September offered desperately needed relief for the Amazon, according to new data from Brazil’s State Secretariat for the Environment (SEMA). The world’s largest rainforest still saw over 3,000 fires last month, but that number represents a 55 percent drop in fires from August and a 39 percent drop from the same period in 2018.

These numbers are a relief to environmentalists after Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s shocking speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where he rejected the idea the Amazon represents “part of a global heritage” and denied his country’s ecological crisis.

While the worst of this year’s fires may be over, Bolsonaro’s rhetoric and the destructive behavior it encourages demand an urgent reformulation of how environmentalists advocate for environmental protection.

Political project 

Fortunately, creative initiatives in Brazil and other major tropical forest zones – including Senegal on the other side of the Atlantic – offer a way forward.

Despite Bolsonaro’s claims, the Amazon basin, home to around one million indigenous people, over three million species of plants and animals, and an estimated 10 percent of the world’s known biodiversity, is an indispensable ecological resource whose role in mitigating global carbon emissions matters for the entire planet.

How, then, can the international community protect these invaluable forests, when Brazil’s own leader resists outside involvement? Answering that question requires understanding that the fires across the Amazon are largely manmade, by farmers and loggers clearing land for crops and grazing.

This recent spate of destruction has been facilitated by political leaders, with both Bolsonaro and Bolivian President Evo Morales sacrificing rainforest for myopic business and electoral interests.

Weakening legal protections for the Amazon and its indigenous populations was key to Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign; Morales has expanded the amount of forestland farmers can clear by “controlled” burning.

Conservation paradigm

The combination of weak environmental policies and fertile land has left conservationists at loggerheads with both politicians and the business community. Overcoming this impasse requires a rethinking of the prevailing approach to conservation, which holds that tropical forests are “pristine” and must remain untouched.

This has created a false dichotomy between protecting ecosystems and human prosperity, driving conservation strategies that restrict human interaction with nature and create “conservation refugees” from the Amazon to East Africa.

It has manifested itself in the development of separate indicators for biodiversity and human well-being, forcing governments to choose between GDP rankings and world development indicators on the one hand, and the IUCN Red List index on the other.

Unsurprisingly, policymakers usually prioritize the former, ensuring conservation strategies fall short of expectations. This comes despite research suggesting areas like the Amazon were once densely populated by large communities who have moulded the ecology of the region’s vast ‘wilderness’ over millenia.

If humans once lived and worked side by side with the Amazon, can we do it again? 

Agroforesty in Brazil

This is the thinking behind ‘agroforestry’ programmes in the Amazon. Agroforestry mimicks nature, using a ‘polyculture’ of trees to regenerate land and restore biodiversity whilst also producing crops. Ultimately, it creates a healthy ecosystem and spares farmers the choice between nature and livelihoods.

A notable example is Olhos D’Água (‘Tears in the Eyes’), an agroforestry farm on 350 hectares of Amazonian land originally cleared for intensive logging. Olhos D’Água, almost indistinguishable from a natural forest, hides a complex system of trees and crop species, producing crops that like the highest quality cocoa beans in the world – without having a destructive impact on the rainforest around it.

This and other agroforestry initiatives have helped the practice gain recognition in academic and policy circles as a viable way to reconcile conservation and development, but other countries facing similar challenges have already demonstrated how proactive policies and public awareness can reverse deforestation.

The mangrove forests of West Africa, particularly those in Senegal, offer an excellent parallel to the situation in the Amazon.

Senegal’s successes

Like rainforests, mangrove forests are indispensable. They protect coral reefs and shorelines, dramatically reducing flooding by reducing the height of waves, and absorb enormous amounts of carbon. A 2018 study estimated mangrove soil trapped 6.4 billion metric tons of carbon worldwide in 2000.

Unfortunately, mangroves are also declining: scientists estimate at least 35 percent of global mangrove habitat was lost between 1980 and 2000. From 2000-2015, as much as 122 million tons of carbon may have been released into the atmosphere by mangrove deforestation.

These losses contribute to desertification, making countries like Senegal even more vulnerable to climate change.

Fortunately, Senegal’s government has opted for a proactive approach. President Macky Sall’s administration has embraced efforts to galvanise private actors, such as Danone and Crédit Agricole, to invest in replanting mangroves to offset their carbon emissions and earn carbon credits.

One such replanting programme in the Saloum Delta, reputedly the largest such initiative in the world, has used funding from 10 multinational sponsors to plant 79 million trees and restore 7,920 hectares of mangrove forest.

Civil society

Civic groups have also played a critical role. Haidar el Ali, Macky Sall’s minister of environment from 2012-2014, is a key member of the Senegalese environmental NGO Oceanium and the public face of grassroots efforts to replant Senegal’s mangroves. Between 2006-2012, Oceanium worked with villagers and devised a planting system to restore 35,000 acres of mangrove forest in its homebase of Casamance.

How do mangrove reforestation programmes like Oceanium offer a roadmap for tropical forest zones worldwide?

Unlike Bolsonaro, the Senegalese government is working with civil society groups to restore a natural resource critical to both the country’s environment and economy. Local communities benefit first and foremost, as residents earn a living from guarding, restoring and producing crops which depend on healthy mangrove systems. This creates a vested interest in protecting mangroves for generations to come.

Brazil and other governments should learn from these successful conservation strategies, which improves the life quality of local residents in conservation zones beside securing the priceless natural habitats they call home. The choice has never been between conservation and development – the two must go hand in hand.

