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The Farmer of Myddfai

Posted on August 1, 2022March 29, 2023 by janet.crompton

Above the village of Myddfai, Escairllaethdy Farm stretches over 150 acres. The farm, which lies on the western edge of the Brecon Beacons at the foot of the Black Mountains, has been in Hywel Morgan’s family since his grandfather bought it after the Second World War. It’s an upland livestock farm, and Hywel also has grazing rights on the common land on Mynydd Myddfai for his sheep, horses, and, more recently, cattle. He describes himself as a hill farmer, and one who is especially passionate about the hills.

For the past five years Hywel has been gradually reducing the impact of his farming methods on the land. In an interview in March 2022, he told me more about how this came about. In the wake of Brexit, Hywel met with a Welsh civil servant and asked him what was really required of farmers in this new political context. The reply was that what the Government wanted was for farmers to farm “with nature”. This set Hywel on a journey of discovery that included a study-tour with the Farming Connect Management and Exchange scheme, investigating low-impact farming in Britain and continental Europe, as well as a visit to the Food and Farming conference in Aberystwyth, where he found disappointingly few farmers but did discover a stand for the Nature Friendly Farming Network. He decided to get involved.

Hywel’s move into lower-impact, nature-friendly farming has had a number of practical results. One is in the amount of hedgerow now on the farm. He explained: “I’ve put in about a thousand metres of double fencing every year for the past five years for hedgerow restoration, whether that is planting new hedges, coppicing hedges, or hedge-laying”. He has also been letting the hedges grow taller, sometimes leaving them for three years before cutting them. He says with a sense of pride, “All of a sudden I saw all these birds around in later winter”. The beneficial effects of the hedges are visible in the summer too, reflected in the behaviour of the livestock. Hywel has noticed that on hot summer days his sheep and cows hide in the shade of the hedges, “and when the sun moves they move with the shade”. He adds, “Watching your animals tells you a lot”. He has also given up using artificial fertiliser and cut down on pharmaceuticals. Where he used to spray off a field of grass with Roundup and drill swedes for the sheep, he now conserves the grass for winter feed.

Farming in a nature-friendly way has involved some changes in the kind of livestock Hywel keeps on the land. He has introduced Highland cattle to his herd, and practises conservation grazing with all of his cattle. The Highlands live up on the hill and Hywel can already see how this stimulates greater biodiversity. In this respect cattle do better than sheep, “because sheep will nibble the short sweet grass right down. The cattle will just trample it for a start, and by trampling it they’re putting organic matter back into the soil and regenerating it a bit”. The hoof impact helps to create habitat for invertebrates and the browsing methods of the cattle “will leave a bit more over for nature”.

How much to leave for nature is a potentially difficult question given that farms are businesses and need to be run as such. Hywel admits that “production-wise it isn’t fantastic because you’re producing less meat per acre or per hectare”, but he argues with great conviction that “we have to have this balance of food production and nature – biodiversity and wildlife – and finding the sweet spot between biodiversity and productivity is key”.

Hywel’s relationship with this landscape is steeped in its history as well as invested in its future. Myddfai is a kind of hallowed ground, the ancient home of the legendary Lady of the Lake and the Physicians of Myddfai, The story of the mysterious Lady and her children, who began a tradition of healers in the village that continued for hundreds of years, was included in The Red Book of Hergest which dates from the late 14th century. Among other tales, the manuscript tells the story of the son of a famer killed fighting to preserve the independence of Wales, who while wandering along the edge of Llyn y Fan Fach, saw a beautiful woman sitting on the surface of the lake. He fell in love with her and wooed her with gifts of bread. On the third occasion, with the bread cooked exactly to her liking, the woman agreed to marry him and stay with him “until she received from him three blows, without any cause”.[i] It was a long time before the man landed the third blow on his wife, but true to her word, she left him and returned to the Lake. The story might be read as a stark warning against domestic violence. But there is a more positive kind of sequel. The couple had three sons and the mother sometimes appeared to them, teaching them about the medicinal qualities of the plants to be found in the area. The boys grew up to become skilful physicians who then recorded their knowledge in writing, “for the benefit of mankind throughout all the ages”.

In a quiet and modest way, Hywel thinks of himself as the inheritor this tradition of herbal knowledge. He has begun planting herbal leys in preference to rye grass because, as he says, “if I can’t grow them, who should?” As a society, we are probably only just beginning to discover how much can be learnt from the herbal medicines of the past. In part this is because the awareness of such sophisticated knowledge and wisdom has been obscured by more dominant, often urban-centric narratives. While the Enlightenment represented a huge advance in knowledge in some areas of the British Isles, the historian David Gange has written of how it benefited the big cities of the British Isles but actually heralded an age of darkness for other areas of the archipelago. In Wales it contributed to the suppression of the histories of the Age of the Saints, a period of intense Christian activity linked with learning and with the emergence of a deeply rooted Welsh culture.

Hywel takes inspiration from this ancient past as well as trying to draw on the practices of his own more recent ancestors. In some respects, regenerative farming means remembering agricultural methods from before the industrialisation of farming – which took place most significantly in the wake of the Second World War and the Agriculture Act of 1947. Farmers involved in nature-friendly farming often look back not to their fathers’ generation for wisdom but to that of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, who were farming before the intensification of agriculture really took hold. In some ways, those generations modelled a way of life that seems preferable to the pressured lives of contemporary farmers. Hywel admits: “But hearing my father repeating stories about my grandad, his dad, I thought how fantastic life sounded. Hard, but just going up on a hill on horseback and chatting to a fellow grazier for hours and hours on end”. Now, in contrast, he says: “I feel like we’re just working. Like we’re running faster to stand still at the moment, because even at 15 I had my own sheep, and I pretty much had the same money then as I’m having now. It hasn’t changed. The price of fertiliser and feed and fuel and everything’s gone up crazy, but what we get for the end product hasn’t”.

The stories from the past, both ancient and more modern are significant. They speak of a tradition of farming on the Welsh uplands that has been in place for millennia. This tradition reflects a particularly deep relationship with the landscape built through hard toil and a commitment to learning the character of the land itself. Hywel’s story is an important counter to some of the current rewilding narratives that, at their most extreme, seem to suggest that the uplands would be better left untouched by farming of any kind. It is because of his careful stewardship that his land is flourishing.

Part of this process involves learning to see how the landscape might begin to heal itself. In a sense, Hywel is continuing in the tradition of the Physicians of Myddfai. Farmers like him are physicians of the land: wise practitioners who don’t impose a range of chemically based industrial-style remedies on the earth, but as the medieval Physicans of Myddfai were reputed to do, find ways of helping the patient through small interventions. This means moving away from the big-ag big pharma model in which agriculture is dominated by pharmaceutical companies and their agrochemicals, and thinking about what the land itself can do.

But regenerative farming does not just mean looking back in time. What struck me most when I first visited Esgairllaethdy was the way in which the wisdom of the past was being combined with some extraordinary contemporary technology. The Highland cattle on the hill wear collars fitted with GPS equipment. The collars enable Hywel to monitor where the cattle are and control their movement by setting up virtual fences using an app on his phone. When the cattle cross the boundary of the virtual field that Hywel maps out for them, the collars emit a high-pitched sound that causes them to step back into their allocated area. He tells me: “I think, in time, I’ll be able to manage without the collars, because the cattle will get used to the place”.

