Resurgence & Ecologist Issue 297

ENVIRONMENT • ACTIVISM • SOCIAL JUSTICE • ARTS • ETHICAL LIVING

July/August 2016 No. 297 £4.95 US$8.00

NATURAL HEALING INDIA WINDSOR-CLIVE on Georgia O’Keeffe

ROWAN WILLIAMS on people and the planet

Wave Cut Gully, 2015 by Pine Feroda (Woodcut / 83 x 122cm / edition of 50) www.pineferoda.co.uk

Joining the forces of Nature This dramatic observation of the north Devon coast near the Resurgence Trust offices is the collaborative product of five British printmakers. It was part of a recent exhibition at the Rebecca Hossack gallery in London (Rebecca is a Resurgence trustee), which also hosted our 50th anniversary party – see page 5 – bringing a breath of sea air to town.

Merlyn Chesterman, Julia Manning, Rod Nelson, Ian Phillips and Judith Westcott work collectively as Pine Feroda. Each of their woodcuts draws on the individual artists’ close observation of the local beaches and headlands – sometimes even standing in the surf to experience the swell and shape of the waves.

Back in the studio, the five artists work together to carve large woodblocks, printing layer after layer, slowly developing the finished piece. The result not only captures the light and energy of the ocean but is also an example of how working collectively can produce outstanding results. www.rebeccahossack.com

WELCOME

ONLY CONNECT Learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else.

– Leonardo da Vinci

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or 50 years, this magazine has been making connections – drawing together the causes we hold to be important, and exploring how they are related. That’s very much a theme of this issue of Resurgence & Ecologist, and in particular what Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, does in our Keynotes feature.

Climate change. Tax justice and transparency.

Empowering women. At first glance, these topics may not seem immediately related. But as Rowan Williams suggests, environmental protection and social justice are inextricably linked.

Climate change will – it already does – impact on us all, but it is the poorest, in all societies, who will be hit hardest. Given that, the international scale of tax evasion is understandably a focus for campaigners who are linking environ­mental and social justice issues, as is the importance of improving the status of women in societies around the world. As our coverline ‘Natural Healing’ suggests, healing the planet goes hand in hand with resolving social and personal conflict, as many artists attest.

Making connections, then, is essential to thinking holistically about the planet and its problems.

Thus there is an obvious parallel between Charles Eisenstein’s essay reminding us that no action, however small, is insignificant, and Adrian Cooper’s account of how he and a group of neighbours came together to establish a network

of green sites in their town. Or as Danny Dorling – interviewed in this issue – insists, that our patterns of consumption are inextricably linked to our impact on our environment.

Echoing Charles Eisenstein’s argument are the testimonies of three other contributors to this issue. Liza Lort-Phillips tells how she felt compelled to act as an individual in response to the refugee crisis on the Greek islands. Ben Winston, who died last year, has left a vivid account of his involvement in environmental protest, which we reprint in tribute to him. And in a moving essay, drawn from her career as a foreign correspondent reporting on some of the world’s conflicts, Christine Toomey reminds us of the need to remember the art of finding light amid the darkness. Reading it, I was reminded of Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem, with its lines Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in. Only connect: we can make a difference.

Elsewhere, this issue has many other riches – not least in our arts pages, where we celebrate the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the extraordinary etchings, harnessing the energy of the sun, of the artist Roger Ackling. Much more, too, and we hope you enjoy making the connections.

Greg Neale Editor

Resurgence & Ecologist is published by The Resurgence Trust, an educational charity.

See inside back cover and our website www.resurgence.org for more information.

Views expressed in our columns are those of the authors and may not necessarily reflect those of the Trust.

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CONTENTS No. 297 July/August 2016

1 WELCOME

FRONTLINE 4 NEWS

ECOLOGIST 10 RICH COUNTRY, POOR COUNTRY

Simon Fairlie presents a new manifesto for

the countryside 13

I’M JUST SO SCARED. THIS ISN’T WHAT I DO Ben Winston’s moving account of being an unlikely activist

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THE NATURE RESERVE BUILT THROUGH FACEBOOK Adrian Cooper on how a local community came together

18 EUROPE’S ROTTEN WOOD

Horatio Morpurgo on a forestry scandal 20 INEQUALITY THREATENS THE PLANET

Oxford geographer Danny Dorling tells Russell Warfield

why consumption patterns fuel climate change

KEYNOTES 24 JUST JOIN THE DOTS…

…for a new environmental and political ethics, argues

Rowan Williams

Cover image: Jimson Weed / White Flower No. 1 1932 by Georgia O’Keeffe Oil paint on canvas, 48 x 40"/ Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas, USA Photography by Edward C. Robison III © 2016 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / DACS, London

UNDERCURRENTS 29 BIG PROBLEMS NEED SMALL SOLUTIONS

Charles Eisenstein disbelieves in the logic of largeness 32 THE DAY WE DIDN’T BOMB

THE COMMONS

Godfrey Boyle recalls the Undercurrents years 35 HANDS ACROSS THE SEAS

Liza Lort-Phillips on volunteering to help refugees

ETHICAL LIVING 38 DIARY

Leo Johnson keeps his head – just

NEW ONLINE

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www.resurgence.org

www.theecologist.org

Social Media

Julia Ponsonby encourages us to enjoy al fresco eating with her recipe for cool vegetarian kebabs; Tim Scott Bolton on the valuable landscapes, created by ‘Capability’ Brown, which serve as sanctuaries for Nature; plus artist and illustrator George Butler shares his explorations across the globe documenting ecological disaster and social injustice in a new gallery feature.

All the stories environmentalists across the globe are talking about, plus opinion pieces and reviews.

Twitter:

Facebook:

Resurgence & Ecologist

Check for new daily content, including regular analysis of key political issues.

To contact the editors, email susan@theecologist.org or oliver@theecologist.org

@Resurgence_mag @the_ecologist Resurgencetrust TheEcologist

Resurgence & Ecologist App Free access for print members: www.resurgence.org/app

July/August 2016

39 ACTIVISM

Our regular appeal for Amnesty

International 40 CHOICES

Satish Kumar on what Jains believe

about Nature 42 FOOD

Julia Ponsonby on the benefits of eating

al fresco 44 CAUSES FOR HOPE

Christine Toomey on the art of finding

light in darkness 47 QWERTY SOMETHING

Matt Harvey sings for his supper

ARTS 48

SEEING THE WORLD IN A FLOWER India Windsor-Clive on the art of Georgia O’Keeffe

52 NATURE’S EYE AND TONGUE

Peter Abbs on the poetry of

Emily Dickinson 54

THE STUDIO THAT’S ALSO A SANCTUARY Angela Baum on a pioneering arts therapy initiative

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THE ARTIST WHO DREW WITH THE SUN Roger Ackling’s testament to his relationship with Nature

REVIEWS

Editor-in-chief Satish Kumar

58 MUSIC TO FREE THE SOUL

Peter Reason reviews Experiencing

Music by June Boyce-Tillman

PA to Satish Kumar Elaine Green

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THROUGH PARADOX TO PARADIGM Stephan Harding reviews Time, Light and the Dice of Creation by Philip Franses

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WE HAVE THE MEANS, BUT NOT THE LEADERS Paul Brown reviews Atmosphere of Hope

by Tim Flannery

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THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED THE WORLD Michael McCarthy reviews The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf

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A PATCH OF ALTERED STATES Adam Thorpe reviews Common Ground

by Rob Cowen

65 A LONG AND WINDING ROAD

Marianna Lines reviews The Jeweled

Highway by Ralph White 66 GETTING INTO HOT WATERS

Andrew Mitchell reviews The Boiling River

by Andrés Ruzo

67 68 69 70

Editor Greg Neale greg@resurgence.org Designer Rachel Marsh Assistant Editor Emma Cocker Sub-editor Helen Banks Art Adviser Sandy Brown Poetry Editor Peter Abbs Communications Manager Angie Burke Ecologist Web Editors Susan Clark and Oliver Tickell Fundraising Manager Sharon Garfinkel +44 (0)7435 781842 sharon@resurgence.org Membership Jeanette Gill, Mandy Kessell +44 (0)1208 841824 members@resurgence.org Events Manager Peter Lang

SHOP LETTERS CROSSWORD ADVERTISEMENTS

Office Manager Lynn Batten info@resurgence.org Classified Advertising Gwydion Batten +44 (0)1237 441293 advert@resurgence.org Advertising Sales Dan Raymond-Barker +44 (0)7776 361671 dan@emsm.org.uk Aditus Acquisitions Membership Sales +44 (0)20 3476 3909 Editorial Office Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, Devon EX39 6EE, UK +44 (0)1237 441293 www.resurgence.org

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Resurgence & Ecologist is published by The Resurgence Trust, a registered educational charity (no. 1120414)

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F RO NTLINE RESURGENCE AT 50

Satish Kumar: photograph courtesy of Cowdray Estate

SATISH KUMAR TO LEAVE EDITOR’S CHAIR AT 80 FOR A NEW RESURGENCE ROLE

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atish Kumar, editor-in-chief of The Resurgence Trust, is to relinquish his editorial responsibilities for the charity’s magazine and websites, he has announced.

Satish, who over 43 years has become one of the world’s longest-serving magazine editors, will step aside after his 80th birthday in August. Under a new title, Editor Emeritus, he will continue to work for The Resurgence Trust, as an ambassador, speaker and fundraiser.

He will also remain in charge of day-today administration of the Trust while the Trustees and staff review its operating and management structure.

Satish will be succeeded as editorin-chief by Greg Neale, who has been editor of Resurgence & Ecologist since 2014.

In a message to The Resurgence Trust and staff, Satish said: “It has been my pleasure, privilege and honour to serve Resurgence for the past 43 years. I would like to thank you all, from the 4

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bottom of my heart, for all the love, generosity and support during these wonderful years.”

James Sainsbury, chair of The Resurgence Trust, said: “Satish’s record, having edited the magazine for some 43 years and overseen the transition to our status as a charitable trust, is truly remarkable. Through his endeavours, Resurgence and its ideals have attained a truly international status. We are all grateful for his enormous dedication to Resurgence and to all that the Trust represents, and for his intention to continue serving our cause in the years to come.”

James continued: “Greg was originally appointed with the view to his being a long-term successor to Satish, and, as I wrote in the 50th anniversary issue of Resurgence & Ecologist, he has increasingly been taking the reins – ever more important as we seek closer integration of our various platforms and activities, and plan the conference at

Oxford in September, when we will not only be celebrating our half-century, but also looking forward to the coming decades of the Trust’s development.”

Greg said: “It is an enormous honour and privilege to be asked to follow in Satish’s footsteps – and quite impossible to think of emulating his achievements: his has been a unique contribution to the causes for which he has worked throughout his life. But we have a very talented editorial team at Resurgence – recently strengthened by the return of Susan Clark to edit the Ecologist website – and I’m looking forward to our taking our titles forward to greater success as we enter our next half-century.”

Prior to joining Resurgence, Greg had been environment correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, founding editor of BBC History Magazine and a reporter for BBC Television’s Newsnight, and had worked for several British universities, including Oxford, York and London’s University of the Arts.

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BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR RESURGENCE

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esurgence & Ecologist – long based in rural North Devon – returned to its urban roots in May to celebrate 50 years as “the spiritual and artistic flagship of the green movement”, as it has famously been described, Will Gethin writes.

The first issue of Resurgence, as it then was, appeared in May 1966. Half a century on, many leaders, activists, writers and artists from the environment and social justice movements gathered at the Rebecca Hossack gallery in central London to celebrate a magazine and a movement that have come of age.

The radical ideas of the sixties idealists who founded Resurgence – such as nuclear disarmament, localism, environmental issues, human rights and animal welfare – have today become mainstream.

Resurgence supporters at the event included the poet Michael Horovitz (whose poem For Modern Man, published in the first issue of Resurgence, was reprinted in our May/ June issue), the environmentalist Jonathon Porritt, animal welfare activist Tracy Worcester, Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project, and figures from a variety of leading green and humanitarian NGOs – from Greenpeace and Oxfam to Friends of the Earth and the Soil Association.

In a speech, Satish Kumar, editor-in-chief of The Resurgence Trust, expressed his gratitude to the many friends, supporters and contributors to Resurgence and stated his wish for Resurgence & Ecologist to continue to serve the entire environmental, social justice and holistic movement.

Jonathon Porritt paid tribute to the spiritual dimension Satish Kumar has brought to Resurgence, recognising its importance for sustaining the wider green movement: “Satish, you have consistently stated that without a spiritual dimension the green movement will not be able to sustain itself, or take on the transformational tasks and challenges that it faces today... Without a proper, thought-through, conscientious, loving, militant spirituality, the green movement cannot do what it needs to do, and for me that’s been utterly brilliant.”

Jonathon finished with a playful anecdote about reading Resurgence in bed: “I read Resurgence just before I go to sleep... It sends me to this correct place before, eventually, my conscious brain shuts down and my unconscious brain kicks in. And I cannot tell you, Satish, the consequences of having taken Resurgence to bed with me, year after year, as the moment of my life before I go to sleep. Thank you for that, thank you for shaping my dreams.”

Greg Neale, editor of Resurgence & Ecologist, said: “The 50th anniversary of Resurgence is indeed a cause for celebration. For a small magazine – without the benefit of corporate support or a wealthy proprietor – not just to survive, but to flourish over half a century, shows not only the affection in which Resurgence is held by our readers, but also the continuing importance of the causes for which it stands.”

He added: “We are determined that the magazine will be no less successful in its second half-century, as the causes of environmental sustainability, peace and social justice have never been so pressing.”

Will Gethin is a freelance communications worker, helping to publicise our 50th anniversary events.

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HRH The Prince of Wales

Alan Rusbridger

PRINCE OF WALES AND ALAN RUSBRIDGER JOIN CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

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RH The Prince of Wales and former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger have been announced as the latest speakers taking part in this September’s One Earth, One Humanity, One Future conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of Resurgence.

Tickets for the event, at Worcester College, Oxford from 22 to 25 September, went on sale last month.

Prince Charles, who is widely known for his lifelong interest in environmental, spiritual and social justice issues, and who has been a contributor to Resurgence, will be addressing the conference via a pre-recorded talk.

Alan Rusbridger, who stood down last year after two decades as editor of The Guardian, is now Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He will be talking about media coverage of environmental issues and his newspaper’s ‘Keep it in the ground’ campaign against fossil fuel production.

More than 50 internationally known speakers are now taking part at the conference, along with artists and performers. They include Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, broadcaster, chef and food campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and environmental activists Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva and Jonathon Porritt.

See www.resurgence.org/R50event for further details about the conference or to book tickets. Tickets can also be booked by telephone on 01497 822 629 (9am to 5pm Monday to Friday).

A New Pilgrimage

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e would like to thank all those who responded to Satish Kumar’s invitation to join him for A New Pilgrimage, following the route of the Thames to Oxford in the week before our anniversary celebrations. We have been overwhelmed with responses, so if you have written to us expressing an interest, we will be in contact with you by the 14 July to let you know if you have been successful in securing a place on the walk.

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F RO NTLINE NEWS FROM THE GRASS RO OT S

Activists occupy and halt work in the UK’s largest opencast coal mine, Ffos-y-fran

Photograph © Kristian Buus

CLIMATE CAMPAIGNERS TARGET FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY IN MASS PROTESTS UK’s largest opencast mine shut by demonstrators, reports Kara Moses

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limate change protesters staged a wave of mass actions against the fossil fuel industry as Resurgence & Ecologist went to press. The actions, part of the ongoing campaign pledged by the climate justice movement after last December’s COP21 climate negotiations in Paris, targeted fossil fuel infrastructure in countries including the Philippines, Nigeria, Brazil, Germany, Australia, India, the US and the UK. In Wales, hundreds of people shut down the UK’s largest opencast coal mine at Ffosy-y-fran near Merthyr Tydfil for 12 hours. The protest was organised by local campaigners and grass roots direct action network Reclaim the Power. A central theme to the protest saw 250 people and banners stretching across the vast mine, symbolising a ‘red line’ for the planet continued use of fossil fuels would cross.

The mine owners, Miller Argent, recently saw planning permission for an adjacent new mine unanimously rejected by Caerphilly Council after a longstanding local campaign against both the existing and the proposed new mine, but are appealing against the decision.

Kat Richardson from Reclaim the Power said: “New coal mines are totally incompatible with tackling climate change, and after signing the Paris agreement to limit warming to 1.5 °C we need to put words into action and transition to clean, renewable energy. Fossil fuel extraction impacts upon local communities, and burning [fossil fuel] is causing dangerous climate change. This global wave of direct action against fossil fuels shows that there is a growing climate justice movement willing to take the bold action we need when governments fail to do so. We will continue until we win.”

Other targets around the world included coal trains, oil refineries, power stations, pipelines and other major fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Reclaim the Power have announced a mass action at London’s Heathrow airport in September. breakfree2016.org reclaimthepower.org.uk Kara Moses is a freelance journalist who has contributed all the articles in this feature. For Ben Winston’s fossil fuel protest story see page 13.

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Power Stance!

Photograph © Amy Scaife

July/August 2016

UK

BATTERY BOOST FOR OFFSHORE WIND POWER

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People gathered to protest against the construction of a coal-fired power plant, Banshkhali, Chittagong Photograph © Dhaka Tribune

BANGLADESH

FIVE KILLED IN PROTEST AT COAL POWER PLANTS

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t least five people were killed and 100 injured when police opened fire on thousands of villagers protesting against the planned construction of two coal-fired power plants in Bangladesh in April.

Violent clashes arose after protests were banned, following days of peaceful demonstration in Gandamara, a coastal town near Chittagong, when the company behind the project started purchasing land. Police have filed cases against around 3,200 people for violence, but villagers maintain the violence came from police.

With finance from China, the S. Alam Group plans to build two coal-fired power plants in the area with a combined capacity of 1,224MW, evicting thousands from fertile coastal land. With Bangladesh’s limited coal reserves, the plants are expected to import most of the coal required from Indonesia, which is also experiencing anti-coal protests from communities facing eviction and loss of farmland and forest.

The clashes near Chittagong follow major demonstrations against the building of a large coal-fired power station at Rampal, on the edge of the Bangladeshi Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest. tinyurl.com/gandamara-coal

COLOMBIA

EVICTED VILLAGERS FACE PIT VIOLENCE

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olombian villagers returning to the homes they were evicted from by mining company Cerrejón were met with violence from police and authorities in February this year, resulting in several injuries. The villagers of Roche and other rural farming communities displaced by new mines are unhappy with what they say are “undignified” semi-urban dwellings, without drinking water and adequate land for farming and livestock.

The Cerrejón mine is the world’s largest open-pit coal mine and has displaced 17 villages in La Guajira, the poorest region of Colombia. Many violent evictions have been documented, most notoriously Tabaco in 2001. Fifteen years on, the community has still not been resettled. Some 60% of the coal from the mine ends up in Europe’s coal-fired plants. colombiasolidarity.org.uk londonminingnetwork.org

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he world’s largest floating wind farm, which was recently granted approval for construction off Scotland’s coast, is now also to include a battery to store the generated energy. Battery storage is seen by many as the key to widespread renewable energy deployment, as it can mitigate intermittency and optimise output. This new 1MWh lithium-ion battery is being designed specifically for offshore wind farms.

When built, the Hywind Scotland floating wind farm will consist of five 6MW ballast-stabilised floating turbines anchored to the seabed using cables, 25–30km off the Aberdeenshire coast. The development of floating turbines is expected to increase the range of possible sites, as they can operate in much deeper water. Start of electricity production at Hywind Scotland is expected in late 2017. tinyurl.com/hywind-floating

UK

SOLAR BEATS COAL – FOR A DAY

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olar energy provided more power than coal over a period of 24 hours in April, setting a new British record. Previously in the UK, the record had stood at only a few hours.

On 9 April, solar panels generated 29GWh of electricity, 4% of total demand that day, while coal-fired power stations produced 21GWh (3% of total demand). The following day solar outpaced coal even more, producing 6% of demand compared to 3% by coal.

Update: solar provided more power than coal over the course of a full week in May. tinyurl.com/solar-coal-2016

UK

CAMPAIGNERS CLAIM ARTS SPONSORSHIP VICTORY

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he oil giant BP has terminated long-standing arts sponsorship deals with the Tate Gallery and the Edinburgh International Festival, a recent target of climate campaigners. BP has cited the “extremely challenging business environment” rather than the years of protest against the controversial sponsorship, previously reported in Resurgence & Ecologist. Protests are continuing against BP sponsorship of London’s Royal Opera House, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Shakespeare Company. bp-or-not-bp.org liberatetate.org.uk

US

NEW BUILDINGS GO SOLAR

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an Francisco has become the first major city to adopt legislation requiring all new buildings of up to 10 storeys to be fitted with either solar PV or rooftop solar panels. The law comes into place next January.

Californian law already dictates that new buildings must have at least 15% of their roof space exposed to sunshine, to allow for future solar panel installation.

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F RO NTLINE

INDUSTRY THREAT TO HERITAGE SITES

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Planting rice seedlings, India

© Universal Images Group / Getty Images

BANGLADESH

‘FISH AND RICE’ FARMING MAY COMBAT FOOD POVERTY Kara Moses reports on a new ecologically based agriculture in South Asia

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n innovative method of farming that combines rice and fish cultivation is helping farmers in Bangladesh produce more food in less space and improve the country’s economy and food security in the face of climate change.

In the integrated rice–fish farming system, small fish are cultivated in wetrice paddy fields, where they reduce the need for pesticides and fertilisers by eating insect pests and providing plant nutrition with their droppings, as well as reducing methane emissions by oxygenating the water. Their presence increases rice yields by up to 15%, providing more food and boosting incomes for farmers who are able to sell their surplus crop at market. The fish provide regular, high-protein meals for the farmers and their families.

Bangladesh is one of the poorest, most densely populated countries in the world, and one of the most vulnerable to climate change. Some 18% of the country is affected by annual flooding, while 27% of the population is undernourished. The integrated rice–fish farming system can be used in areas flooded with salt water and has the potential to significantly increase crop yields and nutritional variety per hectare, thereby building resilience to the impacts of climate change and alleviating poverty and food and nutrition insecurity.

Rice and fish have long been staple foods of Bangladeshis. Traditionally, however, fish and rice cultivation are practised separately, with rice monoculture the main farming system used in the country. Rice monoculture cannot provide a sustainable food supply without long-term adverse environmental effects such as the impact of agrochemicals on soil fertility, and the production of methane.

An integrated rice–fish farming system is more ecologically sound because fish improve soil fertility by increasing the availability of nitrogen and phosphorus, and reduce by 30% (compared with rice monoculture) the production of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Nesar Ahmed, a researcher in fisheries management at Bangladesh Agricultural University, said: “Bangladesh could become a food-secure and poverty-free country within a decade if we can accelerate economic growth and food production through a blue-green revolution.” practicalaction.org/rice-fish-culture

lmost half of all natural and mixed (including cultural) World Heritage sites are threatened by harmful industrial activities, according to a WWF report.

Places at risk include the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon National Park, the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, Lake Malawi National Park, and the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries.

According to the study, 114 of the 229 natural and mixed World Heritage sites have oil, gas or mining concessions overlapping them or are under threat from at least one other industrial activity. wwf.org.uk

GREEN PRIZE FOR ECONOMIST

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artha S. Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the 2016 Tyler Prize for his work in developing economic theory and tools to measure the relationships between human and environmental wellbeing, placing an emphasis on population and environmental sustainability. tylerprize.usc.edu

MEADOW MAKERS HONOURED

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onservation organisations, led by the charity Plantlife, are running a competition to find Britain’s most successful “meadow makers”, to highlight the threats to such habitats. Since the 1930s Britain has lost 97% (nearly 3 million hectares) of meadows and grasslands, and the wild flowers and wildlife associated with them. Entries close on 31 July. magnificentmeadows.org.uk

JAILHOUSE BOX

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risoners at HMP Doncaster and HMP Humber in the north of England have built more than 10,000 wooden nesting boxes for the rare hazel dormouse, whose numbers have fallen dramatically due to loss of habitat. The work is part of a project by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and Natural England’s national dormouse monitoring programme, now in its sixth year. tinyurl.com/prisoners-dormice

Please send newsworthy and/or inspiring stories (and photographs) for possible publication in Frontline to editorial@resurgence.org

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July/August 2016

Eritrean migrants about to be rescued by MSF © Paolo Pellegrin / Magnum Photos

Desperate Crossing

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ast summer photographer Paolo Pellegrin boarded a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) ship, the Bourbon Argos, tasked with intercepting migrant-packed vessels from Libya bound for Europe. Eritrean migrants were rescued at sea by the ship and transported to Reggio Calabria, Italy.

According to MSF, the Bourbon Argos was patrolling the waters off the coast of Libya when it encountered two wooden boats carrying a total of 733 migrants. The migrants reported that a third boat had left Libya with them, but it could not be located by MSF. It was subsequently reported to have been rescued the following day by an Irish ship, but with casualties.

On returning home Paolo Pellegrin, together with writer Scott Anderson, created a multimedia documentary, Desperate Crossing, for The New York Times. In April this poignant documentary of migration was named the winner of the Immersive Storytelling award by the World Photo Press.

To view Desperate Crossing visit: tinyurl.com/zhbnb9a

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E CO LO G I S T L A N D R E F O R M

Rich country poor country Political reform is necessary to prevent the ‘social cleansing’ of the countryside, argues Simon Fairlie

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he British countryside, particularly lowland England, is enjoying unparalleled prosperity. Newly thatched cottages, gleaming Range Rovers, 300hp tractors, and rolling seas of subsidised wheat and barley testify that the countryside harbours a great deal of wealth.

Yet this opulence is not shared by everyone who lives there; it masks an obstinate persistence of age-old inequalities, a significant level of what is now termed ‘hidden poverty’, and progressive gentrification of the countryside comparable to the ‘social cleansing’ taking place in wealthier parts of central London.

On the political stage little has so far been done to tackle this malaise. The Tory Party’s electoral domination of rural constituencies reflects satisfaction with the status quo on the part of an elite of landowners and wealthy in­comers. Countryside policy is de­­ liver­ed oven-ready to ministers by the Country Land and Business Association and the National Farmers’ Union.

Meanwhile the traditional Labour opposition has long given up on rural constituencies as a lost cause.

In the last year, however, the UK’s political landscape has shifted: the Scots have given an overwhelming mandate to a party that has land reform as part of its platform; the Labour Party’s membership has more than doubled 10

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under a leadership willing to think outside the neoliberal box.

It is with this reinvigorated parliamentary opposition in mind that The Land magazine, the Landworkers’ Alliance – a union of small-scale producers and family farmers – and a member of the international peasant farming movement La Vía Campesina have combined forces to produce a rural manifesto entitled Equality in the Countryside.

Young people born in the countryside often find they have no choice but to move to the city It was launched earlier this year at the Oxford Real Farming Conference and is also supported by the Family Farmers’ Association. Here, summarised, are some of its main points:

The influx of the rich has left no place for the poor Consider this curious fact: people living in the countryside in lowland England on average earn about £90 per week more than people living in urban areas.

On the other hand, people working in all rural areas earn on average about £90 per week less than people working in urban areas.