This Author

Natasha Foote is an environmental journalist and writer, specialising in conservation and agriculture. She holds a BSc in Biological Sciences and an MA in Environment, Development and Policy.

Image: Neil Palmer / CIAT for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

It’s almost impossible to argue the jobs versus climate debate without mentioning Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.

Outside the town of Morwell, the gargantuan Hazelwood power station, which once employed 1,000 people, has sat dormant since 2017. Beside it the immense brown coal mine swallows the gaze of onlookers down into its ashen bowels.

To some, Hazelwood was just the most polluting coal fired power station in the Southern Hemisphere, to others it was the lone source of jobs in an increasingly bleak sector.

Tone deaf

Years before its closure, Hazelwood had been a focal point for climate activists willing to take the 150 kilometre trip East from Melbourne to protest the Valley’s carbon emissions.

In a famous action in 2009 hundreds bearing placards arrived to stage a mock closure. It was a move considered by most locals as tone deaf to the two decades of economic depression that had beset the area. At the real closure of the power station one worker responded by attaching a “F*** the Greens” sign to the station’s shut chainlink gate. 

But around the corner from Hazelwood is an industrial park where a venture aims to cut the ever tightening knot between jobs and climate. It is called Earthworker, and has already begun creating green jobs for the area.

Earthworker’s co-founder Dave Kerin conceived of the project in Melbourne but realised early the need to target the Latrobe Valley. 

“It would have been a hell of a lot easier for us to push ahead in Dandenong [an outlying industrial suburb of Melbourne] but we have responsibility within our nation to these families who have been there for generations, who have provided power – we have a responsibility to put these new transitional jobs in place in those areas.”

Having opened a factory last year, they have six part-time employees building high-grade solar hot water heaters for households and businesses around the country, most recently for Father Bob Maguire Hospices.

Old knowledge

Employees Dickie Savva and Graeme Donald take great pride in the quality of their work: “We have a polyethylene casing on the tank – you could roll it down the paddock it might scuff but it won’t damage. They are a durable item and that’s another reason I was really attracted to the philosophy of this organisation.”

Dickie, who does most of the talking, is 58, which he explains is nearing the end of his career, while Graeme, the quieter of the two, is only 30 but so experienced that employers think he is 50 from his resume.

Their opinions frequently differ but the two find common ground in their love for the Australian bush, pride in quality craft and their ability to repair and reuse rather than throw away.

All these are unified within Earthworker’s ethos. Both put in unpaid overtime to get the old welding machines back in operation after receiving them second-hand.

Waste is not just the physical waste thrown into landfill, which, Dickie said, “we all end up paying for it in the long run,” but it’s also wasted talent and human potential.

Earthworker must start training people from the valley – particularly those once employed by the power industry. Graeme explained: “There’s a lot of old knowledge and a lot of skills that need to be passed on otherwise it’ll be lost and you’ll end up with nothing but more problems.” Both people have lived in the area most of their lives and are familiar with the meaning of economic decline.

Innovative challenge 

While the Earthworker Energy Manufacturing Cooperative Factory is small scale, it’s tensile strength comes from its model, an innovative challenge to the conventions of capitalism.

Earthworker is a worker owned coop, meaning the enterprise is owned and managed by the workers themselves, rather than a board and shareholders. Their business decisions have the community in mind. This is what Dave Kerin calls “democratic economics” which he offers as a solution to environmental catastrophe.

Kerin explained: “We want a quadruple bottom line economics, the social, the ecological and the economic but we also want to make sure that we create a democratic ownership by ordinary people – only then you get the engagement you need to deal with the climate emergency and species extinction.”

This attitude reflects Earthworker’s roots in Australia’s famous Green Bans in the 70s. Then unions and neighbourhood groups banded together to stop developers clearing bushland or developing greenspace. The Green Bans resonated worldwide.

In fact, the term ‘Greens’ applied to political parties came when German Politician Petra Kelly witnessed them on a tour of Australia. They also set a vital precedent for Earthworker, and now the tradition of combining industrial and environmental action to oppose the inertia and waste of globalised capitalism is embedded in its DNA.

“You can’t do that with a multinational corporation – that relationship is transactional – we need relationships that are much deeper.”

Ecosystem of support

For Dickie’s part, he appreciates Earthworker’s flatness: “We are all equal and that is unique – it’s a new concept. We are all the bosses.”

To him this strength in numbers is in stark contrast to the insecurity of today’s manufacturing and industrial sector: “I’ve worked and did my training with some guys who have been in the same factory for 45 years. That’s changed now. Throughout the world.”

This worker-owner structure extends throughout the Earthworker Cooperative network, of which the solar hot water enterprise is but one. Within Earthworker are Red Gum Cleaning Cooperative, an energy retailing coop and plans for hemp manufacturing and a journalists’ coop.

Professor Katherine Gibson of the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, has studied Earthworker, cooperatives and the Latrobe Valley in depth. She says that while the need for community enterprises is great, coops have always been considered fringe: “So whether that can be shifted around is through demonstration, that’s what Earthworker is doing.”

Gibson also believes their best hope for a bright future lies in developing a network of cooperatives: “Their potential is to build an ecosystem of support around them. A lot less thinking of the enterprise in isolation. This is a really interesting experiment that is creating jobs for a lot of people.”

Mobilising wages

Dave Kerin also has plans to harness the immense capital of Australian workers’ super to fund environmentally and socially responsible projects like Earthworker: “The minute we can mobilise our superannuated wage behind some big projects and then do some joint venturing with the super of North American workers, the super of European workers then we’ll have a critical mass of capital.”

