Environmental Racism, Green Colonialism, and The Renewable Energies Revolution

Environmental Racism, Green Colonialism, and The Renewable Energies Revolution

by Cara Judea Alhadeff, PhD

Paintings in this post are by Micaela Amateau Amato from Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era.

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House —Audre Lorde

As with our shift from our systemically racist culture to one rooted in mutual respect for multiplicity and difference, we must practice caution during our transition out of our global petroculture. This vigilance should not be based on the motivation, but on the underlying false assumptions and strategies that perceived sustainability and “alternative” agendas offer. The implicit assumptions embedded in the concept of sustainability maintains the status quo. At this juncture of geopolitical, ecological, social, and corporeal catastrophes, we must critically question clean/green solutions such as the erroneously-named Renewable Energies Revolution. I suggest we face both the roots and the implications of how perceived solutions to our climate crisis, like “renewable” energies, may unintentionally sustain ecological devastation and global wealth inequities, and actually divert us from establishing long-term, regenerative infrastructures.

On the surface, sustainability agendas appear to offer critical shifts toward an ecologically, economically, and ethically sound society, but there is much evidence to prove that #1: these structural changes must be accompanied by a psychological shift in individuals’ behavior to effectively shut down consumer-waste convenience culture; and, #2: the core of too many green/clean solutions is rooted in the very essence of our climate crisis: privatized, industrialized-corporate capitalism. For example, in his The Age of Disinformation1, Eric Cheyfitz alerts us: The Green New Deal is a “capitalist solution to a capitalist problem.” It claims to address the linked oppressions of wealth inequity and climate-crisis, yet its proposed solutions avoid the very roots of each crisis.

My challenge is rooted in three interrelated inquiries:

  1. How are our daily choices reinforcing the very racist systems we are questioning or even trying to dismantle?
  2. How are the alternatives to fossil-fuel economies and environmental racism reinforcing the very systems we are questioning or even trying to dismantle?
  3. What can we learn from indigenous philosophies and socialist ecofeminist movements in order to establish viable, sustainable, regenerative infrastructures—an Ecozoic Era?

As we transition to supposedly carbon-free electricity, we must be attentive to the ways in which we unconsciously manifest the very racist hegemonies we seek to dislodge; we must be cautious of the greening-of-capitalism that manifests as “green colonialism” through a new dependency on what is falsely identified as “renewable” energies. Currently, human and natural-world habitat destruction are implicit in the mass production and disposal infrastructures of most “renewable energies:” solar, wind, biomass/biofuels, geothermal, ethanol, hydrogen, nuclear, and other ostensible renewables2.

This includes our technocratic petroleum-pharmaceutical addictions that use technologies to create “sustainability.” Even if policy appears to be in alignment with environmental ethics, we are consistently finding that policy change simply replaces one hegemony, one cultural of domination, with another—particularly within the framework of neoliberal globalization. Only when we acknowledge the roots of our Western imperialist crisis, can we begin to decolonize and revitalize all peoples’ livelihoods and their environments.

Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era3, my climate justice book that explores the perils of the Anthropocene, challenges cultural habits deeply embedded in our calamitous trajectory toward global ecological and cultural, ethnic collapse. The book’s main character reflects: “We have this crazy idea that anything ‘green’ is good—but we know that there is no clear-cut good and evil. What happens when the very solution causes more problems than the original problem it was supposed to fix?”

How we measure our ecological footprint4 and global biocapacity is often riddled with paradox—particularly in the face of green colonialism, or what I call humanitarian imperialism5. The litany of our collusion with corporate forms of domination is infinite within the Anthropocene Era (increasingly characterized as the Plasticene). Disinformation campaigns spread by fossil-fuel interests deeply root us in assimilationist consumerism. The Zazu Dreams’ characters witness social and environmental costs of subjugating others through both fossil-fuel-obsessed economies and their “green” replacements. Vaclav Smil warns us of this “Miasma of falsehood.” This implies replacing one destructive socializing norm—petro-pharma cultures sustained by fossil-fuel addicted economics—with another: purportedly “renewable” energies. These energies (I don’t call them renewable, because they are not “renewable” and not carbon-free)6, like fossil-fuels, are rooted in barbaric colonialist extractive industries. Once again, the “solution” is precisely the problem. Greenwashing is a prime example of the ways in which capitalism dictates our alleged freedom. Free market is a euphemism for economic terrorism. The “green economy has come to mean…the wholesale privatization of nature.”7 Consumerism becomes the default for making supposedly ethical choices.

In Deep Green Resistance, Lierre Keith urges us: “We can’t consume our way out of environmental collapse; consumption is the problem”. Even within the 99%, consumers are capitalism. Without convenience-culture/mass consumer-demand, the machine of the profit-driven free market would have to shift gears. We can’t blame oil companies without simultaneously implicating ourselves, holding our consumption-habits equally responsible. How can we insist government and transnational corporations be accountable, when we refuse to curb our buying, using, and disposal habits? We don’t have to go far back in our cross-cultural histories of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience to learn from world-changing examples of strikes, unions, boycotts, expropriation, infrastructural sabotage, embargoes, and divestment protests.

Yet, most contemporary transition movements are founded in the very system they are trying to dismantle. Our perceived resources, these alternative forms of energy proposed to power our public electrical grids, are misidentified under the misleading misnomers: labels such “renewable”/ “sustainable” / “clean”/ “green”. How is “clean” defined? For whom? There is not a clear division between clean energy and dirty energy/dirty power—clean isn’t always clean. Neoliberal denial of corporeal and global interrelationships instills conformist laws of conduct that continually replenish our toxic soup in which we all live. One perceived solution to help us transition is to create alternatives to fossil fuel-addicted economies, as proposed, for example, through The United States’ proposed Green New Deal and its focus on allegedly “renewable” energies. However well-intentioned, these supposed alternatives perpetuate the violence of wasteful behavior and destructive infrastructures. Even if temporarily abated, they ultimately conserve the original crisis.

Below I address specific technologies that are falsely identified as “renewable” energy; technologies that actually reinforce the very problem they are trying to solve.

1. Solar/Photovoltaic and Wind Technologies: Given the proposed solutions using industrial solar and wind harvesting, Western imperialism has and will continue to dominate global relations. “Clean energy” easily gets soiled when it is implemented on an industrial scale. Western imperialist practices are implicit in solar cell and storage production (mining and other extractive industries) and disposal infrastructures. Congruently, industrial wind farms—aka: “blenders in the sky,”(chopping up migrating birds & bats) use exorbitant resources to produce and implement (both the wind turbines and their infrastructure), and devastate migrating wildlife (bats and birds, critical to healthy ecosystems and some of whom are endangered species).

Both wind and solar energies require vast quantities of fossil fuels to implement them on a grand scale. As we have seen throughout both California and China (two examples among too many), massive solar-energy sites/solar industrial complexes strip land bare—displacing human populations and migration routes of both wildlife and people for acres of solar fields, substations, and access roads—all of which require incredibly carbon-intensive concrete. Consuming massive tracts of land, 100-1000 times more land area is required for wind and solar, as well as for biofuel energy production than does fossil-fuel production.

2. Hydro-Power Technology: Large-scale dams for hydro-power have also historically had cataclysmic effects on indigenous peoples and their lands. Although macro-hydro, like fracking, has
finally been recognized for its calamitous consequences, perversely, it is still proposed as a viable alternative to fossil-fuel economies.

3. Battery Technology: Let’s begin with a California-based scenario: According to the Union of Concerned Scientists and their Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) in California, fine particulate pollution harms African-American communities 43% more than predominantly white communities, Latino 39% more, and Asian-American communities 21% more. As if tailpipe emissions are the only humanitarian catastrophe, one “clean solution” is the electric vehicle for public transportation and for personal consumption. Completely ignoring the embodied energy involved, this perceived solution displaces the costs of environmental racism—once again exported out of the US into the global south—in this case to Boliva where lithium (essential for battery production) is primarily mined. Cobalt, also essential to battery production, is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Like lithium, cobalt’s environmental and humanitarian costs are unconscionable—including habitat destruction, child slavery, and deaths. Eventually, production is followed by solar technology and battery e-waste dispersed throughout Asia, South America, and Africa. Additionally, rarely considered are the fossil-fuel sources used to supply the electricity for those private and public electric vehicles. And, of course most frequently, the poorest US populations work in and live near those coal mines/power plants/fracking stations.