The reason for this apparent paradox is that large numbers of wealthy people who live in the countryside earn their living in the city. The countryside does not currently generate wealth: it imports it, and it imports the people who earn it.

The influx of wealthy incomers to the countryside is sometimes applauded on the grounds that they spread money around the local economy, and this is indeed the case insofar as they buy local food and employ local builders and services.

However, their wealth has also allowed them to buy up huge swathes of rural infrastructure, with the result that the price of houses, agricultural buildings and small parcels of land has shot out of the reach of many people who both live and work in the countryside, whose wages, despite the largesse of the incomers, remain below the national average.

Young people born in the countryside often find they have no choice but to move to the city to earn enough money to pay for their accommodation: only 13.5% of people in rural areas are aged between 16 and 29, whereas in urban areas the figure is over 20%. As an official Cabinet Office report put it some years ago, parts of England risk becoming “the nearexclusive preserve of the more affluent sections of society”.

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Strangling the rural economy The root cause of the gap between urban and rural wages lies in declining terms of trade between urban and rural economies. The rural economy, reliant on the dispersed production of primary commodities, is vulnerable to competition from global markets and to aggressive price bargaining from cartels of processors and distributors (supermarkets), whereas the property market and the urban service economy are largely immune from these forces.

Since the second world war, the price of food and other raw materials that the countryside produces has stagnated, while the price of services – and especially of property – has rocketed.

This has had profound consequences for anyone living in the countryside who is not a property owner. It explains why less than 10% of earnings from the UK food industry goes to UK farmers and fishermen.

To illustrate the scale of the problem: the gross profit for a farmer from a 110kg pig, sold at a farmgate price of £120 and providing perhaps £400 worth of pork, is just £2.80. The gross profit on a 2.2kg broiler chicken is 30p.

This is before fixed costs such as infrastructure, power and rent are deducted.

The cost of producing a litre of milk is 27p, whereas many dairy farmers today are receiving less than 20p from bulk purchasers. No small business in the urban economy could possibly operate on these slim margins.

Urban wealth built on under­ valued rural produce Since the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s, neither liberal nor socialist governments have been keen to protect land-based industries from market forces, though for different ideological reasons. Only after the second world war, when food and timber security issues became paramount, was it felt necessary to support agricultural and forestry production through subsidies, which in recent decades have been provided through the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

CAP subsidies have helped the UK maintain food production by compensating for exposure to a global free market: the UK was only 47% Issue 297

For equality in the countryside, we need more small-scale farming

self-sufficient in food in 1947, but this rose progressively to 78% in 1984. Since then it has declined to the current level of 60%.

However, subsidies have failed to raise rural wages to the level of urban wages and have instead exacerbated inequalities within the rural economy.

Although CAP subsidies were originally linked to productivity, they are now doled out according to the acreage of land owned, whether or not it is being farmed productively.

There is no mechanism within the CAP system, as applied in the UK, to ensure that payments are used to generate employment, or that it is the people actually working the land who are the recipients.

On the contrary, as land values rise correspondingly, beneficiaries are landowners and the supermarkets that

exploit the subsidies to pay lower prices for the goods they buy. As profit margins on agricultural produce dwindle to ludicrously small percentages, farms have to expand to survive, and subsidies are used to secure loans and invest in ever larger labour-saving machinery to cope with the extra acres.

The bulk of the CAP subsidies goes to a diminishing number of landowners.

The £2.9 billion handed out in 2014 represented 54% of all profit made by UK farms that year. It is £5 billion more than the total wages paid to agricultural workers. Around 40,000 of those landowners are estimated to own 28 million acres between them – around half of all the land in Britain.

Meanwhile, small family farms are being swallowed up by industrially farmed holdings increasingly controlled by corporations. 47,000 farms Resurgence & Ecologist

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Rural settlements would benefit from ‘village service stations’ Illustrations by Clifford Harper / Agraphia Press

disappeared between 2000 and 2010, a 20% decline. Over the same period the average UK farm increased by one third in size, from 169 to 226 acres. The average for the whole of Europe is 36 acres.

Since the war, successive governments have done little to halt the loss of family farms, or to question the inequitable flow of CAP subsidies. In the campaign for the EU membership referendum, neither wing of the Conservative Party said much about agricultural subsidy reform, though the subsidy represents a massive proportion of the EU budget – presumably because a sizeable proportion of Conservative Party supporters are beneficiaries.

A plan for effective rural reform Any programme to reduce inequality in the countryside needs to recognise its root causes, namely exposure to an unregulated free market, and the UK’s stilted pattern of property ownership.

The price paid to farmers for producing food needs to increase. How can we, as a nation and as individual householders,

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afford this? By reducing the excessive amount paid in rent and profits to property owners and speculators.

That is not to suggest that this can be achieved head-on through a programme of protectionist measures and compulsory property redistribution; rather, we propose a menu of 46 politically achievable steps, which many people will find sensible and uncontroversial, but which collectively add up to a radical shift in rural policy. Here are a few of them: The Land Registry should not be privatised, as ministers have been proposing. The register of who owns which land should be completed, and made easily and freely accessible online. A cadastral map for each municipality should be made publicly available at council offices, as it is in countries such as France and Spain.

The sell-off of county farms – owned by councils – should be halted. Local authorities should be re-empowered to acquire land for renting to small-scale farmers and new entrants where there is a proven need.

Agricultural subsidies should be capped at €150,000 per individual farmer, releasing an estimated £4 million. The ceiling should be lowered progressively to a level that supports a wider range of thriving family farms.

Much organically produced food and animal feed is not labelled as such because the costs of certification are too high for small-scale producers.

The burden of labelling and certification should instead be borne by farmers who employ chemicals, rather than by organic farmers. Food produced using artificial fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides or GM technologies should be clearly labelled as such.

There should be greater investment in council housing and social housing in villages.

Recently introduced government support for self-build housing should be focused on genuinely and permanently affordable housing, not on luxury homes.

All rural local authorities should set targets within their area for the reduction of carbon emissions through renewable energy generation, including solar, wind and micro-hydro, especially community schemes; and through energy-saving measures such as insulation of buildings.

Support should be provided for the creation of ‘village service stations’ in rural settlements, to combine retail provision of food and essential goods with post office and banking services, car hire and minibus services, and so on.

Land management (horticulture, arable crops, animal husbandry, forestry, and so on) should be included as a subject in secondary schools, on a par with academic subjects.

The fuel duty escalator should be reintroduced – a ratcheted annual increase of carbon tax on petrol and diesel, including red diesel – with the proceeds earmarked for public transport provision.

Simon Fairlie writes for The Land, an occasional magazine about land rights.

Equality in the Countryside is available in full at www.thelandmagazine.org.uk A printed copy, with references for the statistics, can be obtained from: editorial@thelandmagazine.org.uk July/August 2016

E N V I R O N M E NTA L PR OT E S T E CO LO G I S T

I’m just so scared Environmental activists come together at the Ende Gelände (Here and No Further) protest

Photograph © Paul Wagner / 350.org

This isn’t what I do.Yet, oddly, here I am.

Ben Winston didn’t consider himself an activist. Then, last year, he joined a protest in Germany, at one of the world’s largest open-cast coal mines “I’m so glad to see people drawing a firm line in the coalfields, and stopping the planet’s largest coal-digging machines. We’re driven not by ideology but by physics: there’s simply no way to burn all this lignite and keep the climate intact. These protesters are lifeguards for an endangered planet.”

– Bill McKibben, American environmental activist

I

’m running and I’m running and I’m just one, just one amongst hundreds of people running to escape the batons and the pepper spray, running to break through the police line and run on and on across the field to the mine. But as we’re running and my legs are pumping and the adrenalin’s thumping I turn and see something that makes my blood turn cold and time stand still.

I see a man made massive with body armour and a helmet and a baton, and I see him throw his shoulder back and form a fist and smash the full brutal weight of his aggression into the face of an oncoming woman. She crumples but I don’t even see her hit the floor because Issue 297

I’m running and oh am I running and I’m thinking that this isn’t what I signed up for and I don’t want to be here and I’m just so scared. Because I am not an activist. This isn’t what I do.

I’m a relatively normal, middle-aged chap who does clicktivism when he can find the time. Direct action is not my thing. I’m not cut out to be here, running with hundreds of people across the fields of the Rhineland to try and close for one day a sodding great lignite mine.

And yet, oddly, here I am.

I am running because I don’t know what else to do. I am running because I know too much to stand still. I am running because climate change has

already begun and because I’m scared of heatwaves and droughts and mass extinctions and flooding. I’m running because I need to act – we all need to act – and we need to act right now.

And so I’m acting as fast as I can, running from the police, running from my disempowerment, running from my apathy and fatalism. I’m running and dodging batons and pepper spray and I’m more primevally, viscerally terrified than I have ever, ever been.

“REGROUP! REGROUP! REGROUP!” Through the chaos the call goes out and we begin to pull back together after breaking through the police line. People nursing baton Resurgence & Ecologist

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injuries are helped by those who escaped the beatings, and those of us who can see lead those blinded by pepper spray.

We keep walking, quickly recoalescing back into the protective mass of determined people, but I’m feeling very, very shaken. This is so unlike anything I’ve experienced. The violence and brutality are horrible, and I wish I hadn’t come. I wonder how I could have been so naive.

I mean, what was I expecting when I signed up to gatecrash Europe’s biggest source of CO2 emissions? A welcoming beer and a hug?

Why are there so many of us here? I think the answer lies in the urgency of the climate challenge and the feeling that action has become a moral imperative And right now, walking through the fields with 200 other people all dressed, like me, in white paper boiler suits, I’m well out of my depth. This is not my scene. I’m a family man, too old for this kind of thing. Yes, climate change is important and there’s a role for me in the movement, but this isn’t it. I want out. I want to escape. I want to leave this stupid situation and go back to camp and help make tofu burgers, or something.

But then I realise that, beyond the fearful chatter of my thinking, I’m committed. We all are. Others will be feeling all of this, but we’re here together and that means containing my fear and keeping on walking towards the mine.

We have nothing but our resolve and our numbers and in honour of that I have a responsibility to keep my fear contained. I want no part in eroding what is our only strength.

And now, incredibly, it looks as if we might actually make it. The masts of the great pit diggers poke out of the earth just a field or two away, and with no more police or opposition we soon make it to the edge of the mine.

The scale is barely comprehensible. It stretches a full 20km into the distance.

It’s 12km wide. And it’s so resonant 14

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with meaning: a great gaping hole in the Earth from which billions of tons of coal have been dug, crushed and burnt.

It’s dramatic and terrifying testimony to what our species can do when it puts its mind to it, and a potent symbol for the challenge we face with climate change.

And as I look out across the pit I find it hard to believe that we, as a collection of small, frail human beings, can really shut down a problem of this scale.

In truth, we don’t yet know if we can.

We don’t know if we can descend into this beautiful hell and bring this beast to a halt. But we’re going to try. Eight hundred individuals from 45 countries are marching in four groups towards the mine; four fingers of resistance snaking across the Rhineland.

We must look incredible from the air. The police helicopters must look down on these responsive white masses spreading and contracting in response to their colleagues’ attacks. But what they won’t see from those helicopters is one of the most significant aspects of this action: they won’t see how many of us are doing something like this for the first time. People like me, who have never experienced police brutality or the terrifying ordeal of breaking through police lines.

And why are there so many of us here? What is it that compels us normal, law-abiding citizens to put our liberty and safety at risk? What brings us to leave our husbands and wives and children and engage in such radical and, frankly, out-of-character behaviour?

I think the answer lies in the urgency of the climate challenge and the feeling that action of some kind has become a moral imperative. We feel we are not acting simply for ourselves, but for our planet and our children. We feel a responsibility to those who are not yet born. And we feel the anger, sadness and incomprehension of those future generations who will look back at us with incredulity. “What a beautiful world,” they will think. “What kind of madness made our parents trash it?”

And if I have hope – which I do – then it is that we are entering a period that will be remembered as a time when normal people got together and did extraor­ dinary things. Because when people begin to recognise the limitations of a system of individualism and self-interest

and begin, collectively, to seek change, remarkable things can happen.

Which, of course, is exactly what is happening here. I am just one in a finger of 200, in an action of 1,000… but we are in reality a movement of millions. And this action for me is proof of how inconceivably powerful we become when we begin to act from our collect­ ive self. Nothing today would have happened without the collaboration of countless individuals, from those who help finance organisations like 350.org to those who organise logistics, cook, translate and provide free legal representation at the climate camp. But perhaps most numerous are those many who – like my friends – send precious messages July/August 2016

Operations in the mine finally came to a complete halt, with the protesters surrounded by security staff Photograph © Ruben Neugebauer / 350.org

of support that say we do not act alone.

So together we flow over the top of the mine and down towards the diggers. We are chanting and singing and buzzing with a mixture of disbelief and hope, and we spill down towards two men beside an RWE mine vehicle. We must be a terrifying sight, this tidal wave of white boiler suits, but we are nonviolent and unstoppable. We’re singing and celebrating, giddy with elation and adrenalin, mindful of the jeeps in the distance but thrilled for now with success. I begin thinking that perhaps the police are behind us, perhaps they’ll leave the action to the mine staff. And for the first time since breaking through the lines, the fear begins to recede.

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And as it diminishes, so my attention widens to appreciate this incredible place. To our right an endless cliff winds around the rim, an artwork of sandy pigments gouged with the striations of digger teeth. To our left the mine drops down into the distance in a series of terraces, each leading deeper into the earth that gets darker and darker, then turns to black. And across this pit roam the diggers, unimaginable beasts with bucket teeth and vast steel throats, gouging and disgorging the coal onto conveyor belts 16km long.

The pit is beyond comprehension: a raw mix of extreme beauty and utter devastation. And we must descend into it in our search for change.

Our white finger marches around the corner past a huge, stationary belt, and the terrace opens out.

Several miles away we see the closest digger cleaving sandy overburden from the rim. The distant jeeps are getting closer, but we are thrilled that our target is in sight…

Thanks again for all your support and understanding. It’s priceless.

Ben Winston, who died last year, aged 39, was a photographer, film-maker and writer. This is an edited version of his blog on the Ende Gelände protest. www.benwinstonphoto.wordpress.com www.350.org www.ende-gelaende.org/en

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E CO LO G I S T CO N S E RVATI O N

The nature reserve

built through Facebook You don’t need to own vast acres to create a nature reserve.

Adrian Cooper reports on his local community initiative

T

he idea behind Felixstowe’s Community Nature Reserve was born out of my frustration with politicians during the 2015 general election. None of them even mentioned the catastrophic decline in bees and other wildlife. Clearly, action from local grass roots was needed.

After the election, I started talking with people from local government, as well as the wider Felixstowe community, listening and learning about what might be possible, and gathering a small team of volunteers. Most people understood that local wildlife populations were falling. They wanted to help, but simply did not know how.

It also became clear that getting hold of a single plot of land for any kind of nature reserve project in the Felixstowe area would take too long, and would be too complicated. So I decided to make participation in this initiative as simple as possible.

First, I redefined what a nature reserve could be. Instead of it being one area of land, I suggested to local people that each of them only had to allocate three square yards of their garden and/or allotment for wildlife-friendly plants, ponds and insect lodges, and that we would aim for 1,666 people to take part. That combination would give us a total area of 5,000 square yards – the area of a football pitch, an image everyone could grasp. In this way, we would develop a ‘community nature reserve’ composed of many pieces of private land, between which insects, birds and other wildlife could develop sustainable biodiversity. Smaller areas could also contribute. Even window box owners were encouraged to take part. After all, they could grow herbs, A Glanville Fritillary feeding on Wild Thyme

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Photograph © Peter Entwistle / FLPA

July/August 2016

crocuses, snowdrops and much else. No one was excluded.

By the end of October 2015, I was certain that enough local people understood what I was trying to do. The next step was to start a Facebook page with my partner, Dawn Holden, to advise local people about wildlife-friendly plants. Three times each week, a new plant was advised to our rapidly growing readership. The list comprised rowan, barberry, firethorn, foxglove, thyme, sunflower, lavender, honeysuckle, ice plant, buddleia, evening primrose and purple loosestrife.

For the benefit of local people who didn’t have access to the internet, I wrote an article for one of our local advertiser magazines. I also did interviews for our community TV station and BBC Radio Suffolk. One of the volunteers took it upon herself to print off information posters about our work and aims. Those posters ended up on just about every community noticeboard in the town. Over the months leading up to Christmas, it was difficult to miss the name of Felixstowe’s Community Nature Reserve, and we received messages from nearly a hundred local people, saying they had bought and planted at least one of the plants we had recommended. We were thrilled.

Our work continued, highlighting plants that have berries and other seasonal fruit. Here the plant list was composed of hawthorn, yew, alder buckthorn, elder, barberry, holly, rowan, spindle, dogwood and wild privet.

By mid-March we’d had more than 200 messages from local people to tell us they were taking part. And the good news hasn’t stopped there.

In the Leicestershire villages of Cosby and Burbage, local people decided to copy our model to develop their own community nature reserves – all thanks to the internet. We’ve had enquiries from people across the UK, asking how we set ourselves up and how the initiative has developed.

The BBC television natural history presenter Chris Packham found out about us, again through the internet. Chris’s tweets to his 145,000 Twitter followers produced a small avalanche of enquiries about our work and achievements.

We’ve also started to work alongside Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Community Issue 297

A Facebook post recommended followers to plant bee-friendly Viper’s Bugloss Photograph © ERHARD NERGER / imageBROKER / FLPA

Projects Officer, to help the Trust with their grass-roots conservation initiatives, and to raise our profile. In April we led a swift walk to highlight falling populations of swifts, and to show people what they can do to help. In September we will help the Trust raise awareness of hedgehog populations in the Felixstowe area.

The most important lesson we can offer other groups is to listen to as many local people as possible In January we took part in a Green Forum organised by East Suffolk Greenprint Forum and representatives of Suffolk county council, Suffolk Coastal district council and Felixstowe town council. There was tremendous enthusiasm for our work – not only our aims, but also the results we have achieved. As a result we recruited many more volunteers. We also received some imaginative new ideas, such as organising a plant-swap event to keep the cost of buying and growing wildlife-friendly plants as low as possible. We met a local poet, Tim Gardiner, who hopes to organise a summer poetry competition on themes related to our work.

The most important lesson we can offer other groups who may wish to start their own community nature reserve is to listen to as many local people as possible. Don’t rush into the Facebook phase until your local community feels comfortable with what you plan to do.

The next lesson is to keep listening, so that fresh new ideas from the community can be fed into social media as often as possible. We like to use streetlife.com because it’s a great way to get discussions going among local people who otherwise might not get involved in community engagement.

That’s our story so far. Now, could it be your turn? To start a community nature reserve in your neighbourhood, simply visit our Facebook page and choose some of the wildlife-friendly plants we’ve featured, and then plant them. It’s that simple. Tell your family, friends and neighbours what you’re doing – starting a community nature reserve composed of small pieces of private land, which, together, can be used by wildlife as a collection of new green corridors where you live.

Adrian Cooper is a conservationist, writer, BBC broadcaster and lecturer. His most recent book is Places of Pilgrimage and Healing. www.facebook.com/ FelixstoweCommunityNatureReserve

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E CO LO G I S T F O R E S TRY SC A N DA L

Europe’s rotten wood Horatio Morpurgo on the threat to one of the continent’s last great forests in the wake of the fall of communism

H

ome to the continent’s largest remaining area of old growth forest, Romania has, for 25 years now, been great news for any European who wants to see bears and wolves and lynxes and would rather not fly. But those forests were never just for eco-tourism: they were good news for Romanian cabinetmakers, too, until about 10 years ago.

Since then, Romanian exports of timber have more than doubled, while Romanian government figures show that the country’s exports of wooden furniture have undergone a mysterious decline. The explanation is an Austrian company and self-styled “green leader”, Holzindustrie Schweighofer, which began operations in Romania in 2003.

Its gigantic sawmills and factories now have the capacity to process all the softwood harvested in the country.

(And senior management figures at the company have been filmed stating that their ambition is to do exactly that.) As well as timber, its facilities also supply “bio-energy”, in the form of briquettes and pellets, to well-meaning customers across Europe.

But there is a longer story to tell about this. From East Germany to Czechoslovakia, from Hungary to Bulgaria, environmentalists played a crucial role in the undermining of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. It’s a story we ought to know much better than we do. Communist Romania’s Ceauşescu regime was so severe that such activism was not possible until its fall. Since then, Romanian civil society has had everything to learn.

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too well. It could rely from the start on the collusion of politicians eager to welcome investors on almost any terms.

The Austrian company was able to both dictate the price it paid for timber and hijack the ‘restitution’ process, which was supposed to return property confiscated by the communists to its former owners or their descendants.

By 2010, however, more land was being requested for restitution than had ever been confiscated: according to a report by the Washington-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which has conducted a threeyear study in Romania, Schweighofer’s proxies have been directly connected to many fraudulent claims.

Previous owners with genuine rights to their former land, meanwhile, are still mired in legal disputes. A new law, further weakening control of this process, was passed in 2013, signed into effect by Viorel Hrebenciuc, a politician indicted in one of the largest restitution scandals of the last 25 years.

The Romanian parliament has sought to restrain the company and rebuild its furniture-making industry through a new forest law, passed last year, though not without lobbying by the Austrian embassy, and threats by Schweighofer – not, thus far, realised – to disinvest.

Even so, for many Romanians this new law is too lenient.

No account of this can ignore the bizarre hybrid that is Romsilva. Both a government agency and a private company, Romsilva oversees the auctions at which permits to cut trees are sold and administers the country’s forests, 28 national parks included. It also

A mixed forest in the Lotru Mountains, Romania

July/August 2016

© Bob Gibbons / FLPA / imageBROKER / REX / Shutterstock

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negotiated the terms of Schweighofer’s entry to Romania’s timber market.

Potential conflict of interest?

Romsilva doesn’t do things by halves.

Its profits multiplied by five between 2008 and 2014. And it earns five times more from timber extraction inside parks and other protected areas than it spends on managing them.

Schweighofer publicly decries corruption. It has conceded that “irregularities” may have occurred, which in some cases it has claimed were due to “typing errors”. The company’s website “guarantees” that it “never knowingly” buys illegal wood. Yet when EIA investigators with concealed cameras posed as timber merchants offering to cut more than was allowed, Schweighofer managers responded that there was “no problem”. (The company has since argued that these remarks were taken out of context.)

Environmentalists have estimated that somewhere between 30% and 50% of the wood harvested in Romania is now done so illegally. The Romanian journalist Gabriel Paun – also a leading environmentalist – followed a shipment of wood from inside a nature reserve to the gates of a Schweighofer mill. He explained the origin of the wood to the guards, and was pepper-sprayed for his pains. When I asked Romanian forestry officials about this, it was darkly hinted that Paun had been “pushing his luck”. Other journalists investigating the country’s timber industry have also been threatened.

There would be plenty of darkness to dwell on here if it were not for the response of countless concerned Romanians. Thousands of people occupied the ancient beech forest of Retezat to defend it from loggers. Protesters have turned out in their hundreds of thousands in cities across the country.

Directia Nationala Anticoruptie, the anti-corruption agency, has uncovered a thriving trade in faked logging permits, signed in each case by the local Romsilva bureau.

Some 27,000 phone calls were made when a number was set up at the Romanian ministry of environment to enable members of the public to ask about the status of any shipment of wood seen on the road. A quarter of shipments reported were illegal. A “woodtracker”

app will allow the same online. NGOs have organised press conferences in Vienna calling on Schweighofer and the Austrian government to respect European timber regulations.

Schweighofer, in turn, claims that its Romanian forests are all sustainably managed. This is both quite true and breathtakingly cynical. The company sources just 2% of its wood from forests it owns, which are FSC-certified. But 98% of its wood is sourced from forests it does not own, via roughly 1,000 suppliers, many of which are under investigation. And when a team of scientists surveyed one of the company’s “sustainable” forests, at Campusel, they found, even there, clear-cutting, poaching, a new road 32 metres across and large drums of chemicals lying about. Their findings were published in the Romanian Academy Journal. It has been requested that FSC certification be withdrawn.

Thousands of people occupied the ancient beech forest of Retezat to defend it from loggers The effort, then, is on all fronts.

Evenimentul Zilei journalist Vlad Stoicescu’s 2015 essay The World of the Woodcutters was awarded a national prize. Stoicescu travelled over 1,000 miles, talking to foresters and timber merchants, many of them “not proud of what they do”. One of the most striking passages in his essay is about the fear, the blackmail, the threats of violence.

But he reports also on the inspections of their factories, under the new law, by government officials.

From the street and YouTube to literary magazines, science departments and the national parliament: Romania has had a lot of learning to do on the environment. It has, by now, something to teach us, too.

Horatio Morpurgo writes on European environmental and literary topics. A version of this article, with links to reports on Romanian forestry, can be read online: www.resurgence.org/forestry

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E CO LO G I S T I NTE RVI E W

Inequality:

A REAL RISK TO OUR planet Oxford geographer Danny Dorling tells Russell Warfield why consumption, not population, spurs climate change

D

anny Dorling doesn’t think that we can address climate change without reducing inequality. At first, he seems a little surprised that I want to talk about it.

“I don’t often get asked that,” he admits, “but you’ve asked the right question.”

Environmentalists are usually more interested in Dorling – who is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford – for his work on demography and human numbers, as the debates around overconsumption and overpopulation continue to rage across sustainability circles.

His provocative book Population 10 Billion argued that the root causes of our various crises don’t flow from the sheer numbers of people alive. They flow from the inequalities that exist between them. Published around the same time as Stephen Emmott’s contrary Ten Billion (which bluntly argued that the outlook for humanity is bleak), Dorling’s work runs refreshingly counter to the misanthropy that often hangs over this debate.

“We could easily have a population of 1 billion on the planet and burn it up,” he tells me. “We could also potentially have 12, 13, 14 billion – I hope not, but we could – and have a very sustainable human population. But you can’t with high levels of inequality.”

His thinking around demography and population growth is even optimistic enough to accommodate the idea of some positive outcomes for Nature.

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made more attractive, he argues, vast areas of land might be given back over to genuine wilderness. It’s typical of his resistance to fatalism.

Population is not Dorling’s primary concern. He’s worried about inequality – and it’s the primary subject of many of his most influential works, from Injustice to Inequality and the 1%.

Not only does he see rampant inequality across economies and societies as unjust, but he also suggests that it’s a primary driver of the climate crisis.

“It annoys me that people obsess around population numbers, and nobody does the really obvious thing and ask, who is trying to get people to buy all these things we don’t need” he says, exasperated.

At this point, it’s worth bearing in mind some facts it can be easy to forget in the UK, such as that 90% of people have never been on an aeroplane. Or that the richest 1% of people have 50% of all wealth, while the poorest 50% of people have access to only 1% of all wealth.

With the majority of consumption and carbon emissions driven by a tiny global elite, it becomes harder to believe that the population growth of people living in extreme poverty is our biggest environmental challenge. This seems especially true when almost all countries are now barely even hitting replacement level.

Population is stabilising. Inequality is the real problem.

“If we don’t reduce the inequalities in the world and in our individual societies,”

Dorling warns, “we are not going to slow down the rate of burning and the rate of pollution. You don’t have to worry about the exactitude of whether 2 degrees (Celsius), or 4 degrees is bad. Unless we reduce inequality we’re going way up to 6 degrees and beyond. And it’s so obvious that we don’t want to go there.”

