activists must understand what’s at stake for each of us in the spaces we occupy; what our spaces make possible and what they shut down. We must pay careful attention to how we relate to one another. 

Social movements must be accessible and accountable to communities that are excluded from and oppressed by centres of power. In the aftermath of the End Deportations action by the Stansted 15, Ewa Jasiewicz wrote: “When you walk into a courtroom, onto a rooftop, onto a motorway, how you look and how you talk can save your life … When you look around the camp or the room or the social and you see a privileged sameness, then the collective liberation, if not the camaraderie, that I think we’re aiming for still feels far out of reach.” 

The word ‘solidarity’ is derived from the French word ‘solidaire’, meaning ‘interdependent, complete, entire.’ Genuine, radical solidarity brings as much as possible within reach for as many people as possible. It recognises that we each have something bound up in one another’s liberation. 

Intersectionality

We need to focus on the intersections between struggles, but we also need to move beyond those intersections. Writing about the language used by activists to talk about the Dakota Access Pipeline, the queer indigenous organiser Kelly Hayes argued that “intersectionality does not mean focussing exclusively on the intersections of our respective work. It sometimes means taking a journey well outside the bounds of those intersections.” We each arrive at an intersection from a distinct place; each place deserves safety in its own right. 

Respecting this means fighting alongside those who are oppressed on their terms. This is about climate change and racism as much as it is about climate change as racism. 

Reclaim the Power has always worked in solidarity with frontline communities, in the UK and beyond, and has long been committed to social and economic justice – tackling fuel poverty and dirty trade deals. But working in solidarity with migrant justice groups has meant really interrogating the network’s decision making processes, programming conventions, key messaging, and logistics. 

As campaigners look outwards at unequal distributions of power and disparate impacts, we must also look inwards at our own spaces, privileges and processes. 

Action consensus

The organisers of Power Beyond Borders have compiled an introductory reading list of articles on anti-oppression and eliminating racism. They have also produced an Action Consensus. This is a list of principles that participants in the camp agree to follow: “We intend our actions to be in solidarity with frontline communities affected by both new gas infrastructure and the Hostile Environment, and will respect expertise provided by lived experience”. 

The Action Consensus emphasises non-violence and focuses on the reality that there is something different and more dangerous at stake for activists of colour and activists with a precarious immigration status.

Ensuring the safety of all activists explicitly rules out seemingly casual interactions with the police, for example. Policing has a long history of physical violence, deception, sexual exploitation and institutional racism. Increasingly, these functions are being imposed on other public servants: teachers, doctors and social workers are being called upon to work as covert border guards. Resistance to this coercive power has to be absolute. 

The camp programme includes Know Your Rights and Anti-Racist trainings and a panel discussion on what effective solidarity looks like. There will be workshops from End Deportations, the Anti-Raids Network, Help Refugees, All African Women’s Group, Unis Resist Border Controls and many more. 

Reclaim the Power hope that this will be the next step in building meaningful solidarity between movements. But it can’t end here, climate activists need to skill up, clue up and contribute to frontline activism in their communities. 

Come along to Power Beyond Borders to find out how. 

This Author

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. She’ll be camping at Power Beyond Borders and hopes you’ll join her. The camp will run from 26-31 July at a secret location within an hour of London. Find out more here. Camp updates – including coaches to the camp are here. To support the camp, donate here.

Image: Reclaim the Power, Flickr. 
 

A US engineering giant sneaks into a Bolivian city under an assumed name and takes over its public water system.  A Canadian mining company seeks control of El Salvador’s gold even at the cost of poisoning its drinking water.  An Italian energy conglomerate floods an entire valley in Colombia, decimating the lives and land of thousands with a massive hydroelectric project.  

The race is on for the wealth under foot in Latin America – from silver in Peru, to oil and gas in Ecuador, to lithium in Bolivia – and giant international corporations stand at the forefront.  

It is not a simple thing for a global corporation to set up shop in a country on the other side of the world and wrestle away control over its natural resources.  But by looking at case after case across an entire region, the Democracy Center has identified a clear pattern of corporate strategies, three of which are fundamental. 

Public relations

The ENEL Corporation is building a massive hydroelectric project in Colombia that will ultimately decimate 82 square kilometers of farmland settled by small farmers.

In a statement ENEL claimed: “Human and indigenous rights are intrinsic to our operating principles and corporate codes. We want to improve the quality of life for people in the areas in which we work by promoting education, employment and social inclusion.”

