Here Comes The Rain Again!

I think we may now definitively say that the Monsoons have arrived.  Frankly I’m a bit disappointed; I thought the arrival would be more dramatic. It’s true that for the first couple of months after I arrived here in Bangalore we experienced almost no rain whatsoever, whereas now the likelihood of rain is ever-present. But I expected the change to be more black and white.  In old books I’ve read it was normal for characters to recall the exact date the rains started in any given year.

In reality it has been getting progressively cooler, wetter and windier for some weeks.  Although locally it has been fashionable to state with some sense of anticipation that the rain falling outside was just a precursor, ‘you wait; the real thing is yet to come!’ The truth is the change in the weather has been a gradual transformation.

I believe down by the coast, or even in some northern cities it is possible to mark a specific day as the start of the Monsoon. Up here on the Deccan plateau our weather is more complicated.  Right now the prevailing winds come from the west and no doubt much of the rain falls on the Western Ghats, the range of mountains that run from Gujarat in the north to Kerala in the south and separate the interior from the coastal strip.

And that’s another thing.  I’ve seen tropical or sub-tropical rain systems in Africa, Singapore and China.  In Guilin in Southern China, where I spent most of last year, it was officially named “The year of two Aprils” on account of the heavy Spring rains which persisted through  May and June and even into July.  In one memorable typhoon in Hong Kong a few years back, I saw the city’s famous red taxis floating down the streets of Wan Chai on flash floods.  I know what heavy rain is.  Yet so far I’ve seen nothing here that would be unusual in an English summer.  Actually I quite enjoy it, but rather than the torrential downpours I was expecting, we have had several days of soft light drizzle.

The thing is the Monsoon is a big talking point in India.  Even among the urbane coffee set and expats that I have mainly met, it is a regular topic of conversation.  The rains will be late this year. No they will be on time but lighter than usual.  No this is going to be a normal year.  And so on.  When the western Monsoon did finally arrive in Kerala on the southwest coast, Saturday June 1st for those who are interested, the country’s press trumpeted it loudly. “Southwest Monsoon Arrives in Kerala” said The Hindu, “Monsoon Rains Hit Southern Kerala Coast: Weather Official” beamed the Times of India.  From there the rains will now advance progressively up the country to Delhi

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It matters.  In fact it matters enormously to the people here and to the whole Indian economy.  For me it places a question mark over my weekly game of golf and means that I no longer need to sleep with the aircon on.  Mid day temperatures in Bangalore now hover around 25 degrees Celsius instead of the high thirties which was standard back in April. But for almost a billion people it is literally the difference between feast and famine.

Around 70% of India’s population depends directly or indirectly on farming.  Agriculture makes up 14.5% of the country’s GDP.  In global terms India is both one of the biggest producers and consumers of food.  Most farms are rain-fed and have no other form of irrigation, yet 75% of the annual rainfall will come between June and September.  A weak monsoon or even drought damages the rural economy, affecting the country’s bottom line growth figures; it causes suffering among agricultural communities and can lead to civil unrest and political turbulence at national level.

No wonder then that so much national energy is spent on trying to mitigate the effects of the Monsoon.  The government’s Indian Council of Agricultural Research, including its facility here in Bangalore, puts a lot of effort into developing drought resistant strains of staple crops.  The Indian Meteorological Department is constantly tasked with developing better forecasting tools and producing early warning systems for droughts, which are now expected to occur at roughly five yearly intervals. No doubt much could also be done to conserve what precious supply of water exists.

In the long run however India needs to reduce its dependency on this annual event which is both unpredictable and outside its control.  India is proud of its status as a BRIC nation, and Indians are fond of announcing that this is the First World.  Yet surely, whatever development means it has to imply that a country has advanced to a level where political, social and economic success are not left to the caprice of the weather?

[P.S. Since I published this post almost 1,000 people have been killed in some of the worst flooding North India has experienced in years.  In Bangalore however, we are still waiting for some proper rain.]

