Excess THE WASTE ISSUE
BOMBED: THE EFFECTS OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT
The natural environment has been a strategic element of war since the first rock was thrown by the first cave dweller. The armies of ancient Rome and Assyria, to ensure the total capitulation of their enemies, reportedly sowed salt into the cropland of their foes, making the soil useless for farming -- an early use of military herbicide, and one of most devastating environmental effects of war. Warfare today also occurs infrequently between independent nations; more often, armed conflict breaks out between rival factions within a nation. These localized civil wars, are usually beyond the reach of international treaties and bodies of law. Habitat Destruction: Perhaps the most famous example of habitat devastation occurred during the Vietnam War, when U.S. forces sprayed herbicides like Agent Orange on the forests and mangrove swamps that provided cover to guerrilla soldiers. An estimated 20 million gallons of herbicide were used, decimating about 4.5 million acres of the countryside. Some regions are not expected to recover for decades. Refugees: When warfare causes the mass movement of people, the resulting impacts on the environment can be catastrophic. Widespread deforestation, unchecked hunting, soil erosion and contamination of land and water by human waste occur when thousands of humans are forced to settle in a new area. During the Rwandan conflict in1994, much of that country’s Akagera National Park was opened to refugees; as a result, local populations of animals like the roan antelope and the eland became extinct. Invasive Species: Military ships, cargo airplanes and trucks often carry more than soldiers and munitions; non-native plants and animals can also ride along, invading new areas and wiping out native species in the process. Laysan Island in the Pacific Ocean was once home to a number of rare plants and animals, but troop movements during and after World
War II introduced rats that nearly wiped out the Laysan finch and the Laysan rail, as well as bringing in sandbur, a plant that crowds out the native bunchgrass that local birds depend on for habitat.
amba National Park, just across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo. At one point, the number of elephants shrunk from 22,000 to 5,000, and there were only 15 white rhinos left alive.
Infrastructure Collapse: Among the first and most vulnerable targets of attack in a military campaign are the enemy’s roads, bridges, utilities and other infrastructure. While these don’t form part of the natural environment, the destruction of wastewater treatment plants, for example, severely degrades regional water quality. During the 1990s fighting in Croatia, chemical manufacturing plants were bombed; because treatment facilities for chemical spills weren’t functioning, toxins flowed downstream unchecked until the conflict ended.
Biological, Chemical and Nuclear Weapons: The production, testing, transport and use of these advanced weapons are perhaps the single most destructive effects of war on the environment. Though their use has been strictly limited since the bombing of Japan by the U.S. military at the end of World War II, military analysts have grave concerns about the proliferation of nuclear material and chemical and biological weaponry. “We’ve been very fortunate that we have not seen the devastation that we might see,” said Bruch -Marc Lallanilla
Hunting and Poaching: If an army crawls on its stomach, as is often said, then feeding an army often requires hunting local animals, especially larger mammals that often have slower rates of reproduction. In the ongoing war in Sudan, poachers seeking meat for soldiers and civilians have had a tragic effect on bush animal populations in Gar-
US forced to relinquish control of the internet You would expect an announcement that would forever change the face of the internet to be a grand affair - a big stage, spotlights, media scrums and a charismatic frontman working the crowd. But unless you knew where he was sitting, all you got was David Hendon’s slightly apprehensive voice through a beige plastic earbox. The words were calm, measured and unexciting, but their implications will be felt for generations to come. Hendon is the Department for Trade and Industry’s director of business relations and was in Geneva representing the UK government and European Union at the third and final preparatory meeting for next month’s World Summit on the Information Society. He had just announced a political coup over the running of the internet. Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government’s unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium. The issue of who should control the net had proved an extremely divisive issue, and for 11 days the world’s governments traded blows. For the vast majority of people who use the internet, the only real concern is getting on it. But with the internet now essential to countries’ basic infrastructure - Brazil relies on it for 90% of its tax collection - the question of who has control has become critical. And the unwelcome answer for many is that it is the US government. In the early days, an enlightened Department of Commerce (DoC) pushed and funded expansion of the internet. And when it became global, it created a private company, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) to run it. But the DoC retained overall control, and in June stated what many had always feared: that it would retain indefinite control of the internet’s foundation - its “root servers”, which act as the basic directory for the whole internet. A number of countries represented in Geneva, including Brazil, China, Cuba, Iran and several African states, insisted the US give up control, but it refused. The meeting “was going nowhere”, Hendon says, and so the EU took a bold step and proposed two stark changes: a new forum that would decide public policy, and a “cooperation model” comprising governments that would be in overall charge. Much to the distress of the US, the idea proved popular. Its representative hit back, stating that it “can’t in anyway allow any changes” that went against the