If you read the proclamations of the corporations involved in the scramble for Latin America’s natural resources you could easily mistake them for the declarations of a UN agency or development NGO.  They cast themselves as benevolent actors whose true purpose is to lift up the lives of the local people – to give them affordable energy, ample water, new economic opportunity, and a better future.  The conquistadors felt no need for such niceties.

Multinational corporations have to simultaneously manage their image with the people and governments in the country where they have landed and also with the wider public audience in their home country.  A well-crafted corporate public relations message is essential to them on both fronts, but the lofty promises they make and the reality on the ground are two radically different things.

ENEL, the Italian energy giant, set its sights on the Magdalena River in Colombia and a massive hydroelectric development.  The company’s pitch was about getting people affordable electricity.  Left out was the key fact that the energy to be generated had little to do with generating electricity for the Colombian people and everything to do with generating energy for the lucrative export market, at huge environmental cost. 

Miller Dussán Calderón, a local community leader in the fight against ENEL’s project (and who was later criminally prosecuted for that opposition), described the reality of the project this way: “[Enel] has invaded our territories and they are now destroying our strategic ecosystems, our food security, kicking communities out of their own territories.” 

Influencing governments

In theory, the people of a nation have a natural defense mechanism to look after their interests – democracy and the protective powers of government.  A foreign corporation can’t simply wander into a country and start drilling, mining, fracking or damming.  It needs a complicated set of permissions from the government, with the President, the legislative branch, regulatory bodies, the courts, and even community-based consultations playing a role.  That is the theory, but again the reality is something very different.

Corporations entering a nation go to great lengths to influence the laws, rules and regulations governing environmental protection.  Some activists refer to this as: “Why break the law when you can make the law.”

In Peru, Glencore Xstrata, a massive Swiss-owned multi-national has been on a mining hunt for copper, iron ore and other minerals for more than a decade.  Modern mining operations require water in large quantities and one common result is its contamination with chemicals such as arsenic, thallium, and lead. This was the case in the Andean province of Espinar, where mining water is drawn from and then returned to the local river. 

Glencore helped drive a direct lobbying campaign to be sure environmental regulations would not get in the way of its ambitions.  It also mounted that campaign behind the mask of a local industry association that launched an intense national media campaign aimed at policy makers. 

The campaign warning that the nation’s economy was “slowing down” as a consequence of excessive regulation, including the rules aimed at the environmental consequences of Glencore’s mining operations.  Similar efforts to relax and undercut environmental regulation can be found across the region.

Corporate capture

But the reach of ‘corporate capture’ goes well beyond the quiet offices where environmental approvals are granted. 

These corporations aren’t foolish.  They know that public anger against them quickly turns to protest and when the battle lines move from offices to the streets the companies want to guarantee that the police will be on their side.  

During the Cochabamba Water Revolt the national government issued a declaration of martial law and sent soldiers and police into the streets to violently repress the protests.  In Peru police signed a series of agreements with more than a dozen corporations to provide them with paid private security, including Glencore.  

The result is the criminalization of dissent and the kind of violence that has made being an environmental defender in Latin America one of the most dangerous acts on Earth. 

International tribunal

After the US corporate giant Bechtel was kicked out of Bolivia in the Water Revolt, it retaliated by filing a $50 million demand against the people of Bolivia at the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the World Bank’s international trade court. 

When Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining firm, was denied the permits it needed to continue its gold mining operations in El Salvador (a denial that was also the product of public protest) it turned to ICSID seeking $250 million in damages.

In these cases corporations are entitled to seek not only the return of the actual funds they’ve invested, but the profits they had hoped to make and were denied as a result of a nation’s choice.  Bechtel’s Bolivia subsidiary, for example, invested only $1 million in Cochabamba, but sought payment of $50 million, claiming lost profits.   

These cases are so profitable that some of the litigating corporations have even turned the cases themselves into a lucrative market, selling stakes to investors who then get a share of the settlement.  

For the companies involved in these cases the system is a double-win proposition.  Just the threat of such a case, which can cost a poor nation a huge fortune, is enough to have a chilling effect on changes in policy not to the companies’ liking.  And if they win, they reap a fortune.

Beating Goliath

This growing power of global corporations in Latin America is not going unchallenged by the communities affected nor by the international activists and organizations who join them in solidarity.  

Brave and powerful activist campaigns have been waged across the region and globally, in defense of natural resources and territory and against the rise of corporate control.  

At a local level that begins with mobilizing together.  A city in Bolivia is shut down three times by popular general strikes.  A community in El Salvador presses its right to clean water even after some among them are killed for their resistance.  Indigenous groups in Ecuador join together to demand accountability for the destruction of their lands.

