People of colour spend less time in nature in the UK than white people. But we are often closely connected to nature in our countries of heritage – the disconnect seems to occur in the west.  Why is this?

My ethnographic research explores the relationship of black and Asian people to nature in the UK, drawing on my work as a nature allied psychotherapist and leading a nature connection programme in London.

This exploration is situated within the context of racialised narratives about our place within natural settings. Environmental organisations that are typically staffed by white middle class practitioners have framed our apparent absence as rooted in a lack of interest in or appreciation of nature. A colonial perspective that regards white people as the true custodians of nature persists. 

In what follows, I describe some of the findings of my research and practice. 

Race and place

Nature is a source of spiritual nourishment for many, and a means to supporting physical and emotional health, providing a sense of home and place in being connected to the land, knowing that we are part of nature. 

But Natural England found that just 25.7 percent of Asian, 26.2 percent of black and 38.8 percent of mixed race people spend time in nature, compared to 44.2 percent of white people.  

The vast majority of the UK’s black and Asian population live within urban areas, with only a very small number of ethnic minorities living in the countryside – just 1.9 percent of Black people and 2.6 percent Asian people. For many people of colour, journeying into the countryside means navigating a new environment. 

This absence is not simply about people of colours’ relationship with nature, but also about our relationship with other people and how we’re received and responded to in natural settings.

Relationships with nature are often rooted within historical messages about belonging, as well as people’s own direct experiences. In many instances there is a causal flow stemming from the historical experience of colonialism, slavery, and our families’ arrival in the west and a continuing legacy affecting how our relationship with nature is navigated, including the development of cultural attitudes that shun nature.

Support networks 

In our differing migrations people of colour have tended to gather in cities to feel a sense of safety and community in numbers; we had lives to build with a focus on finding work and networks of support to sustain ourselves.  

Experiences of hostility are hard enough to bear when you are surrounded by other people of colour, but they’re more intimidating when you are isolated. This brought about a protective attitude among our parents and grandparents who came to see the countryside and nature in urban spaces as unsafe and alienating. 

Racism is a big part of why people of colour are less present in nature. Many people of colour feel an apprehension about stepping into nature, especially in more remote and open spaces, wondering how they are going to be received. 

A sense of vulnerability increases with increased visibility. A significant proportion of people had experienced or feared being stared at, snubbed, verbally assaulted, followed or physically threatened. People of colour are made to feel their difference, that they were out of place and unwelcome, all of which impacts on our sense of safety. 

Racism has shaped how some of us behave in nature, creating a barrier to simple enjoyment. For example, our presence has been treated with suspicion in natural settings.

Some people of colour, particularly men, feel a pressure to change their behaviour to prove they are not a threat – which sabotages their own relaxation. Some worry that they are perceived as ‘up to no good’ and felt pulled into ‘respectability’ to make white people feel comfortable. This dynamic occurs in cities but is exacerbated in frequency and intensity in areas with fewer people of colour.

Generational disconnect

Many people of colour are disconnected from nature in the UK because their parents and their grandparents didn’t feel safe enough to take them or had other survival preoccupations. This creates a chain of disconnect – not having adults who take us into these spaces means that time in nature isn’t normalised.

People of colour experience a generational loss of connection and cultural attitudes emerge for us to cope with that loss.

In countries of heritage we often learn about the natural world relationally, through conversation and experience with older relatives. In UK settings our elders may lack knowledge about wildlife and often haven’t had connections with established communities from whom they could learn. 

This breaks down the generational oral traditions for learning and leaves us without a bridge into knowledge about nature and relevant practicalities, such as how to keep warm, what to wear, or how to get there; and relationalities such as names, behaviour and the uses of plants and wildlife. 

In this way nature becomes a stranger, while in countries of heritage it was familiar. 

Hardship and subsistence

Time in the natural world is associated with leisure and recreation for many people in the west.

But for some people with a recent history or lived experience of subsistence within the family, having come from rural areas in developing countries, nature can be associated with hardship and struggle in having to work the land – it is a place of survival.  

In coming to the west people may have a desire to leave behind lifestyles where you might get dirty and hands-on in nature, seeing their own rural background as backwards and wanting to integrate into a more urban lifestyle as an indicator of status and implied progression.

Added to this, rather than a romanticised relationship with nature as a source of relaxation, for some people of colour nature can be painfully associated with being the scene of a crime or mistreatment – whether through hard physical work, poverty, legacies of slavery, colonialism and limited options.   

There is a trauma of abuse and coercion in the fields. Abandoning nature can be perceived as escaping systemic oppressions associated with under development. In the UK context there can be a fear of criminality in parks, being seen by some as a place where bad things, such as drug dealing and assault, can happen.

Urbanised culture

An urbanized culture develops when people migrate into cities. Focus turns to successfully being in a city, which is different from successfully being in nature.

How we function in an urban setting and the value codes of claiming status within city contexts tends to have a greater emphasis on material consumerism, on how we present ourselves, what we own, and the kind of activities we partake in.

Our understanding of these value codes are demonstrated, for example, through clean, tidy, box fresh clothes and not dirty, scuffed nature tarnished clothes. Our appearance carries a statement about identity, and about what we do and what we don’t do that is connected with where we feel we belong and where we don’t feel we belong.

Looking good and well turned out is important to feel a sense of self-esteem and to counter anxieties about status, or ‘looking poor’. For people of colour who have experienced poverty in the UK, families may not have a set of clothes that children are allowed to get dirty.  

