As has now been widely reported, the Amazon rainforest is on fire due to a mixture of fires started for land clearance and the effects of climate change.

People start fires to clear out rainforest so as to use the land for other purposes, such as cattle ranching and farming. It’s a crime against the rainforest, but also against the indigenous people who live there and whose land it arguably is.

Destruction of the Amazon is not new – it’s been happening for decades. But this time the scale is different, with the fires are being furthered by a fascist government. However, it’s important to understand that the burning of the Amazon is not actually exceptional; it’s just a spectacular example of the normal way that humans dominate, plunder and destroy Nature all around the world.

Interconnection

As Capra and Mattei set out in their book The Ecology of Law, our politics, economics, law and culture have long been based on the idea that humans are the only thing that matter.

We see ourselves as separate from the rest of Nature, defining it as our environment instead of anything in its own right. Humans are the near-exclusive focus of our politics and economics, and when we measure success, we focus on reductionist metrics like GDP while ignoring anything like sustainability.

In our legal systems, the fundamental unit is the individual rights-bearer, based on an understanding of our society as made up of atomised individuals.

We do not recognise that in reality, human life and freedom is that of individual humans who are interconnected with each other and the world around us. Instead of atomised individuals, our law and general worldview should instead include the network of relationships within which we live.

Our environment provides us with the conditions to live, such as clean air and water, arable soil and temperatures suitable for human life. Even leaving aside the idea that Nature has moral value and is worthy of respect, our legal and economic systems fail to protect the conditions which we need to survive.

Natural capital

We view aspects of Nature as ‘natural resources’ or ‘natural capital’. Legally, they are just things which are ours for the taking, save for the occasional exception of a protected species or national park.

Land, ecosystems and animals all fall within the scope of property law, the starting point of which is finders keepers. Anything in existence is a res nullius, unowned until the first person claims it.

This finders keepers approach to owning Nature it isn’t just about humans dominating Nature; it’s also humans dominating other humans. Indigenous people, many of whom have long lived in harmony with Nature, have been and continue to be forced off their land in the Amazon and the world over.

Ownership is near-absolute. The object, whether it’s your bike or a forest, has no rights of its own, and the owner can essentially treat it however they see fit. Rainforests do not have any right to exist, any right to be left alone to simply be rainforests. Landowners do not have any significant responsibilities to the land, to the rest of Nature, or to other people: the land is yours to do as you wish with.

When our international legal system developed during the colonial period, it distinguished between civilised nations and barbarians. Civilised nations arrived in places where ‘uncivilised’ people lived and claimed the land of indigenous people who lived there, justifying that it was for their benefit, that they weren’t fit to own things, and that they didn’t even have a system of ownership anyway, and therefore it was unowned property ready to be claimed by a coloniser.

Ownership

Our legal systems and approach to ownership were forced upon indigenous people as we colonised the world, and these land grabs continue to happen.

Ownership, the idea that a rich individual, a corporation or even a nation state can own land, is never really justified. It’s just treated as a fact of life, something which liberal philosophers deduced as being morally justified and a fundamental human right simply because they saw people do it. While there are some limitations, such as environmental regulations and the need for planning permission, these still come from the starting point of humans owning Nature and take little account of safe ecological limits; legally, Nature does not have rights to protect itself.

As the Supreme Court recognised in allowing an individual person to challenge a Government decision out of concern for the natural environment, ‘the osprey has no means of taking this step itself’, ruling that an individual person could bring a judicial review out of concern for the natural environment.

The burning of the Amazon is not exceptional; humans have been plundering, subjecting and abusing land throughout the whole modern period, with activities like deforestation, mining and repurposing huge swathes of land for human agriculture entirely normal.

This is killing us.

Ecological destruction 

The notion that we share this planet with the rest of Nature, or even that we ought, perhaps, to limit the scale of ecological destruction such that human life on this planet can be sustained, is entirely absent. The relationship between humans and the rest of Nature is one of subjugation, domination and plunder, when we need it to be one of harmony and regeneration.

Over the last century there has been paradigm shift in many scientific domains, described by Capra and Mattei as “from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network… from a mechanistic to a holistic and ecological worldview.”

While the body is now understood as a whole system, and we recognise that ecosystems are interconnected and that there are planetary systems which sustain life, our law, economics and politics lag far behind.

For human life to survive, this needs urgently addressing; our law, economics and politics should protect the conditions for continued human life on this planet.

There are emerging movements which have recognised this. Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics is an approach to economics which places human activity within planetary boundaries, and the UN’s Harmony with Nature programme recognises ‘a need to devise a more sustainable model for production, consumption and the economy as a whole’ which is ‘based on a non-anthropocentric relationship with Nature’.

Earth jurisprudence

In legal thinking, Earth Jurisprudence and the Rights for Nature movement, which this article is based on, have long recognised the need to change our legal systems to ensure a harmonious relationship with Nature. It argues that Nature should be given legal protection with rights, spoken for via human representatives, to be able to exist, persist and regenerate their vital cycles.

This would include a new form of “ownership” which we don’t yet have the language for, in which Nature would effectively own itself, and law would ensure that the relationship between humans and the rest of Nature is just.

