water | ukwatch.net

Bad Weather, Bad Politics and Catastrophic Economics

eddie — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:03:20 +0000

The world is facing a serious and deteriorating water crisis. This crisis can be attributed in part to population growth and urbanisation, and also to climate change. The quantity of water on and in planet Earth remains more or less stable, though the amount available may rise or fall with overuse, geopolitical change, changes in climate, and technological progress. At the same time, the number of people is growing, as is their concentration in greater numbers in fewer areas. In many parts of the world, moreover, people have become more prosperous, and their water use has risen with their incomes. A warming world is bringing about changes in water availability which are unpredictable and often quite sudden, posing constant problems for those whose task is to ensure that adequate quantities of water get to where they are needed.

The crisis of water is not, however, simply a natural disaster to which we must respond as passive victims. As the recent UN report Water for People, Water for Life emphasises, this crisis is “essentially caused by the ways in which we mismanage water.”

It is often said that water is free, and belongs to us all. This may be the case, but getting it to where it is needed costs money and requires decisions to be made about where that money is to come from. These are political, social, and managerial decisions, and like all such they involve questions of social justice and equity.

Ensuring the extraction of sufficient water from the most appropriate available sources in the face of population growth and changes in economy, technology, politics and climate poses problems for the management of water for drinking, for sanitation, for agriculture and industry, for cooling systems and for a host of other purposes. As things stand, this management is failing, and as a result not only individual human beings but entire communities and their cultures are under threat. It is not failing, moreover, because of human error or incompetence, or because the tasks involved are simply too great or too difficult. It is failing, instead, because of two closely-related phenomena: the subordination of social and environmental goals to the economic interests of powerful corporations; and the failure to develop systems of economic and environmental planning capable of underpinning our survival as a species. This subordination and its accompanying failure of planning are both to a large extent the fault of the European Union. This is true within Europe, but even more so beyond its boundaries, though in the latter case its guilt is shared with that of other representatives of the rich and powerful countries which run the world, and the corporations on behalf of which they run it.

Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency as a result of climate change. Their implications for human societies and the environment of which they form part depend also on political decisions. The effects of climate change are comparable in many ways to the effects of war. It is a violent, disruptive and destructive process, a response to which demands careful decision-making, careful planning, and meticulous implementation of the decisions and plans which result. Total war, in which entire populations are involved, has produced a response in modern times characterised by the socialisation of economic activity and a high degree of state intervention and planning. In addition, in such times, nation and community come to be perceived as unified entities which must be nurtured and preserved. The acceptance of the need for burden-sharing and equitable treatment grows, and economic and social activity becomes directed towards a common goal. Climate change is the result of short-sighted and uninformed economic and political decisions. It is potentially disastrous that it should become manifest at a time when thirty years of propaganda based on distortion of the truth and on downright lies have led to the spread of concepts which reject and contradict such ideas. To the fantasy of “free markets” can be added an individualism and egoism which offers no possible response to the severe problems with which the world is faced.

It is unfortunate that climate change is beginning to have a tangible impact in an era when the huge commitment of public investment and endeavour which would offer the only possibility of a mitigating response are unlikely to be forthcoming. The European Union’s promotion of private ownership of water supplies and its failure, internally, to deal with major problems of waste, particularly through inefficient use of water in agriculture, makes it a cause of the problem rather than a body to which we can look for solutions. The dominant economic ethos in Brussels and almost every EU capital is neo-liberalism, an orthodoxy embodied in every treaty since Maastricht. The spread of neo-liberalism in the epoch of climate change has created a dangerous synergy which threatens to undermine global social and economic stability, leading to ecological catastrophe, disorder, epidemic and war.

It cannot be said that the European Union has failed to show an awareness of the urgency of the problem. Measures to ensure the quality of Europe’s water resources constitute a major body of EU environmental legislation, covering a range of issues including groundwater conservation, drinking water quality, bathing water quality, chemical contamination, flooding, conservation of wetlands, river and marine resources, and urban waste management. However, the effectiveness of such legislation has been persistently undermined by the overexploitation of freshwater in agriculture, in industry and by the polluting effects of much economic activity. The European Commission believes that 20% of all surface water in the EU is seriously threatened by pollution and that six out of ten European cities overexploit their groundwater resources. Meanwhile, half of European wetlands are classed as “endangered”, while the area of irrigated land in Southern Europe has increased by 20% since 1985.

Externally, the EU must share the guilt borne by the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation, all of which have persistently promoted increased private sector participation in water and sanitation services. This fanatical devotion to the ‘market’ as a solution to the problems involved in organising water supply flies in the face of the available evidence. For it is a fact that, measured by the proportion of the affected population gaining access to clean water, privatisation of water supply and deregulation of the market surrounding it have failed to record a single success. Public ownership does not guarantee that problems will be effectively addressed, but privatisation guarantees that they will not.

The European Union Water Initiative, which governs much of the EU’s approach to water policy in third countries, particularly developing countries, is designed primarily to increase the world market share of European corporations. The problem goes beyond this, however, as a whole range of EU policies, including the Common Agricultural Policy, in effect deprive developing countries both of water itself and of the means to tackle water shortages. Seen in this light, the Millennium Development Goal for water, which includes a commitment to halve the number of people in the world who do not have ready access to a clean and adequate water supply, becomes nothing more than a business proposition. Internationally, water supply reflects global inequalities, and in the most grotesque fashion. Extravagant sporting and leisure facilities, many built with European capital by corporations featherbedded by EU policies, are built alongside barrios lacking any safe water supply. The EU has the means to tackle these problems, but chooses instead to transform itself into Fortress Europe, as more and more people from societies squeezed dry of resources, attempt to migrate into Europe to find work.

