Primitive food producers had transformed Earth’s ecology as far back as 4,000 years ago, a study suggests, challenging prevailing notions that human-caused environmental change is only a recent phenomenon.

The findings, from a large international study by archaeologists and scientists, show the deep and previously underestimated impact on the planet of land cultivation and livestock breeding by ancient peoples.

Researchers say the “unique perspective” generated by the study may help them find ways of alleviating negative impacts on soils, vegetation and climate in the future.

Engine

Study author Andrea Kay, of the University of Queensland, said: “While modern rates and scales of anthropogenic global change are far greater than those of the deep past, the long-term cumulative changes wrought by early food producers are greater than many realise.

“Even small-scale or shifting agriculture can cause global change when considered at large scales and over long time periods.”

Up to 40 percent of the Earth’s land area had been affected by human cultivation and farming 4,000 years ago, the study suggests.

The findings challenge prevailing opinions of a mid-20th century starting date for the Anthropocene – the concept of an epoch in which human activity is the dominant influence on Earth’s ecosystems.

They suggest dramatic changes in the Earth’s landscape were started before even the domestication of animals or intensive agriculture – and well before the invention of the steam engine and motor car.

Paradigm

The study, published in the journal Science, was created by pooling the data-sets of 255 archaeologists with regional expertise around the world.

The resulting global-scale assessment, called the ArchaeoGLOBE Project, looks at land use from 10,000 to 170 years ago.

Nicole Boivin, a lead author on the study from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, said: “This novel crowd-sourcing approach to pooling archaeological data is extremely innovative, and has provided researchers with a unique perspective”.

Erle Ellis, of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said: “It’s time to get beyond the mostly recent paradigm of the Anthropocene and recognise that the long-term changes of the deep past have transformed the ecology of this planet, and produced the social-ecological infrastructures, agricultural and urban, that made the contemporary global changes possible.

This Author

Thomas Hornall is a reporter with PA.

The UN recently commemorated the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

It doesn’t really roll off the tongue and it didn’t get much attention in the media. But choosing this date to mark the abolition of the slave trade is incredibly important to the history of the black men and women who rebelled to fight for it. 

Britain must stop taking credit as a nation for ‘abolishing’ the slave trade. It’s a story of black rebellion.

Teaching empire

If, like me, you went to school in the UK you might remember being taught about the slave trade and its abolition in a distinct way. Diagrams of slave ships, the triangular trade route, a few photos of white abolitionists – William Wilberforce, anyone?

Teaching about Britain’s empire in this way is problematic for two reasons. First, we’ve been taught about the slave trade and its abolition in a way that makes us feel better, that allays our emotional reaction in case, heaven forbid, we might start questioning the morality of how our country was built.

Secondly, because of this, it allows us to pose the British Empire as a positive force which ended the slave trade. And this isn’t a narrative that seems to have changed.

In 2018, the Treasury tweeted (and then quickly deleted) “Millions of you helped end the slave trade through your taxes.” It went on to say that in 1833, the British government used 40 percent of its national budget to buy freedom for slaves in the empire. So huge was that sum that it was only finally paid off (in repayments on the loans taken out) in 2015.

I suppose we should pat ourselves on the backs – we’re part of the movement that ended the slave trade! 

Except that we’re really not. Firstly, that money was used to pay off 46,000 British slave owners as compensation for their lost ‘property’. Secondly, the slave trade was banned in the British Empire in 1807 as part of the Slave Trade Act (not 1833 which abolished slavery itself throughout the British Empire).

Black jacobins

The Slave Trade Act is generally attributed to white abolitionists like William Wilberforce, but we must focus on the history of slave rebellions which were central to its introduction.

Here’s where 23 August comes in.

On this date in 1791 Saint-Domingue under French rule (now Haiti) saw an uprising of rebel slaves that spurred what is now known as the Haitian revolution.