This thinking has received some traction around the world, with some rivers (and their ecosystems) being given legal status, and a handful of Latin American countries giving recognition to rights of nature, such as in Ecuador’s constitution or the Bolivian legal system.

Yet there’s a long way to go with raising awareness of these ideas, overcoming the inertia of persuading people of the need for a radically different approach, and then transitioning to legal systems which are based on interconnection and ecological principles.

Our response to the burning of the Amazon cannot simply be about protecting the Amazon from being torched under a fascist regime. Instead, we must recognise that it is just the norm within our legal and economic systems, and that these need addressing urgently.

Humans should be legally required to live sustainably, in the same way that States, Governments and public bodies (though not corporations) are required to respect human rights in all they do. We should do this not because of some hippy idea of loving nature, much as I do, but because our survival depends on it.

This Author 

Alex May is a writer, activist and legal theorist who works in politics. He has undergraduate and master’s law degrees, researching what our legal system should look like and the shift to a relational approach to law. This article was first published on OpenDemocracy.

Campaign group Moving Animals say the beef industry is destroying our rainforests, and is urging universities to lead the way by banning beef.

The Amazon Rainforest is burning at a record rate, with environmental organisations and researchers claiming that the fires were likely started by people in an attempt to clear land for cattle ranching. 

Raising cattle to produce beef is the largest driver of deforestation in every Amazon country, accounting for 80 percent of the current deforestation. 

#BanBeef

Campaign group, Moving Animals, are now calling on universities across the UK to lead the way and #BanBeef in order to fight climate catastrophe and the deforestation of our planet.

The group has written to over 100 universities in the UK, to ask that they consider implementing a ban on the sale of beef products in a move to tackle the climate crisis.

Moving Animals’ co-founder Paul Healey, said: “Beef is one of the most destructive foods for our planet – and claims the lives of millions of cows every year.

“Just this month the UN declared that we must move away from consuming beef and instead adopt more plant-based diets if we are to fight climate catastrophe.” 

“It’s clear more than ever that institutions must act now. Universities continue to have a major role in implementing policies and influencing public thought, and so to demand change, we’re calling on them to lead the way and #BanBeef in order to fight this horrific deforestation of our planet.” 

The group has also launched a petition urging people to add their name to support the ban, and are asking the public, students, and alumni to contact their university reps to call for the ban.

Global supply

Moving Animals’ call for change comes after Goldsmiths University stopped selling beef on campus as part of its bid to tackle climate change.

Ane Alencar, the scientific director of Brazilian NGO IPAM (Institute of Environmental Research in Amazonia) claims that: “These are not wildfires, but rather fires set by people seeking to create cattle ranches, intentionally ignited during the dry season each year. They cut the trees, leave the wood to dry and later put fire to it, so that the ashes can fertilize the soil.” 

A significant portion of the global beef supply, including much of the UK’s corned beef supply, originates on land that was once Amazon rainforest and is now denuded.⁣

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Moving Animals. 

Image: Moving Animals. 

With the sun rising fast as we approach midmorning, our car moves cautiously up a dusty track surrounded on all sides by an abundant spread of thousands of Cork Oak trees.

These are noble forests where the Cork Oak itself is the keystone species that support a whole web of life both above and below ground. Amazingly, the largest store of subterranean water in the Iberian Peninsula is in the cork forests.

Although nearly all Cork Oak forests are in southern Europe and North Africa, the majority, around 34%, grow in Portugal. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, the cork forests literally face down the Sahara that, to date, has pushed further north as the temperatures around the midlatitudes rise as a response to climate change. 

Drought and fire

The long roots of the Cork Oak stretch outwards in the topsoil and several metres downwards to drink as the heat rises in the summer months. However, it is the bark of the tree, the cork bark, that acts as a thermal barrier to heat stress and protects the trunk. 

Even with the succession of forest fires that have become more frequent and extreme in recent years, the Cork Oak can withstand partial burning and even protect buds that stay pocketed within the bark.

Much of the really extreme fires we see in the news are not Cork Oak but rather Pine and Eucalyptus trees that ignite when densely planted forests catch fire and whip up into blazing infernos. 

This is put into perspective by Amorim Director of Marketing, Carlos de Jesus, when he explains that many people who inherit land often have other careers and are less able or interested in maintaining large tracts of forest. Planting Pine or Eucalyptus can offer quick and often easier returns with less hassle. 

Harvest cycle

There are 732,000 hectares of cork forest in Portugal. These forests have been protected by decrees dating back to the 12th century. Respect for the forests is immense and the workers who harvest the trees are well rewarded for their expertise, being among the most highly paid agricultural workers in the world.

We join a team of contract workers who are moving through the forest performing the delicate ritual of stripping bark. Sun-drenched but focussed, the workman approaches the tree with his axe raised, swinging it with an essential force to pierce the cork exterior without causing any damage to the tree. 

He then proceeds to carefully pull back the bark to reveal a blushingly almost iron-red trunk that will be marked with the number 9 denoting this year. It will then be left for 9 years to regenerate itself for another harvest. This process is as healthy for the Cork Oak tree as it is bountiful for those who make use of the cork itself.

