The Guardian
The latest cutting-edge technology changing our landscapes? Trees
The UK has been slow to embrace agroforestry, fearing trees compete for valuable space and water. In fact they can increase crop diversity as well as profits, as two pioneering Cambridgeshire farmers have found
“Most people round here think it’s pretty normal for the earth to just blow away,” says Lynn Briggs. “They seem to think it’s what happens and you just have to live with it. It’s even got a name – they call it fen blow.”
But when Lynn and her husband Stephen moved on to their Cambridgeshire farm in 2012 they had some radical farming notions. Against all precedent, the Briggs planted rows of fruit trees at 21-metre gaps in their cereal fields to provide both windbreaks and alternate crops. “Our neighbours thought we were absolutely crazy,” says Stephen. His soil, however, began to stay put.
Continue reading...Country diary: midwinter has its own discreet beauties
Morfa Bychan, Gwynedd A distant, writhing, black line resolves itself into a low-flying flock of scoter ducks
At the western end of Black Rock Sands, the beach where Roman Polanski filmed the battle scenes in his powerfully unsettling 1971 version of Macbeth, is a dark crag of ancient rock, trap-dyked, quartz-seamed, dripping. In it are the sea-caves that Robert Graves inhabited with the “Things never seen or heard or written about” of his poem Welsh Incident (1929). A dull winter’s afternoon intensified their gloom. The bright orange flash of a kingfisher whirred around sombre overhangs until it found shelter among deep shadow. I turned to face seawards.
Related: Climate change is radically reshuffling UK bird species, report finds
Continue reading...Reduce waste, recycle more, and stop the burning | Letters
This could be the year we start burning more of our waste than recycling it (China’s plastic waste ban ‘creates a crisis for UK local authorities’, 3 January). There are already three English regions where incineration (energy from waste) has become the most likely way for councils to dispose of our waste and the amount that we recycle has flatlined in all but one area of the UK. The exception to this is Wales, partly because they use the incineration ash to make concrete and count this as recycling. We need to urgently cut down on how much we use and build the recycling infrastructure to deal with the waste ourselves. We need regulation to ensure that what we use contains a minimum percentage of recycled materials, so that we can build up the market for such products. Most urgent of all is a charge on incineration to remove the perverse incentive for councils to burn, rather than recycle.
Jenny Jones
Green party, House of Lords
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Continue reading...South-east England at risk of water shortages this summer, officials warn
A year of unusually dry weather means parts of England are facing summer drought with groundwater and some reservoirs well below normal
A year of dry weather, only slightly alleviated by recent storms, has left much of south-east England facing drought this summer.
Groundwater and some reservoir levels are well below normal and only above-average rainfall in the next three months will refill them, officials warned on Friday. One water company, Southern Water, has applied for a drought permit to allow them to take more water than normally allowed from the River Medway in Kent, to try to avoid water restrictions for households in the summer.
Continue reading...Radical ecologists v Big Agriculture: the rival factions fighting for the future of farming
The Oxford Farming Conference and its upstart sibling, the Oxford Real Farming Conference, seem poles apart. But faced with big changes, from Brexit to the future of meat itself, a united front may be the best option
It’s a brisk five minute stroll up the high street to get from the Oxford Farming Conference to its upstart younger sibling the Oxford Real Farming Conference – but a much longer mental leap.
Stately, careful and well-connected, the OFC has been going for 80 years. Sponsored by Big Agriculture businesses such as chemistry multinational BASF and farm machinery specialists Massey Ferguson, the cloakroom creaks with waxed cotton and quilted Barbours, while the audience is overwhelmingly male, white and upwards of 40. The great and good – royalty, government ministers, international politicians – come to speak to a polite, attentive audience; this is the thoughtful end of commercial British farming, brought together over bacon baps and craft beer.
