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. 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: 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. Infrastructure Collapse: 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, chemi-
cal 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
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. 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. 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. 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. Illegal dumping is on such a huge scale that official figures from the Department of the Environment, which claim the landfill tax has led to a 10m tonne drop in officially buried waste, are being challenged by reputable waste companies.. Peter Jones, a director of Biffa, told the investigation: “I believe 3m tonnes of material which would otherwise have come to properly controlled and regulated landfill sites has been disposed of as land-raising material at golf courses, retail development parks, sports facilities and even private residential developments.” Companies are allowed by law to dump what are known as “inert materials” - earth and building rubble - on unregulated sites, provided they pose no health risk to humans or animals. Until recently, the environment agency, which is responsible for policing unregulated dumping, believed there were 14,000 such sites in the country. However, a report commissioned from Ecotech, an independent environmental consultancy, to be published this month, will reveal there are now 32,000 such sites - most of which are never checked - in England and Wales alone.
The environment agency admits it has neither the money, resources nor the expertise to ensure that all these sites comply with the law. The agency is only given money to inspect regulated sites unregulated site inspections are funded from its limited budget. Councils, which are responsible for giving consent for inert waste to be dumped, admit they are in a similar position. Harold Collins, a planning officer for Cheshire county council, and a member of the group said: “ Often the first indication of something going wrong is when a resident rings up to say a cricket pitch has risen 10 feet overnight.” Information gathered in Cheshire has revealed three golf courses - at Mollington, Capenhurst and Hankerlow where illegal dumping has taken place. At Hankerlow 500,000 cubic metres of waste were dumped when planning permission was given for only 80,000 cubic metres. Enforcement is a big problem. Hertfordshire, which has pursued two illegal dumpers says the penalties are too low to be effective. Magistrates can fine people up to £20,000, but most fines are about £1,000, which is no deterrent. No moves are in hand to increase fines or use to customs and excise powers to pounce on firms that evade landfill tax. -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. The British market alone is 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? 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.
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. Lloans 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. 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. 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. But how do we regulate selfhatred? -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. 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. 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 nonaggression 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. “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.” said Daniel Pinkston, deputy project director for the north-east Asia programme. But he noted: “There is a risk and it increases the likelihood of mispercep-
tion, 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 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. 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.”. 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.” -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 under-supply – 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. 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