While Lyn y Fan Fach, the lake from which the legendary Lady emerged is two miles from Hywel’s farm, up on the mountain that adjoins his land, Hywel does now have a mini-lake of his own. He had always wanted a pond on his farm and two year’s into his membership of Glastir Advanced (a whole-farm sustainable land management scheme), he decided to build one. While some construction issues meant that the pond sometimes dries out, when the rain comes it creates a pool. After four days of heavy rain last Autumn, Hywel says, “the pond was full to overflowing”. He has witnessed how the pond has brought new species to the farm: “There was a duck there yesterday, there’s a heron, there’ll be Canadian geese, there’s all sorts of insects, dragonflies, around there”.

When I first visited Esgairllaethy in October 2021, I was at a low ebb: like everyone else, I was reeling from the practical and emotional effects of eighteen months of the pandemic, and from environmental fears prompted by the findings of the 2021 IPCC report and the figures for bioversity decline that came out before COP2021. But walking in the drizzling rain on the Open Farm Day walk, I felt buoyed up by an unexpected sense of hope. Here we were, in the midst of a vibrant landscape nurtured by a farmer whose deep love for the place and growing knowledge of its needs inform his farming practices. Species declining elsewhere are still present here and increasing in number – the hare, the curlew, and the skylark – and species new to the farm are arriving. With a newfound optimism, I thought of how the pond is providing a haven for passing waterfowl; how the Highland cattle on the hill are disturbing the ground, making new habitats for invertebrates and encouraging the growth of rare plants; and how the restored hedges are providing shelter for overwintering birds and shade for the livestock in summer. There’s a strong sense here of how the land is gradually recovering its health and how we in turn might heal our relationship with it.

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Pippa Marland

Excerpts from the interview with Hywel Morgan are quoted here with his kind consent.

This blog is written by Pen and Plough researcher Dr Pippa Marland and is based on her interview with Hywel Morgan (https://thepenandtheplough.wordpress.com/2022/05/17/an-interview-with-nature-friendly-farmer-hywel-morgan-pippa-marland/) and published with his permission. Illustrations by Katie Marland. This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Pippa Marland. View the original blog.

Katie Marland is an artist and illustrator based between Bristol and London, where she recently completed her masters at the Royal Drawing School. Her practice is research-led, working from esoteric texts, medical history, museum collections and from close observation of the natural world. Her work can be found on her website, on instagram @kmarlandart, and on twitter @kmarlandart.

[i] Additional information about the stories of the Lady of Lake and the Physcians of Myddfai is drawn from Terry Breverton’s (2012) The Physicians of Myddfai: Cures and Remedies of the Mediaeval World (Carmarthenshire: Cambrian Books).

IPCC blog series – Working Group 3 – Mitigation of climate change

Posted on July 29, 2022March 29, 2023 by janet.crompton

This blog is part of a series on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent 6th Assessment Report, with this post covering the output of Working Group III and the proposed solutions and mitigations for the climate crisis. This article also features a chat with IPCC Lead Author Dr Jo House and contributor Viola Heinrich, researchers at the University of Bristol and Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Of the three Working Groups, the third makes for the most positive reading. As the title suggests, this one is all about the mitigation of climate change and preventing the disastrous climate futures explained by Working Groups I and II. Whilst remaining focussed on the impending nature of the climate crisis, this report spells out that we have the solutions.

As discussed in the previous posts, massive behavioural changes are needed at government and societal levels. When I spoke to academics, they were positive that we were well past the point of whether climate change is real or has an impact on humanity and that economically minded leaders are starting to see the benefits of sustainable practice and the economic security it brings. Governments and states are listening and looking at policy to mitigate the crisis.

Let’s look at some of the solutions and mitigations proposed:

The quicker we act, the less economic impact

This follows on nicely from previous reports that stated the effects of warming increase with each incremental global average temperature increase. That is to say, a +1.5 degrees C future will see less devastation than a +2 degrees C or even a +1.7 degrees C rise in temperature. Such disasters (drought, extreme weather, flooding) require huge amounts of money resources to sort out. From an economic security point of view, it makes complete sense to act with great urgency. The climate crisis is already here, and therefore already having an economic impact. Action immediately will mitigate against the future potential costs of a climate disaster.

Relative to the economic impact of climate disaster in the future, the investment of reducing the impact of the crisis and securing a liveable planet is small.

The immediate reduction of fossil fuel production and limitation of greenhouse gases in the pursuit of Net Zero

As discussed before, the greatest culprit of the climate crisis is unequivocally greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuels. Therefore, in an ideal world, the immediate halt of fossil fuel extraction, production and consumption would be enough to prevent an overshoot +1.5 degrees C (as discussed in the first report, there is a lag between emissions and warming). Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world, so significant policy to pursue a Net-Zero will be needed.

Going further, carbon must also be removed from the atmosphere somehow, to allow the planet to return to preindustrial atmospheric carbon levels.

Carbon removal, naturally and technologically

A key aspect to the third Working Group is its arguments for carbon capture. This could be either through natural carbon removal through plants and trees, or by using carbon removal technology through direct air capture.

Carbon capture will be essential to solving the climate crisis, as carbon needs to be removed in order to return to the pre-industrial levels of atmospheric carbon. As well as this, proposed tech allows for carbon to be captured at the source of emissions. The issue is that carbon capture could lead to a dependence on the technology.

Companies, understandably, are drawn to the idea of “planting trees” to offset their emissions. It’s visible, tangible, and easy for the public to grasp. However, it’s not always the most efficient use of land and resources, and some worry that these methods will be exploited as a crutch to not reduce emissions output. While an extremely important step in mitigating climate change, some worry that there may be a resultant reliance on carbon removal over carbon emission reduction, allowing the world’s most prolific polluters to continue maintain their carbon output.

One of the most cost-effective mitigation techniques is simply the protection of existing forests and natural sites. The IPCC also stresses that decisions of protection like these must involve the input of the indigenous communities living there.

From the policy level to the personal level

It’s brilliant to be making the personal decisions to limit your own carbon impact, but individuals have limited impact on the climate system. What these reports suggest is wide reaching policy at state level to incentivise populations to make better climate conscious choices, by making things easier through improved infrastructure and methods of “demand management”, reducing the consumption of resource intensive products like meat and dairy. Diet changes at a population scale will be needed to combat the emissions of methane (another greenhouse gas) in particular.

In urban environments, investment in public transportation and cycling infrastructure would go a long way to reduce emissions. As would policy that makes retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient and building new infrastructure with energy efficiency in mind.

For a great bit of further reading, the IPCC Special report on Climate Change and Land goes into much further detail about the impact of changing diets and consumption habits at scale.

Read the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land

As previously discussed in the blog post on the WGII report, the impacts of climate change are not equal or in proportion to climate impact of the nation affected. Therefore, much of the mitigation will need to take the form of humanitarian aid, improving infrastructure for nations without the resources to do so themselves.

The IPCC reports end on a poignant note: “International cooperation is a critical enabler for achieving ambitious climate change mitigation goals”.

Insight from IPCC Lead Author Dr Jo House and contributor Viola Heinrich

Dr Jo House

Dr Jo House is Reader in Environmental Science and Policy, Research Lead of Cabot Institute for the Environment’s Environmental Change theme and a Lead Author on the IPCC’s AR6 Working Group III report.

Viola Heinrich is a Physical Geography PhD Candidate at the University of Bristol, studying the emissions and climate mitigation potential within the land use sector in the tropics, especially the Brazilian Amazon. Viola assisted Dr House in her AR6 work, producing figures for WG III.