For Dorling, the wider inequality gets, the more we drive consumption.

This results in corporations that end up needing to sell two mobile phones per person instead of one, to sustain a business model that demands relentless expansion: growth without endpoint or purpose. This has repercussions throughout society.

“What happens in a very unequal July/August 2016

– and it won’t spare the rich Illustration by Pawel Kuczynski www.pawelkuczynski.com

world is that people start to get expectations to do things and behave in ways that don’t actually even make them happy,” he explains. “And it’s perfectly natural to think: if someone else can do this, why shouldn’t I? It looks nice to drive a car, so why should I use the train or a bus?”

He adds: “These unequal societies produce an enormous amount of energy at the top of those societies to make money.

Just to make the richest even richer.”

This link between inequality and climate change seems clear, but it strikes me that they are related in a second way. Not only does any solution to the climate crisis demand greater socioeconomic equality: we might also be living through our last chance to do it.

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Disasters like the displacement of billions and chronic food shortages don’t feel to me like the ideal backdrops to more egalitarian politics. Happily, Dorling is more optimistic.

“I can’t see why climate change should increase or decrease inequality on its own,” he admits, to my surprise.

“We think that the places it will affect most will be the global South because people are living precariously there.

However, they’re also more resilient in not requiring such a sophisticated infrastructure as we do. If the North Atlantic Oscillation ends because we suddenly have melting of sea ice, and the Gulf Stream stops – unlikely, but possible – we’ll have to think about how

to evacuate the UK. That’s a possible sudden event that would dramatically affect this extremely rich country. We’d have to find countries willing to take us as refugees. Would France or Germany take us?” he asks with an ironic smile.

I take his point that some of the worst effects of climate change could – at a stretch – hit prosperous areas earlier than developing countries. But surely such existential threats will cause existing inequalities to lock into place, the gulf between 1% and the 99% widening to an unthinkable degree as the privileged do all they can to preserve a workable way of life?

“That’s the Blade Runner future,” Dorling replies. “The reason it might Resurgence & Ecologist

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The signs of inequality Inequality is one of the most pressing social justice issues of our time. We now live in a world where the 62 richest people have as much wealth as half of the rest of the world combined, Russell Warfield writes.

If you want to see examples of this injustice, the UK is the perfect place to start. Under the austerity and neoliberalism of our current economic policies, we now see the top 10% richest households holding over 70% of all wealth.

The result is that we see inequality across nearly all areas of life in the UK.

Income and poverty

“The UK has the highest rate of economic inequality in Europe,” Danny Dorling says. “The best-off 10% use of 28% of all income. In no other large European country do they take as much. In the more equitable countries of Europe the poor are paid enough in wages or their benefits are sufficient that they do not need to resort to food banks.”

The recent return of the food bank is arguably the most striking example of modern inequality in Britain. In 2009, the Trussell Trust – one of the UK’s foremost networks of food banks – gave just over 25,000 people three-day emergency food parcels. In 2015, they helped over a million people.

Race and gender

Campaign groups like Sisters Uncut highlight how current economic policies don’t just drive inequality – they often hit the most vulnerable groups in society the hardest.

“Only around a quarter of the best-off 1% in the UK are women,” Dorling explains. “On the other hand, the majority of the poor are women, and women have been most affected by the cuts and austerity.”

“The picture by ethnicity is more complex,” he continues.

“Disproportionate numbers of people in the poorest quarter of British society are not white, but there are disproportionate numbers of ethnic minorities in the best-off 10%, too.”

Housing

Since British governments started selling off public housing to private landlords without building new council houses, we’ve seen the emergence of what has come to be known as “Generation Rent”.

“The housing crisis in the UK is fundamentally a crisis of not distributing housing well,” Dorling argues. “An increasing proportion of our homes are under-used and empty because of growing inequalities. We had more bedrooms per person in the UK in 2011 than in 2001. There is not a lack of supply, but people do become too concentrated where the wealthiest now live.”

Education

Education to university level used to be provided without the burden of debt. Today, tuition fees have risen to £9,000, with maintenance grants being totally scrapped.

This means that the poorest in society can graduate with the most debt – up to £53,000 for most undergraduate courses.

Dorling observes that the UK, “and especially England (but also Edinburgh), has an education system that is more segregated than is found elsewhere in the affluent world. Such segregation is only affordable because economic inequalities are so high. The private school system is the peak of the segregation, but it continues throughout the state system.”

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not happen is that it can only work for a fraction of the 1% – the very richest of the richest. And they’d have to be unprecedentedly devious and wellcoordinated to make that happen.”

Dorling is suspicious of any attempts to see projections of the future as inevitable, especially when humans seem to have an innate capacity to assume the worst. But he’s not a deluded optimist.

He fully recognises the gravity of the threat, especially in an increasingly globalised and therefore fragile world.

“What we’re trying now is on a single planetary scale, so we can’t afford to fail in a way that we could with past attempts to settle into separate villages,” he explains. “It is scary.” And most frightening of all? “There are people who still think we can carry on expanding – that we can just go out into space, and that capitalism can continue. It’s so ridiculous.”

It might be ridiculous, but some genuinely think it’s more plausible to desert a wrecked planet on spaceships than it is to reorganise economies. In a capitalist discourse of such hubris, Dorling’s call for equality is a comfortingly measured voice, especially when we’re faced with the existential threat of climate change.

“I think we’re likely to survive this one,” he assures me, but it’s not permission for complacency. His optimism is balanced by a deeper pessimism.

“The worry”, he says, “is that there will be something else. Something we haven’t thought of yet.”

Nobody worried about totalitarianism before it happened, he suggests by way of example. And nobody worried about nuclear war during totalitarianism. Who can say – or even speculate – what humanity will have to confront in the decades to come?

For better or worse, the future remains unwritten, and nothing is inevitable. Danny Dorling’s glass is neither half full nor half empty. It hasn’t been poured yet. In the meantime, we’d do well to concentrate on reducing inequality if we want to best prepare for whatever might be coming next.

Danny Dorling’s latest book, A Better Politics, is available in a free digital edition at www.dannydorling.org/books/ betterpolitics/ July/August 2016

ONE EARTH ONE HUMANITY

ONE FUTURE 50TH Anniversary event 22–25 September 2016 Worcester College, Oxford www.resurgence.org/R50event

Partners with Oxfam and UPLIFT

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K E Y NOTES DEVELOPMENT

For a new environmental and political ethics, just join the dots‌ Preserving the planet also means helping the poor. That needs tax justice and empowering women, Rowan Williams argues

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N

ot long ago, invited to speak at an event to mark the 50th anniversary of this magazine, I attempted to sum up some of the continuities I saw between what Resurgence stands for and some of the priorities I am regularly engaged with as chair of the trustees of Christian Aid. On the surface, these might seem some way apart; but the more I thought about them, the more it was clear that there was a real convergence – and one that is crucial for the wellbeing of the human family over the next few decades.

Christian Aid is a development agency, and it seeks to work in partnership with some of the world’s most vulnerable communities in building sustainable economic habits that allow people the dignity of a measure of control over their lives. It is an agency that has moved decisively away from simple grant-giving or the direction of projects from outside, and now gives an absolute priority to listening to what local communities say about their needs and supporting them in identifying the resources they have or might have. But in recent years especially, we have tried to be more specific about how a realistic and healthy approach to development requires a ‘big picture’, a set of clear principles that help us sort out where we can make the kind of contribution only we are able to make. And we have settled on three major focal points for campaigning and action.

First, we have recognised that the challenges of climate change are at the heart of countless specific challenges in development. Rising water levels in the Pacific or in Bangladesh, soil erosion and deforestation in East Africa or Latin America, unpredictable weather patterns that disrupt traditional Issue 297

rhythms of sowing and harvesting – all these pose huge challenges for any hope of economic justice and stability.

Second, we have joined in wider advocacy around the issue of tax justice and transparency. Tax evasion by major multinational interests deprives vulnerable national economies of essential resources for infrastructure and social care, and effectively creates a system where the poor subsidise the rich.

And third, we see the liberation of girls and women from positions of disadvantage and powerlessness as a key to unlock a huge range of possibilities for locally based projects. Challenging gender-related violence becomes a crucial tool in transforming both expectation and performance in disadvantaged communities.

So we have been consistent advocates in these areas; but they are not just a set of unrelated Good Causes. I don’t need to underscore the importance of the envir­onmental question. But there is a real connection between this and the other issues – one that readers of Resurgence will not be slow to recognise.

Tax evasion is a problem most frequently with companies in search of copious and cheap raw materials: the extractive industries are overrepresented in the list of offenders. It is not at all surprising that industries whose rationale is so often bound up with assumptions about an unlimited freedom to exploit the material environment in the name of unlimited economic expansion are slow to contribute to those public enterprises that work for the ‘ecology’ of human society, human cooperation, through public services. What tax pays for is the cost of balancing the inevitable ‘swerves’ of marketised life, the incidental (or notso-incidental) injustices of uncontrolled Resurgence & Ecologist

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economic competition; the cost of guaranteeing that all have some chance of equal access to public goods. And once you have acknowledged this as a proper moral and political priority, you can’t simply act on the basis that the material world is capable of being owned and used at the will of a small coterie of the already prosperous.

And of course one of the most obvious effects of some kinds of labour pattern is the breakup of family life – migrant male workers away from home, massive pressure on isolated women to keep families fed and cared for, women pressured into sex work to earn money, and the whole sad cycle of abuse and oppression that surrounds all

this. Women who have been educated and supported in recognising their own capacity are regularly agents of change to a degree that seems almost disproportionate. They are ready and able to take on responsibility for local health and nutrition education, micro-credit ventures, small businesses – humanscale economic activities and services

Tackling the causes of poverty Founded in 1945, Christian Aid is now the official relief and development agency of 41 British and Irish churches. “The reason we do any of our work is because we want to end the scandal of poverty around the world. We do that in different ways,” Christian Aid says. “Responding to humanitarian crisis and delivering long-term aid and development is one way, but we also want to tackle the structural issues that cause poverty.”

disproportionate impacts and have little access to resources to help them adapt. For subsistence farmers who rely on livestock or what they can grow from the land to survive, rising temperatures, drought and unpredictable weather can be lethal. Similarly, poor people living in countries such as Bangladesh and the Philippines are extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise and extreme weather events.”

Climate change

Tax justice

“Climate change is a global phenomenon that is already causing human suffering around the world. Although we’re seeing the effects ourselves in Britain with more winter flooding, it is poor people who are feeling the

“Christian Aid has campaigned for tax justice since 2008.

When multinational corporations and wealthy individuals avoid and evade the taxes they owe developing countries, the price is paid by people living in poverty. Tax dodging deprives governments of money that could be used to fund basic public services on which poor people depend: for instance schools, malaria prevention, clinics, midwives, roads, fire-fighting services, justice systems and social safetynets to protect people from destitution and starvation. This is why Christian Aid has argued that tax dodging costs lives.

“In 2008, Christian Aid estimated that poor countries lose US$160 billion every year to tax dodging by multinational corporations alone – far more than they receive in aid. Since then, evidence has accumulated about the scale of poor countries’ losses to tax dodging, and the methods that companies and individuals use to cheat on tax.”

Empowering women

A study using data from 219 countries from 1970 to 2009 found that, for every additional year of education for women of reproductive age, child mortality decreased by 9.5%.

Between 1970 and 1990, the survival of 4.2 million children stemmed from women’s increased education. A World Bank study found that women spend a greater percentage of their income on their children’s health and education. Yet women face a greater risk of mortality, including from violence, in many low- and middle-income nations, while studies by the International Labour Organization found that, as of 2011, 50.5% of the world’s working women were in vulnerable employment, often unprotected by labour legislation, compared to 48.2% of men. Women were far more likely than men to be in vulnerable employment in North Africa (55% versus 32%), the Middle East (42% versus 27%) and subSaharan Africa (nearly 85% versus 70%).

Working in partnership with vulnerable communities Photograph © Chris Stowers / Panos

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www.christianaid.org.uk July/August 2016

that stand alongside the inhuman scale of so much industrial activity.

Sustainable development has to start at this level and never lose sight of it.

Thinking about development, in other words, must mean thinking about our whole relation to the matter of which we are a part, thinking about the rhythms of work, about the corruption of personal and social relationships by obsessive profiteering, and the corruption of the Earth itself by the efforts of expert profiteers to keep themselves and their enterprises shielded from the common human currency of mutual support and responsibility.

One of the most effective wiles of the devil in our contemporary situation (if I may be allowed a theological phrase) is to present environmental awareness and economic justice and liberation as separate or even alternative goals. It is important for development agencies actively and articulately to model local, intermediate-technology, cooperative economic enterprise – with all that this means for the emancipation of women as producers and managers as well as caregivers. It is essential to separate national economic development from the paper-prosperity that may be generated by large-scale and environmentally callous investment, and to encourage a rethinking of how investment might be conceived and encouraged. And this in turn means that in the ‘developed’ world, we need strong advocacy for such new-style investment and a consistent critique of the assumptions of unlimited growth – the critique that has been offered by book after book in recent years, yet seems to have made relatively little impact on so many influential investors.

I found it ironic that at two seminars on tax transparency in London and Cambridge last year, there were some clear voices raised from exceptionally well-placed people in the business community arguing for a transformed sense of public responsibility: many in this world are now becoming eloquent advocates of fairer and more responsible practices, yet so many investors, private and institutional, still assume that ‘real’ economics must mean profiteering above all. And the latest revelations from Panama have shown just what work remains to be done and how Issue 297

Illustrations by Dave Cutler www.davecutlerstudio.com

You can’t act on the basis that the material world is capable of being owned and used at the will of a small coterie of the already prosperous far the tentacles of complicity reach in government here and worldwide.

And that’s why it is so important to have a good conversation between all that Resurgence represents and the world in which Christian Aid works.

If we at Christian Aid are really doing our business and following through our

priorities, we shall be working with the grain of a Resurgence philosophy; if readers of this magazine are acting on their convictions, they will be able to help shape a robust account of genuinely liberating development as an attainable goal. I am very grateful to have the chance of encouraging such a conversation between two partners who are to my mind vital signs of a hopeful alternative to the passive and destructive patterns that trap us all so much of the time.

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He will be speaking at the Resurgence 50th anniversary event One Earth, One Humanity, One Future in September. For more details visit www.resurgence.org/R50event

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If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter, floating a few feet above a field somewhere, people would come from everywhere to marvel at it. People would walk around it marvelling at its big pools of water, its little pools, and the water flowing between the pools.

People would marvel at the bumps on it, and the holes in it, and they would marvel at the very thin layer of gas surrounding it and the water suspended in the gas. The people would marvel at all the creatures walking around the surface of the ball and at the creatures in the water.

The people would declare it as sacred because it was the only one, and they would protect it so that it would not be hurt. The ball would be the greatest wonder known, and people would come to pray to it, to be healed, to gain knowledge, to know beauty, and to wonder how it could be. People would love it and defend it with their lives because they would somehow know that their lives, their own roundness, could be nothing without it. If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter.

– Joe Miller, 1975, author of If the Earth...Were a Few Feet in Diameter Congratulations to the Gaia Foundation, which has just been celebrating its 30th anniversary. The Foundation held an exhibition in north London celebrating its three decades, and used an eye-catching presentation of Joe Miller’s 1975 poem, If the Earth Were Only a Few Feet in Diameter… as part of its publicity. www.gaiafoundation.org 28

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CONNECTIONS UNDERCURRENTS

Big problems need small solutions

The logic of largeness devalues the personal, Charles Eisenstein believes

L

et me present a logic that has immersed me ever since, as a teenager, I became aware of the state of the planet. The world has some big problems right now.

The crisis is urgent. There is no time to indulge in small, insignificant solutions that will be swept away by the tsunami of climate change, economic meltdown, nuclear holocaust, resourcescarcity-fuelled wars, and so forth. We need big solutions to big problems.

Therefore, whatever you do on a local level, you’d better make sure it is scalable. You’d better make sure it can go viral, because otherwise its impact will be trivial.

Contained within this logic is an implicit hierarchy that values the contributions of some people – and some kinds of people – more than others. It values the activities of people who have a big reach, a big platform, a loud voice, or the money or institutional power to affect thousands or millions of people. That valuation is, you may notice, nearly identical to the dominant culture’s allocation of status and power – a fact that should give us pause.

The logic of bigness devalues the grandmother spending all day with her granddaughter, the gardener restoring just one small corner of earth to health, the activist working to free one orca

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from captivity. It devalues anything that seemingly could not have much of a macro­cosmic effect on the world. It devalues the feminine, the intimate, the personal, and the quiet. It devalues the very same things that global capitalism, patriarchy and technology have devalued.

Yet the logic seems indubitable.

Surely my message will have a bigger effect if a million people hear it than a thousand, or one, or none at all? Surely, if the gardener puts a video of her soil regeneration project on social media, it will have a much greater potential impact than if she practises it invisibly on her small piece of land? Because if no one finds out about it, it will affect only a few square metres of soil, and nothing more. Right?

Here we come to what some call the “theory of change” that underlies the ambition to do a big thing, to scale it up, to reach millions. At its root it is a Newtonian cosmology that says that change happens only when a force is exerted upon a mass. As a single individual, the amount of force you have at your disposal is quite limited. But if you can coordinate the actions of millions of people, perhaps by becoming a president or a pundit, or by having lots of money, then your power as a change agent is magnified as well. Thus we sometimes see an ambitiousness among NGOs and activists that eerily mirrors that of CEOs and celebrities: a race to compete for funding, for members, for

Facebook likes, for mailing lists, for consumer attention.

A force-based causality in which bigger is necessarily better is a recipe for despair, paralysis and burnout among those seeking social and ecologic­al justice in the world. For one thing, the ruling elites who are wedded to the status quo have far more force-based power – more money, more guns, and through concentration of media a much bigger voice – than any activist organisation ever could. In a contest of force, we lose. Furthermore, when we buy into bigger-is-better, most of us must live with the disheartening knowledge that we are smaller-and-worse. How many of us can have a big voice that reaches millions? By necessity, very few.

Taking for granted the assumption of a separate self in a world of force-based causality, moral philosophers have grappled for several centuries with a disheartening corollary: that what you do doesn’t matter. For example, no Resurgence & Ecologist

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matter how much you conscientiously recycle and conserve, your individual actions won’t make a difference. It takes millions of others doing the same.

And if millions of others do it, then it doesn’t matter if you do or not.

Philosophers have advanced various moral and ethical principles to countermand this logic, which is on its own terms unassailable. Foremost among them is Kant’s Categorical Imperative: act in the way you would want everyone to act in that situation. This idea is common in popular morality today: “Don’t dump poison down the drain, because even though it won’t matter if you do it, if everyone thought that way it would matter.” Yet underneath that morality lies a secret, nihilistic fear: “Yeah, but not everyone thinks that way. Actually, it doesn’t matter what I do.”

A force-based causality in which bigger is necessarily better is a recipe for despair We need another reason to do those small things that, if everyone did them, would add up to a more beautiful world, a reason beyond “If everyone did them it would add up to a more beautiful world.” Because you and I are not “everyone”.

My indoctrination into the logic of bigness has exerted an insidious effect on my life, causing me always to question whether I am doing enough. When I focus on the small, intimate realms of life, taking the hours to tend a relationship, to beautify a space, perhaps, or to enter the timeless child’s world with my youngest son, I am subject to an unease along the lines of “There is something more important I’m supposed to be doing.” The logic of bigness devalues the very heart of life.

We all have another source of know­ ledge that holds the small, personal actions sacred. If a loved one has an emergency, we drop everything to help because it feels like the most important thing we could possibly be doing 30

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at that moment. It feels like the most important thing in the world to be at the bedside of a dying loved one, or, less dramatically, to be present for a child at a special moment.

Reality, moreover, often turns out to be the opposite of what the arithmetic of measurable impact would suggest. The most potent actions are often the ones done without forethought of publicity. They are sincere and uncalculating, touching us with a kind of naivety. Ask yourself which is more inspiring: to accidentally witness a touching act of generosity, or to watch the same act staged to become a spectacle? In my work I have discovered that the most powerful gatherings were the ones that were not recorded, and I don’t mean merely “powerful for the people in the room”, but powerful in their ripple effect. And what of the man who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square? Would it have been as potent a symbol if he had made sure first that someone was there to photograph it? Maybe causality doesn’t work the way we’ve been told.

We are transitioning away from a narrative that holds us separate from each other and the world, towards a new and ancient story that Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing. In that worldview, self and universe mirror each other: whatever happens to any being is also happening in some corner of ourselves. Every action we take ripples out to affect the whole world and eventually comes back to affect us as well. Rupert Sheldrake articulates the same understanding as the principle of morphic resonance: a change that happens in one place generates a field of change that causes similar changes to happen everywhere.

Perhaps part of that transition out of the old story of separation is a strange and growing incapacity to act among those powers that have the most force at their command. Despite its mighty military, the United States seems increasingly incapable of achieving its foreign policy objectives. Despite its arsenal of antibiotics and other forms of pharmacological force, modern medicine seems helpless to stem a stagnation or decline in health in the developed world. The world’s central bankers are powerless to fix the global economy, despite possessing the ability to create infinite amounts

of money. As a society, we are losing faith in the tools and methods that we thought gave us power.

The principle of interbeing or morphic resonance coincides with our felt experience of significance when we engage the people and land around us with love, courage and compassion.

Even if we have no idea how those choices will affect the world, we sense that they do, and yet, paradoxically, we don’t make the choices for that reason. Sometimes we encounter special choice points in life that seem to be deliberately constructed to offer no possibility of selfish benefit – not even the benefit of being able to tell ourselves we are doing some big important thing.

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Act in the way you would want everyone to act in that situation Illustrations by Valériane Leblond www.valeriane-leblond.eu

These moments are opportunities for self-creation, when we choose to listen to the voice of the heart over the voice of the calculating mind, which says we are being impractical, unreasonable or irresponsible.

Reasoning from interbeing, applying the principle of morphic resonance, this opposition between heart and mind crumbles away. Every act of compassion strengthens the global field of compassion; every choice of conscience strengthens the global field of conscience. Each act becomes equal; each act ‘scales up’, even if by a pro­ cess so mysterious and untraceable as to evade any perceptible sequence of cause and effect. How can anyone Issue 297

know what fruits will come from that monumental effort at patience you made, unwitnessed, when you stayed gentle with your child on that frustrating afternoon?

None of this is meant to denigrate political or social activism that seeks macroscopic changes: rather, it is to elevate the seemingly small to equal status with the large. People possess a kind of primal ethics that understands that we are all equally important, that no human life is to be valued above another.

Accordingly, there must be some God’seye perspective from which every one of Barack Obama’s choices is no more or less significant than the choices of the lonely addict in the alley. The former’s

choices may have an immediate and visible effect on the world, while the latter’s may bear fruit 500 years in the future.

We cannot know.

Nor does this mean that we should ignore the mundane forms of causality that confront us as we face the world’s problems. If we witness an injustice that is in our power to redress, it won’t do to shrink away from that and practise some other just action in a more comfortable zone of our lives, relying on morphic resonance to remedy the one we witnessed. Life calls us into action, and we maximise the power of our actions when we trust that call.

The ebb and flow of life calls us sometimes to what looks big and sometimes to what looks small. Let us not allow the metaphysics of the separate self to interfere with our listening.

An environmentalist acquaintance of mine, Mark Dubois, told me a heartbreaking story of a river that he and a group of activists tried to save from damming. They fought the dam with every means at their disposal: petitions, legal challenges, lobbying and direct action. All to no avail – in the end, the dam was built and a gorgeous stretch of river with pristine ecosystems was destroyed. Their grief was so great, he said, that for a long time the devastated members of the group could hardly bear to see each other.

It seemed that their years of commitment were wasted. But coincidentally, Mark told me, that was the last dam built in North America. It was as if their actions were a kind of prayer.

The universe wanted to know, “Are you sure you want the dams to stop?

How purely do you want it?” The fact that they gave their all answered that question. In the view of interbeing, no action is wasted. How the results play out is not our domain – that is up to some higher intelligence. Our job is to follow the call of beauty, sacredness, compassion and care.

Charles Eisenstein’s most recent book is The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. He is among the speakers at this September’s One Earth, One Humanity, One Future conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of Resurgence. For details, see www.resurgence.org/R50event

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U N DERCURRENTS RESURGENCE AT 50

The day we didn’t bomb the Commons Print-your-own articles, alternative technology, white bicycles… Godfrey Boyle recalls the Undercurrents years

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y memories of Resurgence date back to the early 1970s, when John Papworth was editor. I was a young journalist working in London on Electronics Weekly, writing mainly about telecommunications. I’d been a schoolboy electronics enthusiast and went on to study engineering at university. I edited the student science magazine and became increasingly interested in a range of unorthodox scientific and technological ideas. I also became increasingly critical of engineering as it was then taught. And like many of my generation I became a soixante-huitard, inspired by the May 1968 radical student protests in Paris.

In 1971, at one of the Resurgence meetings at John Papworth’s house in London, we were intrigued to meet Satish Kumar, a young Indian pilgrim who in the early 1960s had made an 8,000-mile walk for peace.

John was planning to go to Africa for a couple of years and wanted someone to take over the editorship, Satish volunteered, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It was the era of the inauguration of Friends of the Earth in Britain, and of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science. The Resurgence group introduced me to the writings of E.F. Schumacher on the economics of permanence, which led to my interest in intermediate technology.

My idea of publishing a magazine covering all these subjects (and more) might well have gone unrealised for the simple reason that I didn’t have enough capital to get the first issue printed. Then I came across Ann Ward, a South London Labour councillor who had installed a printing press in the basement of her house, complete with plate­making and typesetting facilities, which she made available virtually free to non-profit groups. Thus the first Undercurrents (subtitled ‘The magazine of alternative science and technology’) was 32

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produced for little more than the cost of paper, with the aid of one Pat Coyne, who came along to print the local community newspaper and was cajoled into helping us print Undercurrents.

He stayed.

The format of the first few issues of Undercurrents was unusual. It consisted of various separately printed leaflets and articles, put together and wrapped in a resealable polythene bag.

The bag wasn’t meant to be thrown away. It was supposed to function as a “common carrier” for material printed by the authors themselves and sent to us for inclusion. The idea was inspired by the concepts of decentralisation and networking that I’d become keen on.

Around the time the first issue hit the streets in January 1972 we were invited to the first-ever conference on alternative technologies (AT), which Andrew MacKillop and Peter Harper were organising at University College, London. There I discovered that there were dozens of people interested in these ideas. Several enthusiasts for AT, most notably Peter Harper, got involved in Undercurrents. It was also about then that Sally Maloney offered to help with graphic design – and ended up with a stronger commitment than she’d bargained for. We married the following year.