The Renewable Energies Movement claims that our global addiction to oil (“black gold”) should be replaced by lithium (“white gold”). What we are not considering is that extracting lithium and converting it to a commercially viable form consumes copious quantities of water—drastically depleting availability for indigenous communities and wildlife, and produces toxic waste (that includes an already growing history of chemical leaks poisoning rivers, thus people and other animals). Paul Hawken‘s phrase “renewable materialism” counsels us that this hyper-idealized shift from a fossil-fuel paradigm to “renewable” energies is not a solution. Furthermore, these energies are LOW POWER DENSITY: they produce very little energy in proportion to the energy required to institutionalize them.

As the main character in Zazu Dreams prompts: “Even if we find great alternatives to fossil fuels, what if renewable energies become big business and just maintain our addiction to consumption? (…) Replacing tar sands or oil-drills or coal power plants with megalithic ‘green’ energy is not the solution—it just masks the original problem—confusing ‘freedom’ with free market and free enterprise”.  We must now act on our knowledge that the renewable “revolution” is dangerously carbon intensive. And, as the authors of Deep Green Resistance caution us: “The new world of renewables will look exactly like the old in terms of exploitation.”

ENDNOTES

  1. Eric Cheyfitz, Age of Disinformation: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States. New York: Routledge, 2017.
  2. Surrogate band-aids that are frequently equal to or worse than what is being replaced include: bioplastics, phthalates replacements, and HFC’s. 1.Compostable disposables, also known as bioplastics, are most frequently produced from GMO-corn monoculture and “composted” in highly restricted environments that are inaccessible to the general public. Due to corn-crop monoculture practices that are dependent on agribusiness’s heavy use of pesticides and herbicides (for example, Monsanto’s Round-Up/glyphosate), compostable plastics are not a clean solution. Depending on their production practices, avocado pits may be a more sustainable alternative. But, the infrastructure and politics of actually “composting” these products are extraordinarily problematic. These not-so eco-friendly products rarely make it into the high temperatures needed for them to actually decompose. Additionally, their chemical compounds cause extreme damage to water, soil, and wildlife. They cause heavy acidification when they get into the water and eutrophication (lack of oxygen) when they leach nitrogen into the soil. 2.The trend to replace Bisphenol A (BPA) led to even more debilitating phthalates in products. 3.Lastly, we now know that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), “ozone-friendly” replacements, are equally environmentally destructive as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
  3. Cara Judea Alhadeff, Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era. Berlin: Eifrig Publishing, 2017.
  4. The term “carbon footprint” was actually normalized through shame-propaganda by BP’s advertising campaigns. “The carbon footprint sham: A ‘successful, deceptive’ PR campaign,” Mark Kaufman, https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham/
  5. Under the guise of the common good and universal values, humanitarian imperialism has emerged as a neo-colonialist method of reproducing the unquestioned status quo of industrialized, “First World” nations. For a detailed deracination of these fantasies (for example, taken-for-granted concepts of equality, poverty, standard of living), see Wolfgang Sachs’ anthology, The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. Although the term humanitarian imperialism is not explicitly used, all of the authors explore the hierarchical, ethnocentric assumptions rooted in development politics and unexamined paradigms of Progress. As public intellectuals committed to the archeology of prohibition and power distribution, we must extend this discussion beyond the context of international development politics and investigate how these normalized tyrannies thrive in our own backyard.
  6. The air and sun are renewable, but giant wind and solar installations are not.
  7. Jeff Conant, “The Dark Side of the ‘Green Economy,’” Yes! Magazine, August 2012, 63.
Shale Must Fall: Global Day Of Action Against Fracking

Shale Must Fall: Global Day Of Action Against Fracking

Shale Must Fall: Global day of climate actions uniting sites of extraction in the Global South and beyond with their counterparts of consumption in the Global North.

Friday Dec. 11th, on the eve of the 5th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, a diverse group of environmental movements from 20 different countries are mobilizing together to bring visibility to the environmental destruction of fracking.

The movement is mobilizing to highlight the damage caused by European multinationals that do abroad what they are banned from doing at home (in this case, fracking) with the complicity of their governments that subsidize the industry.

The day of action highlight how those government policies completely undermine the Paris Agreement, as Europe is simply “outsourcing” its emissions to the rest of the world.

The actions around the world are focusing on some of Europe’s largest climate criminals which are also shale oil companies—Repsol, Total, Wintershall, Shell, BP—by connecting the dots of their operations around the world.

It is outrageous that Europe is on one hand committing to emissions reductions and the Paris Agreement, yet on the other it is allowing and even subsidizing companies based in their country to frack the rest of the world, causing enormous harm to human health and to the natural world, and dooming future generations—including their own people—to climate chaos.

Local and grassroots movements from the frontlines of extractivism in the Global South are mobilizing against the operations of these multinationals from the Global North demanding climate justice and an end to this international ecocide.

Solidarity is Strength

Each of the environmental resistance struggles at the frontlines in the Global South is usually not strong enough, if isolated, to defeat a threat so disproportionately larger. But as our struggles begin to come together as we are doing today, we can present a united multinational resistance against a threat that is multinational in nature.

The Harms of Fracking

Science has shown fracking to be responsible for more than 50% of all of the increased methane emissions from fossil fuels globally and approximately 1/3 of the total increased emissions from all sources globally over the past decade. Methane is 87 times more harmful than CO2 in its global warming impact on the atmosphere during the first 20 years, and thus the fracking industry is a major cause for accelerating global warming.

This also makes shale gas the fossil fuel with highest greenhouse gas emissions among all fossil fuels.

After having banned or imposed moratoria on fracking in their home countries, European governments are not only allowing their companies to frack the rest of the world, but they are also subsidizing the import of fracked gas with billions of euros of taxpayers’ funds, by building LNG import terminals across the region that will lock the EU into decades of dependency into this fossil fuel.

They are selling the fossil fuel with the worst carbon footprint of all as a clean form of energy that will serve as a bridge to move away from coal. A transition away from coal with something worse than coal? This is insane and we have to stop it. Clean gas is a dirty lie!


 For more information on Shale Must Fall, check out their website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

How to Make Biomass Energy Sustainable Again

How to Make Biomass Energy Sustainable Again

This piece from Low-Tech Magazine examines the practice of coppicing trees for firewood and other uses. The author argues that this practice offers a sustainable, low-tech, small-scale alternative to industrial logging, and doesn’t threaten to accelerate global warming. While we don’t agree with every element of this piece, it is a very important article.


How to Make Biomass Energy Sustainable Again

by Kris De Decker / Low-Tech Magazine

From the Neolithic to the beginning of the twentieth century, coppiced woodlands, pollarded trees, and hedgerows provided people with a sustainable supply of energy, materials, and food.

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Pollarded trees in Germany. Image: René Schröder (CC BY-SA 4.0).

How is Cutting Down Trees Sustainable?

Advocating for the use of biomass as a renewable source of energy – replacing fossil fuels – has become controversial among environmentalists. The comments on the previous article, which discussed thermoelectric stoves, illustrate this:

  • “As the recent film Planet of the Humans points out, biomass a.k.a. dead trees is not a renewable resource by any means, even though the EU classifies it as such.”
  • “How is cutting down trees sustainable?”
  • “Article fails to mention that a wood stove produces more CO2 than a coal power plant for every ton of wood/coal that is burned.”
  • “This is pure insanity. Burning trees to reduce our carbon footprint is oxymoronic.”
  • “The carbon footprint alone is just horrifying.”
  • “The biggest problem with burning anything is once it’s burned, it’s gone forever.”
  • “The only silly question I can add to to the silliness of this piece, is where is all the wood coming from?”

In contrast to what the comments suggest, the article does not advocate the expansion of biomass as an energy source. Instead, it argues that already burning biomass fires – used by roughly 40% of today’s global population – could also produce electricity as a by-product, if they are outfitted with thermoelectric modules. Nevertheless, several commenters maintained their criticism after they read the article more carefully. One of them wrote: “We should aim to eliminate the burning of biomass globally, not make it more attractive.”

Apparently, high-tech thinking has permeated the minds of (urban) environmentalists to such an extent that they view biomass as an inherently troublesome energy source – similar to fossil fuels. To be clear, critics are right to call out unsustainable practices in biomass production. However, these are the consequences of a relatively recent, “industrial” approach to forestry. When we look at historical forest management practices, it becomes clear that biomass is potentially one of the most sustainable energy sources on this planet.

Coppicing: Harvesting Wood Without Killing Trees

Nowadays, most wood is harvested by killing trees. Before the Industrial Revolution, a lot of wood was harvested from living trees, which were coppiced. The principle of coppicing is based on the natural ability of many broad-leaved species to regrow from damaged stems or roots – damage caused by fire, wind, snow, animals, pathogens, or (on slopes) falling rocks. Coppice management involves the cutting down of trees close to ground level, after which the base – called the “stool” – develops several new shoots, resulting in a multi-stemmed tree.