Water policy, in its many aspects, reveals the real nature of neo-liberalism, the final, or perhaps merely the latest, phase of the sequestration of the world’s resources into private hands and their exploitation for profit which has been proceeding for hundreds of years. The only way to solve the crisis of water and the broader crises of climate change, to address hunger and poverty and the unequal distribution of power and wealth which underlie these evils, is to reverse this process and to begin to take vital resources back into public ownership and popular control. This means that, whilst it is important for each and every one of us to conserve water as individual consumers and small producers, to lay too much emphasis on this would be at best to miss the point, at worst to offer a deliberate distraction from that point. Individual behavioural changes are perhaps most important as a constant reminder of the need, at the levels where authority is exercised – locally, nationally and internationally – for the kind of policies we need to ensure are adopted if we are to avert catastrophe and save lives. This can only be achieved, moreover, if the kind of radical thought and action necessary to win the war against climate change, against water shortage, drought and flood, is taken into every area of political, economic and social thought, reordering priorities and creating structures that would make such a reordering effective, undermining those which prevent this from occurring.

Only active and well-informed citizens capable of organising systematic campaigns against the existing power will prove effective in the global resistance so urgently needed. The current global food crisis is entirely a product of the coming together of bad weather, bad politics and catastrophic economics, including the bad politics and catastrophic economics which have been applied to water supply. Water, the supply of which to everyone on the planet poses no insuperable problems and could be achieved with good political will and modest resources within a generation is instead rapidly developing into a major source of international conflict. So-called “free markets” cannot provide the means to address climate change or the problems associated with it, including the problems of water supply, of sanitation, and of drought and flood.

Kartika Liotard is a Member of the European Parliament for the Socialist Party of the Netherlands and the United European Left. She sits on the Environment and Agriculture Committees and is currently writing a book on the politics of water with Spectrezine editor Steve McGiffen.

Contaminated Water- Yet Again!

tim — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:47:42 +0000

For the third time in three years there has been an outbreak of cryptosporidium in the Gwynedd and Anglesey water supplies. Last time over 200 people were left ill after contracting the parasite which causes severe diahorrea, in late 2005 and a notice to boil all water (which kills the parasites eggs) was in place for several months.

Last time the company (Welsh Water / Dwr Cyrmu) agreed to compensate 37,000 customers £25 each for their inconvenience and were fined a tiny £60,000. After the incident the company spent £1million on new treatment equipment.

But, the bug is back again with a notice to boil water on 30th August which will affect 45,000 people. It appears that this new treatment isn’t working either. A letter released by the Drinking Water Inspectorate pointed out that Welsh Water had been warned about possible problems with Cryptosporidium way back in 1998.

The investigation into the 2005-06 incident said that treatment was in line with regulatory standards because it was believed the bug would be sufficiently dilute in the water not to cause harm!

Welsh Water, like other water companies across the UK was privatised by Thatcher in 1989. The debts of these companies were written off by the government, but this still led to price increases and staff cuts. Maintenance and investment was also cutback on as part of ‘cost-cutting’ exercises.

So we have seen water shortages, outbreaks of bugs like cryptosporidium and poor maintenance of sewerage which made last years flooding much more severe.

The provision of water is a vital public service and should never have been privatised. Socialists argue for the re-nationalisation of the water companies, under democratic control and scrutiny of the local population.

Manufactured Famine

tim — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:31:02 +0000

In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by El Nino, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau. As starvation bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in imperial splendour and commissioned, among other extravangances, “the most colossal and expensive meal in world history”, between 12 and 29 million people died(1). Only Stalin manufactured a comparable hunger.

Now a new Lord Lytton is seeking to engineer another brutal food grab. As Tony Blair’s favoured courtier, Peter Mandelson often created the impression that he would do anything to please his master. Today he is the European trade commissioner. From his sumptuous offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, he hopes to impose a treaty which will permit Europe to snatch food from the mouths of some of the world’s poorest people.

Seventy per cent of the protein eaten by the people of Senegal comes from fish(2). Traditionally cheaper than other animal products, it sustains a population which ranks close to the bottom of the human development index. One in six of the working population is employed in the fishing industry; some two-thirds of these workers are women(3). Over the past three decades, their means of subsistence has started to collapse as other nations have plundered Senegal’s stocks.

The European Union has two big fish problems. One is that, partly as a result of its failure to manage them properly, its own fisheries can no longer meet European demand. The other is that its governments won’t confront their fishing lobbies and decommission all the surplus boats. The EU has tried to solve both problems by sending its fishermen to West Africa. Since 1979 it has struck agreements with the government of Senegal, granting our fleets access to its waters. As a result, Senegal’s marine ecosystem has started to go the same way as ours. Between 1994 and 2005, the weight of fish taken from the country’s waters fell from 95,000 tons to 45,000 tons. Muscled out by European trawlers, the indigenous fishery is crumpling: the number of boats run by local people has fallen by 48% since 1997(4).

In a recent report on this pillage, ActionAid shows that fishing families which once ate three times a day are now eating only once or twice. As the price of fish rises, their customers also go hungry. The same thing has happened in all the west African countries with which the EU has maintained fisheries agreements(5,6). In return for wretched amounts of foreign exchange, their primary source of protein has been looted.

The government of Senegal knows this, and in 2006 it refused to renew its fishing agreement with the EU. But European fishermen – mostly from Spain and France – have found ways round the ban. They have been registering their boats as Senegalese, buying up quotas from local fishermen and transferring catches at sea from local boats. These practices mean that they can continue to take the country’s fish, and have no obligation to land them in Senegal. Their profits are kept on ice until the catch arrives in Europe.

Mandelson’s office is trying to negotiate economic partnership agreements with African countries. They were supposed to have been concluded by the end of last year, but many countries, including Senegal, have refused to sign. The agreements insist that European companies have the right both to establish themselves freely on African soil, and to receive national treatment. This means that the host country is not allowed to discriminate between its own businesses and European companies. Senegal would be forbidden to ensure that its fish are used to sustain its own industry and to feed its own people. The dodges used by European trawlers would be legalised.