Building materials

We are taken by Carlos de Jesus high up to a restaurant with a sweeping view overlooking the city of Lisbon. The vast River Tagus sweeps down from the East to meet the Atlantic, while the rest of Lisbon undulates in and out of sight. On the way up here, we pass the Lisbon Cruise Terminal, designed by esteemed architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça. 

Carlos explains that during the construction of the Cruise Terminal it transpired that the original designs would have to be modified to incorporate a lighter material. That material turned out to be granulated recycled cork mixed with concrete. This composite formed a creamier textured material, that lost none of its former attributes of strength but reduced the weight load by 40 percent.

With cement used for construction being a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions, finding new more eco-friendly construction materials is one of the challenges for an industry that is must expand in order to meet the demands of our species.

The cork solution greatly impressed architect Carrilho da Graça, who noticed not only that the weight saving was huge, there is “also great insulating capacity and structural capacity of resistance.” 

He also noticed that concrete mixed with cork had the potential to be softer in texture than normal paint or plaster, meaning it meets the aesthetic needs of internal spaces, including those designed for living.

Wine

Retreating a short way from the balcony over the city to the inside dining area, Carlos picks up the cork that has been set aside from the wine we are drinking, holding it up pinched between his fingers. He explains how ten years of R&D at Amorim have developed processes that eradicate trichloroanisole (TCA), also often referred to as cork taint, using a process called NDTech. It was the high rate of TCA that drove so many wine producers to switch to aluminium screw-caps and plastic stoppers instead. 

Globally, this switch has embedded a hugely unnecessary environmental cost onto recycling a bottle of wine.

In the UK alone we consume around 33million bottles of wine per week. Many of those bottles will use screw-cap or plastic closures. There has been a misconception that screw-caps are better for the environment than corks because no trees are harmed in the production process. 

Having witnessed the careful cork harvesting process and visited the Amorim factories, where last year 5.4 billion cork closures were produced, the idea that a non-recyclable aluminium and plastic-lined screw-cap can be better for the environment is laughable. In addition, plastic closures (often called plastic corks) are also the worst kind of solution for closing wine as they are both ineffectual and environmentally unfriendly.

It is estimated that a glass bottle of wine has a carbon footprint of around 300-400 grammes of CO2. When I spoke to Amorim CEO, Antonio Amorim he said, “We can identify that one single cork that has a weight of 5 or 6 grammes can retain 392 grammes of CO2.”

In seeking to quantify the real environmental differences between the plastic, screw cap and cork closures, Amorim commissioned PriceWaterhouseCoopers to conduct a verified audit of all three. Taking greenhouse gases alone, natural cork displayed a massive twenty-four fold advantage over aluminium and a nine-fold one over plastic.

Antonio Amorim puts it this way, “It is not comparable because we have done a product life assessment in between, cork, plastic and screw caps and it is like 25-nil in soccer terms because we are carbon negative and plastics and screw-caps are clearly carbon positive.”

Unrecycled

While digesting the experience of visiting the cork forests and listening to what are the various applications of natural cork, whether newly harvested or recycled, it seemed that chucking our cork closures away is a horrible waste of a valuable resource.

Natural cork may well prove to be one of many ingredients in the future of architecture in the west. It has already been labelled by NASA as Nature’s own polymer and has been used in countless launches into space due to its extraordinary thermal properties. 

Could a willing public conspire with retailers to upcycle corks for increased utility after the wine has long since been recycled? Is there room for this ingredient to be reprocessed to help improve the UK’s building standards of affordable homes in a more circular economy approach we so badly need?

Strengthening defences

Antonio Amorim expressed a growing concern in Portugal that desertification is spreading from Africa into the Iberian Peninsula: “In a country like Tunisia the desert stops where the cork forest starts. Portugal has a programme to replant a bunch of cork trees in the south part of the country because we are afraid that this desertification movement can ramp up from North Africa to the south of the Iberian Peninsula.” 

The life expectancy of the Cork Oak is 150 years but the harvest cycles produce ongoing retention of carbon. Antonio points out that “one tonne of cork produced retains 73 more times of weight in CO2 in retention.”

One of the drawbacks that has slowed cork planting is the period of 25 years before a cork tree reaches maturation and can be harvested. Amorim has started to plant their own forests in the south conducting tests with drip irrigation techniques that demonstrate that the 25-year gap can be closed to 10 years. Another side effect of this is the increase in the survival rate of young plantations. After the first harvest, the irrigation must then be stopped so that the integrity of the cork is not compromised.

Earth stewardship

In recent months we have witnessed from both satellite and land-based footage, the Amazon Rainforest ablaze in what has been rightly categorised a catastrophe for all life on Earth. The task of locking up greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is moving too rapidly in the wrong direction. 

The Cork Oak forests that line the Mediterranean shores, holding back the Sahara desert, offer a glimpse of how the natural world has developed its own materials for withstanding higher temperatures. 

It is speculated that the Cork Oak trees developed their thermal protecting bark at a time when fires were much more prevalent than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years. But we know that temperatures are going up and that fires and deserts are spreading. If we are to take a more custodial approach in respect of our planet, then embracing nature’s gifts is likely the safest route to the future.

