Agriculture has been the bedrock of human civilisation since 7000BC. There’s not a society on the planet that hasn’t been built around it.

But today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that cutting carbon emissions from transport and energy usage is not enough to tackle climate change.

In order to prevent the earth from heating to dangerous levels – 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – we need to substantially change agriculture and land-usage.

Three problems

So when did agriculture – something we can’t picture life without – become such a problem? There’s three crucial points.

One was when we started to use “cheap” fossil fuels to replace human labour, ingenuity and working with nature. So now, it takes 10 calories of inputs to produce one of food. Once, not so long ago, it was one in to three out.

That was the second change – the introduction of huge volumes of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Hedges that has housed the predators of pests were grubbed up, ponds filled in, “weeds” eliminated to the point of absolute monoculture.

Finally, there was the shift to most “food” coming through supermarkets and multinational companies, which wanted uniform sizes and shapes, and tastes, around the world. So crops were wedged into unsuitable environments, just to feed multinational companies that wanted uniform products around the world.

When I visit the supermarket I am dumbfounded that products which are organic, free-range, palm-oil free or grass-fed are demarcated on stickers.

Environmentally chaotic

Whereas products which wreak havoc on biodiversity, come from land that was recently rainforest, that are intensively farmed and waste tonnes of water, are not stickered. These are the defaults.

We are subtly led to expect agriculture to be intensive, unsustainable, cruel, water-thirsty and environmentally chaotic unless a little sticker (and often a higher price tag) tells us otherwise.

If anything embodies what we’ve been led to believe is the norm, it is intensive animal farming. The IPCC emphasises a truth which has been known for years – yet met with general inertia from global leaders – that a rapid global shift to plant-based diets is necessary for human survival.

What the report makes clear is that farmed food which we could eat is wasted on feeding animals for slaughter. For every 100 calories fed to farm animals, between 15 and 30 calories make it into our stomachs as meat.

But no matter what food we buy – whether it is animal or plant – we are wasting far too much of it. Over a quarter of food that makes it past the farm door doesn’t end up in our stomachs.

Waste

Seventy percent of food is wasted by households – that equates to over 6 tonnes a year. The average household with children is spending £700 a year on food that ends up in the bin.

The land and water used in producing this food? Utterly wasted.  Whether it is by filtering it through animals for meat, or by throwing unused food into landfills – it is clear that we are producing far more food than we need.

In a climate emergency, wasting food, water and land at the rate we are currently going is unthinkable.

And yet food waste and land usage seem don’t seem to be very high on the agendas of world leaders. The IPCC report stresses that we are running out of time.

Whilst we sort our banana peels and egg shells into our composting heap, and carefully store our leftovers to eat later, farms are often forced by the purchasers of their crops to waste enough fruit and veg to feed Birmingham for a year.

Climate emergency 

UK households  binned £13 billion of edible food in 2017. Individual responsibility cannot be ignored, but looking into supermarkets, it is easy to see that responsibility is shared.

BOGOF (buy one get one free) encourages overpurchasing. Fruit and vegetable comes packaged in ways that makes buying just what you need impossible. Rampant confusion still reigns over “use by” and “best by” dates.

And a look at the ready meals, the promotions, the “luxury” ranges, show how much meat is still presented as the centre-piece of meals.

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer writes, “Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else?… If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is?”

It is a question that is hard to answer, but one which all ecologists and environmentalists need to consider. We are in a climate emergency and our relationship with what we eat and how we farm it needs to change. Our window of time to be indifferent is up.

This Author 

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party. 

Agriculture has been the bedrock of human civilisation since 7000BC. There’s not a society on the planet that hasn’t been built around it.

But today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that cutting carbon emissions from transport and energy usage is not enough to tackle climate change.

In order to prevent the earth from heating to dangerous levels – 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – we need to substantially change agriculture and land-usage.

Three problems

So when did agriculture – something we can’t picture life without – become such a problem? There’s three crucial points.

One was when we started to use “cheap” fossil fuels to replace human labour, ingenuity and working with nature. So now, it takes 10 calories of inputs to produce one of food. Once, not so long ago, it was one in to three out.

That was the second change – the introduction of huge volumes of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Hedges that has housed the predators of pests were grubbed up, ponds filled in, “weeds” eliminated to the point of absolute monoculture.

Finally, there was the shift to most “food” coming through supermarkets and multinational companies, which wanted uniform sizes and shapes, and tastes, around the world. So crops were wedged into unsuitable environments, just to feed multinational companies that wanted uniform products around the world.

When I visit the supermarket I am dumbfounded that products which are organic, free-range, palm-oil free or grass-fed are demarcated on stickers.

Environmentally chaotic

Whereas products which wreak havoc on biodiversity, come from land that was recently rainforest, that are intensively farmed and waste tonnes of water, are not stickered. These are the defaults.