He then cites Simon Sheikh, Founder of Ethical Super’s statistic that 7.7 percent of Australian super could create 100 percent of renewables in this country.

It’s a discussion better suited for the glass towers of Melbourne’s CBD than in a repurposed factory on the outskirts of Morwell. Sparks fly as Graeme and Dickie weld a seam on a hot water heater due out tomorrow morning.

Dickie confessed, “stainless steel can be tricky,” as he checks the join then drops his welding mask. They’ll be working overtime tonight to get an order out, a union member’s system that burst earlier.

The Maritime Union of Australia is negotiating an Earthworker clause in contracts where members can have an Earthworker hot water system installed as part of a wage increase. This sort of bootstrapping could one day see theirs grow into something like Spain’s sprawling Mondragon network of 257 companies. But right now, there’s work to be done. 

This Author 

Kurt Johnson is a writer and journalist who has written for the ABC, Crikey! and published a book – The Red Wake – about travelling through the post-Soviet landscape. His current focus is deindustrialisation and the opportunities and pitfalls that a transition to a carbon free economy offers society. He has a weekly radio show for 3CR Melbourne.

European Union (EU) and Finnish NGOs have obtained a document produced by Finland’s Ministry of Agriculture which reveals that Finland is secretly attempting to renegotiate its way out of accounting for its deforestation. The document tarnishes the country’s carefully crafted green image.

The document, obtained by EU forests and rights NGO Fern and the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (FANC), relates to the notoriously complex issue of Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF). It is dated 2 October 2019 and outlines the Finnish’s government’s policy position.

Under the EU’s LULUCF Regulation, Member States must account for emissions from forests, wetlands and agricultural land in order to ensure that the land continues to store carbon and cool the climate. Without such measurements, a country could claim that activities such as burning forests for bioenergy or turning forests into plastic packaging was carbon neutral and thereby appear to be a green leader.

Hide emissions 

During negotiations around the LULUCF Regulation in 2017, Finland lobbied – and obtained- flexibility for how it accounts for emissions from the forestry industry. It also attempted to obtain additional allowance to compensate for deforestation. The latter was rejected by other EU Member States.

According to the document that Fern and FANC are making public, Finland is now pressuring the EU Commission to allow them to be able to release 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from deforestation, something that was flatly rejected by Member States earlier.

Kelsey Perlman, Forest and Climate Campaigner at Fern, said: “The only way to meet the new EU targets is to maintain and restore European forests to increase their health and biodiversity. Secret Finnish attempts to hide their own emissions from deforestation puts the whole process at risk.”

The IPCC points to efforts to end deforestation as crucial in limiting temperature rise. Finland is however hesitant to end one of their most harmful practices of clearing peatland forests for more agricultural land.

Undermine credibility 

Hanna Aho, conservation expert at FANC said: “Using the limited additional compensation to cover emissions caused by deforestation or agricultural land is not in line with the Regulation which is binding EU law.

“Finland’s actions therefore undermine the credibility of their Presidency. Finland can’t just talk about its climate ambition, it must deliver on its commitments to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees and end deforestation. This is what our citizens voted for in our April elections and demanded on the streets.”

The recently elected Finnish government led by Social Democrats was swept in on a wave of demand for climate action by its citizens, and up until this point has been recognised as a leader on EU climate action.

While Finland has been negotiating their secret deal, Eastern European countries including the Visegrad region, Romania and Slovenia have also been calling for exemptions.

Kelsey Perlman said: “This region has seen an upturn in climate related forest degradation, this is partly due to poor land management. Countries have asked for both financial support to protect and restore these forests, and for the right to log their way out of the problem. There’s a clear mismatch.”

Combat deforestation

Finland’s lobbying is particularly concerning as EU President-elect Ursula von der Leyen has stated her support to increase EU emissions reduction targets from 40 to 55 per cent. Continued deforestation in countries like Finland would take the EU in the opposite direction and jeopardise its position as a global climate leader.

Finland presently holds the Presidency of the Council of the EU and has been playing a lead role in developing the Communication on Stepping up EU Action to Protect and Restore Forests. The communication proposes actions to combat deforestation.

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Fern. 

Extinction Rebellion activists are launching legal action against the police over a London-wide ban on their protests.

The move comes amid growing criticism of the ban, made under public order legislation already used to restrict the action to Trafalgar Square.

Activists continued protests in the capital in defiance of the police order, targeting the Department for Transport and locking themselves to a caravan on Millbank, prompting more arrests.

Necessary

Human rights lawyer Tobias Garnett, working for Extinction Rebellion, said the group would be filing a High Court claim challenging the ban on the grounds it is “disproportionate and unlawful”.

The group was planning to file a claim on Tuesday afternoon, and was seeking an expedited hearing.

On Tuesday evening, Mayor Sadiq Khan – who oversees the Metropolitan Police, said he had asked officers to find a way for those who wanted to protest to be able to do so legally and peacefully.

He said he had “received assurances that Extinction Rebellion are not banned from protesting in our city”, adding: “Neither I nor the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime was informed before the Metropolitan Police took the operational decision to impose a Section 14 order on Extinction Rebellion Autumn Uprising last night.

“I’ve met with senior officers today to seek further information on why they deemed this necessary.”

Unacceptable 

Mr Garnett said the police order limiting protests “risks criminalising anyone who wants to protest in any way about the climate and ecological emergency that we face”.

Under the current order, any assembly – classed as a gathering of two or more people – linked to the Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’ in London is unlawful.

Lawyers have questioned the legality of ban, aimed at halting further protests after more than a week of disruption by the environmental activists in London, while a number of politicians expressed outrage over the move.