The United Nations was holding a big conference on the environment in Stockholm that June. Peter Harper had been asked to do a Peoples’ Technology exhibition there as one of several alternative events planned by the Stockholm eco-freaks to ginger up the otherwise boring official UN proceedings. We set to work and managed to get issue No. 2 of the magazine printed in time to catch the train and boat for Sweden. It contained what was to become Undercurrents’ most notorious article: ‘Towards a People’s Bomb’, by Pat Coyne, then a brash young nuclear physics postgraduate. It purported to show how anyone, armed July/August 2016

‘Undercurrents’ was an early advocate of wind and solar power

only with a smattering of atomic theory, a couple of kilos of hijacked plutonium and a sincere desire to be destructive, could vaporise the Cabinet and House of Commons merely by depositing a simple box of fissile tricks in a left-luggage locker at Charing Cross station.

The mechanics of Amateur Armageddon are a bit more complicated than Pat had foreseen, but his essential point is now accepted: nuclear weapons proliferation is easier than you might think, and the Big Powers can’t count on retaining their monopoly of the instruments of terror.

We spent a merry fortnight in Old Stockholm enjoying that short but magical Swedish summer when the sun never quite goes down, pedalling around on the white bicycles that the UN was lending free to journalists.

Soon after we got back, the ‘People’s Bomb’ article hit the front page of the London Evening Standard, which reported Issue 297

Illustration by Brian Hanscomb

its denunciation by Professor Joseph Rotblat (of the Pugwash group that brought together scientists from both sides of the cold war), who cited it at a nuclear conference as a dire example of how nuclear information might get into the wrong hands.

After the ‘People’s Bomb’ scare, things settled down a bit.

By the time UC4 came out in early 1973 the magazine was still in a bag, but by this time it was obvious that people were reluctant to go to the bother (and expense) of printing items for inclusion, and booksellers were reluctant to stock the awkward package on their shelves. So from UC5 onwards we changed (a little regretfully) to a conventional magazine format. And by the end of 1973, I’d become tired of working on Electronics Weekly and eager to get a job writing about the things I really believed in. So I decided to quit my job and edit Undercurrents full-time.

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donations from sympathisers and a small subsidy in the form of a short-term contract to write an environment column for Time Out, the London listings magazine, I convened the first meeting of Undercurrents Ltd, held in the Opera Tavern in Covent Garden in January 1974. Chris Squire turned up and offered to help with the business side of the new enterprise.

He seemed to know what he was talking about, so we elected him a member.

Around 1974 we were introduced to the group producing the massive tome An Index of Possibilities: Energy and Power – and to their publishers, Wildwood House.

Wildwood were more adventurous than most publishers and soon commissioned us to write what we initially called “The AT Book” but eventually became another major tome: Radical Technology. Published in 1976, it was well received and sold very well worldwide, spawning a US edition published by Pantheon, and other editions in German and Japanese.

Also in 1976, encouraged by Dave Elliott, a member of the Undercurrents collective and a lecturer at the Open University (OU), I applied for an OU lectureship to join the team producing a new undergraduate course, Control of Technology. To my surprise, I was appointed. I handed over the editorship of Undercurrents to the editorial collective, of which I continued to be a member.

The royalties from sales of Radical Technology supported Undercurrents’ income for many years. But by the early 1980s the magazine’s circulation had diminished significantly from its mid-seventies peak of around 7,000. It had adopted a broader, less focused editorial direction and its print quality had been reduced to cut costs. Eventually in 1984 the collective decided that it should cease publication, and Undercurrents Ltd was wound up.

Attempts were made to incorporate the magazine into the weekly New Statesman, assisted in various ways by Undercurrents members Pat Coyne, Pat Sinclair and Duncan Campbell, who worked on the Statesman, but these eventually came to naught. Finally Resurgence offered a merger, and at a meeting with Satish Kumar later in 1984 I accepted. We agreed that the subtitle ‘Incorporating Undercurrents’ would be added below the Resurgence masthead on the front cover.

Today, the Undercurrents connection continues, not as a subtitle on the cover but as a section inside the magazine.

Undercurrents anticipated future developments in various technologies – not least in my own field of renewable energy, where we were early advocates of wind and solar power. The contributions of these energy sources have grown massively and it is now officially anticipated that they will provide a very large proportion of UK, EU and world energy needs in coming decades.

While echoes of Undercurrents live on in Resurgence & Ecologist, the ideas we described in Radical Technology will soon be revisited, 40 years on, in a major conference, RT2.0, at The University of Bristol, from 3 to 5 September this year.

We’ll be looking back to 1976 – examining what we got right (and wrong) – but mostly looking forward, discussing and debating how the world of the 21st century, and its associated technologies, can be made safer, more humane and ecologically sound.

Godfrey Boyle is Emeritus Professor of Renewable Energy at the Open University.

For more information on the RT2.0 conference, visit www.radicaltechnology.org The issues of Undercurrents have been archived by Chris Squire at www.undercurrents1972.wordpress.com/about/

Happy birthday, Resurgence!

“Congratulations and heartfelt appreciation to Resurgence for 50 years of dedication to the cause of offering wise and sustainable alternatives to the ravages we confer upon this beautiful, tortured planet we call home. Love and gratitude.”

– Annie Lennox “Every time I open an issue of Resurgence my mind becomes serene, my sense of beauty more acute, and my resolve to work for a sustainable, just, and peaceful world is renewed.

Happy 50th Anniversary!”

– Fritjof Capra 34

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July/August 2016

VO L U N T E E R I N G U N D E R C UR R E N T S

Hands across the seas, faces on the frontline Liza Lort-Phillips volunteered to help refugees arriving in Greece from the conflict in the Middle East Illustrations by George Butler

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othing quite prepares you for the first time you have to squeeze nine cold, wet, traumatised refugees into a small Fiat and drive them to a warm, safe camp. Or hold a hypothermic child. Nor for the sadness and guilt you feel listening to a Syrian man who lost his family to a rocket blast thank you profoundly for hot tea and a warm coat. From my own experience, it makes us infinitely more human – and more politicised.

Last summer, I watched on television, from the comfort of my own sitting room, as boatloads of refugees washed up on the shores of southern Europe.

No amount of hand wringing, solidarity marches, and clothes parcels to Calais seemed adequate. As Christmas approached, I decided to trade in a season of excess for a season of goodwill. It seemed almost callous not to, while tens of thousands of cold, hungry refugees huddled in makeshift tents in A child huddles for warmth under a blanket our backyard.

Where to start with such an endeav- by a Frenchman called Fred about our? The crisis was crying out for the chaotic humanitarian response Arabic and Farsi speakers, doctors, on the Greek island of Lesbos (which human rights lawyers, life-guards, had borne the brunt of the crisis). psychotherapists, carpenters, plumb- Overflowing makeshift loos, shoddy ers... I felt woefully inadequate. But I shelters, badly fed refugees, squabbling could cook, speak Chinese and pitch a volunteers and relief agencies… He tent. And surely 20 years of living and seemed to know his stuff. I tracked him working overseas in development and down via LinkedIn, and he responded enterprise had to count for something? swiftly. In the process of establishing I pestered all my NGO friends for his charity, the Humanitarian Support advice. I hunted down returning vol- Agency (HSA), in Spain, he wrote: unteers, mined a rich seam of online “Great. Call me when you get here.”

And here, on this most beautiful of articles and volunteer networks. I found a ‘warts and all’ report written islands, was a very ugly reminder of Issue 297

failed politics. Already on its knees from Greece’s economic crisis, Lesbos was playing host to thousands of refugees, a handful of humanitarian organisations, and a new, motley breed of self-appointed citizen-volunteer. In the last 12 months, the number of refugees passing through the island has exceeded, ten times, a local population of 100,000.

Not surprisingly, the locals had mixed views. As Dimitri, my taxi driver from the airport, put it: “We have a home, they don’t even have a country.

We must help. But when the holiday season starts we may have less sympathy.” Lesbos is dependent on a critical five-month tourist season in which to make a year’s income. Already travel agencies were starting to cancel bookings and advise against ‘the refugee island’ as a holiday destination. Its beaches were littered with abandoned dinghies and life jackets – for some, tragic symbols of a people in flight; for others, an inconvenient eyesore.

Business was good for the otherwise idle tourist trade – a high influx of volunteers in a low season, renting cars and rooms, and filling restaurants and bars that would otherwise be closed. Others opened their homes and hearts. But there was anger and fear too: anger that med­ dlesome volunteers were “encouraging” boatloads of refugees to land on their island. Fear, understandably perhaps, given historical wounds. Arabic carvings on water fountains and forts were reminders of the island’s past – largely bloody – on the fringes of the Ottoman Empire, a mere five nautical miles away.

Were these bedraggled boatloads of Resurgence & Ecologist

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Arabic-speaking people the advance party for a modern-day invasion?

The crisis had drawn all sorts, of all ages and motivations, to the island. The heartfelt but hare-brained, the hero, the hard-bitten humanitarian, the voyeur, the willing and able… And inevitably, the “Let me save a baby (and save myself)!” types, masters of misguided heroics who needed their daily fix of refugee hugs. They often worked alone, and usually appeared just in time for drama on the beach.

And there was always drama on the beach. Graveyard shifts, huddled round a fire, ears and eyes trained on a cold, dark sea, waiting for the low, reedy hum of a cheap motor, a waving flashlight, cries from the darkness.

The boats came thick and fast at these hours, smugglers wise to the snooze and shift patterns of the Greek and Turkish coastguards.

Within minutes, chaos, as dark shapes tumbled and stumbled onto the beach.

Do you respond to the immediate physical needs first (cold, hunger, exhaustion), or the emotional ones (shock, fear, distress)? You do the only thing that comes naturally. Reassure, smile warmly, grasp a hand, a shoulder; embrace. It’s OK, you’re safe now. Then, dry socks, warm clothes, emergency blankets, food, water. Physical needs were straightforward; it was the psychological ones I worried about. Psychotherapists Sans Frontières, where are you?

HSA was a willing, able band of resilient, committed and quirky folk.

I counted 15 nationalities between us.

It played a frontline role in the Syrian family camp, Kara Tepe, providing hot food, shelter, clothes and emergency response across three eight-hour shifts each day. We had rules. We had laminated sheets of useful Arabic phrases; we had marker pens, emergency biscuits, head torches, boxed wine, mushy peas and even an adopted camp dog called Freckles.

HSA worked collaboratively alongside the bigger beasts of the humanitarian jungle, including UNHCR, Médicins Sans Frontières, the Red Cross and the International Rescue Committee.

Relations between the relief agencies and volunteer groups were not always easy – the former, pondering and procedural; the latter, reactive and rule-free. In truth, 36

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A man clutches at the barbed wire that separates him from the next step in his journey

the situation demanded both, and each needed the other. And there was nothing like a cold, wet night in a draughty tent, huddled round a vat of chai, in varying unwashed and emotional states, to generate an esprit de corps.

After the chaos and trauma of their boat journeys, it was here on the camp, fed, sheltered, warm and safe, that our newcomers relaxed a little. In these precious moments, suspended between their brutal pasts and uncertain futures, hearts opened and hopes were shared.

Such connections were often fleeting, always intense. And some have endured. Porak, a hairdresser from

Homs, had set her sights on Belgium (“A small, quiet place, no fighting…”).

Hassan, a former travel guide from Damascus, feared that “Germany won’t be so friendly now.” I gave him a warm coat and felt largely useless.

Ibrahim, 23, wants to finish his electrical engineering degree and marry for love. On a cold New Year’s Eve around a warm campfire he told me he’d worked 14-hour days for a year in Turkey until he had enough to pay smugglers US$2,000 to make the short, perilous crossing. The rest he sent to his family in Syria. As he progressed through the Balkans we stayed in touch

Volunteers online Humanitarian Support Agency (HSA) – frontline support on beach, in camp and in kitchen. www.humanitarian-support-agency.org The Dirty Girls – a perfect example of humanitarian and environmentalist spirit in one. This wonderful group collects dirty wet clothes from beaches, washes and dries them, and redistributes them back to the refugee camps. www.facebook.com/dirtygirlslesvos/ Bristol Skipchen – a feisty and resilient food team, feeding thousands daily, 24/7. www.facebook.com/bristolskipchen/ The refugee crisis is fast-moving. With each new border closing and each new political deal struck, both need and response shift. Keep abreast with www.facebook.com/groups/informationpointforlesvosvolunteers/

July/August 2016

Illustrations: George Butler www.georgebutler.org

via WhatsApp. “Had my boots stolen in Macedonia but I am OK.” And, later, more despondently, from a camp in Germany, “Everyone was so friendly in Lesbos, not so good now…”

Connections of a different kind of intensity happened in the clothes tent.

Late one night, a boatload of tired, wet refugees arrived. I was dealing with an insistent mother who wanted only the best kit for her podgy 8-year-old son.

Buttons popped, zips stuck and patience frayed. Diplomacy and tact rapidly gave way to ultimatums. He gets the grey sweatpants with elasticated waist and stays warm, or he gets the tight jeans and waddles all the way to Germany holding his breath. Finally, function won over form, but not without a fight.

These intense interactions led to equally intense reflections. Above all, respect for the courage and resilience of those whose lives we touched, however briefly – and those that touched ours.

They had lost everything but the will to survive. We could give them temporary shelter, warm food, a coat, a hug, but we couldn’t offer them what they needed most: the certainty of a better life.

Yet we could act as a moral conscience for Europe. I met one famous refugee on the island during my stay who intended to do just that. He was the only one who didn’t need dry socks.

Issue 297

“Had my boots stolen in Macedonia but I am OK.” And, later, from a camp in Germany, “Everyone was so friendly in Lesbos, not so good now…”

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, an unexpected visitor to the camps, told me: “Everyone has a role to play, even us artists.” Two months later the Konzerthaus Berlin was clad in thousands of bright orange life jackets. No more visible and poignant a reminder of a moral duty.

For anyone who cares about the new face of Europe, I can think of no better cause to volunteer for. But prepare well. Talk to people, plug into networks. There is a whole new and exciting frontier of citizen-­volunteerism out there, but there is also plenty of misinformation and hysteria. Secondly, know yourself. If you can’t live with uncertainty, discomfort, chaos and distress, stay at home and write a cheque instead. And finally, if you plan to fundraise, there is no better time to do it than over Christmas, when you can happily exploit a tide of giving and

guilt. I managed to raise over £10,000 in the space of a month.

Altogether, the experience has made me both more human and more political. At a time when European politics looks bleak and disappointing, a resurgent volunteer spirit is surely what we need. As somebody wise wrote, “Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections only once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day for the kind of community you want to live in.”

As the second world war was perhaps the defining cause for our parents’ or grandparents’ generation, so the refugee crisis is ours (if you don’t count climate change, feeding the planet sustainably, and so on). How we respond to it will, in turn, define us, and Europe, for the generation yet to come.

Liza Lort-Phillips is a former board member of the UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative. She also volunteers for the UK Refugee Support Network www.refugeesupportnetwork.org Read about her experiences on her blog: www.earthmonkey007.wordpress.com Ai Weiwei responds to the refugee crisis in Greece with a new exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, until 30 October. http://bit.ly/1Tu6794

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E T H IC AL LIVING DIARY

Worried?

Don’t lose your head Leo Johnson ponders immortality, axes and the gifts of the gods

Cartoon by Ian Baker www.ianbakercartoons.co.uk

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t the end of the Aztecs’ sporting tournaments at Chichen Itza, the magnificent pyramid near Tulum in Mexico, the captain of the winning team would have his head ceremonially severed.

You got that right – not the losing captain, but the winning one would have decapitation as the reward for victory, the chance to get closer to the Aztec god Kulkulkan for eternity.

I’m in Mountain View, San Francisco, for the new season of our BBC Radio 4 show FutureProofing, sitting opposite Aubrey de Grey, a neuroscientist who is also actively planning decapitation. His goal, though, is eternal life amid the soy lattes of Silicon Valley. Decapitation, to be fair, is de Grey’s Plan B. He has signed up, alongside 1,000 others, to have his head chopped off immediately post death and then cryogenically preserved at -196°C in a stainless-steel tank of liquid nitrogen. Plan A, though, the plan that he’s working on through SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), is just to conquer death.

I had spent the morning under the redwood trees by the coast just north of San Francisco. The redwoods are giants among trees, 100 metres high, a thousand years old, but it’s all down to a few technical fixes – high levels of tannin that keep off the insects, fire-resistant bark, roots that intertwine with other redwoods to fight off earthquakes. People, de Grey reckons, can do the same. We are like Aeroflot jets: the tailfin slips off on a bumpy landing in Minsk? The wheel nuts pop off or get borrowed for the inflight trolley? You just weld something back on. But the real progress will come from designing us better, fixing the things that age and kill us.

With the progress they are making on cell rejuvenation, there are children born today, de Grey believes, who may live forever. The average human lifespan is already growing by 5 hours every 24, and that’s before Google’s investment in the anti-ageing company Calico. The moment we have accelerated that life extension to 24 hours every 24 hours, then – you do the maths – we’ve ended death, retired the concept of ageing. Doubt it, and you’re one of a class of sceptics de Grey refers to as deathist.

It’s technologically speaking a long way from Brent, 38

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where my aunt and I have hatched a visionary plan. We are going to harvest the crops from our allotment in the park (rhubarb, Majestic potatoes, tomatoes, onions, leeks and of course hops for beer) and then eat it all, inspired

by Spoon Camp at Dartington, with our own axe-whittled spoons and forks. (My aunt doesn’t know this last bit, but I bet she will love it.)

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ack in London, I get home close to midnight. The lights are all off, my wife and children asleep upstairs.

Chucking off my jacket, I head to the downstairs bathroom to throw water on my face. There is a woman in there, doing her make-up.

It is hard to begin the conversation. “Excuse me,” I ask, “but who are you?” “Gemma,” she says. “The lady who answered the door said to be very quiet because the children are asleep. So I have been very quiet. I have made myself a bed up over there.” Then she beckons me to follow and leads me through to my own study.

There, on the sofa, right by the freshly sharpened spoonwhittling axe, next to my papers, and the priceless demi-john of community cider (elixir of youth) that we are about to unleash on an unsuspecting neighbourhood, Gemma has laid out her possessions – socks, hair clips, a couple of T-shirts.

And she tells me her story: thrown out of the house by her sister and mother, handcuffed and in jail three times in the last month, ringing local doorbells at random. My wife, it turns out, had thought the doorbell ringing was me without my keys again, had pressed the remote control button upstairs to open the front door… and had no idea a stranger had been in the house beside the axe for the last hour while the children slept.

What do I do? I don’t know if it’s Aubrey de Grey and the talk of decapitation, but I fail. I know the ancient Greeks believed that strangers were a gift from the gods, but I fail. I find £60 and walk with Gemma, humbled by my own failure of humanity, out into the Kilburn streets to find her a B&B. Leo Johnson co-presents the BBC Radio 4 series FutureProofing.

July/August 2016

ACTIVISM ETHICAL LIVING

Journalist freed from jail, but campaign to clear her name goes on Khadija Ismayilova, 2015

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© Aziz Karimov / REX / Shutterstock

Each issue, we highlight an Amnesty International appeal for those persecuted for their nonviolent campaigns and beliefs

mnesty International is appealing for the help of Resurgence & Ecologist readers for Khadija Ismayilova, the award-winning Azerbaijani investigative journalist who was jailed for seven and a half years in 2015 on what it says were trumped-up charges.

Just before this issue went to press, Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court announced that Ismayilova would be released from prison, reversing two of the initial charges that had been laid against her, and reducing her sentence to a suspended term of three and a half years. Amnesty International has welcomed the court’s decision but is continuing its campaign, calling for her to be fully acquitted of all the charges.

Before she was jailed, Ismayilova, who worked for Radio Free Europe, had published numerous articles exposing human rights violations and corruption at the highest level in Azerbaijan, a former republic in the Soviet Union. She had also written on business deals involving President Ilham Aliyev’s extended family. The authorities initially retaliated by running a smear campaign against her and her family in the state-controlled media, after which she was charged with offences including tax evasion, embezzlement, illegal entrepreneurship and abuse of office.

Shortly before her arrest in December 2014, Ismayilova published a list of the political prisoners in Azerbaijan that had been compiled by a group of human rights defenders, many of whom have themselves since been imprisoned.

The day before she was arrested, the Presidential Chief of Staff, Ramiz Mehdiyev, accused Azerbaijani journalists of treason. In his statement, Mehdiyev referred to Ismayilova as “the best example” of journalists working against the government.

Earlier this year, the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney had taken up Ismayilova’s case, attracting further international attention. In May, Ismayilova received the UNESCO World Press Freedom prize for her work.

Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, welcomed Ismayilova’s release, Issue 297

but said she would not obtain justice until her conviction was quashed.

“Khadija Ismayilova must be fully acquitted if she is ever to obtain justice for her wrongful imprisonment,” Krivosheev said. “Numerous other prisoners of conscience are still in jail for exercising their right to freedom of expression in Azerbaijan and must also be freed to break this dangerous pattern of fear and repression.”

According to Amnesty International, the Azerbaijani authorities have engaged in an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of expression, association and assembly. Dissenting voices in the country frequently face trumped-up charges, violence, harassment, intimidation, blackmail and other reprisals from the authorities and groups associated with them. The authorities have targeted civil society and political activists, banned and violently dispersed peaceful protests, censored media and imposed onerous restrictions on NGO activities.

Amnesty International is asking Resurgence & Ecologist readers to help their campaign by calling on the Azerbaijani authorities to fully quash Khadija Ismayilova’s conviction and acquit her of the remaining charges against her. It is also calling on the Azerbaijani authorities to free all other prisoners of conscience unconditionally, and to protect the right to freedom of expression, association and assembly, in conformity with Azerbaijan’s obligations under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Politely worded messages should be sent to President Ilham Aliyev Office of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan 18 Istiqlaliyyat Avenue Baku, AZ 1066 Azerbaijan http://en.president.az/letters/rules (online letter form on official site) email: office@pa/gov.az Salutation: Dear President Aliyev Resurgence & Ecologist

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E T H IC AL LIVING CHOICES

Making peace

with the planet Satish Kumar joins our series of articles looking at the world’s major faiths and their environmental teaching, with an account of his own boyhood religion, Jainism

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n India there are four major indigenous religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism.

There are also four significant religions that came from abroad but have made important contributions to the life of Indians: Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism – the religion of the Parsee community – and Judaism.

Among these eight religions of India, Jains are probably the least well known.

There are only about 4 million Jains worldwide, most of them in India.

The highest and most profound principle of Jainism is nonviolence (Ahimsa). This is the principle of total and comprehensive nonviolence of thought, speech and action. This means nonviolence to oneself, nonviolence to others and nonviolence to Nature.

Of course Jains realise that complete nonviolence is not possible, but we are required to be mindful of our mental, verbal and physical activities in order to minimise any damage we may inflict on ourselves or other living beings. This constant awareness is key to maximising compassion and minimising harm.

The importance of nonviolence is recognised by many religions, but in most cases it is interpreted to mean nonviolence to other humans. But Jains preach and practise nonviolence to all living beings.

Jains recognise that earth, air, fire, water, plants, forests, insects, animals, birds – in other words the entire natural world – are all alive. Nature is soulful and intelligent. Therefore life – not just human life, but all life – is sacred and must be treated with reverence.

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So Jain ecology is reverential ecology.

Therefore the Jains must respect even the mosquitos and not kill them! Jains have set up hospitals and sanctuaries for old or wounded animals and birds.

Many people believe that somehow human life is superior to non-human life, and that in order to sustain and maintain human life we can therefore sacrifice animal life. That is why the production and consumption of meat is prevalent in the world, and the destruction of rainforests and the overfishing of the oceans are so widely practised.

But Jains are required to have equal reverence for human life and nonhuman life. Therefore not only are the production and consumption of meat and fish out of the question for Jains, but Jains are also required to limit their consumption of vegetable matter.

My mother would not eat potatoes or carrots or any other root vegetables because she believed that disturbing the soil and uprooting the plants was a subtle form of violence. She believed that we should only take what the plants give us as ripened fruit. She would limit the numbers of vegetables and fruit she consumed. She would say that the practice of nonviolence necessitates the practice of restraint.

Through the practice of restraint we make peace with ourselves, peace with people and peace with Nature. Keeping animals in cruel conditions in factory farms, poisoning the soil with artificial chemicals, destroying rainforests and overfishing the oceans are acts of war against Nature. The principle of Ahimsa

necessitates peace with planet Earth.

Life is interdependent and interconnected. We are all related: humans and animals are related, forests and animals are related. As in a family parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters take care of each other, receive and give mutual support, so we should treat people of all nations, religions, races and colours as our brothers and sisters and practise compassion towards all.

Before we are Americans or Russians, British or French, Indians or Pakistanis, Hindus or Muslims, Christians or Jews, Buddhists or Jains, black or white, we are all humans. We are members of one human family. But this sense of the unity of all life goes beyond human life. The birds flying in the sky, animals wandering in the forests, and earthworms working in the soil are all our relations, and therefore we may not harm them. Our sacred duty is to practise compassion and enhance all life.

July/August 2016

Jains recognise that the entire natural world is alive Pause, 2015 by Olivia Fraser, from Olivia Fraser: The Sacred Garden, at Sundaram Tagore Chelsea www.sundaramtagore.com

This is the principle of nonviolence.

Then there is another Jain principle of equal importance: that of Aparigraha.

It is a very beautiful word, but it is not easy to translate. It means freedom from the bondage of material possessions. It is an ecological principle. It is a principle of reduction in consumption and minimal accumulation of material possessions. If I can manage with three or four shirts, why do I have to have ten or twenty? I can only wear one at a time. If I can manage with one pair of regular shoes, maybe a pair of walking shoes and a pair of sandals, that is enough. Why do I need to accumulate a cupboard full of shoes? This goes for every material possession. Jains are required to use material objects to meet their need and not their greed, and free themselves from the burden, worry and anxiety of owning stuff.

The principle of non-accumulation or Aparigraha is just the opposite to Issue 297

the modern idea of the economy, where maximisation of production and maxi­ misation of consumption is the driving ideal. Even at the time of religious festivals such as Christmas and Easter, shopping and consumption takes priority over any religious practice. People become so obsessed with buying and selling that they are left with little or no time for their spiritual nourishment. No time for themselves, no time for meditation, and no time to study a spiritual text.

In a consumer society, poets and artists are a rare breed. The majority of people have no time for poetry, art or music. No time for family or friends.

No time to go for a walk in solitude and appreciate Nature. No time to cele­ brate. This kind of life is the antithesis of Aparigraha. If we were to restore and rejuvenate the principles of Ahimsa and Aparigraha we would have no ecological crisis, no depletion of resources, no waste, no pollution, no climate change,

no social injustice, no strikes, and no exploitation of the weak.

Ahimsa and Aparigraha emphasise the quality of life over quantity of material possessions. With good care of the Earth, all humans can have a good life, good food, good housing, good education, good medicine – which is very different from a lot of bad food, bad housing, bad education, bad medicine, and much besides. For Jains the question is not how much you have, but whether your life is good, happy and fulfilled. Less is more, as long as that less is of a nourishing and nurturing quality.

Ultimately Jain ecology implies reverence for Nature, restraint in consumption, celebration of the spirit, and a life of elegant simplicity.

Satish Kumar is the author of No Destination: Autobiography of an Earth Pilgrim.