Together with global allies, these communities also challenge the corporation’s misleading narrative with a real one.  In the fight against fracking in Colombia local activists tapped into the power of anti-fracking efforts in other countries. 

Carlos Andrés Santiago, a local man who challenged ConocoPhillips fracking efforts there declared at a community consultation, “If fracking is so great, then how come in Australia five out of seven states have banned it?  Why is it that a month ago in Ireland the President signed into law the banning of fracking?”

Global solidarity

Activists are also taking their battles directly to the top leaders of the corporations involved, in very personal ways.  The heads of a major corporation can decide to destroy an entire Andean valley and never meet a soul who lives there.  

It is important to fix the story of that abuse squarely onto the top leaders of the corporation involved.  In the Bechtel case the Democracy Center gave 2,000 activists the personal email of the corporation’s CEO, Riley Bechtel.  

When ENEL was pushing criminal prosecution of opponents of its mega-hydro project, a coalition of allies went after the company’s CEO on his Twitter feed.  In both cases that activism forced the companies to capitulate because the damage done to these CEO reputations became a greater burden than they were willing to bear.

Finally, global solidarity is essential.  When a community in a place like El Salvador or Peru is under threat from a multinational corporation it is often fighting a battle that it cannot win alone and shouldn’t have to. 

Local communities need information about the corporate actors they are dealing with and they need allies who can call out corporations on their home turf.  

The best way to challenge the manipulative ways of global corporate power is first to know them.  If we do, with clear eyes and together in community and solidarity, we can be sure that the urgency and bravery that drives these struggles is made as effective as it can possibly be. 

This Author 

James Shultz is the founder and executive director of the Democracy Center and lived in Cochabamba, Bolivia from 1998 to 2017. This article is drawn from a full report of the same name, available on the Democracy Center’s website. 

Image: Institute for Policy Studies. 

I often feel challenged when asked to speak at climate change gatherings. Especially so, at events like the five-day Rebel Camp that Extinction Rebellion recently held outside the Scottish Parliament. 

Public campaigning works on simple messaging. Yet climate change has been described as a “wicked problem”. It’s riddled through with interacting systems, multi-layered conundrums and emergent properties.

Few proposed solutions are without unintended consequences. Against such realities, there are no easy remedies to salve our desperate itch for optimism.

Psychology and spirituality

I first wrestled with this tension between realities and optimism over a decade ago, when writing Hell and High Water (Birlinn, 2008). Gandhi once said that when faced with the overwhelming evils of our time, we have to dive deep into our hearts for inspiration and then share it with others. Only in this way did I arrive at the book’s subtitle: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition. 

Where might we find such hope that runs far deeper than mere optimism? What might be its life-giving qualities? How can it make a difference? Those are the questions that I’ll try to tackle here.

Although I have not been closely involved with XR, I have three times been asked to speak at their Scottish events. At the first, I could not attend in person so I sent a written text. Later published in The Ecologist, it tackled the psychology that drives the consumerism that, to a considerable extent, drives greenhouse gas emissions. 

The second time that XR invited me was at the winter solstice last December, outside the BBC HQ in Glasgow. This time, and again written up for The Ecologist, I tackled the spirituality that might help us. 

By the spiritual, I mean the interconnecting bedrock of being on which our lives are built. I spoke about the robin redbreast, its Hebridean folklore, and its totemic quality of courage with compassion that we need.

Three demands – TAP

On the most recent occasion with XR Scotland, the event outside the Scottish Parliament, I spoke with others about spiritual activism. Activism that is resourced from depths within the psyche that can protect from cynicism, despair, and burn-out or sell-out.  

In so doing, I asked my hosts if I might raise some questions and some challenges as a critical friend. Generously, they said that they were a diverse movement, and that such would be welcome. 

XR has laid down three “demands”, though I should prefer to think of them as beseechments. We might sum these up as TAP: Truth – tell the truth; Action – act now, for decarbonisation by 2025; Politics – moving beyond politics, to alternative decision making.

To “tell the truth” is the only antidote to the day’s loud lying, to the fog of war and mirages of consumerism. It is a primary source of power. It brings us into our comportment, deportment and inner bearing such as can convey moral authority.

This kind of authority is both self-authored and authoritative. It is not to be confused with the hubris of authoritarianism that tends towards fascism. However, it is not only governments that must tell the truth. The same high calling must be heard by every one of us.