Responding to the ban, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted: “If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken.”

Protect

Anti-Brexit barrister Jo Maugham QC claimed the move was a “huge overreach” of police powers, human rights lawyer Adam Wagner called it “draconian and extremely heavy-handed”, and Allan Hogarth from Amnesty International said it was “unacceptable”.

Jeremy Corbyn, speaking about the London-wide ban of Extinction Rebellion protesters by police on Monday night, said: “Concerns have been expressed about this.

“Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon are contacting the Metropolitan Police to discuss this, as indeed Sadiq Khan has as the Mayor of London.

“I think it’s important to protect the right of free speech, and the right to demonstrate in our society – obviously in a non-violent way.”

The Labour leader said Mr Khan had no involvement in the “operational decision” by police to remove the protesters.

Risk

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “This ban is completely contrary to Britain’s long-held traditions of policing by consent, freedom of speech, and the right to protest.”

Green Party MEP Ellie Chowns, who was arrested in Trafalgar Square, Green MP Caroline Lucas and shadow policing and crime minister Louise Haigh also spoke out against the move.

But Home Secretary Priti Patel backed the police in a tweet, saying: “Officers from around the country have done a fantastic job policing XR protests. Supporting our Police is vital.

“Labour support the law breakers who have disrupted the lives and businesses of Londoners. They cannot be trusted in Downing Street or the Home Office.”

Police moved in to clear Trafalgar Square on Monday evening, telling protesters to leave the site by 9pm or risk arrest.

Location

On Tuesday, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said the protest ban was brought in after “continued breaches” of the condition limiting the demonstration to Trafalgar Square.

He said: “I want to be absolutely clear, the conditions put in place yesterday afternoon do not in any way ban protests from London, nor do they ban the activities of Extinction Rebellion as a group.

“These conditions specifically state that any assembly linked to Extinction Rebellion’s ‘Autumn Uprising’ must now cease.

“The decision to impose further conditions was made in order to help us get London moving again. It is a lawful decision which we felt is entirely proportionate and reasonable to impose after nine days of sustained, unlawful assembly and protest by Extinction Rebellion.”

The Met said that using Section 14 to limit the location and duration of protest action was “not unusual”.

Arrested

Extinction Rebellion activists defied the order and on Tuesday morning, the group’s co-founder, Gail Bradbrook, was arrested after action to target the Department for Transport in Westminster over HS2 and airport expansion.

Police also dealt with a road block near Baker Street and told a number of protesters camped in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to move on or risk arrest.

Protesters locked themselves to a caravan parked by Millbank tower in central London, with police spending more than two hours trying to free them using electric saws.

The protest outside the MI5 headquarters aimed to highlight the issue of food security.

Ilya Fisher, a fine art photographer from Cornwall, said she was taking part despite never having been arrested before.

Highway

She said: “I’m doing this because I want other people to see ‘why is such a boring ordinary person doing this?’ and they will look into the climate science.

“The government isn’t protecting us. If we wait until 2050 for the carbon emissions to be reduced it’s way too late.”

By Tuesday afternoon, police said 1,489 people had been arrested in connection with the “Autumn Uprising”.

And 92 people had been charged for offences including failing to comply with a condition imposed under Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, criminal damage, and obstruction of a highway.

These Authors

Emily Beament, Margaret Davis and Tom Pilgrim are reporters with PA.

Extinction Rebellion activists are launching legal action against the police over a London-wide ban on their protests.

The move comes amid growing criticism of the ban, made under public order legislation already used to restrict the action to Trafalgar Square.

Activists continued protests in the capital in defiance of the police order, targeting the Department for Transport and locking themselves to a caravan on Millbank, prompting more arrests.

Necessary

Human rights lawyer Tobias Garnett, working for Extinction Rebellion, said the group would be filing a High Court claim challenging the ban on the grounds it is “disproportionate and unlawful”.

The group was planning to file a claim on Tuesday afternoon, and was seeking an expedited hearing.

On Tuesday evening, Mayor Sadiq Khan – who oversees the Metropolitan Police, said he had asked officers to find a way for those who wanted to protest to be able to do so legally and peacefully.

He said he had “received assurances that Extinction Rebellion are not banned from protesting in our city”, adding: “Neither I nor the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime was informed before the Metropolitan Police took the operational decision to impose a Section 14 order on Extinction Rebellion Autumn Uprising last night.

“I’ve met with senior officers today to seek further information on why they deemed this necessary.”

Unacceptable 

Mr Garnett said the police order limiting protests “risks criminalising anyone who wants to protest in any way about the climate and ecological emergency that we face”.

Under the current order, any assembly – classed as a gathering of two or more people – linked to the Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’ in London is unlawful.

Lawyers have questioned the legality of ban, aimed at halting further protests after more than a week of disruption by the environmental activists in London, while a number of politicians expressed outrage over the move.

Responding to the ban, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted: “If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken.”

Protect

Anti-Brexit barrister Jo Maugham QC claimed the move was a “huge overreach” of police powers, human rights lawyer Adam Wagner called it “draconian and extremely heavy-handed”, and Allan Hogarth from Amnesty International said it was “unacceptable”.

Jeremy Corbyn, speaking about the London-wide ban of Extinction Rebellion protesters by police on Monday night, said: “Concerns have been expressed about this.

“Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon are contacting the Metropolitan Police to discuss this, as indeed Sadiq Khan has as the Mayor of London.

“I think it’s important to protect the right of free speech, and the right to demonstrate in our society – obviously in a non-violent way.”