Children being dirty from outdoor play is a sign of an afternoon well spent, being healthy and productive for white middle class families without economic and status anxieties. This measure of worth remains for people of colour even as financial circumstances improve: getting dirty is often seen as naughty or transgressive. 

Internalised racism 

Middle class white people are free to enjoy nature without feeling they’re having to prove that they’re separate from it.  

For many people of colour there is a sense of shame in being connected to nature, through our experience of colonialism and slavery which stigmatised us as having an inferior and primitive way of life, close to nature. Our poor, under-developed villages are contrasted to the west’s superior affluent technological cities.  

These racist stigmas become internalised and some people of colour may want to distance themselves from being perceived as ‘backward’, often by perpetuating self-limiting myths about nature and our place in it: black people don’t ‘do’ camping/hiking/skiing/swimming.

These myths articulate a message that we have no business being there, that we’re relieved to no longer be there, that you’re mad for wanting to go, that being in nature is a sign of being mentally unwell, weird or of acting white.  

Trevor Noah, Walter Kamau Bell, Gina Yashere, Romesh Ranganathan all have material laughing at the absurdity of being close to nature.

Culturally there is often force in the ridicule that aims to disparage. It serves as a coping mechanism to protect feelings about something lost or that doesn’t feel safe by dismissing and trivialising nature.

Disenfranchisement

People of colour rarely see ourselves in nature in a western context. There is a widely acknowledged lack of black and Asian representation within environmental organisations and nature based activities, and we are rarely presented as knowledge-holders or leaders in natural spaces, creating a feedback loop further increasing a perception that green spaces are not for us.

Many people of colour have been disenfranchised from nature through human interference. Our experiences of how we’re received by white others in nature and negative narratives about our connection have led to a sense that we are outsiders who are not welcome.  

We are less likely to feel entitled to be in natural spaces or to have a sense of ownership, feeling more of a guest in the space than it being our home.

The issue of our absence in nature isn’t simply self-limiting behaviour, but is linked to cultural responses to historical and current traumas of shame, hardship and racism.  

Consequently some people feel they’re escaping something negative and stepping into something better in cities, while simultaneously being negatively received by other humans in the natural world – providing cause to see ourselves as uniquely urban in western contexts.

For those who do want to explore, being in nature can start to feel emotionally complicated, creating a barrier to just getting on with enjoying ourselves.

Although people of colour in the west currently spend significantly less time in nature than white people, for many of us the desire to be connected with nature remains strong. In many cases it is the relationship with other humans that have made being in nature feel unsafe and out of reach.

This Author 

Beth Collier is a nature allied psychotherapist and anthropologist who teaches woodland living skills and natural history. She is director of Wild in the City, supporting urban residents’ well-being through interacting with nature. 

We need innovative thinking and radical transformation to engage the UK public in climate action. 

The charity Possible has published a new report – 10 Bold Ideas – that reflects five key challenge areas in accelerating climate action: cleaning up energy, working with nature, changing what we eat and buy, talking about the climate crisis, and changing how we travel. 

Possible’s ten ‘bold ideas’ – combining policies, technologies and cultural interventions – were developed within the context of last year’s IPCC report on keeping to 1.5°C global warming and the clear need for rapid transformation. The report is published in tandem with the charity’s name change from 10:10 and new strategy.

Rapid transformation

One of the proposed programmes is a “National Climate Service” which would enable everyone to take paid leave to work on practical climate action projects such as tree planting, training exercises in retrofitting, renewable energy or low carbon farming techniques.

The report also includes calls to create a network of “electric motorway lanes” so that lorries and coaches can use the same overhead cable technology as trams and trains; a publicly owned “climate forest” on top of the nation’s disused open cast coal mines; and a “National Climate Helpline”, offering information on climate change, and support for anyone struggling with climate dread and access to crisis support on the impacts of climate change.

Max Wakefield, co-director at Possible, said: “Once the urgency and scale of the climate crisis is truly understood, you quickly realise that we’re stuck between the impossible and the unthinkable.

“You can either carry on business as usual and let the unthinkable become reality or you can make the impossible possible. The goal of this report it to inspire people to choose the latter and build the rapid, zero carbon transition the climate crisis demands.”

Imagining the future

Alice Bell, co-director at Possible, said: “This report was an exercise in imagining better futures. We all know how depressing the issue can be – it’s no surprise that climate dread is on the rise – but that shouldn’t let us lose sight of what we can do to tackle the crisis.

“The sheer scale of changes we need to make means it will touch everyone’s lives. If we’re going to move at the speed required – and if we’re going to ensure the new world we build is fair – everyone’s got to be involved.

“It’s vital we have ideas that don’t just cut carbon, but inspire people with positive climate action.” 

This Author 

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

Image: 10:10, Flickr. 

To provide a dialectical definition of dialectic we begin by establishing its genus and then by identifying its differentia to other concepts in the same genus, and finally arrive at its essence. In more Hegalian terms, we are searching for both identity and difference.

Read: An introduction to Aristotle’s Dialectic. 

The first step is to place dialectic into a genus.  So how do we define genus? In more contemporary language a genus is basically the more ‘general’ category or class in to which our concept, dialectic, can be placed. Aristotle gives the definition of genus as ‘that which is predicated of a number of specifically differing things as part of their nature.’

My interpretation of this is that each thing in the genus shares a significant or fundamental characteristic but are not the same as everything else. So the genus animal would include human, lion, rabbit. So we want to know, ‘to what category of concepts does dialectic belong?’

Intellectual investigation 

The meta-genus to which dialectic belongs is ‘intellectual investigation’. Dialectic is an intellectual practice. It is one of the methods we use to interpret the information that we gather through our senses, and through language.