France did what it could to keep a colony whose commodities were consumed in Europe and generated income that fuelled the French empire. One in ten slaves who were brought to the island died each year. The ‘black jacobins’, the men and women sold into slavery, revolted against the system.

Known as the ‘Night of Fire’, on the night of 22- 23 August, thousands of rebels began to strategically attack and set fire to plantations in Saint-Domingue in a highly organised way. It is said that “the finest sugar plantations of Saint Domingue were literally devoured by flames.” A colonist said that there were “as many rebel camps as there were plantations.”

Slave uprising 

It was this insurrection that sparked a successful slave uprising which weakened the grip of the slave system.

Ultimately, the events of 22-23 August 1791 set in motion the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 and beyond. From this date, thirteen years of unrelenting warfare (including against British armies) began.

Black slave rebels under the leadership of  Toussaint L’Ouverture beat Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, the world’s most powerful at the time, and Haiti gained independence in 1804, known as the first ‘black republic’.

So why don’t we learn about this? Why are tweets not centered around this? Why are the the most memorable portraits in our school textbooks still of white abolitionists?

In a society where black students campaigning to get rid of colonial statues is seen as far more offensive than the monuments to colonists to begin with, where over 40 percent of people believe that the British Empire was a good thing, where being taught that white men are the saviours of black bodies, the 23 August is a poignant date.

Real legacy

This date should serve as a reminder that the abolition of the slave trade and, ultimately, slavery was won as a result of the black rebels who resisted it. 

It’s time to start learning and teaching about the real legacy of empire, and that can only really start by accepting reality. We must stop taking credit as a nation for ‘abolishing’ the slave trade from which we continue to profit.

This Author

Radhika Patel is communications and campaigns officer at Global Justice Now. Before joining Global Justice Now she was the network and communications assistant at Stamp Out Poverty which oversees the Robin Hood Tax campaign. 

Extinction Rebellion has blocked bridges in London to raise awareness about the damage of our roads, and protested at BP and Shell to show the impact of these major corporates on our environment. 

I was very happy to learn that the group has decided that their next target will be one close to my heart. 

Extinction Rebellion have now announced plans to focus attention on London Fashion Week. Along with others, I have spent years campaigning to raise the public’s awareness of the fashion industry’s environmental failings – so I welcome this move. 

Severe damage 

There are no shortage of events in London that would have provided fair game in the fight for carbon neutrality. 

Last month Tobacco Docks was home to “Meatopia” – London’s biggest meat festival – which would have been a great place to highlight the environmental and health issues of a society overconsuming meat.

Next next month those who enjoy buying and selling bullets, battleships, bombs and tanks will be gathering in ExCeL for the annual Arms Fair. An industry which by definition ends lives and ruins habitats around the world, and which I for one would love to see shut down permanently.

But I am glad that people are starting to understand that the damage caused by the fashion industry is also severe, and – frustratingly – could be improved if there was the corporate and political will.

The more you research the fashion and beauty industry, and the more you scratch below the surface, the uglier it gets.

Overconsumption and exploitation

The industry that London Fashion Week celebrates has overconsumption and exploitation at its core.

The world of fashion relies on using advertising and peer pressure to make people feel the need to buy new clothes, shoes, and accessories frequently as the style changes, in order to keep up with the latest trends.

Although this is ethically repugnant, from a capitalist business perspective it is working. The global apparel market is valued at 3 trillion dollars, accounting for 2% of global GDP. 

The fashion brand Burberry made headlines last summer when they burnt £28million of excess stock in order to protect the exclusivity of its brand. 

Budget clothing stores such as Primark have come under serious fire for selling £2 t-shirts, and online retailer Boohoo made headlines this summer with their £1 bikini. Both raise questions about the ethics of the supply chain and whether a fashion tax may be ultimately needed.

Grotesquely wasteful

Online retailers have also seen backlash to wasteful buying practises, such as encouraging buyers to buy the same item in several different sizes and then return the unwanted ones for free after trying at home.  Many returned items aren’t worth the bother of returning to stock. They just get thrown in the landfill.