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A coppice stool. Image: Geert Van der Linden.

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A recently coppiced patch of oak forest. Image: Henk vD. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Coppice stools in Surrey, England. Image: Martinvl (CC BY-SA 4.0)

When we think of a forest or a tree plantation, we imagine it as a landscape stacked with tall trees. However, until the beginning of the twentieth century, at least half of the forests in Europe were coppiced, giving them a more bush-like appearance. [1] The coppicing of trees can be dated back to the stone age, when people built pile dwellings and trackways crossing prehistoric fenlands using thousands of branches of equal size – a feat that can only be accomplished by coppicing. [2]

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The approximate historical range of coppice forests in the Czech Republic (above, in red) and in Spain (below, in blue). Source: “Coppice forests in Europe”, see [1]

Ever since then, the technique formed the standard approach to wood production – not just in Europe but almost all over the world. Coppicing expanded greatly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when population growth and the rise of industrial activity (glass, iron, tile and lime manufacturing) put increasing pressure on wood reserves.

Short Rotation Cycles

Because the young shoots of a coppiced tree can exploit an already well-developed root system, a coppiced tree produces wood faster than a tall tree. Or, to be more precise: although its photosynthetic efficiency is the same, a tall tree provides more biomass below ground (in the roots) while a coppiced tree produces more biomass above ground (in the shoots) – which is clearly more practical for harvesting. [3] Partly because of this, coppicing was based on short rotation cycles, often of around two to four years, although both yearly rotations and rotations up to 12 years or longer also occurred.

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Coppice stools with different rotation cycles. Images: Geert Van der Linden. 

Because of the short rotation cycles, a coppice forest was a very quick, regular and reliable supplier of firewood. Often, it was cut up into a number of equal compartments that corresponded to the number of years in the planned rotation. For example, if the shoots were harvested every three years, the forest was divided into three parts, and one of these was coppiced each year. Short rotation cycles also meant that it took only a few years before the carbon released by the burning of the wood was compensated by the carbon that was absorbed by new growth, making a coppice forest truly carbon neutral. In very short rotation cycles, new growth could even be ready for harvest by the time the old growth wood had dried enough to be burned.

In some tree species, the stump sprouting ability decreases with age. After several rotations, these trees were either harvested in their entirety and replaced by new trees, or converted into a coppice with a longer rotation. Other tree species resprout well from stumps of all ages, and can provide shoots for centuries, especially on rich soils with a good water supply. Surviving coppice stools can be more than 1,000 years old.

Biodiversity

A coppice can be called a “coppice forest” or a “coppice plantation”, but in reality it was neither a forest nor a plantation – perhaps something in between. Although managed by humans, coppice forests were not environmentally destructive, on the contrary. Harvesting wood from living trees instead of killing them is beneficial for the life forms that depend on them. Coppice forests can have a richer biodiversity than unmanaged forests, because they always contain areas with different stages of light and growth. None of this is true in industrial wood plantations, which support little or no plant and animal life, and which have longer rotation cycles (of at least twenty years).

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Coppice stools in the Netherlands. Image: K. Vliet (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Sweet chestnut coppice at Flexham Park, Sussex, England. Image: Charlesdrakew, public domain.

Our forebears also cut down tall, standing trees with large-diameter stems – just not for firewood. Large trees were only “killed” when large timber was required, for example for the construction of ships, buildings, bridges, and windmills. [4] Coppice forests could contain tall trees (a “coppice-with-standards”), which were left to grow for decades while the surrounding trees were regularly pruned. However, even these standing trees could be partly coppiced, for example by harvesting their side branches while they were alive (shredding).

Multipurpose Trees

The archetypical wood plantation promoted by the industrial world involves regularly spaced rows of trees in even-aged, monocultural stands, providing a single output – timber for construction, pulpwood for paper production, or fuelwood for power plants. In contrast, trees in pre-industrial coppice forests had multiple purposes. They provided firewood, but also construction materials and animal fodder.

The targeted wood dimensions, determined by the use of the shoots, set the rotation period of the coppice. Because not every type of wood was suited for every type of use, coppiced forests often consisted of a variety of tree species at different ages. Several age classes of stems could even be rotated on the same coppice stool (“selection coppice”), and the rotations could evolve over time according to the needs and priorities of the economic activities.

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A small woodland with a diverse mix of coppiced, pollarded and standard trees. Image: Geert Van der Linden.  

Coppiced wood was used to build almost anything that was needed in a community. [5] For example, young willow shoots, which are very flexible, were braided into baskets and crates, while sweet chestnut prunings, which do not expand or shrink after drying, were used to make all kinds of barrels. Ash and goat willow, which yield straight and sturdy wood, provided the material for making the handles of brooms, axes, shovels, rakes and other tools.

Young hazel shoots were split along the entire length, braided between the wooden beams of buildings, and then sealed with loam and cow manure – the so-called wattle-and-daub construction. Hazel shoots also kept thatched roofs together. Alder and willow, which have almost limitless life expectancy under water, were used as foundation piles and river bank reinforcements. The construction wood that was taken out of a coppice forest did not diminish its energy supply: because the artefacts were often used locally, at the end of their lives they could still be burned as firewood.

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Harvesting leaf fodder in Leikanger kommune, Norway. Image: Leif Hauge. Source: [19]

Coppice forests also supplied food. On the one hand, they provided people with fruits, berries, truffles, nuts, mushrooms, herbs, honey, and game. On the other hand, they were an important source of winter fodder for farm animals. Before the Industrial Revolution, many sheep and goats were fed with so-called “leaf fodder” or “leaf hay” – leaves with or without twigs. [6]

Elm and ash were among the most nutritious species, but sheep also got birch, hazel, linden, bird cherry and even oak, while goats were also fed with alder. In mountainous regions, horses, cattle, pigs and silk worms could be given leaf hay too. Leaf fodder was grown in rotations of three to six years, when the branches provided the highest ratio of leaves to wood. When the leaves were eaten by the animals, the wood could still be burned.

Pollards & Hedgerows

Coppice stools are vulnerable to grazing animals, especially when the shoots are young. Therefore, coppice forests were usually protected against animals by building a ditch, fence or hedge around them. In contrast, pollarding allowed animals and trees to be mixed on the same land. Pollarded trees were pruned like coppices, but to a height of at least two metres to keep the young shoots out of reach of grazing animals.

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Pollarded trees in Segovia, Spain. Image: Ecologistas en Acción.

Wooded meadows and wood pastures – mosaics of pasture and forest – combined the grazing of animals with the production of fodder, firewood and/or construction wood from pollarded trees. “Pannage” or “mast feeding” was the method of sending pigs into pollarded oak forests during autumn, where they could feed on fallen acorns. The system formed the mainstay of pork production in Europe for centuries. [7] The “meadow orchard” or “grazed orchard” combined fruit cultivation and grazing — pollarded fruit trees offered shade to the animals, while the animals could not reach the fruit but fertilised the trees.

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Forest or pasture? Something in between. A “dehesa” (pig forest farm) in Spain. Image by Basotxerri (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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Cattle grazes among pollarded trees in Huelva, Spain. (CC BY-SA 2.5)

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A meadow orchard surrounded by a living hedge in Rijkhoven, Belgium. Image: Geert Van der Linden.

While agriculture and forestry are now strictly separated activities, in earlier times the farm was the forest and vice versa. It would make a lot of sense to bring them back together, because agriculture and livestock production – not wood production – are the main drivers of deforestation. If trees provide animal fodder, meat and dairy production should not lead to deforestation. If crops can be grown in fields with trees, agriculture should not lead to deforestation. Forest farms would also improve animal welfare, soil fertility and erosion control.

Line Plantings

Extensive plantations could consist of coppiced or pollarded trees, and were often managed as a commons. However, coppicing and pollarding were not techniques seen only in large-scale forest management. Small woodlands in between fields or next to a rural house and managed by an individual household would be coppiced or pollarded. A lot of wood was also grown as line plantings around farmyards, fields and meadows, near buildings, and along paths, roads and waterways. Here, lopped trees and shrubs could also appear in the form of hedgerows, thickly planted hedges. [8]

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Hedge landscape in Normandy, France, around 1940. Image: W Wolny, public domain.

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Line plantings in Flanders, Belgium. Detail from the Ferraris map, 1771-78. 