How did you get involved with the IPCC and WGIII?

Dr Jo House – “I have been working on IPCC reports for 20 years. I was first employed as a chapter scientist to support the chapter team for working group I, 3rd assessment report carbon cycle chapter. I was then made a lead author for the synthesis report for AR3. Since then, I have been a lead author or contributing author on all three Working Groups, as well a lead author for the Special Report on Climate Change and Land. I am also a lead author twice for the IPCC Task Force on Inventories, who provide methodological guidance to countries on how to produce their greenhouse gas inventories, for reporting to the UNFCCC, as well as accounting under the Kyoto Protocol.

Viola Heinrich

Despite the long hours and the many thousands of comments we must respond to, I do IPCC because I care about climate change, and IPCC gets the science into the hands of people who can do something about it.”

Viola Heinrich – “I’m a PhD student working on understanding the emissions and climate mitigation potential within the land use sector in the tropics, especially the Brazilian Amazon. Jo, as my supervisor, approached me in 2019 to help produce some figures for her work on AR6 and WGIII.

It was a great learning experience seeing how these report cycles work and one bonus was that the work I produced for the IPCC reports was able used in the introduction to my PhD thesis”

What’s one key message you’d like to highlight from WGIII?

Dr Jo House – “We are nearly already too late to stay within 2 degrees, so we need to reduce fossil fuels usage drastically and rapidly to avoid even worse impacts.

Also specifically from a land perspective: The land has potential for mitigation, but it cannot do it all, planting trees is not a get out of jail free card for continuing to burn fossil fuels.”

Viola Heinrich – “This report has followed nicely on form previous cycles in that it has reaffirmed what we know about the land use component and the mitigation potential of the land use sector (20% to 30% by 2050). The big caveat of course is that the land can’t do it all and we need to be actively reducing emissions rather than relying in capture methods from trees for example.

Another interesting factor about the report is that it stresses the importance of considering the local communities in places where solutions and mitigations take place, seeking their expertise in protection, and understanding how these actions will affect them.”

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As always, we recommend taking a look at the IPCC’s full reports and report summaries for yourself if you seek to further understand the evidence and reasoning behind their headline statements.

That wraps up the blog series, I hope that it was enjoyable and informative.

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This blog series was written by Cabot Communications Assistant Andy Lyford, an MScR Student studying Paleoclimates and Climate modelling on the Cabot Institute’s Master’s by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at the University of Bristol.

Andy Lyford

IPCC blog series – Working Group 2 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

Posted on July 28, 2022March 29, 2023 by janet.crompton

This blog is part of a series from the Cabot Institute for the Environment on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent sixth Assessment report, with this post covering the output of Working Group 2 and the impacts of climate change on society and ecosystems. This article also features a chat with Prof Daniela Schmidt, a Professor at the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, and a Lead Author on the IPCC’s AR6 report. For links to the rest of the series, see the bottom of the post.

Welcome to the next post in this series on the IPCC sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Now that we’ve covered the background science to climate change, the next phase looks at the impacts on society, ecosystems, and the intricate fabric of everything in between – combining the science and aiding the transition of translating to policies that governments can implement to better the planet and mitigate the impacts.

This report is, in my opinion, the most alarming of the bunch – some scientists referring to this as the “bleakest warning yet”. Here are the key points:

The increased frequency of Extreme Weather and Temperature will have a cataclysmic impact – Everywhere will be affected

There is no inhabited region on earth that escapes the impacts of climate change. It’s estimated that over 3.3 billion people are living in areas highly vulnerable to climate change effects – largely extreme temperatures, leading to food insecurity and water shortages. Extreme weather events, such as tropical storms and flooding, are also set to increase in both frequency and severity.

As we’ve seen in recent years, wildfires have become more common (Australia and California making international news) and will continue to rise in frequency – wreaking devastation on communities and wildlife. This, along with the retreat of glaciers and polar ice caps, also results in a release of even more carbon to the atmosphere as the Earth’s natural carbon sinks continue to be dismantled. The ensuing feedback loop amplifies the warming, only serving to increase the severity of these events.

However, the impacts of climate change won’t be experienced uniformly across the planet…

The Impacts of Climate Change will not be experienced equally

This is one of the most important statements from all three Working Groups. It’s been well reported that sea level rise will be existentially cataclysmic for atoll island nations such as Kiribati and the Maldives, but there are other effects of climate change that will be unequally experienced. At the other end of the scale, Britain and other western European nations will see less drastic impacts, despite having some of the greatest contribution to the emissions at the root of the climate crisis. In summer, some parts of the globe are already becoming unliveable due to the extremely high temperatures. In India and Africa for example, where temperatures can exceed 40 degrees C, the number of deaths due to heat are increasing year on year. Poorer communities, especially those who work outdoors, are disproportionately affected as their occupation puts them at greater risk.

Some of the nations with the lowest development and therefore lowest contribution to climate change will experience the impacts more than some of the greatest contributors.

A Climate Crisis exacerbates other ongoing Crises

The effects of a climate crisis add an extra layer of complexity to all sorts of problems the world is already facing. Threats to food and water security because of climate change will increase pre-existing geopolitical tensions as resources become more and more scarce. Therefore, the likelihood of conflict and war increases – which in turn shift focus from fighting climate change. To some extent, we are seeing this already with the war in Ukraine, for example. In summary, climate change can increase severity of a crisis and limits the efficacy of response.

Impacts on ecosystems are already happening as well

Mass die-offs of species are well underway, particularly in oceanic ecosystems as sea temperatures rise and ocean acidification takes place. Deforestation and wildfires are destroying ecosystems.

When I spoke to Professor Daniela Schmidt, a lead author on the WGII report (more from her at the end of the article), she was quick to point out and stress the connections between nature and society, links often underestimated – “Negative impacts on nature will negatively impact people”. Nature, land-use, and conservation will be some of the key tools in helping mitigate the effects of climate change.

This is something to explore further with the next blog in this series on Working Group 3: Mitigation of Climate Change.

Insight from IPCC AR6 Lead Author Professor Daniela Schmidt

Daniela Schmidt is a Professor of Palaeobiology, Cabot Institute member and a key author on the IPCC’s WG2 report.

How did you get involved with IPCC AR6 and Working Group II in particular?

“I was a lead author on the fifth assessment report, working on the ocean chapter. I have since worked on reports for the European Commission on food from the ocean. I volunteered for this cycle with the expectation of working with WGI but I was assigned work on WGII, which was challenging because it was way out of my comfort zone. Working on this report has changed the way I will conduct research in the future, and has taught me to be more open to the complexities of life”

What’s one key point you’d like to get across from the WGII report?

“The official key strapline from AR6 is that the evidence is clear, climate change is real and happening right now. It’s a rapidly closing window of opportunity to do something about it.”

“One of the main things I like to communicate is that if we don’t hit 1.5 degrees C targets, then 1.7 degrees C is still better than for 2 degrees C example. The point is that every increment matters and that we can’t give up if we miss targets. I think it’s important to tell people that if we are overshooting 1.5 degrees C, yes, there will be consequences, some of which are irreversible, but we can still come back.”

“I also try not just to talk about climate change. Much of the adaptation action for climate change incidentally will, in my view, help to make the world a better place – providing clean drinking water, clean energy, habitable homes and ensuring there is nature surrounding them”

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We recommend taking a look at the IPCC’s full reports and report summaries for yourself if you seek to further understand the evidence and reasoning behind their headline statements.