To the credit of designers, London Fashion Week is a celebration of art and innovation, but it is also a celebration of a grotesquely wasteful industry. It will only change if pressure is put on it from consumers, politicians and a threat of legislation and regulation.

We are in a climate emergency – the time is up for massively carbon-intensive and polluting industries to stick on a pair of designer sunglasses and look the other way. We have to make them  face up to what hyper-consumerism is doing to our planet.

I’ll be joining protestors at London Fashion Week to call on brands, influencers and designers to take the climate emergency seriously and commit to making a change in their industry. 

This Author 

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party. 

Alamos Gold has two mines in Mexico‘s Sonora region: El Chanate (very close to the US border) and Mulatos (in Sahuaripa, east of Hermosillo). El Chanate suffered a major cyanide spill in 2016 and Mulatos suffered a landslide in December 2018 in which workers died.

The landslide had been predicted since 2014. There was even a complaint to the National Commission on Human Rights for insufficient action to prevent it. Such accidents now occur so often that they became the rule rather than the exception.

In Miacatlán, Morelos, there has been an ongoing fight against the company Alamos Gold in defence of the territory and the archaeology of Xochicalco,  a pre-Hispanic monument. While the claims in Sonora are focused on the reparation and compensation for the damages caused, people in Morelos are fighting against new mining activities.

Mining concessions

On August 1, 2016, a meeting of the Morelense Movement against open cast mining, held in Miacatlán, was followed with a march through the main streets. Banners included slogans such as: “We want beans, we want corn, we want the mining company out of the country”, and “No to mining, yes to life”.

Two years after, once the presidential elections of July 2018 had been held and Lopez Obrador was to become president, again the members of the Morelense Movement against the Open Pit Mining Concessions initiated another protest under the name “Life and the Defence of the Territory”.

The campaigners demand that elected federal and state authorities and municipal officials cancel mining concessions. This petition against Alamos Gold is still ongoing and depends on approval by authorities.

Alamos Gold’s already infamous case in Turkey has recently (in July and August 2019) taken on another dimension: Alamos Gold proceeded with planning activities of open-pit gold mining projects using cyanide on Mount Ida. The struggle against mining projects in this area has been going on for over ten years and local opposition managed to stop the project in 2013.

The attempt to reopen exploitation activities has triggered the mobilisation of 10,000 people, uniting environmentalists, local and rural people and supporters of the opposition to Erdogan.

Excessive logging

Cutting down thousands of trees to prepare the ground for mining in July 2019 prompted the outbreak of protests.

In response, environmental activists set up a camp and tens of thousands of people marched through the mountain in protest. This environmental protest in western Turkey – supported by the opposition – has shaken the country’s politics, with strong accusations against the government allowing damage to nature for a foreign company to profit.

The Kirazli mine, in the western Turkish province of Canakkale, south of the Dardanelles, had been acquired by the Canadian company in 2010 for around $ 90 million. Çanakkale includes the peninsula called Gallipoli (in European languages), the site of a battle in World War in the attempt by the Allied powers to weaken the Ottoman empire. Canakkale and Gallipoli are names that imply a call for resistance, this time against a foreign company and without weapons of war.

Aside from the excessive logging, environmental activists also denounce that the company will use cyanide to leach gold. Cyanide used for mining is toxic to soils and water resources.

The mine is close to the Kazdagi National Park, a wooded area that includes Mount Ida, 1,774 meters high, with rivers and water reserves which could be severely affected. The political opposition to Erdogan is against mining.

The mayor of the provincial capital of Çanakkale, Ülgür Gökhan, who belongs to the Social Democratic Party opposing Erdogan, criticizes the mining concession, while the mayor of Istanbul, also in opposition, met with the Canadian ambassador to discuss the case, thereby displeasing the Erdogan government.

Water and life

It is not only in Turkey and in Mexico where the pressure of public opinion on local authorities should be forcing Alamos Gold into a corner.