We are subtly led to expect agriculture to be intensive, unsustainable, cruel, water-thirsty and environmentally chaotic unless a little sticker (and often a higher price tag) tells us otherwise.

If anything embodies what we’ve been led to believe is the norm, it is intensive animal farming. The IPCC emphasises a truth which has been known for years – yet met with general inertia from global leaders – that a rapid global shift to plant-based diets is necessary for human survival.

What the report makes clear is that farmed food which we could eat is wasted on feeding animals for slaughter. For every 100 calories fed to farm animals, between 15 and 30 calories make it into our stomachs as meat.

But no matter what food we buy – whether it is animal or plant – we are wasting far too much of it. Over a quarter of food that makes it past the farm door doesn’t end up in our stomachs.

Waste

Seventy percent of food is wasted by households – that equates to over 6 tonnes a year. The average household with children is spending £700 a year on food that ends up in the bin.

The land and water used in producing this food? Utterly wasted.  Whether it is by filtering it through animals for meat, or by throwing unused food into landfills – it is clear that we are producing far more food than we need.

In a climate emergency, wasting food, water and land at the rate we are currently going is unthinkable.

And yet food waste and land usage seem don’t seem to be very high on the agendas of world leaders. The IPCC report stresses that we are running out of time.

Whilst we sort our banana peels and egg shells into our composting heap, and carefully store our leftovers to eat later, farms are often forced by the purchasers of their crops to waste enough fruit and veg to feed Birmingham for a year.

Climate emergency 

UK households  binned £13 billion of edible food in 2017. Individual responsibility cannot be ignored, but looking into supermarkets, it is easy to see that responsibility is shared.

BOGOF (buy one get one free) encourages overpurchasing. Fruit and vegetable comes packaged in ways that makes buying just what you need impossible. Rampant confusion still reigns over “use by” and “best by” dates.

And a look at the ready meals, the promotions, the “luxury” ranges, show how much meat is still presented as the centre-piece of meals.

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer writes, “Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else?… If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is?”

It is a question that is hard to answer, but one which all ecologists and environmentalists need to consider. We are in a climate emergency and our relationship with what we eat and how we farm it needs to change. Our window of time to be indifferent is up.

This Author 

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party. 

Agriculture has been the bedrock of human civilisation since 7000BC. There’s not a society on the planet that hasn’t been built around it.

But today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that cutting carbon emissions from transport and energy usage is not enough to tackle climate change.

In order to prevent the earth from heating to dangerous levels – 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – we need to substantially change agriculture and land-usage.

Three problems

So when did agriculture – something we can’t picture life without – become such a problem? There’s three crucial points.

One was when we started to use “cheap” fossil fuels to replace human labour, ingenuity and working with nature. So now, it takes 10 calories of inputs to produce one of food. Once, not so long ago, it was one in to three out.

That was the second change – the introduction of huge volumes of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Hedges that has housed the predators of pests were grubbed up, ponds filled in, “weeds” eliminated to the point of absolute monoculture.

Finally, there was the shift to most “food” coming through supermarkets and multinational companies, which wanted uniform sizes and shapes, and tastes, around the world. So crops were wedged into unsuitable environments, just to feed multinational companies that wanted uniform products around the world.

When I visit the supermarket I am dumbfounded that products which are organic, free-range, palm-oil free or grass-fed are demarcated on stickers.

Environmentally chaotic

Whereas products which wreak havoc on biodiversity, come from land that was recently rainforest, that are intensively farmed and waste tonnes of water, are not stickered. These are the defaults.

We are subtly led to expect agriculture to be intensive, unsustainable, cruel, water-thirsty and environmentally chaotic unless a little sticker (and often a higher price tag) tells us otherwise.

If anything embodies what we’ve been led to believe is the norm, it is intensive animal farming. The IPCC emphasises a truth which has been known for years – yet met with general inertia from global leaders – that a rapid global shift to plant-based diets is necessary for human survival.

What the report makes clear is that farmed food which we could eat is wasted on feeding animals for slaughter. For every 100 calories fed to farm animals, between 15 and 30 calories make it into our stomachs as meat.

But no matter what food we buy – whether it is animal or plant – we are wasting far too much of it. Over a quarter of food that makes it past the farm door doesn’t end up in our stomachs.

Waste

Seventy percent of food is wasted by households – that equates to over 6 tonnes a year. The average household with children is spending £700 a year on food that ends up in the bin.

The land and water used in producing this food? Utterly wasted.  Whether it is by filtering it through animals for meat, or by throwing unused food into landfills – it is clear that we are producing far more food than we need.

In a climate emergency, wasting food, water and land at the rate we are currently going is unthinkable.

And yet food waste and land usage seem don’t seem to be very high on the agendas of world leaders. The IPCC report stresses that we are running out of time.

Whilst we sort our banana peels and egg shells into our composting heap, and carefully store our leftovers to eat later, farms are often forced by the purchasers of their crops to waste enough fruit and veg to feed Birmingham for a year.