But it is not the only one. This meta-level genus of intellectual investigation can be divided into the genuses of arts and science. The difference between the arts and the sciences is that the arts are relative – our findings can be different based on the individual person or the material to which they refer; whereas, the sciences search for the absolute or universal – where our findings are true in all cases.

Aristotle places dialectic in the genus of arts along with rhetoric and medicine. These are human practices that take place in a social arena. Even though both rhetoric and dialectic deal with concepts or language, and medicine with plants and bodies, they belong together because they are skilled activities. They are not sciences because they concern individual humans, are subjective. They seek to test definitions rather than attempting to define absolute truth, to discover the one definition.

However, the arts like science do seek knowledge which is generalisable. As Dr Evans points out in Aristotle’s Concept of Dialectic: “[T]he arts – dialectic, rhetoric, medicine – are concerned with the individual perspectives as well as with that which is seen through, and distorted by, them. But the arts too search to achieve universality and objectivity.”

Further: “Dialectic is distinguished from the particular sciences, which are didactic rather than interrogatory and take their start not from views but from premisses which are true and primary.” 

Arts

The arts – dialectic, rhetoric, and medicine – also involve the careful selection of materials that can have a desired impact on a specific human being: “[Aristotle] compares dialectic with rhetoric and medicine, and says that in the case of all three faculties the possession of skill is marked by the ability to work successfully with suitable materials; not all materials are suitable, and it is not required of the man who exercises these faculties that he should be able to achieve success with just any materials.”

The art of dialectic uses syllogisms as does the science of logic, but does so in subtly different way: the premises used in dialectic are sought from or agreed with a specific human individual engaged in a dialectic debate. Its aim is to validate and invalidate arguments, and to discover truths. It is concerned with testing the claims of a specific person through question and answers to establish what the premises, logical argument and conclusions used are, and whether they are valid. Logic is concerned with objectively true premises.

As Dr Evans points out: “The study of the apparent syllogisms must be organised on the basis of some selection among the varieties of ways in which people may be deceived; and it is this organisation and selection which makes this study an art. A science must study a concept in its absolute form.”

This affirms that dialectic belongs to the genus of art – and not the genus of science. It is concerned with opinion. You begin not with what is irrefutable (such as established scientific fact) but instead with what the person you are in conversation takes to be true. This is to bring them towards a state of a higher understanding, but also means that dialectic can be used in complex areas of life where no such truth is yet established.

Differentia

We now move to differentia – the things that make dialectic stand out from other concepts in the same genus. Differentia are those properties that allows us to distinguish from one thing (an object or concept) and an other.

The subject – the thing being described – is qualified by the predicate – the thing being used to describe the subject. A genus is a class (or collection) of things that share a defining predicate. The differentia is the property of any subject that makes it distinguishable from other subjects in the same genus. Therefore, in Dr Evans phrase, that “every differentia is felt to show some qualified thing.” (109) 

Dialectic – for Aristotle – belongs to the same metagenus as logic in that both are intellectual activities. Indeed, dialectic is a debate between two individuals who use logic to test arguments. Dialectic and logic both rely on the use of premises, inference and conclusions – and also the syllogism.

The differentia between dialectic and logic are primarily 1. Dialectic is deployed in debate with a specific individual while logic is not; 2. Dialectic can make use of premises that have not been established as absolute truth, as pure logic should not.

Dr Evans observes: “So there are two ways in which we may have to qualify the absolute character of the dialectical argument – by reference to the other people involved in the dialectical exercise, or to the nature of the problem which we are dealing (81).” These differences mean that dialectic belongs in the genus art, whereas logic belongs in the genus science. 

Ontology

Let us explore further these two essential differences further: Let’s begin at 1. Aristotle says of dialectic: “All this sort of thing is relative to another person”. It’s about the person you are in dialogue with. Dr Evans interprets this in the following way: “[D]ialectic is necessarily concerned with the individual and his logical reactions, since in the practice of dialectic it is only with individuals that one can deal.” (75) He adds later: “In serious dialectic it is important to be clear about whose views, if indeed they are those of any particular person, are being examined”. (81)

This has significant implications. I have often heard it asserted that dialectic means that everything is part of a whole, and that everything is connected. This does not apply to Aristotle’s dialectic.

Dialectic has no axioms, nor does it have any findings. It is the process of moving from premises to conclusions through question and answer between two individuals. Aristotle is clear that there is a difference between dialectic and ontology, the theory of reality.

Even though his ontology does posit that everything is part of a whole, this argument is not seen as a property of dialectic. Dr Evans writes: “Aristotle … makes the distinction … between ontology, which studies everything in the respect in which all things constitute a unity, and dialectic, which does not as an intellectual activity have such a structure as to reflect any unity in the subjects which it treats…”

The individual

There is another fundamental feature of dialectic which results from its concern with that a specific individual knows or argues. Logic – according to Aristotle – attempts to establish a single, central universality.

Universal refers to the qualifier “all” in the class of claim that takes the form of “all s is p”. This essentially means that we are looking for propositions that state all something shares a particular property, or belongs to the same genus.

For example, ‘all humans are animals’. Logic, in the end, is looking for the all of everything. The aim of logic ultimately is to establish a single truth. Dr Evans explains: “[Dialectic] is not the same as the ideal of pure logic, which is to free the conditions of proof from dependence on the variations which may be imposed by the audience or the problems treated (92).”