‘historical role” of the US in controlling the top level of the internet. But the refusal to budge only strengthened opposition, and now the world’s governments are expected to agree a deal to award themselves ultimate control. It will be officially raised at a UN summit of world leaders next month and, faced with international consensus, there is little the US government can do but acquiesce. But will this move mean, as the US ambassador David Gross argued, that “even on technical details, the industry will have to follow government-set policies, UN-set policies”? No, according to Nitin Desai, the UN’s special adviser on internet governance. “There is clearly an acceptance here that governments are not concerned with the technical and operational management of the internet. Standards are set by the users.” Hendon is also adamant: “The really important point is that the EU doesn’t want to see this change as bringing new government control over the internet. Governments will only be involved where they need to be and only on issues setting the top-level framework.” But expert and author of Ruling the Root, Milton Mueller, is not so sure. An overseeing council “could interfere with standards. What would stop it saying ‘when you’re making this standard for data transfer you have to include some kind of surveillance for law enforcement’?” Then there is human rights. China has attracted criticism for filtering content from the net within its borders. Tunisia - host of the World Summit - has also come under attack for silencing online voices. Mueller doesn’t see a governmental overseeing council having any impact: “What human rights groups want is for someone to be able to bring some kind of enforceable claim to stop them violating people’s rights. But how’s that going to happen? I can’t see that a council is going to be able to improve the human rights situation.” And what about business? Will a governmental body running the internet add unnecessary bureaucracy or will it bring clarity and a coherent system? Mueller is unsure: “The idea of the council is so vague. It’s not clear to me that governments know what to do about anything at this stage apart from get in the way of things that other people do.” There are still dozens of unanswered questions but all the answers are pointing the same way: international governments deciding the internet’s future. The internet will never be the same again. -Kieren McCarthy
Tide of polluted landfill ' beyond control'’ Millions of tonnes of contaminated waste are being illegally dumped across Britain - on golf courses, farms, beaches and in city centres - to avoid the new landfill tax, an investigation by the Guardian and the Channel 4 programme Dispatches reveals today.
indication of something going wrong is when a resident rings up to say a cricket pitch has risen 10 feet overnight.”
Roger Hockney, the chair of the waste planning advisory group of the Planning Officers Society, said he had no national picture. “Our group has members representing only 20 different authorities - so there are about 300 other councils we have no information about. From the information we do have, it is clear that there is widespread dumping against the regulations.”
Mr Jones from Biffa said: “There should be tougher fines for illegal dumpers. If firms have to lose a huge amount of their turnover for breaching the law, that would be a real deterrent to stop this - £1,000 fines mean nothing.”
Information gathered in Cheshire has revealed three golf courses - at Mollington, Capenhurst and Hankerlow - where illegal dumping has taken place. At Hankerlow 500,000 The situation has become so bad that the environment cubic metres of waste were dumped when planning permisagency now admits it has lost control of policing and moni- sion was given for only 80,000 cubic metres. toring one Britain’s biggest environmental problems. Other golf courses where waste was dumped include the Illegal dumping is on such a huge scale that official figures former municipal course in Sunderland; Hinksey Heights from the Department of the Environment, which claim the near Oxford and Waterstock in Oxfordshire. Altogether 30 landfill tax has led to a 10m tonne drop in officially buried golf courses are under investigation for illegal dumping. waste, are being challenged by reputable waste companies. A similar picture emerges of illegal dumping on farms. In The companies claim that illegal dumping operates on a Cornwall, 120 suspected illegal sites are under environmassive scale, affecting almost every corner of the country. ment agency investigation. In Hertfordshire, at Valley View farm, near South Oxhey the agency is planning to prosecute Peter Jones, a director of Biffa, the waste arm of the Seven 240 hauliers