Going further, potential solutions and climate change mitigations will be covered in greater detail in our summary of WG3’s report titled “Mitigation of Climate Change”, will be the next blog in this series, featuring a chat with IPCC AR6 Lead Author Dr. Jo House and contributor Viola Heinrich.

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Andy Lyford

This blog was written by Cabot Communications Assistant Andy Lyford, an MScR Student studying Paleoclimates and Climate modelling on the Cabot Institute Master’s by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at the University of Bristol.

IPCC blog series: Working Group 1 – The Physical Science Basis

Posted on July 27, 2022March 29, 2023 by janet.crompton

This blog is part of a series from the Cabot Institute for the Environment on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent AR6 report (IPCC, AR6), with this post covering the output of Working Group 1 and the physical scientific basis of climate change. This article also features a chat with Professor Dan Lunt, a Climate Scientist at the University of Bristol who focusses on paleoclimates and climate modelling, and a Lead Author on the IPCC’s AR6 report. For links to the rest of the series, see the bottom of the post.

The IPCC begins their 6th Assessment Report by explaining the physical science basis and publishing the finding of Working Group 1 (WG1) in August 2021. This means that, rather than considering the impact on humans, ecosystems and societies covered by later working groups, this report only looks at the effects on the planet from a physical standpoint. Consider this part of the report to be describing the problem, where later reports describe the impacts and then the possible solutions.

Here are the key points from WG1, detailing the physical science basis:

Human activity has unequivocally caused a change in the global climate.

If you were in any doubt before, let this be the sole key message you take away from this report.

Human activity has caused widespread warming of the land, ocean an atmosphere, affecting weather systems, ecosystems, and the cryosphere (areas covered by ice such as mountain glaciers and the polar regions).

One of the main drivers of this change has been Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), which have been observed to be increasing in atmospheric concentration since as far back as 1750 and the beginning. These gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), come from human processes that burn fossil fuels – transport, energy production, intense cattle farming for example.

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere act like blanket, trapping rather than heart from the sun, warming the Earth. We also know from studying past climates that the Earth will get warmer with greater atmospheric CO2 levels.

Changes to the climate are happening at an unprecedented rate.

Figure 1: Graph from AR6-WG1 showing the unprecedented levels of warming seen in the last 2000 years.

You may have heard that the Earth’s climate has naturally ebbed between periods of hot and cold. This is completely true, however it can be a misleading statement that completely undersells the issue. Human activity has caused the planet to warm at an unprecedented rate. We are currently undergoing thousands of years of warming in just a few decades (fig.1) – much to fast for adaptation from the world’s ecosystems.

As such, the Earth will take millions of years to recover and reach an equilibrium. I highly encourage you to check out climatearchive.org’s simulations of the next million years using cutting edge modelling data – created by the Cabot Institute for the Environment’s Sebastian Steinig.

Climate change is ALREADY affecting every inhabited region on Earth, with observed increases in extreme weather and climate extremes.

Many people believe that the climate crisis is far off in the future, a problem to prevent before it arrives. However, this is not the case. It’s already happening under our noses. And everywhere. Every inhabited region in the world currently experiences an increased likelihood of an extreme weather event, extreme heat drought, or extreme precipitation. This summer for example, temperatures in the UK have been modelled and subsequently measured to creep above 40°C, unprecedented for a region with a usually temperate climate and setting national records.

Increased warming leads to an increase in effect and creeps towards a tipping point from which recovery is impossible.

You might have heard phrases like “2 degree C future” or “1.5 degree C rise” in the news, but what do these really mean? These numbers refer to the global mean temperature rise using a rolling average of the previous 20 years, relative to the temperature measured between 1850-1900 when climate change started to begin. Currently, the average global temperature anomaly sits above 1 degree C of warming (fig.1).

The Earth system is remarkably robust, but not quite robust enough to maintain an equilibrium with such rapid warming in a short space of time. One place where this is most stark is the cryosphere – parts of the Earth usually covered by ice all year round (glaciers, polar regions for example).

Melting has already begun and will continue to happen for decades even if emissions magically ended tomorrow. This is incredibly troubling, since the cryosphere also happens to be huge carbon store in the form of methane trapped in the ice. This creates what’s known as a feedback loop, where the effects of warming lead to greater warming in themselves.

Through studying paleoclimates, the IPCC reports that climate sensitivity and therefore “tipping point” sits at around 3 degree C, resulting in total climate breakdown.

Significant and immediate action limiting Greenhouse Gas emissions will be a major key in fighting climate change.

The one silver lining the report alludes to is that IPCC scientists are confident that the climate crisis is caused primarily by greenhouse gas concentrations, therefore we know the solution – reducing emissions quickly and effectively will mitigate against the worst warming in a big way. Pursuing a net-zero CO2 strategy and limiting other GHG emissions will be absolutely necessary. Working Group 3’s report on the Mitigation of Climate Change goes into greater detail on how governments can work together to go about this. This will be published on 29 August 2022.

Insight from IPCC WG1 author Professor Dan Lunt

Professor Dan Lunt is a Professor of Climate Science, Cabot Institute member and a key author on the IPCC’s WGI report.

How did you get involved with IPCC AR6?

Dan Lunt

“I was involved with the previous IPCC report, AR5, providing some data and graphs for a section on polar amplification in past and future climates (the disproportionate warming of the polar regions relative to the rest of the Earth system). This time round, a call went out around four or five years ago for authors to work on the upcoming Sixth Assessment Report. I applied for and was chosen to be a Lead Author on Chapter 7 of the AR6 report – a section focussed the Earth’s radiation budget and Climate Sensitivity, as well as on paleoclimates as evidence for the patterns of global warming, such as polar amplification.”

What’s one key point you’d like to get across from the work of Working Group 1?

“For me, what I would interpret as the key message would be climate change is already happening, and it’s happening all over the globe. It’s unprecedented in terms of its magnitude and its speed of change, relative to the past tens of thousands of years. It’s unequivocally caused by human activity.”

“One of the new key points in this assessment report is that there’s a lot more evidence now that there are changes in the frequency of extreme events. We now have enough data to say that this increased frequency is human induced. So that’s more droughts, floods, extreme heat events etc.”

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We recommend taking a look at the IPCC’s full reports and report summaries for yourself if you seek to further understand the evidence and reasoning behind their headline statements.

As we’ve discussed the scientific basis for climate change, you may be wondering what the real-world impacts. The specific impacts on ecosystems, global health and on human society will be covered in greater detail in our summary of WG2’s report titled “Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability”, publishing tomorrow (Thursday, 28th of August).

Andy Lyford

Introducing our IPCC blog series

Posted on July 26, 2022March 29, 2023 by janet.crompton

This blog is the first part of a series from the Cabot Institute for the Environment on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6). This post is an introduction to the blog series, explaining what we’re aiming to do here and with a glossary of some climate change terms that come up in the later posts. Look out for links to the rest of the series this week.

What is the IPCC?

The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Formed in 1988 by scientists concerned about the state of the global climate, they’ve been publishing assessment reports on the climate to advise policymakers and governments to act. This year they published their 6th assessment report (AR6), which has been described as their ‘starkest warning’ about the dangers of climate change. The report was built up of 3 Working Groups and over 2800 experts representing 105 countries covering different aspects, from the base science to the sociological impacts of a climate crisis. Alongside their assessment reports, the IPCC also publish special reports on key issues to explore them in more detail. These topics have included Land Use, Impact on the Ocean and Cryosphere and further clarifications on the goal of mitigating 1.5°C global warming.