However, dialectic accounts for two types of universality – the central and the peripheral. The central universality is the object of study of logic. The logician is seeking universals that describe objects and concepts with a single definition which is true in all cases.

Dialectic can make use of both central universality, as established with logic, and also peripheral universality. An example of this is the claim “all humans are good”. It is a universal statement because it refers to “all” humans, and therefore is not a particular statement that refers only to “some” humans. But it is not – or at least not here – predicated on a long coherent chain of argument back to first principles as it would need to be to qualify as a central universality.

If your interlocutor in dialectical argument agrees with you that “all humans are good”, you can start here and infer conclusions from it, but cannot play this fast and loose when engaged in pure logic. 

Universality 

Dr Evans puts it like this: “[T]he nature of dialectic is determined by the fact that it employs certain concepts which, as Aristotle’s analysis shows, possess a double type of universality; these are the type of universality which characterises the concept in its central and primary form, and the type which characterises it in all its forms, peripheral as well as central. It was the distinction between these two forms of universality which was the basis for the analysis of the relation between dialectic and science”. (105).

In reality, every attempt to define the world relates to the person attempting such a definition. It is not possible, in the end, to be completely objective. Even objectivity itself is defined by being separate to the subject.

The real, human, subject is necessary to hold the concept of objectivity. Logic is nonetheless the attempt at establishing propositions which are universal and objective entirely, are free of the subject.

Dr Evans puts it like this: “For such subjects as proof, argument, inference, all contain a reference to the subjects who exercise or experience these things. The study of logic seeks to free these concepts from their dependence on the subjects and to establish theses about them which are objectively and universally valid, and only if it can achieve this do we allow that the study of logic is a skillful activity…” (74) This is not the case with dialectic.

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is part of the Endoxa.review project. 

Page references given refer to J. D. G Evans, Aristotle’s Concept of the Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

A humpback whale which swam into the River Thames has died, according to a charity.

The British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), which has been dedicated to the rescue and well-being of marine animals in distress around the UK for more than 30 years, said it has found the dead whale.

In a statement on Twitter, the organisation said: “Terribly sad news that soon after 5pm today the humpback whale which had not been seen in the Thames all day, was found dead around the Greenhithe area.

Navigational

“A necropsy will be carried out to determine the cause of death.”

The whale, nicknamed Hessy, was first spotted swimming along the Thames on Sunday.

A spokesperson for charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation said the death of the whale was “not unexpected”, adding: “There was always the possibility that the humpback had come up the Thames because he or she was lost or ill.

“Sadly, thousands of whales and dolphins and porpoises die on shores across the globe every year, some through natural causes such as disease, disorientation, and some due to human activity such as loud underwater noise pollution from military activity or oil exploration.”

BDMLR national co-ordinator Julia Cable said it is “very unusual” for a humpback whale to be seen within the Thames Estuary. “It’s very likely that it just made a navigational error,” she said.

Bottlenose

However, Ms Cable said there was no indication that the whale was in any distress.

The BDMLR added: “The Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) will carry out a necropsy as soon as it’s possible, they will then publish their findings.”

In 2006, a northern bottlenose whale was spotted in the Thames in central London. On that occasion the whale, which was too weak to find its way back out of the river on its own, died as rescuers attempted to transport it back to sea.

In 2009 a humpback whale was found washed up on the shore of the Thames in Kent, having seemingly died from starvation.

A year ago a beluga whale, which was given the nickname Benny, was spotted swimming in the Thames near Gravesend. It is thought to have made its own way back out to sea in the new year. In 2006, a northern bottlenose whale was spotted in the Thames in central London. 

This Author

Will Stone is a reporter for PA.

While millions of climate activists took to the streets to demand immediate and far-reaching action to protect our environment and advance social justice, world leaders and government officials have been attending a series of summits at the United Nations.

These include a summit to discuss climate action and another to find ways to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and move towards a “fair globalisation,” in the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

A number of child and youth activists were invited inside the UN’s hallowed halls, including Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swede who spearheads the global Fridays for Future movement, which started just a year ago as a one-girl protest outside the Swedish parliament.

Scientific

“People are suffering; people are dying; entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” Thunberg told governments at the climate summit. “The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line.”

As if to underline her seriousness, Thunberg and 15 other children and minors filed a groundbreaking complaint to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in which they describe national governments’ inaction on global warming constitutes a violation of their rights as children.

Although some patchy progress has been made, Thunberg is right when she says that current commitments are woefully inadequate to face up to the challenge, especially with the notable absence of some of the world’s worst polluters, such as the United States and China.

“For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight,” Thunberg said at the Climate Summit.

Indeed, the science has been clear for a long time. And as the smog in the air thickens, the scientific insights become ever clearer: humanity is on an unsustainable path to mass destruction and neither business as usual nor patches and bandaids will save the day. Only holistic policies that take account of the ecological, economic and social crisis can tackle the mammoth challenges facing us.

Carbon capture

The United Nations understands the magnitude of the climate crisis facing humanity. “Science tells us that on our current path, we face at least 3°C of global heating by the end of the century,” António Guterres said on the occasion the climate summit. “The climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win.”

And, with the right changes and policies, it most certainly is a race we can win. Some promising initiatives were floated at the climate and sustainability summits, including the commitments taken by 30 countries to “power past” coal, the drive to conserve 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030. However, a lot of this is too little, too late.

More troublingly, some of the proposed solutions smack of ‘business as usual’ or exhibit too much optimism in the anticipated gains future technologies can deliver.