The Labour leader said Mr Khan had no involvement in the “operational decision” by police to remove the protesters.

Risk

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “This ban is completely contrary to Britain’s long-held traditions of policing by consent, freedom of speech, and the right to protest.”

Green Party MEP Ellie Chowns, who was arrested in Trafalgar Square, Green MP Caroline Lucas and shadow policing and crime minister Louise Haigh also spoke out against the move.

But Home Secretary Priti Patel backed the police in a tweet, saying: “Officers from around the country have done a fantastic job policing XR protests. Supporting our Police is vital.

“Labour support the law breakers who have disrupted the lives and businesses of Londoners. They cannot be trusted in Downing Street or the Home Office.”

Police moved in to clear Trafalgar Square on Monday evening, telling protesters to leave the site by 9pm or risk arrest.

Location

On Tuesday, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said the protest ban was brought in after “continued breaches” of the condition limiting the demonstration to Trafalgar Square.

He said: “I want to be absolutely clear, the conditions put in place yesterday afternoon do not in any way ban protests from London, nor do they ban the activities of Extinction Rebellion as a group.

“These conditions specifically state that any assembly linked to Extinction Rebellion’s ‘Autumn Uprising’ must now cease.

“The decision to impose further conditions was made in order to help us get London moving again. It is a lawful decision which we felt is entirely proportionate and reasonable to impose after nine days of sustained, unlawful assembly and protest by Extinction Rebellion.”

The Met said that using Section 14 to limit the location and duration of protest action was “not unusual”.

Arrested

Extinction Rebellion activists defied the order and on Tuesday morning, the group’s co-founder, Gail Bradbrook, was arrested after action to target the Department for Transport in Westminster over HS2 and airport expansion.

Police also dealt with a road block near Baker Street and told a number of protesters camped in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to move on or risk arrest.

Protesters locked themselves to a caravan parked by Millbank tower in central London, with police spending more than two hours trying to free them using electric saws.

The protest outside the MI5 headquarters aimed to highlight the issue of food security.

Ilya Fisher, a fine art photographer from Cornwall, said she was taking part despite never having been arrested before.

Highway

She said: “I’m doing this because I want other people to see ‘why is such a boring ordinary person doing this?’ and they will look into the climate science.

“The government isn’t protecting us. If we wait until 2050 for the carbon emissions to be reduced it’s way too late.”

By Tuesday afternoon, police said 1,489 people had been arrested in connection with the “Autumn Uprising”.

And 92 people had been charged for offences including failing to comply with a condition imposed under Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, criminal damage, and obstruction of a highway.

These Authors

Emily Beament, Margaret Davis and Tom Pilgrim are reporters with PA.

Extinction Rebellion activists are launching legal action against the police over a London-wide ban on their protests.

The move comes amid growing criticism of the ban, made under public order legislation already used to restrict the action to Trafalgar Square.

Activists continued protests in the capital in defiance of the police order, targeting the Department for Transport and locking themselves to a caravan on Millbank, prompting more arrests.

Necessary

Human rights lawyer Tobias Garnett, working for Extinction Rebellion, said the group would be filing a High Court claim challenging the ban on the grounds it is “disproportionate and unlawful”.

The group was planning to file a claim on Tuesday afternoon, and was seeking an expedited hearing.

On Tuesday evening, Mayor Sadiq Khan – who oversees the Metropolitan Police, said he had asked officers to find a way for those who wanted to protest to be able to do so legally and peacefully.

He said he had “received assurances that Extinction Rebellion are not banned from protesting in our city”, adding: “Neither I nor the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime was informed before the Metropolitan Police took the operational decision to impose a Section 14 order on Extinction Rebellion Autumn Uprising last night.

“I’ve met with senior officers today to seek further information on why they deemed this necessary.”

Unacceptable 

Mr Garnett said the police order limiting protests “risks criminalising anyone who wants to protest in any way about the climate and ecological emergency that we face”.

Under the current order, any assembly – classed as a gathering of two or more people – linked to the Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’ in London is unlawful.

Lawyers have questioned the legality of ban, aimed at halting further protests after more than a week of disruption by the environmental activists in London, while a number of politicians expressed outrage over the move.

Responding to the ban, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted: “If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken.”

Protect

Anti-Brexit barrister Jo Maugham QC claimed the move was a “huge overreach” of police powers, human rights lawyer Adam Wagner called it “draconian and extremely heavy-handed”, and Allan Hogarth from Amnesty International said it was “unacceptable”.

Jeremy Corbyn, speaking about the London-wide ban of Extinction Rebellion protesters by police on Monday night, said: “Concerns have been expressed about this.

“Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon are contacting the Metropolitan Police to discuss this, as indeed Sadiq Khan has as the Mayor of London.

“I think it’s important to protect the right of free speech, and the right to demonstrate in our society – obviously in a non-violent way.”

The Labour leader said Mr Khan had no involvement in the “operational decision” by police to remove the protesters.

Risk

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “This ban is completely contrary to Britain’s long-held traditions of policing by consent, freedom of speech, and the right to protest.”

Green Party MEP Ellie Chowns, who was arrested in Trafalgar Square, Green MP Caroline Lucas and shadow policing and crime minister Louise Haigh also spoke out against the move.

But Home Secretary Priti Patel backed the police in a tweet, saying: “Officers from around the country have done a fantastic job policing XR protests. Supporting our Police is vital.

“Labour support the law breakers who have disrupted the lives and businesses of Londoners. They cannot be trusted in Downing Street or the Home Office.”