Continue reading...Ocean dead zones, coffee cups and green farming – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...Quarter of British honey contaminated with bee-harming pesticides, research reveals
Although the contamination rate has fallen from a half since a partial EU ban the insecticides remain in the farmed environment posing a serious risk to bees
Almost a quarter of British honey samples remain contaminated after a partial ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, new research has revealed.
The contamination rate has fallen – it was more than half before the ban – but the study shows that the potent insecticides remain prevalent in the farmed environment and still pose a serious risk to bees and other vital pollinators.
Continue reading...Will a 25p charge change Britain's throwaway coffee cup culture?
On a busy Guildford high street reaction to the proposed ‘latte levy’ is mixed. While many welcome the move to change peoples’ habits, for some, already feeling the squeeze of a weak pound, the 25p hit is too high
Turn any corner in the busy town centre of Guildford on a weekday morning, and someone is carrying a disposable cup bearing the logo of one of the major chains.
Each minute in the UK about 500 of these used coffee cups are thrown away. Every year consumers use and dispose of 2.5bn of them. The vast majority are not recycled.
Continue reading...Giant curtain erected in Peru in bid to reveal secrets of the cloud forest
Global warming is predicted to push clouds higher in the sky. One scientist hopes to understand the future of our forests by suspending a vast fog-catching mesh in the Peruvian jungle
What will happen if climate change pushes clouds higher into the sky, as models predict? One ecosystem that will be seriously affected will be cloud forests – tropical jungles persistently bathed in fog.
Until now, little research had been done on the likely impacts of rising clouds, but one scientist is planning to change that using an enormous curtain strung up in the middle of the forest.
Continue reading...MPs call for 25p charge on takeaway coffee cups ahead of possible ban
In UK 2.5bn disposable cups are thrown away each year, of which less than 0.25% are recycled, according to environmental audit committee report
MPs are calling for a 25p charge on takeaway coffee in a move that could see disposable cups banned in five years time.
In the UK 2.5bn takeaway coffee cups are used and thrown away each year – enough to stretch around the world five-and-a-half-times. The UK produces 30,000 tonnes of coffee cup waste each year, according to a report published by MPs on the environmental audit committee on Friday.
Continue reading...Trump administration plans to allow oil and gas drilling off nearly all US coast
- Ryan Zinke unveils plan to offer leases in Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic
- Environmental groups and some Republicans lead outcry
The Trump administration has unveiled a plan that would open almost all US offshore territory to oil and gas drilling, including previously protected areas of the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific oceans.
Related: Trump plan to shrink ocean monuments threatens vital ecosystems, experts warn
Continue reading...Grand Designs £27,000 eco-home in Wales burns to the ground
Simon and Jasmine Dale spent six years building their home, which is now the subject of a crowdfunding appeal
An eco-home labelled the “cheapest house ever built in the western hemisphere” on the Channel 4 programme Grand Designs, has been destroyed by a fire.
The three-bedroomed house, which is based in the sustainable community of Lammas in rural Pembrokeshire, was featured on the TV programme in 2016 after its owners, Simon and Jasmine Dale, spent just £27,000 building it.
Continue reading...Oceans suffocating as huge dead zones quadruple since 1950, scientists warn
Areas starved of oxygen in open ocean and by coasts have soared in recent decades, risking dire consequences for marine life and humanity
Ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, scientists have warned, while the number of very low oxygen sites near coasts have multiplied tenfold. Most sea creatures cannot survive in these zones and current trends would lead to mass extinction in the long run, risking dire consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the sea.
Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause of the large-scale deoxygenation, as warmer waters hold less oxygen. The coastal dead zones result from fertiliser and sewage running off the land and into the seas.
Continue reading...Coral reef bleaching 'the new normal' and a fatal threat to ecosystems
Study of 100 tropical reef locations finds time between bleaching events has shrunk and is too short for full recovery
Repeated large-scale coral bleaching events are the new normal thanks to global warming, a team of international scientists has found.
In a study published in the journal Science, the researchers revealed a “dramatic shortening” of the time between bleaching events was “threatening the future existence of these iconic ecosystems and the livelihoods of many millions of people”.