Although line plantings are usually associated with the use of hedgerows in England, they were common in large parts of Europe. In 1804, English historian Abbé Mann expressed his surprise when he wrote about his trip to Flanders (today part of Belgium): “All fields are enclosed with hedges, and thick set with trees, insomuch that the whole face of the country, seen from a little height, seems one continued wood”. Typical for the region was the large number of pollarded trees. [8]

Like coppice forests, line plantings were diverse and provided people with firewood, construction materials and leaf fodder. However, unlike coppice forests, they had extra functions because of their specific location. [9] One of these was plot separation: keeping farm animals in, and keeping wild animals or cattle grazing on common lands out. Various techniques existed to make hedgerows impenetrable, even for small animals such as rabbits. Around meadows, hedgerows or rows of very closely planted pollarded trees (“pollarded tree hedges”) could stop large animals such as cows. If willow wicker was braided between them, such a line planting could also keep small animals out. [8]

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Detail of a yew hedge. Image: Geert Van der Linden. 

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Hedgerow. Image: Geert Van der Linden. 

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Pollarded tree hedge in Nieuwekerken, Belgium. Image: Geert Van der Linden.

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Coppice stools in a pasture. Image: Jan Bastiaens.

Trees and line plantings also offered protection against the weather. Line plantings protected fields, orchards and vegetable gardens against the wind, which could erode the soil and damage the crops. In warmer climates, trees could shield crops from the sun and fertilize the soil. Pollarded lime trees, which have very dense foliage, were often planted right next to wattle-and-daub buildings in order to protect them from wind, rain and sun. [10]

Dunghills were protected by one or more trees, preventing the valuable resource from evaporating due to sun or wind. In the yard of a watermill, the wooden water wheel was shielded by a tree to prevent the wood from shrinking or expanding in times of drought or inactivity. [8]

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A pollarded tree protects a water wheel. Image: Geert Van der Linden. 

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Pollarded lime trees protect a farm building in Nederbrakel, Belgium. Image: Geert Van der Linden.

Location Matters

Along paths, roads and waterways, line plantings had many of the same location-specific functions as on farms. Cattle and pigs were hoarded over dedicated droveways lined with hedgerows, coppices and/or pollards. When the railroads appeared, line plantings prevented collisions with animals. They protected road travellers from the weather, and marked the route so that people and animals would not get off the road in a snowy landscape. They prevented soil erosion at riverbanks and hollow roads.

All functions of line plantings could be managed by dead wood fences, which can be moved more easily than hedgerows, take up less space, don’t compete for light and food with crops, and can be ready in a short time. [11] However, in times and places were wood was scarce a living hedge was often preferred (and sometimes obliged) because it was a continuous wood producer, while a dead wood fence was a continuous wood consumer. A dead wood fence may save space and time on the spot, but it implies that the wood for its construction and maintenance is grown and harvested elsewhere in the surroundings.

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Image: Pollarded tree hedge in Belgium. Image: Geert Van der Linden.

Local use of wood resources was maximised. For example, the tree that was planted next to the waterwheel, was not just any tree. It was red dogwood or elm, the wood that was best suited for constructing the interior gearwork of the mill. When a new part was needed for repairs, the wood could be harvested right next to the mill. Likewise, line plantings along dirt roads were used for the maintenance of those roads. The shoots were tied together in bundles and used as a foundation or to fill up holes. Because the trees were coppiced or pollarded and not cut down, no function was ever at the expense of another.

Nowadays, when people advocate for the planting of trees, targets are set in terms of forested area or the number of trees, and little attention is given to their location – which could even be on the other side of the world. However, as these examples show, planting trees closeby and in the right location can significantly optimise their potential.

Shaped by Limits

Coppicing has largely disappeared in industrial societies, although pollarded trees can still be found along streets and in parks. Their prunings, which once sustained entire communities, are now considered waste products. If it worked so well, why was coppicing abandoned as a source of energy, materials and food? The answer is short: fossil fuels. Our forebears relied on coppice because they had no access to fossil fuels, and we don’t rely on coppice because we have.

Our forebears relied on coppice because they had no access to fossil fuels, and we don’t rely on coppice because we have

Most obviously, fossil fuels have replaced wood as a source of energy and materials. Coal, gas and oil took the place of firewood for cooking, space heating, water heating and industrial processes based on thermal energy. Metal, concrete and brick – materials that had been around for many centuries – only became widespread alternatives to wood after they could be made with fossil fuels, which also brought us plastics. Artificial fertilizers – products of fossil fuels – boosted the supply and the global trade of animal fodder, making leaf fodder obsolete. The mechanisation of agriculture – driven by fossil fuels – led to farming on much larger plots along with the elimination of trees and line plantings on farms.

Less obvious, but at least as important, is that fossil fuels have transformed forestry itself. Nowadays, the harvesting, processing and transporting of wood is heavily supported by the use of fossil fuels, while in earlier times they were entirely based on human and animal power – which themselves get their fuel from biomass. It was the limitations of these power sources that created and shaped coppice management all over the world.

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Harvesting wood from pollarded trees in Belgium, 1947. Credit: Zeylemaker, Co., Nationaal Archief (CCO)

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Transporting firewood in the Basque Country. Source: Notes on pollards: best practices’ guide for pollarding. Gipuzkoaka Foru Aldundía-Diputación Foral de Giuzkoa, 2014.

Wood was harvested and processed by hand, using simple tools such as knives, machetes, billhooks, axes and (later) saws. Because the labour requirements of harvesting trees by hand increase with stem diameter, it was cheaper and more convenient to harvest many small branches instead of cutting down a few large trees. Furthermore, there was no need to split coppiced wood after it was harvested. Shoots were cut to a length of around one metre, and tied together in “faggots”, which were an easy size to handle manually.

It was the limitations of human and animal power that created and shaped coppice management all over the world

To transport firewood, our forebears relied on animal drawn carts over often very bad roads. This meant that, unless it could be transported over water, firewood had to be harvested within a radius of at most 15-30 km from the place where it was used. [12] Beyond those distances, the animal power required for transporting the firewood was larger than its energy content, and it would have made more sense to grow firewood on the pasture that fed the draft animal. [13] There were some exceptions to this rule. Some industrial activities, like iron and potash production, could be moved to more distant forests – transporting iron or potash was more economical than transporting the firewood required for their production. However, in general, coppice forests (and of course also line plantings) were located in the immediate vicinity of the settlement where the wood was used.

In short, coppicing appeared in a context of limits. Because of its faster growth and versatile use of space, it maximised the local wood supply of a given area. Because of its use of small branches, it made manual harvesting and transporting as economical and convenient as possible.

Can Coppicing be Mechanised?

From the twentieth century onwards, harvesting was done by motor saw, and since the 1980s, wood is increasingly harvested by powerful vehicles that can fell entire trees and cut them on the spot in a matter of minutes. Fossil fuels have also brought better transportation infrastructures, which have unlocked wood reserves that were inaccessible in earlier times. Consequently, firewood can now be grown on one side of the planet and consumed at the other.

The use of fossil fuels adds carbon emissions to what used to be a completely carbon neutral activity, but much more important is that it has pushed wood production to a larger – unsustainable – scale. [14] Fossil fueled transportation has destroyed the connection between supply and demand that governed local forestry. If the wood supply is limited, a community has no other choice than to make sure that the wood harvest rate and the wood renewal rate are in balance. Otherwise, it risks running out of fuelwood, craft wood and animal fodder, and it would be abandoned.

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Mechanically harvested willow coppice plantation. Shortly after coppicing (right), 3-years old growth (left). Image: Lignovis GmbH (CC BY-SA 4.0). 

Likewise, fully mechanised harvesting has pushed forestry to a scale that is incompatible with sustainable forest management. Our forebears did not cut down large trees for firewood, because it was not economical. Today, the forest industry does exactly that because mechanisation makes it the most profitable thing to do. Compared to industrial forestry, where one worker can harvest up to 60 m3 of wood per hour, coppicing is extremely labour-intensive. Consequently, it cannot compete in an economic system that fosters the replacement of human labour with machines powered by fossil fuels.

Coppicing cannot compete in an economic system that fosters the replacement of human labour with machines powered by fossil fuels

Some scientists and engineers have tried to solve this by demonstrating coppice harvesting machines. [15] However, mechanisation is a slippery slope. The machines are only practical and economical on somewhat larger tracts of woodland (>1 ha) which contain coppiced trees of the same species and the same age, with only one purpose (often fuelwood for power generation). As we have seen, this excludes many older forms of coppice management, such as the use of multipurpose trees and line plantings. Add fossil fueled transportation to the mix, and the result is a type of industrial coppice management that brings few improvements.