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E T H IC AL LIVING FOOD

The Picnic is Over by Lucy Raverat / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images

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July/August 2016

In praise of picnic power Julia Ponsonby enjoys the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of eating al fresco

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s summer sunshine tempts us outdoors, it is good to be reminded that the sheer pleasure of our woodland walk, beach trip or camping expedition has a merit that goes beyond sensory enjoyment.

Indeed, every picnic carries the potent power of a miniexpedition into Nature’s own unlicensed health spa.

Packing a hamper of food to enjoy al fresco with friends (as well as sometimes on our own) can become a means of ensuring a few rejuvenating hours of outdoor living with very little notice. At its simplest, a picnic can be entered into on the spur of the moment, when we wake up to blue skies and decide to grab some ready-made sandwiches from the local garage. At its more involved, we could plan our picnic well in advance, preparing some delicious nibbles, trusting in the weather forecast and choosing a location that offers shelter should the weather get rough.

The natural benefits of our burst into Nature partly depend on the location we have chosen. A visit to the seaside will relax and inspire us, filling our lungs with the salty air that does wonders for the respiratory system and dosing our bodies with vitamin D direct from the sun. A visit to the forest has us breathing in essential oils from trees and has long been regarded as a form of natural aromatherapy in Japan, where shinrin-yoku (‘forest bathing’) trips have become increasingly popular.

In both environments, our eyesight will naturally be drawn to the horizon, countering the contemporary epidemic of myopia that is blighting a generation that spends hours a day staring at computer or mobile phone screens. The Journal of the American Medical Association has reported that 50% of children suffer with myopia in the United States, whereas in some urban areas of Asia levels of high school graduates with myopia reached 80–90%. Chinese research suggests that this level could be significantly reduced by prescribing more time out of doors.

Much of our lives has become about looking at things close to, rather than looking into the distance to see birds, trees, mountains, clouds and stars. Our peripheral vision, which is more suited for noticing movement, is sacrificed at the altar of our central or ‘hard’ vision. As soon as we get outside for a picnic in Nature we are forced to use our eyesight differently.

We also have the benefit of the natural ambient light from the sun, which contrasts with the artificial light, often from harsh fluorescent sources, that we use at home or work. In addition, outdoor light may increase dopamine levels in the eye, which in turn prevents the development of a certain kind of eye shape associated with myopia.

Both seaside time and forest time have been found to Issue 297

correspond with a decrease in stress hormones, such as cortisol, and an increase in hormones that contribute to relaxation and compassion, such as seratonin. In a woodland setting this effect is associated with the phytoncides (plant-protective compounds) released by trees. On the beach, it is associated with the fresh sea air, which contains the negative ions that help balance out serotonin levels, resulting in more energy and reduced depression. The sound of the lapping waves also alters wave patterns in our brains, lulling us into a deeply relaxed state that can help rejuvenate mind and body.

Let yourself be coaxed by the power of the picnic! Don’t forget that getting some sunshine every day is also good for your health. Whereas prolonged sunbathing may lead to sunburn and skin cancer, a short meal in the fresh air will allow your skin to absorb vitamin D from the sun. This in turn will improve autoimmune protection, increase endorphins, lower the risk of cancer and enhance bone health.

It is also important that picnicking allows us to witness the changing state of Nature – if not in our ultimate destination, then in our journey to find it. We need to see what is happening in the real world and become witnesses to it. If what we experience is fragmentation between treasured places of natural beauty, rather than connective ecological pathways, this awareness will heighten our effectiveness as defenders of the natural world.

So, what shall we take on our picnic? If we are inviting children who have become reluctant walkers, then a few tempting treats that transport well and don’t often appear at the kitchen table are worth packing into our hampers. As a child I thought that the term ‘sandwich’ came from the presence of sand in accidentally dropped seaside sandwiches.

Later, I much preferred the make-your-own picnics that came when we took crusty French baguettes down to the beach and helped ourselves to fillings of cheese and salad.

In recent years I have enjoyed the flicker of barbecues on the beach. I’ve also enjoyed making sushi for gluten-free picnics and can just imagine these tasty morsels being taken on forest bathing expeditions in Japan: déjeuner sur l’herbe with a difference. Another picnic favourite that rings the changes is a kebab stick – vegetarian kebabs roasted in the oven before setting off and eaten pleasantly lukewarm, or reheated if a fire is available. At air temperature, kebabs made with juicy chunks of marinated red pepper, cherry tomato, aubergine, squash or sweet potato, red onion and either halloumi cheese or marinated tofu are quite delicious on their own or wrapped in a pouch of pitta bread.

Of course, picnics are not all about food – they are about enjoying shared time outside in a relaxed atmosphere – and the promise “to hide and seek as long as we please” is often just as enticing to children and adults alike as to teddy bears!

Julia Ponsonby is Head of Food at Schumacher College, and author of Gaia’s Kitchen, Gaia’s Feasts and The Art of Mindful Baking. For one of her recipes, see www.resurgence.org/picnic

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E T H IC AL LIVING C AUSES FOR HOPE

The art of finding light in darkness Christine Toomey reflects on the stories we need to hear

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n the summer of 2003 I travelled to a small town in central Bosnia to meet a very brave woman. It was eight years after the end of the brutal war that tore through the Balkans in the 1990s, but the scars of that conflict were still everywhere: in the burnt-out houses and bulletmarked buildings, but most of all in the faces of the people I passed on the streets.

I’d arranged to meet Jasmina in a deserted café and she brought her 10-year-old daughter with her. But she sent her to play outside while she told me what had happened during the war: how, when she was 18 years old, she was taken to a remote hunting lodge, where her hair was taped to a post and she was tortured and raped. Her daughter was born nine months later.

Jasmina was one of tens of thousands of women subjected to what has now been recognised in international law as genocidal rape. Few women kept babies born in this way, and few talked of it afterwards. It was regarded as taboo. But Jasmina agreed to talk to me that day because she was convinced that, ultimately, honesty was in the best interests of her child.

Jasmina sat chain-smoking as she told me how she struggled at first to love her daughter. When her baby was crying to be fed, Jasmina had pretended she didn’t hear. She’d just walk away.

But then she told me how she would watch her small child rocking herself for comfort. When she saw this, Jasmina said, her heart melted. “Maybe it’s strange,” she said, “but when I saw her do this it made me love her more than any mother should probably love her child.” It was this fierce and protective love Jasmina felt for her daughter that had helped her back to some sort of normality after the war ended.

Of the many stories I covered as a foreign corres­ pondent and feature writer for The Sunday Times over more than 20 years, this story of Jasmina and her daughter and the other children I met who’d been born as a result of rape has stayed with me.

It prompted an outpouring of letters from readers moved by the bravery of these women and children.

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I believe this story touched our hearts because it spoke of glimmers of light that came out of so much darkness.

We live in a world numbed by the amount of attention paid to violence, terrorism and political and religious power struggles. But stories of hope and redemption like Jasmina’s exist in almost every horror humankind has yet devised.

All too often, though, the sharpest spotlight is shone on humanity’s darkest deeds. There’s no question we need to shine a light on those very dark corners, and I have many brave journalist colleagues who put their lives on the line to do this every day.

But I believe there is a hunger, too, for signs of hope. A thirst for more attention to be paid, not to those determined to drive us ever further into the abyss, but to those who master the most difficult task of all – the art of finding light in sometimes unimaginable darkness.

I gained a deeper appreciation of this three years ago when my writing took a very different turn.

After so many years spent writing about conflict of one kind or another in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Gaza, Iran and Colombia, in 2012 I stepped back from the journalism to which I’d dedicated most of my career, prompted in part by the sudden deaths of my parents within a few months of each other. I realised that after so long bearing witness to the suffering of others, I was struggling to handle my own.

At the time I’d just embarked on writing a book about women in the East and the West who dedicate their lives to living as Buddhist nuns. I spent the next two years listening to their remarkable stories, travelling through the Himalayas of Nepal and India, through Burma, Japan, in North America and in Europe. (See Resurgence & Ecologist 291.)

Through this journey I met the most extraordinary women I’m ever likely to encounter. Brave, wise women who teach courage and whose lives are driven by a determination to cultivate a sense of peace, both within themselves and in those July/August 2016

Our sense of common humanity is much stronger than any feelings of bitterness Two People Sitting at a Table by Jan Zrzavý / Národní Galerie, Prague, Czech Republic / Bridgeman Images

whose lives they touch. Women dedicated, quite literally, to enlightenment.

Some of those I met had endured extreme hardship. Some Tibetan nuns had been imprisoned and tortured in Chinese jails before fleeing across the Himalayas into exile. Others I interviewed had come from the most unexpected backgrounds.

One had been a counter-terrorist policewoman.

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Another was a princess. There was a former banker, a one-time advertising executive, a concert violinist, a former Bollywood star, a former BBC journalist, and also a one-time presenter of the TV motoring show Top Gear.

In Kyoto, Japan, I met a 92-year-old Zen nun – ordained in her fifties – who has won all of the country’s top literary prizes, some of them for erotic Resurgence & Ecologist

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fiction. When I asked where she cont­inued to derive inspiration for this kind of writing, she looked at me and said: “I’ve got a very good memory!”

O

ver the two years I spent observing the lives of these women, I came to understand that their wisdom and strength are grounded in long hours of meditation. Some of the wisdom of this ancient Buddhist practice has now spread far beyond monastery walls, both in the East and in the West, as seen in the growing popularity of insight meditation and in various forms of mindfulness training now taught on a purely secular basis.

Advances in modern science now show how deeply beneficial such practices are to the human mind and body. Techniques such as neuroimaging, for instance, can now highlight those areas of the brain that are activated and strengthened through regular practice.

As the Vietnamese Zen master and poet Thich Nhat Hanh says, these practices are a way of “touching life deeply, in every moment” .

I experienced this personally during the time I spent at a Zen training temple in Japan where, with a group of Zen Buddhist nuns, I followed a strict regime of meditation called a sesshin. Each day began at 4am and the practice was to sit quite still, in silence, cross-legged, facing a bamboo screen, simply observing thoughts and physical sensations without either trying to repress them or getting carried away by them, but just letting them pass.

In the beginning it was agony. But as the hours and days passed, it was also illuminating. I came to see how much of our time is spent literally lost in thought. I began to understand the sense of peace that can come from observing thoughts rather than constantly unconsciously reacting to them.

Experiencing how hard this practice can be gave me a deep respect for these women who dedicate their lives to the discipline of acute awareness in order to help others from a true place of compassion. They do this in many different ways: through teaching others, working with people who are dying, working in prisons, sometimes with those who will never be released.

I saw the profound difference all this can make to people’s lives.

But we hear far less about those who come at life from a place of wisdom and bravery rather than hate and self-interest. As philosophers and psych­ ologists have observed, the human mind tends to think in terms of binary opposites – us and them, right and wrong, light and dark – and the darkest side has always exerted a powerful pull.

There’s great strength to be found in the wisdom of those who find a way of cultivating peace: those who come at life from the heart, rather than from this dualistic way of thinking.

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I

’d like to end with another story I covered that illustrates this. It’s about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy called Ahmed Khatib who lived in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Ahmed was a gentle boy who liked to draw and play the guitar. But one morning he was playing on the streets of the camp with his friends when he became caught up in a firefight. He was shot in the head and stomach by an Israeli soldier.

Ahmed clung to life for several days. But when, finally, he lost the battle, his mother Abla and father Ismael took the decision to donate their son’s organs for transplant. Within a day, Ahmed’s heart, lungs, liver and kidneys were given to six desperately ill people. All were Israelis (four of them Jewish).

We hear far less about those who come at life from a place of wisdom and bravery rather than hate and self-interest When news of this broke, Abla and Ismael were hailed as heroes, both in the media and by politicians. But then the names of Ahmed and his parents were just as quickly forgotten.

Some months later I travelled to the West Bank to talk to Abla and Ismael. We sat long into the night in their home, a shack in the refugee camp, and I came to understand how hard their lives had been even before they lost their son. When I asked Ismael how they had been able to reach the decision to donate Ahmed’s organs, he answered: “Our sense of common humanity is much stronger than any feelings of bitterness or revenge.”

These stories are just some of those that have had a great impact on me, and show how even in the most devastating circumstances the human spirit can shine through.

Being able to find light in darkness at different times in our lives is a fundamental need we all share. Perhaps it’s the most important art in life.

Sometimes it comes out of immense heartbreak.

But it’s an art that can resolve so much conflict, both within ourselves and in the world around us, and I passionately believe it deserves more of our attention.

Christine Toomey’s book The Saffron Road: A Journey with Buddha’s Daughters is published by Portobello Books.

This is the edited text of a TEDx talk given at Cambridge University earlier this year. tinyurl.com/tedx-light July/August 2016

Q W E RT Y S O M E T H I N G E T H I C A L L I V I N G

Scoff and nonsense

Matt Harvey sings for his supper and learns why less is more

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or a second year, I’m asked to recite poems at the Network of Wellbeing’s International Day of Happiness community potluck. I’m worried.

Listening to me might not be the top thing on potluck diners’ What-Enhances-My-Wellbeing list. Or even, let’s be honest, in their top twenty.

Last time, equally anxious, I opted for potato-based love poetry. This time the organisers have asked me to introduce the ‘Happiness Haiku’ they’re encouraging everyone to write, so I feel better deployed. I’ve found an Action for Happiness cartoon showing an empty suitcase, and captioned ‘All You Need Is Less’. This will be my guiding principle.

I keep it simple, tell people not to worry about strict syllable counts and share: Spellcheck I’ve been feeling sleek and furry since you came and made me whole and now I understand why love’s an anagram of vole To a Very Special Slope You’re such a radiant gradient a smooth one, not a hilly one your red-rimmed sign says you’re one in nine but to me you’re one in a million and finally Maxim for the Troops We’re only human after all and even a Colonel of Truth sometimes needs a Soldier to cry on Short and sweet. The food was lovely, the company too, and people wrote lovely haiku. But I came away feeling dissatisfied. Undernourished. Or did I still need less of something?

The answer when it came surprised me: what I need less of is sense. I’m not against it – it’s just that it gets out of balance. The quest for the nourishing nonsense I need led me to old notebooks, which conjured memories, till I was back at Arvon with poet John Moat, whose playful, erudite Didymus pieces drew me to Resurgence back when I was knee-high to an environmentalist.

As a callow youth, I was lucky enough to attend an Arvon course led by John and his friend John Fairfax, then Resurgence poetry editor. My fellow writers were an intimidating lot, many already published. It was hard to be there, let alone to share my work – which was, at the time, almost entirely nonsense. I could hardly bear to show this poem to Issue 297

Illustration by Claudia Schmid www.claudiaschmid.co.uk

the two Johns, but somehow I did because they were good at making unlikely things possible.

By meaning to argue the evening Or round up the shadows that fall As still as the leaves and the dripping As dull as the old stone wall The birds to be numbered and feathered Remain to be questioned and fed By dock leaves the nettles are threatened The firewood is not quite dead By worms that are sticky and supple By right of the bark on the trees The twilight takes risks in the rubble There’s nobody left to please Confuse me with bird-song and rose beds Protect me with ivy and cloud As shadows stretch out by the hosepipe My furrow has not been ploughed Confer me with clothes-lines and wrinkles With flies from the compost heap Confirm me with Autumn and Winter As valleys and hills let me sleep.

“It’s not really about anything,” I said, sheepishly. “It’s a sort of pastoral nonsense.”

“Nevertheless,” said John, “I like it.”

“Me too,” said John.

“But what is it?” I asked.

“It’s a poem,” they said.

“Really?”

They nodded, “Yes.” “You’re a poet,” they said. “Carry on.”

Matt Harvey presents his new book Oh Dog, in collaboration with illustrator Claudia Schmid, at the Ways with Words festival, Dartington on 10 July. www.wayswithwords.co.uk

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A RT S VISUAL ART

Seeing the world in a flower As a new exhibition of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe opens, India Windsor-Clive sees in her work a deep response to Nature “Where I come from, the earth means everything. Life depends on it.”

– Georgia O’Keeffe

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rom her childhood on a farm near Sun Prairie in the vast open spaces of Wisconsin to her last decades spent in the expansive desert of New Mexico, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s connection with the earth was a defining feature of her life and work.

O’Keeffe painted iconic images of magnified floral bodies undulating across canvases in streams of brilliant colour. But despite being one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century, she is also one of the least understood. Her name is shrouded in myth, her life and work often disputed. But beneath layers of gendered and Freudian readings, and allusions to her personality and a tempestuous relationship with the modernist photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz lies the key to her work: a deep personal response to Nature and the desire to create an equivalent in art.

Tate Modern’s new exhibition marks a century since O’Keeffe’s New York debut. It is the first major O’Keeffe retrospective for 20 years in the UK – where there are no works by her in public collections – and it brings together a hundred of her provocative and most important works from a 60-year career, including Jimson

Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918 © Alfred Stieglitz / Bridgeman Images

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Weed/White Flower No. 1, which became the most expensive painting by a female artist ever sold at auction when it fetched US$44.4 million at Sotheby’s American Art Sale in November 2014.

Nearly a century before, in 1915, O’Keeffe had begun a series of abstract charcoal drawings that represented a radical break with tradition and made her one of the first American artists to practise pure abstraction. Using Nature as a point of departure, and inspired by the simple yet radical teachings of the artist Arthur Dow – “to fill a space in a beautiful way” – she had found her own way of working.

With an emphasis on composition and design, these abstractions revealed a fascination for natural phenomena such as the canyons, stars and sunrises of Texas, where she was teaching at the time. Their originality captured the attention of Stieglitz, who included them in a group show at his New York gallery 291 in 1916. This was the beginning of a prolific professional and personal partnership between Stieglitz and O’Keeffe, who married after she moved to New York in 1924.

During seasonal trips to a property belonging to Stieglitz’s family at Lake George, in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, O’Keeffe painted many of her celebrated botanical studies. Engulfing the viewer in fluid, lyrical and bold compositions, they pushed the boundaries of representation. Whilst appearing abstract, however, her work remained firmly based on observations of Nature. Cropping and foreshortening, O’Keeffe used the graphic power of photography to frame abstract relationships between natural forms. Using the language of form and colour, she valued abstraction in its ability to translate feeling and consciousness itself, to express what words cannot.

In his book Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters, curator Jack Cowart encapsulates the artist’s monu­mental and commanding forms that render the delicate entities that they are in reality: July/August 2016

Jimson Weed / White Flower No. 1, 1932 by Georgia O’Keeffe

Oil paint on canvas, 48 x 40 inches / Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas, USA Photography by Edward C. Robison III All paintings © 2016 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / DACS, London

“O’Keeffe acted to suspend time, producing art that would capture the transient. O’Keeffe made a flower, with all of its fragility, a permanent image without season, wilt or decay. Enlarged and reconstructed in oil on canvas or pastel on paper, it is a vehicle for pure expression rather than an example of botanical illustration. As the Issue 297

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I wanted to give that world to someone else”

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Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930 by Georgia O’Keeffe Oil on canvas mounted on board, 24¼ x 36¼ (61.6 x 92.1cm) Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation

enlarged blossom floats in the ambiguous pictorial space, O’Keeffe transforms this traditional still-life subject into a meditative experience.”

O’Keeffe wished to show what many people – especially the busy New Yorkers she’d come to know – overlooked, such as the intimate anatomy of a flower. She stated: “Nobody really sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time… So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.” She went on to explain: “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I wanted to give that world to someone else.’’

Though many ascribed gendered readings of her work, particularly feminist critics who saw her paintings as illusions to female genitalia, O’Keeffe denied any hidden symbolism. She professed only to witness the essence of flowers. With intense observation she documented the androgyny of their reproductive parts, representing both the masculine and the feminine. She epitomised how, by way of Nature, the sensual and sexual, masculine and feminine, are all entwined in the fabric of the natural world, as are its patterns, from the micro to the macro, repeated and interconnected.

During seasonal visits to New Mexico, O’Keeffe often painted the Jimson weed, a poisonous flower that grew in abundance around her adobe house.

In subtle modulations of white, yellow and green, she simplified the blossom into circular forms, with polished paint carrying the play of light 50

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across their delicate surfaces. O’Keeffe describes her experience of this plant in her autobiography: “It is a beautiful white trumpet flower with strong veins that hold the flower open and grow longer than the round part of the flower – twisting as they grow off beyond it… Some of them are a pale green in the centre – some a pale Mars violet. The Jimson weed blooms in the cool of the evening – one moonlight night at the Ranch I counted one hundred and twenty-five flowers.

The flowers die in the heat of the day… Now when I think of the delicate fragrance of the flowers, I almost feel the coolness and sweetness of the evening.”

With her physical and emotional health deteriorating from the strains of the city and her fraught relationship with Stieglitz, O’Keeffe sought solace in the landscape of New Mexico. From 1929 onwards she made annual trips for months at a time to a house near Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch, north of Santa Fe, before moving there permanently in 1949, three years after her husband’s death.

Inspired by the land, O’Keeffe redefined herself, no longer as how Stieglitz or the New York art world saw her, but as how she saw herself in New Mexico. She expressed her appreciation for the place in a letter to Stieglitz from 1929: “Please leave your regrets – and all your sadness – and misery – If I had hugged all mine to my heart as you are doing I could not walk out the door and let the sun shine into me as it has – and I could not feel the stars touch the centre of me as they do out there on the hills at night – or the silver of the sagebrush way off July/August 2016

into the distance as well as nearby – seem to touch my lips and my cheek as it does.”

O’Keeffe and Stieglitz wrote to each other endlessly, seeing the world through similar eyes and fuelling their creative spirits – a literary legacy, their relationship is documented in over 5,000 letters on everything from the details of everyday life to the depths of their passion.

O’Keeffe had an invigorated reaction to New Mexico: “It’s something that’s in the air, it’s different. The sky is different, the wind is different.” She revered its compelling forms: “I have this mountain, the Pedernal, and God told me if I painted it often enough, he would give it to me.” The emptiness and wildness offered privacy and solitude, allowing O’Keeffe to live in intimate contact with the land.

Along with vivid colours and a unique clarity of light, she found new subjects in surreal juxtapositions of sun-bleached animal skulls, dramatic geological formations and rugged desert terrain.

She described the red hills that rolled out from the doorstep of her adobe hacienda: “All the earth colours of the painter’s palette are out there in the many miles of Badlands, the light Naples yellow through the ochres, orange and red and purple earth, even the soft earth greens, our wasteland,

I think our most beautiful country.” Her life in New Mexico enhanced and nurtured her perfectionism and meticulous craftsmanship in all areas of her creativity, from cooking, making clothes and gardening to grinding her own pigments.

O’Keeffe chose to live close to the land and to Nature, making this closeness the subject of her work. Her paintings of enlarged flowers bring into focus a unique sensory experience and intense emotional response to natural forms, whilst her visions of New Mexico manifest a profound sense of place in a land she made her own. From a skyscraper in New York to botanical studies in Lake George or a mountain in New Mexico, O’Keeffe responded to her surroundings with a singular and elemental clarity of vision. She was a beacon of independence, with abstracted natural forms and bright colours blazing through a male-dominated art world centred on trends of urban modernism.

Nature remained the main source of inspiration for her paintings – some of the greatest abstractions of American modernism.

India Windsor-Clive is a freelance journalist.

The exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe runs at Tate Modern, London, from 6 July to 30 October 2016. www.tate.org.uk

Red Hills with White Shell, 1938 by Georgia O’Keeffe Oil on canvas, 30 x 36.5 inches Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA / Gift of Isabel B. Wilson in memory of her mother, Alice Pratt Brown / Bridgeman Images

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A RT S POETRY

Nature’s eye and tongue Emily Dickinson’s extraordinary poems include profound ecological affirmations. Peter Abbs celebrates her genius

“T

he outer from the inner derives its magnitude.”

So wrote Emily Dickinson, a contemporary of Walt Whitman, and one of the greatest American poets. The line provides a key to the large and intricate mansion of her work. Born in 1830, at her death in 1886 she left nearly 2,000 poems, many of them tied up in small handmade bundles, nearly all without titles, and many of them composed in complete secrecy.

Dickinson stands as the dramatic antithesis to the strutting and controversial celebrity Whitman. Unlike him, she lived as a recluse, remaining loyal to what she saw as her “polar privacy”. And yet, like Whitman, she had her own sublime vision of Nature, which she bodied forth in a continuous flow of lyrical poetry.

No one recognised her genius. Confining herself to an upstairs room in her father’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts, she chose to live the life of a highly reflexive solitude. In later years, she dressed in white and rarely consented to see visitors – even if they were relations. She corresponded with a few literary acquaintances, but no one detected her brilliance of intellect, her linguistic originality or the metaphysical audacity of her vision.

Her poetry often testifies to the inner stress and strain of that isolation. There are stark poems of acute inner disintegration and wrenching despair, which remain all but unique in Anglo-American literature; but also, and answering these cries of desolation, there are poems of redeeming conviction and ecological affirmation. She came to see life as a creative experiment, conducted dangerously at the edge, but always inside a magnificent evolving universe. Not the Bible, but Nature became her treasured Book of Revelation.

Dickinson’s style is as startling as it is intense, and it can take some time to appreciate. She writes as one dispatching a frenzied sequence of emails or breathless electronic texts. The poems possess the hesitant manner of exploratory speech.

They are brief, fractured and often inconclusive, ending abruptly as if the uncertain act of communication is still in mid-flow. Well before the phrase had been coined by William James, they reveal writing as a stream of consciousness.

Grammatically, Dickinson achieves her effects by three stratagems. She abandons nearly all punctuation, except for the constant use of the dash; she employs a very short line (often with no more than two or three stresses); and she frequently uses ellipsis. The conventional connectives are 52

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discarded, and the reader is asked to leap from one thought to another without any lexical guidance. Her nervous idiom is highly distinctive and, like the brush strokes of Van Gogh’s paintings, instantly recognisable.

And yet, as so often, the originality of her style had a conventional foundation. The poems are transformations of the Protestant hymns she would have heard and sung every Sunday as a small child. As a poet she takes the familiar structure of the hymn, with its short line, regular stresses and alternating rhymes, then simply turns up the heat; and, at the very same moment, she scraps the inherited platitudes of piety to let in the fierce demons of her own experience.

The truth of it; the pain, and the elation.

She described the creative act as the soul working at “white heat” until it generated the light of an “unanointed Blaze”.

Paradoxically, while entirely unsanctioned by any religious authority, it was conceived as a holy act. Thus through a courageous poetic sublimation the traditional chapel hymn became the daring lyric of modern consciousness. An extraordinary metamorphosis.

What Dickinson testifies to is a new spirit of being: an exploratory existence. She works like a Zen master or a mystical Socrates, distilling amazing sense / From Ordinary Meanings. In her poems she remains unsure about the existence of God or any form of afterlife, but she is compelled by the beauty of Nature in all its evolved complexity and strangeness. She cultivates an openness of heart and mind describing her state as a Sweet Skepticism of the Heart – / That knows – and does not know. God or no God (and the question perplexes her), there is humility here. She dwells in possibility and lives for astonishment. Her method is to ambush with surprise. And there is a joy in the broader unfolding of a mysterious cosmos experienced through the questioning powers of an alert consciousness.

One of Dickinson’s secular hymns to Nature conceived as a goddess ends thus: We pass, and she abides. / We conjugate Her Skill / While She creates and federates / Without a syllable. Decades before any holistic theory about ecology had been philosophically formulated, there is a recognition of the ways Gaia shapes herself without a word. But then, of course, as Freud graciously recognised, the poets were always there first.