The IPCC are the most trusted climate group worldwide, with their work being used in policy decisions all over the world.

What are the three Working Groups?

Each of the working groups focuses on a different part of the climate story, looking at causes, effects, and solutions.

• Working Group 1: The Physical Science Basis (WGI)

• Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (WGII)

• Working Group 3: Mitigation of Climate Change (WGIII)

What is this blog series covering?

The full reports are well over 1000 pages each, with many chapters, subchapters, and footnotes to wade through. As previously mentioned, the full report is split into the domains of the working groups.

Each report from the Working Groups is then filtered down into its own Summary for Policy Makers, which is still dense and features a lot of explanation of evidence. This is further broken down into the headline statements that get released to the press. Even at this level, it’s hard for ordinary members of the public to take the time to read all the evidence and digest the key points.

The aim of this campaign is to distil the key points in each Working Group report in a short, easily understood, and shareable blog as a tool for public outreach. As well as this, the campaign will feature voices from across the Cabot Institute for the Environment including IPCC authors from each of the working groups.

It’s a nearly impossible job trying to filter down the output of thousands of experts into a digestible snippet, but hopefully readers will come away more informed about the IPCC reports and the climate crisis than before.

This week, we’ll be sharing my report summaries here on the Cabot Institute for the Environment blog as well as on Twitter and LinkedIn, starting this Wednesday [27 July] on the output of Working Group I: The Physical Science basis. Keep an eye out for it!

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This blog campaign was written by Cabot Institute Communications Assistant Andy Lyford, an MScR Student studying Paleoclimates and Climate modelling on the Cabot Institutes’ Masters by Research in Global Environmental Challenges program at the University of Bristol.

Engaging with visions of mobilities within the landscape of risk

Posted on July 19, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

When describing the commercial port land of Felixstowe (fig. I) as a ‘nerve ganglion of capitalism’ in 2006, a proto-nostalgic horizon ‘blighted by cargo ships’, Mark Fisher was describing a vision of the natural’s collision course with the monetary in words that ooze forth from the ascetic expanse he walked us through, right up to the journey’s reposeful end point, the burial ground at Sutton Hoo (fig. II). Here, in this space, palpable is the sense that the increasingly unseen in today’s world is seen so lucidly that upon listening closer, Beowulf’s verses may come rushing forth upon the Deben mists to play amongst the ancient mounds and time-worn grasses.

Figures I (top) & II (bottom): Felixstowe container port (top) the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom, a point of arrival and nerve ganglion of capitalism responsible for the distribution of material commodities across the land along established networks of commerce. By contrast, the ‘sunlit planetary quality of serenity’ offered at Sutton Hoo (bottom) engages with a vision of departure, two different points within a geography that speaks to themes of migration, mobility, and the conflict of boundary in space and time. (sources: Institution of Civil Engineers (top) & thesuffolkcoast.co.uk (bottom)).

In a space as innately human as this, the purpose of the city, the urban, and what it means to exist in it becomes overwritten in the victorious verse and rhythm of nature and the environment, yet there is an eeriness inherent in this vision. A sense of disconnection and immobility that is increasingly disassociated with the ever-expanding urban centres across the world. This is a sense that many might argue is, itself, becoming increasingly overwritten through development and, possibly more directly, through proliferating networks of digital visualisation and communication.

More of us are living in urban settings and more of us are moving to them, what drives this flight to the city, the deeper motivations can only be described as, much like the conditions of the British weather, myriad. What this mobilisation and migration looks like is relatively more straight forward to describe: a need for access to resources through labour, coupled with a space in which to live and be at home, to rest. Mirrored perfectly in Fisher’s visions from Felixstowe to Sutton Hoo, a seamless cross section of the Anthropocene. Capturing the stillness afforded by a space so radically different to the city, where the scale of achievement, to simply occupy a space with as much concrete matter as is condensed into the wondrous square miles of London, Birmingham, and Manchester, amongst many others, by comparison to that which does not occupy the vastness of Suffolk is astonishing. Historically, progress for those who have settled in these cityscapes has, in many senses, been assured, simply through an increased likelihood of encountering streams of revenue and capital, or so goes the utopian visions of the upwardly mobile Mondeo Men and Worcester Women.

Loosely this might be described as the enabling of capital progress, however these connections, patterns and trends underpinning, however loosely, such stereotypical visions of city living have become much more distant for most within the current global climate. A crude utilisation of Tobler’s first law of geography would, when coupled with Mark Fisher’s nerve ganglion metaphor, lead us to deduce that those closest to capital, to the contemporary capital markets of the city, are not as readily likely to benefit from this proximity as they might once have. This sense of capital mobility associated with the city is now fundamentally more precarious and is visually very different from that seen in the past, offering the first glimpse of the landscape of risk.

Of course, this form of mobility is not completely linear as the city has long also been associated with a flux of capital mobility represented by a great, and growing, disparity between those operating at the top of the metropolitan hierarchy, in gleaming beglassed monoliths, and those looking up at them from the mosaic of avenues and streets below. This structural and spatial inequality of the cityscape is as symbolic of the urban as it is of the human condition it embodies, where products of value are exchanged for labour and where, as David Harvey explained in Social Justice and The City, ‘capitalism annihilates space to ensure its own reproduction.’ Historically facilitated by barbaric internal mechanisms in the West, from blockbusting and redlining amongst a spectrum of variable living standards that extend from unthinkable to the decadent, urbanisation and urban expansion reassembling the natural spaces in the pursuit of capital will naturally enhance and further facilitate the growth of inequity and thus, further strengthen the boundaries of the risk landscape.

This does come down to a fundamental connection between capital and risk, where risk is largely framed in the context of ‘asset loss’ but the landscape in which it is most acutely observed, where capital value is most apparent, the city, is where it is, and will continue to be, predominant. Harvey concludes his vision on the engagement with political process as fundamental to traversing the forms of inequality and injustice generated and facilitated through ties to this form of ‘development’. Consequent of the unprecedented recent times we have lived in, and now continue to live through, together, the public inquisitions regarding the moral constitution of those responsible for overseeing political processes challenges any desire for engagement. Age old theoretical undercoats of societal constitution and modernity begin to peel away under the searing heat of growing public discontent whilst those at the very zenith continue to profit financially.

The risk landscape is one fraught with conflict and is perpetually in crisis. However, were this crisis to be wholly one of capital, it would affect everyone. Capital and inequity are one facet of the greater conflict the risk landscape has with the environment at large, as even when this crisis is framed in the context of equity, it finds equilibrium in the continuation of the trend that, depending on where you are categorised within the social hierarchy of the city, you will continue to be worse off from here on out and no amount of ‘levelling up’ will bring about a truly positive change to this course. We are beginning to feel this at home, on a personal scale now through a volatile geopolitical landscape, but that doesn’t mean that labour is any less abundant. The boundaries of the risk landscape will continue to expand beyond this and find a continuing but ultimately existential conflict with the natural environment, generating an accelerated form of risk that is much more linear in outcome. The general message related to this is clear: ‘Adaptation of current modes and systems to emergent environmental risk is needed, with further mitigation required to prevent the acceleration of this risk’

The modern human age is liquid, where change and continuity are seen to different degrees and operate at various tempos across time. Were I to define which of the processes discussed throughout this missive are representative of change and continuity, I would posit that the ultimate defining factor of both lie in the hands of nature and not my own. Whilst social categories become redefined through mechanisms closely tied to the city, overwriting of old landscape structures through the proliferation of the urban over time generates a legacy of risk through reparation and over expansion. In appropriating space that is not in the interest of that which inhabits that space, be it the development of floodplains to accommodate homes, the utilisation, or lack, of land due to pollution from past industry, processes of land reclamation, we are clutching at straws. Yet, capital is generated and claimed with little interest for the longevity or safety of those inhabiting these new spaces, asserting a dynamic of equitability for whom exactly?