Brock Stars

It’s over a year since I first wrote about the government’s proposed cull of badgers in South west England intended to reduce the incidence of bovine tuberculosis in cattle.  Although the timetable has been pushed back by around a year from the original plans because of various legal challenges, and although one environment secretary has gone and a new one taken office, the cull will go ahead starting on June 1^st this year.  It almost seems as if government ministers don’t read my blog!

I don’t intend to rehash the arguments I made last year.  The blog post, “Stop This Pointless Cull”, remains as valid now as it was then.  Suffice to say that the science clearly indicates that culling will not prove effective as a means of controlling the disease. Culling has been tried before and failed.  It’s been rejected by the devolved Welsh government as cruel and ineffective.  And an alternative in the form of vaccination is available at a cost effective price.

With that in mind, I read two interesting pieces on Twitter this week.

The first is the launch of a new website dedicated to tracking and debating the issues around badgers and bovine TB. It’s called BadgerGate.  I particularly like their principles, clearly stated, which begin with the paragraph:

“We are not about ‘farmer bashing’ or anyone else bashing. Bovine TB and its management are complex, sensitive and controversial matters. Not surprisingly, feelings on both sides of the debate often run high. However, that’s no reason why people shouldn’t be able to debate the issue in an informed and civil manner.”

 Part of the problem here is that both sides, the farmers and the protestors, have become entrenched in their respective positions, to the point that facts just get in the way of a good argument.  It threatens to turn in to a rerun of the fox hunting debate which became characterized, wrongly, as a fight between town and country.

The site includes a link to a Government E Petition started by Queen guitarist, Brian May, demanding a Parliamentary debate on the issue, which incidentally has now reached over 200,000 signatures, double the figure needed to force a response.

The second tweet to catch my eye was from DiscoverWildlife.com.  I confess I’ve never heard of this publication but it seems to be the digital version of the BBC’s Wildlife Magazine.  It has some nice photographs and interesting features.  The tweet was a link to a poll to nominate a ‘national species’ for the United Kingdom.

“Unlike many other countries around the world, the UK has never had a national species to call its own. BBC Wildlife Magazine thinks that Britain deserves a national plant or animal of its own – so we have launched a public poll to find a wildlife icon we can all be proud of.

Australia has the kangaroo, New Zealand the kiwi, South Africa the springbok, America the bald eagle, and Russia the brown bear. But what about Britain? What should our national species be? Which species best sums up the UK’s national character, and our history and aspirations?”

It seemed like a bit of fun so I followed the link, and guess what was the very first nomination vying for this prestigious accolade:  of course it was the good old brock!

Wouldn’t it be marvelous if in the same month that the government launched its barbaric and useless attack on badgers the British public announced that this was our national animal?

Money! Money! Money!

How is your ‘natural capital’ doing?  Are you getting good value from your ‘ecosystem services’?

If you don’t have the faintest notion what I’m talking about then it is possible that you are not at the cutting edge of current environmental thinking.  These are terms in the new lexicon of market based ecology.  According to this school of thought we have to recognize the economic value of nature in order to safeguard it.  The reason we have been so cavalier in destroying our natural environment is because we don’t recognize what it’s worth.  If you regard nature as worthless and infinite then of course it is expendable.  If you can put a monetary value on ‘green infrastructure’, forests, hills, rivers etc. in the jargon of this philosophy, then you will go a long way to ensuring their survival.

The UK government is at the forefront of this movement.  The Natural Capital Committee was established last year ‘to provide independent expert advice on the state of English ‘natural capital’.  It reports not to the Environment Secretary but to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

 

‘Natural capital’ is simply ‘nature’. ‘Ecosystem services’ are natural processes that benefit mankind, as if helping man was the whole point of nature.  For instance if bees didn’t naturally pollinate our crops as an ‘ecosystem service’ we would presumably have to get the local council to do it.  But surely man’s tendency to put himself outside the natural world, rather than as a player in it, is the root of most of our present and historical ecological issues?

There is no question, that mankind benefits enormously from natural processes in all kinds of ways.  Forests and oceans act as carbon sinks, rivers and lakes provide drinking water and places of recreation, upland moors regulate water runoff and prevent flooding of lowland cities, and so on.  In 1958 in China Mao Zedong launched a famous campaign to extirpate sparrows, which were charged with stealing the peasants’ rice.  Millions of sparrows were killed as the birds were driven to near extinction.  In the following years rice yields plummeted as the crops were ravaged by insects, and an estimated 20 million people died of starvation.  Far from being a pest, the birds had been providing an ‘ecosystem service’.