Peter Abbs is Poetry Editor for Resurgence & Ecologist.

July/August 2016

241 I like a look of Agony, Because I know it’s true – Men do not sham Convulsion, Nor simulate a Throe – The Eyes glaze once – and that is Death – Impossible to feign The Beads upon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung.

435 Much madness is divinest sense – To a discerning Eye – Much sense – the starkest Madness – ’Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail – Assent – and you are sane – Demur – you’re straightway dangerous – And handled with a Chain – Illustration by artist Penelope Dullaghan for the Emily Dickinson Museum

657 I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior for Doors – Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of Eye – And for an Everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky – Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise –

937 I felt a Cleaving in my Mind – As if my Brain had split – I tried to match it – Seam by Seam – But could not make them fit – The thought before I strove to join Unto the thought before – But Sequence ravelled out of Sound Like Balls upon a Floor.

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258 There’s a certain Slant of Light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – We can find no scar, But internal difference Where the Meanings, are – None may teach it – Any – ’Tis the Seal Despair – An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air – When it comes, the Landscape listens – Shadows – hold their breath – When it goes, ’tis like the Distance On the look of Death –

The first full edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems, retaining their original form, was published in 1955. The editor, Thomas H. Johnson, numbered the poems according to their chronology. I have used his system here. PA

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A RT S ART THERAPY

The studio that’s also a sanctuary Angela Baum reports on the work of a pioneering arts initiative

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n the autumn of 2014, the elusive graffiti artist Banksy recreated Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring high on a wall in Bristol’s dockland, larger than life, and incorporating a yellow fire alarm as the young woman’s ‘pearl’. Hidden between two warehouses, the Girl looks out from her secret corner upon the other hidden pearl of this once forgotten industrial quarter: Studio Upstairs.

Studio Upstairs is an organisation providing unique therapeutic art studios in London and Bristol. The first was set up in 1988 in a squat in Diorama Arts, Regent’s Park, London

by three dynamic people with diverse backgrounds in the arts, performance, teaching and psychotherapy Douglas Gill, Claire Manson and Jo Hill.

The trio regarded Diorama Arts as an excellent environment in which to develop the project, which was radically different from any psychiatric services then available. The motivation for starting the studio had come from the founders’ frustration with their work in traditional art therapy practice, where art was produced for its interpretive value and then kept filed away. They wanted to create a culture where art was not seen as a recreational pastime but as

a serious objective in its own right that could appear in the public gallery.

More importantly, they recognised the need for people to move away from the psychiatric system. Whilst too vulnerable to attend adult education, members of the studio had the opportunity to create art away from the clinical setting.

As a result of interest by the art therapy profession in Bristol, the second Studio Upstairs was opened in January 2000 Spike Island, the city’s international centre for contemporary art and design, with some painting resources and one volunteer artist. It opened

Three studio stories

‘I

am a professionally trained fashion and textile designer. My career came crashing to a halt with the birth of our disabled child, the subsequent onset of my own physical disabilities and the end of my marriage. Since I became a self-funding member of Studio Upstairs (as my local health authority will not fund me) it has become an essential retreat and sanctuary, which offers me much-needed respite from my ongoing caring duties.

Studio Upstairs has supported me to re-engage with my creative self. This process has been deeply satisfying: drawing is again like breathing, and I feel whole again.’

‘I

arrived at Studio Upstairs having recently completed a home detox, with no medication or assistance. The day before I arrived to have a look around was the first time I had walked in over a week. What I needed was a place to just be, and whilst in this state of being I could do something that I really loved, to draw and paint and take time to understand the last year, the havoc I had wreaked and a family meltdown.

After six months I am now back in employment and have moved to my own studio space. This is down to many factors, foremost that of Studio Upstairs.’

‘M

y work explores relationships and the formation and maintenance of identity, through the making of masks, and their usage in film and performance.

Having attended Studio Upstairs for about 10 years, I learned to dissociate myself from the label attached to my illness and focus on the narrative aspect of my work.’

The Girl with the Pierced Eardrum by Banksy © REUTERS / Andrew Winning

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one day a week and supported two members. From then the membership gradually grew, along with the number of artist volunteers and art therapists.

Working partnerships developed with a number of arts, health and educational organisations.

The project has proved increasingly resilient, despite public spending cuts. In May, a new Studio Upstairs was opened in Croydon, South London. “We believe in artistic practice as a valu­able way to create meaning and purpose in life,” says Zlatinka Hristova, the organisation’s director. “After a few really challenging years, Studio Upstairs has weathered the storm and not only survived, but flourished and is growing.”

Following on from the ideas of R.D. Laing – who believed in talking rather than medication – a non-medical model for psychosis and mental distress – Studio Upstairs encourages its members to come into a community with likeminded people, using creative expression to transform their lives. Artist members and art therapists make art together and talk. They talk about art and materials and, if the time and space are right, about unspoken feelings of piercing pain and suffering.

In Studio Upstairs tradition, the members, volunteers and art therapists of the Bristol studio work alongside one another. Studio managers are named as such, rather than ‘staff’ or ‘therapist’, in the spirit of attempting to deconstruct the fixed roles people often find themselves in. This methodology is especially significant when people are subjected to an external diagnosis.

I had a studio in Spike Island when Studio Upstairs first came to my attention. I had recently been bereaved, and in conversation with an art therapist friend, I discovered there was a therapeutic studio on the top floor of our building. I became involved and joined as a volunteer artist. The place was perfect. I found somewhere I felt safe with my own chaotic feelings, as well as an abundance of materials and an open philosophy about framing art within life. The Studio held Open Weekends at the same time as the Spike Open, and ran workshops and residencies for visiting artists. It also acquired another space in the Spike building for a “moving on studio”, where artists could progress Issue 297

Electric Chair by a student of Studio Upstairs

with their art in their own time with support from the Studio if needed.

I stayed in Studio Upstairs for 10 years. During this time I saw members go on to take degrees, become art therapists, teachers, writers and poets, and become more confident in the wider community. I saw others who were

Studio Upstairs continues to make the case that Art is intrinsic to a healthy life kept out of hospital as a result of the commitment of the Studio to giving psychological support when needed.

During Studio Upstairs Bristol’s time on the top floor, its membership grew and grew. With its success it was obvious that it needed larger premises, and so in 2003 it moved to its current home, an industrial unit, light and spacious, encouraging the possibility of making larger work in 2D and 3D. Underpinning the therapeutic practice at Studio Upstairs is the idea

of ‘dwelling’. Being able to dwell, according to Heidegger, is a process of forgetting oneself, losing one’s selfconsciousness, in a ‘safe’ place. Being at home, belonging, is to be oneself.

For nearly 20 years, Studio Upstairs Bristol has served all those looking for a therapeutic space in which to make art. Members, volunteers and art therapists come to the Studio from all parts of the west of England and Wales, and most memberships are supported by welfare benefits. It has become a place to form friendships and find confidence in a creative life; a place where people can think and speak – aesthetically, emotionally, socially – or remain silent; a place whose very being is synonymous with healing; a place where mental illness is seen as ordinary through the extraordinariness of art.

Studio Upstairs continues to make the case that art is intrinsic to a healthy life.

In these difficult times, Banksy’s yellow pearl alarm serves as a warning: life without art is madness.

Angela Baum is a former trustee of Studio Upstairs. www.studioupstairs.org.uk

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A RT S TESTAMENT

The artist who drew with the sun Roger Ackling, who died in 2014, created intensively meditative art – using a magnifying glass to etch with sunlight on small pieces of driftwood.

In a new book, he describes his work, and his relationship with Nature

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ature is not outside our bodies. Nature flows through everything and everyone. We don’t need to become Nature. We are Nature. To become one with Nature means to become one with oneself. To look from oneself at Nature is to look from a selfless centre. However, to look outside at the world and see the world as fundamentally different is an illusion. We look out to look in. Not to find oneself but to try and break down the wall between inside and outside – to become one. The one of inner self flowing into outer self.

Nature runs through us Nature runs through the world We are in the world Our eyes look out Our spirit looks out and in.

When I speak of the spirit I speak of the eternal energy that we all have. The spirit wants to break down the boundary between inside and outside to be free and inseparable from the world. We see with our eyes looking out. Our spirit identifies with Nature – the natural world. That is why we are uplifted in Nature. Our spirit becomes one (through looking, hearing, seeing, smelling, touching Nature) with Nature. It longs to be re-united.

When we sense Nature through our senses we are in fact sensing ourselves, our inner spirit. Images of mountains, streams, rocks, flowers are of course images of those things, but they are also depictions of us. It is wrong and dangerous to speak of human beings separated from Nature. It isolates us.

It leaves us feeling abandoned and looking for Gods. When we are at one with the world, we are at one with ourselves.

Art helps us understand this.

Art documents the journey towards re-union with ourselves and the world.

Art is the attempts we make to find ourselves. The artefact or art object holds this process of looking – the looking for ourselves. Art is only the face of the searcher. It is only the window to look through. Clarity and clearness in art helps us to look through the artefact to the spirit of the person seeking to be reunited with the world, themselves and Nature. All art is the process of looking in and looking out. There are many ways of looking. There are many faces to art. Art can be anything.

Voewood, 2007, sunlight and paint on wood, 19 x 18 x 1.3cm © The Estate of the Artist

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Art is the attempt to bring meaning. Without meaning we become lost and our relationship with the world can potentially be lost. Artefacts/art objects/art events are places where meaningfulness is attempted. The greater the clarity of the spirit, the clearer the artefact.

One does not have to know how to bring meaning to one’s life; searching is to bring meaning – the journey. One does not have to know what one is doing for meaning to occur.

Meaning can occur through belief and hope – but one has to abandon oneself, to allow the wall between inside and outside, between success and failure, to collapse.

Love is an ancient way to break the wall down. We are always in relationship to everything. We should allow ourselves to be in relationship to our spirit – our true force – and love is inseparable from our spirit. To be loving is to be in contact with our inner spirit. Artefacts are places therefore where a person’s true spirit can be found – a person’s love.

Art has nothing to do with money.

Art has nothing to do with fashion.

Art has nothing to do with success or self-promotion.

Although anything and any way can be art, for me in whatever form it takes it is about being united with our true self, which is the spirit of the world. Love is the world’s true spirit. Art is love.

To not look at the sea, but over it.

In winter, not at the tree, but through it.

With art, not to look at or through but with it.

To make art, one has to believe that the activity can be meaningful. One has to believe it is possible to bring meaning. To bring meaning, I mean to make sense.

One does not have to know how to bring meaning to one’s life; searching is to bring meaning – the journey Artists can bring meaning from positions and ideas that many people would think are crazy. Artists can make art from anything. Artists can make art anywhere. Artists can make art anytime.

There is no position, no way, that for some artists it is not possible to take. Some artists have great courage – it takes courage to search for oneself. It takes real belief. This freedom we have won for ourselves is that anything can be art – this was established in the 20th century by artists.

Because anything can be art, we need the courage of belief.

This is not religious belief but the re-union with our spirit.

Artists are the same as everyone else but hopefully with the courage of belief to be at one with ourselves, at one with the world, at one with Nature. I believe all people of whatever race, religion, gender are all looking for the same – to find meaning in this life – and to do this we have to find ourselves.

Artists make art.

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Diagram, 2003–4, sunlight on card with paper, 28 × 20.6cm © The Estate of the Artist

Sunlight on wood My own art for the past 30 years has been made the same way and only one way. I have focused sunlight through this lens onto discarded wood – a potentially pointless activity but one through which I have attempted to find meaning. The wood is usually found by the sea’s edge or on wastelands, on the margins. I have worked in many places on the Earth’s surface but mainly in the north of Norfolk, England, where I live.

My work is small, and each piece takes no longer than seven hours to make. The time of day and year, cloud cover, altitude and the nature of the wood affect how long it takes for the wood to burn. I usually work from left to right and against the grain. Each line is made up of many black dots.

Each dot is an image of the sun.

I believe my work to be art. I show it in various places. I often show it in galleries, but also in more discreet places – or not at all. At present I have made 116 one-person shows.

I’m not sure I know what I’m doing – I’m not trying to communicate anything; I don’t have an objective. The quality of experience while making the work is important; I choose to make my work in silence and sitting still. I regard the activity of making art as lifelong, and I hope to continue to try to understand more, to bring meaning to my life.

This text has been written up from notes Roger Ackling made in preparation for a talk he gave on 14 April 2002 at Free Space Praha in conjunction with the Ishikari Project.

Between the Lines: The Work and Teaching of Roger Ackling, edited by Emma Kalkhoven, is published by Occasional Papers.

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Music to free the Soul Peter Reason applauds a revolutionary work uniting arts and the spirit

Experiencing Music – Restoring the Spiritual: Music as Well-being June Boyce-Tillman Peter Lang, 2016 ISBN: 9783034319522

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inchester Cathedral was packed. A buzz of anticipation ran through the gathering. Their children, their mothers and fathers, their friends and relations, had been preparing for months and were about to perform. The Great Turning. What could this be?

Something to do with the environment; something new; something different.

The Reverend Professor June BoyceTillman, colourful in her flowing robes, took to the conductor’s podium. After a moment’s quiet, she gestured to the percussion. Into the silent cathedral came a crash of cymbals, rising and falling in complex rhythms, soon joined by the deep notes of trombones, evoking the Big Bang that started our universe on its evolutionary path. As the cymbals died away the cathedral was filled with a softer sound, coming, it seemed, from all directions: maybe falling rain, maybe tumbling grain. We were spellbound, wide-eyed: what could it be?

And then children were ushered into their places behind the orchestra, each tapping together two stones. The choirs then sang of the formation of Earth: “Come, Gaian beings, we form the parts of Earth. In honouring and sharing we bring new life to birth.”

What we were experiencing had its roots in Stories of the Great Turning (2013), stories of how contributors were addressing the challenge of our times in their everyday lives, the challenge that Joanna Macy describes as the Great Turning (see Resurgence & Ecologist March/April 2013). Boyce-Tillman had 58

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been so taken by the stories in the book – to which she’d contributed a chapter – that she had adapted the text and set it to her own music.

For the next hour or so we were drawn into the four themes of the Great Turning: the great age of Gaia; gratitude for her gifts; the challenges of uncertainty, doubt and despair; our dreams and hopes for humanity.

This was a participatory event, with musicians from across Hampshire: eight school choirs, six community and university choirs, and an orchestra.

The music itself was immensely

Music has always played a part in the liberation of subjugated cultures; it might play a part in the liberation and transformation of our own varied: simple children’s songs, modern harmonies sung a capella. Some sections were solemn, some boisterous choruses. In the finale, we all joined in the hymn We Shall Go out Renewed in Our Commitment to the tune of Danny Boy. Music over, everyone rose in appreciation. We had witnessed and participated in an experience we knew was special, a musicking – to use BoyceTillman’s term – that took us beyond performance into a deep sense of participation and transcendence.

N o w B o y c e - Ti l l m a n ’s b o o k Experiencing Music explores the philosophy and practices behind this kind of music-making. There is, she says in her Prelude, a longing to bring the wandering soul of the West back

home: “How can we approach music in a way that will empower people to discover the spiritual aspect of musicking with integrity and judgment?” The restoration of soul would bring about a greater sense of aliveness and belonging; it would also bring us into a sense of mystery – that “curious, almost paradoxical sense that all is well with the world” – and so of peace of mind.

This resouling of the Western world is taking place in the context of a “religionless spirituality”, which BoyceTillman explores in her second chapter.

She asserts that the Western world has been “missing god” since Nietzsche declared his death; we are bereft. Can musical experience provide us with the nurture that we lack? Can we have spirituality without religion?

Drawing on process philosophy and theology, Boyce-Tillman insists that we must change our view of spirituality to process rather than product. We must experience god as a verb, ‘go a-godding’, so to speak: spirituality not as a thing to be achieved, but as an ongoing explor­ ation between humans and the divine throughout the cosmos.

The book explores four domains of music experience. The Material domain includes the body and voice, the instruments, the sounds of the other-than-human world. In this domain Boyce-Tillman also includes the buildings in which musicking takes place as acoustic spaces, instruments in their own right. She describes her experiments of placing musicians in different parts of the space and close to walls “so that the walls support the sounds from behind and are coaxed into resonating”.

The domain of Expression brings together the subjectivities of composer, performers and listeners. Whatever the intentions of composition and performance, the experience brings its own July/August 2016

Music can take us beyond performance into a deep sense of transcendence Composition Number 8, 1923 (oil on canvas), Kandinsky, Wassily (1866–1944) / Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA / Bridgeman Images

meaning, influenced by its context: music can be about companionship and vulnerability, freedom and empowerment, emotion and reminiscence.

Boyce-Tillman describes this in Platonic terms as a search for The Truth.

The domain of Construction concerns quality within a particular musical idiom: the search for The Beautiful.

Boyce-Tillman laments the dominance of the Western classical tradition, because it has cast a shadow on other idioms. For example, much traditional African music is expressed through complex rhythms: to an African ear Mozart’s music, with its emphasis on melody and harmony, may seem rather simple and undeveloped. As a feminist scholar, she wonders whether the idiom of the Western canon, dominated as it is by mathematical form and monumentality, is in some ways a reflection of Western patriarchy.

In exploring the domain of Values, Boyce-Tillman asserts that music reflects not only an individual’s values, but also a particular society’s search for The Good. She describes her own Issue 297

experiments in this ethical dimension of music, and her particular interest in musicking in the creation of pluralist culture and community.

These four domains weave together in an expression of Spirituality. The book evokes the Greek figure of Hermes, the calling of the “psychagogue”, who can “transport the musicker to a different time/space dimension… move them from everyday reality to ‘another world’”. Boyce-Tillman chooses the term ‘liminality’ for this; it can also be described as peak experience, as flow, as trance. At its fullest, this experience integrates a sense of mystery with a narrative; empowers individuals while developing empathy; evokes a deep connection with the more-thanhuman, and unity with all beings and the cosmos.

In many ways this is a complex and academic book, drawing on writers from many traditions – musicological, psychological, philosophical and theological. In places it is a bit ‘listy’, and I sometimes wished there were more narrative and less references. But

Boyce-Tillman makes a huge contribution to our understanding of the links between musicking – and the arts in general – and our better human natures.

And it is revolutionary work. If this “radical musical inclusion” can help bring the Western soul home and give dignity to difference, musickers will truly inhabit the role of psychagogues – like Hermes, able to lead the soul from the underworld with love and empathy.

Boyce-Tillman argues that late capitalism has invented “many underworlds to keep people trapped in cultures of consumerism, inequality, addiction and control”.

Music has always played a part in the liberation of subjugated cultures; June Boyce-Tillman is pointing out how it might play a part in the liberation and transformation of our own.

Peter Reason’s book, Spindrift: A Wilderness Pilgrimage at Sea, is published

by Vala. He blogs at peterreason.net The Great Turning: A Celebration Work

by Rev Prof June Boyce-Tillman: tinyurl.com/great-turning-film

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Through paradox to new paradigm A journey of discovery…

Photograph: © ALFRED PASIEKA / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Stephan Harding relishes a challenging attempt to reconcile cutting-edge science with holistic theory Time, Light and the Dice of Creation: Through Paradox in Physics to a New Order Philip Franses Floris Books, 2015 ISBN: 9781782501725

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hilip Franses, my colleague on the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College, has written a remarkably innovative and remarkably challenging book.

Innovative, because it puts together the paradoxical, ambiguous and essentially incomprehensible insights from relativity and quantum theories with the inner experience of searching for authentic wholeness. Challenging, because this is not light reading – unless perhaps you are very familiar with both physics and the search for meaning.

You need an especially calm and steady mind to understand the many nuggets of deep insight that lie in wait for you in this book, insights perceptible by the intuitive mind with its capacity for understanding, or perhaps sensing, the relationships between space, time and chance. Franses takes us on a journey of discovery into a series of paradoxes in physics (division/unity, darkness/light, past/future, chance/ order, potential/expression and emptiness/form) that baffle 60

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our everyday minds, showing how these paradoxes need each other to bring forth their harvest of felt experience of the immense, unexpected living richness of the present moment.

The book is organised “like the faces of a dice” so that “each opposition fits to add to the significance of the previous ones”, since “In a dice, the separate faces require opposition to present their particular possibility. And similarly here, the paradoxical opposition of various theories and predictions of physics face their partial perspectives to a deeper, whole truth of experience.”

In the first section of the book, The Dice of Existence, the opposite faces of Franses’ dice are Bohr and Heisenberg, Pauli and Jung, Bohm and Bortoft, and Newton and Leibnitz, all described in the light of the significance of the physics not principally as an academic endeavour, but rather as a doorway into a deep realisation of meaning in the very wholeness of everyday life.

I found it particularly interesting how, early on in the book, Franses shares his understanding of this pervasive wholeness by stitching together a key moment in the development of quantum theory – namely the meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in wartime Denmark – with the psychological state of Western culture as a whole at the time. According to Franses, the realisation by these two geniuses that the atom could be split to make a particularly destructive bomb July/August 2016

REVIEWS mirrored the dangerous inner split within humanity that has by no means been overcome 100 years after the appearance of this pivotal insight in physics. As he says, “Throughout the history of physics, the way the relationship of the individual to the world has been interpreted has determined how mathematics has been turned into the world picture of physics.”

In the second section, The Dice of Renewal, we discover how chance becomes experiential, allowing an individual to “[surrender] itself, outside any predefined structure, to a journey of discovery, where order is introduced only at the end by the fulfilment of wholeness”. In the final section, Creation, existence and renewal hold the paradoxical

ambiguity between energy and time to discover how both mythological and chronological aspects of time underlie reality, “in the fulfilling of the experiential, participative journey into the nature of wholeness”.

I experienced several powerful openings into the rich perspectives offered by Franses as I worked intensely with this text, sometimes savouring a sentence over and over for many minutes on end, an exercise I would recommend to readers of Resurgence & Ecologist willing to embark on this demanding but hugely rewarding journey.

Stephan Harding is the author of Animate Earth.

We have the means, but not the leaders A scientist’s assessment of the climate change challenge is an up-and-down ride, says Paul Brown Atmosphere of Hope: Solutions to the Climate Crisis Tim Flannery Penguin Random House, 2015 ISBN: 9780141981048

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his is a fast-moving seesaw of a ride through the latest schemes to combat climate change. From the title, one would expect it to be cheering. But Tim Flannery, while an excellent writer, is also a scientist, so he is given to pointing out the downsides to new and bright ideas as well as being hopeful about their possibilities.

Flannery’s first book, The Weather Makers (2006), was very influential mainly because he turned the science of climate change into a graphic read and spelt out the global consequences in the clearest fashion. This latest excursion into the same area is supposed to be more optimistic, judging from the title. And to be fair there’s much to be cheerful about. There are some very clever people out there devising brilliant schemes for getting carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and saving us from the worst effects of climate change. All that is needed is to scale them up sufficiently and we will be saved – or could be – if we act fast enough.

There are plenty of ideas to choose from. Perhaps the most unlikely, yet most appealing, is seaweed farming.

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This not only takes large quantities of carbon dioxide out of seawater, so reducing the acidification of the oceans, but also can be used for biogas production. The seaweed farms make a haven for shellfish and a nursery for commercial fish, and provide many by-products – but obviously from the climate perspective it is biogas as a substitute for fossil fuels that matters.

The only problem is scale. There would need to be seaweed farms covering 9% of the oceans to solve the problem of climate change.

The best solutions always seem to come down to producing less carbon dioxide in the first place and finding substitutes for fossil fuels But this book is more than a runthrough of possible solutions. It is an update on the latest science and how close we are to catastrophic climate change. It was written before the Paris climate talks of last December, about which Flannery was not hopeful. In the event the result was far better than most people had dared to hope. This does not detract from Flannery’s main message, however – that it is lack of leadership from the politicians that is

our main obstacle to tackling climate change, not lack of technology.

Many of the examples he uses to illustrate this are from Australia. Flannery’s native land is one of the most ser­ iously affected by climate change, yet in recent years it has had a government entirely sceptical about climate change and wedded to the interests of the coal industry. The worst offender, former prime minister Tony Abbott, was in office when Flannery wrote the book, but he has now been succeeded

by Malcolm Turnbull – a moderate by comparison, but by Flannery’s standards still not up to the job.

The book examines a lot of technical “solutions” and geo-engineering techniques, such as putting iron filings in the sea to stimulate plankton growth, and thus storing carbon on the seabed.

Many of them won’t work or have potentially dangerous side effects that render them worse than useless. The best solutions always seem to come down to producing less carbon dioxide in the first place and finding substitutes for fossil fuels. In the end this is a cheering read because the signs are much better now than they have been for a long time. The message is that we really could save our children from a terrible future – but we need to try harder.

Paul Brown is co-editor of the Climate News Network and is a former environment correspondent for The Guardian.

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The man who discovered the world The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt – The Lost Hero of Science Andrea Wulf John Murray, 2015 ISBN: 9781848548985

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A world in his sights

Alexander von Humboldt (1806) by Georg Friedrich Weitsch © akg-images

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t is a commonplace that human knowledge has expanded far beyond the capacity of a single human mind to contain all of it, so much so that no individual now would consider making the attempt. But such was not always the case. When information about the world was less bewilderingly extensive, the endeavour to synthesise it was undertaken from time to time, and some of these efforts are of great value to us even today – consider the writings of Aristotle on everything from literary criticism to fish. We also think of Pliny (the Elder) in Rome; of Leonardo, the universal man, in the High Renaissance; and, more obscurely perhaps, someone like the 17th-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher.

But who was the last? Who was the last before it became impossible, before learning swelled so monstrously that specialisation became de rigueur – the last person who was interested in everything (more or less) and deeply knowledgeable about it all? A good case can be made that it was Alexander von Humboldt, the German naturalist and explorer and contemporary of Napoleon, and a riveting new biography of him makes it with panache.

Who? You may well ask. Andrea Wulf has anticipated your reaction. She told a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society earlier this year that when she informed her English friends – she is an Anglophone German – that she was embarking upon a life of Humboldt, she was met almost universally with blank faces, and it is one of her principal themes, and a subsidiary title of the book, that her subject is The Lost Hero of Science.

Certainly in the English-speaking world Humboldt is largely forgotten outside academia, yet he was once the July/August 2016

Michael McCarthy on a dazzling reassessment of a pioneering natural scientist and polymath most famous man on the planet besides his contemporary, Bonaparte, and he has had more organisms named after him than anyone else – nearly 300 plants and more than 100 animals – not to mention dozens of monuments, parks, mountains and other natural features, including a geyser, a bay, a cape and a glacier as well as a famous ocean current, and in North America alone four counties and 13 towns.

The begetter of this fantastical legacy was born into the high aristocracy of Frederick the Great’s Prussia in 1769.

Humboldt was an archetypal product of the age of the enlightened despots, perhaps the most glittering one; indeed, you might say he was the Enlightenment’s golden child. Such was his hunger for knowledge of the sciences and the natural world, and his rapid acquisition of it, and his astounding fluency in conversing of it, that by his mid-twenties he had conquered the scientific-minded German literary establishment led by Goethe and Schiller, who regarded him as some kind of wunderkind (with his good breeding helping, naturally.) But a larger stage than the salons of Weimar and Jena awaited him.