Climate emergency 

UK households  binned £13 billion of edible food in 2017. Individual responsibility cannot be ignored, but looking into supermarkets, it is easy to see that responsibility is shared.

BOGOF (buy one get one free) encourages overpurchasing. Fruit and vegetable comes packaged in ways that makes buying just what you need impossible. Rampant confusion still reigns over “use by” and “best by” dates.

And a look at the ready meals, the promotions, the “luxury” ranges, show how much meat is still presented as the centre-piece of meals.

In his book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer writes, “Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else?… If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is?”

It is a question that is hard to answer, but one which all ecologists and environmentalists need to consider. We are in a climate emergency and our relationship with what we eat and how we farm it needs to change. Our window of time to be indifferent is up.

This Author 

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party. 

The world must “look after the land” to help tackle climate change, experts warn as rising temperatures put food supplies at risk.

Global warming will increasingly lead to extremes such as drought, heatwaves and wildfires and threaten food security, reducing yields, pushing up food prices and disrupting supply chains, a new UN report said.

But sustainable farming, changing diets to eat less meat, replanting forests and protecting habitats such as peatland and mangroves can cut climate emissions and deliver other benefits such as securing food supplies.

Swift

Land is already under pressure, with around 70 percent of the world’s ice-free land affected by human activity – and climate change is driving more problems such as turning land to desert, and soil and coastal erosion, the study said.

How people use the land is also contributing to global warming – with activities such as growing crops, raising livestock and cutting down forests accounting for almost a quarter of greenhouse gases (23%) between 2006 and 2017.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) comes after a study from the international body last year called for “unprecedented” action to slash carbon emissions to zero by 2050 and limit dangerous global warming.

Experts behind the new report called for swift action to protect land to curb emissions, help nature and ensure food security.

Dr Jo House, from the University of Bristol, said: “We have to look after the land, the land is doing many things for us and we need to support the land for it to continue to do that.”

Lentils

Professor Jim Skea, from Imperial College London, said: “The human race has been rather abusing it and we need to look after it for our own benefit as well.

“Land is already struggling under pressures we put on it at the moment. The issue is climate change is adding to all the other burdens we put on the land system.”

And he said: “There’s a lot of actions that can be taken for the land sector to help with climate change, there are many ways of managing it to reduce the impacts of land and bring benefits like building up soil carbon.”

He added: “In the past we’ve often thought dealing with climate change is about renewable energy and energy efficiency, but this is bringing land much more into the foreground.”

The report said balanced diets with plant-based foods such as grains, beans and lentils, nuts, fruits and vegetables and animal-based food produced in sustainable systems with low greenhouse gas emissions can help curb climate change and benefit health.

Wasted

Dr House said it was not up to scientists to tell people what to do.

But she said red meat had a much higher carbon impact than other types of meat due to the emissions given off during production as well as clearing land to grow animal feed.

The report said around 13% of carbon dioxide between 2007 and 2016 was caused by human uses of land, mostly from cutting down forests.

Land also accounted for 44% of methane emissions, with livestock such as cattle and expansion of rice paddies driving rising levels of the gas, and 82% of nitrous oxide emissions, coming from fertilisers for crops and from livestock.

At the same time, around 25-30 percent of all food produced is lost or wasted, contributing more greenhouse gases, the report by experts from around the world found.

Slashed

Sustainable food production, improved forest management, protecting soils, conserving habitats and restoring land, reducing deforestation and food loss and waste can all tackle climate change, help wildlife and boost livelihoods.

Conserving peatlands, wetlands, grasslands, mangroves and forests can have an immediate impact.

Other measures could include replanting forests and using more trees as part of farms in “agroforestry”, for example for shading livestock or as crops such as apples which could be planted through the middle of fields of other crops.

But the experts warned that planting monocultures of trees or crops for bioenergy on a large scale in an unsustainable way will have negative impacts, and sufficient land must be available to grow food.

They also warn that tackling emissions from land is not on its own enough to curb climate change, and greenhouse gases must be slashed from all sectors to keep global warming to well below 2C or 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Climate change could cause an increase in toxic mercury in seafood such as cod and tuna as warmer waters force them to eat more to keep going, scientists have warned.

Around four-fifths of the mercury put into the atmosphere from natural and human causes, such as burning coal, ends up in the ocean where some is converted by tiny organisms to a particularly dangerous form known as methylmercury.

This methylmercury, which can affect brain function, works its way up the food chain and accumulates in top predators such as cod and tuna in high concentrations.

Cod

As the seas warm, these fish are using more energy to swim which requires more calories – so they are eating more and storing up more of the toxin.

This means that while regulation to curb emissions of mercury are leading to decreases in the concentrations of the toxin in fish, rising ocean temperatures due to climate change are predicted to push it up again, the researchers from Harvard warn.