It is in this dissection of value, it’s definition and by whom (or what), that the vision of the risk landscape becomes truly material. How these values shift, and to what benefit, must continue to be explored if we are to make a sustainable vision of the city into a liveable environment, equitable for all who will call it home. If our mobility within this exploration could be versed in the cognitive, as Mark Fisher did for us, then we are becoming more aware of the trends that connect the naturally seen and unseen with the landscape of risk. Supporting us in the delineation of what is really of and for us against that which appears to be, revealing what it is to be truly of and for the natural.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member, Dr. Thomas O’Shea. Dr O’Shea is a postdoctoral research associate with the University of Bristol School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. The primary focus of his research is on developing understanding of the human-water interface with specific interests in the application of social theory, urban and hybrid geographies towards shaping narratives and strategies of sustainability.

This blog is the final blog in the Migration, Mobilities and the Environment blog series, in conjunction with Migration Mobilities Bristol.

Migrants and miners: gender, age and precarious labour in a Tajik resource extractive landscape

Posted on July 5, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

Migration is both gendered and aged. It is also deeply tied to the emergence of new extractive landscapes around the world, marked by extractive frontiers pushing into already stressed and fragile environments. The story of the village of Kante in Tajikistan, of its male migrants and its coal miners – men, women and children – illustrates the ways in which multiple forms of precarious labour appear alongside these new landscapes.

The village of Kante, Tajikistan, 2014 (Negar E. Behzadi)

In Tajikistan, a landlocked country in post-Soviet Muslim Central Asia, men started migrating seasonally for work following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In Kante, a village of 1,500 inhabitants on the slopes of the Fann Mountains, 2,000m above sea level, the men gradually began leaving a derelict landscape and a run-down collective tobacco farm. Like most Tajik male seasonal migrants, they left for Russia to find new livelihoods and to escape a country torn by civil war. During the seven years of conflict, which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, men who did not fight travelled as far as the Kamchatka peninsula in search of work. Some Kantegui mountaineers became fishermen. Others went to Moscow, Sverlovsk, Irskuk and other big Russian cities to do ‘mardikor’ (the work of men) on construction sites.

When the war ended, some men came back to Kante, only to find destroyed infrastructure, abandoned fields and an uncertain future. So most returned to Russia. In Kante, as in the rest of Tajikistan, migration became a way of life and a rite of passage – every real man in Tajikistan has migrated, provided for his family back home, drunk alcohol in overcrowded compounds, travelled illegally through borders. Some have slept with Russian women, fallen in love, even taken a second Russian wife, leaving a Tajik wife back home (Behzadi, 2019). Life has also changed for those referred to as ‘the left-behind’. Women, children and the elderly live without husbands, fathers or sons for most of the year. Men become absences, photos, voices down the phone, heroic stories, the amount of remittances arriving at the Western Union in the local town.

Unlike villages in the rest of the country, however, Kantegui men have an alternative to migration. The village lies on one of the largest coal reserves in the country. After the fall of the Soviet Union, families started digging up the mountain with pickaxes to extract coal, using donkeys to haul their load. At first, families extracted the coal for subsistence, but later they started selling it on a growing informal market. This coincided with a broader turn to coal as a major source of energy across the country. Following Uzbek/Tajik resource conflicts, Uzbekistan shut off the pipeline providing Tajikistan with gas in 2012/13, leading to a new Tajikistani coal development strategy (Behzadi, 2019). The same year, a formal Sino-Tajik mine was established in the village, which blew up the Southern slope of the mountain with dynamite. The rolling stones and big machinery crushed some of the donkeys of the informal miners and damaged their houses. The company brought in engineers and managers from China and pushed informal miners away.

Young boys coming back from the mines with coal bags on donkeys, 2014 (Negar E. Behzadi)

In 2014, around 300 men from Kante and neighbouring villages worked in the formal Sino-Tajik mine. Most Kantegui miners in the ‘Chinese’ mine were men who had retired from migration, tired of the back and forth between Russia and the village. In their 30s and 40s, these men had nothing to prove anymore – they were the ‘djahon didir’ (those who have seen the world) who had come back to a quieter life (Behzadi, 2019). But the formal mine does not offer jobs to all. Those who do not work for the Chinese carry on splitting their year between labour migration to Russia in spring and summer and informal coal mining in autumn and winter. In 2014, around 500 men were working in the informal mines. The hardship of their labour and the simplicity of their tools contrasted with the relative ease of labour in the Chinese mine. Although less arduous, however, work for the Chinese project is a mixed blessing: precarious contracts, unpaid salaries and difficult relationships with Chinese managers take their toll in other ways. And the trade-off is significant: men who accept work for the Chinese mine know it is threatening the very existence of their village. The Chinese are ‘taking all our coal’, many villagers say, in particular the informal miners. Part of the informal mines have already been destroyed, and they fear that the whole village might follow.

Map of informal and formal mining areas in Kante, 2018 (Negar E. Behzadi)

Like migration, extractive labour in mines is gendered and aged. Women and children cannot work in the Sino-Tajik mine, but they do work in informal mines. In the past decade about 20 women have been going mining every day high above the village, and sometimes at night when they know they can go unseen. Some of their husbands, like Nadirah’s (a female miner in her 30s), left the country straight after their wedding and took a second wife in Russia. Now he sends only sporadic remittances. Nadirah goes mining with a friend and her daughter who is 13. Her work is considered ‘ayb’ (shameful) in the village and, as a result, Nadirah is stigmatised and excluded from social networks. But while it is considered unacceptable for women to work underground, it is tolerated for children. Most children start at the age of five, leading the donkey in and out of the coal galleries to the market while their parents extract the mineral on the coalface. ‘Coal,’ says Gulnissar, a mother of a 10-year-old child coal miner, ‘there is only coal in children’s heads today.’

Sino-Tajik mine containers in Kante, 2014 (Negar E. Behzadi)

Male seasonal labour migration, the ‘shameful’ work of female miners and the spread of child mining comprise a few of the many precarious forms of labour that emerge in new extractive landscapes around the world. The story of Kante illustrates the fragmentation of societies along gendered and aged lines that occurs in such extractive landscapes. These new extractive frontiers also often emerge in places that are already socio-ecologically stressed, such as in the countries that emerged following the fall of the Soviet Union.

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This blog is written by Dr Negar Elodie Behzadi is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. She is a feminist political geographer and political ecologist who explores questions of resource extraction and migration in Tajikistan and France. She has also co-directed two ethnographic films on resource extraction in Tajikistan: Komor: Journeys through the Tajik Underground and Nadirah: Coal Woman.

Negar Elodie Behzadi

What protections are available to people displaced by climate change?

Posted on June 20, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

Climate change will impact all our lives in the coming years and many people will experience extreme events due to climate change resulting in displacement, both internally and across international borders. This has become the reality for some already within low-lying archipelago islands within the South Pacific, such as Tuvalu and Kiribati. Despite the certainty of increased climate change-related displacement, there is still no specific frameworks which protect those moving for climate related reasons (see a detailed discussion here).