after they discovered hospital and household Trent water company, told the investigation: “I believe 3m waste had been dumped to a height of 40 feet. The county tonnes of material which would otherwise have come to council tried to stop the dumping by blocking an access properly controlled and regulated landfill sites has been road - but the lorries smashed though a barrier to continue disposed of as land-raising material at golf courses, retail their work. development parks, sports facilities and even private residential developments.” Enforcement is a big problem. Hertfordshire, which has pursued two illegal dumpers - at Bricket Wood, near St Companies are allowed by law to dump what are known as Albans and Valley View farm - says the penalties are too low “inert materials” - earth and building rubble - on unreguto be effective. When enforcement orders are made they lated sites, provided they pose no health risk to humans are often ignored until expensive court procedures have or animals. Until recently, the environment agency, which been exhaustively followed. On conviction, magistrates can is responsible for policing unregulated dumping, believed fine people up to £20,000, but most fines are about £1,000, there were 14,000 such sites in the country. However, a which is no deterrent. report commissioned from Ecotech, an independent environmental consultancy, to be published this month, will Michael Meacher, the environment minister, was challenged reveal there are now 32,000 such sites - most of which are on Dispatches to act on the problem - particularly the environment agency’s inability to police dumps because of never checked - in England and Wales alone. a lack of cash. The environment agency admits it has neither the money, “Those who have the advantage of the exemption [from resources nor the expertise to ensure that all these sites comply with the law. The agency is only given money to using regulated sites] certainly ought to pay the costs of the agency to ensure that a sufficient sample of sites can be inspect regulated sites - unregulated site inspections are properly inspected. That is one of the changes that we will funded from its limited budget. look at very carefully,” he said. “We do not have the money”, a spokesman told the GuardNo moves are in hand to increase fines or use to ian and Channel 4. Councils, which are responsible for giving consent for inert waste to be dumped, admit they are customs and excise powers to pounce on firms that evade landfill tax. in a similar position.
Harold Collins, a planning officer for Cheshire county council, and a member of the group said: “ Often the first
-David Hencke
THE SECOND COMING:WORT WAITING FOR?
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Looking back in anger: why prison didn’t work out
‘My time in prison was absolutely horrific, a terrible experience and a complete waste of time. No one tells you how fucked up you are going to be when you leave prison. You forget everything [about outside life] but when you get out you have to relearn social boundaries and how to live in a community.’
‘If we are going to break the cycle you have to show the kindness, that’s what has helped me.’
‘I served 19 years and I didn’t think I was ever getting out. I used to have dreams about being on the outside, but I was always surrounded by a glass box.’
Prison is not going to change you, it just makes people more careful about getting caught next time. I also think all the prison staff should be trained to deal with people. 99% of them are just on a power trip.
‘There is no point in sending them to a place where they are going to be broken still further...’
One Cold afternoon in 2010, in an office just around the corner from Harrods, I sat very still and watched a woman in her 20s undergo a “15-minute nose job”. It was slightly quicker than that, in fact, the process of injecting a mixture of anaesthetic and Restylane filler into the bridge of her small, straight nose and massaging it firmly into place to fill an imagined dent. I think about it often – the fine, bent needle and the squeak of the doctor’s baggy rubber gloves and, walking out through the Harrods beauty hall, between the tight-eyed women and their identical daughters, the way it made me feel so differently about cosmetic surgery, how its speed and simplicity scared me. That was the year that the injectable and laser market blew up, the demand for chemical peels increased by 306%, and, in a survey, almost half of British schoolgirls said they planned to have plastic surgery one day. The British market alone was worth £2.3bn. Two years later, thousands of women’s breast implants ruptured and industrial-grade silicone gel intended for mattresses leaked into their body; the resulting PIP scandal shone a bright spotlight into a dark corner. Last week, questions began to be asked by the Department of Health. Why hadn’t the EU regulatory system detected the PIP fault earlier? Why was it so difficult to trace the women who had received the implants? Are vulnerable people put under excessive pressure to undergo procedures and are they properly informed about the risks? Most important, is the private cosmetic sector properly regulated? It’s a dark and complex world, the world of cosmetic surgery, one constantly on the defensive, often unwilling to interrogate the reasons for its success, that fog of manipulated insecurity that leads women (and increasingly men, whose demand for gynaecomastia has