Changes in the diet of species including cod and spiny dogfish as a result of overfishing of their food sources such as herring can also affect how much methylmercury they are consuming and storing in their bodies.

The researchers from Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health modelled the impacts of reductions in mercury emissions.

They also looked at the impacts of overfishing which changes what top predators eat, such as reducing how many large herring cod are eating.

Warming

Their study, based on three decades of data from fish and seawater from the Gulf of Maine and published in the journal Nature, also looked at what temperature increases would do.

Concentrations of the toxin in cod increased by up to 23% between the 1970s and 2000s as a result of dietary shifts initiated by overfishing and then a recovery of herring populations, they suggested.

The researchers’ computer modelling predicts an increase of 1C in seawater temperatures compared to how warm it was in 2000 would lead to a 32 percent increase in methylmercury levels in cod and a 70% increase in spiny dogfish.

Even with a 20 percent decrease in methylmercury in sea water as a consequence of reductions in emissions, a 1C temperature rise would lead to increases of 10% in cod and 20% in spiny dogfish, the researchers said.

They also analysed the effects of recent ocean warming from a low in 1969 on concentrations of the mercury in Atlantic bluefin tuna and found it could contribute to an estimated 56 percent increase in levels in the species.

Exposure

Elsie Sunderland, a senior author of the paper, said: “We have shown that the benefits of reducing mercury emissions holds, irrespective of what else is happening in the ecosystem.

“But if we want to continue the trend of reducing methylmercury exposure in the future, we need a two-pronged approach.

“Climate change is going to exacerbate human exposure to methylmercury through seafood, so to protect ecosystems and human health we need to regulate both mercury emissions and greenhouse gases.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

The highly controversial practice of allowing investors to sue national governments before investment tribunals risks a chilling effect on meaningful action on climate change, environmental law experts have warned.

Legal experts from ClientEarth are calling governments around the world to address the risk that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms could halt climate measures, such as phasing out fossil fuels or introducing carbon taxes.

Investment arbitration mechanisms like ISDS are included in around 3000 investment and trade agreements worldwide, like the trade agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA). They enable big corporations to side-line domestic courts and sue governments – whose environmental or social policies may affect their investment – in massive compensation claims.

Rapid exit

In a brief submitted to the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), where discussions to reform the ISDS system are ongoing, legal experts have warned governments participating in the reform process that foreign investors may want to use ISDS to challenge and delay emission reduction policies needed to implement the Paris Agreement.

Co-author of the briefing, ClientEarth Trade and Environment lawyer Amandine Van den Berghe said: “The ISDS system has given rise to an alarming number of claims against environmental measures, which are already the fastest growing trigger for dispute. This poses a specific and concerning threat to the global fight against climate change.

“We are running out of time to take meaningful action to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“Amid this climate emergency, we call on governments to respect their international commitments, and push for a deep and systemic reform of ISDS, so that these mechanisms are not able to undermine efforts to save the planet.”

The briefing’s other co-author Dr Kyla Tienhaara from Queen’s University said: “A rapid exit from the system is by far the preferable option. The window for action to avoid catastrophic climate change is closing and we must quickly remove any obstacles that could prevent or delay the adoption of emission reduction policies.”

Environmental standards

As part of the last phase of the UNCITRAL ISDS reform process, ClientEarth urges parties involved to address the regulatory chill effect of ISDS on climate change policy.

The Vattenfall case is the most striking example of government watering down their environmental standards because of an ISDS dispute.

In their brief to governments, legal experts put forward a series of proposals – the first calls on UNCITRAL working parties to develop a mechanism that allows countries to move away from traditional investment treaties and ISDS.

Alternatively, for states that are not ready to withdraw consent or terminate their treaties, legal experts recommend a series of five measures, which when combined should ensure that only responsible investors who respect international climate commitments can utilise ISDS:

• Exempt all measures taken in pursuit of international obligations under the Paris agreement on climate change from challenge under ISDS;
• Require exhaustion of local remedies before recourse to ISDS;
• Allow counterclaims and ensure full participation for affected third parties;
• Ban third party funding of cases;
• Include climate change considerations in the calculation method for compensation.

 

This Author 

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

Image: Stop ISDS. 

More than 20,000 people have signed a petition calling for a ban on the sale of toxic personal hygiene products such as tampons and baby nappies.

The online petition launched in June and is currently attracting an average rate of 2,000 signatures a week.

The petition is demanding that supermarkets stop selling personal hygiene products that have been bleached with chlorine dioxide, as they may contain chemicals that are harmful to human health. These products include well-known tampon and diaper brands, as well as incontinence pads and other tissue products such as napkins.

Dangerous chemicals

The chlorine dioxide bleaching process used to make these products releases dioxins – a group of compounds that have been linked to cancer and infertility as well as other health disorders.

The World Health Organisation has classified dioxin as one of the world’s most dangerous chemicals. Recent studies have revealed alarming levels of dioxin in these products, fuelling concern that these products represent a public health risk.