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Coppiced trees along a brook in ‘s Gravenvoeren, Belgium. Image: Geert Van der Linden. 

Sustainable forest management is essentially local and manual. This doesn’t mean that we need to copy the past to make biomass energy sustainable again. For example, the radius of the wood supply could be increased by low energy transport options, such as cargo bikes and aerial ropeways, which are much more efficient than horse or ox drawn carts over bad roads, and which could be operated without fossil fuels. Hand tools have also improved in terms of efficiency and ergonomics. We could even use motor saws that run on biofuels – a much more realistic application than their use in car engines. [16]

The Past Lives On

This article has compared industrial biomass production with historical forms of forest management in Europe, but in fact there was no need to look to the past for inspiration. The 40% of the global population consisting of people in poor societies that still burn wood for cooking and water and/or space heating, are no clients of industrial forestry. Instead, they obtain firewood in much of the same ways that we did in earlier times, although the tree species and the environmental conditions can be very different. [17]

A 2017 study calculated that the wood consumption by people in “developing” societies – good for 55% of the global wood harvest and 9-15% of total global energy consumption – only causes 2-8% of anthropogenic climate impacts. [18] Why so little? Because around two-thirds of the wood that is harvested in developing societies is harvested sustainably, write the scientists. People collect mainly dead wood, they grow a lot of wood outside the forest, they coppice and pollard trees, and they prefer the use of multipurpose trees, which are too valuable to cut down. The motives are the same as those of our ancestors: people have no access to fossil fuels and are thus tied to a local wood supply, which needs to be harvested and transported manually.

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African women carrying firewood. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

These numbers confirm that it is not biomass energy that’s unsustainable. If the whole of humanity would live as the 40% that still burns biomass regularly, climate change would not be an issue. What is really unsustainable is a high energy lifestyle. We can obviously not sustain a high-tech industrial society on coppice forests and line plantings alone. But the same is true for any other energy source, including uranium and fossil fuels.

Written by Kris De Decker. Proofread by Alice Essam.

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References:

[1] Multiple references:

Unrau, Alicia, et al. Coppice forests in Europe. University of Freiburg, 2018.

Notes on pollards: best practices’ guide for pollarding. Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia-Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa, 2014.

A study of practical pollarding techniques in Northern Europe. Report of a three month study tour August to November 2003, Helen J. Read.

Aarden wallen in Europa, in “Tot hier en niet verder: historische wallen in het Nederlandse landschap”, Henk Baas, Bert Groenewoudt, Pim Jungerius and Hans Renes, Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, 2012.

[2] Logan, William Bryant. Sprout lands: tending the endless gift of trees. WW Norton & Company, 2019.

[3] Holišová, Petra, et al. “Comparison of assimilation parameters of coppiced and non-coppiced sessile oaks“. Forest-Biogeosciences and Forestry 9.4 (2016): 553.

[4] Perlin, John. A forest journey: the story of wood and civilization. The Countryman Press, 2005.

[5] Most of this information comes from a Belgian publication (in Dutch language): Handleiding voor het inventariseren van houten beplantingen met erfgoedwaarde. Geert Van der Linden, Nele Vanmaele, Koen Smets en Annelies Schepens, Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed, 2020. For a good (but concise) reference in English, see Rotherham, Ian. Ancient Woodland: history, industry and crafts. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.

[6] While leaf fodder was used all over Europe, it was especially widespread in mountainous regions, such as Scandinavia, the Alps and the Pyrenees. For example, in Sweden in 1850, 1.3 million sheep and goats consumed a total of 190 million sheaves annually, for which at least 1 million hectares deciduous woodland was exploited, often in the form of pollards. The harvest of leaf fodder predates the use of hay as winter fodder. Branches could be cut with stone tools, while cutting grass requires bronze or iron tools. While most coppicing and pollarding was done in winter, harvesting leaf fodder logically happened in summer. Bundles of leaf fodder were often put in the pollarded trees to dry. References:Logan, William Bryant. Sprout lands: tending the endless gift of trees. WW Norton & Company, 2019.

A study of practical pollarding techniques in Northern Europe. Report of a three month study tour August to November 2003, Helen J. Read.

Slotte H., “Harvesting of leaf hay shaped the Swedish landscape“, Landscape Ecology 16.8 (2001): 691-702.

[7] Wealleans, Alexandra L. “Such as pigs eat: the rise and fall of the pannage pig in the UK“. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 93.9 (2013): 2076-2083.

[8] This information is based on several Dutch language publications:Handleiding voor het inventariseren van houten beplantingen met erfgoedwaarde. Geert Van der Linden, Nele Vanmaele, Koen Smets en Annelies Schepens, Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed, 2020.

Handleiding voor het beheer van hagen en houtkanten met erfgoedwaarde. Thomas Van Driessche, Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed, 2019

Knotbomen, knoestige knapen: een praktische gids. Geert Van der Linden, Jos Schenk, Bert Geeraerts, Provincie Vlaams-Brabant, 2017.

Handleiding: Het beheer van historische dreven en wegbeplantingen. Thomas Van Driessche, Paul Van den Bremt and Koen Smets. Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed, 2017.

Dirkmaat, Jaap. Nederland weer mooi: op weg naar een natuurlijk en idyllisch landschap. ANWB Media-Boeken & Gidsen, 2006.

For a good source in English, see: Müller, Georg. Europe’s Field Boundaries: Hedged banks, hedgerows, field walls (stone walls, dry stone walls), dead brushwood hedges, bent hedges, woven hedges, wattle fences and traditional wooden fences. Neuer Kunstverlag, 2013.

If line plantings were mainly used for wood production, they were planted at some distance from each other, allowing more light and thus a higher wood production. If they were mainly used as plot boundaries, they were planted more closely together. This diminished the wood harvest but allowed for a thicker growth.

[9] In fact, coppice forests could also have a location-specific function: they could be placed around a city or settlement to form an impenetrable obstacle for attackers, either by foot or by horse. They could not easily be destroyed by shooting, in contrast to a wall. Source: [5]

[10] Lime trees were even used for fire prevention. They were planted right next to the baking house in order to stop the spread of sparks to wood piles, haystacks and thatched roofs. Source: [5]

[11]  The fact that living hedges and trees are harder to move than dead wood fences and posts also has practical advantages. In Europe until the French era, there was no land register and boundaries where physically indicated in the landscape. The surveyor’s work was sealed with the planting of a tree, which is much harder to move on the sly than a pole or a fence. Source: [5]

[12] And, if it could be brought in over water from longer distances, the wood had to be harvested within 15-30 km of the river or coast.

[13] Sieferle, Rolf Pieter. The Subterranean Forest: energy systems and the industrial revolution. White Horse Press, 2001.

[14] On different scales of wood production, see also:

Jalas, Mikko, and Jenny, Rinkinen. “Stacking wood and staying warm: time, temporality and housework around domestic heating systems“, Journal of Consumer Culture 16.1 (2016): 43-60.

Rinkinen, Jenny. “Demanding energy in everyday life: insights from wood heating into theories of social practice.” (2015).

[15] Vanbeveren, S.P.P., et al. “Operational short rotation woody crop plantations: manual or mechanised harvesting?” Biomass and Bioenergy 72 (2015): 8-18.

[16] However, chainsaws can have adverse effects on some tree species, such as reduced growth or greater ability to transfer disease.

[17] Multiple sources that refer to traditional forestry practices in Africa:

Leach, Gerald, and Robin Mearns. Beyond the woodfuel crisis: people, land and trees in Africa. Earthscan, 1988.

Leach, Melissa, and Robin Mearns. “The lie of the land: challenging received wisdom on the African environment.” (1998)

Cline-Cole, Reginald A. “Political economy, fuelwood relations, and vegetation conservation: Kasar Kano, Northerm Nigeria, 1850-1915.” Forest & Conservation History 38.2 (1994): 67-78.

[18] Multiple references:Bailis, Rob, et al. “Getting the number right: revisiting woodfuel sustainability in the developing world.” Environmental Research Letters 12.11 (2017): 115002

Masera, Omar R., et al. “Environmental burden of traditional bioenergy use.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 40 (2015): 121-150.

Study downgrades climate impact of wood burning, John Upton, Climate Central, 2015.

[19] Haustingsskog. [revidert] Rettleiar for restaurering og skjøtsel, Garnås, Ingvill; Hauge, Leif ; Svalheim, Ellen, NIBIO RAPPORT | VOL. 4 | NR. 150 | 2018. 