If we can adequately recognise these beneficial effects in advance then we can balance the value that nature provides alongside the proposed ‘benefits’ of destroying it.

It’s tempting to dismiss this way of thinking as some sort of neoliberal market based snake oil being peddled by right wing politicians and businessmen, the very people environmentalist have been fighting against for years.  And it’s true that when ecologists start speaking the language of economists it’s bankers who are the first to recognise the opportunities.  In Wall Street and Canary Wharf people in investment banks are trying to work out how to measure ‘blended revenue streams’ including contributions from nature along with traditional economic valuations of land.  Could such ecosystem services be securitised and then traded on a new green exchange?  If ecology can be ascribed a monetary value then it becomes possible to trade offsets.  A company can destroy a forest in one place by paying for another one to be created elsewhere.

Yet the idea has gained traction with some deep green environmentalists too.  Tony Jupiter is a former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) with a string of green credentials to his name.  In his recent book, “What Has Nature Ever Done For Us”, he argues that he and others have spent decades campaigning for the protection of nature for its own sake and, despite occasional victories, the trend has been one of managed retreat.  The moral argument does not seem to be enough.  Only by recognising that the environment has an economic value that can facilitate economic growth will we prevent the further destruction of forests, loss of soils, depletion of aquifers, extinction of animals and plants and plunder of the oceans.

This way of thinking is increasingly common in environmental debates.  In the recent fight to get the EU to apply restrictions on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, various bodies calculated the potential economic loss to Europe if bees and other pollinators were not available to provide free pollination as an ‘ecosystem service’.  (The Soil Association put the figure at £430m per annum for the UK alone.)  Indeed these arguments may have helped sway the argument in favour of a limited ban.

In making the case for new Marine Protected Areas on the Scottish seabed, the Marine Link Taskforce claimed that MPAs could be worth £10bn to the Scottish economy by “mitigating against extreme weather impacts, boosting fisheries and securing Scotland's tourism appeal.”

While I definitely do not think the environment is worthless or infinite I have a number of serious concerns with this approach.

While it is theoretically possible to put an economic value on ecosystems or large geographical features, how do you calculate the ‘natural capital’ of individual species?  Would the Kenyan safari industry collapse if there were no rhino left to satisfy the tourists?  Of course not, as long as there are lions, giraffes and all the rest.  What about butterflies or penguins or cowslips?  Are any of them worth saving for their economic value?

What happens if you calculate the value of ‘natural capital’ of a given environmental feature and it doesn’t outweigh the economic benefits of its destruction?  By this measure the Dutch sailors who drove the dodo to extinction while hunting them for meat made the right decision.

One such test will be Lodge Hill in Kent.  This former MoD training ground is home to one of the largest populations of nightingales in the UK, a species which is on the RSPB’s Endangered List.  The government is keen to develop the site.  5,000 new homes will provide jobs and growth, yet Natural England, the government’s own environmental watchdog, has declared the area a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) which effectively precludes development.  Supposedly the issue has had Chancellor George Osborne complaining about ‘feathered obstacles’ to development, and somewhat sinisterly Prime Minister, David Cameron, has told Environment Minister, Owen Paterson, to ‘get it sorted’.  If either the nightingales or Natural England survive, clearly it will not be because of their economic benefit.

Arguably humans have always put an economic value on the environment.  Many invasive species were introduced specifically to enhance that value, to increase the ROI in contemporary financial parlance. Pheasants were introduced to England, and are now fiercely protected by the shooting industry to the direct detriment of our native raptors. Rabbits, originally brought to Australia to provide food for European settlers are now regarded as the most significant known factor in species loss in that continent.  Surely, both of these initiatives were attempts to enhance the value of ‘ecosystem services’ provided by nature. What if you read the arguments about trees providing a carbon sink but decide that imported, non native varieties do it better?  Exposing nature to free market forces is not guaranteed to achieve ecologically sound outcomes.  In fact it’s almost guaranteed not to.