risen 28%) to their small, bright rooms above shoe shops and salons. In June, bullied 14-year-old Nadia Ilse received $40,000 in free cosmetic surgery from the Little Baby Face Foundation, an American organisation set up to help children with facial deformities. Ilse’s deformity was that her ears stuck out. So she had them pinned back, had her chin reshaped and some minor rhinoplasty, and now she’s pretty, she’s happy – the bullying seems to have stopped. Ilse has grown up in the shadow of Cosmo-culture, where drastic measures are encouraged if beauty, and therefore confidence and “empowerment”, is the end result. The death of Cosmopolitan’s Helen Gurley Brown, plastic surgery pioneer, has brought some of her choice quotes to the surface. “Self-help,” she said to Nora Ephron, explaining the methods she used to improve her flaws. “I wish there were better words, but that is my whole credo. You cannot sit around like a cupcake asking other people to come and eat you up and discover your great sweetness and charm. You’ve got to make yourself more cupcakable all the time so you’re a better cupcake to be gobbled up.” The formula she laid down for Cosmopolitan in 1965 relied on constant renovation, improvement and a continual quest for
achievement, where anybody can be beautiful, if only they try hard enough. This is how we live now. Anything that makes us feel better about our appearance, whether it involves needles, knives or acid, is acceptable. Anything that takes us closer to an imagined ideal, whatever the risk or the cost. Price, a survey by ComRes confirmed, is a far more important factor for customers of cosmetic surgery than the qualifications of the person performing the procedure. And loans for those who can’t afford the work they want are rife. The demand for surgery in Beirut has even led to banks offering loans directly to female customers. “You cannot find a job in Lebanon if you are not good-looking,” says Maher Mezher of Beirut’s First National Bank. “People will reject you socially.” These social structures are already in place. These beliefs that perfection is attainable, that beauty is the goal. Of course the industry should be regulated. Of course two-for-one deals should be banned, and a complaints system strengthened, and a register of people with implants should be established. Of course dermal fillers, the collagen or hyaluronic acid injectables used to smooth out foreheads, fill lips and reorganise noses, should no longer be classified as “medical devices” rather than drugs. Regulations about who can administer them would be tighter and their side-effects discovered before they’re tested on women, even if this threatens to send business underground. Of course there should be better education about the risks of surgery and the fact that most breast implants have to be replaced every 10 years. Of course vulnerable patients should be psychologically screened before being accepted for surgery. Of course an industry that cuts into our bodies should be regulated. Of course. But this sidesteps a larger issue, one that concerns all of us, even those who opt out of surgery. It’s the issue of the importance of “beauty” itself. That we feel our bodies, our sagging eyes and furrowed brows, are defective. It’s that our desire for individuality and independence is remoulded into a longing for a perfect and therefore neutral body. It’s the idea that cosmetic surgery is acceptable if it makes us feel acceptable. The idea that self-esteem comes from feeling confident about the way you look, so whatever it takes to find that confidence – whatever you have to buy, usually – is unobjectionable. That beauty is worth paying for – that we should be saving for new boobs rather than fighting against the structures that demand them. It’s this issue that leads these customers to become patients, leads them into what the Department of Health admits is a “grubby” industry, currently self-regulated. It’s the fact that so few of us feel comfortable in our bodies. We can regulate the liquids that we inject into our faces and the qualifications of the people we hire to insert saline sacs into our breasts. We can regulate the aggressive advertising of such operations, the offering of “mummy makeovers” that trivialise invasive surgery. But how do we regulate self-hatred? -Eva Wiseman
s on n o i t nc UN Sa orea k h t r no
North Korea has said it is cancelling a hotline and non-aggression pact with the South after the United Nations security council unanimously backed a toughened sanctions regime over the country’s third nuclear test.
as hitting the elite with a more stringent version of the 2006 ban on the export of luxury goods to the country. Measures include tightened financial restrictions and cargo inspections.
Pyongyang issued a series of warnings in the run-up to Thursday’s vote, and in the hours before the council met it raised the threat of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States. Experts point out it has a history of bellicose statements without matching action, and do not believe it capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a missile that could reach the US, but expect the North to take action of some kind in response.
Jennifer Lind, associate professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, noted: “For a long time we were sanctioning them in the hope [the North] would change its behaviour ... but North Korea seems rather determined to hang on to its nuclear programme.”