The UN’s Economic Commission for Africa has described the EU’s negotiations as “not sufficiently inclusive”. They suffer from a “lack of transparency” and from the African countries’ lack of capacity to handle the legal complexities(7). ActionAid shows that Mandelson’s office has ignored these problems, raised the pressure on reluctant countries and “moved ahead in the negotiations at a pace much faster than the [African nations] could handle.” If these agreements are forced on West Africa, Lord Mandelson will be responsible for another imperial famine.

This is one instance of the food colonialism which is again coming to govern the relations between rich counties and poor. As global food supplies tighten, rich consumers are pushed into competition with the hungry. Last week the environmental group WWF published a report on the UK’s indirect consumption of water, purchased in the form of food(8). We buy much of our rice and cotton, for example, from the Indus Valley, which contains most of Pakistan’s best farmland. To meet the demand for exports, the valley’s aquifers are being pumped out faster than they can be recharged. At the same time, rain and snow in the Himalayan headwaters have decreased, probably as a result of climate change. In some places, salt and other crop poisons are being drawn through the diminishing water table, knocking out farmland for good. The crops we buy are, for the most part, freely traded, but the unaccounted costs all accrue to Pakistan.

Now we learn that Middle Eastern countries, led by Saudi Arabia, are securing their future food supplies by trying to buy land in poorer nations. The Financial Times reports that Saudi Arabia wants to set up a series of farms abroad, each of which could exceed 100,000 hectares. Their produce would not be traded: it would be shipped directly to the owners. The FT, which usually agitates for the sale of everything, frets over “the nightmare scenario of crops being transported out of fortified farms as hungry locals look on.” Through “secretive bilateral agreements,” the paper reports, “the investors hope to be able to bypass any potential trade restriction that the host country might impose during a crisis.” (9)

Both Ethiopia and Sudan have offered the oil states hundreds of thousands of hectares(10,11). This is easy for the corrupt governments of these countries: in Ethiopia the state claims to own most of the land; in Sudan an envelope passed across the right desk magically transforms other people’s property into foreign exchange(12,13). But 5.6 million Sudanese and 10 million Ethiopians are currently in need of food aid. The deals their governments propose can only exacerbate such famines.

None of this is to suggest that the poor nations should not sell food to the rich. To escape from famine, countries must enhance their purchasing power. This often means selling farm products, and increasing their value by processing them locally. But there is nothing fair about the deals I have described. Where once they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The scramble for resources has begun, but – in the short term at any rate – we will hardly notice. The rich world’s governments will protect themselves from the political cost of shortages, even if it means that other people must starve.

References:

1. Mike Davis, 2001. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World. Verso, London.

2. ActionAid, 11th August 2008. SelFISH Europe. http://www.illegal-fishing.info/uploads/ActionAidSelFISHEurope.pdf

3. ibid.

4. ibid.

5. Vlad M. Kaczynski and David L. Fluharty, March 2002. European policies in West Africa: who benefits from fisheries agreements? Marine Policy, Volume 26, Issue 2, pp75-93.
doi:10.1016/S0308-597X(01)00039-2

6. Tim Judah, 1st August 2001. The battle for West Africa’s fish. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1464966.stm

7. UNECA, EPA Negotiations: African Countries Continental Review, African Trade Policy Centre, February 2007. Quoted by ActionAid, ibid.

8. Ashok Chapagain and Stuart Orr, August 2008. UK Water Footprint: the impact of the UK’s food
and fibre consumption on global water resources. Volume one. http://assets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_uk_footprint.pdf

9. Javier Blas and Andrew England, 19th August 2008. Foreign fields: Rich states look beyond their borders for fertile soil. Financial Times.

10. ibid.

11. Barney Jopson and Andrew England, 11th August 2008. Sudan woos investors to put $1bn in farming. Financial Times.

12. For discussions of how landrights in Africa are overruled, see:

Lorenzo Cotula, September 2007. Legal empowerment for local resource control. International Institute for Environment and Development. http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/12542IIED.pdf

and:

13. Camilla Toulmin, 2006. Securing Land and Property Rights in Africa: Improving the
Investment Climate. Chapter 2.3 of the Global Competitiveness Report, World Economic Forum, Switzerland.

10 reasons why organic can feed the world

tim — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:47:12 +0000

1. Yield

Switching to organic farming would have different effects according to where in the world you live and how you currently farm.

Studies show that the less-industrialised world stands to benefit the most. In southern Brazil, maize and wheat yields doubled on farms that changed to green manures and nitrogenfixing leguminous vegetables instead of chemical fertilisers.1 In Mexico, coffee-growers who chose to move to fully organic production methods saw increases of 50 per cent in the weight of beans they harvested. In fact, in an analysis of more than 286 organic conversions in 57 countries, the average yield increase was found to be an impressive 64 per cent.2

The situation is more complex in the industrialised world, where farms are large, intensive facilities, and opinions are divided on how organic yields would compare.

Research by the University of Essex in 1999 found that, although yields on US farms that converted to organic initially dropped by between 10 and 15 per cent, they soon recovered, and the farms became more productive than their all-chemical counterparts.3 In the UK, however, a study by the Elm Farm Research Centre predicted that a national transition to all-organic farming would see cereal, rapeseed and sugar beet yields fall by between 30 and 60 per cent.4 Even the Soil Association admits that, on average in the UK, organic yields are 30 per cent lower than non-organic.

So can we hope to feed ourselves organically in the British Isles and Northern Europe? An analysis by former Ecologist editor Simon Fairlie in The Land journal suggests that we can, but only if we are prepared to rethink our diet and farming practices.5 In Fairlie’s scenario, each of the UK’s 60 million citizens could have organic cereals, potatoes, sugar, vegetables and fruit, fish, pork, chicken and beef, as well as wool and flax for clothes and biomass crops for heating. To achieve this we’d each have to cut down to around 230g of beef (½lb), compared to an average of 630g (1½lb) today, 252g of pork/bacon, 210g of chicken and just under 4kg (9lb) of dairy produce each week – considerably more than the country enjoyed in 1945. We would probably need to supplement our diet with homegrown vegetables, save our food scraps as livestock feed and reform the sewage system to use our waste as an organic fertiliser.