This Author

Nick Breeze writes about wine and climate change.  He posts regularly on Secret Sommelier  is an organiser of the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series. He is on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.

The most destructive implement on the Planet, without a doubt, is the human jawbone. 

Every year, in the course of wolfing through 8.5 trillion meals, it dislodges more than 75 billion tonnes of topsoil, swallows seven billion tonnes of fresh water, generates 30 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions and distributes five million tonnes of concentrated biocides.

That same human jawbone fells forests, empties oceans of life, destroys rivers and lakes, sterilises landscapes and blankets the planet in a toxic plastic shroud. It is the main driver of the present grotesque imbalance in terrestrial vertebrate biomass: 32 percent human, 66 percent domestic livestock, 3 percent wildlife. 

Food revolution 

From these figures alone – and many others – it is clear that there can be no solution to the global ecological crisis or the sixth extinction without a solution to the issue of how humans produce and consume food.

Bluntly, we are in the process of devouring a planet which, if one considers the matter even for microseconds, is not a good lookout for the survival of our own species, either.

Take heart. There is a solution. It is practical, involves little or no new technology and, what is most important, it is completely affordable and the money to implement it already exists. So do the people and skills.

However, as you may imagine, it involves a food revolution an order of magnitude or so greater even than the green energy revolution now sweeping the planet. But it is equally promising and feasible.

Appetite for war

The first thing which everyone who eats needs to understand is that the present food system, perfectly adequate for the twentieth century, is not sustainable in the twenty first.

Apart from a growing vulnerability to climatic impacts, modern broadacre farming systems are destroying the very soils, waters and ecosystem services they depend on at such a rate that major food system failures will be unavoidable in coming decades, starting with water crises in the 2020s and beyond.

Just because our bronze-age food system has served us well for 6000 years does not mean it will work for 10 billion people in the hot, resource-depleted, ecologically-impaired world of the latter C21st.

Food failures, we know from history, nearly always lead to wars and mass refugee upheavals. Only this time they are liable to be global in impact. And war is almost as bad for ecology as food production.

This process is already under way, with one third of a billion people – equal to the US population – leaving home each year in search of new lives in countries which appear to them more stable and food secure. Therefore, in developing a new food system, we also have to find a way to curb the human appetite for war…

Food or war

In Food or War, I trace the nexus between food and conflict through human history, explore the food driver in recent and existing conflicts and identify nine regions of the world which are at high risk of conflict in the foreseeable future – conflicts which range on a scale from riots and government failures to thermonuclear war.

My aim is to show that the link between food and war is inexorable – but that it can be broken. And that a sufficiency of food is the most under-rated, under-recognised ‘weapon of peace’ in the world today. 

So, how do we achieve sufficient food for all of humanity, to take us past the peak in human population in the late 2060s, down to the sustainable level of 2.5 billion that existed when I was born (and towards which the world’s women are now steadily leading us) without laying waste to the entire planet either agriculturally or militarily?

There are basically three pillars to a sustainable global food supply, each supplying roughly one third of our food needs:

1. Regenerative farming and grazing, globally, to restore ecosystem function over an area of about half of the planet presently farmed or grazed, using minimal inputs of chemicals or fertiliser and locking up far more carbon.
2. Urban food production, in which all urban water and nutrientsare recycled in a ‘circular economy’ into climate-proof food, produced by a wide range of techniques from hydroponic, agritectural and aquaponic to ‘cellular agriculture’ systems.
3. Redouble marine aquaculture, especially into deepwater ocean culture and algae farming or water-cropping. This will replace wild-harvest fisheries and substitute for some broadacre cropping on land.

Stewards of the earth 

There is a lot more to each of these than I can explain in this short article, so please bear with the argument.

Suffice to say there are scientists, farmers, companies and innovative technologists all round the world already pioneering these techniques, hammering out the flaws and investing billions of dollars in ‘new food’ ventures aimed at a safe, healthy, sustainable diet for all.

Furthermore, there is a dramatic opportunity to eat better. So narrow is our present industrial food base that we presently eat fewer than 300 (i.e. less than 1 percent) of the 30,500 edible plants so far identified on Earth. We have yet to explore our Planet in terms of what is good, safe and sustainable to eat.

In his book ‘Half Earth’, the great biologist E.O.Wilson argues that we need to set aside about half the planet for other life if we are to avoid mass extinction and an ecological collapse that will imperil  our own future.

Insatiable power ​​​​​​​

In Food or War, I show how this may be achieved – by re-wilding half of the world’s presently farmed and grazed lands, in all continents, under the stewardship of former farmers (whom the industrial food system is evicting anyway) and indigenous peoples – a scheme titled ‘Stewards of the Earth’. On Wilson’s calculus, this should spare around 86 percent of the species presently destined for anthropogenic midnight. 

Is this affordable? The funding to make it happen already exists – by  diverting just 20 per cent of the global arms budget of $1.8 trillion (ie $340bn/yr), on the grounds that improved global food security is the most effective means of bringing peace to the planet since food scarcity is, nearly always, a fundamental propellant of the tensions that lead to war. An even larger cut happened between 1990-2005, so we know it is possible.