The site of the village of Tebunginako, Kiribati – relocated due to severe coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion (image: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia)

Are people displaced by climate change refugees?

Under Article 1(A) of the 1951 Refugee Convention, climate-related displacement does not constitute grounds for international protection. I will take the essential elements of Article 1(A) in turn. First, a refugee must have crossed an international border, whereas climate-related displacement is expected to be predominantly internal.

Second, a refugee must have a well-founded fear of persecution. Persecution requires an egregious violation of human rights, which is assessed in light of the nature of the right and the severity of the violation (see here for further discussion). It also requires that the fear of persecution must be well-founded – this does not require certainty – but it must not be far-fetched and should be based upon both an objective assessment of the likelihood of persecution and the subjective nature of the individual’s fear (see Chan v Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, 1989). Climate change is unlikely to fulfil this requirement despite the detriment it can have on an individual’s access to human rights. It is unlikely to meet the severity threshold even in relation to socio-economic rights and, as McAdam (2016) highlights, it is difficult to identify a ‘persecutor’ that the refugee fears; instead, many refugees are likely to be moving to states that are major greenhouse gas contributors.

Third, persecution must be related to a reason given by the Convention of ‘race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion…’ The impacts of climate change do not discriminate. Even if an individual did establish persecution based upon an egregious socio-economic rights violation caused by climate change, they would need to argue that this affected them because of their membership of one of these groups. At best, an individual could argue that a government had consciously withheld assistance to address the impacts of climate change to a specific group, amounting to persecution (see here) but the group must be connected by an immutable characteristic (Applicant A v Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, 1997), not just the impact of the climate change.

Courts have firmly established that the Refugee Convention does not protect victims of natural disasters, slow-onset degradation, poor economic conditions or famine – even when the country of origin is unable or unwilling to provide protection (Canada (Attorney General) v Ward, 1993; Horvath v Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2001). UNHCR has echoed this in its own discussions of how to respond to climate-related displacement (see here and here).

What protections are available to people displaced by climate change?

A response to climate-change related displacement must therefore be sought through other international legal mechanisms. In 2009, the UN Human Rights Council recognised under resolution 10/4 that there is a ‘core inter-linkage between human rights and climate change’ such that those displaced by climate change would be able to rely on the obligations outlined in the ICCPR and the ICESCR. In particular, this would include state’s non-refoulment obligations as the cumulative effect of socio-economic harms can amount to inhumane and degrading treatment such that an individual cannot be returned to such conditions (see Sufi v Elmi, 2011). However, courts may require an immediacy to the rights violation such that future fear of climate-related impacts is insufficient grounds to provide protection from return (see AF(Kiribati), 2013).

In the specific situation of small island states whose territory is threatened by climate change, the law relating to statelessness may also be able to provide some protection and a remedy (see the 1954 Statelessness Convention; Rayfuse 2009). UNHCR has a mandate to prevent and reduce statelessness enabling them to work with states to respond, including coordinating international cooperation, providing protection and resettlement. However, issues concerning when a state will have ceased to exist under international law remains unsettled. For example, for a state to be recognised by international law, Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention requires a permanent population, territory, government and capacity to enter international relations (see Lauterpacht, 1944, and Crawford, 2007, for further discussion). However, there is a lack of clarity on when these criteria will cease to be fulfilled. The problem that international law has grappled with until now has been when new states are formed, not when existing ones have disappeared. As a result, it is unclear when protection for stateless persons of ‘disappeared’ states will be triggered.

There are also regional frameworks that provide broader protections to displaced people, beyond the narrow 1951 definition. In particular, the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration both contain provisions relating to ‘events seriously disturbing public order’, which could be taken to include the events resulting from the effects of climate change. These are both non-binding instruments, whereas Article 5(4) of the Kampala Convention is within a binding instrument and explicitly includes protection for those affected by climate change:

States parties shall take measures to protect and assist persons who have been internally displaced due to natural or human made disasters, including climate change.

This focusses protection on internally displaced individuals and ensures that signatory states are required to provides protection and assist those displaced by climate change.

The Kampala Convention is largely based upon the UN Guiding Principles on internal displacement which, under Principle 6(d), outlines that internal displacement is prohibited including in the context of disasters. The principles then provide a framework for states to respond to internal displacement, including that resulting from disasters. The extension of human rights protections to those fleeing climate change is echoed in the Global Compact on Migration, which calls for humanitarian visas for people migrating due to natural disasters and climate change (see objective 2 and 5), as well as similar commitments in the Sustainable Development Goals. Such a response to climate-change related displacement is required under the commitments of Article 14(f) of the Cancun Adaptation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This aims to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement…’ These instruments represent moves by the international community to consolidate existing legal frameworks to respond to climate-change related displacement. However, they are not binding treaty law. They demonstrate political commitments not legal obligations. It is evident that, outside the Africa region, mechanisms for protecting individuals from climate-change related displacement are often non-binding and ad-hoc.

The future of climate-related displacement

The term ‘climate refugee’ is conceptually flawed. Such individuals will not constitute refugees for the term ignores the complex causation involved in any displacement, let alone that related to climate change, which in itself is a multi-causal phenomenon. Whilst human rights law, the law relating to statelessness and regional arrangements do provide for some protections to individuals displaced by climate change, these approaches remain disparate and uncoordinated. A lack of clarity can lead to legal loopholes that are abused by states to limit protections.

To respond to this complexity, there are calls for a separate framework for cross-border climate migrants. Commitments within the Global Compact on Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the Cancun Agreement, represent attempts by the international community to start to coordinate and elucidate protection for climate-related displacement. However, much more must be done to ensure clarity on the personal, material and temporal scope of protections and obligations for climate change-related displacement.

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This blog is written by Dr Kathryn Allinson, a Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol Law School. Her research concerns the establishment of state responsibility for breaches of international law focussing on the interaction of human rights and humanitarian law in relation to displacement, and the protection of socio-economic human rights during conflict.

Kathryn Allinson

A previous MMB blog by Ignacio Odriozola looked at a landmark decision by the United Nations Human Rights Committee on people seeking international protection due to the effects of climate change: Climate-change displacement: a step closer to human rights protection.

Foodie for thought

Posted on June 14, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

Have you ever wondered how the food you eat impacts climate change? There are all sorts of discussions around energy, transport, green tech, that famous 1.5 ℃, the IPCC… but there is a significantly unspoken polluter that is part of our daily lives, and without which, ironically, we could not live: the food industry. The food industry is one of the biggest contributors to climate change and biodiversity loss, yet food systems have not been given much thought until recently, somehow it was always thought that food “just happens”.

How many of us, when shopping at the supermarket, really think about where everything that is there, nicely placed on the shelves and aisles, comes from? Who packaged your apples? Who flew your avocados from Brazil? Who harvested those avocados from Brazil and how much were they paid? How old was that cow that some factory milked, and who bottled the milk? What is the footprint of that bottle? How much space do cows take? How much soya do they need to grow? How much do cows emit? We could go on forever, but the reality is that not many people really ask those questions at the supermarket, for some, as I said, food happens.

And I feel obliged here to open a short bracket to say that, of course, in reality there will be people who are not even able to ask those questions because it is not their priority. There are often bigger problems in our lives we have to deal with, and it would be unreasonable to ask people who, for example, are struggling to make ends meet to think about what they buy. But on the other hand that is also the point. We have made it incredibly difficult and almost a privilege for people to be able to reflect on their food. So returning to my initial point, how could we blame anyone for not asking all those questions, when we have become so detached from those very people who produce our food, and those places where food is grown?