2. Energy

Currently, we use around 10 calories of fossil energy to produce one calorie of food energy. In a fuel-scarce future, which experts think could arrive as early as 2012, such numbers simply won’t stack up. Studies by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs over the past three years have shown that, on average, organically grown crops use 25 per cent less energy than their chemical cousins. Certain crops achieve even better reductions,including organic leeks (58 per cent less energy) and broccoli (49 per cent less energy). When these savings are combined with stringent energy conservation and local distribution and consumption (such as organic box schemes), energy-use dwindles to a fraction of that needed for an intensive, centralised food system. A study by the University of Surrey shows that food from Tolhurst Organic Produce, a smallholding in Berkshire, which supplies 400 households with vegetable boxes, uses 90 per cent less energy than if non-organic produce had been delivered and bought in a supermarket.

Far from being simply ‘energy-lite’, however, organic farms have the potential to become self-sufficient in energy – or even to become energy exporters. The ‘Dream Farm’ model, first proposed by Mauritius-born agroscientist George Chan, sees farms feeding manure and waste from livestock and crops into biodigesters, which convert it into a methane-rich gas to be used for creating heat and electricity. The residue from these biodigesters is a crumbly, nutrient-rich fertiliser, which can be spread on soil to increase crop yields or further digested by algae and used as a fish or animal feed.

3. Greenhouse gas emissions and climate change

Despite organic farming’s low-energy methods, it is not in reducing demand for power that the techniques stand to make the biggest savings in greenhouse gas emissions.

The production of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, which is indispensable to conventional farming, produces vast quantities of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential some 320 times greater than that of CO2. In fact, the production of one tonne of ammonium nitrate creates 6.7 tonnes of greenhouse gases (CO²e), and was responsible for around 10 per cent of all industrial greenhouse gas emissions in Europe in 2003.6

The techniques used in organic agriculture to enhance soil fertility in turn encourage crops to develop deeper roots, which increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, locking up carbon underground and keeping it out of the atmosphere. The opposite happens in conventional farming: high quantities of artificially supplied nutrients encourage quick growth and shallow roots. A study published in 1995 in the journal Ecological Applications found that levels of carbon in the soils of organic farms in California were as much as 28 per cent higher as a result.7 And research by the Rodale Institute shows that if the US were to convert all its corn and soybean fields to organic methods, the amount of carbon that could be stored in the soil would equal 73 per cent of the country’s (would-be) Kyoto targets for CO² reduction.8

Organic farming might also go some way towards salvaging the reputation of the cow, demonised in 2007 as a major source of methane at both ends of its digestive tract. There’s no doubt that this is a problem: estimates put global methane emissions from ruminant livestock at around 80 million tonnes a year,9 equivalent to around two billion tonnes of CO²,10 or close to the annual CO² output of Russia and the UK combined.11 But by changing the pasturage on which animals graze to legumes such as clover or birdsfoot trefoil (often grown anyway by organic farmers to improve soil nitrogen content), scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research believe that methane emissions could be cut dramatically. Because the leguminous foliage is more digestible, bacteria in the cow’s gut are less able to turn the fodder into methane. Cows also seem naturally to prefer eating birdsfoot trefoil to ordinary grass.

4. Water use

Agriculture is officially the most thirsty industry on the planet, consuming a staggering 72 per cent of all global freshwater at a time when the UN says 80 per cent of our water supplies are being overexploited.12,13

This hasn’t always been the case. Traditionally, agricultural crops were restricted to those areas best suited to their physiology, with drought-tolerant species grown in the tropics and water-demanding crops in temperate regions.14 Global trade throughout the second half of the last century led to a worldwide production of grains dominated by a handful of high-yielding cereal crops, notably wheat, maize and rice. These thirsty cereals – the ‘big three’ – now account for more than half of the world’s plant-based calories and 85 per cent of total grain production.15

Organic agriculture is different. Due to its emphasis on healthy soil structure, organic farming avoids many of the problems associated with compaction, erosion, salinisation and soil degradation, which are prevalent in intensive systems.16 Organic manures and green mulches are applied even before the crop is sown, leading to a process known as ‘mineralisation’ – literally the fixing of minerals in the soil. Mineralised organic matter, conspicuously absent from synthetic fertilisers, is one of the essential ingredients required physically and chemically to hold water on the land.

Organic management also uses crop rotations, undersowing and mixed cropping to provide the soil with near-continuous cover. By contrast, conventional farm soils may be left uncovered for extended periods prior to sowing, and again following the harvest, leaving essential organic matter fully exposed to erosion by rain, wind and sunlight. In the US, a 25-year Rodale Institute experiment on climatic extremes found that, due to improved soil structure, organic systems consistently achieve higher yields during periods both of drought and flooding.17

5. Localisation

The globalisation of our food supply, which gives us Peruvian apples in June and Spanish lettuces in February, has seen our food reduced to a commodity in an increasingly volatile global marketplace. Although year-round availability makes for good marketing in the eyes of the biggest retailers, the costs to the environment are immense.

Friends of the Earth estimates that the average meal in the UK travels 1,000 miles from plot to plate.18 In 2005, Defra released a comprehensive report on food miles in the UK, which valued the direct environmental, social and economic costs of food transport in Britain at £9 billion each year. In addition, food transport accounted for more than 30 billion vehicle kilometres, 25 per cent of all HGV journeys and 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2002 alone.19

The organic movement was born out of a commitment to provide local food for local people, and so it is logical that organic marketing encourages localisation through veg boxes, farm shops and stalls. Between 2005 and 2006, organic sales made through direct marketing outlets such as these increased by 53 per cent, from £95 to £146 million, more than double the sales growth experienced by the major supermarkets.20 As we enter an age of unprecedented food insecurity, it is essential that our consumption reflects not only what is desirable, but also what is ultimately sustainable. While the ‘organic’ label itself may inevitably be hijacked, ‘organic and local’ represents a solution with which the global players can simply never compete.