In 1799 he embarked, with a French companion, Aimé Bonpland, on a five-year scientific exploration of the Americas, which made him internationally famous. Humboldt’s flamboyant accounts of their hair-raising adventures in the jungles and the mountains of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico, his tales of scaling unclimbed volcanoes and testing the shock of electric eels on himself, of battling mosquitos and jaguars left audiences back in Europe spellbound; but he was not just a glorified sightseer. Everywhere he went he made detailed scientific measurements, took copious notes and drew maps, and he was given a hero’s welcome by an admiring President Thomas Jefferson when he finally arrived in the United States, because by now he knew more about Spanish colonial America than anyone else. Back in Europe, he was instantly – still in his thirties – the Grand Old Man of Science, and even Issue 297

more, of Nature, a position he held unchallenged until his death in 1859.

Wulf gives the most vivid account of these years of colossal world celebrity, which intensified steadily as more narratives of South America poured from his pen and Humboldt embarked upon his own whacking great synthesis of all available scientific knowledge, entitled Cosmos, in five fat volumes: think of David Attenborough’s current British reputation, on a global scale. It is a masterly and wholly absorbing piece of

A page from the herbarium assembled by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland (1799–1804) © akg-images / Gilles Mermet

biography, shining light on everything from his life trying to be a liberal nobleman at the reactionary Prussian court, to the achievements of his distinguished brother Wilhelm.

What carries less conviction is Wulf’s grand conclusion about what Humboldt and his writings amounted to. The book’s principal title is The Invention of Nature, and she writes, early on: “Humboldt gave us our concept of nature itself.” Perhaps. Her argument is that, in contrast to the Linnean taxonomists who preceded him, obsessed with separating species from each other, Humboldt saw Nature as a whole in which all the parts were connected,

as we do today. She also suggests that he anticipated today’s concern for global warming, James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis of the Earth as a single organism, and Darwin’s evolutionary theories.

Yet while there is no doubt whatsoever that Humboldt was very influential – Darwin read him avidly – to cast him as the fons et origo of the way in which we now look at the natural world feels rather too much like a construct.

It is a certainly a detailed one: Wulf carefully traces the influence of Humboldt on later writers, not only Darwin but also such figures as John Muir and George Perkins Marsh. But it is clear that while many of Humboldt’s observations are as seed-corn for these men, they are scattered about his writing and do not form a cogently articulated single new message such as the others achieved, Muir with his championing of the wilderness, Marsh with his calculating of the cost of the human destruction of Nature, and Darwin with natural selection.

Even so, why has Humboldt been forgotten so completely among Englishspeakers? Clearly, as Wulf points out, with the two world wars, all things German fell out of favour; but perhaps also there is not quite the substance that she supposes. Darwin’s assessment of Humboldt was “the greatest scientific traveller”, though were Darwin himself known only for The Voyage of the Beagle, he would not be up with Freud and Marx as one of the true shapers of our worldview.

Yet that is not to say that Humboldt does not deserve to be disinterred from his present oblivion. He was a quite remarkable figure, of surpassing historical and human interest, and in this richly documented, brilliantly contextualised and thoroughly engrossing account of his fascinating life, Andrea Wulf has resurrected him triumphantly.

Michael McCarthy was formerly environment editor of The Independent, and is the author of The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy.

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R E V IEWS

A patch of altered states Adam Thorpe admires a naturalist’s absorption with a liminal land and its wildlife

Common Ground Rob Cowen Hutchinson, 2015 ISBN: 9780091954550

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chance glance at a map pulled Rob Cowen into a prolonged love affair with a liminal area near his house in Bilton, North Yorkshire: a patch covering just half a square mile, it borders a sewage farm and embraces fields, woods, a disused railway viaduct, pylons and much brambled detritus. It turns out to be teeming with wildlife, too, encouraged by human neglect and a small river, the Nidd.

There is nothing new about odes to edgelands – Dickens relished describing them as 19th-century London gnawed ever further out – and the author indicates his literary debts – Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts’ Edgelands similarly includes the “dark dials” of sewage ponds – but Common Ground is also the record of obsession, loneliness and anxiety. Dreaming of liberation from the city, Cowen returned to his childhood county while his wife temporarily stayed behind in London, but “moving house had proved to be an imprisonment.” Thus the scrap on the map became a refuge and a healing space: “It has begun to colonise my sleeping mind.”

Cowen in turn spiritually colonises its wildlife – dramatic creatures such as owls and foxes and hares, each 64

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Deep in the Night by Amanda Clark

with an air of mystery and magic; or ungrasp­able entities like swifts, as well as modest ladybirds and butterflies. (He knows his flora, too.) He tracks them through snow, rain, nettles and thorns, wanting to join “an earlier world”, its “sheer immediacy”. The fox is particularly resonant for him. There is a long bravura section when he thinks himself into its famished consciousness, all the way to its agonising death in a trap.

There’s a danger in anthropomorphic writing, of course: the colonisation of something completely other; I was less convinced by the first-person (sic) account of a hunted deer. However, Cowen’s skill translates the fox’s existence into something like a shamanic dance: there is a real shock when, in human guise again, he finds the corpse: “That flame fur has long since leached into the earth.”

Foxes are our suburban familiars now, of course, but with a startling otherness. Owls are something else, not cute or wise, but ruthless hunters.

Cowen is reminded of this when, visiting Harrogate’s antenatal clinic, he sees a child’s drawing of a tawny owl Blu-Tacked on the noticeboard; feeling

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his wife Rosie’s bump, he senses the vulnerability of humankind. Looking out at “the lone oak, the razor-cut line of hills, the pylons, the smothered steeples, domes and towers of town”, he recognises how easily things can go wrong. Rosie’s pregnancy provides a strong philosophical and narrative pull to the seasonal cycle of note-taking and solitary discoveries, revelations and epiphanies continuing through the seasons, culminating in a gripping scene that had me wiping my eyes.

Thus Cowen’s naturalist expertise is interwoven with his own personal doubts and fears, and is admirably tuned into the subjective malleability of the countryside, being ultimately a projection of his own altering states. Not so much what he sees, but who he is when he sees it. A glimpsed tramp, ‘Sir Hare’ – if more like a fox in his prowling opportunism, secreted by his fire in the Bilton woods – holds forth in a long, imagined monologue: a former Sixties adman turned guerrilla ecologist, he allows Cowen to vent his political spleen as well illuminating some of his deeper sources: “I fell into the rituals of earl­ier times. I prayed to the gods of Celt, Saxon, Angle and Jute and communed July/August 2016

REVIEWS with the insects, animals and plants seeking to learn the secrets of their microbial, cellular majesty.”

Apart from this passion for burrowing in and dissolving the species’ borders, Cowen takes us through the area’s history from the Mesolithic hunters on, dwelling particularly on the last 300 years: the enclosures, the appropriations by the rich, the loss of the peasantry, the conversion of land into profit, the triumph of self-interest,

the land’s chemical soakings, its inevitable disappearance under new estates.

This is mostly done through footfall, including the discovery of the capstone laid long ago over a possible sulphur spring: ownership, “a new departure in our changing relationship with land”.

There are marvellously lyrical passages on swifts and mayflies, on the modest history of a single buddleia bush, on the sting of nettles and on the lost son of Bilton Hall, a revenant

from the trenches. Cowen’s relationship with this morsel of land is intense and honest, and described in superb prose. I travelled the lanes around it on Google Street View, and glimpsed English-pretty northern countryside. A “wilful trespasser”, Cowen has turned it all into something not only rich and strange, but also astonishing.

Adam Thorpe’s most recent book is On Silbury Hill.

A long and winding road Marianna Lines enjoys an autobiographical journey in search of fulfilment The Jeweled Highway: On the Quest for a Life of Meaning Ralph White Divine Arts, 2015 ISBN: 9781611250343

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alph White is Everyman searching for spiritual fulfilment, for enriching the destiny of Earth and achieving his full potential.

Many of us may give up on this after a few enthusiastic years in our own self-made Never Never Land, but The Jeweled Highway takes us further. This is the story of all those posthippie travellers who backpacked around India, climbed Machu Picchu and then found a community family before setting out on their own to discover the world – or just get a job.

Ralph and I, at the time we were living at the Findhorn Foundation, once attended an International Communes Festival in Galloway, Scotland alongside anarchic commune groups from Denmark and Spain and even a warrior women cult from Ireland – the Amazonian Women. It was embarrassing to be dubbed the ‘Martini Set’ among the more earthy crowd of like-minded anarchists out to save the world.

However, Ralph changed all that by ending the festival in

Switchback road leading up to Machu Picchu, Peru © Mint Images – Frans Lanting / Getty Images

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a dance, a Sacred Dance, a circle dance. We were no longer capitalists against socialism, or bohemian New Age iconoclasts. We were one in that single moment in time.

Ralph White began life in Wales and grew up around Huddersfield before breaking away to explore the world.

He eventually went on to establish The Open Center, the first holistic centre in New York City. His is an adventurous story. The reader is transported from the early years in Northern England, down Route 66, hitchhiking to Machu Picchu and across the Eastern Himalayas into Tibet. Hardly a travel journal, this book describes a bejewelled road that is full of challenges and pitfalls, and it also tells of a deep cultural shift taking place. The origins of the major holistic movement define why it serves as a focal shift for the emergence of greater wisdom, awareness and sanity in the world.

Leaving the straight world and going full-on into an alternative life with no financial back-up is a courageous scenario.

On the last page White writes: “Without my stumbles, doubts and dark times, or my joys, ecstasies, and insights, I would never have uncovered the trail that leads toward the Jeweled Highway. But once found, that road goes on forever.”

In this post-modern, apocalyptic age, where spirituality is a rare concept and oft despised, this book offers a vision of how to find a life beyond the ordinary. It actually makes the reader feel the urge to write his or her own story.

As these concepts are even more relevant in the second decade of the 21st century as the pulse quickens, it is even more significant to find our base line, our modus operandi, our credo for life on this planet. As David Attenborough, the great British naturalist, says, “The world is in turmoil.

All species are being tested.” Ralph White, who has been described as a “blending of the modern Western mind with an ancient sense of soul”, is possibly an antidote to what is reining us in, what is stopping us from going forward.

Mystery surrounds and beguiles him, and this is a key to his Western Mystery Tradition teachings and beliefs.

Marianna Lines is the author of Sacred Stones, Sacred Places and The Traveller’s Guide to Sacred Scotland. www.stoneline.co.uk

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R E V IEWS

Getting into hot waters Andrew Mitchell warms to a tale of exploration in the Peruvian forest

The Boiling River: Adventure and Discovery in the Amazon Andrés Ruzo TED Books, Simon & Schuster UK, 2016 ISBN: 9781471151583 Andrés Ruzo sampling the 207-degree water

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re there anomalies in exploration still to discover? If so, can they tell us about the relationship between humans and Nature? The Boiling River, a short book in the TED series, proves how little we know about some parts of our world, at a time when Google might have us believe we can know everything at the touch of a button.

Andrés Ruzo, a young geologist, heard a legend as a child, handed down by his Quechua grandfather, that the conquistadors were spiritually defeated in 1533 by the doomed Inca emperor Atahualpa, who had encouraged their thirst for gold. The Incas created the notion of Paititi, a city of gold, waiting to be discovered in the Amazon. The invading Spaniards, after defeating the Incas, went in search of it, and many died as a result.

Ruzo’s grandfather’s legend also recounted that the conquistadors who returned told of the horrors of death and disease that the forest visited upon them. Mysteriously among these was the story of a steaming river, its water so hot that if you fell into it you would be boiled alive.

The book tells of Ruzo’s search for the river in the Peruvian Amazon and his amazing discovery, in 2013, that the legend was true. What was remarkable was that no visible references to the existence of the river existed in modern literature, yet it was not too difficult to find. Ruzo finds out that there may have been a cover-up by the energy industry that first discovered oil deposits in the 1930s near where the river emerges.

They feared that reporting its existence might deter investors from allowing them to drill.

The Asháninka, who for centuries had occupied the territory where the boiling waters emerge from fissures in the rocks, had long treated the river as a secret and sacred place filled with healing properties. With a history of land invasions by illegal loggers, and murders of their leaders by outsiders, there was little incentive for them to encourage inquisitive visitors.

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How such hot water can emerge in the Amazon, far from any volcanoes and where no thermal upwelling has been recorded in the Earth’s crust, forms a part of the mystery Ruzo’s journey attempts to reveal. Along the way he enlists the help of an Asháninka shaman, who takes him into the spiritual world of the forest in search of explanations. “The river shows us what we need to see,” the shaman tells him.

What I found intriguing, but perhaps not surprising, having spent many years investigating tropical forests, is that such a large and obvious wonder should be hidden in plain sight for so long. Ruzo had to pursue his hunch that the river existed in the face of stiff opposition from his PhD supervisor; experts scoffed at the probability of its existence in the knowledge that Peru’s volcanic activity had ‘turned off’ 2 million years ago. Ruzo set out to prove them wrong.

The river’s ‘discovery’ by outsiders could now help to redress the appalling suffering the Asháninka communities have endured at the hands of modern-day entrepreneurs plundering Paititi. Because, of course, the riches that Paititi symbolises are life itself. Evolution delivered to the Asháninka a permanent store of diverse natural capital that others have plundered simply for plywood, murdering their people in the process.

It has taken the Asháninka 12 years to gain title to their lands. The boiling river symbolises the wonder of the forest and its eternal energy bubbling free out of the ground. What will happen now? A spa? Eco-tourism? Is it worse than what the Asháninka have suffered already?

Ruzo’s words sum up the book well: “It’s a story where modern science and traditional worldviews collide – not violently but respectfully – united in their sense of awe for the natural world.”

Andrew Mitchell is the author of The Enchanted Canopy and is Founder Director of the Global Canopy Programme in Oxford.

July/August 2016

SHOP

RESURGENCE SHOP LUCKY DIP BUNDLES An exploration through the archive of Resurgence. As we celebrate 50 years of publication in 2016, we invite you to take a look through a selection of our archive issues. We will select 5, 10 or 15 back issues of Resurgence, ranging from January/ February 1990 (issue 138) through to

July/August 2012 (issue 273), for you to enjoy. Beautifully designed and illustrated, each issue includes a Welcome by Satish Kumar, our editor for over 40 years. Satish brings his unique perspective as a former Jain monk, peace activist and visionary to the pages of Resurgence.

5 copy bundle £7.50 plus p&p £3.15 UK, £9.17 Europe, £13.20 ROW

10 copy bundle £15 plus p&p

15 copy bundle £20 plus p&p

£7.77 UK, £17.07 Europe, £25.08 ROW

£9.27 UK, £23.84 Europe, £35.25 ROW

ART & CULTURE

SPIRITUALITY & PHILOSOPHY

You Are, Therefore I Am, Soil, Soul, Society, Earth Pilgrim, No Destination and a £5-off voucher for membership to The Resurgence Trust.

All presented in a limited edition reusable eco-friendly bag featuring the Resurgence 50th Anniversary logo.

Images of Earth, Art and Spirit, Resurgence & Ecologist Issue 281: Protecting the Countryside, The Ecologist Guide to Fashion and a £5-off voucher for membership to The Resurgence Trust.

All presented in a limited edition reusable eco-friendly bag featuring the Resurgence 50th Anniversary logo.

£35 plus p&p £3.15 UK, £9.17 Europe, £13.20 ROW

£25 plus p&p £3.15 UK, £9.17 Europe, £13.20 ROW

You Are, Therefore I Am and The Buddha and The Terrorist by Satish Kumar, Resurgence Issue 265: Intrinsic Values and Resurgence & Ecologist Issue 283: Small is the New Big and a £5-off voucher for membership to The Resurgence Trust.

All presented in a limited edition reusable eco-friendly bag featuring the Resurgence 50th Anniversary logo.

GIFT PACKS

The Collection: 4 books by Satish Kumar

£25 plus p&p £2.59 UK, £6.92 Europe, £9.81 ROW

CRAFT & CULTURE

WELCOME PACK

The Beauty of Craft, Resurgence & Ecologist Issue 281: Protecting the Countryside, The Ecologist Guide to Fashion and a £5-off voucher for membership to The Resurgence Trust.

All presented in a limited edition reusable eco-friendly bag featuring the Resurgence 50th Anniversary logo.

No Destination, Only Connect, the two latest issues of Resurgence & Ecologist, and a £5-off voucher for membership to The Resurgence Trust.

All presented in a limited edition reusable eco-friendly bag featuring the Resurgence 50th Anniversary logo.

£25 plus p&p £2.87 UK, £8.04 Europe, £11.50 ROW

£18.50 plus p&p £3.15 UK, £9.17 Europe, £13.20 ROW

Order today (while stocks last) on +44 (0)1208 841824 (Mon–Thu, 9am–5pm) For more books, magazines, CDs, DVDs and cards – visit www.resurgence.org/shop Issue 297

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L E T TERS

Letters to the Editors DON’T POLARISE THE MEAT DEBATE

In the article ‘Vegetarianism is the Only Green Option’ in your March/April issue (No. 295), Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswatiji makes many good points about the way animal agriculture affects our environment and health. Whilst I agree that, in the current context, it is important that we reduce our overall meat consumption, I feel that the impact of these points (and the interest of readers) is in danger of being lost by the polarising way in which vegetarianism is advocated.

Many of the criticisms of animal agriculture apply equally to all industrial farming processes: the clear-cutting of forest, water-wastage and C02 emissions are also a major problem with crop production. And this is not to mention the adverse effects on our health of the hybridisation and genetic modification of crops such as soya, corn and wheat. (For a comprehensive indictment of wheat, see Wheat Belly by William Davis.)

Notwithstanding that the environmental impact of the livestock industry exceeds that of crop farming (since the latter also feeds the former), is it meat eating that should take all the rap, or is the real issue to do with human population (and associated consumption)? If human numbers could be kept within limits, then would not a diet that includes eating livestock raised and slaughtered as humanely as possible (bearing in mind that all beings must die in some way at some time) – and forming part of integrated, organic food systems – be far more justifiable, both morally and ecologically, than that of a vegetarian living in the context of the current mainstream food system?

For a path toward sustainability and

higher awareness, we need look no further than those ancient, Indigenous cultures that still survive on Earth; yet I am not aware of any that are vegetarian. According to the author, “Eating fish is … violent to our own bodies and to the fish themselves.” Tell that to those First Nations of British Columbia whose entire culture, way of life, sustainability and wellbeing revolve around salmon!

Bear in mind too the results of experiments by Cleve Backster (in the 1960s, published in the International Journal of Parapsychology) and others on plants and their responses to violence done to them – or even just the intention of it – suggesting to me that vegetarianism on purely moral grounds may simply be a way of avoiding the more fundamental spiritual questions relating to suffering as an inherent part of life on the material plane.

I was a vegetarian for around seven years before starting to eat meat again (once or twice a week), until last year.

Then a health crisis forced me to reevaluate my diet, drastically reducing the intake of sugar and carbohydrates and substituting more fish and meat, on a daily basis and organic wherever possible. Psychologically I resisted meat, for many of the reasons presented in the article, but my body rejoiced, shedding pounds of unwanted flesh and becoming lighter, stronger and happier.

My conclusion is that each person is different and has different needs at different times. To advocate vegetarianism for all seems to me to miss the point – and risks masking the deeper causes of the environmental crisis, not to mention the roots of suffering itself.

Andrew McAulay Tai Po, Hong Kong, China

INDIAN OIL – AND ANIMAL SUFFERING?

I was very interested to read Vandana Shiva’s article ‘Gandhi’s ghani’ (Issue 296) about cold-press oil mills in India and about the destruction of the environment by palm oil plantations. I was curious, however, about the photograph.

My first glance took in the woman with her tin perched on the side of the mill. Then I looked at the background, at what I assumed to be a pile of rough debris with, oddly, a pair of horns laid on top. Next I registered the blinkers and chains and huge wooden pestle and eventually I realised I was looking at the skeletally thin body of a white bullock(?) harnessed up to tread a repetitive circular walk around the ghani.

I’ve heard that donkeys once similarly harnessed to wells in England had to be blinkered to prevent them going mad.

Perhaps the oil mills are now mechanised – could Vandana Shiva tell us more about the circumstances?

Victoria Manthorpe Norwich, Norfolk

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?

As I thumbed through the 50th anniversary edition (Issue 296) I couldn’t help but notice a predominance of contributions from men compared to those of women. Even the article ‘Founding Figures and Guiding Lights’ relegated women to the end. Similarly in the feature ‘The Challenges Ahead’, there was a gender bias of 4:1 in favour of male contributors, whilst the reviews section was totally given over to the men – both reviewers and authors. Elsewhere it was a similar story. Where were the women?

To go forward into the next 50 years, Resurgence & Ecologist needs more new female voices to address this imbalance. Whilst I greatly admire Vandana Shiva, her message is very similar from issue to issue. Please could you better represent the female readership of your otherwise excellent publication by having more key articles from a feminine perspective?

Dorothy Thomas Trefonen, Shropshire

Cartoon by Jonesy www.jonesycartoons.com

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WHEN AUSTERITY IS A DIRTY WORD

Ros Coward seems to believe that austerity lessens consumption and should therefore be welcomed by environmentalists (‘Austerity Is Not a Dirty Word’, Issue 296). This is a misunderstanding.

The opposite of austerity is not “unlimited consumption”, as Coward implies.

The opposite of austerity is a decent public sector and welfare state.

It is wrong to draw a parallel between the present day and the thrifty ‘austerity’ of WWII. Today, there is enough to go around. Austerity is an ideological project that seeks to

shrink the state, cut public services, and transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. It is not a return to a nobler ‘make do and mend’ mentality.

Nor does austerity curb consumption. The people now queuing at food banks were already consuming the least. The people who have benefited from austerity were already consuming the most. Now the super-rich consume yet more.

I have never heard an anti-austerity campaigner call for a return to growth for growth’s sake. In my experience, they mostly care about avoidable deaths and worsening poverty in a

Crossword Across 1 “We are travelers on a _____ journey” – Paolo Coelho, The Alchemist. (6)

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time of plenty. It is right to worry about overconsumption, but Coward ought to place the burden of belt-tightening on the richest in society, not the poorest.

Russell Warfield London We welcome letters and emails commenting on Resurgence & Ecologist articles and issues. These should include your postal address. Send your letters to The Editors, Resurgence & Ecologist, Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, Devon EX39 6EE or email editorial@resurgence.org Letters may be edited for reasons of space or clarity.

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4 He flew too close to 11. (6) 9 When one heavenly body obscures a complete view of another. (7) 10 To deduce as a consequence. (5) 11 “But soft! What light from yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the ____” – Shakespeare. (3)

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13 “I will _____ and go now, and go to Innisfree.” – Yeats (5) 14 Bringing to an early end. (11)

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19 Following 11 across, an appropriate garment for some to keep cool. (5) 21 Mother-of-pearl. (5)

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23 Following 11, wear one to keep cool. (3) 24 Creator of the Cave Analogy, whereby humans observe only the shadows of reality. (5)

16 Ursus malayanus, a vulnerable animal living in the tropical rainforest of southeast Asia. (3,4)

25 According to the Wu Xing system, the Chinese considered wood one of the five ______s. (7)

17 What an organism does to survive, according to evolution. (6)

26 Following 11, a dangerous consequence of overdoing it. (6)

20 You get one if you grab Electrophorus electricus. (5)

27 Falsely implicated in a crime. (6)

22 Following 11, a high SPF is advisable to protect the skin.

18 Could describe a swimming pool, or a debate. (6)

Down 1 In Japan, sakura is the much awaited season when this tree blossoms. (6) 2 and 3: Project proving the feasibility of air transport by clean energy. (5, 7) 5 The world’s biggest solar farm is in this country. (5)

Solution to the crossword in Issue 296

6 A bully. (7) 7 Durable type of stone, much used at Stonehenge. (6) 8 Like a mosaic. (11) 15 Where to enjoy an al fresco meal. (4,3) Issue 297

The answers are also available online at www.resurgence.org/crossword To comment on the crossword, email Tim at ecores_crossword@hotmail.co.uk

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July/August 2016

Working to Transform Young Lives Shared Lives Providers Required Transform Residential are seeking Shared Lives Providers (SLPs) to give residential placements, ranging from 36 - 52 weeks, for young people with learning disabilities and/or difficulties aged 16 - 25, attending one of Ruskin Mill Trust specialist further education colleges.

SLPs are self-employed and fully supported by our Shared Lives Co-ordinator, with generous weekly allowances including a proportion to be spent on organic produce, in-line with our food and nutrition policy. There are also additional payments for individual placement plans. Experience is helpful but not essential as significant training will be required including on Ruskin Mill Trust’s unique method. Principally, the position entails: • Providing each individual with a warm, caring and supportive environment • Offering support, supervision and guidance for up to three of our young people in everyday household tasks and independence skills • Encouraging and enabling students to attend social and cultural activities and to develop their communication and social skills • Ensuring the safety and welfare of each student, whilst supporting their goals and aspirations, including personal and leisure interests We would especially welcome interest from applicants who do not have children in their households.

For more info contact Sharron Derry: sharron.derry@trl.rmt.org The approval process to become a Shared Lives Provider will include a comprehensive assessment with a designated assessor and consideration by an independent panel plus a ‘Disclosure and Barring’ certificate acceptable to Transform Residential Limited.

Resurgence188x136_2-11-15.indd 1

Developing a comprehensive perception of patients and illness that encompasses body, soul and spirit.

Forming a new relationship to medicines and their source materials through plant and mineral studies.

Experiencing how art supplements science and widens understanding.

Discovering new methods of study that stimulate and motivate personal learning.

Exploring exercises and meditations that support personal development in relationship to medical work.

Issue 297

British Postgraduate Training in Anthroposophic The full British Medicine Postgraduate 04/11/2015 12:39:18

Intensive Residential Introduction to Anthroposophic Medicine 6th - 10th July 2016 The Trigonos Centre, Snowdonia Wales

For Doctors but also open to other practitioners (conventional & complimentary).

In a beautiful natural setting, the five day programme offers an approach to medicine that includes art, a qualitative approach to the natural world, medicinal plant study, a personal exploration of spiritual biography and aspects of the spiritual history of North Wales.

Training in Anthroposophic Medicine over three years December 2016 For Doctors and medical students.

A three year part time course consisting of 5 three day weekend seminars and a five day summer intensive per year.

Based at St Luke’s Medical Centre, Stroud, Gloucestershire.

For further details of these courses see www.anthroposophic-drs-training.org

E-mail Dr. Michael Evans info@anthroposophic-drs-training.org Telephone 01453 750097 Resurgence & Ecologist

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THE KRISHNAMURTI CENTRE Brockwood Park, Bramdean

A quiet retreat set east of Winchester, offering simple and beautiful accommodation with vegetarian meals.

A place for people to explore the work of philosopher and spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986).

For those interested in self-reflexion and inquiry the Centre provides a serene atmosphere. Solo retreats and organized events are available. Facilities include a sitting room, library and a specially-designed quiet room.