Such is the insatiable power of the human jawbone that rethinking food not only holds the key to peace and plenty for all, but also to ending the 6thExtinction and regenerating a fairer, greener Earth. 

This Author

Julian Cribb is a science writer and the author of Food or War (Cambridge University Press, 2019). It is his fourth book on the existential emergency facing humanity and what may be done about it. All statistics given above are based on scientific sources given in the book. 

Public spending on the climate and nature must be more than doubled to at least £42 billion a year, organisations backed by millions of Britons have urged.

In a letter to chancellor Sajid Javid, 18 groups ranging from the Women’s Institute to Greenpeace and the Woodland Trust call for this week’s spending review to kick-start an ambitious programme on the environment.

Boosting spending will help provide warm, secure zero-carbon homes to millions of UK families, support electric vehicles and enhance public transport and protect and restore nature, they argue.

Funding

It will also cement the UK as an “international climate champion” and should include a new five-year increased commitment to finance for poor countries to deal with global warming.

The organisations warn that without much more investment, the Government will miss its target to cut greenhouse gases to zero overall by 2050 and leave the next generation with a “planet-sized debt”.

Upping public investment on spending for climate and nature from the current £17 billion to at least £42 billion a year – or around five percent of public spending – will tackle social inequality, create jobs, improve people’s lives and protect British wildlife and nature, they said.

In the letter, the groups warn: “The climate and environmental crisis has no modern parallel and it demands your – and all of your Government’s – urgent attention.” They call for it to be treated as a long-term investment in the future, similar to education.

Money could come from phasing out support for fossil fuels and redirecting funding from high-carbon investment such as road building and Heathrow expansion.

Emergency

Polling by Opinium for the groups suggests more than half of people (52 percent) think the government should be spending more on the environment, while only eight percent think it should be spending less.

Lynne Stubbings, chair of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, said WI members felt passionately about the environment.

“In the midst of a climate emergency, people across the UK are sending a clear message to the government that we need further and faster action to protect our environment and safeguard our planet for the future.

“We were pleased to see government commit to net-zero by 2050, but we now need to see this level of ambition reflected in Government policies and action,” she said.

Overwhelming

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “No-one in government is still trying to argue that this is not an emergency, and yet no-one in Government is acting as though it is.

“We are still constantly pumping carbon into the atmosphere, and trying to ignore the problem will leave our children with a damaged world and a planet-sized debt.

“There’s a strong economic case and an overwhelming moral imperative for the chancellor to act.”

The groups who have written to the Chancellor are: Amnesty International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, The Climate Coalition, CPRE, Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance, Greenpeace UK, UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, Islamic Relief, The National Federation of Women’s Institutes, National Union of Students, Oxfam GB, The Ramblers, The RSPB, Wildlife Trusts, the Woodland Trust and WWF-UK.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

It has never been business as usual for Rebel Kitchen. At the heart of this plant-based brand is their Purpose Manifesto, a pledge to show that business can be, and should be, a force for good.

In an effort to be transparent and to encourage others to act consciously, the rebellious company made a commitment to be carbon neutral by 2025. They managed it in six months!

Only last year, Rebel Kitchen underwent the mammoth task of measuring their carbon footprint. In order to do this, the team in London joined forces with Provenance, a platform that empowers brands to take steps towards transparency, and Carbon Analytics, a company that helps businesses measure their entire carbon output, and so began their journey to CO2 self-discovery. 

Carbon intensity

The challenges for a Food & Drink business to go carbon neutral can seem to be never-ending but being sustainable has never been more important.

Business operations, in any sector, vary in legal and organisational setups making it difficult to determine where the lines of responsibility should be drawn and how best to go about collecting the required data. Plus, having a footprint measurement that you can trust is just the beginning. What you do with this information is the main question. 

When analysing a business-wide carbon footprint, not one item of business expenditure is left out of the carbon equation. With the help of Carbon Analytics, the team at Rebel Kitchen were able to allocate a carbon value to absolutely everything. This included the obvious like purchasing ingredients, transporting good and manufacturing, to the forgotten factors such as the coffee cups used at trade shows. 

As you may expect, as the business grew, so did their carbon usage. But Rebel Kitchen’s carbon intensity did not increase, and between 2018 and 2019 their carbon intensity actually decreased by 14 percent.

What does that mean? In a nutshell, carbon intensity is a way of comparing carbon use as a percentage of revenue, business-to-business and sector-by-sector. Rebel Kitchen, whose carbon intensity averaged 35 percent lower in the Food & Drink sector also used this measurement to determine if their carbon use is in line relative to their growth. 

Vital resource

The company’s carbon footprint for 2018/19 is 4,041.82 with a reduction in carbon intensity of 14 percent. To put that into human terms, that’s the equivalent of a Boeing 747 flying non-stop for 5.32 days straight or driving the average car 24/7 for 17.93 years. 

But it isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are added complexities for SMEs as the numbers can be deceiving if you’re looking for clear linear reductions, particularly when it comes to innovating new products.