6. Pesticides

It is a shocking testimony to the power of the agrochemical industry that in the 45 years since Rachel Carson published her pesticide warning Silent Spring, the number of commercially available synthetic pesticides has risen from 22 to more than 450.21

According to the World Health Organization there are an estimated 20,000 accidental deaths worldwide each year from pesticide exposure and poisoning.22 More than 31 million kilograms of pesticide were applied to UK crops alone in 2005, 0.5 kilograms for every person in the country.23 A spiralling dependence on pesticides throughout recent decades has resulted in a catalogue of repercussions, including pest resistance, disease susceptibility, loss of natural biological controls and reduced nutrient-cycling.24

Organic farmers, on the other hand, believe that a healthy plant grown in a healthy soil will ultimately be more resistant to pest damage. Organic systems encourage a variety of natural methods to enhance soil and plant health, in turn reducing incidences of pests, weeds and disease.

First and foremost, because organic plants grow comparatively slower than conventional varieties they have thicker cell walls, which provide a tougher natural barrier to pests. Rotations or ‘break-crops’, which are central to organic production, also provide a physical obstacle to pest and disease lifecycles by removing crops from a given plot for extended periods.25 Organic systems also rely heavily on a rich agro-ecosystem in which many agricultural pests can be controlled by their natural predators.

Inevitably, however, there are times when pestilence attacks are especially prolonged or virulent, and here permitted pesticides may be used. The use of organic pesticides is heavily regulated and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) requires specific criteria to be met before pesticide applications can be justified.26

There are in fact only four active ingredients permitted for use on organic crops: copper fungicides, restricted largely to potatoes and occasionally orchards; sulphur, used to control additional elements of fungal diseases; Retenone, a naturally occurring plant extract, and soft soap, derived from potassium soap and used to control aphids. Herbicides are entirely prohibited.

7. Ecosystem impact

Farmland accounts for 70 per cent of UK land mass, making it the single most influential enterprise affecting our wildlife.27 Incentives offered for intensification under the Common Agricultural Policy are largely responsible for negative ecosystem impacts over recent years. Since 1962, farmland bird numbers have declined by an average of 30 per cent. During the same period more than 192,000 kilometres of hedgerows have been removed, while 45 per cent of our ancient woodland has been converted to cropland.28

By contrast, organic farms actively encourage biodiversity in order to maintain soil fertility and aid natural pest control. Mixed farming systems ensure that a diversity of food and nesting sites are available throughout the year, compared with conventional farms where autumn sow crops leave little winter vegetation available.29

Organic production systems are designed to respect the balance observed in our natural ecosystems. It is widely accepted that controlling or suppressing one element of wildlife, even if it is a pest, will have unpredictable impacts on the rest of the food chain. Instead, organic producers regard a healthy ecosystem as essential to a healthy farm, rather than a barrier to production.

In 2005, a report by English Nature and the RSPB on the impacts of organic farming on biodiversity reviewed more than 70 independent studies of flora, invertebrates, birds and mammals within organic and conventional farming systems. It concluded that biodiversity is enhanced at every level of the food chain under organic management practices, from soil micro-biota right through to farmland birds and the largest mammals.30

8. Nutritional benefits

While an all-organic farming system might mean we’d have to make do with slightly less food than we’re used to, research shows that we can rest assured it would be better for us.

In 2001, a study in the Journal of Complementary Medicine found that organic crops contained higher levels of 21 essential nutrients than their conventionally grown counterparts, including iron, magnesium, phosphorus and vitamin C. The organic crops also contained lower levels of nitrates, which can be toxic to the body.31

Other studies have found significantly higher levels of vitamins – as well as polyphenols and antioxidants – in organic fruit and veg, all of which are thought to play a role in cancer-prevention within the body.32

Scientists have also been able to work out why organic farming produces more nutritious food. Avoiding chemical fertiliser reduces nitrates levels in the food; better quality soil increases the availability of trace minerals, and reduced levels of pesticides mean that the plants’ own immune systems grow stronger, producing higher levels ofantioxidants. Slower rates of growth also mean that organic food frequently contains higher levels of dry mass, meaning that fruit and vegetables are less pumped up with water and so contain more nutrients by weight than intensively grown crops do.33

Milk from organically fed cows has been found to contain higher levels of nutrients in six separate studies, including omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin E, and beta-carotene, all of which can help prevent cancer. One experiment discovered that levels of omega-3 in organic milk were on average 68 per cent higher than in non-organic alternatives.34

But as well as giving us more of what we do need, organic food can help to give us less of what we don’t. In 2000, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that organically produced food had ‘lower levels of pesticide and veterinary drug residues’ than non-organic did.35 Although organic farmers are allowed to use antibiotics when absolutely necessary to treat disease, the routine use of the drugs in animal feed – common on intensive livestock farms – is forbidden. This means a shift to organic livestock farming could help tackle problems such as the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

9. Seed-saving

Seeds are not simply a source of food; they are living testimony to more than 10,000 years of agricultural domestication. Tragically, however, they are a resource that has suffered unprecedented neglect. The UN FAO estimates that 75 per cent of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost over the past 100 years.36

Traditionally, farming communities have saved seeds year-on-year, both in order to save costs and to trade with their neighbours. As a result, seed varieties evolved in response to local climatic and seasonal conditions, leading to a wide variety of fruiting times, seed size, appearance and flavour. More importantly, this meant a constant updating process for the seed’s genetic resistance to changing climatic conditions, new pests and diseases.