The Canadian public should be much more aware of what Canadian mining companies do abroad, particularly Alamos Gold.

If a triangular movement could arise with mutual visits and support between activists in Turkey, Mexico and Canada, the respective governments could take action more easily.

The new Minister for the Environment in Mexico, ethno-ecologist Victor Toledo, is certainly not in favour of open cast gold mining with cyanide. Perhaps he needs a little push from abroad.

Stopping Alamos Gold concessions in Mexico would become big news in Turkey. There is a chance to stop Alamos Gold and set an example to other Canadian mining companies. Water and life are much more worth than gold.

This Author

Joan Martinez Alier is an eminent and award wining professor in ecological economy and a globally recognised specialist on environmental justice. Martinez-Alier works at ICTA-UAB, Barcelona. He wrote this contribution in his capacity as the coordinator of the European Research Council funded EnvJustice Project, which manages the Atlas of Environmental Justice. 

Originally published in Spanish by Joan Martinez-Alier in La Jornada de Oriente (Mexico).

Greta Thunberg has arrived in Trump’s America after a two-week voyage across the Atlantic. The articulate, seemingly fearless 16-year-old has become a hero of the environmental movement since starting her school strikes for the climate a year ago – inspiring over one million young people to do the same.

In these times of environmental crisis, do we need people like Greta to show us the way? Satish Kumar, peace activist and founder of The Resurgence Trust, thinks so.

In the first episode of the second series of the Resurgence Voices podcast, Satish describes how heroes have influenced his own journey. His 8,000-mile walk for peace in the 1960s started from the grave of Mahatma Gandhi and took him to Atlanta Georgia, where he met Martin Luther King.

Unimaginable

But the heroes of today have a very different challenge to face. “I think the next revolution will be led by a younger person, by a woman, and I feel that Greta Thunberg is that person,” Satish says. “I think that some kind of divine power but also some kind of unseen, unimaginable, unexplainable force is working through her.”

What does Greta think of that? Amid a scrum of journalists at the Mayflower Marina in Plymouth, I get a chance to ask her.

To listen to our conversation – and hear Greta’s response – subscribe to Resurgence Voices wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like it, you can even leave us a review.

This Author

Marianne Brown is editor of the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. Listen to the podcast online. The Ecologist is owned by The Resurgence Trust. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said investors have not “stepped up to the plate” in efforts to help avert the climate crisis.

The Most Rev Justin Welby described climate change as “the most pressing investment challenge of our time”, and urged the investment community to take “environmental, social and governance factors” into account when making decisions.

Mr Welby’s comments come a day after he confirmed he would be willing to chair a citizens’ forum on Brexit “in principle” after being approached by senior MPs, but conditions on him accepting the role “have not yet been met”.

Focus

In a video message for the Global Ethical Finance Initiative (GEFI) ahead of this autumn’s world summit on ethical finance in Edinburgh, Mr Welby said: “Money is not morally neutral – it can do harm and it can do good.

“At the very least it is the responsibility of investors to take account of environmental, social and governance factors in their investment decisions and in their stewardship of their assets.

“At its best, ethical finance can drive positive change in the world, while still being responsible for its investors.

“It can ensure that while meeting investors’ risk return requirements, investments benefit people and planet.

“I’d like to focus for the next few moments on the most pressing investment challenge of our time – climate change.

Unquestionable

“Because frankly, the investment community has still not sufficiently stepped up to the plate on this.

“I’ve seen for myself the devastation of climate change – I’ve seen it in the Niger Delta, I’ve seen it in Fiji when I travelled there last year, hearing children’s stories of how rising sea levels are affecting life there.

“The average global temperature has already increased by one degree from pre-industrial times, and still greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.

“The situation we find ourselves in has rightly been called a climate emergency.

“We know it’s unquestionable that investors acting together can influence outcomes on everything, including climate change.