For example, if a business develops a product one year, but that product doesn’t go to market until the next, it’s likely to impact their year-on-year improvement by affecting the carbon to revenue in a way that’s not a straight decline. 

Despite the challenges and the uncertainty of the future, Rebel Kitchen believe that having the ability to track and analyse carbon use on a monthly basis is an invaluable step in the right direction towards sustainability.

The brand has tracked  four years of historical data so far, and this has become a vital resource to help determine their strategic direction.

Ripple effect

The environmental impact of the dairy and beef industries is now common knowledge, but Rebel Kitchen want to use their recent achievement to shine a light on plant-based ingredients too.

Dairy alternatives are receiving negative backlash, particularly when it comes to ingredients sourcing. Some other forward-thinking brands have started to share their climate impact, including noting their carbon footprint on their packaging. 

Rebel Kitchen wanted to take this further. They were never interested in simply stating the problem, they set out to solve it. They predicted that becoming carbon neutral would take five years, but they did it in six months.

The alternative milk brand offset its entire business-wide footprint for 2018-19 immediately and have now officially been certified as carbon neutral by Carbon Analytics. 

The London based company also wanted to keep connected to carbon offsetting projects to build relationships and ensure efficacy. They partnered with PUR Project and Ecosphere, two Verified Carbon Standard projects based in Peru. Both organisations work tirelessly to protect high-value Amazon rainforest under threat, regenerate degraded ecosystems and support community-driven programmes. 

Conscious packaging

But what if other businesses could do the same? Rebel Kitchen is the very first plant-based alternative brand in the UK to take this step but they are part of a growing network of businesses across the world who all see the importance of going carbon neutral.

A commitment to go further by one business could be the beginning of others exploring the edge of what’s possible. 

Rebel Kitchen is radically honest. They don’t shy away from the fact that their ingredients are sourced from around the world, but through sheer determination to take ownership of their impact, the brand has achieved carbon neutrality four and half years earlier than planned.

Not happy to settle, the team have set to work on their next venture, conscious packaging, as their next step to keep improving. Their mission is to revolutionise the food system and bring as many others on the journey with them as possible. 

This Author 

Anna Van Der Hurd, oversees Rebel Kitchen’s social and environmental performance, supporting the integration of sustainability and ethics into the fabric of every business decision the company makes.

Lawyers from ClientEarth are putting 100 local authorities across England on notice, warning them that they will violate their legal obligations and risk legal challenge if they do not introduce proper climate change plans.

The environmental lawyers are writing to each local authority that is currently developing a new local plan, giving them eight weeks to explain how they will set evidence-based carbon reduction targets and ensure these targets are then central to their new planning policy.

Amid growing pressure for local governments to declare ‘climate emergencies’, ClientEarth launched the campaign in light of the massive shortfall in compliant local planning policy across the country and to advise authorities of their legal duties under planning and environmental law.

Collective failure

ClientEarth climate lawyer Sam Hunter Jones said: “There is a collective failure by local authorities across England to plan adequately for climate change.

“Too often climate change is perceived to be just a national or international issue and therefore solely the responsibility of central government. Clearly central government needs to do more, as the recent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) progress reports stress.

“Yet so many of the daily decisions around new and existing infrastructure – such as new buildings, roads and utilities – are made at the local level. All of these decisions will ‘lock in’ an area’s future emissions and its resilience to climate change.

“Scientists warn that we have 10 years to transform our economies and avoid catastrophic climate change, but decisions that will have ramifications for decades are being made now by authorities with no idea if these decisions are consistent with national and international commitments to limit emissions.

“In July this year, the CCC criticised the UK’s continued failure to take action on emissions from buildings and transport – two sectors where local planning plays a critical role.”

Climate-sensitive planning

Hunter Jones said that while many local authorities face difficult economic conditions, there are substantial benefits to climate-sensitive planning, such as improving local economies and creating jobs.

“Climate action at a local level can transform people’s quality of life for the better, with clear net benefits to health, air and water quality, employment, energy affordability, community cohesion and biodiversity.”

Local authorities across the country have declared climate emergencies and announced local carbon reduction targets. At the city level, Greater Manchester and London have committed to net zero emissions targets by 2038, while Bristol and Leeds are aiming for 2030 and Nottingham for 2028.

ClientEarth has written to councillors and planning officers from areas that are revising their local plans, reminding them of their legal responsibilities. These duties include setting targets and policies based on the local potential to reduce emissions, and that are at least in line with the UK’s Climate Change Act.

The latter target was recently increased to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, meaning that all sectors now need to plan for full decarbonisation.

Core objectie

Lawyers said that for carbon targets to be meaningful, they need to be incorporated into local planning policy as a core objective against which all other policies and decisions will be tested.

Local planning authorities also need to monitor performance against local targets at least annually.

Hunter Jones said: “Each and every planning decision taken today must be in line with long-term climate goals, because what and how we build today will determine our climate impact and resilience in the crucial decades to come.”

This Author 

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

Climate change is affecting the populations of around a third of English breeding birds studied in 50 years of “citizen science” surveying, research suggests.

Of 68 species monitored between 1966 and 2015, 24 showed evidence that changes in their population were linked to temperature or rainfall.