The industrial transition track propose at the climate action summit still talks about “growth plans” and appears to rely heavily on private-public partnerships to implement low-carbon technologies. However, as a number of recent studies have suggested, ‘green growth’ and its promise of decoupling resource use from economic growth is simply not delivering the goods, or not fast enough to meet the magnitude of the challenge ahead. In the long term, there is one thing that is also crystal clear: sooner or later our economies will have to stop growing, since we do not live on a limitless world and there is no such a thing as human activities with zero energy use and zero ecosystem impacts.

The energy transition track lists carbon capture and storage as one area of interest, despite the fact that CCS technology uses an extraordinary amount of fuel to transport emissions for storage, has delivered disappointing results and is being used as a fig leaf by the coal industry to claim that it can become “green”.

Evolve

Improving storage technologies for renewable energies is also a focus of these transitions. However, it is unclear whether, for example, the minerals required to build high–density batteries will be available for more than a generation of electric cars if we continue throwing away rare and valuable elements, such as lithium, cobalt or manganese, with almost zero recycling.

Then, there is the environmental impact of the mining of minerals required to produce batteries and we should not forget that the batteries we have today store almost 100 times less energy per unit of mass than petrol. Moreover, we do not know if their technical features will ever evolve enough to rival presentday fuels.

We have built a society based on fossil fuels with amazing technical features. All the renewable alternatives, though better for the environment, are a lot less efficient and versatile. The transition to a world with lower–quality renewable energy sources which seeks to protect our overexploited ecosystems will be especially difficult if we continue to try growing our economies.

One major challenge is that many solutions rely on models that do not represent the entire reality of the situation, thereby assessing the sustainability and feasibility of future scenarios inaccurately. This is because most economic models are blind to or do not take adequate account of the natural limits and limitations of the biosphere, and assume that there is no feedback relationships between the monetary world of the economy and physical and biological ecosystems.

This implies that the Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) used by institutions and policymakers need to evolve and be adapted. This is precisely what our project LOCOMOTION is working on.

Malaise

We are developing IAMs that make allowance for the finite nature of mineral and fossil fuel reserves and, above all, the natural limitations of ecosystems. LOCOMOTION seeks to address the reality that our economic activities profoundly damage ecosystems, but also the fact that the future shortage of energy and the damage done to the biosphere, have the potential to hurt the economy as well, in a kind of vicious cycle, unless we find ways to cushion the transition.

Integrating all the economic, technological and biological factors at play, and the complex interactions between them, is crucial to empower policymakers and civil society to assess the relative merits of the various technological and policy options on offer, and to choose the right one. To ensure that LOCOMOTION’s models meet the needs of stakeholders we will involve them in defining some of our models and we will develop a user-friendly interface to allow them to customise our models to their specific purposes.

Informed decisions based on sound science and data are vital if we want to avoid being lured by excessive techno-optimism down a path to further destruction. We can only find solutions in those technologies that are themselves sustainable, i.e. they meet the three basic requirements of sustainability: they recycle close to 100% of the minerals used; they use 100% renewable energy; and they limit their flows of waste residues and their extraction of natural resources to the regenerative capacities of the biosphere.

Like when fever strikes, global warming is a symptom of a deeper malaise. Climate change is telling us loud and clear that our growth–based economy is unsustainable, and that we must correct the underlying structural problems, rather than simply administer temporary painkillers.

This Author

Margarita Mediavilla has a PhD in physical sciences from the University of Valladolid (Spain) and is an associate professor of systems engineering and automation at the School of Industrial Engineering. She is also a very active in awareness raising about the limits of economic growth, participating in all kinds of publications and conferences in the Spanish-speaking world. Her personal blog is Habas Contadas. With additional reporting by Khaled Diab.

I’ve ducked out of Design Week for some years, consciously opting out of an obsession with branding and gentrification. Perhaps I’d grown embittered by a dearth of affordable housing for locals. 

But this year, the festival instilled great optimism through art, aestheticism and functionalism, environmentalism and considerate design. That’s to say, it wasn’t all privileged entrepreneurial millennials making fortunes in their pursuit of ‘design for design sake’.

The festival platformed activist designers and biodiversity projects, coupled with a signature stance on international collaboration. All this makes for an exciting time in the design world, even for this old cynic. 

Coming of age

Designers hold the keys to a new future in a country made increasingly precarious by Brexit and climate crisis. 

London Design Festival (LDF) has excelled itself, growing annually into a gargantuan entity. The festival is divided into organised and accessible ‘design districts’, each area loaded with installations, events, talks, presentations and innovations that represent the best in UK and international creativity.

These extraordinary offerings restore a sense of pride in being British at a time of great confusion. Far from sentimental, design reveals itself as elemental, progressive, tech-aware and bold. LDF offers something for everyone, particularly as it goes above and beyond in its platforming of all areas of design, even in its incorporation of Artificial Intelligence. 

This year’s Emerging Design Medal winner is Ross Atkin, who focuses on disability and is a designer to follow.

Renowned creative Yves Behar’s keynote asked ‘How can designers build a better future?’ Behar’s work combines commercial briefs with democratised design to empower communities. His long-term work with the homeless, providing sustainable shelters in Latin America, showcases design committed to communities’ needs and cultures. 

Sustainability 

100% Design,  the UK’s largest and longest-running trade event for designers, celebrates a quarter of a century. It never fails to platform futuristic design, ahead of the times and in turn, on-trend – a must-go for anyone interested in design and in need of inspiration.

Designers here know the double edged sword – tempting consumers with stupefyingly beautiful and useful designs, all the while knowing that ‘less is more’. In addition, its several topical talks hone in on wellbeing, and present special guests such as design maverick Marcel Wanders who gave a typically off-beat and philosophical talk.