As Joni Mitchel observed, it is very often easier to see what you’ve lost than to understand the true value of what of you are destroying.  Plus, it is quite normal that the people who potentially benefit from environmental destruction are rarely the same as those who lose out.  Everyone’s personal cost benefit analysis looks different. Many adverse environmental changes are brought about with only good intentions.  Farmers in the North Yorkshire Moors who were encouraged to drain peat bogs to improve the land for sheep grazing had no notion that their efforts would cost the denizens of Richmond and York millions in repairing flood damage.

We are getting better both at modeling potential unintended impacts of environmental changes, and at ensuring that those companies who destroy landscapes pay for their restoration.  To this extent, factoring the whole life cost in to a project and not merely calculating the profits to be made say from extracting oil or metals are welcome.  But you can’t replace a thousand year old forest or replace an extinct species when the wells run dry. Nightingales migrate for thousands of miles and then return the precise tree where they were born.  How will we explain to them that their home has now been relocated 100 miles down the A3? Turn right at Petersfield, you can’t miss it!

However, my greatest concern is that commoditising nature and reducing everything around us to its dollar value, is to lose sight of the very thing we are trying to preserve, and also to lose sight of our own humanity. I want to conserve the planet and every living thing on it not because it may have some potential use of value to me, but because nature is beautiful and wonderful in its own right.  We may have evolved to the point where we no longer see ourselves as part of nature.  All the more reason then, that we should regard ourselves as stewards of the environment and do what we can to protect and nurture wildlife for its own sake.

 For me environmentalism is about values not value. I admire the King James Bible as a wonderful piece of literature, and the phrase that comes to mind the most readily in this context is this one:

“For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?”

Bee in my Bonnet

I don’t like to go on, but this is an issue that simply refuses to lie down.

The plot so far.

You may remember that last month Britain and Germany abstained in a crucial EU vote which aimed to introduce restrictions on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides which have been widely implicated in killing bees and other pollinators.  The proposal for a two year ban on the use of neonics on a range of specific crops, followed advice received by the European Food Safety Authority. (EFSA)  The details are in my earlier blog “The Plight of the Humble Bee”.

The position of Britain’s Owen Paterson, the Secretary for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is that the science is inconclusive, the cost benefits analysis unclear and he intends to wait for DEFRA’s own trials before making any commitments.

That sounds reasonable.

Prof. Ian Boyd

However Paterson’s own chief scientific advisor, Prof. Ian Boyd of St Andrew’s University, admits that insufficient testing has been carried out to inform a proper cost benefit analysis.  He agrees that in twenty years of use, it is unacceptable that that the manufacturers have not published clear data one way or the other.  In fact the agrochemicals companies who make neonics have spent a fortune trying to prove that bee decline is primarily caused by the parasitic varroa mite.  Meanwhile a growing number of peer reviewed research reports do support the view that neonicotinoids are a major factor in pollinator decline.

But is a cost-benefit analysis the appropriate way to go about this?  How do you compare the financial benefit of biodiversity with the costs of implementing bans or restrictions?  Actually, The Scottish Wildlife Trust, which supports the ban, does try to do just that.  “Bees and other pollinating insects play a vital role in food production, worth approximately £43 million/yr to Scotland’s economy.”  Obviously the figure for the entire UK would be several times greater than that.  Although they also point out that “Most… plant communities rely on pollinating insects to reproduce and therefore spread. They also form a vital part of the food chain for other species such as birds, reptiles and amphibians. It follows that any insecticide that drastically reduces pollinator numbers will have effects beyond the agricultural sector and will ultimately affect the health and function of entire ecosystems.”

And what of DEFRA’s own trials, referred to by Mr. Paterson?  On 27^th February, Prof. Boyd gave evidence to the UK Environmental Audit Committee at which he admitted that their field trials had been seriously compromised by contamination from neonicotinoids and stated that at the control site of the bumblebee study, there were residues of neonicotinoids in pollen and nectar.  In other words, bees range so widely to find nectar, that it was impossible to isolate a colony from the effects of these insecticides in order to conduct comparative trials.  Surely that highlights the scale of the problem and reinforces the need for restrictions as the only way to assess the impact of neonics?