Police moved in to clear Trafalgar Square on Monday evening, telling protesters to leave the site by 9pm or risk arrest.

Location

On Tuesday, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said the protest ban was brought in after “continued breaches” of the condition limiting the demonstration to Trafalgar Square.

He said: “I want to be absolutely clear, the conditions put in place yesterday afternoon do not in any way ban protests from London, nor do they ban the activities of Extinction Rebellion as a group.

“These conditions specifically state that any assembly linked to Extinction Rebellion’s ‘Autumn Uprising’ must now cease.

“The decision to impose further conditions was made in order to help us get London moving again. It is a lawful decision which we felt is entirely proportionate and reasonable to impose after nine days of sustained, unlawful assembly and protest by Extinction Rebellion.”

The Met said that using Section 14 to limit the location and duration of protest action was “not unusual”.

Arrested

Extinction Rebellion activists defied the order and on Tuesday morning, the group’s co-founder, Gail Bradbrook, was arrested after action to target the Department for Transport in Westminster over HS2 and airport expansion.

Police also dealt with a road block near Baker Street and told a number of protesters camped in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to move on or risk arrest.

Protesters locked themselves to a caravan parked by Millbank tower in central London, with police spending more than two hours trying to free them using electric saws.

The protest outside the MI5 headquarters aimed to highlight the issue of food security.

Ilya Fisher, a fine art photographer from Cornwall, said she was taking part despite never having been arrested before.

Highway

She said: “I’m doing this because I want other people to see ‘why is such a boring ordinary person doing this?’ and they will look into the climate science.

“The government isn’t protecting us. If we wait until 2050 for the carbon emissions to be reduced it’s way too late.”

By Tuesday afternoon, police said 1,489 people had been arrested in connection with the “Autumn Uprising”.

And 92 people had been charged for offences including failing to comply with a condition imposed under Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, criminal damage, and obstruction of a highway.

These Authors

Emily Beament, Margaret Davis and Tom Pilgrim are reporters with PA.

Extinction Rebellion activists are launching legal action against the police over a London-wide ban on their protests.

The move comes amid growing criticism of the ban, made under public order legislation already used to restrict the action to Trafalgar Square.

Activists continued protests in the capital in defiance of the police order, targeting the Department for Transport and locking themselves to a caravan on Millbank, prompting more arrests.

Necessary

Human rights lawyer Tobias Garnett, working for Extinction Rebellion, said the group would be filing a High Court claim challenging the ban on the grounds it is “disproportionate and unlawful”.

The group was planning to file a claim on Tuesday afternoon, and was seeking an expedited hearing.

On Tuesday evening, Mayor Sadiq Khan – who oversees the Metropolitan Police, said he had asked officers to find a way for those who wanted to protest to be able to do so legally and peacefully.

He said he had “received assurances that Extinction Rebellion are not banned from protesting in our city”, adding: “Neither I nor the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime was informed before the Metropolitan Police took the operational decision to impose a Section 14 order on Extinction Rebellion Autumn Uprising last night.

“I’ve met with senior officers today to seek further information on why they deemed this necessary.”

Unacceptable 

Mr Garnett said the police order limiting protests “risks criminalising anyone who wants to protest in any way about the climate and ecological emergency that we face”.

Under the current order, any assembly – classed as a gathering of two or more people – linked to the Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’ in London is unlawful.

Lawyers have questioned the legality of ban, aimed at halting further protests after more than a week of disruption by the environmental activists in London, while a number of politicians expressed outrage over the move.

Responding to the ban, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted: “If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken.”

Protect

Anti-Brexit barrister Jo Maugham QC claimed the move was a “huge overreach” of police powers, human rights lawyer Adam Wagner called it “draconian and extremely heavy-handed”, and Allan Hogarth from Amnesty International said it was “unacceptable”.

Jeremy Corbyn, speaking about the London-wide ban of Extinction Rebellion protesters by police on Monday night, said: “Concerns have been expressed about this.

“Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon are contacting the Metropolitan Police to discuss this, as indeed Sadiq Khan has as the Mayor of London.

“I think it’s important to protect the right of free speech, and the right to demonstrate in our society – obviously in a non-violent way.”

The Labour leader said Mr Khan had no involvement in the “operational decision” by police to remove the protesters.

Risk

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: “This ban is completely contrary to Britain’s long-held traditions of policing by consent, freedom of speech, and the right to protest.”

Green Party MEP Ellie Chowns, who was arrested in Trafalgar Square, Green MP Caroline Lucas and shadow policing and crime minister Louise Haigh also spoke out against the move.

But Home Secretary Priti Patel backed the police in a tweet, saying: “Officers from around the country have done a fantastic job policing XR protests. Supporting our Police is vital.

“Labour support the law breakers who have disrupted the lives and businesses of Londoners. They cannot be trusted in Downing Street or the Home Office.”

Police moved in to clear Trafalgar Square on Monday evening, telling protesters to leave the site by 9pm or risk arrest.

Location

On Tuesday, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said the protest ban was brought in after “continued breaches” of the condition limiting the demonstration to Trafalgar Square.

He said: “I want to be absolutely clear, the conditions put in place yesterday afternoon do not in any way ban protests from London, nor do they ban the activities of Extinction Rebellion as a group.

“These conditions specifically state that any assembly linked to Extinction Rebellion’s ‘Autumn Uprising’ must now cease.

“The decision to impose further conditions was made in order to help us get London moving again. It is a lawful decision which we felt is entirely proportionate and reasonable to impose after nine days of sustained, unlawful assembly and protest by Extinction Rebellion.”