Some 13 species including corn buntings, goldcrests and long-tailed tits saw a boost in their populations of at least 10 percent as a result of changing climatic conditions, such as warmer winter temperatures.

Seasonal

But three species – cuckoo, little owls and reed warblers – saw numbers fall by at least 10 percent as a result of climate change, the study by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and government conservation agency Natural England found.

Warmer winter temperatures have a positive effect on population growth of a range of resident species, probably by improving survival rates over the winter, the researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Bird Study.

And some species which have seen long-term population declines over the period studied, but which prefer warmer conditions, such as farmland birds including the corn bunting and grey partridge, may have seen less significant falls than they would have done without climate change, the study suggests.

The data used in the study comes from the BTO common bird census and from the BTO, joint nature conservation committee and the RSPB’s breeding bird survey, whose fieldwork is conducted by volunteers.

Limit

This was compared with changes in the climate in terms of seasonal temperatures and rainfall.

James Pearce-Higgins, director of science at the BTO and the paper’s lead author, said: “Given the changeable British weather, it can be difficult for us to see the long-term impacts of climate change, but by monitoring bird populations we can track impacts upon the natural environment.

“Thanks to the efforts of our volunteer bird surveyors who have been counting birds in England for over 50 years, we can show that climate change is already affecting about one-third of breeding bird populations monitored.

“Whilst some of these impacts have resulted in population increases, as harsh winters which naturally limit the populations of some resident species have become less common through time, there are also species which appear to have declined too.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

This summer has seen the UK swelter under some of the hottest days on record. While much of the media irresponsibly framed this heatwave as a good thing, for the rest of us, it rang loud alarm bells of an imminent environmental emergency.

These extreme temperatures leave people not only uncomfortable but they can also lead to death, especially amongst the elderly. For rural communities in particular, the impacts of scorching heat which dries out the land, followed by flash flooding, can destroy livelihoods.

But if we’ve begun to reap the disturbing fallout of climate change here in the UK, it’s nothing compared to the damaging and life-threatening effects that the Global South has long been having to deal with.

Famine

Climate change doesn’t affect us all equally, with those in the developing world being far more ‘climate vulnerable’ to soaring temperatures which result in an increased prevalence of droughts and therefore famine and migration. However the Global North – which is primarily to blame for the climate crisis that we are in – is only just seeing the impact of this emergency.

Environmental disparities are real; for many years, the Western world has steamed ahead with plans for aviation expansion, more road-building, dirty energy such as fracking, as well as an insatiable appetite for environmentally damaging foods – ignoring the impact all of these have on developing communities.

Meanwhile, inner city communities with higher numbers of ethnic minorities in Europe and The United States tend to have to deal with environmental threats which more prosperous sectors of society don’t. In my region of the South East of England, there are big pockets of deprivation: 25.5% of children in Crawley are living below the poverty lineandhave to live in the polluting shadow of Gatwick airport.

Outside of Europe, climate change is responsible for extreme weather events like Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe which obliterate homes, destroy livelihoods and kill people.

The Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures warned back in 2015 that around a third of the planet’s land has been lost over the past 40 years due largely to climate disasters and poor conservation, with more than 1.3 billion people living on agricultural land that is becoming less and less efficient – leading to failing harvests, poverty and famine.

Fault

Droughts have affected more than 1 billion people in the last decade – hitting people in developing countries hardest. Three out of four people living in poverty worldwide rely on agriculture and natural resources to survive – meaning that climate change affects those who are already the most at risk.

And this may account in part for the fact that global inequality is growing.

The gap between the Global North and its former colonies has become an increased dichotomy over the past 60 years.These countries that have been pillaged as a result of colonisation have been left with scant resources now have to deal with a climate crisis which isn’t their fault.

Climate reparations are one way to go about undoing some of that damage – insisting that wealthier nations who were responsible for excessive carbon emissions in the first place transfer funds to poorer nations to deal with the consequences of climate change and pave the way for exciting new technologies that can transform people’s livelihoods, standard of living and environment.

Since the climate crisis is clearly the fault of the North, they’re responsible for helping the South adapt.

Impossible

In 1960, the average North-South Gap in average yearly wage amounted to $8,969 (£7,359). By 2017, that had grown exponentially to $34,798 (£28,551). While Latin America, the Carribbean, and East Asia have become slightly richer, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have only grown in their relative poverty.

It is clear that there are no systems currently in place which are working to readdress that chronic and ever-increasing imbalance.

A Green New Deal for Europe, however, does offer a solution.

‘The Green New Deal for Europe is the first attempt at a political response to climate change that is on the same scale as the problem itself,’ says environmentalist and global warming expert, Bill McKibben.

McKibben doesn’t think that addressing climate change is impossible; he simply says that any response has to deal with the austerity and ‘economic short-sightedness that currently paralyse our society’.

Safeguard

To undo the societal and environmental damage caused by this continent’s political decisions and obsession with extractive growth, the Green New Deal for Europe (as outlined in the report,Green New Deal for Europe: A Blueprint for Europe’s Just Transition, published today) offers a set of pragmatic and comprehensive policies.

This report envisions a GND as being comprised of three distinct institutions, dealing with investment, scientifically-backed regulations and environmental justice.