Tell the truth

I understand that the thought of Mahatma Gandhi has been very influential on XR. In order to speak about the power of truth, he came up with the term satyagraha. It draws on two Sanskrit elements. Satya meaning truth, being, essence, soul or God. And Graha meaning insistence, holding  or force. Therefore, Satyagraha or “truth force”, as the driver of ahimsa (“not-striking”) or nonviolence. 

Gandhi explained that “The world rests upon the bedrock of Satya or Truth. Asatya meaning untruth, also means non-existence: and Satya or Truth also means that which is. If untruth does not so much as exist, its victory is out of the question. And Truth, being that which is, can never be destroyed. This is the doctrine of Satyagraha in a nutshell.”

Therefore, not to be in the truth is to be unreal. Even, to be injurious to the fabric of reality. These principles are both an inspiration and a challenge to how we think about nonviolent direct action.

For example, in Non-Violence in Peace and War (1942), Gandhi wrote that “sabotage is a form of violence.” He went on to explain that nonviolence is not just about avoiding physical violence against the person. It is also about building right relationships with adversaries.

That is why I would question the tactic, suggested by some XR groups, of flying drones over airports to force them “to safely close airspace”. This could only work if airspace safety is considered by the civil aviation authorities to be compromised. As such, it would rely implicitly on fear.

Direct action

Direct action must think through its messaging. Nonviolence seeks to soften, not to harden hearts. As another example, blockading the London Underground when folk are meant to be using public transport seemed to me to be at best mixed messaging.

In whatever our chosen paths of activism – of being actively engaged in this world – we must, as an old Highland saying has it, be “terrible strong for the truth.”

It is always tempting to overstate a case. We do it out of ignorance, or out of desperation as a wake-up call. It might be tempting, for example, to exaggerate the likelihood of near-term human extinction and ramp up panic.

But if we so indulge, are we not departing from the science? We mostly only know what we think we know about climate change thanks to the science. More than this, is we focus on the warning of generalised extinction we risk overlooking people in the Global South, who are already suffering the impacts of climate breakdown. 

In my view, the evidence-based approach of science to reality is the gold standard. The truth may be humble and uncertain. But to “tell the truth” can spare us from flirtation with the lie.

Act now

Just as we must seek, ourselves, to stand in truth, in satya, so we must beware of pushing others into asatya. Of pressuring them to step outside of their truth, to demand promises that exceed their legitimised agency for delivery. Here is another challenging example. 

XR’s second demand is for governments to “act now” to achieve net zero greenhouse gas by 2025. But consider. That is just slightly more than a single term of a UK parliament. Six years in which to legislate, to crank up the industrial capacity to replace fossil fuel heating systems in most folks’ homes, and to bring about other revolutionary changes in travel, diet, manufacturing and the whole shebang of fossil-fuel driven society.

Even with the UK’s 2050 targets, or Scotland’s renewable energy rich 2045, there will be massive global knock-on consequences. 

The Natural History Museum points out that for the UK alone to electrify its vehicle fleet, it would need to import, each year, the entire current European annual consumption of cobalt. And that’s not mentioning such challenges to the mining industry as sourcing Rare Earth elements, and impacts on frontline communities being displaced, polluted and violently threatened by the mining industry. 

I well understand that XR bases its 2025 demand on what the science says the planet needs. But here’s the rub. In a democracy, politicians can lead only so far ahead of the electorate. Get too far ahead, and they’ll leave the pack behind and lose the vote. 

Beyond politics

There’s our stark conundrum. The 2025 demand might have been a useful stalking horse. It helped to draw the political lions back into the arena of climate science.

But might not persistence in trying to force it as a “demand” risk pressing our political servants into asatya? Into making pledges that depart from truth and are politically unhinged? Like the hubris of an eco five-year Soviet plan?

For politicians to be held in satya, for satyagraha to guide our common paths ahead, pledges and targets must be matched to credible pathways. These must be politically achievable, technically possible and financially resourced as well as ecologically imperative. 

That might sound hard, but consider. If we insist on pledges without workable pathways, what might we be inviting? History has names for movements that get ahead of democracy.

Our part – the satyagrahi’s path – is to be authored and authoritative, not authoritarian. Were we to play hardball out of panic, what might we be legitimising? Other groups, with very different objectives, might gladly take the cue and play that hand more forcefully than we.

Doom and dharma

But I sense my reader’s frustration. Is this not dithering at the doors of doom? No less a spiritual figure that Thomas Merton remarked: “If nothing is left of nature, there is nothing for grace to build on.”