Continue reading...Brazil raises hopes of a retreat from new mega-dam construction
Hydropower policy to be rethought in face of environmental concerns, indigenous sensitivities and public unease, says surprise government statement
After swathes of forest clearance, millions of tonnes of concrete and decades of hydro-expansion, Brazil has raised hopes that it may finally step back from the construction of new mega-dams.
In a surprise statement, a senior government official said hydropower policy needed to be rethought in the face of environmental concerns, indigenous sensitivities and public unease.
Focus on quality not weakened regulation post-Brexit, Gove tells farmers
Quality and provenance must be the future of the British food industry, rather than lowering regulation or welfare standards, says environment secretary
The future of the British food industry after Brexit must focus on quality and provenance rather than weakened regulation, environment secretary Michael Gove has said.
“The future for British food is in quality and provenance and traceability and competing at the top of the value chain,” Gove told a packed auditorium at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. “And if we sign trade deals or lower our regulation or welfare standards in a way that means we’re no longer at the top of the value chain, then we undermine the growing strength of the very best of British food production.”
Continue reading...Community leader tortured and killed over land trafficking in Peru
José Napoleón Tarrillo Astonitas murdered for opposing land traffickers seeking to clear land in the Chaparrí Ecological Reserve, say local witnesses
A criminal gang involved in land trafficking has tortured and murdered a community leader in northern Peru, according to his wife and local villagers who witnessed the killing.
José Napoleón Tarrillo Astonitas, 50, was attacked by four men in his home on Saturday night. His wife, Flor Vallejos, told police he was bound by his hands and feet, beaten with a stick and strangled with an electric cable.
Country diary: we have reached an arrangement with our mole
Claxton, Norfolk The front lawn has been contested territory between the humans who assume they own it and the tiny creature that truthfully has possession
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Farmland could be turned into meadows post-Brexit, says Michael Gove
Gove will tell farmers that the current subsidy regime, which rewards land ownership, will be replaced by a scheme focused on supporting the environment
Farmers will get subsidies for turning fields back into wildflower meadows after Brexit, according to environment secretary Michael Gove.
More than 97% of the UK’s wildflower meadows have been destroyed since the second world war and their loss has played a significant role in the falling numbers of bees, birds and other wildlife.
Continue reading...Short-term thinking of UK nuclear policy | Letters
Justin McCurry (Fukushima looms large as Japan plans to restart world’s biggest nuclear plant, 28 December) quotes critics of the proposed reopening of the 8.2GW Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Japan, who say chaos would ensue if the plant failed and the 420,000 people who live within 20 miles of it had to be evacuated. But when the three Fukushima reactors failed on 11 March 2011, the radioactive plume spread over 40kms from the plant to the north-west, engulfing a large number of towns and villages. Everyone within 20kms of the plant was immediately evacuated. Iitate village, located 40kms away, and in the path of the toxic plume, was also evacuated. Many in the 20km zone may never return home but in the “return zone” villages they began to trickle back in early 2015. A 20-40km long radioactive plume issuing from the Hinkley nuclear facility could engulf both Cardiff (348,000 population) and Bristol (428,000 population), causing the evacuation of at least a million people from the region. The UK government is the only organisation brave enough to take on that level of catastrophic risk, with our money – happy to do so no doubt because the individuals who make the decisions on our behalf will be long retired when the cesium hits the fan.
Emeritus Professor Sue Roaf
Oxford
• David Lowry’s fact-finding mission to 1958 (Letters, 28 December) is correct – at the dawn of the nuclear age, the UK’s civilian nuclear fuel cycle was seen as a precursor to weapons-grade material. However, for technical and other reasons, it was soon realised that the route to weapons-grade material was not through the civilian nuclear fuel cycle. In the current (and real) world, the peaceful use of civilian nuclear energy specifically, clearly and strictly breaks any such linkage. This is enshrined in IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group protocols.
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