Summit

“It is in investors’ power to help avert the disastrous consequences – ethical and financial – of failing to achieve the Paris goals.

“Passive investment, with investment decisions controlled and influenced by the algorithms and index calculations, may be the right investment solution for many, but passive stewardship is the answer for no-one.

“All investors can make a difference by engaging and voting determinably in support of the Paris Agreement.”

The ethical finance summit on October 8 and 9 will bring together global leaders in business, politics, banking and investment with the aim of shaping a fairer finance system.

Honoured

The United Nations, the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority, RBS, Baillie Gifford and HSBC, plus 500 senior representatives from more than 200 companies and organisations, are expected to be in attendance.

On Tuesday, Mr Welby said: “It is an unexpected privilege to be asked to chair this proposed citizens’ forum on Brexit.

“In the past this kind of gathering has, in many places and in difficult situations, opened the way for careful deliberation if at the right time and genuinely representative.

“I am honoured to be approached and would be willing to accept in principle, subject to some conditions which have not yet been met.”

This Author

Catherine Wylie is a reporter with PA.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said investors have not “stepped up to the plate” in efforts to help avert the climate crisis.

The Most Rev Justin Welby described climate change as “the most pressing investment challenge of our time”, and urged the investment community to take “environmental, social and governance factors” into account when making decisions.

Mr Welby’s comments come a day after he confirmed he would be willing to chair a citizens’ forum on Brexit “in principle” after being approached by senior MPs, but conditions on him accepting the role “have not yet been met”.

Focus

In a video message for the Global Ethical Finance Initiative (GEFI) ahead of this autumn’s world summit on ethical finance in Edinburgh, Mr Welby said: “Money is not morally neutral – it can do harm and it can do good.

“At the very least it is the responsibility of investors to take account of environmental, social and governance factors in their investment decisions and in their stewardship of their assets.

“At its best, ethical finance can drive positive change in the world, while still being responsible for its investors.

“It can ensure that while meeting investors’ risk return requirements, investments benefit people and planet.

“I’d like to focus for the next few moments on the most pressing investment challenge of our time – climate change.

Unquestionable

“Because frankly, the investment community has still not sufficiently stepped up to the plate on this.

“I’ve seen for myself the devastation of climate change – I’ve seen it in the Niger Delta, I’ve seen it in Fiji when I travelled there last year, hearing children’s stories of how rising sea levels are affecting life there.

“The average global temperature has already increased by one degree from pre-industrial times, and still greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.

“The situation we find ourselves in has rightly been called a climate emergency.

“We know it’s unquestionable that investors acting together can influence outcomes on everything, including climate change.

Summit

“It is in investors’ power to help avert the disastrous consequences – ethical and financial – of failing to achieve the Paris goals.

“Passive investment, with investment decisions controlled and influenced by the algorithms and index calculations, may be the right investment solution for many, but passive stewardship is the answer for no-one.

“All investors can make a difference by engaging and voting determinably in support of the Paris Agreement.”

The ethical finance summit on October 8 and 9 will bring together global leaders in business, politics, banking and investment with the aim of shaping a fairer finance system.

Honoured

The United Nations, the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority, RBS, Baillie Gifford and HSBC, plus 500 senior representatives from more than 200 companies and organisations, are expected to be in attendance.

On Tuesday, Mr Welby said: “It is an unexpected privilege to be asked to chair this proposed citizens’ forum on Brexit.

“In the past this kind of gathering has, in many places and in difficult situations, opened the way for careful deliberation if at the right time and genuinely representative.

“I am honoured to be approached and would be willing to accept in principle, subject to some conditions which have not yet been met.”

This Author

Catherine Wylie is a reporter with PA.

Floods are becoming more severe in parts of northern Britain due to climate change, a large-scale study has found.

Analysis from data collated at thousands of locations across Europe found flood events are becoming increasingly severe in the north-west – including the UK – but are decreasing in severity in the south and east of the continent.