Sometimes in such an existential conundrum we must dive deep into the heart as Gandhi said, then come back round upon a higher gyre. Dad’s Army was an iconic BBC TV sitcom from the 1960s. Private Frazer was the dour Scot who, from out of the jaws of every disaster, proclaimed “We’re a’ doomed”. 

Few have ever realised the depth of truth he spoke! But not as a counsel of despair. Bear with me.

Many English words have roots in a lost language, proto-Indo-European (PIE). Sanskrit is its closest survivor. The Sanskrit dharma is very close to satya. So close, that in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, one of the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, “Dharma is the Truth (satya). Both are one.” 

Dharma is the unfolding of reality through time. At a personal level, it is walking in the path of truth that leads to life. The linguistic root is dhe- or dhr-, pronounced dhu- from out of the pit of the belly and meaning “that which sustains”. As that which sustains the innate ordering of reality it also gets translated, somewhat restrictively, as “the law”.

Double meaning

Now – and I did ask for forbearance – being a particularly dour Scot and therefore, a scholar, Private Frazer would unquestionably have understood that the same dhe- root extends from PIE into many European and Asiatic languages. It is the probable origin of such words as deem, Duma (the Russian legislative assembly) and, indeed, the very doom to which the good Private said we’re all consigned.

In Govan, the part of Glasgow where I live today, there used to be a Doomster Hill beside the ancient churchyard. A doomster was a law-giver. From here the tribal ways – the patterns and examples of what XR calls a regenerative culture – would have been hammered out.

To be “all doomed” is thus the wake-up to our fate as doom as dharma. It is to face unflinchingly the truth as sata, and from there, to satyagraha. 

Far from being the end of everything, such doom (if I might play a double meaning) is the end of everything. It is a basic call to consciousness. It is the base of grace from which to build the human qualities required to care for nature. 

Common vision

Here is what Paulo Freire of Brazil saw as full “humanisation … the vocation of becoming more fully human.” That prophetic vision, “in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love.” 

Here is what the Norwegian philosopher of deep ecology, Arne Naess, saw as self-realisation of “the ecological Self”. Through this, “a higher realism” can invigorate the ecological movement, because the sense of who we are is “widened and deepened, so that protection of free nature is felt and conceived of as protection of our very selves.”

The “common vision”, says Starhawk, in the closing words of her life-giving book Dreaming the Dark (1982), is of community with all beings – “human, plant, and animal”. From such a base derives “a power no one can wield alone – the power to reshape our common lives, the power to change reality.”

I accept, at one level, that such a long-wave approach of tackling the human condition leaves it all “too late”. We’re told “we’ve only got eleven years left.” But when, in the past five hundred years of the industrial revolution and imperialism, has anything not been “too late”? 

We have to dig from where we stand amidst the ruins. If we are to build a regenerative culture, ours is not to only jump at deadlines. We must cast out lifelines. 

This Author 

Alastair McIntosh is the author of books including Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power (2001), Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service (2015) and Poacher’s Pilgrimage: an Island Journey (2016).  

A speech given by Claudia Goncalves at XR Scotland’s Rebel Camp in Edinburgh will be forthcoming in Resurgence and Ecologist magazine. 

Image: Tomm Morton.

Since the heady days of the first outdoor gatherings at Newport, Isle of Wight in the late 1960s, summer in the UK has become synonymous with the music, mud and mosh pits of the festival scene.

From the meagrely attended Pilton festival, an event that spawned the legendary Glastonbury experience, British festivals are now attracting up to four million attendees per year. The once counterculture-inspired ethics of their origins, however, have often been replaced by a corporate feeding frenzy and an orgy of disposable consumerism.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.

While mass hedonism may be an understandable response to contemporary life stresses, for those who have witnessed apocalyptic-like post-festival scenes, modern life is literally rubbish, it seems.

Weary contentment

As the production staff set to work dismantling the giant stage sets, weaving their forklifts around a multicoloured wasteland of wasp-infested beer can mountains, moribund pop-up tents and transparent inflatable sofas, it can be difficult to grasp what actually brought us here.

As a younger punter I was there to experience, whether it was the highs of seeing my favourite band amongst an undulating human ocean of excitement, or the lows of the portaloos in the freezing light of dawn.

When all was over, I simply exited in a haze of weary contentment, unaware of what was left behind, only taking pleasure in a near future of clean sheets and the humble comfort of chairs. One long summer working in site clearance a few years later, however, would truly open my eyes.

As the festival-goers drifted homewards, leaving the site in an eerie peace akin to a hastily deserted disaster zone, my fellow workers and I huddled our remaining tents together like a dayglo lost tribe. Lined up in rows of forty or more and armed with black and green plastic bin bags the following day, we were instructed to move across the landscape as human vacuum cleaners, picking through a vast sea of discarded synthetic and rotting organic rubbish in back-breaking unison.