 

Claims Against Meat Fail to Consider Bigger Picture

     by Richard Young – SFT Policy Director / Sustainable Food Trust

Media attention has again highlighted the carbon footprint of eating meat, especially beef, with some journalists concluding that extensive grass-based beef has the highest carbon footprint of all. SFT policy director, Richard Young has been investigating and finds that while the carbon footprint of a year’s consumption of beef and lamb in the UK is high, it is nevertheless responsible for less emissions than SFT chief executive Patrick Holden’s economy class flight to the EAT forum in Stockholm this week.

A recent, very comprehensive, research paper by Poore and Nemecek from Oxford University and Agroscope, a large research company in Switzerland, has again drawn attention to the rising demand for meat, resulting from population growth and increasing affluence in some developing countries. Looked at from a global perspective the figures appear stark. The study claims that livestock production accounts for 83% of global farmland and produces 56-58% of the greenhouse gas emissions from food, but only contributes 37% of our protein intake and 18% of calories. As such, it’s perhaps not so surprising that concerned journalists come up with coverage like the Guardian’s, Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth. This is part of a series of articles, some of which have been balanced, but most of which have largely promoted vegan and vegetarian agendas with little broader consideration of the issues.

The question of what we should eat to reduce our devastating impact on the environment, while also reducing the incidence of the diet-related diseases which threaten to overwhelm the NHS and other healthcare systems, is one of the most important we face. Yet, the debate so far has been extremely limited and largely dominated by those with little if any practical experience of food production or what actually constitutes food system sustainability.

I’ve lost count of the number of food campaigners who’ve told me that all we need to do to make food production sustainable is to stop eating meat. Really? What about the environmental impact of palm oil, soya bean oil, rape oil and even sunflower oil production; the over-enrichment of the environment from nitrogen fertiliser; the decline in pollinating insects; the use of pesticides with known harmful impacts that would have been banned years ago were it not for the fact that intensive crop and vegetable growers can’t produce food without them?

What also about the growing problem of soil degradation, not just in the countries from which we import food, but right here in the UK? Environment Secretary Michael Gove himself has warned that we are 30-40 years away from running out of soil fertility on large parts of our arable land. With only minor exceptions, soil degradation is not a problem on UK grasslands.

Contrary to popular belief, continuous crop production is not sustainable. That’s the mistake made by the Sumerians 5,000 years ago in what is now Iraq, and the Romans in North Africa 2,000 years ago, and in both cases the soils have never recovered. Far from abandoning livestock farming on UK grassland, we actually need to reintroduce grass and grazing animals into arable crop rotations. Despite the drop in demand for red meat in the UK (beef consumption down 4% and lamb consumption down more than 30% since 2000), at least one leading conventional farmer has now publicly recognised the agronomic need for grazed grass breaks. Even before there has been any encouragement in policy, I am aware that some arable farmers are already being forced to re-introduce grass and livestock because they can no longer control arable weeds like blackgrass, sterile brome and couch (twitch), which have become resistant to the in-crop herbicides repeatedly applied to them in all-arable rotations.

Grazing livestock and nature conservation

Seemingly oblivious of these issues, George Monbiot in The best way to save the planet? Drop meat and dairy, on Friday, June 8, also used the research study as evidence to support his claim that if we all gave up meat and dairy we’d be able to re-wild grasslands and live happily by eating more imported soya. Giving up livestock farming would, he believes, allow “many rich ecosystems destroyed by livestock farming to recover, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, protecting watersheds and halting the sixth great extinction in its tracks.”

He quoted a passage from the Poore and Nemecek research paper which states that the environmental impacts of converting grass into human-edible protein are “immense under any production method practiced today”. However, ‘immense’ is a subjective adjective. There are many things we do which have far higher negative impacts, most of which are non-essential and do not bring with them the unique benefits that come from grazing animals. Letters responding to the Guardian’s series of articles drew attention to some of these, including issues previously publicised by the Guardian itself.

What about meat and wildlife?

It’s true, and a very great concern, that human activity is destroying the natural world in a completely unsustainable way. The growing of grain crops specifically for intensive livestock is clearly part of the problem, as is highly intensive grassland farming. However, blaming meat consumption so specifically lets an awful lot of practices off the hook. When one considers the rabbits, hares, deer, moles and wild birds killed each year to protect food crops, and the decline in hedgehog and other small mammal numbers since the 1950s – in part due to the removal of hedgerows to make fields larger for crop production – plant-based diets could even be responsible for the deaths of as many mammals and birds as animals slaughtered from the livestock sector.

Since we were (mistakenly in my view) encouraged to switch from animal to vegetable fats 35 years ago, we’ve also consumed and used ever-greater quantities of palm oil from south-east Asia. Its production has been responsible for the near annihilation of many species, including orangutans, pigmy elephants and Sumatran elephants, rhinos and tigers. With demand still growing, similar pressures are now building in equatorial countries in Africa and South America where palm oil production is also taking off. The scientists behind some of the most recent research on species decline blame “human overpopulation and continued population growth, and overconsumption, especially by the rich”, rather than livestock production specifically.

The importance of livestock grazing for wild plants and animals

We also need to remember that many important plant and wildlife species have evolved in tandem with grazing animals and depend on them for their survival, a point made very strongly by Natural England in their report, The Importance of Livestock Grazing for Wildlife Conservation. This is a key reason why the RSPB uses cattle on its reserves, and states that livestock farming is “essential to preserving wildlife and [the] character of iconic landscapes”. And while overgrazing, encouraged by poorly conceived support schemes, has been a problem in the past, the RSPB is concerned that “undergrazing is now occurring in some areas, with adverse impacts on some species, such as golden plover”, while also “contributing to the spread of ranker grasses, rush, scrub and bracken”. Extensively grazed grasslands also have a wide range of additional benefits. They purify drinking water better than any other land use, and they provide food for pollinating insects at times of year when there is little else available. They also store vast amounts of carbon, which if released through conversion to continuous crop production, would accelerate global warming even faster than it is currently occurring.

Food security

Livestock production may only provide 37% of total protein globally, but it clearly provides significantly more than that in the UK. Two-thirds of UK farmland – if we include common land and rough grazing – is under grass, most of that for important environmental reasons. Only 12% of this (8% of total farmland) is classified as arable, meaning that it may, under current EU rules, be ploughed for cropping. Much of this is on farms which grow grass in rotation with crops to build fertility naturally and control weeds, pests and diseases, so when one field of arable grassland is ploughed up another is generally re-sown with grass. If we were to stop grazing cattle and sheep on this land, we would greatly reduce our food security and make ourselves vulnerable, if, for example, extreme weather due to climate change, or a new crop disease were to reduce global soya yields. We would also need to import a very great deal more food, because as I have previously shown, cattle consume only about 5% of the 3.1 million tonnes of soya oil, beans and meal we import (1.1 million tonnes of the 3.1 million tonnes imported is fed to livestock, of which cattle consume only 15%) and sheep consume very little indeed.

The problem with global averages

So far, I’ve rather ducked the key issue of the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production. Before we can make much progress on this we need first to consider the issue of global average emission figures. Looking at global averages and drawing conclusions from them isn’t actually very helpful. Essentially a small proportion of grazing livestock animals cover a high proportion of the land area and emit a high proportion of the greenhouse gases, while producing only a very small proportion of the meat and milk. The authors of the research paper say, “For many products, impacts are skewed by producers with particularly high impacts…..for beef originating from beef herds, the highest impact 25% of producers represent 65% of the beef herds’ GHG emissions and 61% of land use.”

Simplistically, we might think the obvious answer is to eliminate the 25% of producers who are causing such a large part of the problem. However, this 25% of producers mostly live in dryland regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, areas which often have very poor soils and low rainfall. As such their animals grow very slowly, but it is claimed, still produce a lot of methane, because they have to eat very poor-quality herbage. No doubt, people living in the Global South could reduce their carbon footprint from food significantly if they gave up meat and dairy, but they would also very quickly starve.

Approximately a quarter of the global population live in dryland regions where severe droughts are an ever-present threat. Farming families, depending entirely on crops, would have no food at all when the rains fail. In contrast, animals put on flesh in the better years and provide a substantial buffer against starvation, since they can be slaughtered and eaten one by one over significant periods of time in drought years. It also has to be pointed out that unlike many of us in the Global North, who mostly have cars, central heating and fly abroad, the emissions associated with meat consumption in the drylands in the Global South are more or less the only carbon footprint these people have, and amount to just a small fraction of our own.