For information please contact: 01962771748 | info@krishnamurticentre.org.uk | krishnamurticentre.org.uk

SATURDAY 12TH NOVEMBER 2016

Sir Anthony Seldon

Please register to join us: 01962 771744 | enquiry@brockwood.org.uk | brockwood.org.uk

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Beginning with stillness my faith becomes action.

Krishnamurti Concert J. Krishnamurti: Silence, Music and the Arts - Maria João Pires / Beethoven with Aditi Mangaldas (Indian Classical dance), Nigel North (lute) & Maria João Pires (piano) Introduction by Ian Skelly

3rd September 2016 - 7.30pm London, Cadogan Hall Maria João Pires : PhotoFelix Broede, Deutsche Grammophon

Nigel North

Aditi Mangaldas : Photo Dinesh Khanna

Ticket information

www.j-krishnamurti.co.uk www.cadoganhall.com £40, £35, £25, £17.50 £10 Box office: 020 7730 4500 *£3 booking fee per online transaction or by phone.

Cadogan Hall, London, SWQX 9DQ Q Logo - Fern - CMYK - Black Text.pdf

Find out more www.quaker.org.uk

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THE TURNING OF THE AGE

BEAUTIFUL RETREAT VENUE A Tyringham Initiative Event in collaboration with Resurgence Magazine and Evolver

FOR SALE

EDENRISE nr Totnes Devon

FRIDAY 30TH SEPTEMBER - SUNDAY 2ND OCTOBER 2016 Join Charles Eisenstein, Rupert Sheldrake, Satish Kumar and other special guests, amidst the splendour of Tyringham Hall, for two days of intimate discussion and experiential processes designed to relate more deeply with the transition that is upon us as we move towards ending the Age of Separation.

RESIDENTIAL: Friday 6pm until Sunday 6pm, including accommodation, all meals, talks & workshops - £950 (‘early bird’ £750). NON-RESIDENTIAL: Saturday & Sunday, 10am to 6pm, including lunch, talks & workshops - £250 each day, or £400 for two days. For more information: info@tyringhaminitiative.com

www.resurgence.org

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www.tyringhaminitiative.com

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www.evolver.net

2 Barns converted in 2008 - 17 beds, Spacious Group Rooms, Sauna, Land, Annexe to convert for live-in accomodation Views to Dartmoor

www.edenrise.org sale info: g_s_chapman@hotmail.com July/August 2016

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Summer School

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Tel: 01453 839121

Everything you need to publish your book

Fairphone from The Phone Co-op A smarter phone for a better planet The Phone Co-op. For people who give a damn.

Join the movement. Visit www.thephone.coop/resurgence or call 01608 434000 now to find out more.

Issue 297

01237 441839 www.thewritefactor.co.uk

Let us help you with: Feasibility studies, surveys, sustainable design, conservation, planning applications, building regulations, project management

To Advertise here call Dan on +44(0)776 361671

Satish Kumar’s EVENTS DIARY

9 July The Heart of Humanity, Tuscany 17 July Ways with Words, Dartington 5 Aug Niddfest, Harrogate,Yorks

19 Aug Mangreen Hall, Norwich Permaculture Magazine display ads 2016 20 Aug Acle Hindu Temple, Norwich This PDF layout is CMYK 300dpi 27 Aug Greenbelt Festival, Kettering If you require an ad in another format i.e. tiff, please contact T 2 Sept Co-investing with Nature, Frome or email: tony@permaculture.co.uk.

3 Sept Valley Fest, Chew Valley Resurgence & Ecologist

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www.gaiahouse.co.uk

MEDITATION RETREATS IN THE BUDDHIST TRADITION

doortothehimalayas.co.uk Tibetan singing bowls Pure Pashmina stoles

arts * sustainability * spirituality * well being

HAWKWOOD Centre for Future Thinking

Meditation shawls Handloom blankets Ethically sourced, individually hand-crafted items by rural artisans across the Himalayas

RISING WOMEN RISING WORLD

11 July next monthly evening gathering 4-6 November InnerAction Foundation weekend

BLOOD OF THE AMAZON FILM 6 July MUSICIANS WITHOUT BORDERS 15 July SUMMER RESTIVAL

MA SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

It starts with a six day residential in the Lake District, during which you will be challenged and supported in a highly interdisciplinary exploration of both sustainability and leadership.

The old orthodoxies will be deconstructed so you can more clearly identify a pathway for yourself as a leader of social and organisational change. We challenge you to take action.

A QUALIFICATION FOR OUR FUTURE

You can join our Sustainable Leadership courses in four ways:

START DATE: SEPT. 2016 UNIVERSITY OF CUMBRIA, AMBLESIDE CAMPUS

• Short courses, without qualification • Stand-alone Certificates of Achievement (20 credits) • Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Leadership (60 credits) • MA in Sustainable Leadership Development (180 credits)

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The MA combines online study with five intensive week-long residentials.

Find out more about the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability, our leadership programmes and our lifechanging events at www.iflas.info or call 015394 30228.

Time to slow down and be nourished 17-21 July—Margot Henderson & Katie Lloyd-Nunn

CREATIVE ARTS SUMMER SCHOOL

15-31 July—20 different day or weekend courses

LIVING THE NEW STORY

21-23 Oct Jude Currivan and Honor Griffith

EVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP

“The readiness is all” - lessons from Hamlet 7-10 November Richard Olivier and Ana Rhodes

DEFINING YOUR FUTURE

Futuring with Stefan Hermann Dreams worth staying awake for 20-24 Nov Courses * Retreats * Events * Venue Hire

www.hawkwoodcollege.co.uk Stroud GL6 7QW tel. 01453 759034

July/August 2016

Holistic Holistic Holidays Holidays In In Greece Greece

Biodanza and 5-Rhythms® Creative Writing Enneagram, Filmmaking Family Fortnight (August) Healing Self, Society & Planet Living in Community weeks Mindfulness, Vegetarian Cookery Raw Food Fortnight (August) Radical Economics & Money Vipassana 10 day Retreat Walking Mt Pelion Yoga (Scaravelli & Hatha)

brochure@kalikalos.com

Jill Purce

The Healing Voice Rediscover the ancient power of group chant Magical Voice Techniques • Mantra & Sonic Meditations • Mongolian Overtone Chanting

Check out the 2016 programme

Healing London HealingVoice Voice Weekends Weekends- -London July2 6-7; Dec Dec 7-8 3 - 4 Jul - 3; Oct Oct26-7; 29 - 30; Healing WeekRitual - 7 day Oct 29 - Nov 4 28-9 Healing Voice the Family& Resonance Sept

HealingFamily Voice-Week Intensive - London -Oct 26Healing & Ancestors Weekends London Nov 1 Sept 24 - 25; Oct 15 - 16; Nov 26 - 27

www.Kalikalos.org

www.healingvoice.com • T: 020 7435 2467

Living-Learning Summer SchoolS

Ad-LivingSpir_188x66mm_ResurgenceMag-Jan2016 22-01-16 15:20 Pagina 1

Living Spirituality Who am I? What gives my life meaning?

“Set your sights higher than your eye can see.”

- Rumi

OneSpirit offers a two year cutting edge experiential programme creating your unique path to wholeness and service, weaving together living community, spiritual leadership, social action, ritual and spiritual counselling. ✷ Training programmes for OneSpirit ministers commence each autumn. ✷ Open introductory events are held throughout the UK and Ireland. ✷ Contact Lindsay Jarrett 0333 332 1996 for details www.osif.org.uk

BI JA A to Z Programme on Organic Farming and Agro-biodiversity 15 September – 15 October 2016 The course on Agriculture, Food and Health will cover principles & practices of agro ecology, the conservation of biodiversity and living seed, the building of organic living soil which help us grow more food and are also the solution to climate change. We will also explore the internet links between agriculture food and health.

Besides scientific discussions on agroecology, living seed , living food, living soil, participants will have the opportunity to engage practically in farm activities and cooking classes.

For more information on other courses during 2016, see www.navdanya.net

For further information please contact Mini Joy at: bija@navdanya.net Tel +91 11 268 532 772 Issue 297

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Resurgence and Ecologist Advertising Issues Jan–Feb March–April May–June July–Aug Sep–Oct Nov–Dec

Deadlines 1st November 1st January 1st March 1st May 1st July 1st September

Classified adverts £1 per word including VAT. Add £5 for semi display. Add £10 for web inclusion. 25% discount when you book three consecutive adverts.

Call to book on 01237 441293 or visit:www.resurgence.org/education/ classified-booking.html

ACCOMMODATION

HOLIDAYS

RETREAT Beautiful off-grid cob house (as seen on TV!) in Cotswolds next to organic veg and dairy available for short (or long) retreats. For info contact michael.buck1@yahoo.co.uk or 01865 515777

RUGGED, BEAUTIFUL PEMBROKESHIRE Two eco-friendly converted barns on smallholding.

Each sleeps 4. Coastal path 2 miles. Tel. 01348 891 286 holidays@stonescottages.co.uk www.stonescottages.co.uk

COMMUNITIES SEEKING LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE for community house share. Hertfordshire WGC, St Albans. Female early 50s.

E: susaneeeee@hotmail.com

COURSES FOCUSING is a special way of paying attention so that we sense the whole feeling about situations or issues. Focusing can guide us in creativity, decision-making and emotional wisdom.

Courses, 1:1 sessions, face-to-face or Skype. www.carolannsamuels.co.uk Tel: 01303 266 253 HAWKWOOD CENTRE FOR FUTURE THINKING Innovative thinkers, and creative activism at Hawkwood, our ethical centre for education and enquiry. Beautiful, sustainably managed setting, warm welcome and delicious food. Residential and day options. Artist Residencies; Creative Arts Summer School 15-31 July; Summer Rest-ival 17-21 July; Living the New Story 21-23 October; Evolutionary Leadership 7-10 November; Defining your Future 20-24 November; Rising Women, Rising World Inner Action training 4-6 November. www.hawkwoodcollege.co.uk Tel. 01453 759 034 FRIENDLY BUDDHIST RETREAT IN THE HEART OF THE COTSWOLDS Buddhist Society Summer School August 20th to 27th. Prices from £185 www.thebuddhistsociety. org Tel: 020 78345858

EVENTS ECOHESION offers freelance lectures in 2016. ‘The Ecology of Economics’ – the assumed ‘separability’ of the ecologically cohesive (ecohesive) world, of which we are part.

Details: Stuart McBurney 0114 288 8037 GREENSPIRIT ANNUAL GATHERING 21-23 October, EarthSpirit, Somerset. Speaker – Philip Carr-Gomm. www.greenspirit.org.uk/ag2016 or Hilary: 020 8470 3365

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MID WALES Earth, Air, Water, Fire... Walk wild hilltops, breathe fresh air, explore streams and waterfalls, snuggle down by the woodburner. Cosy, bright, peaceful s/c hideaway for 2+2. Also quiet streamside camping and campfires. Rob and Pip: 01686 420 423 www.the-gorfanc-hideaway.co.uk ITALY, TUSCAN-UMBRIAN BORDER Lovely 17th-century farmhouse, flexible accommodation for 12–14, in two buildings (access for partially disabled), six bedrooms and four bath-/shower rooms. In its own private curtilage in soft rolling countryside with farreaching views and large swimming pool. Well sited for Florence, Arezzo, Cortona, Urbino and Perugia. Available year-round. www.laceruglia.com Tel. 01392 811 436 or email slrs@perridge.com TOTNES (SOUTH DEVON) Self-catering double-bedroom riverside apartment. Situated on the edge of the magnificent Dartington estate. Short walk along the river path to Totnes mainline station and town centre. Perfect base for exploring by foot, canoe and bike. www.littleriverside.wordpress.com Tel. 01803 866 257 mobile: 07875 727 763 littleriverside@googlemail.com PERSONAL RETREATS, FRANCE Make space to reflect and be still. Beautiful retreat house in Auvergne offers supportive, welcoming environment for individual retreats. Daily rhythm: meditation; silent interludes; contemplative/ artistic activities. Lovely walks. Organic vegetarian food. www.retreathouseauvergne.com SW FRANCE Small detached cottage and a secluded oak cabin for rent. Perfect for those of you seeking peace and quiet in a truly beautiful, romantic spot.

Ideal for walking, painting, writing... Wonderful fauna and flora and sublime villages.

Website: webb89.wix.com/lamasse ANDALUCIA, ALPUJARRAS Village house, wild countryside, walking, sea view, peaceful, £220 p/w. scarapiet@hotmail.com

Display Advertising Rates £1,500 Full page Half page £850 Quarter page £475 £275 Eighth page Sixteenth page £160 To advertise get in touch with Dan: dan@emsm.org.uk 07776 361671 www.emsm.org.uk MID WALES Stream-side caravan, sleeps 4+. Conservation smallholding; abundant wildlife, pond, swimming, beautiful walks. Near Machynlleth and Centre for Alternative Technology. £160– £180 p/w. No smoking. Also CAMPING. 01654 702 718 greenholidays@yfelin.plus.com www.yfelin.plus.com TRANQUIL 17C COTTAGE, DENTDALE Idyllic setting in sunny hillside pasture surrounded by open fields. SSSI with magnificent views over Dentdale and Whernside. Sleeps up to seven, Dent village (meditation centre) 3 miles. www.allenhaw-dent.co.uk nrcarr@outlook.com ANDALUCIA, ALPUJARRAS Secluded mountain retreat. Beautifully restored. www.alpujarrasruralhouse.com NW SCOTLAND, COIGACH Remote, cosy, traditional croft house, beautifully situated on wild mountainous coastline. Sleeps 6. £375–£535 pw. www.173culnacraig.com Email: gwennie.fraser@zen.co.uk CENTRAL PORTUGAL Self-contained modern cabin. Private facilities, parking, wifi. Set in organic smallholding, rural but not isolated. From €25/night.

00351 969 249 273 daterramail.wix.com/daterra SOUTH DEVON, TOTNES Delightfully renovated townhouse. Sleeps 5. £310–£610 www.totnes-house.weebly.com rogerkindell@hotmail.co.uk 07890 729 777 GREECE Findhorn-inspired summer holistic holidays combine retreats, creativity and sustainability workshops and a living-in-community experience with lush forest, gorgeous beaches and Greek vegetarian meals. Or join our inexpensive (£65/ week) autumn workcamp for a working holiday 16 September – 7 October. www.kalikalos.org Email: info@kalikalos.com Tel: 020 8816 8533 BEAUTIFUL 2-BEDROOM BEACH-FRONT s/c apt in Kinghorn, Fife. Close to St Andrews and East Neuk. Direct train to Edinburgh over Forth Bridge. Available for festival. www.13stjamesplace.uk COSY SELF-CATERING STRAW-BALE roundhouse for vegetarians in the beautiful Gwili Valley, Carmarthenshire. Beaches and castles nearby. Contact 07583 980 767 sunwheel111@gmail.com

July/August 2016

MISCELLANEOUS

SITUATIONS VACANT

SOUL THERAPY BY SKYPE Develop self-knowledge and personal depth; strengthen environmental and community purpose.

Enquiries: soultherapy@nym.hush.com

Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden Corporation (KFBGC) is a registered non-profit making organization based in Hong Kong, dedicated to harmonizing our relationship with the environment (www.kfbg.org). We are looking for a candidate to fill the following position: SENIOR EDUCATION OFFICER To be responsible for the design, management and delivery of education programmes in support of the KFBG mission.

Responsibilities • To design, manage and conduct a range of holistic, experiential education programmes to enhance self-awareness and connection to nature, in support of sustainable living, for people of various ages and backgrounds; • To help integrate holistic education elements into KFBG’s other education programmes; • To develop marketing strategy to promote education programmes to public and organizations; • To monitor the execution and evaluation of the above projects and activities to good effect; • To establish and maintain an international network of relevant experts, community groups, schools and other organizations; • To lead a small team of staff and volunteers; • Other duties as assigned from time to time by the Head of the Education Department.

Requirements • Commitment to the mission, vision and values of KFBGC; • Good command of English (knowledge of Cantonese and/or Putonghua will be an advantage although not essential); • PhD or Master degree in a relevant educational field (such as Holistic Science and Experiential Education etc.); • At least five years of solid working experience in Experiential Nature Education, Holistic Education or Transformational Education programmes preferred.

• At least five years of good and solid track experience at supervisory level in education project management, promotion and marketing will be required.

• Proven skills in facilitation, design and implementation of workshops or retreats; • Experience of mindfulness practice would be an advantage; • Self-motivated, dynamic and a good team player; • Ability to interact with a wide range of people in a positive, inspirational way; • Passion for nature; • Have an understanding of Chinese culture; • Physically fit for mild outdoor group activities; • Open minded and recognize the validity of all spiritual paths; • There is an expectation that the job holder will publish articles and books online to further the field.

• Able to work residentially occasionally, including weekends and public holidays; • Valid Type I or II driving license is preferred.

Interested parties, please send your detailed C.V., with expected salary, and a short essay on ‘How can we help people to connect to their own hearts and nature?’ to the Human Resources Manager, Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden Corporation, Lam Kam Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong or email to kfjobs@kfbg.org.

LUDDITES FOR MUTUAL SUPPORT PO Box 297/1, Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, EX39 6EE

PRODUCTS SHITAKE MUSHROOM LOGS Grow your own mushrooms on our Ready to Grow Logs, various species. DIY Log Kits and dried mushrooms also available. Unusual healthy presents! www.rusticmushrooms.co.uk Tel. 01825 723 065

PROPERTY FOR SALE CRAFTSMAN-BUILT OAK-FRAMED HOUSE 4 Beds, Workshop, Garden, Parking. Near Hawkwood College/Steiner Schools, Nailsworth, Stroud Glos. £550K ono. Willmott.

Tel 07967 663 714 IRELAND Co. Clare and surrounding areas: farmhouses, cottages, smallholdings, etc., in beautiful unspoilt countryside. Some within reach of Steiner school. Greenvalley Properties.

Tel. +353 61 921 498 www.gvp.ie VILLAGE HOUSE IN GUILLAUMES Alpes Maritimes. €120,000. More details email pauljcraig@icloud.com LANGSIDE FARMHOUSE, AYRSHIRE: Lot 1. House and outbuildings + 8 acres good grazing land: offers over £475,000. A large, versatile, beautifully appointed Georgian property, with adjoining south-facing large stone barn with plans for conversion, 4 stables, workshop and good outbuildings.

Commanding views over the valley, 15 min Ayrshire coast, 30 min Glasgow. Ideal for B&B, equestrian, smallholding or livestock activities. Period features throughout, 2 staircases leading to 5 main bedrooms (4 en suite) + family bathroom, 3 reception rooms, studio with loft bedroom above, large farmhouse kitchen, elec/log-fired range cooker, walk-in larder, food prep area.

Adjoining clear-roofed garden room with 11 raised beds, courtyard front garden, 1 acre at rear incl. large veg plot. 50kW auto biomass (woodchip) central heating with oil backup, 4kW photovoltaic panels (maximum tariff).

6,493 sq ft incl. house, barn, garden room.

Lot 2. 25 acres good grazing land with woodland + possible micro hydro: offers over £75,000. Contact CKD Galbraith Estate Agents: 01292 268 181 http://goo.gl/Dvmje5

ORGANIC FARMING COMMUNITY in beautiful Herefordshire seeks new families.

We have a south-facing, family-sized property for sale, currently valued at £295,000. Would you be interested in a change of lifestyle?

Growing food, watching your children growing up on a unique farm of 40 acres, sharing community with animals and friends? membership@canonfromecourt.org.uk or visit our website: canonfromecourt.org.uk

Issue 297

WANTED BACK ISSUES OF QUEST MAGAZINE Details and price to Box No. 297/2, Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, EX39 6EE

RESURGENCE CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Sep/Oct – 1 July Nov/Dec – 1 September Jan/Feb – 1 November Please include my advert in the next one q three q issue(s)* of Resurgence.

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David Midgley david@schumacher-north.co.uk Meeting bi-monthly

Membership Rates Six issues per year UK: £30 Europe: £38 | Rest of the World: £40

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OVERSEAS MEMBERSHIP USA Walt Blackford, PO Box 312, Langley, WA 98260, USA Airmail: US$68

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Contact: Elaine Brook 01981 550246 elaine@gaiapartnership.org Near Hay on Wye, 6.30pm, quarterly Contact: Margaret Evans 0191 290 1516 margaretevans.wb@gmail.com

AUSTRALIA Melbourne

Contact: Debby Badger 03 9530 8642 badgers@optushome.com.au Meeting monthly

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RESURGENCE GROUPS An opportunity to share ideas and seasonal food. For more information, or to start your own group, contact Jeanette Gill: 01208 841824 members@resurgence.org

Bournemouth

Contact: Anna Moreton 07935 325604 annamoreton10@gmail.com

East Devon

Contact: Christina Bows 01297 23822 tinabows@hotmail.com Monthly at The Spiral Sanctuary, Seaton

Dorset

Contact: Pamela Rosling 01258 818223 pamrosling@yahoo.co.uk Meeting bi-monthly

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Netherlands

PORTUGAL Paredes de Coura

Contact: Gabriela Cunha (+351) 919 991585 gabrielacunha@gmail.com Rajesh Pai rajesh.pai@green-pai-energy.com Meeting bi-monthly

Porto

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Sobral Pichorro

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SOUTH AFRICA Cape Town

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RESURGENCE SUPPORTERS Patrons

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Life Members

Colette Annesley-Gamester and Johnathan Harding, Robin Auld, Keith and Debby Badger, Caroline Bennett, Klaas and Lise Berkeley, Carmen Blazquez, Peter and Mimi Buckley, Ruy Barretto, Anisa Caine, Mrs Moira Campbell, Anne Clements, Mary Davidson, Liz Dean, Craig Charles Dobson, John Doyle, John and Liz Duncan, Rosemary Fitzpatrick, Mrs V. Hamnett, Hermann Graf-Hatzfeldt, Tony Henry, Guy Johnson, Thomas Lingard, Michael Livni, Mill Millichap, Valerie Morgan, Mrs O. Oppenheimer, Vinod Patel and Rashmi Shukla, CBE, John Pontin, Colin Redpath, Jane Rowse, Gabriel Scally, Penelope Schmidt, Miss N. Sharpe, Mark Shorrock, Philip Strong, Carey Taylor, Caroline Windsor, India WindsorClive, Dick and Sue Wright

Sustainer Members

Mr G. Bader, Mrs Helen Carlton, Eric Chen, Mrs K. Dudelzak, Jonathan Horwitz and Zara Waldeback, Maureen Lodge, Iain McKay, Marcela de Montes, G.R. Murthy, Re-Green Greece, Monika Sachtleben, Rosemary Steel, James Stelfox, Mrs Charmaine Wright

TRUSTEES James Sainsbury (Chair), Josephine Amankwah, Dick Baker, Sandy Brown, Rebecca Hossack, Tony Juniper, Hylton Murray-Philipson, Nick Robins, Kim SamuelJohnson, Ana Stanic

PRODUCTION Printer Kingfisher Print, Totnes, Devon ISSN 0034-5970 Printed on Evolution paper: (75% recycled fibre/25% FSC certified virgin pulp), using soya-based inks

SUPPORTING GROUPS Hemel Hempstead

Contact: Paul Sandford tel. 07767 075490 paulsandford28@yahoo.co.uk Meets on the 2nd Wednesday of the month

London

Contact: Annemarie Borg amb@annemarieborg.com Antara Project Group focused on role of artists

Resurgence & Ecologist (ISSN 0034-5970) is published bi-monthly by The Resurgence Trust and is distributed in the USA by Mail Right Int. 1637 Stelton Road B4 Piscataway NJ 08854.

Periodical Postage Paid at NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ 08901 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Resurgence, The Resurgence Trust C/O 1637 Stelton Road Ste B4, Piscataway NJ 08854

July/August 2016

Ideas

musIC

LIterature

Bill McKibben on climate change, Theos Director Elizabeth Oldfield on Europe, Citizens UK’s Neil Jameson on community organising, Sally Magnusson on dementia, Paul Mason on postcapitalism, Jude Wanga on racism, Satish Kumar on sustainability, Kate Bottley on Judas, Terry Waite on being a hostage, WWF’s Bernadette Fischler on ecology, Rupert Shortt on faith and atheism, Elaine Storkey on gender violence, Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg on Holocaust memoirs

Nahko and Medicine for the People, The Hot 8 Brass Band, Kitty Daisy & Lewis, Hope & Social – A Band Anyone Can Join, Mike Peters, Gungor, Beth Rowley, Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band, Akala, Listener, Ella & the Blisters, Tankus the Henge, She Makes War, Regime

Lemn Sissay, Jan Carson, Valerie Bloom, Breis, Khulud Khamis

Comedy Josie Long, James Acaster, Harry Baker & Imran Yusuf

greenbelt.org.uk

GBF Resurgence FullPage Ad May 16.indd 1

PerformIng arts Al Seed Oog, Pif Paf Planetary, Sam Halmarack & the Miserablites, Craft Theatre Dante’s Inferno, Vamos Theatre Walkabout, Actors for Human Rights Asylum Monologues, Half Moon Theatre Fairy Tales Gone Bad, Barely Methodical Troupe Bromance, Pangottic & Circus Geeks Project Vee

PLus Youth, Children & Family Programmes, Visual Arts, Spirituality, Mobile Planetarium, Workshops, Giant Inflatables, Climbing Wall, Campfire

tICkets Ticket savings before June 30 18–25s £80 Youth & child £50 1st-time community leader £50 Group discounts Plus a range of concessions Book online at greenbelt.org.uk

a festival of arts, faith and justice

17/05/2016 16:41

Short Courses at Schumacher College How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body 24 - 26 June

With David Hamilton

Join Schumacher College for this rare residential weekend with best-selling author, David Hamilton, as he discusses all the different ways the mind impacts the body and learn practical visualisation strategies used by people around the world to help facilitate recovery from serious illness and disease.

Elegant Simplicity – Creating an Extra-Ordinary Life 27 June - 1 July

With Satish Kumar and June Mitchell

Embrace complexity in place of complication and learn how to transform even the small activities in life into something extra-ordinary.

Ecological Food Systems - Sustainable Food for All (Policy and Practice) 4 - 7 July

With Miguel A Altieri, Clara Nicholls, Colin Tudge and Ruth West

Join us to learn more about the ecological, social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of a new agricultural paradigm and how it talking shape around the world and in the UK, whilst visiting some of the most pioneering agro-ecological projects in the local area.

Rogue Bards 18 - 22 July

With Martin Shaw and Jay Griffiths

Join us around the fire as we explore the art of story in both its oral and written form.

Martin and Jay will be looking at the bardic relationship to words and the place of story in the modern world. Expect plenty of time outdoors, storytelling and writing workshops, discussion and investigation of the sense of story and of moment in all of our lives

Becoming Indigenous 2016 - Finding Our Way Home

09/09/2016 - 21/07/2017 This 10 month programme is a deep journey into the question of what it means to be indigenous to our place, our land and our community. Once in the place of home, connected to our birth-rite of belonging, how do we act in the world to create change and support others?

Resurgence Readers

SAVE 10% OFF

Using code: Resurgence10D

“Schumacher College is a place and space where the implications of the profound changes in worldviews, now surfacing in so many fields of human thought and endeavour, can be studied — and lived.”

Satish Kumar, Co-Founder & Visiting Fellow, Schumacher College

Book online: www.schumachercollege.org.uk/short-courses