By contrast, modern intensive agriculture depends on relatively few crops – only about 150 species are cultivated on any significant scale worldwide. This is the inheritance of the Green Revolution, which in the late 1950s perfected varieties Filial 1, or F1 seed technology, which produced hybrid seeds with specifically desirable genetic qualities.37 These new high-yield seeds were widely adopted, but because the genetic makeup of hybrid F1 seeds becomes diluted following the first harvest, the manufacturers ensured that farmers return for more seed year on year.

With its emphasis on diversity, organic farming is somewhat cushioned from exploitation on this scale, but even Syngenta, the world’s third-largest biotech company, now offers organic seed lines. Although seedsaving is not a prerequisite for organic production, the holistic nature of organics lends itself well to conserving seed.

In support of this, the Heritage Seed Library, in Warwickshire, is a collection of more than 800 open-pollinated organic varieties, which have been carefully preserved by gardeners across the country. Although their seeds are not yet commercially available, the Library is at the forefront of addressing the alarming erosion of our agricultural diversity.

Seed-saving and the development of local varieties must become a key component of organic farming, giving crops the potential to evolve in response to what could be rapidly changing climatic conditions. This will help agriculture keeps pace with climate change in the field, rather than in the laboratory.

10. Job creation

There is no doubt British farming is currently in crisis. With an average of 37 farmers leaving the land every day, there are now more prisoners behind bars in the UK than there are farmers in the fields.38

Although it has been slow, the decline in the rural labour force is a predictable consequence of the industrialisation of agriculture. A mere one per cent of the UK workforce is now employed in land-related enterprises, compared with 35 per cent at the turn of the last century.39

The implications of this decline are serious. A skilled agricultural workforce will be essential in order to maintain food security in the coming transition towards a new model of post-fossil fuel farming. Many of these skills have already been eroded through mechanisation and a move towards more specialised and intensive production systems.

Organic farming is an exception to these trends. By its nature, organic production relies on labour-intensive management practices. Smaller, more diverse farming systems require a level of husbandry that is simply uneconomical at any other scale. Organic crops and livestock also demand specialist knowledge and regular monitoring in the absence of agrochemical controls.

According to a 2006 report by the University of Essex, organic farming in the UK provides 32 per cent more jobs per farm than comparable non-organic farms. Interestingly, the report also concluded that the higher employment observed could not be replicated in non-organic farming through initiatives such as local marketing. Instead, the majority (81 per cent) of total employment on organic farms was created by the organic production system itself. The report estimates that 93,000 new jobs would be created if all farming in the UK were to convert to organic.

Organic farming also accounts for more younger employees than any other sector in the industry. The average age of conventional UK farmers is now 56, yet organic farms increasingly attract a younger more enthusiastic workforce, people who view organics as the future of food production. It is for this next generation of farmers that Organic Futures, a campaign group set up by the Soil Association in 2007, is striving to provide a platform.

Ed Hamer is a freelance journalist

Mark Anslow is the Ecologist’s senior reporter

References

1 Andre Leu, ‘Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World’ in Organic Farming, Winter 2007, citing Jules Pretty, 2001

2 Pretty, 2006. http://www.rimisp.org/getdoc.php?docid=6440

3 Pretty, 1999, ‘The Living Land’.

4 Cited in Woodward, 2003. http://www.efrc.com/?i=articles.php&art_id=42&highlight=organic

5 Fairlie, 2007, ‘Can Britain Feed Itself?’, The Land, Winter 2007-8.

6 EEA data for EU-15, 2003, for nitric acid production cited by Soil Association

7 Drinkwater LE et al. ‘Fundamental differences between conventional and organic tomato agroecosystems in California’, Ecological Applications 1995, 5(4), 1098-1112.

8 http://www.newfarm.org/depts/NFfield_trials/1003/carbonsequest.shtml

9 US EPA, 1998, ‘Ruminant Livestock and the Global Environment’

10 Using a multiplier factor of 24.5

11 Russia annual CO2 emissions: 1,524,993,000 tonnes; UK annual CO2 emissions: 587,261,000 tonnes.

12 Weis, T. (2007) The global food economy: the battle for the future of farming, Zed Books, London.

13 UNESCO (2006) United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, World Water Development Report 2006: http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr/index.shtml

14 Alteiri, M. (1987) Agroecology: The Scientific Basis of Alternative Agriculture, Westview Press, Boulder.

15 FAO (1997) The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Food Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome.

16 Lampkin, N. (1990) Organic Farming, Farming Press Books, Ipswich.

17 Lim Li Ching (2005) Organic Outperforms Conventional in Climate Extremes, web accesses: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OrganicOutperforms.php

18 FOE (2006) http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/green_new_year_resolutions_…

19 Defra (2005) The Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator of Sustainable Development: Final report, Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

20 Soil Association (2006) Organic Market Report 2006, Executive Summary, Soil Association, Bristol.

21 Whitehead, R. (1999) UK Pesticide Guide, British Crop Protection Council, CABI Publishing, Cambridge.

22 World Health Organisation (1990) The Public Health Impact of Pesticides Used in Agriculture, WHO, Geneva

23 Pesticide Action Network UK (2007) Pesticides on a Plate, A consumer guide to pesticide issues in the food chain, PAN UK, London

24 Sustain (2003) Myth and Reality, Organic vs. non-organic: the facts, Sustain, London.

25 Francis, C. A. & Clegg, M. D. (1990) Crop Rotations in Sustainable Production Systems, Sustainable Agriculture Systems 107-122

26 International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (1998) Basic Standards for Organic Production and Processing, IFOAM, Germany

27 Soil Association (2006) How does organic farming benefit wildlife? Soil Association 2006.

28 Spencer, J. & Kirby, K. (1992) An inventory of ancient woodland for England and Wales, Biological Conservation 62, 77-93.

29 IFOAM (2003) Organic Agriculture and Biodiversity information sheet, International Federation of Organic Agriculture and Management.