Speaking to several creatives and punters reveals how LDF is impacting positively and widely. International collaborations inform key environmental decisions, while the ‘design districts’ place significant emphasis on the environment, sustainability, heritage and localised ways of working. However, what arose from several fertile discussions is the necessity to work collaboratively across industries.

Thee V&A (Victoria&Albert) museum was ‘Home-Zone’ for the week. This globally-renowned  icon of culture hosts LDF events and the ‘Thought Leadership Programme’; the associated ‘Global Design Forum’ in 2018 drove 170,000 visitors to the Museum during the festival’s tenure. The V&A’s day of sustainability proved popular with punters, high profile designers and activists. 

Social design

Listing top recommendations is almost impossible. Many are worthy. But Paul Cocksedge’s Please Be Seated was a personal favourite, and is on display in Finsbury Square until 11 October. 

The large-scale installation comprises everything social design should be. Using recycled wood from scaffolding – it was love and lust at first sight. Organic-style design, curvaceous, fluid, functional and utterly beautiful – its hybrid nature at once both feminine and masculine.

Beckoning with welcoming ‘arms’, its cool, polished, soft and sinuous wood whispers, come hither. Like a flower in which to find your own little corner to curl up and dream. An escape from urbanism and the urbane.

London’s East End is now hyper ‘design wise’ – but this installation breaks barriers that gentrification sets up, with local workmen lying cradled in its curves, scoffing sandwiches and watching the world go by.

As Cocksedge notes: “Every aspect of the installation is tailored to its environment as well as the function it serves. The curves raise up to create back-rests and places to sit, with space for people to walk under, or pause and find some shade”.

Working with interiors company White&White to re-imagine and re-use building wood, different ‘dwellers’ occupy the installation throughout day. It will be missed in the area. (Why can it not stay?)

Waste not 

The already established Design Junction welcomed Kings Cross as the latest addition of design geography across the city, with Granby Workshop launching the world’s first ceramic tableware made from 100 percent waste.

The workshop comprises an installation and pop-up shop in Coal Drops Yard, with products available to order exclusively on KickStarter.

The Liverpool ceramics studio researched a wide range of post-consumer and industrial waste streams through experimentation and chemical analyses, to then reproduce the physical and aesthetic properties of conventional glazed stoneware. 

Brompton Biotopia is a series of animal habitats designed to support urban biodiversity. Marlene Huissoud at the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths University worked with the Material Architecture Lab to design habitats from an animal’s perspective. The project explores applications of natural materials with designers at the forefront of innovative material research, architecture and technology.

Designers’ dedication to fully reflecting on global ecological challenges was in evidence throughout.

Creative economy

The festival underscored the importance of looking holistically at design projects’ wider impact –     including sourcing and styling products. This work is urgent but cannot be done overnight.

LDF Director Ben Evans is a man on a mission. It’s apparent that he ‘lives and breathes’ LDF, determinedly raising its profile and funding: “London has the biggest creative economy in the world, and design is a key part of it.

“LDF celebrates and promotes London’s design excellence in a period when showcasing creativity is even more important.”

For an event lasting only a week and taking the year to plan, such vast choice can also be overwhelming. Impressively the fest is well organised, with maps (on recycled paper) in each district, endless informed volunteers, a stellar media team and an general eagerness to help, as well as listen to suggestions from professionals and punters alike.

All this is incorporated into future strategy. The festival annually raises the stakes, encircling ever widely what constitutes an already burgeoning discipline. Here’s to LDF 2020 and an added Design Biennale. I for one, can’t wait.

This Author

Wendyrosie Scott is an anthropologist, journalist & stylist focusing on design & creative communities. She looks at positive partnerships between lifestyle trends & the natural world.

Image: Martin_VMorris, Flickr. 

With his guests gathered around a white folding table last May, Tim Little cut his oven-bake cake into squares, excavating pieces from the foil wrapper, and handing them around on paper plates.

An assortment of china mugs brought out from the house wait for coffee from a pot teetering on a pile of farming books. Shafts of morning sunlight peeked through small windows, illuminating the inside of the steel barn – a classic John Deere tractor, a car lift, and mechanical tools.

This photo essay was written and photographed by Spike Johnson in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. Read: Shrinking the Gulf Coast ‘dead zone’: Part I

Little and his friends grew up here, on family farms in Bridgewater Township, just an hour from the Mississippi River. Now in their 60s, they’ve formed a loose collective to pool resources, and share knowledge. Over the last decade they’ve been measuring increasing losses in topsoil, and a decline in soil health generally, aware of their connection to local rivers and streams, and subsequently to the rest of America. 

Now Little and his friends are pushing the boundaries of their industry to develop more efficient ways of farming locally, and towards solving a greater national problem – a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Little said: “We need to protect our land, our water, and our seas for future generations. We’re all connected through industry and ecology, and change will require a huge group effort.”

Little’s home state of Minnesota gives birth to the Mississippi River, its cold water bubbling over football sized rocks that edge the glacial lake of Lake Itasca. Here it begins a walking-paced meander, 2,320 miles towards New Orleans, collecting water from 31 states, along with leftover agricultural chemicals that are blamed for a growing dead zone spanning the Louisiana and Texas coastlines.

Dead zones begin when farm fertilizers wash off fields and into rivers, eventually concentrating in the sea, where they promote algae blooms that absorb oxygen needed by marine life. Escaping fish are forced to migrate out of natural habitats, and oysters perish where they lie.