The Met said that using Section 14 to limit the location and duration of protest action was “not unusual”.

Arrested

Extinction Rebellion activists defied the order and on Tuesday morning, the group’s co-founder, Gail Bradbrook, was arrested after action to target the Department for Transport in Westminster over HS2 and airport expansion.

Police also dealt with a road block near Baker Street and told a number of protesters camped in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to move on or risk arrest.

Protesters locked themselves to a caravan parked by Millbank tower in central London, with police spending more than two hours trying to free them using electric saws.

The protest outside the MI5 headquarters aimed to highlight the issue of food security.

Ilya Fisher, a fine art photographer from Cornwall, said she was taking part despite never having been arrested before.

Highway

She said: “I’m doing this because I want other people to see ‘why is such a boring ordinary person doing this?’ and they will look into the climate science.

“The government isn’t protecting us. If we wait until 2050 for the carbon emissions to be reduced it’s way too late.”

By Tuesday afternoon, police said 1,489 people had been arrested in connection with the “Autumn Uprising”.

And 92 people had been charged for offences including failing to comply with a condition imposed under Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, criminal damage, and obstruction of a highway.

These Authors

Emily Beament, Margaret Davis and Tom Pilgrim are reporters with PA.

We move one step closer to our worst-case climate catastrophes with every passing year that countries and transnational corporations put economic profits over people.

I’m from the Philippines but currently based in Germany, where extended heatwaves caused drought and forest fires last summer. Elsewhere, the impacts are much more severe – from supertypoons to snow storms. 

Climate change impacts women and members of structurally-disadvantaged communities more severely. Oftentimes women are the ones in charge of the household, child-rearing, and care-giving for elders, as well as outsourcing their domestic work for wages. 

Women find themselves in scenarios of not only struggling to find shelter, food, and clean drinking-water, but also desperate to evade the higher risk of sexual violence during a state of emergency.

Environmental defenders

Indigenous peoples, too, are on the frontline of climate action in the Global South, but also in the Global North. Canadian prime minister Trudeau violently evicted activists and protectors from the Wet’suwet’en Nation from their land in the way of the TransMountain oil pipeline this January.

I have spoken at rallies in Berlin against the North Dakota access pipeline, too. In many of these movements, it’s the women who are leading the resistance to protect the Earth.

While Brazil and the Philippines are under strongman leadership by macho-fascists, they are also the countries with the highest and second-highest rate of murders to environmental defenders in the last years.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Kankana-ey-Igorot), and several other Indigenous Filipinas are women who have found themselves placed on national terrorist lists, as enemies of the state for protecting their land from environmental destruction.

Environmental defenders literally risk their lives in the face of land grabbing by agribusinesses.  For example, a local woman asked the president about shutting down the quarry that was likely to have caused a deadly landslide in the Philippines caused over 60 deaths. She was forced into hiding for having openly criticized him.

Disaster

Mining corporations bring a lot of male aggression into regions were women and children become the targets of violence, trafficking, and prostitution, if not outright murder – as is the case in North America’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (#MMIW).

In November of 2013, Supertyphoon Haiyan ravaged the islands of Samar and Leyte in the Philippines, to date with more than 6000 human fatalities and 1000 still missing.

Warming oceans caused a stronger typhoon than the typical ones that hit the region during typhoon season. The seawater rose in the low-pressure system of the eye of the typhoon and caused a storm surge that the population hadn’t been warned about or prepared for.

This storm surge was well over two stories high, rolling across infrastructure in the city of Tacloban where my uncle, aunt, and cousin live. They were presumed to be among the dead in the hardest-hit area – the peninsula the city’s airport was on – cut off from any communication. They were found after three days, when another relative connected to the military had made his way there from a neighbouring province.

The reason I mention the storm surge is also because women in the Philippines are discouraged from learning how to swim. They don’t stand a chance to survive sudden-onset flooding in an archipelago of over 7,100 islands.

Colonialism

The same racist forces of American colonialism and neocolonialism that the Philippines has been under since 1898 are why Flint still doesn’t have clean drinking-water, why Puerto Rico is still rebuilding after Hurricane Maria while many residents have migrated to the US mainland.

Colonialism is why the US Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas – within the path of the same typhoons that regularly hit the Philippines – still has residents living in shelters and tents after Typhoon Mangkhut and Supertyphoon Yutu destroyed their homes in September and October 2018.

While some governments and their politicians are still denying climate change, a handful of global corporations are responsible for causing the majority carbon emissions and pollution.

Climate justice demands funding poorer nations and communities already impacted by climate change. In addition to resources with which to adapt, these communities must also see a just transition away from fossil fuels and compensation for loss and damage.

We must consider the long-term consequences of our energy supply, while protecting our labour force. 

System change

By contrast, unjust and imperialist solutions take away more Indigenous lands for palm oil plantations, and promote nuclear energy as a safe alternative to fossil fuels only to dispose of the waste near marginalized communities.

It’s affecting us all globally, but at a different speed and intensity.

Postponing a collective system change – from profit to people – is still seen as a worthwhile gamble in the global North, while others in the global South and in Indigenous territories are already losing their homes, livelihoods and lives to an insatiable and imperialist greed.

This Author 

Karin Louise is Filipino-German academic, Indigenous rights and climate justice activist and PhD candidate in American Studies. 

This text is adapted from a speech given at the Women’s March 2019 in Berlin, first published on Medium.

A cold October morning and a stage is being built on the Mall for the start of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests.