This aspect also helps us to see how misleading even the headlines on the percentage of land used for livestock production can be, when the very large areas of land in dryland regions are averaged with the grasslands in more fertile regions.

It is also significant that global averages cited by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation in Livestock’s Long Shadow in 2006 (and two other reports in 2013) were dramatically increased by the inclusion of the emissions associated with the destruction of rainforest and virgin land for cattle grazing and soya production, most of which took place before 2005. These were tragic events with multiple causes, but ones which have little relevance to grazing livestock production and beef consumption in the UK, where the predominant land use changes occurring at the time were entirely in the opposite direction – the conversion of grassland to crop production and the planting of trees.

Beef and sheep production in Northern Europe, especially the UK and Ireland, is highly productive and this greatly reduces the carbon footprint of beef and lamb in these regions. These countries have climates and soil types ideally suited to growing grass and only marginally suited to crop production. So using global average figures for the UK also tells us nothing of value.

The scientific debate

I have written to a number of scientists about these issues over the last week, including one of the authors of the research paper, Joseph Poore. Both he and I recognise that there are huge differences in the emissions associated with beef produced in different production systems and that an objective should be to improve systems, wherever possible, to reduce their carbon footprint. While the headlines have focused on the worst examples – beef linked to emissions of between 40 and 210 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilo – the research study does actually provide data for the second most productive category of beef production which emit 18.2 kg of CO2 per kilo of beef produced.

For anyone not familiar with how these figures are obtained it may help to know that despite being expressed in terms of the greenhouse gas (GHG) CO2, the emissions from beef mostly relate to methane (CH4) and to a lesser extent nitrous oxide (N2O). In order to compare emissions from different sources, these are expressed in terms of CO2 equivalent, based on the relative global warming impacts of the different GHGs, CH4 and N2O, approximately 30 and 300 times higher, respectively, than CO2.

The figures cited in the research paper are global close-to-best, overall average and close-to-worst, but in correspondence, Poore has helpfully given me further information, which shows that beef from the UK dairy herd is typically responsible for emissions in the range 17-27 kg CO2 per kilo. I’ll express this as an average of 22kg CO2 per kilo of beef to make the calculations later on, less complex. While it is generally assumed that dairy beef has lower emissions than suckler beef, and that could be the case on farms with late maturing cattle, figures for the 100% organic grass-fed beef produced on my own farm suggest that emissions are no higher than 17 kg per kilo of beef, and may even be lower – I can’t do a complete calculation because I don’t have figures for all aspects, for example, the electricity costs at the abattoir where our animals are slaughtered and refrigerated before being brought back to our butchers shop, or the GHG costs of making our hay.

Methane

Despite all this, we cannot pretend that the direct greenhouse gases from grass-fed beef are insignificant.  Nevertheless, methane (CH4) breaks down (largely in the atmosphere, and to a lesser extent in soils not receiving ammonium-based nitrogen fertilisers) to CO2 and water after about 10 years. If we contrast grassland with little or no nitrogen fertiliser use with food systems which depend heavily on nitrogen fertiliser, the carbon in the CO2 and the CH4 from grass-fed ruminants is recycled, not fossil, carbon. Ruminants can’t add more to the atmosphere than the plants they eat can photosynthesise from the atmosphere.

The high methane levels in the atmosphere are a very serious problem, but they have become a problem not so much because of cattle and sheep – the numbers of which have increased only modestly over the last 40 years – but because of fossil fuels. Taken together, the fossil fuels, oil, natural gas and coal are not only by far the biggest source of the major GHG CO2, they are also responsible for about a third more methane emissions than ruminants – and all the carbon in that CH4 is, of course, additional carbon that has been stored away deep underground for the last 400 million years. That’s all based on long-established data. But a more recent study analysing the relative amounts of the isotopes carbon12 and carbon14, which vary according to the source of the methane, has found that scientists have previously under-estimated methane emissions from fossil fuels by 20-60% and over-estimated those from microbial sources, such as the rumen bacteria which produce methane, by 25%. That doesn’t affect the figures in Poore and Nemecek’s paper, but it does help us to see more clearly the relative importance of reducing fossil fuel use compared with red meat consumption. In that respect, re-localising food systems, discouraging supermarkets from centralising their distribution networks, consuming the foods most readily produced in the UK and minimising imports would surely be a good start?

Soil carbon sequestration

Unlike some leading campaigners and scientists who call for big reductions in ruminant numbers and largely dismiss the significance of soil carbon sequestration, Poore and Nemecek accept that carbon sequestration under grassland can, under certain circumstances, for a finite period, offset a significant proportion of the emissions from cattle and sheep. According to them the maximum extent of this is a reduction of just over one-fifth (22%) of the emissions. However, since they cite no UK-specific data in their study it is not clear whether this has any relevance to the UK or whether it is simply a global average.

About half of soil organic matter is made up of carbon. The rest is mostly nitrogen and water. Organic matter is critically important to long term soil resilience and water-holding ability. The general assumption amongst scientists is that organic matter levels fall, year on year when grassland is converted to cropland, and eventually stabilise at a new lower level on clay-based soils after a century or more. Peat-based and sandy soils are an exception as. In contrast, the conversion of croplands to grass will rebuild that carbon over broadly the same period. Overstocked land will also lose carbon. Ley/arable rotations will see levels go up and down depending on the phase of the rotation and the proportion of arable to grass crops.

As such, long-established, many well managed soils under permanent grassland in the UK are probably already close to their maximum potential level of carbon. However, virtually all heavily stocked UK grasslands have the potential to sequester more carbon if their management is improved and all croplands could steadily regain carbon if they were converted to grass or to rotations including grass breaks. Since a third of soils globally are significantly degraded and another 20% moderately degraded the global potential for carbon sequestration is considerable.

Confusion has arisen due to the very significant variation between the rates of sequestration found in many studies. However, a review of 42 studies in 2014 found that more than half these differences could be explained by considering whether or not livestock manures were returned to the land. It seems likely, based on other research, that much of the remaining differences will relate to land management, stocking levels and precipitation levels. Deeper rooting grasses, legumes and herbs also have the potential to increase carbon down to much greater depths than the most widely used ryegrasses which are shallow-rooting.

Undertaking a calculation

Can we find a way of relating the emissions associated with beef to other things we do to get some idea of their relative significance? I’ll use the average 22 kg of CO2 for beef from the UK dairy herd (established above) as it’s the only solid figure I have for the UK. In 2015 and 2016, according the AHDB’s UK yearbook – cattle, average beef consumption per person in the UK was 18.2 kg and average consumption of lamb was 4.9 kg. So we can now undertake a calculation to establish the carbon footprint of a typical beef and lamb consumer.

  • Beef 18.2 x 22 = 400.4 kg carbon dioxide equivalent
  • Lamb 4.9 x 25 = 122 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (based on figures in the study)

On this basis an average British beef and lamb consumer is responsible for the equivalent of 522 kg of CO2, as a result of their red meat consumption. This doesn’t of course include the emissions associated with chicken and pork, but to get some idea of whether giving up red meat is the single most important thing you can do to save the planet, I used an online calculator to work out how much CO2 was emitted as a result of SFT chief executive Patrick Holden’s return flight from Heathrow to Stockholm for the 2018 EAT forum this week. That comes to 466 kg of CO2. Undertaking a similar exercise for the round trip journey by car from his farm in Wales to Heathrow adds another 110 kg, making a total of 576 kg carbon dioxide, for one trip to a nearby country, compared with 522 kg for a whole year’s worth of red meat eating.

One question which therefore arises from this is whether the repeated focus on red meat as a source of global warming is misleading the entire population into assuming that providing they don’t eat red meat they can travel abroad as much as they like with a clear conscience? It’s of note that a roundtrip from Heathrow to San Francisco is equivalent to about 5 year’s-worth of beef and lamb produced in the UK – and quite a few of the vegetarian and vegan campaigners at the EAT forum had come from the US.

Why we need grazing livestock

More than all these issues, however, the SFT defends the role of grazing animals, as we know from years of practical farming experience that systems with cattle or sheep at their core are able to remain highly productive, repair degraded soils and avoid the GHG emissions associated with the manufacture of nitrogen fertiliser, equivalent to about 8 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of nitrogen used. Farmers growing bread-making wheat and oilseed rape in the UK use up to 250 kg of nitrogen per hectare, meaning that each hectare puts GHGs equivalent to 2 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, just in relation to nitrogen. About half of this nitrogen is lost to the environment and has a wide range of negative impacts on soils, water, the air and on our health. This diffuse pollution has major negative costs for society, estimated by scientists to be 2-3 times higher than the commercial benefits farmers get from using nitrogen fertiliser.