The extent of climate change on the severity of flooding has been previously unclear due to a lack of data.

Rainfall

But the Vienna University of Technology claim their database is the most complete on European flooding so far, involving research institutions in 24 European countries including the University of Bath and University of Liverpool.

Researchers analysed records from 3,738 river flood measurement stations across Europe over five decades.

Northern England and southern Scotland have seen an increase in flooding of more than 11%, while the study observed a 23 percent decrease in Russia.

The UK has seen a pattern of severe flooding over the past 10 years which the Environment Agency says is linked to an increase in extreme weather events.

The study, published in the journal Nature, suggests that an increase in autumn and winter rainfall caused by climate change has led to increasing floods in the UK and north-western Europe.

Patterns

In southern Europe, flood levels are decreasing due to declining precipitation and water temperatures are causing an increase in evaporation of water in soil, the report claims.

Decreasing snow cover in eastern Europe, also caused by warmer temperatures, have also led to decreasing floods in the area, according to the authors.

They conclude that the data demonstrates the need to consider climate change impacts when designing flood management strategies.

Lead author Professor Gunter Bloschl said: “We already knew that climate change is shifting the timing of floods in a year, but the key question had been does climate change also control the magnitude of flood events?.

“Our study did in fact find there are consistent patterns of flood change across Europe and these are in line with predicted climate change impacts, such as a contrast between increasing severity of flooding in the north and decreases in the south.”

Long-term

Sir James Bevan, chief executive of the Environment Agency, said: “Climate change means the threat of flooding and rate of coastal change will increase significantly.

“To prepare for this risk, as a nation we need to move from a strategy of protection and building higher flood defences to improving the resilience of our communities and our infrastructure, strengthening our ability to cope with flooding and coastal change when it does happen.

“Our new flood strategy sets out a long-term approach to tackling the effects of the climate emergency, as well as the actions we can take in the short term. This includes a record £2.6 billion investment we are making now to protect 300,000 homes from flooding and coastal erosion.”

This Author

Emma Bowden is a reporter with PA.

Many of us do not need to hear any more warnings from the IPCC, David Attenborough or climate activists like Greta Thunberg. We have seen enough to be convinced that limitless economic growth and the globalisation of high-consumption lifestyles have brought our planet’s life-support systems to the brink of collapse.

In response to today’s urgent ecological and social problems, we often hear calls from sustainability advocates about the need to “downshift” away from consumer lifestyles, to practise permaculture and to embrace simpler ways to live. When these movements scale up, the argument goes, we will “degrow” our economies to a sustainable scale.

Important though these analyses and perspectives are, they almost always leave something critical out of the conversation. There is a very powerful reason we are currently unable to move toward a simpler and sustainable society: the costs of securing access to land for housing often mean that only the relatively affluent can afford such “green lifestyles”.

System change

In response to this problem, we offer some ideas to show how public land could be used for sustainable forms of community-led development.

Recognition of the need for system change is growing. But those arguing for high-impact societies to downshift toward cultures of sustainable consumption need to acknowledge a fundamental problem more clearly: simply keeping a roof over our heads can demand an energy-intensive lifestyle and a dependence on market growth.

Why? Having to buy or rent a home in capitalist societies has huge implications for most of us. It affects what we do for work, how much we work, our need for a car, etc. And, if you can barely afford land or your own home, putting solar panels on the roof, working part-time or growing your own organic food all become very unlikely.

In short, securing the basic need for housing is putting people in more and more debt. This often means any attempt at “dropping out” of market consumerism first involves a whole lot of “dropping in”. The consequences of this reality are anything but simple, local and sustainable.

A different type of land and housing opportunity is needed for reasons of sustainability and equity. Central here is the recognition that access to land, just as with air and water, is not a market product. It is a human right and should be recognised as such. 

Land reform

Even discussing land reform in terms of “affordable housing” still frames land as a market commodity. These discussions often rely on notions of charity and welfare to increase access to land when it really should be available as a right.