30 Hole, A. G., Perkins, A. J., Wilson, J. D., Alexander, I. H., Grice, P. V., Evans, A. D. (2005) Does Organic Farming Benefit Biodiversity? Biological Conservation, 122, 113-130.

31 Worthington V. Nutritional quality of organic versus conventional fruits, vegetables, and grains. Journal of Complimentary Medicine 2001; 7 No. 2: 161–173

32 Soil Association, 2008: http://tinyurl.com/3aye3g

33 Gundual Azeez, Policy Manager, Soil Association, Personal Communication 01/2008.

34 Soil Association, 2007: http://tinyurl.com/3e3fby

35 Food and Agriculture Organisation, Food Safety & Quality as Affected by Organic Farming, Report of the 22nd regional conference for Europe, Portugal, 24-28 July 2000.

36 FAO (1997) The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Food Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome.

37 Shiva, V. & Gitanjali, B. (2002) Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security, The Impact of globalisation, Sage Publications, London.

38 Soil Association (2006) Organic Works Report: An investigation into employment on organic farms conducted by University of Essex 2005.

39 ISEC (2002) Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness, Zed Books, London.

UK water companies fined millions after fiddling accounts

Tim Holmes — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:13:19 +0000

Companies supplying water to more than half the population in England and Wales have been fined millions of pounds this year, after fiddling their accounts and cheating customers.

The industry watchdog Ofwat has fined Thames Water, the UK’s largest water company, £12.5 million (US$25 million) and Southern Water £20 million (US$40 million), accusing the companies of “ misreporting” regulatory data, which allowed them to raise prices by more than they should have done. Southern Water directors have agreed to pay up (a Serious Fraud Office investigation has been dropped), but Thames Water directors are contesting the penalty.

Ofwat chairman Philip Fletcher said, “From the evidence we have seen it is clear that Thames Water has failed to meet the Guaranteed Standards Scheme performance standards. The failures were within the company’s control, and some customers have not received the standard of service to which they are entitled. As a result customers’ interests have been damaged.”

“It is extremely disappointing that we have had to take this action against Thames Water for its customer service failures, coming on top of the company’s breach of its leakage target. This is a clear warning to Thames Water that it must be focused on delivering the services that customers have paid for,” Fletcher added.

Ofwat CEO Regina Finn said, “Southern Water deliberately misreported its customer service performance to Ofwat and systematically manipulated information to conceal the company’s true performance over an extending period of time.”

Finn added, “The magnitude of this fine reflects the magnitude of the offence—deliberately misleading the regulator, failing of the Southern Water board of directors to pick up the deception, the resulting poor service to customers and damage to the regulatory regime, in general.”

Ofwat will probably seek compensation from the UK’s second largest water company, Severn Trent Water, next year for similar offences. However, the regulator is waiting until criminal proceedings against the company are completed following a two-year long Serious Fraud Office investigation into claims that data relating to the amount of water that leaked from its pipes had been falsified. Ofwat uses leakage figures to assess a water company’s performance and to determine how much they can charge customers. Severn Trent Water has already been ordered to repay £42 million it overcharged customers after lying to Ofwat about the company’s level of income and bad debt.

Ofwat is also investigating a fifth company, Three Valleys Water, after “irregularities” were found in data relating to the billing of customers with water meters. And United Utilities has been fined £8.5 million for cheating its customers by a different method—paying high prices to its unregulated sister companies and then arguing that bills should be higher. Fletcher said that over a 10-year period, United Utilities water division would have overcharged its customers by about £80 million.

It is unlikely the latest scandal would have come to light if it had not been for Severn Trent employee, David Donnelly, blowing the whistle on the false data being given to Ofwat and in the process exposing the cosy relationship that existed between the regulator, the company and its auditors.

Donnelly had worked for Severn Trent since 1975 and became a financial analyst. He has always admitted that he falsified the figures, but said he acted under pressure from senior management and that many people were aware of what was going on. According to Donnelly, the figures allowed the company to impose an extra price rise on its customers, equivalent to £50 million in two years, or £17 per customer.

Donnelly raised his concerns in early 2004 with the directors of the parent company, Severn Trent Limited, who asked the Forensics section of its auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to investigate. In May 2004, Donnelly reported Severn Trent to Ofwat. However, in November 2004, the company concluded that the accounts were satisfactory and customers were not overcharged. Ofwat later revealed that two of the usual PwC auditors were on the forensics team and that it was a “ surprising omission” that some of Donnelly’s staff were not interviewed during the investigation. It also complained about the initial lack of cooperation with the parent company.

Donnelly went public in the Daily Mail in November 2004, feeling that the company and Ofwat were trying to bury a scandal that threatened to further undermine public confidence in the privatised water companies and the regulatory system. Severn Trent chairman Sir David Arculus embodied this relationship. He was also chairman of the Labour government’s Better Regulation Taskforce, where he became architect of the “Regulation—Less is More” programme and president-elect of the Confederation of British Industry.

It was only in January 2005 that Ofwat finally began its own investigation. The Labour government mounted a damage-limitation exercise by giving Ofwat the power to levy a financial penalty not exceeding 10 percent of a company’s turnover. (Bear in mind, 10 percent of Thames Water’s regulated turnover last year was £140 million, yet its operating profit was nearly £430 million).

Ofwat published its Interim report on allegations made against Severn Trent Water in March 2006. It found no basis for Donnelly’s claim that directors of Severn Trent “directed the deliberate miscalculation and that knowledge of it was widespread,” but it did conclude the company had provided regulatory data which was “either deliberately miscalculated or poorly supported,” leading to bills being higher than was necessary. Its mealy-mouthed conclusion—it could not be otherwise without implicating Ofwat itself—was that the “culture” in Severn Trent Water “led to data being submitted that was not accurate or well supported and that was influenced by a desire to present a particular position or achieve a particular outcome. We consider that Severn Trent Water’s approach fell significantly below the standard we expect.”