It’s this latter element – the Environmental Justice Commission (EJC) – which offers the best hope for targeting environmental disparities between the Global North and South.

The proposed EJC would be the first international body tasked with ensuring that the transition to renewable energies is also a just one: one which includes everyone, no matter where they live or work, in this new, exciting, positive adventure to tackle climate change and create secure, well-paid jobs which contribute to creating a new type of world which is truly sustainable.

This commission’s mandate would be to set a new international standard for research and reporting on environmental injustices – gathering data on the consequences of climate change, monitoring the implementation of Europe’s climate agenda and advising governments all over the world on what environmental policies need to be put into place now to safeguard all of our futures.

Options

It will focus on international justice, intersectional justice and intergenerational justice.

Because the impact of climate change isn’t evenly distributed, the commission would strive to ensure that EU countries aren’t exacerbating the problems. Rather than allowing countries to make migration impossible, for example, the commission would develop strategies for helping with climate refugees and their claims for asylum.

A Green New Deal carries so many possibilities to make society fairer around the world. It promises better paid jobs, cleaner air and more accountability from richer nations who have got away with so much up until now. Economically, socially and environmentally, we finally have a positive and practical solution to a problem that up until now has seemed overwhelming.

This climate emergency affects us all – but it’s up to us to ensure that the Global South doesn’t continue to take the biggest hit.

A Green New Deal is our only option.

This Author

Alexandra Phillips is the Green Party MEP for the South East Region of England.

Extinction Rebellion has announced it will hold peaceful demonstrations throughout Manchester centre today (Monday 2 September), including a protest outside Barclays’ regional head office in Piccadilly.

Barclay’s is one of the largest investors in fossil fuels, and has £15.6 billion of assets in oil, gas and coal extradition globally.

The group has announced it will hold a peaceful protest outside the bank’s office in Piccadilly Placethis morning, to call on the business to recognise the catastrophic impact its actions are having on the environment, and cease its investments in fossil fuels, which are currently increasing.

Impacts

A spokesperson from Extinction Rebellion Manchester said: “Barclays has funded the fossil fuel industry, from fracking and coal here in Britain to the Dakota Access pipeline in North America. Mines and oilfields are financed with the help of Barclays, who are increasing their financing for fossil fuel.

“Today we’re calling on them to stop doing that and recognise that we are facing catastrophic ecological breakdown – which these practices are contributing to. Not a day goes by without further news of the unfolding crisis; whether its unprecedented fires in the Arctic, glaciers melting at terrifying rates, thousands of species being lost. We have just a handful of years before the damage we have done to the planet becomes irreversible.”

Extinction Rebellion Manchester has been working with police and other authorities throughout the Northern Rebellion, and have been meeting with the police every few hours to keep them informed about its activities.

The protest group will also today gather outside Manchester’s Civil Justice Centre, to show support for the three anti-fracking protestors appearing in court as part of a legal challenge, which aims to reduce the scope of Cuadrilla’s injunction against protests outside its fracking project in Blackpool, and also reduce the sentencing of protestors found to be breaching this injunction.

An Extinction Rebellion Manchester spokesperson said: “The protestors appearing in court today were amongst the first to stand against an injunction designed to stop people protesting against Cuadrilla, a company which said it could frack without causing earthquakes or environmental damage.

“In reality, Cuadrilla has in fact caused more than 100 quakes including a 2.9 intensity six. This is just one of many awful impacts Cuadrilla have admitted – it has also cold vented 6.8 tonnes of methane.”

Performances

Demonstrators from Extinction Rebellion will later today meet at the group’s site on Deansgate to form a peaceful, musical protest procession led by a samba band.

This will see demonstrators peacefully march through the streets of Manchester city centre, staging non-violent ‘die-ins’ as they go, to raise awareness of the climate emergency and highlight the threat of ecological breakdown and biodiversity loss.

Protestors will carry plants with them from the guerilla garden the group created this weekend on John Dalton Street, to be repurposed in the disused Central Retail Park on Great Ancoats Street.

The community living around this 10-acre site want to turn it into the world’s first recycled People’s Park as part of the ‘Trees Not Cars’ campaign and protestors want to help them.

Extinction Rebellion Manchester, one of the largest localised groups in the UK, has been hosting four days of free talks, music performances, art, training, food, workshops and peaceful, non-violent direct action at the site it has been occupying on Deansgate.

Disobedience

This has been done in discussion with Manchester Council and Greater Manchester Police and the city council.

The Northern Rebellion has been attended by hundreds of supporters of the group from Leeds, York, Liverpool, Sheffield, Cumbria, Cheshire, North Wales, London and from across Europe.

The group plans to vacate the Deansgate site following an extensive clean-up later today.

Extinction Rebellion is calling on the Government to tell the truth about the urgency of change needed by declaring a climate emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 to halt biodiversity loss and create a Citizen’s Assembly to lead decision-making on climate justice.

Extinction Rebellion is an international movement with a presence in at least 80 countries, which uses non-violent civil action disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Extinction Rebellion. For more information on Extinction Rebellion and to support the Northern Rebellion, visit its website.