But in a nation where simply abolishing negative gearing appears to be politically unpalatable, it would be pragmatic, as a first step, to explore less controversial but still effective policy approaches.

There are many conceptions of property, which means we do not simply have to choose between free market capitalism and state socialism. In Singapore, for example, more than 80 percent of residents live in state-provided housing. 

Societies can govern access to land in an infinite variety of ways. Each way distributes or concentrates wealth and power in progressive or regressive ways.

One policy deserving of attention involves attempting to transcend the “welfare” framing of existing uses of public housing. Already, secure access to public land has empowered some residents to participate in programs such as community food gardens, resources repair/share programs, housing management, maintenance and, in the UK, even housing construction.

Construction collectives

In New South Wales, 50,000 public housing residents have converted many hectares of land in social housing areas into gardens growing vegetables, fruit and flowers. In Victoria, more than 20 public housing estates have established community gardens. 

If these self-selecting residents could be better supported and validated, their status in society (and how they might conceive of themselves) could move from being regarded as “social dependants” to “pioneers of a new economy”.

By showing that access to public land can help with the emergence of local and sustainable community economies, such experiments could be the cultural driver of a broader policy rethink of how we govern land.

For example, more public land could be made available for housing construction collectives, where people participate in building their own homes under the guidance of experts. Australia could seek inspiration from Senegal, where 14,000 ecovillages are being developed.

In governing land we are limited only by our imaginations. Currently, a chronic lack of imagination is being shown. It is time to experiment with new frameworks that can increase access to land and thereby empower more people to explore lifestyles of reduced consumption and increased self-sufficiency.

First steps

We call on the simple living, permaculture and degrowth movements – and the sustainability movement more generally – to better recognise the obstacle that access to land presents to achieving their goals.

More energy and activism should be dedicated to envisioning, campaigning for and experimenting with alternative property and housing arrangements.

Our purpose is not to dismiss the importance of the various downshifting movements. We need as many people as possible pushing against the tide of consumerism and showing that low-impact living can be good living.

These social movements will help create the culture of sufficiency that is needed to support a politics of sustainability. But any such politics must include more empowering and creative land policies.

This Author 

Alex Baumann is a casual academic at the School of Social Sciences & Psychology, Western Sydney University. Samuel Alexander is a research fellow at Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne. This article was first published on The Conversation. 

Image: Creating a place like Sustainable Fawkner’s ‘Dandelion Patch’ depends on access to suitable land. More creative public housing policies could lead the way in developing more community food gardens. Takver/Flickr, CC BY-SA 

I thought I had an understanding of the impact of our toxic way of life. B despite all my reading, research and reporting, it wasn’t until I witnessed it firsthand that the extent of plastic pollution and its consequences sank in. It’s terrifying. 

Cameraman Brice Lainé and I had joined an expedition to the Sargasso Sea with Greenpeace, who were testing for microplastics, among other things. 

The Sargasso Sea, the only body of water without shores, is defined by the currents of the North Atlantic gyre, currents that also carry with them our plastic filth, making it one of the five ocean garbage patches. 

Poisonous waste

The Sargasso is named after Sargassum, a free-floating yellow-brown seaweed that creates a habitat so rich it’s been dubbed the Atlantic golden rainforest.  The cloud-like mats of Sargassum provide a haven for hatchling sea turtles, baby fish, and hundreds of other marine animals.

There are large pieces of plastic entangled in the Sargassum, but the magnitude of it isn’t visible from the surface. It has a subtler presence, revealing itself as you dive down into the blue. Then the realisation dawns: those the shards glittering all around you are broken up pieces of plastic.

Most ocean plastic is first discarded on land, not dumped directly into the water or thrown from the side of ships. Only around 9 percent of plastic produced has ever been recycled. Single-use plastic that ends up in landfills finds its way into our rivers and oceans, flushed into water systems or blown by wind currents. 