The process was then repeated, this time crouching in a micro-sweep intended to remove every trampled shard of plastic, cigarette butt and embedded bottle top the mud revealed.

Greener planning

Clearing one site of vast pastureland or country house estate could take over a week of ten-hour, muscle-contorting shifts. The fine art of cleaning up, whether on an industrial scale or in the domestic setting, is so often rendered invisible, which itself encourages a culture of zero consequences.

Such sights and experiences were later compounded by my sessions as a charity volunteer sent to collect any usable items from the deluge of festival remains. Many items left behind were either designed for single use or had been slashed, burned or broken beyond repair.

We did manage to salvage a small vanload of tents, sleeping bags and camping chairs, which, while something, caused little dent in the flotsam and jetsam of human excess around us.

Since this shocking phenomenon was exposed, many festival organisers have been pressured into greater action. While smaller venues have often applied ecological values, many larger sites have only begun to implement greener planning, from more punter-friendly waste collection to payment incentives motivating self-clean-ups and encouragement to utilise and retrieve reusable equipment.

Festivals that once sent more than 70 percent of waste to landfill have managed to reverse that alarming statistic into a 70 percent recycling standard. Representative of a proverbial drop in the ocean of waste we produce, open-air events simply lift the lid on a global disposable culture coupled with an absence of human responsibility.

Nevertheless, strategies to create a friendly welcoming environment that is also environmentally friendly are as imperative here as everywhere.

This Author 

PL Henderson is creator & curator of @womensart1, a freelance writer and reviewer, art researcher and historian, and artist. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.

Cardiff councillors voted almost unanimously to transfer around £200 million into a fund tracking the Global Low Carbon Index and to divest the rest of their pension fund from fossil fuels within a five year timeframe.

Last year Monmouthshire council became the first council in Wales to vote to divest its pension fund from fossil fuel companies.

Previous research by Friends of the Earth found that the eight local authority pension funds in Wales invested over £1billion between them in fossil fuel companies.

Historic decision

Bleddyn Lake, Friends of the Earth Cymru spokesperson,  said: “After years of lobbying by Friends of the Earth, it’s fantastic to see Cardiff councillors taking the historic decision to stop supporting the fossil fuel companies that are fuelling the climate crisis.

“Now it’s time for all the local authority pension funds in Wales to follow Cardiff’s lead. Too many have been hiding away from taking meaningful action, preferring to hide behind so called ‘engagement’ with these companies.

“If a climate emergency is to mean anything then we simply cannot afford to be investing money in the very companies which are driving climate change. Research has shown that divesting from fossil fuel companies is actually better financially too and will minimise future financial risks for those with pensions in these funds.

“Climate change is the challenge of our age. We can’t afford to push action further down the road all the time or expect others to be the ones to sort out this mess.

“We want to see the Wales Pension Partnership, the Welsh Assembly, the Welsh Government and all other public body pension funds ditch fossil fuel investments and we will be keeping the pressure up until they do the right thing, both for the planet and for future generations here in Wales and around the world.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from Friends of the Earth. 

Image: Elliot Brown, Flickr. 

The UK could be experiencing a once-in-a-decade wildlife phenomenon this year with a mass influx of painted lady butterflies, experts have said.

TV naturalist Chris Packham is urging people to take part in the world’s largest insect citizen science survey, the annual Big Butterfly Count, to see if the painted ladies are arriving in their millions to the UK’s shores this year.

The butterfly is a common immigrant from the Continent to the UK each summer where its caterpillars feed on thistles, but around once every 10 years there is a painted lady “summer” when millions arrive en masse.

Tropical

Wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation, which runs the Big Butterfly Count, said unusually high numbers have been reported across Europe over the spring and early summer with large numbers now spotted crossing to the UK.

The last mass immigration took place in 2008 when around 11 million painted ladies migrated to the UK.

Mr Packham, who is vice president of Butterfly Conservation, said the painted lady migration was “one of the wonders of the natural world”.

“Travelling up to 1km in the sky and at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour these seemingly fragile creatures migrate hundreds of miles to reach our shores each year.

“This butterfly undertakes an extraordinary 7,500-mile round trip from tropical Africa to the Arctic Circle every year – almost double the length of the famous migrations of the Monarch butterfly in North America.

Well-being

“Signs across Europe are looking very promising, meaning that 2019 could be a very good year for the Painted Lady with high numbers already being recorded across parts of the UK.