Throughout the period, Donnelly was vilified. He was forced on sick leave soon after he raised his concerns and then spent two years on half-pay with a disciplinary charge of gross misconduct hanging over him. The disciplinary hearing document said, “Whilst Donnelly has claimed that such disclosures are protected pursuant to whistle-blowing legislation, he did not raise such allegations as a genuine whistleblower and in good faith to seek to right what he perceived to be a wrong, but rather to further his own purposes.”

“The very fact that I am charged with manipulating the accounts is a very strange form of vindication,” Donnelly retorted. “After all, the only one to gain from twisting the regulatory submissions was Severn Trent Water—I certainly did not. What purpose could I possibly have in doing this?”

Donnelly eventually came to an early retirement agreement with Severn Trent in August 2006, but it involved a clause forbidding him speaking about the case. He said he was unlikely ever to work again adding, “Once you have blown the whistle, you are all alone. The accusation is made that you are feathering your nest and it is hard to fight.”

Most of the Severn Trent board left, too, but they have done rather better for themselves. Arculus became chairman of mobile phone operator O2, and CEO Robert Walker became chairman of the retailer WH Smith.

The overcharging affair is the latest in a string of scandals hitting the water and sewerage industry since the Thatcher Conservative government privatised it in 1989. Profits and dividends have soared. Severn Trent posted a record £150 million in the six months up to September this year, with shareholders receiving a seven percent rise in dividends and Thames Water announced a 50 percent leap in its profit. Profit margins are typically 40 percent—four times the international average. At the same time, water bills have increased by 7 percent this year—well above inflation—making the average bill £312 in England and Wales. Customer complaints rose by nearly one third from 185,466 in 2005/2006 to 240,799 in 2006/2007, an increase of nearly 30 percent with Thames Water, Severn Trent and United Utilities were responsible for more than three quarters of the complaints. In addition, there has been a public outcry about high levels of water leakage, lack of water during last year’s drought and continuing sewage pollution.

Ofwat claims the fines will be paid by shareholders, but nobody believes it. One way or another, customers and workers will end up paying them. In April 2007, within months of finally accepting limited responsibility for the overcharging scandal, Severn Trent said today it would cut 10 percent of its workforce—nearly 600 jobs—over the next five years.

Splash the Cash

The Staff — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:57:12 +0000

AS INVESTMENT SHARKS ENJOY THE THRILL OF WATER SPORTS

Ever since England and Wales’ water was privatised by Thatcher in 1989, Big Business has been making big money out of the monopoly of one of life’s essentials.

Last week investment Bank JP Morgan part purchased Southern Water. With a captive and always thirsty customer base of 6.6 million people, the company’s going to be raking in more than £1.5bn per year. During the first ten years of water privatisation profits rose by more than 160% – if you’d been flying high on the yuppie boom and invested £100 in Southern Water in 1989, your investment would be worth nearly £650 ten years later. Nice little earner! Meanwhile, proper investment in the infrastructure becomes unattractive and ‘customers’ (they can just choose not to have running water if they don’t like it) are rewarded with ever deteriorating service and bills set to rise by a minimum of £15 a year, having already gone up more than 60% since privatisation.

Company bosses have argued that the increases were justified because of the improved service being offered. The Serious Fraud Office begged to differ after it’s investigation into the company. A policy of artfully concealing the true number of complaints it receives, pretending that its performance was a lot better than reality and adding a more positive spin to customer feedback were just three techniques being used to boost ‘shareholder value’. Shame they just couldn’t seem to find the cash to do anything about the 115million litres of water that are lost every day due to leaks. And SchNEWS is still waiting for them to improve water quality on Brighton Beach so we can do skinny dipping without getting ill! It’s been sixteen years since a European Directive meant the sewage works had to be upgraded to a decent level of treatment in the area.

EAU DEAR

The same share-boosting blags are at work in London too. Thames Water is facing a record £11m fine for misreporting regulatory required information. But still it’s worth it for Australian investors who last year bought it for £8bn, almost twice as much as the previous German owners, RWE, had paid only three years previously. And RWE had done their best to spend the cash – with the five-man board of directors receiving £20m in shares and salaries in 2005! And just why has a company that has missed its leakage targets three years in a row being allowed to increase prices to consumers by 20 per cent?

Maybe the answer lies in the fact that global water company shares have posted better profits than Big Oil over the last three years, despite the boom in price of a barrel of black gold. The Bloomberg World Water Index of 11 utilities has seen 35 per cent a year growth since 2003 – a figure no doubt helped along by the 10% a year increase in bills for consumers.

In the countries of the south, the damage is even worse as poorer countries are forced to sell their water infrastructure as part of world trade agreements or IMF/World Bank loans. 22,000 people have their water disconnected every year in Johannesburg alone. With a population of 44 million people, almost one quarter have been disconnected at some time in a country where 43,000 people die of diarrhoea each year. At least that water company was supplying some people with water: in Tanzania they didn’t even get round to building any pipes while the UK’s own Adam Smith Institute were paid £35m for spin, including developing a propaganda campaign that centred around a pop video with the lyric “Our old industries are dry like crops and privatisation brings the rain!”

THIRST FOR ACTION?

If you’re pissed off with this why not just not pay? By law they can’t cut your water off – all the water companies can do if you don’t pay is get a County Court judgement against you.

Mass non-payment has been a great way to deal with unfair charges; it saw off the Poll Tax. In Northern Ireland a successful campaign against the introduction of additional water charges has been running for two years. Currently water charges are paid through rates, but the Northern Ireland Assembly want to introduce a separate bill for water (like in England), but of course without any corresponding decrease in the rates!

The blatant attempt to tap the the public for a flood of filthy lucre did not go unnoticed by the great unwashed and a successful campaign saw the additional water bills postponed for two years, saving the average family £339. Despite many politicians declaring before the recent Assembly election that they were against the charges, the way water is rationed for cash is now ‘under review’ and the scheme continues to lurk as an option.

More info www.wewontpaycampaign.com.