In the oceans, degrading plastic becomes even more poisonous as it attracts and binds with other man-made chemical pollutants. 

That is what I was staring at. Miniscule pieces of poisonous human waste from the countries that border the Atlantic, from the west coast of Africa to the east coast of the US, that had travelled thousands of kilometers, breaking up along the way.

We knew

Diving under and looking up into the Sargassum you see the small schools of juvenile trigger and file fish and other species darting around or just hiding within, like shrimp. Species we eat, species that are eaten by species we eat. 

Those insidious microplastics are what make their way into the gills and digestive systems of marine life and travel up the food chain, all the way to our dinner plates.

On this expedition, part of its year-long pole to pole campaign to push for a Global Oceans Treaty, Greenpeace found in its samples similar or greater concentrations of plastic to what they found in a study they did last year in the notorious Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Their analysis indicated that most of it originated from single-use plastics.

Celia Ojeda, a marine biologist and Greenpeace oceans campaigner, said: “This is why science is so important and why governments need to listen to scientists now. We need to take measures against plastic pollution.”

Plastic pollution is hardly a new phenomenon. A study undertaken back in the early 1970s, off the shores of Bermuda, found 3,500 pieces of plastic per square kilometer. We knew. Nearly fifty years ago we knew.

No quick fix 

A more recent, as yet unpublished study by the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo, found that nearly 42 percent of fish sampled in the area had ingested microplastics.

Robbie Smith, a marine ecologist who was part of that study, and is the curator of the Bermuda Aquarium and Zoo, explained: “We need to be more respectful that plastic is a great tool but can become a nightmare. 

“There is no quick fix. Nothing is going away fast. It takes a decade or two for plastic to make its way into the watershed.”

There is only so much that we as consumers can do. You can try to avoid plastic bags and you can recycle. But then at the grocery store produce is often wrapped in plastic, ice cold drinks come in plastic cups, your take-out arrives in plastic containers, wrapped in plastic. Hotel rooms are filled with small plastic shampoo bottles and body lotions. 

It’s all around us, everywhere. Literally.  Plastic micro-fibres are in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, from the north to the south pole.

Toxic plastics

Last year I went on assignment to the Antarctic where another Greenpeace study found microplastics in nearly all water samples and PFAS (chemicals that are used as stain and water repellents in things like cookware and outdoor gear) in snow samples.

Chilean scientists showed us microfibres they found in Antarctic clams. A few months ago, I was in the Arctic where more recently a report found microplastics in the Arctic ice. The WHO organization just published its findings about the presence of microplastics in tap and bottled water.

Scientists don’t yet fully understand what that plastic or the toxins the plastic contains can do to us. A recent study from June of this year said that the average person ingests around 2,000 microplastic particles a week, about the weight of a credit card.

The scientists and conservationists I spoke to are clear – the problem needs to be dealt with at the source. Companies and corporations need to end the production of single use plastic. We need to grow a culture of reuse and refill.

The “laissez-faire” attitude of too many key decision makers defies logic. There is a lot of buzz around plastic now, which is great, it’s a start. Some countries are starting to take measures, but this isn’t something that we can ease into or take our time with. This is an emergency. 

Climate crisis

We need more urgency around the environment and the climate crisis. We need to learn to respect the living planet that sustains us.

Given what I knew going into the trip to the Sargasso Sea, I am surprised by how jarring it is to witness firsthand. There was something about being tossed around by the wind and waves, how powerful and vast the oceans are, all the while knowing that beneath the seemingly pristine surface lies the evidence of our destructive ways. 

It’s not hard to imagine a time in the not too distant future where every single thing we consume from the ocean is toxic, where our pollution silently, slowly and invisibly destroys marine ecosystems – one of our main food sources.

Out of sight, out of mind doesn’t apply here. Our world is interconnected, and it’s time we start to save it and save ourselves before it’s too late.

This Author 

Arwa Damon is CNN’s Senior International Correspondent.