Currently, Prof Boyd conceded, there are no relevant trials in the pipeline which might influence DEFRA’s stance.

Are we sure neonicotinoids are to blame?

 PAN, The Pesticide Action Network, which also unsurprisingly supports the ban, is very clear.

“Honey bee losses and population declines are certainly multi-factored, [their bold] involving reduction in adequate and good quality foraging sources, habitat degradation, reduced immune system defences to parasites and diseases, as well as increased exposure to neonicotinoids.”   But doesn’t that make it all the more important that we do what we can to avoid needlessly adding to the problem.

Plus other circumstantial evidence also points towards neonics as a major culprit.

Colony Collapse Disorder was first noticed within two or three years of neonics being introduced.

Many species of wild bee and other pollinators have also seen catastrophic population declines over this period and they are not susceptible to varroa mites.

Italy introduced a ban on seed treatment of maize by three neonicotinoids in Autumn 2008.  At the same time, the Italian Ministry of Agriculture set up APENET as the official monitoring agency for the trials.  Since the ban no cases of hive collapse have been reported in the crucial Spring sowing period, compared with 185 cases in the preceding year.  And Winter losses, always a factor in beekeeping, have also declined from 37.5% in 2008 to 15% in 2011, indicating an all round improvement in bee health.

So where are we now?

Mr Paterson’s problem is that his orders from the Prime Minister are unequivocal.  “Don’t do anything that might damage economic growth.”  Syngenta, one of the two major manufacturers of neonicotinoids, employs 2,000 people in the UK and Ireland.  The other big manufacturer is Bayer and Germany joined the UK in abstaining in last month’s vote.  Quite clearly, Paterson is putting short term economic expediency ahead of the long term health of the environment.

Fortunately, it is not too late for the Secretary of State to make amends.  Next week, on April 29^th, the EU Commissioner for Health & Consumer Policy, Tonio Borg, will take his case to the European Commission's Appeal Committee.  He is entitled to do this since there was no overall majority of the 27member states.  Mr. Borg deserves much credit for retaining his proposal intact and refusing to water it down in the face of intense lobbying by the chemicals industry.

Currently, Mr. Paterson is saying publicly that he will oppose the ban.  But the temperature is rising on all sides.

On March 20^th, immediately following his abstention, the minister complained of a cyber attack when he received over 80,000 emails demanding he take action to help bees.

On April 3rd, the influential, cross party Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee issued a report accusing DEFRA of ‘extraordinary complacency’ in this matter.  The Department, it said, was relying on ‘fundamentally flawed’ studies and failing to uphold its own precautionary principle. It continued, "We believe that the weight of scientific evidence now warrants precautionary action."

Further influential reports published by Greenpeace (Bees in Decline) April 9th, and one by a team of 40 scientists from 27 institutions published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, on April 22 both demanded coordinated action to help bee populations.

Last week, as reported on this blog, the supermarket chain, Waitrose, introduced its own ban on produce from farms using neonicotinoids.

Yesterday, the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Marin Raykov, announced that his country would be changing its position to support the ban.  Addressing a protest rally of beekeepers from all over Bulgaria he stated,  “If we fail to pay attention to the problem with bees today, tomorrow we shall have nothing to eat,".

In the UK, Internet lobby group 38 Degrees will deliver a petition signed by 250,000 people to Owen Paterson tomorrow, and this will be followed on Friday by a march on Parliament jointly organized by Avaaz, Buglife, Environmental Justice Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Pesticide Action Network UK, RSPB, and the Soil Association.

Mr. Paterson’s record on green issues is not encouraging.  Apart from failing to protect pollinators, he has personally lobbied to loosen restrictions on GMO use across the EU, he has made some very unfortunate comments about birds of prey, he is ploughing ahead with the badger cull in the face of mounting public and scientific opposition, and his department has completely fumbled the ball on implementing Marine Conservation Zones.  Does he now want to go down as the man who destroyed Europe’s agricultural sector by killing all our bees?