In contrast, using forage legumes, like clover, instead, allows nitrogen to be built up in the soil under grazing swards without any GHG emissions. This can then be exploited to grow crops in subsequent years, before going back to grass and clover. Such grassland systems are almost as productive as those using the highest rates of nitrogen fertiliser. Grain yields are lower, but if we move away from grain-fed livestock that won’t matter. Grain legumes like beans and peas do also fix some nitrogen naturally, but it is not enough to make a significant contribution to reducing nitrogen use in subsequent crops. In addition, not all cropland in the UK is suitable for growing peas, and it’s not possible to grow beans more than one year in five, even with repeated applications of herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.

In conclusion

Clearly there are significant emissions associated with meat production, and it may well be that, in general, grass-fed beef has slightly higher direct emissions than grain-fed beef. I can see big advantages, both environmental and ethical in reducing the production and consumption of grain-fed meat, be it chicken, pork or beef. But there is an overwhelmingly important case why we should continue to produce and eat meat from animals predominantly reared on grass, especially when it is species-rich and not fertilised with nitrogen out of a bag.

Yet, while a few farmers are trying their best to counter the prevailing trends by producing organic or grass-fed meat, far more cattle are now being housed in American-style feedlots, as recently exposed by the Guardian. Ironically this trend is occurring largely due to the failure of scientists, journalists and campaigners to understand the full significance of the differences between farming systems, and therefore the red meat which brings major benefits as well as a few negative impacts, compared with that which only has negative impacts. Due to falling demand for red meat, smaller, more traditional farmers are being forced to choose between giving up – something which has now affected tens of thousands of them – and intensifying, in order to cut costs and stay in business. I very much hope we can find a way to broaden understanding of these issues, because if we can’t, we will see the further spread of most intensive beef systems and we will lose the iconic pastoral character of the British countryside.

Copyright © 2018 with Richard Young, republished with permission. The Sustainable Food Trust is a UK registered charity, charity number 1148645. Company number 7577102.

India: A Changing Landscape for the Bonda Highlanders

India: A Changing Landscape for the Bonda Highlanders

Featured image: Typical Bonda house in Baunsupada village. The Bondas have always led sustainable lives in the forest, but deforestation and changes in traditional farming practices now threaten their survival. Photo: Abhijit Mohanty. 

     by  / Intercontinental Cry

The road to Bondaghati winds through the hills and forests of Malkangiri district, on Odisha’s southern edge. As you enter the area, the tar road fizzles out into multiple footpaths leading towards Bonda villages with thatch and clay tile huts. The area is popularly known as Bondaghati because it is home to one of India’s particularly vulnerable tribes – the Bonda. There are 32 villages covering around 130 square kilometres. According to the census 2011, there are around 12000 Bonda populations.

The Bonda houses are arranged one above the other in uneven terraces. Raibaru Sisa, of Bondapada village, explains that “before the construction of a new house, we consult with our traditional astrologer. He performs a divination to find out the suitability and auspiciousness of the proposed site. Only after the identification of an ideal site for the house by the astrologer, we start constructing our house.”

 The once-dense forests of Bondaghati sustained the Bonda for centuries. The forest provided fire wood, grazing land and forest produce such as fruits, tubers,  roots, honey, mushrooms, medicinal herbs that they could barter.  There was an abundance of wild boar, barking deer, spotted deer, sloth bears, leopards and birds. As Bonda Sombaru Sisa says, “The forest is our home. If there will be no forest, our community will vanish in no time.”

Over the last two decades, this home has shrunk, wildlife is seldom seen and the community’s dependence on the land has become tenuous. “Now we have to cover more distance to collect firewood, forest produce, and to graze our cattle. Earlier, the forest was dense and located near our village, but now, even after walking kilometres together, we find very few resources,” Budhbari Sisa, a Bonda woman laments.

Firewood is mostly collected by the Bonda women for cooking. Photo: Abhijit Mohanty

In the Bonda community, women are everywhere – gathering forest produce, tilling the land and watching over the crops. They practice shifting cultivation on the slopes – on patches of unevenly terraced plots called birhi land – staying in one place for three to five years before moving on. They begin in December by clearing the bushes and shrubs and in February they set fire to the undergrowth. As a rule they don’t burn fruit-bearing trees like mango, tamarind and jackfruit. In the monsoon month of July, sowing by dibbling begins – millet, paddy, pulses, oilseeds and a few vegetables. “We watch the crops day and night, staying in field huts raised on shifting plots,” says Raibari Muduli, a Bonda woman of Dantipada village.

Bondas eat a range of millets and can survive a drought with traditional hardy varieties. Many of their parabs (festivals) revolve around harvests and hunting. The year begins with Magh Parab in January to mark the ceremonial eating of new rice and the selection of village functionaries.

Bonda Women at the local weekly market at Mudulipada. Photo: Abhijit Mohanty

The biggest festival is Chait Parab held through March to celebrate eating the first mango and the start of the annual hunting season. Though all the festivals are important for the Bondas, Chait Parab holds a unique place in the community.

“Men and boys go out into the forest for the annual hunt. If we come back without anything, we cannot show our faces to others. Therefore, no animal escapes from us. If we get nothing else, we even kill a jackal. Women dance and sing whole day in the streets and in village commons” Dhanurjay Sisa of Kichapada village says.

The contour of changes

The typical Bonda language–known as Remo–is now an endangered tongue because more Bondas are getting familiar with Odia as their primary language of communication. The absence of a script or text for Remo adds to the threat of its extinction. It is also assumed that their rich indigenous wisdom will become a casualty to this loss.

From 1976-77, the government of India set up a Bonda Development Agency in Khairput block. The Integrated Tribal Development Agency was also established in Malkangiri district. They did more harm than good, Jaldhar Muduli says, “Many of our traditional varieties of crops are lost and the yield has reduced. Earlier we used to cultivate a range of millets like ragi, kodo, pearl, little, barnyard along with up-land paddy and pulses on the slopes of the mountain. [The] Government is providing us saplings of fruit orchards, seeds of onion and potato. We cannot survive on these. We need millets, rice to feed our belly. This will give us the strength to work on our Birhi land.”

The Bonda also had strong traditional system for resolving conflicts. In the past, the village council seen was as cultural center of the village and the Naik or village headman would be carefully selected based on seniority and their knowledge of tradition. While performing his duties for the villagers, the Naik would be assisted by the Challan and Barika, village functionaries who were responsible for maintaining law and order in the village.

After a police station was erected at Mudulipada panchayat, the judicial role of the village receded. Now cases of assault and violence are reported directly to the police station. As a result, hundreds of Bondas now languish in jail.

Bonda women usually wear thick, durable skirts called ringa. Their jewellery is headbands made of grass, garlands of coins and colourful beads, metal bangles and rings on their necks. They also shave their heads. The older women believe that by sticking to traditional attire they appease the gods and prevent misfortune.

Laxhma Muduli is busy with her household chores. Photo: Abhijit Mohanty

Laxhma Muduli, of Baunsupada village, says, “We are careful about our attire because we do not like to break our age-old tradition.” But the cheap and easy availability of sarees is inducing younger women to switch over, and further to grow their hair. Men too are changing to shirts and shorts.  Even modern cloths has been distributed by various government departments and some local NGOs.

A young Bonda girl wearing a modern gown instead of their traditional Ringa. Photo: Abhijit Mohanty

As the outsider visitors frequented the Bonda regions, this interaction and curiosity have had its disastrous effects on the culture, tradition, age-old wisdom and low carbon footprint life style of the ever-resourceful Bonda community. On the other hand, the Bonda are largely unaware of their contribution towards widening and enriching the scope of global culture.

In the words of Verrier Elwin, one of the eminent scholar of Tribal Studies in India, “Let us teach them that their (tribal’s) own culture, their own arts are the precious things, that we respect and need. When they feel that they can make a contribution to their country, they will feel part of it.”

Dambaru Sisa is the first Bonda to represent his community in the Legislative Assembly. A graduate in mathematics and law from Berhampur University, he wants to work to protect “the unique culture and tradition of our Bonda tribe while giving them access to education and everything that goes with modern civilization. I do not want framed photographs of my people decorating drawing rooms of the rich,” he says.

“I also do not want to influential people making money from government programs meant to usher in development for Bondas,” concludes Sisa.

Abhijit Mohanty is a Delhi-based development professional. He has extensively worked with the indigenous communities in India, Nepal and Cameroon especially on the issues of land, forest and water.