Shockingly, there is no legal requirement for dioxin and other chemical ‘ingredients’ to be listed on the packaging of these products. This lack of disclosure makes it impossible for consumers to avoid any potential toxins when purchasing such items.

The #MyClosestEnemy campaign is looking to raise public awareness on what it calls a ‘hidden issue’ by demanding supermarkets and manufacturers take action.

Stronger controls

Rune Leithe, founder of the #MyClosestEnemy campaign, says supermarkets need to understand the dangers associated with stocking such products on their shelves, and start specifying that their suppliers – the manufacturers of these products – offer safer, totally chlorine-free alternatives and free of other toxic compounds.

“We are calling on Europe’s biggest retail chains – Tesco, Carrefour, Aldi, Lidl, ICA, Axfood and others –  to stop selling these products. The manufacturers of these products can offer non-toxic alternatives by switching to a safer, totally chlorine-free bleaching process, but the vast majority of them have chosen not to – this has to change,” Leithe says.

France is already calling for new laws to make disposable diaper products safer following  a two-year investigation by the Agency for Food, Environment & Occupational Health & Safety (Anses), which found unsafe levels of dioxins and other toxic compounds in various nappy brands being sold across the EU4.

As a result of these findings, French authorities have asked diaper manufacturers to review their production processes and impose stronger controls on the raw materials used to make their products.

Leithe said: “I urge other governments to follow the recommendation of French authorities to eliminate these toxic substances in disposable diapers – but also to go one step further and include other personal hygiene products such as tampons.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from MyClosestEnemy. 

Image: Marco Verch, Flickr. 

Human predators are a threat to sharks’ wellbeing, research suggests.

Scientists have discovered that the supposedly fearsome creatures cannot thrive near large human populations and fish markets.

Researchers also found the average body size of sharks and other marine predators fell dramatically in these areas, where sharks are caught and killed intensively for their meat and fins.

Over-exploitation

The study indicates the average body size and number of sharks and other marine predators fell significantly in proximity to cities with more than 10,000 people and associated fishing fleets.

Lead author Dr Tom Letessier, of the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology, said: “Human activity is now the biggest influence on sharks’ distribution, overtaking every other ecological factor.

“Just 13 percent of the world’s oceans can be considered ‘wilderness’ but sharks and other predators are much more common and significantly larger at distances greater than 1,250 kilometres from people.

“This suggests that large marine predators are generally unable to thrive near to people and is another clear example of the impact of human over-exploitation on our seas.”

Published in the journal PLOS Biology, the research suggests the minimum distance from people and fishing which had no measurable effect was 1,250 kilometres.

Tropical

This is much further than previous studies have suggested and probably reflects the increased distances fishing boats can now travel.

As a result, sharks were only observed at 12% of sites monitored, scientists say.

According to the research, sea surface temperature also had a strong influence on predators’ average body size, with a marked decrease at more than 28C.

While this is consistent with what is already known about many smaller species living in tropical waters, it could become a problem as global temperatures continue to rise.

To collect their data, the team analysed video footage taken at 1,041 sites across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Remote

Sites varied in proximity to fish markets and human populations, with some close to cities and others up to 1,500 kilometres away.

Sharks, and other free-swimming predators, were studied using cameras attached to canisters filled with bait.

The team recorded a total of 23,200 animals representing 109 species, including 841 individual sharks from 19 different species.

Dr Letessier added: “Our study also found that shallower water habitats, of depths less than 500 metres, were vital for marine predator diversity.

“We therefore need to identify sites that are both shallow and remote and prioritise them for conservation.

Prey

“Existing large, no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) need to be better enforced and extended to focus on the last refuges where these extraordinary animals remain abundant.

“Large marine predators and sharks in particular play a unique and irreplaceable role in the ocean ecosystem.

“They control populations of prey species, keep those populations healthy by removing sick or injured animals, and transport nutrients between loosely connected habitats over vast distances.”

This Author

Nina Massey is the PA science correspondent.

A major conference in Stirling this September will examine how Scotland can reverse its widespread depletion of nature and become a world leader in restoring its land and seas to good health, so wildlife and communities can flourish.

The Big Picture Conference will explore the potential for rewilding large parts of Scotland’s forests, peatlands, rivers, moorlands and seas, and the benefits this could bring for declining wildlife such as red squirrel, wildcat and capercaillie, as well as for people’s health, wellbeing and employment.

Hosted by communications group SCOTLAND: The Big Picture at the University of Stirling’s Macrobert Arts Centre on 21 September, the event will examine why rewilding – the repair and restoration of nature – matters. 

Restoring ecosystems

The conference – the only event of its kind in Scotland – will focus on solutions rather than reinforcing problems of global biodiversity crashes and climate breakdown.

There will be inspirational presentations and examples from around the world, delivered by leading rewilding practitioners, policy makers and storytellers.