“The butterfly can turn up anywhere so please take part in the Big Butterfly Count and look out for them – you could be witnessing a once in a decade butterfly phenomenon.”

Participants are encouraged to spot and record 17 species of common butterfly, including painted ladies, and two day-flying moths in the UK during three weeks of high summer, to help experts see how the insects are faring.

Experts also say taking part in the count has benefits for those doing the count, with research showing that watching wildlife and spending time in nature can have positive benefits for mental health and well-being.

Counting

Mr Packham said: “The mental health benefits of spending time outdoors watching nature have been blindingly obvious to me for as long as I can remember.

“Immersing yourself in nature, even if it’s just for a few short minutes, changes your perspective, it helps you slow down and notice what’s going on around you and it opens a door to the overlooked beauty and drama of our natural world.”

Butterfly Conservation is being supported by mental health charity Mind to champion the benefits of spending time in nature, and is sponsored by B&Q.

To take part in the count, which runs from July 19 to August 11, people just need to find a sunny spot anywhere in the UK and spend 15 minutes counting the butterflies they see, and then submit sightings online at www.bigbutterflycount.org or via the free Big Butterfly Count app.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Trillions of cigarette butts are littered every year, posing a risk to plant growth, research suggests.

The presence of cigarette butts in the soil reduces the germination success and shoot length of clover by 27 percent and 28 percent respectively, a study has found.

Published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, the results also showed that the root weight was reduced by 57 percent.

Discarded

For grass, germination success reduced by 10% and shoot length by 13 percent, say the team led by academics from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). Most cigarette butts contain a filter made of cellulose acetate fibre, a type of a bioplastic.

But filters from unsmoked cigarettes had almost the same effect on plant growth as used filters, indicating that the damage to plants is caused by the filter itself, even without the additional toxins released from the burning of the tobacco.

It is estimated that around 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered every year, making them the most pervasive form of plastic pollution on the planet.

As part of this study, the academics sampled locations around the city of Cambridge and found areas with as many as 128 discarded cigarette butts per square metre.

Control experiments contained pieces of wood of identical shape and size as the cigarette butts.

Pollinators

Lead author Dr Dannielle Green, senior lecturer in biology at ARU, said: “Despite being a common sight littering streets and parks worldwide, our study is the first to show the impact of cigarette butts on plants.

“We found they had a detrimental effect on the germination success and shoot length of both grass and clover, and reduced the root weight of clover by over half.

“Ryegrass and white clover, the two species we tested, are important forage crops for livestock as well as being commonly found in urban green spaces.

“These plants support a wealth of biodiversity, even in city parks, and white clover is ecologically important for pollinators and nitrogen fixation.”

Plant

She added that the filters can take years, if not decades to break down.

“Dropping cigarette butts seems to be a socially acceptable form of littering and we need to raise awareness that the filters do not disappear and instead can cause serious damage to the environment,” said Dr Green.

Co-author Dr Bas Boots, added: “Although further work is needed, we believe it is the chemical composition of the filter that is causing the damage to plants.

“Most are made from cellulose acetate fibres, and added chemicals which make the plastic more flexible, called plasticisers, may also be leaching out and adversely affecting the early stages of plant development.”

This Author

Nina Massey is the PA science correspondent.

The right wing think tank that commissioned a report labelling environmental activists as “extremists” who want to “break up democracy” has failed to reveal who funded the report.

The Policy Exchange, which has long refused to reveal its financial backers, commissioned retired terrorism police officer Richard Walton to write the headline-grabbing report. Walton was previously best known for his controversial role in police spying on the family of murdered schoolboy Stephen Lawrence.

Speaking about the report on the Today programme yesterday morning, Walton described Extinction Rebellion as a “hardcore anarchist group which want to break up our democracy”.

Organisational discipline

The report also speculated about the environmental group using violent tactics to further their aims in the future. Extinction Rebellion has used entirely non-violent protests to shut down city centres to draw attention to climate change and species loss.

When openDemocracy asked Policy Exchange how the report was funded, it didn’t respond to our questions. openDemocracy has also asked Shell, BP and ExxonMobile if they fund Policy Exchange. None have yet commented.

The report is co-authored by Walton and Tom Wilson, who works in the Security and Extremism Unit at Policy Exchange. In it, they argue that, had Extinction Rebellion flown drones over Heathrow – something the group chose not to do – it “may have crossed the threshold into a terrorism offence,” and add that: “Given the extreme objectives of Extinction Rebellion, therefore, it is not inconceivable that some on the fringes of the movement might at some point break with organisational discipline and engage in violence.”