Globally, dead zones have quadrupled since 1950, according to the journal Science. As the human population rises and increases its reliance on large-scale farming, the problem is expected to continue.

This year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Gulf dead zone is 6,952 square miles, roughly the size of New Hampshire. That’s slightly smaller than their earlier prediction of 7,829 square miles, but much larger than the 5-year average of 5,770 square miles.

In 2008, The Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, organized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), promised a 20 percent reduction of the dead zone by 2025, and along with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), have granted millions of dollars to agricultural and conservation groups for the development of nutrient reduction strategies, which are beginning to bear fruit.

In the Midwest, farmers are experimenting with new methods of agriculture, taking advantage of federal cost-share incentives and co-operative arrangements to limit the spread of fertilizers into rivers and streams. They’re bucking the trends of an entrenched industry, aware of their connection to the coast.

Little said: “We’ve got to do something different, something more environmentally friendly. We need to find ways of keeping our soil on the land, reduce the chemicals we use, to protect our watersheds.”

A convoy of scuffed work trucks turned left off the single-lane county road and bounced over the uneven dirt of Little’s land in Bridgewater Township. In a line, they made a wide arc over the stubbled field, heading for the middle. Dead vegetation burned on the horizon, sending columns of white smoke drifting across a flat landscape, dotted with grain silos and lonely trees.

Little climbed from his cab, well-worn work boots treading the dusty earth. For five years Tim has been planting cover crops across his 2,000 acre farm, a method of reducing fertilizer runoff and increasing soil health that’s quickly growing in popularity among conservationists and farmers. 

The process works by sowing new seeds (a cover crop) into mature corn or soybean fields (the primary crop) before the primary crop is harvested. When the primary crop is cut, the cover crop sees the sun and grows through the stalks of the primary crop. The decaying stalks return nutrients to the soil as worms break them down, boosting nitrogen levels for the next rotation of primary crop.

Cover crops mean that fields have year-round vegetation, without any periods of bare earth. They protect the ground from the summer heat, their new root systems improving drainage so that rain and soil stay on the land rather than washing off the top. Any fertilizers left in the soil are used by the cover crops as they grow. After five to seven years farmers report better soil health, and a higher yield in their primary crops. 

“It’s really opening up the ground, restarting the soil biology,” Little said. “Now it’s giving the nitrogen back to the soybeans. We’re seeing increased growth because of the nitrogen uptake.”

The hay-brown remains of Little’s soybean harvest lay in foot-long stalks on the ground, unplowed, and rotting where they fell. In patches the new green growth of his cover crops pushed through the old plants. They were a mix of cereal rye, radish, kale and purple top turnips sown by airplane between his soybean plants. With a dirt stained spade Little cut through the topsoil, pulling up clods of earth and prying them apart to show earthworms and new root systems. 

Through the 1950s and 1960s farmers in America were pushed to mechanize. The material shortages that hampered farm machinery production in World War II eased, but the resultant decline in war-time farm labor persisted. 

The purchase of machinery designed for specific functions — planting, plowing, or harvesting — pushed a natural tendency to find return on investment through crop specialization. In the Midwest, markets for corn and soybeans gained in demand as international trade developed, and the use cases for these high yield crops increased to include biofuels, animal feed, high fructose corn syrup, and bio-based plastics. Interest in alternative crops, dairy, and livestock waned, leading to farms planting corn one year, soybeans the next — a habitual duocrop rotation.

Little said: “Our fathers had diverse crops — oats, alfalfa, corn, what we needed for the hogs and the cows. But as the cows went we raised corn and soybeans only. We lost the crop diversity, and then we lost the soil health.”

In Keota, Iowa, Stefan Gailans, research and field crops director for the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), a 3,000-farmer organization, carried a battery powered microphone through a field of knee-high oats last [month], preparing with his host Tim Sieren to address group members about cover crop strategy. 

Gailans said: “At the moment the main economic opportunity to cover crops is as a food source for livestock.

Around them children played sword fights with ears of corn, and in the eaves of a wooden barn volunteers grill burgers on a steel smoker. 

Most PFI members plant cover crops on their farms, and between fifty and sixty run research trials, sharing their findings with the rest of the group. But the evolution of farming in America to a duocrop model has eroded markets for alternative species. Small grains are used less and less as animal food, and the limited markets that do still exist are already saturated with supply. 

Gailans continued: “Corn and soybeans are easy to find markets for. But stuff like wheat or rye isn’t grown here so much anymore, so there’s nowhere to sell.” 

The reintroduction of new markets would further incentivize farmers to adopt cover cropping. As well as contributing to conservation, farmers would have alternative income sources, and resilience against the economic fluctuation of the prominent duocrops. But this means competition for the dominant corn and soybean trade, and tough conversations all round.

From buyer to seller we’ve favored market over environment, voting with dollars through our supermarket carts and restaurant menus, unknowingly punishing farmers whose profits are half that of 2013, according to USDA statistics. Grinding tariff negotiations with China, one of the largest importers of American corn and soybeans, have damaged markets and plunged the price of US crops, highlighting an economic downside of such limited trade options — when the largest customer stops buying your only product, values tumble. 

PFI is making headway though, and recently enticed Pepsi and Unilever into the cover crop fold, both companies now offer financial incentives to farmers growing cover crops. And Target is buying oats grown as cover crops in perhaps the first building block toward new market creation.

Discussions about changing the way we use agricultural land arrive at similar stalemates. 