With food systems becoming ever more complex and globalised, individuals started to lose touch with the reality behind the curtains. We no longer ask the farmer; we ask the label, but how much can a label tell us about what we are buying? Unfortunately, big corporations can often hide behind labels, something that we now call “green-washing”, a fancy word for misleading (and often false) advertising that creates nothing but confusion among consumers, making them believe that they are making a conscious and environmentally friendly choice, when they are not.

One of the biggest controversies in the past few years was around the MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) “Certified Sustainable Seafood” label (that blue tick on tuna cans and other fish sold in supermarkets), which was criticised for setting a very low bar for fisheries to be certified as sustainable, and for its lack of on-site controls and checks. So not only the label allegedly does not guarantee that all efforts have been made to avoid bycatch and seabed damage, but also the fact that fisheries buy the certification from the MSC is for many something that undermines its credibility.

So how can consumers navigate all this information? It would be impossible for people to be able to assess the credibility of every label, stamp, tick on their food, but also unreasonable. The lack of transparency in the food system we are locked-in is a massive flaw, and labels, the way they are handed out now, are not a solution.

There has been much talk about reconnecting with our producers through smaller supply chains, and the idea of buying from their local farmers is something that many probably dream of. How nice would it be to just go to the local market, like the good old days, and buy fresh fruit, vegetables, fresh meat, fresh eggs… all sorts of delicious, good food? It would be great, yes, but probably a utopia for a long time still. Just think of Bristol, a great city with plenty of good food and farmers, a city that has been recognised for its efforts towards a better food system, yet in 2021 about 6.5% of the local population suffered from hunger and 12% struggled to access food. How is this happening in a city so rich of diverse cuisines?

There are many factors that contribute to the rise of food insecurity in Bristol. Covid-19 and the rise in cost of living are maybe the most obvious and recent factors, but generally any inequality can be linked back to poverty and lack of accessibility (which shockingly is a big problem in Bristol). But aside from all of these, something that has an impact on food systems (much more than what many would think) is culture. Systems are ultimately the result of our own ways of doing, ingrained in practice and often locked in, and our ways of doing are inevitably linked to our culture. Now I will not spend time telling you about the history of our food systems and British food culture, because, as a matter of fact, my point is somewhere else. However, in the past few years we have seen the so-called “foodie culture” emerge.

Being a foodie in the simplest terms means that you care about food and are interested about what you eat and where it comes from, which, don’t get me wrong, it is great! Because these people are probably asking those questions that I mentioned at the beginning. However, the problem is that foodie culture has become a very much elitist trend, and with food becoming more and more trendy and catered for foodies, it has now become acceptable to charge stratospheric prices for a burger and chips because the potatoes are organic. Satire aside, it is true, the quality of products should be valued more, and of course products that are produced more sustainably cost more; but this also means that we are telling people who cannot afford to spend more than a certain amount on a good burger with chips that they cannot eat good food.

The fundamental issue of foodie culture is that it has become a trend to eat “fancy” food, which gives businesses the power to price things up, in a way that it becomes exclusionary for people who do not have the privilege of being able to “treat themselves”, and this creates more division. Unfortunately, foodie culture goes hand in hand with a very much criticised characteristic of environmentalism and sustainable living, which is that it is predominantly a (white) middle-class prerogative. Being able to afford to think about sustainability is a privilege, and of course those who are in such fortunate position have the responsibility to act upon it, but what we should not forget is that indeed we are in a position that many could only envy.

There is no way we can create a better and more transparent food system, where people are connected and aware, if all these inequalities still exist. We cannot have a better food system when we live in a cultural setting that leaves half of the population behind, which is perhaps the main message I want to convey. If you have read this far, I hope you will give more thought to what your standpoint and your privileges are. I do wish I had the answers to all these problems I laid out, but there is only so much one can do in a one-year research programme!

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Sonia Pighini, currently researching people-centred sustainable food system transitions on the Cabot Institute’s Master’s by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at the University of Bristol.

Stockholm+50: No way to have a conversation about climate change

Posted on June 13, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

I’m just back from Stockholm+50, the summit convened to mark 50 years since the first UN conference on ‘the human environment’ that led to the founding of the UN Environment Programme. Could the participants then have imagined that half a century later we would be living through mass extinctions and still be trying to work out how to stop (some) humans creating a hothouse world?

Perhaps they would, if they’d seen what these conferences have become. While ‘jaw jaw’ remains better than ‘war war’, there is no doubt that these climate conferences have become a parody performance of international negotiations. Children sang and presented flowers; the UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez restated the ‘code red’ call he’s been making for a while now; John Kerry stated publicly that world leaders were on a ‘collective suicide mission’, which, given that he’s the United States Ambassador on Climate Change, should have made more headlines, but was instead greeted with a collective ‘meh’. ‘Interactive’ dialogue sessions promised to open up the agenda, but invited only pre-selected agencies all of whom said, again, what they’d been saying for years.

This is no way to have a conversation.

Over two days, ministers and civil servants from every UN country and associated organisations make five minute speeches on the main stage designed to appeal to the media back home rather than make any breakthroughs in the room. There are the usual obligatory selfie walls and hordes of professional sustainability experts in suits taking advantage of them to burnish their green international network credentials. Civil society groups have to fight discriminatory visa systems and lack of funds to even get to the summit, only to find out that there is no access to the processes by which the summit decisions and texts are being made. The youth delegations express their now familiar (and understandable) frustration with the older generation and demand of tired, under-funded UN representatives that they ‘use their privilege’ and power to make the changes needed. It resembles nothing so much as a pyramid selling scheme, with everyone fighting to get closer and closer to a centre of power which, in the end, turns out to be illusory.

As an outsider, watching this process in Stockholm, just as I watched COP last year in Glasgow, was like watching an old world dying. You could see old institutions struggle and fail to deal with state capture by fossil fuel interests, observe exponential natural changes meet incremental policy negotiations, feel the chaotic speed of ecosystem transformations meet lock-in and predatory delay of social systems.

And yet, where there is death there is also, always, life.

All around the official event were people using the summit as an excuse to gather, as a way of using the old systems to create something new. A new generation of policy actors, youth movements, academics, unions and civil society, energised by lessons learned from COP26, gathered in informal associated events and activities. This is where the energy was, where dialogue was taking place, where people were learning from each other and naming the obstacles that needed to be overcome.

You could feel the energy in the work of the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty movement which is creating serious alliances across countries and interests and is beginning to exert enough pressure to get commitments to fossil fuel phase-out on the formal agenda; you could see it in the brilliant legal escapades of the ‘Stop Ecocide’ movement making the case for the rights of nature and getting faith leaders around the world signed up to protecting nature. And more than energy, you could see serious, feasible new ideas emerging in the hard economic thinking mobilised by the Stockholm Resilience Centre in their new Earth4all report, which outlines concrete steps towards non-ecocidal and non-suicidal economic arrangements; and in the principled and practical work of the Rainforest Coalition demonstrating what real carbon capture actually looks like and tracing routes towards sustaining it.

What characterises many of these activities is a commitment to a different sort of conversation – to processes of unlearning, of listening, of deep attention to others in the room, of naming the hard problems and working together on them. They point the way to a new sort of conversation – one from which the organisers of future UN conferences might learn. And one which we can all begin to model and practice in each country, network or community that we are part of back home.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Keri Facer, Professor of Social and Educational Futures at the University of Bristol.