Extinction Rebellion’s three demands are “Tell the truth” about the scale of the environmental crisis, “Act Now” to avert it and move “beyond politics” by founding a citizens’ assembly on climate and ecological justice.

openDemocracy also asked Richard Walton if he can comment on who paid for his report. He is yet to respond.

Controversial role

Walton, the report’s author, has previously come under scrutiny for his controversial role in police spying on the family of murdered schoolboy Stephen Lawrence. Speaking to openDemocracy about the case in 2017, Walton emphasised that: “I have quite simply done nothing wrong, either in 1998 or recently.”

While the Independent Police Complaints Commission found that Walton had a case to answer, the Metropolitan Police Professional Standards Unit and then Commissioner rejected the conclusion that there was a case to answer prior to his retirement – leaving Stephen Lawrence’s father “heartbroken”.

Walton also played a minor role in the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking. In 2009, he was staff officer to the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson – a role reported at the time as being hisright-hand man.

Stephenson was forced to resign as a result of the phone hacking scandal. Walton attended the meeting at which the Met decided not to investigate the Guardian’s initial phone hacking allegations, though he says he did not contribute to the meet.

His name appears twice in the official documents released by the Leveson Inquiry. There is no suggestion that Walton himself did anything wrong.

Walton also made headlines in 2017 when he wrote a report for the pro-Brexit group Veterans for Britain, which Walton told us he wasn’t paid for.

This Author 

Adam Ramsay is the co-editor of openDemocracyUK and also works with Bright Green. This article was first published on OpenDemocracy.

Down on the farm, a new grassroots initiative is being sown. It’s a simple idea for turning plots of land into sustainable and self-regulating ecosystems that can provide nutritious, healthy, organic food for local communities. It also brings those communities together to combat loneliness and engender a sense of comradeship and belonging. And it’s working.

The Food Forest Project is a small, newly formed organisation that has been established to help communities to plant food forests. But it’s not just about growing food for the local community. It’s also about providing food and habitats for wildlife – so it’s a win–win situation for all.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

The idea was conceived by Bristol-based Tristan Faith, a specialist in architectural conservation, who shared his vision with me by sketching the concept on paper: “It’s the idea of working with Nature to replenish itself nat­urally rather than over-working and depleting the soil.” 

Organic and biodiverse

Faith continued: “It’s all about creating a layered, self-regulating ecosystem. It starts with planting trees that grow to create a canopy layer that shades a mid-layer of fruit trees that in turn shade a shrub layer and a root crop layer, right down into the subsoil.

“Each layer creates a habitat for different species that enable natural predators to control the insects. It takes around five years for the complete system to stabil­ise and produce fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, and so on.

“Once it gets to that level of maturity no further intervention is necessary, because it then becomes self-sustaining.”

Faith’s vision remained a conceptual idea until he found a supportive farmer who kindly donated a suitable plot of land that met the criteria for the project.

The land, near Shepton Mallet in Somerset, had been heavily used as pasture for many years. Now the food forest being developed there is creating an organic, biodiverse area of natural habitat that will provide perfect homes for local wildlife.

Sustainable agriculture

The food forest also helps mitigate the effects of climate change, air pollution and the toxification of soil and water by creating natural spaces that capture carbon, regenerate soil and reduce run-off as well as stabilising erosion through the planting of woodland.

No pesticides or fertilisers are necessary once the natural seasonal cycles take over, and the enriched soil will enable organic fruits and vegetables to thrive. These products will then be available for the local community to buy by donation, helping to fund further expansion.

Creating a food forest requires a lot of careful planning if it is to thrive in a self-sustaining manner. Current food-production techniques tend to create huge wastage as well as depleting soil nutrients, so the project focuses on minimising wastage by means of a ‘closed loop’ system.

It has been calculated that a large quantity of high-quality and totally organic food can be produced in a small area with minimum wastage. Any excess products can be recycled naturally to further enrich the soil.

The project has another important goal. A large proportion of modern society has lost its connection to the natural environment. In recognition of this, the project has now joined forces with SAFE Collective, an organisation that works with vulnerable and abused young people.

Volunteers bring teenagers to the Shepton Mallet site to plant trees and crops and to learn all about sustainable agriculture and food production in a safe, inspiring and natural environment. Introducing vulnerable young people to these and similar activities helps build their self-confidence and shows how they have value in the community.

This Author 

Joe St Clair is managing director at World Sustainability Forum UK. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

​​​​​​​Image: Food Forest Project.