Shortly after the resolution was agreed the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the body dealing with cross-border affairs on the peninsula, announced the cancellation of the hotline and non-aggression pact, repeating its threat to retaliate with “crushing strikes” if enemies trespass on to its territory and to cancel nuclear disarmament agreements with the South. “According to their strategy and gameplan they have to do something – they have to respond,” said Daniel Pinkston, deputy project director for the north-east Asia programme at the International Crisis Group. “With the announcement of exclusionary zones for ships and aircraft [off the North’s coasts] I would suspect a live-fire missile exercise. It may be they will have another nuclear test. They can roll out a number of things ... There is a game of brinksmanship and signalling their resolve.” But he noted: “There is a risk and it increases the likelihood of misperception, miscalculation and inadvertent escalations. The statements and the things they are doing shorten the escalation process, which is of course a concern.” The new resolution was reached after lengthy discussions between the US and China, the North’s main ally. It aims to hinder the missile and nuclear programmes, as well
Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics warned in a blogpost that the resolution was unlikely to have substantial effect. Referring to the financial measures and the requirement for states to deny ports and overflight rights to ships and vessels with suspect cargo: “Each of these provisions has a kind of ‘credible information’ clause and a government which does not want to enforce them can say that they lack credible information or that the information that they were provided did not meet the standard of reasonable grounds.” The resolution established for the first time what constitutes luxury goods – including some kinds of jewellery, yachts, and expensive or racing cars – rather than leaving the decision to individual countries. But Noland noted that it left out many of the items included on lists by Australia, the European Union and Russia such as expensive fur coats, watches and prestigious liquor brands. “Your cognac and big-screen HDTVs are safe,” he said. Noland also wrote: “If the Chinese government chooses to enforce resolution 2094 rigorously it could seriously disrupt, if not end, North Korea’s proliferation activities. Unfortunately, if past behaviour is any guide, this is unlikely to happen.” China’s ambassador to the UN, Li Baodong, told reporters that Beijing wanted “full implementation” of the resolution. -Tania Branigan
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‘Use it or lo
ose it’ Nick Boles caused uproar when he stated that the amount of land built on in the England should increase by a third from 9% to 12%. I believe we should be turning our attentions to boarded up Britain, rather than developing more land, to help solve our housing crisis. No matter where you look today you’ll find an empty building. Homes, pubs, warehouses and mills abandoned are vacant and left to rot. You can’t escape it on the high street; the UK town centre vacancy rate hit 11% in October, according to data from the British Retail Consortium. That’s more than one in 10 shops now standing empty. We should transform these areas into affordable developments, leaving the greenbelt untouched. Over the next 20 years more than 230,000 households will be formed each year. To cope with this increased demand around 250,000 homes need to be built every year. Critics argue that brownfield land and empty buildings can’t be the answer because there isn’t enough available to cope, but if you look at the figures closely there is enough brownfield land to build 1.5 million homes. Figures released by charity Empty Homes this winter showed that the number of homes in England now stands at 710,140. That’s more than 2.2m existing homes, not to mention the vacant offices and retail spaces which can be transformed into residential housing. Added together, these boarded up and brownfield sites could provide enough housing to cope with nearly nine years of rising demand and make up for past undersupply – not quite the 5m homes needed by 2033, but enough to keep the argument about greenbelt development at bay for a decade while tacking dereliction. Boles’ argument that the built environment can be more beautiful than nature is divisive. What cannot be denied is that the abandoned, unused and unloved buildings in town and city centres aren’t pretty. We started BoardedUpBritain.com in a bid to draw attention to these buildings, so the public has a platform
to shout about the empty buildings in their area and – through the power of the crowd and with the help of social media – put pressure on property owners to do something about them. Despite some local authorities aiming to increase the council tax on empty properties, there are few real deterrents for landowners to do anything productive with their assets. It means the owners can just sit on these buildings until prices start to rise, and by land banking they also keep the prices of the current housing stock artificially high which is in their best interest. We want to take a ‘use it or lose it’ stance. Why have a building sat there when it could be transformed into something more useful? Saltford Court, a tower block in Ancoats, Manchester was abandoned and unused after Manchester council closed it in the 1990s. A private developer purchased the building in 2006 but has failed to do anything with it since. Residents want change; it could be made into more than 100 much-needed apartments which could be brought on to market at an affordable price. But it’s not just private owners who are letting land and buildings go to waste. The brownfield land owned by the public sector is more than twice the size of Leicester. If this was sold on to developers who had a time limit to complete a housing development, it would raise money for local authorities and be a quick way of getting Britain building. It’s clear that we need to build more houses, but turning to the greenbelt and development on new land should be a very last resort. This issue shouldn’t even be raised until we’ve used all the brownfield land we have. -Matthew Dyas