Peter Cairns, Director of SCOTLAND: The Big Picture, said: “Scotland is blessed with awe-inspiring landscapes, but huge areas have become ecologically depleted. Woodlands, wetlands and peatlands across the country are all shadows of what they could be.

“But with different thinking, Scotland could become a world-leader in restoring its ecosystems to good health, for both wildlife and people.

“We’re aiming for a great day of inspiring presentations and thought-provoking discussions.”

Cairngorms Connect

Scotland’s biggest habitat restoration project – Cairngorms Connect, a land manager partnership that is enhancing habitats across a vast area of Cairngorms National Park – will feature at the event, as will Lynbreck Croft, whose owners are farming with nature.

The keynote presentation will be from the inspiring American Prairie Reserve, where three million acres of public and private lands across Montana, USA are being reconnected to benefit nature and people.

SCOTLAND: The Big Picture says rewilding could provide employment, especially in the Highlands and Islands, where otters, deer, puffins and sea eagles already support a growing nature tourism economy. Nature’s benefits also include beavers reducing flooding, trees providing food, and peatlands soaking up carbon. Increasingly, studies show how nature boosts people’s health, and is good for children.

The organisers hope to encourage debate and discussion, and also cooperation between different groups. They say rewilding can co-exist well with farming, forestry and recreational activities.

This Author 

Mariane Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from SCOTLAND: The Big Picture. 

Anyone can attend the conference, which is sponsored by The Woodland Trust and Ecosulis. Tickets can be purchased here.

The HBO miniseries “Chernobyl” is a timely reminder of the horrors of nuclear technology gone wrong.

In the early hours of 26 April 1986, an accident occurred in northern Ukraine that revealed once again that all the genius and inventiveness of nuclear technology is powerless against human error. Machines could save no-one.

The HBO drama painstakingly detailed the events of that night: the botched experiment that led to an explosion that ripped a 2,000 ton concrete roof off the reactor; the fire that lasted ten days and released 100 times the amount of radioactivity as Hiroshima.

Vivid portrayal 

We watched as the scientists struggled in the first ten days to avoid an even worse outcome. If the molten mass were to penetrate through the concrete floor and come into contact with water, a nuclear explosion might take place with huge swathes of Europe rendered uninhabitable.

We observed the work of the “liquidators”, the army of men, numbering anywhere between 600,000 and 800,000, drafted in from all over the Soviet Union, to clean up the site and the contaminated territory.

Some shovelled graphite off the roof of Reactor 4, in an atmosphere so radioactive that they could stay only a minute or two before retreating. Over the next few years, the liquidators built the first sarcophagus, cleared away topsoil, buried whole villages, washed down roofs, and shot radioactive dogs and cats abandoned in these villages.

We watched as the men who were exposed to the highest levels of radioactivity died, decomposing from within, and contaminating anyone who came near them, including their wives and unborn children.

The miniseries was a brilliant piece of work: well written, well acted and well filmed. It did exactly what a good drama should do. It portrayed vividly what it was like for those people to face the worst technological disaster in history. It was hard to watch and hard not to cry.

Debunking myths

So far so good. The viewing public learnt how devastating a nuclear accident can be. How disappointing then that the opportunity to understand Chernobyl, its true health effects and the cover-up of those health effects, has been squandered.

The series has done nothing to debunk the myths about Chernobyl. We will not be able to avoid a repeat of history unless we face up to these realities.

The first myth is that Chernobyl was a “Soviet” accident. Surely, the West is told, only the USSR would cut corners and produce a second-rate nuclear reactor with inherent defects that needed only human error to result in a nuclear catastrophe.

The nuclear industry in the West was perfectly aware of RBMK reactor technology and there is no evidence that the West ever warned that an accident was waiting to happen. At that time, the capacity of the USSR to develop nuclear technology and expand its fleet of nuclear power stations was a source of admiration and perhaps a little fear in the West.

Besides, the UK had experienced its own nuclear accident in 1957 at Windscale, the US in 1979 at Three Mile Island and in 1999, days before the millenium, the French escaped a near meltdown at a nuclear power station near Bordeaux.

Nuclear accidents

On the night of 27 December 1999, a storm destroyed forests across Europe but before crossing the continent, the winds hit the French coast and a hundred million litres of water broke over the sea walls and flooded the Blayais reactor. The cooling system failed, then the diesel back up system failed, and finally two of the four essential service pumps failed.

A government spokesperson admitted that they were within twelve hours of a meltdown. This accident at Blayais bears many similarities to the accident at Fukushima in 2011. The nuclear lobby would like the public to believe that Fukushima was the result of a natural disaster, but even the Japanese parliamentary panel reporting in 2012, a year after the accident, said that it was a “man-made” disaster.

TEPCO had simply not built the reactor to withstand the earthquakes and tsunamis which occur regularly in Japan. Equally, a French parliamentary report had recommended in 1997 that the sea wall around Blayais be heightened half a metre, but EDF had postponed the work till 2002.