The theme of the talks was ‘the future is here’ and it was inspiring to be invited to share a space for people to talk about positive, practical actions they could take to accelerate our path to a Net Zero world.

Inspiring also to meet so many people prepared to take a stand for a better world. 

Vote for the future

I have written before about how we are all impact investors by default and that our money is often working at odds with our values. That won’t change unless we are proactive and do something about it – rather than leaving it to banks or pension funds to make our decisions for us.  

My message on that Monday to the XR audience was that our money makes a difference in the world and investing is a political act almost as powerful as a vote or a protest. This message prompted lots of questions which I hope will lead to plenty of letters and meetings for pension fund trustees and employers, and perhaps some new investors too. 

The power of investment is that your decisions have an impact that lasts many years into the future; it is not about the coffee cup you just saved from landfill, it is about what companies will be doing decades from now.

An investment is a vote for the future you want to see. Since the launch of auto-enrolment pensions, every month every employee is an investor, whether they realise it or not. 

As investors we are all very likely to be shareholders in oil and gas companies too. By default rather than design, but most of our pensions are oil-fired rather than solar-powered. When you invest in a pension your money goes into shares and the way those shares are chosen tends to reflect the various indices which organise stock exchanges.

The biggest shares get the biggest proportion of our money and that means, because they need a lot of money, carbon-based companies. 

Green finance 

I was asked directly about this on the following Tuesday by MPs on the Treasury Select Committee who are leading an inquiry into decarbonising the economy, in particular the role that green finance can play in delivering that goal. You can watch the video here.

One of the main points we kept returning to was what to do about the companies that are the ‘uncooperative crusties’ of the stock market. Moving money away from them might lower their share prices but is not guaranteed to accelerate the move away from carbon. 

Should these companies (and their employees) be afforded a ‘just transition’ or should the market (and consumer choice) dictate their fate, as they have done for countless companies in the past. Where is the mitigation for Thomas Cook, or Woolworths or Kodak before them?

Investors in companies like IBM and Nokia know the power that markets have to change the value of their investments. Either capitalism works in your favour, or it doesn’t, but you don’t get to choose socialism when it suits you.

Investing 

It is not that the fossil fuel companies (and banks that lend to them) are immune from criticism. 

They care about what others think about them (which is why they sponsor museums and theatres) and perhaps at an individual level their bosses care what their children think about what they do for a living.  

But it is hard to hear them saying ‘change takes time’ when history shows that markets punish those who fail to change with the times. Perhaps an unintended consequence of the XR protests is a crisis of a different sort. A crisis about the sort of economy we choose to have, in the true meaning of the word from the Greek “krisis” or “decision”. 

Money gives you choices, and those choices are much bigger than those we make as consumers. As investors we get to have a say in the way the world works and what sort of world we live in.

This Author 

Bruce Davis is managing director of Abundance Investment, which advertises with The Ecologist.

Researchers based in Lima, Peru, today launched a bid to shine a light on climate change in the Andes Mountains to better understand how to adapt to a warming world.

Home to many indigenous superfoods – from grains like amaranth and quinoa to lupine pulses and maca roots – the Andes is described as the “richest hotspot of agrobiodiversity” in the world.

Mountain regions also play a critical role in downstream water supplies, with the Andes providing as much as 50 per cent of the water for the upstream Amazon’s river basins through glacial melt.

Agrobiodiversity

Yet changing temperatures and weather patterns have resulted in extreme droughts, hailstorms and frost, which is impacting food production and agriculture at altitude in the Andes and beyond.

Ginya Truitt Nakata is director of Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Potato Center (CIP), which launched the initiative at this year’s World Food Prize event.

Nakata said: “The Andes is one of the last rich hotspot of agrobiodiversity, and the birthplace of many nutritional crop varieties that are vital for meeting the global need for a diverse diet.

“All of this makes the Andes a petri dish for climate change, and we overlook its importance at our own peril.”

The initiative to accelerate climate research in the Andes will focus on agrobiodiversity, climate change and healthy diets, and will include a new network of laboratories to study extreme frosts, hailstorms, excess rain and droughts.

Researchers will also develop a tool for assessing changes in land use, and support farmers with new markets for superfoods.

Indigenous crops

One understudied area of climate research to be addressed is the significance of high-altitude below-ground carbon stocks, and the risks associated with unsustainable land use in the Andes.

Stef de Haan, senior scientist at CIP, said: “The volume of carbon stocks per area unit in peatlands in the High Andes are comparable to those in the Amazon.

Yet the role of the Andes as a carbon reservoir has received little attention from researchers and policymakers while there is increase evidence that land use change rapidly driving the agricultural frontier upwards.

“By dedicating climate research to this vital region, we stand the chance of being able to protect indigenous families, rural incomes and nutritious diets while also adapting and mitigating the effects of climate change.”

CIP already spearheads several projects to protect biodiversity in the Andean region, including in-situ conservation with smallholder farmers and repatriation programs returning lost agrobiodiversity to indigenous communities.

CIP researchers also work with communities to improve diets using improved indigenous crops.

Living laboratory

Jesus Quintana, is head of the Andean and Southern Cone Sub-regional Hub at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), one of the co-hosts of the World Food Prize side event. 

Quintana said: “Through our strategic partnership and collaboration, we will support and progress vital work in the Andean region, which is experiencing the impacts of climate change with a greater intensity than anywhere else in the world.

“This living laboratory of climate science and agrobiodiversity can offer valuable lessons for tropical mountain regions and vulnerable areas worldwide for climate resilience.”

This Article 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the International Potato Centre.

Image: David Stanley, Flickr.