Laurie Nowatzke is measurement coordinator for the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a state government initiative to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous from Iowa industry and agriculture that get into state waterways and, ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico. Nowatzke said: “Land use is something that we don’t talk about enough, and there’s political reasons for that. It’s hard to talk about changing our farming structure.” 

Nowatzke tracks conservation practices and water quality on farms across Iowa, one of the largest producers of corn and soybeans in America, and argues that switching corn and soybean fields to prairie after one rotation, using it to graze livestock, would help conservation efforts. The soil would have time to regain its natural nutrients, would need less fertilizer to support future crops, and with planned down-time there’d be less fertilizer on the land anyway. 

Nowatzke continued: “It could have a much greater impact on nutrient loss, but it’s a really difficult conversation.”

However if a dent in Gulf Coast hypoxia is the goal, Midwest agriculture is tip-toeing toward it. 

Earlier this year the Census of Agriculture published that in 2017, Iowa had nearly a million acres of cover crops planted, with a slight increase predicted for 2018, compared to just 10,000 acresten years before. 

“To put that in perspective though, studies in nutrient reduction strategy in Iowa show that we need 14 million acres of cover crops,” Nowatzke said. “We’re only just scratching the surface.” 

There is no national prediction from the EPA, the Hypoxia Task Force, or the USDA indicating the total fertilizer load that would lead to a reduction of the dead zone, or how long a reversal would take. The problem is too complex for definitives, its outcome relying on rainfall, ocean temperature, soil health, and crop growth rates. 

Guesswork is rife but well meaning, and alongside the Hypoxia Task Force’s promise to shrink the dead zone by 20 percent, Iowa’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy, written in 2013, also promised to make a 45 percent decrease in fertilizer runoff by 2035.

In July, a report by the Iowa Environmental Council found that at current implementation rates, it would take nearly 100 years to reach the Nutrient Reduction Strategy’s cover crop goal, and hundreds or even thousands of years to reach other key goals outlined in the strategy, according to a July report in the Des Moines Register.

Mike Naig, the state’s secretary of agriculture, told the Register that the report was unfair, pointing to hundreds of millions of dollars in new state appropriations and saying he anticipated that rates of strategy adoption were likely to speed up as a result. 

In Keota, the sun was grasping at the horizon. With Gailans’ talk finished, his guests ambled in the waning light, querying the talk’s finer points. Dressed in checkered shirts, blue jeans, and a spectrum of faded baseball caps they break off gradually toward their parked trucks. 

Gailans said: “There are practices that can improve water quality in the Mississippi River. But can agriculture have a positive impact on the dead zone? Absolutely we can, it’s a matter of do we want to?”

For now, the Gulf Coast Dead Zone remains, oblivious to swinging political pendulums, nutrient regulation negotiations, and cover crop incentives. An apex predator of our own invention, hungrily digesting fish and fertilizer alike, it swells onward in the deep.

This Author 

This photo essay was written and photographed by Spike Johnson in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

Spike Johnson photographs in the documentary style, exploring themes of social conflict that lie at the edges of the human experience. In the past his projects have received funding from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Protestors gathered outside Brazil’s Embassy in the UK last week to demand that Brazil’s environment minister Ricardo Salles stop destroying the country’s most biodiverse territories and stop threatening its indigenous guardians.

Activists from the UK Student Climate Network, Survival International, Greenpeace and others  stood in solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Brazil who are on the frontline of the fight to defend their land and to combat climate change.

They carried placards calling on Minister Salles to “Stop Brazil’s Genocide” and displaying messages of anger and resistance from indigenous people.

Declaring war

President Bolsonaro has virtually declared war on Brazil’s indigenous peoples. His administration is trying to strip them of their autonomy, steal their territories for logging, mining and agribusiness and “assimilate” them against their wishes. This is the worst situation indigenous peoples in Brazil have faced since the military dictatorship.

The number of attacks and invasions of indigenous territories is sky-rocketing, and the Amazon fires – many set by illegal loggers and ranchers – are destroying the forest at an alarming and heart-breaking pace. The survival of whole uncontacted tribes – the most vulnerable peoples on the planet – is at stake.

Minister Salles is central to this assault. He is in favor of using indigenous territories for large-scale plantations and agribusiness, and has denied that indigenous peoples are being attacked. Vast areas of Amazon rainforest continue to be destroyed by fire as he meets with companies with mining and fossil fuel interests.

Minister Salles’ visit to London is part of a tour of Europe, during which he has been met with protest every step of the way.

Indigenous peoples – nature’s best guardians and our best allies to combat the climate crisis – have fought to protect their lands from outsiders for over 500 years and they most definitely won’t stop now. They’re fighting back against Bolsonaro and Salles’ attacks, more united than ever before. As Sonia Guajajara says: “We’re putting our bodies and our lives on the line to try and save our territories.”

Shoulder to shoulder

In January, they led the biggest ever global protest for indigenous rights. In April, thousands gathered in Brasília to take their urgent messages to the heart of government.

On Amazon day activists around the world fought alongside indigenous peoples to make their voices heard, and now indigenous people and their allies are protesting again, to tell Minister Salles and President Bolsonaro to #StopBrazilsGenocide. Our anger only strengthens our will to resist.

APIB, the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, said: “We have the right to exist. We won’t retreat. We’ll denounce this government around the world.”

Indigenous peoples and their allies have fought shoulder to shoulder and won many victories over the last 50 years. We can win this battle too. Indigenous peoples’ survival, and the survival of all humanity, depends on it.

This Author 

Sarah Shenker is an activist at Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples.

Image: © Eleanor K. Russell/Survival International.