There is nothing “Soviet” about nuclear accidents.

Death toll 

The second myth surrounding Chernobyl concerns the death toll from the accident. The majority of sensible people are suspicious of the figures put about by the nuclear lobby (30 to 50 deaths) but struggle to understand the larger figures put out by organisations like Greenpeace, that involve tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths.

It suits the nuclear lobby for this discrepancy to exist in our minds. It allows them to paint Greenpeace and similar organisations as extremists and doom mongers. The discrepancy also conveniently obscures the dangers of low level radiation that causes illness and premature death in the vicinity of every nuclear reactor in Europe. 

It is perfectly true that between thirty and fifty people died in the weeks following the accident from acute external radiation poisoning. The HBO drama concentrated on these (admittedly horrific) deaths, but it is not acute radiation poisoning that accounts for the hundreds of thousands of deaths following Chernobyl.

Illnesses and premature deaths caused by Chernobyl are due instead to chronic internal low level radiation from the ingestion of food grown on contaminated soil.

Apart from the victims of acute external radiation poisoning, who died in 1986, there are three other groups of people who suffer illness and premature death in the contaminated territories of Chernobyl. 

Liquidators

The first are the liquidators, whose mortality and illness is mentioned briefly at the end of the HBO drama. Whether they removed graphite from the roof of Reactor 4 – the “organic robots”, who received horrendously high levels of radiation, or whether they dug up fields and villages and received a lower dose, the liquidators all inhaled particles of radioactive material in varying amounts. These particles remain in the body and will eventually lead to cancer or other illnesses.

In 2001 at a World Health Organisation conference in Kiev, the Chief Medical Officer of the Russian Federation said that 10 percent of his liquidators had died and 30 percent were ill. Extrapolated over the total number of liquidators from all over the USSR, this suggests that even in 2001, between 60,000 and 80,000 liquidators had already died and between 200,000 and 300,000 were ill.

The average age of the liquidators in 1986 was 33. We do not know about these men because the USSR not only lied about the levels of radioactivity they received but they also forbade doctors and hospitals from attributing illness and death to the accident.

Likewise, we do not know how many are still alive today, and if they have died, their cause of death will never be verified. 

Evacuees

The second group of victims are the evacuees from the towns and villages in the vicinity of the reactor who should have been evacuated immediately but remained for a few days in extremely dangerous conditions. 

The third group are the million peasant farmers living in the most contaminated villages in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Their illness and premature death is the result of the chronic ingestion of food, morning noon and night, contaminated at low levels with radionuclides.

The radionuclides accumulate in the body and have effects on every organ of the body, in the medium and long term. There are villages where no children are healthy.

It must be remembered that children are far more vulnerable to the effects of radiation. A foetus is 100 times more vulnerable to the same amount of radiation as an adult male. (Just for the record, our internationally accepted “safe” limits are based on an adult male). 

Health effects

The viewer watching Craig Mazin’s miniseries will be moved to tears but will be no nearer to understanding the devastating health effects that continue today in the contaminated territories around Chernobyl.

The harm comes from tiny particles lodged in the organs of the body, accumulating gradually over time. “No matter how small, if an area that has been subjected to intense ionisation for a sufficient time, cancer will proliferate throughout the body. It is in fact the body’s reaction to the exhaustion it experiences from trying to repair one very specific site that has been destroyed innumerable times”.

But cancer with its long latency period is not the only illness caused by this chronic internal low level radiation, which causes disorders in every organ and system of the body. The list (not exhaustive) includes cataracts, heart irregularities, diabetes, digestive problems, neurological problems, fertility problems, birth defects, chronic infections, and genetic effects.

The illness and death suffered by the victims of Chernobyl has been documented in a book published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe on People and the Environment brings together 5,000 scientific papers mainly from the three worst affected countries but also from the rest of Europe.

It is often forgotten that 57 percent of the radioactive fallout occurred outside Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. By way of illustration, one of the studies in the NYAS book details the doubling of the incidence of Down’s Syndrome in Lothian Scotland, an area that received fallout from Chernobyl (Ramsay et al,1991). 

Valeri Legasov

The real disinformation in Craig Mazin’s miniseries is the almost total absence in his account of the role played by the nuclear lobby.

Any accident, anywhere in the world at a nuclear power station is of intense concern to the nuclear lobby because it threatens the industry. As early as August 1986, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) were in Moscow, directing the cover up. They remained in constant communication over the next five years, making abstract calculations about radiation levels and health effects and manipulating the data.

IAEA officials were carefully scrutinising the Soviet scientists they met, strengthening ties with those who adopted the nuclear industry line, and disparaging those wayward individuals who inconveniently insisted on telling the truth. Legasov was one of these wayward individuals. 

The central character of the HBO miniseries is Valeri Legasov, brilliantly portrayed by Jared Harris. Legasov was a good man, who helped oversee the extinction of the fire in the first ten days, knew the true extent of the contamination, and the health consequences that would result.

When Legasov took his own life on the second anniversary of the accident, it was the culmination of a two year battle with the nuclear lobby.

Persecution

From August 1986, four months after the accident, the IAEA and the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) were already at work, pressuring the USSR to lower their estimates of deaths resulting from the accident.

Legasov had presented them with a voluminous document consisting of a general report and an Annexe. The stumbling block for the West were the 70 pages of Annexe 7 entitled “Medical and Biological Problems” in which Legasov contended that there would be at least 40,000 deaths.

Over the next year of so, Legasov and other independent scientists were worn down in a process one commentator has called “the stages of submission to the lies”. A collaboration of IAEA officials and tame Soviet establishment scientists minimised future health effects, threatened economic ruin if large populations were evacuated, and attacked independent scientists.

Four days before his death, Legasov, already persecuted in Moscow, heard that the nuclear lobby at an UNSCEAR conference on Sydney had massaged his figures down again, to a mere 4,000 possible deaths.

At the same conference, the IAEA made the decision that the Soviet people living in the “nuclear gulag” could live perfectly healthy lives with levels of radioactivity five times higher than officially recommended levels elsewhere on the planet. Legasov felt he had betrayed his people and he saw only one way out. 

Ethos

The nuclear lobby has been active in the contaminated territories ever since. Organisations with names like Ethos, funded by the French nuclear lobby, were sent in to advise the population that “living with Chernobyl means learning to live again, to live another way, integrate the presence of radioactivity into daily life as a new component of existence”.

Ethos has no expertise in health and offers no medical care. They muzzle the few independent scientists and doctors who are genuinely involved in the health of the population and who accurately measure levels of radioactivity in soil and foodstuffs.

While the independent scientists and doctors working in the contaminated villages receive no money other than donations from charitable NGOs in the West, Ethos has seemingly limitless funds, which allow it to bribe the corrupt governments of the three countries concerned, whose overwhelming priority is to minimise the health effects and save money.

Ethos is now active around Fukushima in Japan, persuading the population to return to areas contaminated at levels higher than the evacuated zones of Chernobyl. “Ethos Japan” organises “rehabilitation” programmes, oversees confidentiality agreements between various university hospitals and the IAEA, and disparages the work of independent scientists.

Ethos threatens legal action against journalists like Mari Takenouchi who have the temerity to suggest that returning people to contaminated areas amounts to an experiment on human beings.

Responsibility

Fukushima was the price the Japanese paid for the lies told about Chernobyl. The lie told by the nuclear lobby is that a nuclear accident is not only survivable but something for which we should prepare.

We are being prepared now for the next nuclear accident with funding being provided by the EU for agricultural research into growing crops after large scale radioactive contamination of our lands.

Evacuation plans for a future nuclear accident are being prepared and it is proposed that the safety limits be raised from 1 mSv per year to 20 mSv per year in a post-accident scenario, as has happened in Japan.

Mazin lays the blame for the accident and for the lies told about the health effects at the door of Soviet Russia. But why be surprised that the USSR tried to cover up the accident and its likely effects? They have always lied to their people.

It is the nuclear lobby in the West who are effectively responsible for the world’s ignorance on this matter. The leaders of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are simply the local administrators of policies that emanate from the Permanent Members of the Security Council of the United Nations (United States, France, Great Britain, China and Russia) and are legitimised by the IAEA and other organisations of the nuclear lobby.

The World Health Organisation has shamefully abdicated its responsibility in matters of radiation and health because it is subordinate in the UN hierarchy to the IAEA. 

Debt to the truth

In his book The crime of Chernobyl, Wladimir Tchertkoff wrote: “A deliberate scientific crime has been going on for twenty eight [now 33] years at the heart of Europe, sanctioned at the highest level against the background of disinformation and general indifference.

“In order to preserve consensus about the nuclear industry, the nuclear lobby and the medical establishment are knowingly condemning millions of human guinea pigs to experience new pathologies in their bodies in the vast laboratories of the contaminated territories of Chenobyl”.

Craig Mazin has barely scraped the surface in uncovering the truth about Chernobyl: “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, Sooner or later that debt is paid”.

These are the words spoken by Legasov, the hero of Mazin’s miniseries. It is the central emotional message of the drama. But Mazin has betrayed Legasov, and all the other brave independent scientists, not named in the series, and he has betrayed the victims who still live in “the nuclear gulag”, by telling only half of the story. 

This Author

Susie Greaves translated The Crime of Chernobyl: The Nuclear Gulag, a 700-page account of the accident and its aftermath by Wladimir Tchertkoff. The book was published in France in 2006 by Actes Sud, in the UK and the USA in 2016, and now also published in Russia and Japan.

A further review of the Chernobyl mini-series will be published in the next issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Image: Wendelyn_Jacober, Pixabay.